troyunrau

Personal anecdote. I run a small business with a business partner (co-owner) and we have no employees. We need an employee. I'm personally a huge fan of employee-owned companies.

But from a hiring perspective, it is mind bogglingly risky for us to hire someone and just automatically stake them. Like, what if it's the wrong person? How do we claw back control? Do we risk dilution sending the company in another direction?

It's just so much easier just to pay someone and not have to deal with the complexity. And therein lies the rub.

Probably should be launched with a trebuchet

Hot take. But put it in the context of the year it was aired, not today. Star Trek (and sci fi in general) was suffering from being perceived as "blue babes and laser guns".

This episode was thoughtful if taken as standalone. And TNG really was about taking the episodes more or less independently. The season long story arcs and such didn't exist. People weren't binge watching. So the world building was less important than the specific hypothetical moral quandary of the week. Like, they are almost like Asimov short stories with a shared cast.

It wasn't until a few years later that serialized TV even really became a thing -- Twin Peaks probably was the first here, but Babylon 5 would have a good claim (and DS9, Buffy, and others were coming together then too). So the style of storytelling on TNG S2 is different.

Divorce the story from Star Trek and the setting and evaluate it as a sci fi ethical quandary. And in that framework, it is a remarkable episode.

Also, Brent Spiner played it well :)

def bathroom(customer): return False

Unpopular opinion (largely discredited in anthropology circles): cold weather encourages resourceful behaviour and improves human cooperation. In climates where you can survive winter outdoors, homelessness is not as detrimental to continued existence. Three walls and no roof is fine in a slum in Florida, but harder to pull off in Minneapolis.

This societal coordination which is required to survive winter leads to more orderly and more socialist civilizations. Because hairless apes have no business being in that climate. So it is human ingenuity that is selected for -- and that includes development of systems of cooperation.

If I extrapolate, our space faring descendants will face much bigger hurdles, but ideally will develop even better systems to deal with it.

Bonus picture. Me doing arctic exploration.

The premise here is that Trump loses but refuses to back down, attempting to forcibly claim victory. If Trump legitimately wins, there is a different path. Then...

Assuming multiple systematic failures occur simultaneously, including any of: actual voter fraud, fraudulent electors, congress refusing to certify, a captured supreme court acting in favour of Trump, or actual insurrection on or before Jan 6th.

I actually expect the US Military to step in. Every member is sworn to uphold the constitution. But if the constitution has been discarded, then I'd expect them to step in to restore it.

Failing that, the US likely fractures and we leave the Republic phase.

The premise is ridiculous, so I wonder: how serious does the book play out, or is it self-aware enough to lampshade things?

Very cool

Considering how well received this game was, perhaps it is more about marketing or misunderstanding the genre appeal?

Not as immersive but we have this little sound activated animatronic monster adjacent to the door, which typically goes off while they're yelling trick-or-treat. One little girl ran off screaming this year. One girl tried to make friends with the monster, attempting to shake its hand...

Damn. Need to wrap that whole bar in a try: except: that just silently fails. Solves all the issues and you go to another bar.