Strange New Worlds catches the feels of TOS without feeling dated. It honors the best of TOS, Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager, but leaves behind the parts that don’t really work anymore. There are women on the bridge and Rick Berman’s shadow is long gone. Although there is still some interpersonal drama, it doesn’t feel nearly as center stage as it did in Discovery, focusing more on the adventure and focusing less on ACTING-centric monologues that made Discovery unbearable sometimes. I wouldn’t call the politics luke warm, though they are maybe a more subtle and less center stage than they were in Discovery. In general, my feeling is that Strange New Worlds has distanced itself from all the parts of Discovery that didn’t work for me.

My chief gripe is that Spock is often way more emotional than makes sense.

-A millennial that watched every episode of Next Generation at least twice, once when they aired and again from VHS tapes when my dad got home from work. I guess I’ve watched them all way more than twice now.

Old enough to know what the Internet sounds like and to have actually made mixtapes on tape.

Being much closer to her height than his I can confidently say that’s just not true, short of your feet literally hanging off the end of a bed. You just have bad posture, bad form, and don’t stretch.

Why? Height doesn’t automatically equate to back problems. Uneven weight distribution (belly, boobs, etc.), poor stretching habits, lack of excerise, bad posture/form/lifting, or injury equate to back problems at ANY height.

I’ve always just wiped the squeaky hinges down with petroleum jelly because it’s what was immediately on hand. I don’t bother wiping away too much of the extra closest to the moving bits. It works its way into the hinges well enough. It doesn’t smell. I’ve yet to have to re-apply to any hinge, even years later.

Not just typical. It should be celebrated. I for one throughly enjoy seeing cross cultural exchanges of any creative type. Exotic doesn’t need to be derogatory or dehumanizing. (it’s really unfortunate that it most often is.) Everybody is exotic somewhere.

Git gud.

This is only looking at emissions. It’s absolutely not considering the consequences of the heavy metal mining that is required to produce those massive batteries. It also totally ignores the problem of how to dispose of, reuse, or recycle those old batteries once they can no longer be effective in your vehicle.

Obviously we ultimately need to dump internal combustion engines, but focusing solely on emissions is a kind of green washing meant to convince you to consume. The 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) continue to be the most effective way for an individual to limit their environmental impact. Those first 2 R’s are all about reducing by taking public transport and re-using that older car (and keeping it well maintained to reduce consumption), not going out to buy the newest electric swastika.

All of those kinds of communities, where people tell anecdotes about their lives, turned into creative writing excerises for wannabe authors long before we had to worry about AI slop. TIFU, AmITheAsshole, RelationshipAdvice, etc. were all getting pretty derivative and sensational for clicks long before the exodus. Now they’re all either that or illiterate attention seekers showing off the results of their latest LLM prompts. I liked those stories too, but I don’t want anything to do with any of those communities anymore. It all just turned into a training ground for LLMs generating engagement. YouTube still tries to force those dumb AI story voiceover videos to me constantly. We used to joke that “nothing ever happens”, but everyday that sentiment feels a little less cynical and a little more real.

Why did the Thinkpad 701 become a cult legend in computer history?

It was the expanding butterfly keyboard that gave you an 11.5" wide keyboard from a 10" wide laptop. Super cool for its day, but not really a problem that needs solving anymore. Nobody seems to be clamoring for the nipple mouse anymore either.

Pineapple pizza really is kinda meh by itself. But, pineapple + jalapeno + a salty/savory topping like pepperoni can be amazing.

Semi-tangential non-sequitor: The news algorithms offered up the recipe for an “Italian treat” recently that had me appalled and curious in the same way I expect pineapple pizza haters are. It was very ripe cantaloupe slices wrapped in prosciutto. I don’t even really know what to say. I just don’t want to be alone in knowing about that monstrosity.

YOU usually couldn’t tell. I guarantee that everyone else can tell.

Excerise doesn’t make you instantly stink, you’ll just smell like sweat. The stink happens over time as bacteria eat that sweat, regardless of how much you sweat. Since you’re not regularly washing away those bacteria and their byproducts, you will stink.

First of all, yes, those look like shit. Brown gravy? Square flat bricks that I assume are meant to be biscuits? Just awful.

But, an over easy or sunny side up egg is always a welcome addition to biscuits and gravy. That’s the only thing they got right.

I really don’t get how people screw up the gravy so badly. It’s just sausage crumbles in a pan, coated with flour once the fat has rendered (melted) a bit, then adding milk or cream and pepper to your desired consistency and taste respectively. Simmer and add spices until it looks good. Maybe add some minced sage if the sausage doesn’t have it already. If you’re not starting your gravy recipe for biscuits and gravy with sausage, you’re doing it wrong and should be ashamed. It doesn’t come from a box. It’s not white as a sheet and devoid of spice or flavor. It’s not vegetarian. It’s not gluten free. It’s also not brown gravy, which is made entirely differently using fond to give it the brown color.

The biscuits are no better. Even Bisquick biscuits from a box would turn out better for most people than these depressing bricks.

What’s wrong with tuna salad? Potato salad? Macaroni salad? Coleslaw (a kind of cabbage salad)? Mayo isn’t really all that different than many other salad dressings either. Also, pretty much any decent deli sandwich is basically a salad with meat and cheese dressed in mayo between two slices of bread.

You’re missing out.

I can’t tell if you’re making a very subtle joke with a straight face and your tongue in your cheek or if you really haven’t actually read the book. The irony is just fucking delicious. I prefer S. Morgenstern’s original text.

Yeah, absolutely no existential dread from the Cold War. And we all just instantly stopped believing that the world would end in a nuclear holocaust just because the Soviet Union collapsed. Then there was the Gulf war, then 9/11, then another Gulf war. And we’ve known about climate change and how capitalism is killing our planet for practically the entire time, that’s not new. Oil crisis? That’s been a slowly building crescendo of apocalypse since like the 70s.

I’ll buy existential dread as an excuse for not wanting to breed, not as an explanation for teenagers being less horny.

Bicycles (and electric scooters) are vehicles that should also be following the same rules as car, i.e. not driving the wrong way down a one way street and not bombing down the sidewalk. I mean, I still look both ways, but that’s because people are dumb maniacs on the road, not because bicycles.

Can you still buy a star? Obviously dubious that you actually own it. But certainly bigger than anything on earth and a bit tricky to deliver.

That’s fair. Never really had any attachment to the comic character myself, just enjoyed the 90s blockbuster craziness. Serious, it absolutely is not.

He was TOO good at the satire. On the left dum-dums thought he was actually right, while on the right dum-dums thought he was on their side.

Also, I think people are hitting their limit of joking about the collapse of democracy and civil society. I know I am. I know there are now movies, TV, and books that I might have found interesting in less interesting times; now it all just hits too close to home. John Oliver can hit those “too close to home” topics and move on to other things. But it always felt like when Colbert was doing his conservative pundit schtick, he was trapped in it. It was harder to laugh along with him about other things that weren’t specifically about that kind of satire. He might have had some more material of a particular idiom if he’d stuck with it, but that idiom can wear thin.