Based and friendpilled

You’re preaching to the choir. “Concede the point” is a figure of speech which means the speaker is going explore an assumption despite not believing it themselves.

My point is that the whole “capitalism is the best economic system we know about because humans are greedy” argument is sophistry. It doesn’t even make sense in the context of its own flawed premise.

Let’s concede the point: humans are inherently greedy and selfish.

But greed and selfishness are bad, right? We want less greed and selfishness in the world.

Given these two assumptions—humans are greedy, greed is bad—shouldn’t we architect society to explicitly disincentivize greed?

The instances hosting active Star Trek communities didn’t exist during the previous season of Discovery, so Lemmy isn’t a great way to gauge relative interest.

On Reddit, the /r/startrek discussion thread for 4x02 has 1.1k comments and 4x03 has 600 comments while the thread for 5x03 only has about 400 comments. This seems to support your hypothesis.

I have long held that Season 5, Episode 2 of The Next Generation is the best episode to “test” if you’ll like Star Trek or not. It is a generally well-liked and well-reviewed episode, but more than that, from both a story and a character standpoint it is representative of what your average Star Trek episode is generally about.

So, my recommendation is to watch that one episode and report back.

After four seasons, Discovery still can’t figure out how to pace a full season arc. The A-plot was a miniature Humanity on Trial story which Trek has done to death, and the rest was filler.

Jinaal was a fun character and Wilson Cruz did a great job with him. “This guy really works out” made me laugh. Beyond that, sheesh, what a snooze.

It’s extremely easy, you just install AdGuard.

In the US you either had unlimited SMS or no SMS plan at all, in which case you got charged for every single message, sent or received. But I remember having unlimited SMS as early as 2003.

If you had no SMS at all then you certainly didn’t have a data plan, which ruled out WhatsApp entirely.

That’s easy: unlimited SMS was common on most mobile plans in the US as early as the mid-2000s. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans had no financial incentive to use WhatsApp.

Well, that was certainly an episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Actually, it might be one of Discovery’s most representative episodes.

Discovery at its worst: geez that warp chase scene was awful. It wasn’t a great use of How We Got Here because there wasn’t enough time between the flashback and the redux to make the flashback seem justified—the bulk of the episode happened after the redux anyways. It wasn’t a great use of Once More With Clarity, either. I guess they were going for some sort of dramatic Rayner reveal? But, the “revelation” that the Antares was shadowing Burnham that whole time wasn’t particularly interesting. Nothing was gained by temporally displacing that scene other than frontloading the action, which makes it seem like Discovery is scared to lead with a character moment or a story beat, as if their mentality is “we gotta get to the pew pew ASAP because that’s why the audience is here.”

It felt unearned, and was just another instance of Discovery borrowing things from better shows without adding anything or seemingly even understanding why what they borrowed worked in a different context. And of course, this teed up one of Discovery’s most obnoxious long-running tropes: Burnham knows she’s right and spends a few minutes exasperatedly explaining to an unwelcome guest with equivalent or higher authority than her to no avail. The thing that’s always weird about these scenes is the way Burnham keeps going even after it’s become very clear that the person she’s trying to convince isn’t having it. At that point, focus on getting into the ship, don’t continue the argument! These scenes always feel like Burnham is trying to make sure that the viewer knows she’s right rather than the other character.

I know she’s right. She’s always right.

Discovery at its best: The scene where Discovery and Antares save the settlement on Q’mau. This had all the bits and pieces of a classic Trek triumph: the heroes put the mission, their ships, and themselves at risk to save innocent lives because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately save the day thanks to quick thinking, creativity, and Starfleet’s engineering prowess. This was actually the only sequence in the episode where the Burnham-Rayner interaction worked: Rayner’s calculated risk paid off but introduced a new complication, but Rayner was also pretty quick to concede that “ok yeah, to hell with this ‘Red Directive’ nonsense, innocent lives are at stake” and ceded authority to Burnham.

Visually, seeing Discovery and Antares literally shield the settlement was fantastic. The detail on the shields stopping the rockslide was great fun to watch. These have always been my favorite Discovery moments: classic Trek formula with modern effects and pacing.

Why I’m worried: Rayner. One of Discovery’s quirks has always been what I call “the interloper,” an external authority figured foisted onto the cast to either foil or assist Burnham depending on which direction the story needs to turn. Lorca and Pike were more pronounced instances of this quirk than Vance and Rilliak were, but all four seasons have done it.

Our season 5 interloper looks to be Rayner, and it looks like Rayner is going to be as prominent as Lorca and Pike were. And boy, I didn’t find Rayner to be interesting or compelling at all. I’ve worked with far too many “I’m allowed to be a jerk because I’m right” types to be entertained by them, particularly when played straight. I really hope they do something more novel with Rayner, and quickly.

This is one of my favorites, despite the fact that most of my losses are in fact due to the mistakes I committed.

Yes, that’s it! Thank you!

I dunno about favorite, but my go-tos are an Old Fashioned in the fall and winter, and a Tom Collins in spring and summer.

Those become a Manhattan or an Aviation if I’m feeling fancy or just want to mix it up.

I’m glad you liked it! From here on out I would just say watch The Next Generation. If you find that you’re struggling in seasons one and two, I recommend you skip around using the IMDB ratings. The good episodes in these seasons are few and far between, but are easy to spot by their score.

Once you get to season 3 the show has found it’s voice: the the average episode is pretty good and the terrible episodes are mostly behind you. Mostly.

I have long held that Season 5, Episode 2 of The Next Generation is the best episode to “test” if you’ll like Star Trek or not. It is a generally well-liked and well-reviewed episode, but more than that, I feel that from both a story and a character standpoint it is representative of what your average Star Trek episode is generally about.

Eh. Season 3 is more coherent than 1 and 2, but I found the season-long arc to be ridiculous nonsense that wasn’t compelling at all. You know how TOS and early VOY in particular just get real weird every once in a while? DIS season 3 had that energy, except when TOS or VOY did it, it was a one-episode experiment with no lasting repercussions. DIS season 3 spent a whole season on it and there are enormous repercussions for the Trek universe.

Season 4 is definitely the most cohesive season in terms of story and theme, and did raise some interesting (if cliché) concepts. However, I found it to just be terminally boring.

I’m not quite sure what to make of season 5 from the trailers. The description on YouTube tells me that we’ll be embarking on “an epic adventure across the galaxy” which could describe every other season of DIS all the same. It looks like it’s definitely going to be… another season of Discovery, and all that entails.

We are absolutely worse off in the real 2024 than what “Past Tense” depicted.

• Vin asks Sisko for a “UHC card” when trying to identify him. A universal healthcare card. In the real 2024? Still no universal healthcare in the US.
• The famous billionaire’s role in the story of “Past Tense” was to get residents of the districts access to “the nets” to tell their story. In the real 2024, Elon Musk would just take to Xitter and advocate for crackdowns.
• Once on the nets, the resident’s stories actually swayed public opinion. Can you honestly imagine the stories they told making a dent in the zeitgeist, even if they trended on YouTube and TikTok?
• Sanctuary districts exist too, they’re just on the border and privatized.

Ira Steven Behr set out to depict a horribly dystopic 2024, succeeded, and undershot.