This post is a skill check for how terminally online you are.

And I passed. Fuck.

CRAZY!

Honestly this is one of the things I appreciate about Trek. Things don’t just automatically get better and better throughout human history. But in both Trek and real life, people want things to get better and will fight to make them better if given a chance. Past Tense might be my favorite episode of TV in general because while things might still get worse before they get better, the Bell Riots are one of the things that spurs people into action.

I think there’s a lot to be hopeful for in that respect. We’re seeing a resurgence of unions and labor action after they collapsed in the 90s, the development of an incredibly large anti war movement, and people are realizing things only change if we force them to.

Anyways, there will always be bad things happening in a capitalist society, but there will always be people fighting to make things better, and right now a lot of people are realizing they want to be a part of that group.

So yeah, shit sucks but there will always be people who want to fix things.

Lots of cast members ended up directing over the years. 90’s Trek had a reputation for being a factory for directorial debuts. It’s really neat, it brought a lot of variety and personality to the episodes.

Seems like the largest criticisms are that the Bloodborne inspiration is a little too obvious/heavy-handed and the usual discourse around soulsbonre difficulty, both of which can very much be positives depending on personal preference. Personally I’m very down for some spiritual successors since Sony hasn’t been doing anything with Bloodborne, and the difficulty was perfect for me in the demo (and I have to give them credit for putting out a comprehensive 2+ hour demo, that was a real breath of fresh air). Glad it seems like they pretty much hit the mark on what they were going for.

Capitalism defines success as profits increasing at an ever-increasing rate. During the height of the pandemic, tech companies tended to fare better than other industries because they were better able to handle the switch to remote work (among other things). This wasn’t lost on investors, who smelled money in the water, and went all in on tech. Like, seriously, colossal amounts of money, and they expect returns on those investments. Problem is, we’ve hit the point where the easy profit sources for these companies have more or less dried up, and now they’re having to squeeze whatever they can out. This is why we’ve seen massive layoffs, quick money making schemes, and things like this that will be disastrous in the long run, but stand to make some short-term profits.

It’s a boneheaded move, but when all you care about is pleasing the investors right now, it’s the logical way to operate.

Never assume the courts are going to side with the workers. Not to be overly cynical but legal processes take lots of time and money even in the best cases, which corporations are going to have more of ten times out of ten. And that’s assuming the rulings will be fair.

Having this option isn’t bad, but the best, most consistent way to actually win victories is with strong, worker-led union campaigns with strong demands and escalating tactics that engage the workers and don’t back down in the face of union busting.

It’s the broad brush that gets me. Going dark has to be a principled choice. DS9 nailed it with the “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise” mentality. The hope in most Trek writing comes from a worldview that most people are inherently good unless their environment forces them to act otherwise (which I would very much say is how the world actually works). When shows go dark using something closer to a “people are inherently evil unless they really fight back against their nature” mentality, it feels bad and rings hollow.

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Brunt”: HELL YEAH!

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Weyun”: HELL YEAH!

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Brunt and Weyun”: LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO!

For the average user maybe, but for a client as big as Twitter they’re probably going to want to take a more hands-on/careful approach, so whatever’s in the contract would probably supersede their standard terms.