Trump has a lot of wealth on paper, but a lot of it is tied in up in real estate, which isn’t the easiest thing to turn into cash when you need it. And a lot is tied up in stock, but since he got caught fixing the books for the Trump Organization, he can’t really use that as his personal piggybank without a lot of scrutiny. And Truth Social is worth over a billion on paper but will crash if he starts to sell any of his stock, which would cause a lot of new problems right now.

Meanwhile, he is burning through money at an insane rate. I mean historically, he’s lost far more money than he’s ever been worth. He’s always had to have new businesses and schemes to cycle through as the old ones crumble. He basically never made a profit until the Apprentice, and that actually caused problems because he’d structured his operations around losing money, leaving other people holding the bag when things go completely south, writing off the loses for tax purposes, and, well, cooking the books.

But with hundreds of millions in judgements against him, on top of the hundred million plus in legal fees, he’s in a bit of a bind. He already had to put a $175 million up for bond to appeal the judgment civil judgment against the Trump Organization. If he loses the appeal, he’s out not just the $175 million, but the full $489 million judgement, plus about $115k a day in interest. Plus he’s got the E Jean Carroll judgments and ongoing cases because he’s a dumb bastard that can’t stop himself from committing defamation every time he leaves a courthouse after losing defamation case.

So, while he’s been funneling money from his PAC to cover his legal bills that only goes so far, and as I understand it, he can’t use that for actual judgements against him. If he loses the election, he may be fighting legal battles for years to come, that PAC money will likely dry up, and if he doesn’t have the cash when the court demands it, he could see his assets seized and auctioned off. If he wins the election, he can do basically anything and we’re all fucked.

So to simplify this a bit, imagine that he spent almost all his money on a lot of properties without getting a single monopoly, while his opponent has hotels on the dark blue and green properties. He keeps trying to survive the gauntlet and pass go to stay in the game, and maybe he can survive by mortgaging everything, but it’s much easier for him if he has the cash to pay the bill.

Which valuation is reasonable depends entirely on whether or not it’s been cleaned.

8th Doctor.

Babylon 5 has a pretty weak pilot movie, a somewhat shaky first season, and then gradually becomes the greatest thing in human history.

Farscape is basically Guardians of the Galaxy if it were a show on sci-fi a decade earlier, with muppets. Mostly very fun, occasionally hits a lot harder than you’d expect.

TNG is the best at being Star Trek

DS9 is the best show in Star Trek

I really wish Star Trek was more consistent with its world building when it comes to stuff like this. There’s a variety of spaceborn life forms out there, but no larger ecosystem, and usually no lifecycle. I get that exploration and discovery means not having all the answers, but shit like the pitcher plant just doesn’t make sense. They are basically just monsters that exist outside the natural order of things. In fact, the many omnipotent beings in Star Trek are often the best explanation for how these things came to be, pretty much just “a wizard did it” but pretending that it’s still somehow sciencey if we don’t call it magic.

I like the idea that the galaxy could be populated by a complex web of gigafauna. I want to see pods of spacewhales navigating between worlds, filter feeding on gigantic space bugs, and evading ambush predators that phase in and out of reality. I want areas on the star chart that say “here there be dragons” because while we’re pretty sure there aren’t actual dragons, we know something dangerous is lurking there. I want to see spores from a silicon fungus that spread solar sails and infect neighboring worlds. And I want the show to remember that it exists instead of just being gone forever as soon as the credits roll.

I think you can very easily see the progression of KOTOR -> Jade Empire -> Mass Effect - > Dragon Age Origins. It’s not all straight lines, but you can see the things they keep, the things they tweak, the things they cut, and the things they bring back.

I love Jade Empire. There are a lot of things I think could have been better, but I do really love it.

The combat was cool, and I liked the different styles, and the fact that you were not going to learn them all in a single playthrough. It also incentivized switching between hand to hand, weapons, magic, support and transformation in ways that still allowed each type to feel like it was useful and filling a niche rather than being the kind of samey rock paper scissors bullshit that many games use. That said, the balance was not great, and some options were significantly better than others, to the point of making some things seem almost useless. Most of them are usable, but if you try them all out you’ll find that there are some you will probably never use again. That said, on replays I would always pick white demon for my martial style even though objectively it’s the worst choice because I found it more fun and challenging than the other two.

Story-wise, the companions were fairly standard for Bioware games. I don’t hate any of them, but I also can’t say I have as much of a connection to them as I have to HK-47, Jolee and Canderous, or Garrus, Wrex and Tali, or Alistair, Oghren, and Morrigan. It’s not that there’s something wrong with the characters, as much as there’s just less opportunity due to the way Jade Empire handles them in gameplay. Unlike those other games, you only get 1 companion in your party at a time, so there’s no banter between them while you walk, and just less interaction with them overall.

This is made worse by the way the game handles combat for them. Followers can be set to fight or support, where they meditate to give you a bonus but leaving you to fight the enemies alone. A neat idea in theory, but the problem is that fighting really just translates to them distracting one or two minions until they get knocked unconscious. They can’t stand up to anything tough, and they will not be dispatching enemies, just acting as a momentary distraction before they fall (even the two that are combat only and are supposed to be incredibly strong). In support they will each give you a different bonus. One scatters bottles around that temporarily let you use drunken master style… which is not better than what you already have so it’s just a novelty. Two others slightly increase your damage with either weapons or martial attacks. And the remaining three each refill one of your resources (health, focus and chi). Since Chi is able to heal you and increase your martial damage, and powers your magic and transformations, that chi restoring character is by far the most useful, with the focus restoring guy being a distant second since it allows you to slow time and is needed for using weapons.

If I had one suggestion I could send back in time it would have been to allow 2 or 3 followers at a time, with a dedicated combat slot and a dedicated support slot so that you can have a larger party and less incentive to just pick one character to the exclusion of everyone else.

The morality system was a great idea, but like Mass Effect, there is a clear disconnect between what they describe it as and what it actually is in practice. The way of the open palm is supposed to be altruistic, while the closed fist is supposed to be about strength and growing through conflict and adversity. They aren’t intended to simply be good and evil. The problem is, you get lots of pointlessly evil options that don’t correspond with that philosophy they describe, and yet they still give you closed fist points. In fact, I struggle to think of a single time in the game where you couldn’t just replace the open palm and closed fist points with light side and dark side points and get the exact same result. It’s a shame, because it would have been great if they had more of a focus on the competing philosophies, with times when open palm might seem less than ideal, and times when closed fist comes across as respectable in its own way. In fact, I would have loved it if they’d had open palm, closed fist, and a third hidden stat for just being a dick, and had people react to all three.

One other big difference is the pacing of the game. The others all start in tutorial town, then move on to a second area which launches you on your quest, then opens up the map and lets you pick which order to do things in, before taking you to the endgame. Jade empire technically follows that description, but the part where it opens up is basically just letting you choose between 2 options, so it’s not nearly as dynamic. And based on the number of places which are frequently mentioned but never seen, I suspect there were multiple areas which were cut from the game.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there’s nothing wrong with the pacing, it’s just notable once you’re familiar with that classic Bioware formula.

Overall, I highly recommend Jade Empire. It’s fun, it has an engaging story, an interesting world, and a lot of that old pre-EA Bioware charm.

I should play Skies of Arcadia again.

It wasn’t a sex doll, it was basically 24th century chatgpt imitating an engineer, and then shifting the role into romance. He never asked for that, and at most it was reading his body language etc. as feedback and played into the behaviors that got whatever the computer considered to be a positive response.

Geordi’s best move once it was discovered probably would have been to say “I asked the computer to give me a realistic person to bounce ideas off of in a crisis, and I turned it off when it started saying weird stuff like that.” Assuming he didn’t go back to bone the hologram after the original episode ended, the computer should be able to back him up.

Yup, my understanding is that it was executive meddling.

Apparently there was some disagreement about that scene and a producer insisted that Data wouldn’t kill someone like that, which sounds good in a vacuum but in context makes no sense. Data’s intentions are pretty clear right before he gets transported out, it’s hard to reconcile his actions leading up to the transport with the idea that he wasn’t willing to pull the trigger.

And it’s not like Data never kills people. He carries a phaser for a reason, it’s part of the job. He doesn’t like it (emotion chip shenanigans aside) but he will do what is necessary.

Which, to bring it back around, is part of why this is such an intense scene. A logical being guided by a moral framework that values life looked upon this man and determined that his death was necessary.

It’s so much better than that though. He won’t murder him just for being a piece of shit. He spent the entire episode of peacefully resisting but refusing to harm another sentient being, even to free himself. He values life to such an extent that he won’t take it unless there is no other option, and he had all the time in the world to attempt to escape.

But Fajo changes the equation when he not only murders someone in cold blood, but makes clear that he will do it again and again if that’s what it takes to get what he wants out of Data. In this situation, Data unemotionally, logically determines that the only moral course of action is to kill him. Not in the heat of the moment, not in immediate self defense, just gunning him down where he stands because he cannot be allowed to continue.

It’s a chilling moment, and I love it. I just wish they hadn’t felt the need to insert that line about the weapon going off by accident. It comes across as a lie, and I think it undermines the episode a little.

I would absolutely watch a version of Star Wars that replaces R2 and C3P0 with Crow and Tom Servo.

How often do you have to refill your gas tank? If it’s damn near daily, then your ability to rely on an EV is going to be much more limited than if it’s closer to once or twice a week.

If you have an outlet at home that can be used to charge an EV, and you don’t regularly drive hundreds of miles in a day, an EV is likely a viable replacement for an ICE car. If you do make long distance trips regularly enough for that to be a concern, you will probably be more dependent on the availability of charging infrastructure in your area.

1930s: We’ve accidentally wandered into the past, we have to keep a low profile and avoid doing anything to change the timeline

1960s: We’re here to study the past, so we’ve come prepared for this exact scenario, and we’ll need to be extremely careful not to do anything that interferes with the backdoor pilot history.

1980s: Hi, I’m from space and want to take your whales into the future.

But in all seriousness, for the most part Kirk does quite well in the 80s, failed attempts at profanity notwithstanding. It’s mostly Spock that gets him in trouble, and he was still recovering from that whole being dead thing.

Well, he was also just keeping his head down and hanging out at a soup kitchen at the time.

Much more impressive was the fact that (iirc) he infiltrated NASA during a military satellite launch in 1968, blending in so well that you’d almost think he was invisible or something.

How well would you fit in if you found yourself 300 years in the past? You probably have a passing knowledge of what the world was like in 1724, but would you really be able to blend in and get the little details right?

And that’s probably an easier task than going back 300 years to the 20th century, when changes were coming much more rapidly.

Why do people defending Star Wars keep shitting on sci-fi and fantasy? “It’s just a movie about space wizards with laser swords” they say, as though having fantastical elements negates all criticism.

The original trilogy isn’t schlock. It’s fun, relatively lighthearted adventure in a fantastical setting. It has its flaws, but there is genuine artistry there, and it resonates with people because of that.

And even if I am looking at classic Star Wars through nostalgia goggles, that doesn’t invalidate criticism of new Star Wars stuff. Rise of Skywalker is a train wreck of a movie all by itself, no comparison needed.

I believe there was originally a line of dialogue about there being resistance when they pushed through objects, which was supposed to explain why they don’t just fall. That line was cut, but IIRC it is still referenced indirectly when Geordi’s hand gets zapped and he says that there was more resistance to pushing through stuff afterwards.

That wouldn’t explain why there is enough resistance in the floor to stand and walk, but not enough resistance in walls to prevent them from easily passing through. Presumably their mass and the pull of gravity are unchanged, so the resistance would have to be enough to counteract their weight. And even if they did weigh less, they still propel themselves forward through walls by pushing off the floor, so either the floor needs to be more solid, or they should be nearly weightless and move by paddling their feet through the floor until they build up momentum enough to smash through a wall. Also, if they are applying pressure to objects they pass through, shouldn’t people they touch feel it?

Personally, I’d probably explain the floors specifically being impassable by blaming it on the way the artificial gravity is generated.

I don’t have a good explanation for how they can breathe, how they see without interacting with light, how they can hear clearly when matter isn’t really touching them and therefore can’t conduct sound, etc.

It now has a bonus against evil outsiders and undead.

Not in a million fucking years Sony. I would have gladly given you my money, but apparently that’s not good enough for you.