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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • That makes about as much sense as saying that pip, gem, npm, cargo, or nix should called be the default package manager on Mac OS…

    The default package manager is the default because it manages the system’s software. RPM, Deb/apt, pacman, etc. Homebrew is like pip or docker or cargo or snap or whatever else. You can set it up if you’d like but it’s certainly not a default. (Though I’m not trying to dispute that it’s good 😊)

    Mac OS doesn’t have a good default package management solution (though they would if they just opened up the app store and added a CLI). It’s ok to admit it, and say that third party folks (who Apple does not support unless I’m missing something) are powering a pretty good third party experience. If only Apple cared about people who wanted a truly free an customizable computer, they could make a great OS :)








  • Or her usefulness to the episode could be that Edgar Alien Perv has a crush on her.

    Yeah that was a super rough episode.

    We just are taking two different perspectives about being essential. Uhura was like an organ: quietly essential to the regular operation of your body. Whereas Hoshi is like hands or maybe ears or something: very important for achieving your body's goals, but you can compensate for them not working. You're right Uhura is more essential. I just think it's more interesting watching the hands / ears of the ship helping achieve the mission.



  • It's funny because I have the exact opposite opinion! I feel like in TOS, Uhura just relays messages and presses buttons on her console. Maybe I'm missing something though. Maybe she's critical to the intra ship communications as the "telephone operator" but she never seems to be critical to the mission.

    On the other hand, ENT spends a lot of time building up how many languages Hoshi knows, and how quickly she can pick up new ones, even alien languages. She definitely has her moments where she just struggles until the UT works. But in several episodes they rely on her to translate alien writing, and in at least one or two, she learns to speak a whole new language to communicate. She's also shown to have developed major improvements to the UT. My impression of her, even from Broken Bow when Archer recruited her, was that she's a freaking language savant, operating and developing very new experimental tech. It is sad she didn't get to fully realize her transition from timid linguist to badass crew member (and still linguist). But I always felt like she was doing something critical for the mission, whereas I felt Uhura (in TOS) wasn't.

    SNW Uhura is very different in that regard, she does a lot more "mission critical" stuff and she's getting an arc that's very reminiscent of Hoshi (totally a savant, hard working, starting out timid but growing). So I love that for her!





  • It can be both, and I’m not sure I see the distinction. It’s a coping mechanism, and that’s not actually an awful thing.

    Growing up in church, nobody was creating hypotheticals and then trying to explain it using religion. It’s just not what it was about. But I guess if you brought up babies with cancer, then yeah the “mysterious ways” argument would have been a prime cop out to avoid challenging faith too much.

    Most commonly, people just wanted to know how to handle the (typically less hyperbolic) challenges in their own lives. They believed they were good and faithful and didn’t understand why God would allow bad things to happen in their lives. Ultimately the “mysterious ways” line was just a coping mechanism, that came with advice to search for the silver linings, and think about past challenges and how they resolved, as evidence of the mysterious ways. Of course it also served to avoid challenging their faith too.

    At the end of the day, religion has its very bad elements that I won’t defend. But it’s silly to ignore that for most people, they’re looking for ways to interpret life in order to find meaning, or maybe cope with struggles. For myself, I’m not religious, but if I were trying to help a friend dealing with something difficult in life, I would still encourage them to look for silver linings and to reflect on past challenges. Not to use it as evidence for some god working in mysterious ways, but just to give them perspective to realize that they have the strength to overcome challenges.


  • This is exactly what the TNG episode “Lower Decks” was about. It was actually super powerful as a representation of how the decisions made by the captain and bridge officers had a profound impact on the lives of the ensigns (NCOs didn’t seem to be mentioned), without them knowing what’s going on.

    The show lower decks was obviously inspired by that specific episode, but definitely lost that serious tone and lack of visibility into the politics/big picture that the captain dealt with.

    And honestly I think star trek forgot that NCOs existed and just kept remembering it each time Chief O’Brien had a major episode and his rank came up.


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    1 year ago

    It’s far more important to trek to criticize and reflect modern society, which is a lot harder to do if your characters are living in a utopia.

    I disagree… if anything, the opposite is true! Having “Federation utopia” makes it incredibly easy to critique modern society. Just introduce planets which have whatever element of modern society you want to comment on, and then draw a painfully obvious comparison to the perfection that is humanity in the 24th century, and boom, it’s done! Heck, you could even make an entire alien race to critique an element of modern society like capitalism, not that anybody would do something that obvious :P

    I feel like TOS and TNG lived on this a little too much, especially in early TNG seasons. It was what made DS9 so interesting when the writers flipped the script. Instead of spoon feeding you the critique of modern society in the form of planet-of-the week, they throw in stuff that makes you question whether the federation utopia approach is actually right, or if it’s too naive.