Feels like a major cultural shift in the 1990s was the realization that you could make pizzas with bagels, French bread, English muffins… basically any bread item that wasn’t Italian.

Same energy.

Photo of six men, one of them the current President, in FRONT of the women athletes being ‘celebrated.’

I thought this tone deaf hilariousness had to be fake, but have been assured it is not.

This was one of my favorite webshows ever.

Ironically, there’s no way for these two pieces of tech to interact.

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

I think this was part of the charm of A Study in Emerald 1st ed. Eight zombie meeples and a good chance to never see zombies? Every agent has a vampire on the back and a good chance that to never see vampires? Every agent has a separate double agent token that would likely never be used? I loved it.

The fact that he’s standing next to a mirror and not actually using the camera that is presumably in the glasses is telling.

Star Trek The Killing Game The Killing Game, Part II Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night Inquisition

The Killing Game returns, again, to the Hirogen, starting in medias res with the hunters having already taken over Voyager and enslaved its crew. But there conquest has no goal of material gain. They have brainwashed the crew into assuming the characters of major conflicts, dropped them into the…

…virtue of also working for Starfleet but distinctly opposed to Bashir’s morality. This is very much set up for a follow-up story, so it will be interesting to see how far Bashir can push the spy lifestyle.

…somewhat goofy, especially considering how naïve he was for the first several seasons, something which was not really tempered by the revelation that he was genetically modified as a child. Sloan, played wonderfully by William Sadler, makes a strict antagonist, ostensibly on Bashir’s side by…

…memory.

Inquisition is about Bashir unknowingly auditioning to be a spy. He turns down the opportunity. But first, he goes through a full holodeck simulation, unaware that he’s been abducted by Section 31, a covert Federation intelligence taskforce. The idea that Bashir is the ideal spy is…

…privileges to her mothers family, privileges that probably ensured her survival as a child, and Kira decides that both her mother and Dukat are worth saving. It is an ambivalent ending, with Kira not coming to peace with the revelations about her mother but affirming that she still has to love her…

…transports her back in time to witness her mother’s acts. The moral quandary is supposed to be if her mother’s complicity makes her at best someone who can be collateral damage or at worst worthy of being killed. A third way emerges, with Kira realizing that Dukat actually made good on providing…

…contrivances to be really worth it.

Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night is the story of Kira learning that some collaborators during the Cardassian occupation were okay. Dukat sends her a covert message telling her that her mother was once his lover. Kira consults one of the Bajoran orbs, which…

…Resistance, with Janeway first leading the resistance and then trying to reach a truce with the Hirogen rather than beat them outright. The notion of needing fake fights so that the Hirogen don’t kill themselves off in real fights is interesting, but it takes too long and with too many…

…this was originally broadcast on the same night as part one; why not just make this a double-length episode? I made sure to watch both parts in the same night, to again capture as much of the original viewing experience as possible. The story transitions from French Resistance to Starfleet…

…to see how much the Hirogen are pushing the limits of the holodeck, which culminates in the characters, most of whom are not holograms, actually breaking out into the real world.

The Killing Game, Part II is obviously the followup of the previous story. I’m not sure why this is a part two, as…

…Torres prominently pregnant, finally displaying in the wide shots Roxann Dawson’s own pregnancy which has been obvious for the past several stories despite the attempts to hide it. Chakotay and Paris are really shoehorned into this as they are clearly been expected to be in the story. It’s neat…

…holodeck, and proceeded to fight them. They’re sent to the Doctor to be fixed up for the next LARPing fight. The bulk of this story is a World War II story of the French Resistance in Vichy France. It’s fun to see some out of character moments here, like seeing Seven crooning as a lounge singer or…

Star Trek The Killing Game The Killing Game, Part II Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night Inquisition

The Killing Game returns, again, to the Hirogen, starting in medias res with the hunters having already taken over Voyager and enslaved its crew. But there conquest has no goal of material gain. They have brainwashed the crew into assuming the characters of major conflicts, dropped them into the…

That last bit is the glaring error in Conclave. On the other hand, fiction can do whatever it wants.

Today I mixed up a picture of something holding a scythe with the word “reapers,” so that’s where I am.

photo of a page of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, reading "Do you fear the stone?" she asked as if unbelieving; and he answered, "Yes." In the deadly cold and silence of the room encircled by wall after wall of spellwork and of stone, in the light of the one candle she held, Serret glanced at him again with gleaming eyes. "Sparrowhawk," she said, "you are not afraid." "But I will not speak with that spirit," Ged replied, and looking full at her spoke with a grave boldness: "My lady, that spirit is sealed in a stone, and the stone is locked by binding-spell and blinding-spell and charm of lock and ward and triple fortress-walls in a barren land, not because it is precious, but because it can work great evil. I do not know what they told you of it when you came here. But you who are young and gentle-hearted should never touch the thing, or even look on it. It will not work you well." "I have touched it. I have spoken to it, and heard it speak. It does me no harm."

Me trying in vain to describe the dangers of AI to someone while they talk about casually using it for research or to make funny pictures:

the guy playing charlie/“nuwanda” in this isnt kieran culkin, but in a larger, spiritual sense, he is

How often do you find that you’ve just invented from first principles something that was published already twenty years ago?

This is a valid point: whenever you see this sort of high-pressure sales tactic turned on a technology, you can be CERTAIN that it's a fake—actually useful new tech sells itself!

And don't underestimate the effectiveness of FOMO as a tool in the hands of a con artist.

Weather Storm YouTube video by Massive Attack - Topic

Guess who gets panic attacks during severe storms?

Guess who also just got out of 75 minutes of tornado warnings?