Akuchimoya
@Akuchimoya@startrek.website
- Comment on Is Star Trek Discovery that bad? 4 weeks ago:
I watched all of Discovery. It is, by far, the worst of all Star Treks. (Disclosure: I have not seen TAS.)
The reason is simple: Discovery is really the Michael Burnham show. She is the Mariest Sue who ever Mary Sued. Discovery could have been a really great show if it had been an ensemble show because it has a lot of very interesting characters whom we never explore.
Instead, everything centres around Burnham. She is the reason for the war at the start of the show. She is the magical, fated solution. She is Spock’s (adopted) sister and had immeasurable impact on his life. Even through timey-wimey things, her (biological) mother comes to save her and the universe.
And on top of all that is the crying. Oh, gosh, everything is so emotional on this show. There is a time and place for emotions, but Discovery was too much of it, including inappropriate times. Burnham and her maybe-broken-up-boyfriend stop in the middle of an infiltration in a hostile station to talk about their relationship.
Even the really great characters, Saru and (Emperor Georgiou) centre around Burnham. She is like a sister to Saru, she saved his life, he gives up being a Captain to continue serving under her captaincy. Burnham is Georgiou’s daughter (not actually), and Georgiou’s love for her (as much as she can love) changes her.
No one has a story unless its actually about Burnham.
The best thing about Discovery is it brought Trek back on TV and it gave us the rest of this era of shows.
- Comment on ‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops 1 month ago:
All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he’s in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he’s doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.
- Comment on Too soon? 1 month ago:
Truly, without sarcasm, I invite you to read the gospels and actually get to now about Jesus. The shortest is Mark and can be read through in one evening.
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Star Melissa Navia’s Spotlight Episode Is So Intense, She Was Told She Could ‘Shoot a Marvel Film After’ It 1 month ago:
The story progression was predictable and the pacing was not the best. Still, I appreciated the focus on Ortegas and Navia’s acting. In this interview she alludes to not being able to dance when others are; I presume she’s talking about the death of her partner late 2021 (which was after the worst of covid restrictions, but not so long after them). When it came to the rescue scene and La’an killed the Gorn, Ortegas’ only friend in a lonely time and place, it made me sad to think Navia was probably going back to that loss.
But this episode was really made to retcon people not knowing the Gorn in TOS. The writers needed to make up a reason for people to forget a species they’ve now encountered several times, including medical breakthroughs (Batel). Still, more Ortegas, please. And still more range, please.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans" 1 month ago:
Since La’an doesn’t make it to TOS, my guess is she dies by the end of the show and the pain of losing her drives Spock to push his humanity aside. I was expecting that to happen with the Chapel break-up, but then they brought La’an into things, so I transferred the theory onto her instead 😂
- Comment on Neville Page On “Unsustainable” Original Saru On ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ And Inspiring Future Generations 4 months ago:
Forgive me for saying this, but the final Kelpian design looks much, um, tastier than the original one. I can’t imagine Terrans looking at a green and brown multi-eyed triangular headed alien and think “delicacy”.
- Comment on Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails 5 months ago:
I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)
The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.
- Comment on Maybe Trump's Presidency Will Make Everything So Awful It Will Facilitate Actual Positive Change Nationwide 5 months ago:
We barely rejected the right wing nuts, and they could easily take the next election. While relief is warranted, we should not be smug or complacent about it, either. Lies more faster than the truth, it’s still an uphill battle for morality and decency.
- Comment on Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI | The Verge 5 months ago:
Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.
- Comment on To whom it may concern 5 months ago:
So credit card issuers are bad now?
- Comment on Religions have some of the wackiest rules 5 months ago:
Bloodletting is therapeutic… for some very specific conditions. For example, hemochromatosis, where the body has too much iron, and there has been some preliminary study that blood donations are a way to reduce the amount of PFAS in blood.
But everyone has PFAS in their blood; not every male has (beyond normal) phimosis.
- Comment on Tesla recalls all Cybertrucks ever made over trim falling off | Electrek 7 months ago:
A little over a year ago, a guy tried to ask me out and I’m the process said a few dumb things in an attempt to impress me. The dumbest of them all was that he was planning to buy a Cybertruck as his next vehicle. By the time he’d said this, I’d already long made up my mind about this guy. Mind, this was the period of time when Elon was just an asshole and hadn’t gone full Nazi yet, but even then, this dude’s choice of vehicle told me I’d made the right choice.
Theseadays I wonder if that guy ever got his idiot truck, and, whether he did or not, if he’s changed his mind about it.
- Comment on Nearly half of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are. 7 months ago:
Librarians go to school to learn how to manage information, whether it is in book format or otherwise. (We tend to think of libraries as places with books because, for so much of human history, that’s how information was stored.)
They are not supposed to have more information in their heads, they are supposed to know how to find (source) information, catalogue and categorize it, identify good information from bad information, good information sources from bad ones, and teach others how to do so as well.
- Comment on Nearly half of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are. 7 months ago:
I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are spread to be “information professionals”. If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don’t know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.
- Comment on Judges Are Fed up With Lawyers Using AI That Hallucinate Court Cases 7 months ago:
The best use, for me, is asking ChatGPT to give me five (or however many) scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic. Then I search for said articles by title and author name on my school library database.
It saves me so much time compared to doing a keyword search on said same database and reading a ton of abstracts to find a few articles. I can get to actually reading them and working on my assignment way faster.
AI is a great tool for people who use it properly.
- Comment on Master Replicas Reveals New Line of Star Trek Action Figures 8 months ago:
I’ve been waiting five years for Ruthie!
- Comment on Film Discussion | Star Trek: Section 31 8 months ago:
The movie ended up being what I expected from the trailer: a disappointment. This should have been a movie just about Georgiou, and a movie about Section 32 should have been something else a entirely.
The Hunger Games concept was kind of dumb, but I actually liked the San story. It gives Georgiou more depth and complexity, but it could have been a lot more. Unfortunately, it was just sandwiched in between an action-whodunnit with a lot of new characters (who were not adequately developed on their own rights) instead of being a drama with some action scenes, as a story like it should have been.
I love Michelle Yeoh, and I’ll watch her in anything, but this was a poorly written and directed movie that didn’t know what it should have been.
- Comment on Commander Charles “Gentlemen” Tucker III 9 months ago:
Trip was a complete gentleman… that time. He made no guarantees or warranties for future missions.
- Comment on TIL Connor Trinneer & Dominic Keating have a podcast called "The D-Con Chamber". Here they are interviewing Nana Visitor on her new book! 11 months ago:
How deeply disappointing. Yes, Nana will make money from sales, but it’s so clearly not about money. The idea of women viewing other women as competition is just another thing that keeps women down. This reflects so poorly on Sirtis, especially since she could have so much to say about how Troi’s character was treated and eventually became (a little) more than just feelings.
- Comment on Emmy Award Winner Tatiana Maslany to Guest Star in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1 year ago:
What I’d love is if her brother showed up with her too. (I love the rel-life connections.)