cerebralhawks

@cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I need a mashup of "What it Sounds Like" and "What Does The Fox Say"⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  There are AI tools that can do that.

  Look up the YouTuber “There I Ruined It.” They do stuff like what you’re talking about. Partly with AI. Partly with just mixing multitracks.

  I really hate your idea, but damn, if I can help you pull it off… well, that’s what I know. Best of luck to you. And my condolences to your enemies you will smite with this creation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fans Left Speechless as Capcom Locks Street Fighter 6 Finals Behind Paywall⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  And people will still pay it, just like people bought Switch 2s in record numbers and just like the ROG Ally X (Xbox handheld) will sell well.

  I’m sure those who say they won’t are telling the truth, but most of them were never planning on buying it. Those who were will roll over like they always do.

  It’s sad, but I’m somewhat rooting for $80-100 games and other BS like this, because I know at some point the frog will jump out of the water, we’ll have another video game crash, and after a few years things will return to sanity. But unlike last time, we all have huge backlogs — it won’t hurt gamers nearly as much as it will big publishers. I think it may even be good for indies.

  What I’m really rooting for though: more indie games, more weird games, more dumb games that appeal to a niche and are loved by them for years to come that most people don’t get. A shift away from platform exclusivity. A shift away from Windows to both Mac and Linux. Something like Proton (LInux tool for emulating Windows games) on Mac. I’m fine with gaming being fine on Windows and Xbox, but it should still be fine if you don’t want to throw any money at Microsoft.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Street racers are not criminals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re onto something. I’d take it a step further — OP should have put the same energy into making this post that they put into replying to everyone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Street racers are not criminals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Are they speeding? Then they are committing crimes, ergo they are criminals by the definition of the word.

  Even if you ethically limit crime to harmful behavior, the risk to pedestrians and other traffic still paints them as criminals.

  There are reasons they aren’t racing at a track, and part of it is the thrill of someone potentially getting hurt, or arrested. So even by your definition, they are criminals.

  Now skateboarding is not a crime. Public nuisance, perhaps, at worst, but not a crime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  BioWare needs to do what the Castlevania creator did. Konami wouldn’t give up the rights to Castlevania (or sell it — the Netflix deal was lucrative, after all) and just make their own studio “with blackjack and hookers.” Sure, the studio behind Bloodstained was problematic when it came to delivering on certain promises to Kickstarter backers, and sure, the mobile ports were abandoned and the Switch port was (apparently) never fixed… but on PC and Xbox at least, the game was fine. The best of Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow, it’s the best Castlevania game not called Castlevania, and it’s among the best Castlevania games, too. I’m not sure there is even one that is actually better at everything. They really took all the good parts of Castlevania and, instead of a gimmick like an inverted anti-castle or entering paintings, they just made the castle stupidly huge, almost unreasonably so. The architecture doesn’t make sense, but it never did.

  It happened with the developers behind Fallout as well. They became Obsidian, and I think InXile got some of those developers. Obsidian went on to make Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. InXile made a bunch of RPGs too, but I can’t name any without looking them up.

  BioWare needs to take its talent and go indie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit Mods Sued by YouTuber Ethan Klein Fight Efforts to Unmask Them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Reminds me of when the Klan we’re on Jerry Springer and someone tried to unmask them and that seemed to be the absolute worst thing in the world to them. Letting people see them for who they really are.

  Not hateful people — not just Klan, or Reddit mods for that matter — operate more openly. It seems the one hateful group still terrified of exposure is child predators. Release the damn Epstein files! No, I don’t think Reddit mods are on it. They do defend child predators on Reddit, but Epstein only rubbed elbows with the rich and powerful, not the pseudo powerful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that only by being yourself will you find people who like the real you. No one can beat you at being you, but you’ll only ever be second best at pretending to be someone else.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I know MWAM but not Tricot, checking them out now — thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that only by being yourself will you find people who like the real you. No one can beat you at being you, but you’ll only ever be second best at pretending to be someone else.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Almost sounds like it belongs on a Hallmark card, but I can dig it. It’s like that bumper sticker “your vibe attracts your tribe.” It’s cliche but some cliches are popular because there’s some truth there.

  I’ve found that, to most of my peers, I’m definitely the weird one. I often let others pick the music because, while most of my coworkers tend to play stuff I find agreeable, the stuff I listen to is too eccentric, weird, and downright alien to them. So we listen to hip-hop, country, R&B, or pop music at work. And I listen to Japanese rock in my car on the way home. So is the real me an eccentric, or someone who’s accommodating of others? I don’t think there’s an easy answer. At least not one that fits on a greeting card.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I said Magic: The Gathering but I was thinking of Weiss Schwarz, a less popular card battle game that uses anime characters. Sometimes called Waifu Wars because, well, waifus. Part of the gamble there was that the game would last, whereas Magic was a more established property.

  I didn’t mean to shit on Magic. I got plenty to not like about it. When it came out, Wizards of the Coast was competing with TSR (who made D&D). Wizards ended up buying TSR out entirely. But, I think they’ve been good to the franchise, so I’ve cooled off on Magic. Even tried it. Got a starter set five, six years ago, tried playing, I was running forest or whatever you call it (all my lands were trees/forest, so I ran the related cards). Never really went anywhere. But I’ll tell ya what I love about Magic… the troll cards. So I was playing Weiss one day, guy comes up and asks for a high five. I bet you know where this is going — He Who Is Left Hanging or something like that. Had I denied him, he would have gotten some bonus in combat? And the card that forces you to set the whole game aside and run a sub-game out of your discards? Love it. So aside from the nice artwork, there are some really interesting game mechanics. I kinda wanted to get into Commander, but didn’t really have the patience/drive at that point. I know a guy with like a dozen Commander decks and we played a game, it was fun.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There isn’t one. Certainly never has been with baseball cards. It’s all the same though. Except you can’t win anything with collectible cards. Maybe you get one that’s worth something down the road… IF you took care of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Everyone saying loot box toys should be illegal should ask themselves if Magic: The Gathering should be illegal too. Or baseball cards. “Blind box”/“blind packs” have existed for decades. It’s only a problem now because they’re toys instead of cards? Or were they always a problem? Please clarify.

  I personally think Labubus are fucking ugly as hell. But we have blind bags in the anime fandom, pretty much any big franchise gets them. SPYxFAMILY, My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man… probably Dandadan and Demon Slayer, though I haven’t seen those yet. Anyway, you buy a bag and there’s a figure inside. The one you probably want is rare. It’s nice with SPYxFAMILY because Yor (the mother) is the rare one, not Anya (sort of the mascot of the show, the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old telepath with the pink hair and horns who is just so friggin’ cute). If they made Anya rare, the fans might be in trouble, but it’s just the ones horny for Yor that end up wading through a pile of Loid (the dad), Anya, and Becky (the friend) to get to the one hot chick they want. And that’s what it seems to be, the hot chick the horny young guys are after is the rare one. If you like the cute character or one of the guys, you’ll probably get your figure or you can trade for it, or buy it off someone who doesn’t want it. Then again, if you’re horny and not dumb, you can spend the money you’re spending on blind bags on a figure that has more detail.

  But again: baseball cards have existed for decades. Where was the outrage then? And baseball is just as dumb to a lot of Labubu fans as Labubu is to jocks. What’s the diff?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does more expensive phones have better reception?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if they’re CPU or GPU intensive, but I’ve heard Call of Duty Warframe pushes the phones to overheat. I dunno, never played it. Also, iPhone 15 or 16 and later can play a handful of AAA games. Nothing good, just some Capcom and Ubisoft slop. Assassins Creed and Resident Evil stuff. The new ones, too.

  Pretty sure the last couple generations of iPhones are more powerful than the Switch 2. Pretty sure most phones from the last 5-6 years are more powerful than the Switch 1. The Switch 1 was just a reworked Nvidia Shield tablet… from 2014. It had more RAM than the phones of its time, and the Tegra GPU hit a little harder, but the whole Switch 1 was quickly outclassed by every flagship phone on the market after a couple years, and the Switch 1 came out in like 2016 or 2017. Basically if you have a good phone from 2019 or 2020 or later, it’s more powerful than a Switch 1, and Switch 1 ran Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (with cel-shaded graphics and heavily optmised).

  A lot of us in tech are guilty of underestimating ARM64, but it’s been doing great. Apple has used it exclusively in their desktop and laptop computers (the M-series Macs) since 2020. I have an M2 Pro on my desk, it can run Cyberpunk and you probably know how small it is. Whole computer is like 7.75" square and maybe an inch tall?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not saying Washington/the US is better than China. But, the devil you know. Also, the devil we know (the west) has probably lied to us in a few ways about China. I remember as a kid I believed children in China were starving. I also remember hearing that they kill female babies (and often not humanely) because of their one child policy. My dream when I was a kid was to save all those girls and educate them and teach them basic fighting skills… may have been like a Charlies Angels kind of thing going on in my head.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I suppose I should have updated my information before saying that… last I checked, there weren’t, but I don’t know how old that information is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Star Trek Discovery that bad?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never heard of Trekkies as a generational term. I’ve always understood that Trekkers were people who enjoyed the show as a show (they’re on the Trek) whereas Trekkies enjoy the show as part of the show (they’re in the Trek). Like they believe Trek is real, or it’s our actual future, and that Klingons and Vulcans are out there somewhere. Gene Roddenberry preferred this term because the show is about hope, that things will get better to where the show is, and that when things are bad on the show, hope that they will be better or that it will all work out in the end. But me? I just like it as a show. It’s not “real” to me.

  Though, I suppose everyone’s relationship with Star Trek (or, any other franchise) is unique and personal to them and you can’t just divide the fans into two categories. Still, that is what I always understood the difference between the two types was, as we are a franchise that has two names for its fans.

  Regarding what you said about them having a generic space show and naming it Star Trek. That has happened before. Deep Space Nine exists because the guy made Babylon 5 pitched it to Paramount and they ran him off and stole his idea. Yes, Deep Space Nine is awesome and we love it, but it would not exist if not for Babylon 5, which we should all be thankful we also got. To this day no one who wasn’t involved knows exactly how much DS9 took from B5, but DS9 was not originally Star Trek, and it was widely criticised for not being Star Trek being that they were not exploring and that they were on a space station. I imagine a lot of episodes of TV started out as something else, some unconnected idea that was shoehorned into that show in the writers room. So while I don’t doubt that Discovery may have not been an original Trek idea, I do not care because neither was DS9 and I love DS9.

  I’m not disagreeing with you, though, and I agree with some of your clarifications, particularly in point 1.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does more expensive phones have better reception?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes and no. It’s not about the price of the phone, it’s about the capability of the modem and the material between the modem and the sky.

  About ten years ago, I went to visit family in another state, and I blew my brother’s mind with the speeds my iPhone was getting. He thought it was an iPhone thing. I said nah, much as I’d like to brag about having the more powerful, more private phone — I just had a newer modem. I think he had a Galaxy S3, which was a few years older than the 6s I had. I told him if he had the latest Samsung, he’d likely see comparable speeds.

  Apple is getting into making their own modems, and the jury is still out on whether that’s a good thing. I think the 17 series still use Qualcomm for 5G but they use Apple silicon for WiFi and Bluetooth. Maybe LTE as well, not sure about that. The Apple modem will almost certainly sip less power, but I’m not sure if it will be “better”. Probably not.

  I’ve been all over the smartphone debate and I’ve argued on both sides (for Android and for iPhones). I’ve never heard anyone seriously defend one having better network connectivity. iPhones are almost always universally faster. Right now the Galaxy S25 is faster than the iPhone 16 series, but the iPhones lose less power to thermal throttling, which is to say the iPhones are better for gaming since they lose less power, but if you’re not a gamer, the Samsung will be faster. Camera is subjective. iPhone almost always has the best video recording, but their photos are oversharpened. Samsung oversoftens, and Pixels hallucinate details they can’t see, with AI. (Zoom in on something far away with text, take a picture, then zoom in on the text and look at the AI-generated text that looks like it’s from Animal Crossing. So what other details is it hallucinating?) But network connectivity? We don’t get into that. Because it really boils down to “it’s all the same but each generation improves upon the last a little.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Whitelight] You Don't Hate Remasters Enough⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m gonna go on record and defend the Deus Ex remaster. There’s no way to play it on modern hardware. The only game console that can run it is the PS2, and not even then. The PS2 version was a whole other game because DX1 was too powerful for consoles. So it was basically DX1 dumbed down. Maps were smaller, everything was reduced… it was like a “de-make”.

  You can run it on Windows PCs with some tweaking, but if you don’t have a computer with spyware, you can jump through bigger hoops. Linux has Proton. On my Macs I can do it with Whisky. It’s really not hard, but I did need a third party tool called Deus Exe because the original DeusEx.exe was a complete no-go. I think it was made for Windows 98? Anyway, once I got Deus Exe up and running, I was even able to run Shifter, which was a mod for DX1 that tightened a few things up and added “legendary” versions of each weapon to various places around the world. I actually ran a mod of the mod, one I made myself that had more hacks to the game, like you could update your cyber link to rifle range, i.e. to use computers from across the room. Like V can do in Cyberpunk. Except DX1 wasn’t made for that so it was kinda game breaking. But fun. I mean the game was never hard.

  Anyway, they’re bringing DX1 to Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. And PC, of course. Hopefully Mac — the developer, Aspyr, has done Mac ports, but they were doing Mac ports of Xbox 360 games when Macs and Xbox 360s used the same PowerPC architecture, so that’s kinda cheating. That said, anybody porting to Switch is a stone’s throw away from porting to Mac since they’re both ARM64, and that’s part of why we even have Cyberpunk on the Mac now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long can someone physically walk for?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Stephen King is really bad with numbers. Apparently in the book they had to constantly walk at 4-5MPH, but they dropped it to 3 for the book. But sometimes King will just pull numbers straight out of his ass and his editor just lets it fly.

  Similar case, in IT, he constantly described Ben as fat, as wider than he was tall, etc., basically fat shaming the kid, but his actual weight was just a bit over average. It’s just in 1958 when the book took place, there really weren’t fat kids, and the “fat kid” was the one who didn’t look starved. Not like now where everyone’s thick and fat really means fat. It’s a matter of perspective, but the fact of the matter is, we might even consider Ben to be normal or underweight compared with the 11 year old boys (what he was) of today. King just liked to fat-shame. (But he also gave Ben a huge member in the train scene. Like shockingly big. So he didn’t do the boy entirely dirty!)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Bluesky might be better than X I’ if all you want is SMS length microblogging, but I’d like to see scientific types embrace a more federated system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  TikTok was run by a fascist regime: China. It’s just, most Americans are not of much interest to Beijing. Their intelligence probably wants to know what is trendy in America so it can better appeal to us and influence our elections to serve their interests, but Beijing is probably not concerned at all with you or I as individuals. But if they can get us to vote for a candidate they support by showing us the parts of that candidate that we agree with, we can be used as a tool by Beijing. Now Washington wants that power.

  I don’t like it either way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, I’ll “have at” TikTok for being shit because historically, it has been. It’s driven by memes and trash.

  That said, over the past couple years I’ve heard lots of good things. “BookTok” and other -Tok’s being communities within the service — I admit I don’t know how it is because I’ve never used it — but also, the rapid decline of YouTube has made me seriously consider getting on TikTok just to have something different. My resolve to be anti-TikTok has greatly reduced over the last couple years, as an “old guy” who does not like “social media”.

  So yeah, credit where it’s due.

  I’d love for the Fediverse to have a strong alternative, but again, the costs of running a video server that is anywhere close to being “widely used”…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly I just thought it was funny they got rid of the cracker and the barrel.

  Through the course of the controversy, I learned that the “cracker” was the Uncle Herschel mentioned in the menu a few times. He’s a character of theirs, something of a mascot, though a much subtler one than most other restaurant mascots. He’s in the art but his name isn’t widely advertised. A couple menu items have his name in them (e.g. Uncle Herschel’s Breakfast), but the name is not connected to the mascot in the logo.

  Oh, I also thought it was funny that they said they changed the logo to be more inclusive (I guess of people who don’t look like Uncle Herschel), but they still don’t operate in California due to that state’s progressive policies, so they can shove their “inclusive” talk. Actions speak louder than words. They do hire women, and people of color, which is a great start for a restaurant so steeped in “Southern values,” but you can’t say nobody is excluded from the table while excluding an entire state based on the politics of its government. That’s just as dumb as rock groups refusing to play whichever Southern state did a stupid thing most recently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  TikTok was never good. Have at it.

  Though, he is always free to start his own MAGA-themed video service, much like he did with Truth Social. I think the problem is — and if he doesn’t know it, he’s been advised, with crayons and hand puppets — that running a server serving video is orders of magnitude more expensive than running a server hosting a text-based social network.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Star Trek Discovery that bad?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Discovery was never bad. It’s just different. Some people say it’s not what Trek is about.

  1. Star Trek has always been about captains exploring. Deep Space Nine challenged that with a commander; Sisko later made captain, but the station itself only moved in the pilot (closer to the wormhole; it’s always been in Bajor’s orbit) and maybe one other time? But they did plenty of exploring in the Runabouts, and Defiant, the ship they got later. But essentially the action came to them, and that was fine. Discovery is not about a captain. Michael Burnham is a… commander? I forget. On the original ship. Then she’s nobody. She gets promoted up but she almost never leads, but the show focuses on her. It’s… weird. (And she’s a woman… named Michael… pronounced the same as the male name… and this is never explained.)

  2. Star Trek has always been about diversity, but Discovery had a gay couple in an openly sexual relationship. It never showed sex between them, but plenty of kissing and intimacy. Discovery also had a non-binary character with they/them pronouns. And as mentioned, a woman named Michael, but she’s cisgendered and straight, so that’s not why she has a guy’s name. Anyway, some people thought it was a few bridges too far.

  3. Star Trek has almost always been wholesome. Deep Space Nine pushed the envelope, and while it showed Sisko doing some very bad things, profanity was never part of it, and the violence was mostly PG. Discovery was on streaming, so they had profanity and R-rated violence. There may have even been some mild nudity, I don’t recall. This put off a lot of traditional fans.

  4. Before Deep Space Nine (i.e. The Original Series and The Next Generation), Star Trek has always been episodic. DS9 introduced arcs, but each episode still had its own identity, and this was true through Enterprise. But each season was its own thing on Discovery, and no one episode really stood alone.

  Points 3 and 4, and to some, point 2, put off some older, “traditional” Trekkers who felt that Discovery was made for the younger generation and was not “for” them. And I can dig it. I mean, it does follow the recent-ish films where the ships are flashy, not tacky with their tech. (Keep in mind, the ships were always flashy for their time! It’s just, we cling to the old designs and the newer, flashier one just seems excessive, but now, the newer, flashier one is dull in comparison to the ones that have followed it.)

  As for Picard, that was purely a sequel to The Next Generation (and to a lesser extent, Voyager, because of Seven of Nine). It was a love letter to the fans of that show, those shows. As purely its own thing, it’s a weaker Trek entry, but for those of us who grew up with 80s/90s Trek, it was good closure since the movies were neglecting those characters. Another such show might be Prodigy, which is a more direct continuation of Voyager, but Prodigy stood on its own better with its original cast. Picard’s original cast was not very good, but very forgettable.

  Back to Discovery, it’s very much its own thing, set both before TOS and after anything else (minor spoilers — plot device allows them to swerve around any continuity problems). It did launch Strange New Worlds, which Trekkers seem to like more than Discovery, as that is a straight TOS prequel, showing the (movies/newer) original Enterprise under Captain Pike, who was captain before Kirk. Spock’s in it, too. (I have yet to watch SNW, but I plan to. I just finished Prodigy and I like to space them a bit.) Discovery also launched Section 31, the streaming-only movie, which is about as bad as you’ve heard. The less said about that one, the better — if you want to watch it, you should, and you should do so without worrying what Internet People think about it. It’s still Star Trek, albeit some of the weakest Trek out there.

  Personally, I rate Discovery above ENT but below Voyager. I have a hard time deciding whether Discovery or Prodigy is better. Prodigy was a computer-generated anime that aired on Nickelodeon and that all sounds bad, but it was actually very good. It might seem at first that Kate Mulgrew (Janeway/Hologram Janeway) is there to prop the cast up, but they all shine so brightly, they don’t really need her as much as they think. I liked TNG, DS9, and VOY all better than STD and… whatever we’re abbreviating Prodigy to (PRO? STP?). As a child of the 80s, TOS is a bit dated for me, but the stories were so good… that’s another one that is hard to place for me.

  I recommend you watch it, but if you do, you have to finish the season. You can’t drop it mid-season, and if you do, you can’t judge it, because the individual episodes aren’t meant to be watched on their own. It’s meant to be binged. That said, you can safely stop at the end of any season. I won’t say it gets worse, but each season made me wonder if it was really necessary, including the first one. Because no, it isn’t. Discovery is not necessary for… anything… in the Star Trek universe. It’s not really connected. Even Strange New Worlds… they ran into the Enterprise in the beginning of the second season, but then they went away. So yeah, you can safely watch SNW without Discovery and you’d be fine. I do think the first season was good, as far as action Trek goes. And you can stop there, but with the way it ends… you won’t. Season 2 was okay, a good mystery, and you can stop there, but you still may want to see what comes next. After that, I think the quality does take a bit of a dive, but then they’re in the far future, and you just wanna see more and more of what’s left of Starfleet in the future. And it’s good enough to stick with. But never necessary. And that’s probably the “worst” thing I can say about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jesus was Jewish, but Christians aren't⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because Jesus showed them a better way? I thought that was the point of it.

  All of Jesus’s followers who lived when he did were Jewish as well. They were all guilty of what Jesus was crucified for, going against the established religion of the land (I wouldn’t call it apostasy though; that’s renouncing God and none of them were doing that). Christianity is/was based on the teachings of Christ; it builds upon Judaism.

  That’s my understanding anyway. I am not religious. But, I don’t think “Christians are not Jews like Jesus was” is a bad thing.

  What’s wild to me is that today’s Jews believe Jesus was this decent guy but not the son of God. Then you have Muslims who believe that maybe he was the son of God, maybe he was just a prophet, but they still follow his teachings, they just lean more into the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him) (that’s how they say it, or they add “PBUH” which means the same). But guess who the Christians side with politically? I don’t get it. But I don’t think that (the political thing) has to do with who’s more closely aligned with Jesus, I think it’s who pays better.

  But again, I’m not religious, so I don’t support or reject any of them. And of course my understanding of these religions is far less than actual practitioners of said religions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yes, That Great-Looking 'Star Trek: Voyager' Game Will Let You Spare Tuvix⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes but more like Fallout Shelter (which is like FTL but from the side).

  I get why you went to FTL, because it’s in space and you’re on a ship. Maybe Fallout Shelter was inspired by FTL?

  But nah, this is more like Fallout Shelter in space, maybe with some elements of FTL because rather than having a base where characters are added and must go out for resources, the base moves and can’t really get new characters (or maybe it can, Neelix, Seven, and Kes came from the Delta Quadrant, so ostensibly they could get more) but still sends people out on missions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yes, That Great-Looking 'Star Trek: Voyager' Game Will Let You Spare Tuvix⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because the point was the moral question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google says adblockers caused YouTube views count to drop - this is what adblockers told us really happened⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  YouTube is completely broken on my Apple TV — the last platform I have which actually does display ads. When the app loads, I get a black screen. When I tap on a video (click on it? on the remote?) it goes black, stutters through an ad, stutters through the next one, then stutters through the video for a couple seconds. Sometimes I have to start the video over. If I were running an ad blocker, I would expect static like this… but I’m not. I don’t have a PiHole. The Apple TV has direct, unfiltered access to my WiFi. The ads are showing, but the app is just… broken. On my computers (Macs) I get a perfect experience, because I use Firefox with uBlock Origin like a sane person who knows what they’re doing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should you copy a person's accent when pronouncing their name?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If the name depends on an accent, I’d say yes, but only to an extent.

  A good example is the name Jesus. We tend to think of Christ, the Christian figure, when we read the name and think “Gee-zuhs.” But it’s a common Hispanic name and it’s pronounced “Heh-zoos.” Die Hard 3 made a joke about this. Samuel L. Jackson’s character is called Zeus. One of his people says “Hey, Zeus” and Bruce Willis’ character calls him “Jesus” but pronounces it the same. “Do I look Puerto Rican to you?!” Jackson cries out to him. “He said Jesus,” Willis says. “As in hey Zeus, shove a lightning bolt up your ass ZEUS!” Been ages since I watched it but I still remember that part.

  Asking people how to pronounce their names and asking them back, attempting to do so, if it’s fine, and not only listening to what they say, but reading their body language, is the way to go.

  I once knew a guy, can’t remember if he was Cambodian or Vietnamese, he didn’t give people his name because nobody could pronounce it correctly. I asked him to let me try. Took me a few tries, but I got it. Oddly I still remember it. Can’t fucking type it to save my life though. He did ask I still call him by the same name others do, so as not to create confusion, but he was happy I learned to say his name. And if it was just us, I could use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown looks like a field day for micro managers in its first gameplay trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m kind of amazed that someone thought something based on Voyager would even sell. I loved Voyager when it was new — don’t get me wrong — but coming hot off the ending of The Next Generation, and its first few seasons coinciding with Deep Space Nine right after things got good on DS9? It wasn’t very popular at the time. Then we got ENT to dump on, then STD. And I like most/all Trek, but I’ve found generally people dumped on the new thing. I’m glad Voyager is getting love. We got Prodigy which is kind of a sequel to Voyager, in much the same way Picard was to TNG. (Now do DS9, you cowards!)

  Not sure this game is it… it just looks like Fallout Shelter, reskinned with some extra bells and whistles. Which might not be such a bad thing, people liked Fallout Shelter. I got overwhelmed by it and gave up on it. I might play it on my computer if it comes to macOS, but I don’t see myself booting up the Xbox for a game like this. (I see they are porting it to PC, but Macs run a whole other hardware architecture, one that phones and Nintendo Switch run. Mac ports are more likely when a game is coming to one of those; for example, any game that runs on either Switch should run on all M-series Macs. It’s just a question of whether they want to support the platform.)