FriendOfDeSoto

@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some franchises with characters that personify countries?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Asterix

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you apologize, even if it's not your fault just to make the other person feel validated?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no simple answer to this. It’s like at least three factors interacting. How much empathy do you feel towards the other person? How close is your relationship on the scale of strangers bumping into each other on the street to best friends forever? How big an issue has any of this been objectively (or as close as you can get there)? So that’s three sliding scales to adjust to get an outcome. The closer a relationship is, the harder this can be because there is history and people (I’m including myself in this) can be very petty.

  Just judging by the hints you dropped you should probably reconsider your approach to your coworkers. And I don’t mean you need to be submissively apologetic all the time and share everything from your private life, even your hemorrhoid problems, with the crew. You’ll probably make your life easier just on a human level plus improve odds of promotion if you do more of that, even if it feels more line cosplay to you. I share your “grow the eff up”/no bullshit stance but that only works in a group of like minded people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s the wrong label, anti-intellectualusm. Sense of reality might do it more justice. I think there are two factors at play. 1) how much does higher education cost you? Does it put you in debt you’ll be lucky to have paid off before you retire? Have other people gotten degrees and still ended up unemployed? Why get majorly in debt to get no job in the end? That’s more a North American specific problem. I’m in Asia and I haven’t heard anybody shit talking college degrees in favor of the trades. 2) We need plumbers and carpenters and welders and whatnot. And due to declining birth rates in many places and the fact that the numerous birth years of the boomers are retiring and will continue to retire in the short term, we are running out of sparkies, masons, and HVACs. So if you had to career advise people today, you’d be silly not to bring up a profession with near certainty of getting a job once you’re trained up.

  Shitty work environments exist in more high brow professions as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Through the Lens of Time" was one of the silliest episodes yet [Spoilers]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Think about it

  I have done that. I’m just more forgiving than you. They may have shot the go ahead scene and cut it for an unrelated reason. They may have decided not to want to get Romijn or Mount do another ADR session, which costs money. The Paramount/Skydance merger loomed heavily over this season’s production with tight budgets and uncertainty for the future. I’m not saying the episode is perfectly put together. I guess what I am saying is that you are hung up on one detail here. I suggest you give it the Elsa treatment.

  This is my perspective: this is a silly show. They did a musical episode, which I really didn’t like. They did a documentary episode, which I could’ve done without. I feel Babylon 5 did a much better job with this kind of meta TV episode. They took the established “space dad” Pike character and made him unsure and hesitant this season and I don’t know why. They are taking a soap approach to relationships within the show. The show is a dead man walking with its end after 5 more episodes already decided. All new Trek shows have already been axed and I’m not optimistic about the success of Academy. S31… With all of this going on in the background I choose to smile that SNW exists and not cry because the stories are wonky here or there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you ever give up your right to leave a bad review about a company?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  People are mad. There are mad people on both sides.

  Consumers can feel very empowered by a few hundred followers and one bad experience. And that translates more into a diss track, embelished and dramatized, than an honest review. Entrepreneurs justifiably fear this because this can hurt their businesses significantly. So they fight back with this legal retcon attempt. It’s most likely not enforceable - and they probably know that too. If they wouldn’t mind you speaking positively about you online, they cannot keep the negative stuff out either (as long as it is based in fact, libel is a different story). This little boiler plate serves only to give pause to the consumer. It plants a seed of restraint in their minds (if they actually read it).

  Humans are a complicated species.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is playing horror games a good way to get desensitized to fear, or it gonna backfire and make my anxiety worse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That was only option 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is playing horror games a good way to get desensitized to fear, or it gonna backfire and make my anxiety worse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You need to try for yourself. Or consult a therapist who knows you well enough. Us idiots on the internet cannot look inside your head.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Through the Lens of Time" was one of the silliest episodes yet [Spoilers]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think “vibe scripted” is harsh. The writers were bumping against the restriction that they need ::: spoiler spoiler Chapel blood next to anybody when they enter or exit the place. That’s why the alien buys it. Scaredy pants tries to go out on his own and gets fried. They wanted to avoid another entrance/exit on screen to keep us guessing how this Star Trek Inception works. :::

  It’s a version of “commander, you better take a look at this.” It keeps the suspense up for the audience as Riker saunters over, maneuvering over multiple chairs, to take a look at the corpse of the mortal enemy of the federation. In a real military, Worf would say something like “heads up, Romulan casualties on the premise, everybody be on the lookout.” That’s to prevent the commander or anybody else from getting shot by a possible half-dead Rom in the rubble. But that’s not great television. It’s just script writing 101.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I rewatch Deep Space Nine Duet episode, why Bashir didn't resurrect Darkhe'el?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Gul Darheel is dead and buried on Cardassia. Smug Dukat tells Odo he attended his funeral. That’s kind of a big ask for Bashir to accomplish resurrection from DS9.

  Marritza suffered from the HDJ syndrome as well. It befalls characters whose death fits the story - and it is a more impactful ending with Kira almost mourning the loss of this guy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a word for the happiness in finding the exact right word?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Wortfindungseuphorie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Kids are probably old enough to get it. I would just think that you will be loading a shotgun that’s going to shoot you in the face down the line. Either the ladies will get in each other’s hair or, worse, they’ll team up against you. I think your girlfriend is either insane or not entirely honest when she says she would be fine with your arrangement. I would sooner suggest you look for a place closeby. I’m guessing the 15yo is eye rolling you hard and the 13yo will soon not care about you either. You’ve carried them through the divorce rough spot with your unique living arrangement. Take a bow and let it go. Provide a better environment for your new relationship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is "AI" the end of truth?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We are just asking old questions here. The printing press, novels, and pamphlets were the end of truth! We struggled, many people died, but life moved on. Then newspapers, more death, radio, world wars. Television, photoshop, the internet - fewer deaths in between but still. And life moved on.

  Every new medium brought a phase of uncertainty (and possible carnage). That’s where we are right now. Every time we think “this is the worst EVER.” Until the next thing comes around. We will figure out the slop tsunami as well. I think fewer people will die than during the reformation.

  Some people will successfully bend truth to generated video or whatever. But in the end, most will not succeed. Because we get wiser at spotting the bullshit. Q Anon showed us the learning isn’t a linear development; it follows more of a two steps forward, one step back pattern.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it better to: [A] watch videos content on a flagship/midrange smartphone that you already have, OR [B] get a cheap tablet (say, around $200 USD) to watch videos?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you ever noticed the difference in screen quality before? Did you ever watch a YT video on something slightly better than a cathode ray monitor and thought to yourself: “hmm, this is shit.”? If so, don’t cheap out on the tablet. Maybe a used iPad might even be ideal. I’m leaning Apple here because Android tablet screens tend to be worse on average and there will be fewer good ones on the resale market.

  If you don’t want a big TV, how about a smaller one that you can cast content to? Just as another suggestion because other folks have already suggested laptops.

  As you get older, your eyes turn to shit and most of this won’t matter that much. So you’re right to be cautious on the spending.

  I proudly watch movies on my phone. If I don’t want to watch Paw Patrol or Frozen it’s the only way to get some not-made-for-kids content in. And I can take it to the toilet and continue watching. And I don’t mean porn, just to clarify. Sure, as the cinematic experience goes, it isn’t what Christopher Nolan had in mind but shit happens. It’s that or nothing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a geneticist, I don’t even play one on TV. But i’m fairly confident in saying: evening out? That’s not how this works. When your daddy’s sperm combined with your mother’s egg, a whole host of chance processes happened to make up your genes. It’s random as far as I can tell. It isn’t just averaging out between them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If there's a sort of "apocalyptic" event but there are still surviving communities, will people be able to make eyeglasses again, or are people with vision issues gonna be fucked?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It took centuries to get to disposable contact lenses while trying to figure out the physics, both in optics and in manufacturing any sort of spectacles, at the same time.

  Will the survivors of the apocalypse be able to pick up where we left off or will they essentially start from scratch? That depends on the apocalypse and on the survivors. Do documents and knowledge survive, perhaps in a stash or in digital form? Do the survivors include an optician or a material engineer? Chances look good if that’s the case. If no, life will get a lot harder for many people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Germany is a collection of regions and former midieval fiefdoms that pretty much all hate each other. Munich and surroundings is representative of Munich, not the whole country. But a lot of the stereotypical things Americans think of when thinking of Germany will be there. Most of the South was occupied by US forces post WW2 and all the lederhosen, Oktoberfest, and Neuschwanstein Castle should feel just right for you. And that pisses off the Germans in the rest of the country like telling a Texan their BBQ is trash.

  Somebody said Germans aren’t into smalltalk. That’s probably true by comparison to the average American but by comparison to their countrymen in the North they are positively chatty in Bavaria.

  Bring cash or research at least two ways to get your hands on it while in the country. Just in case one method fails. A lot of places do not accept credit cards and that will probably extend to US debit cards that run on a cc system.

  And yes, especially intercity trains are a clustereff of neglect and wear and tear and timetables are not to be trusted at all.

  Don’t rent a car and just floor it on the autobahn. Take it at 120kph/75mph first for an hour before you put your pedal to the metal. Get a feel for the road and the rules first because Germans love a rule. And it decreases your chance of hitting a concrete pillar. No speed limit areas tend to be between cities, not on the built up areas. Know that speeding tickets will be charged after the fact or they will follow you by mail.

  The staring people refer to here may be, to a large extent, that if there are no Chinese tourists in the area, American ones will be the loudest ones around, carrying their cute little fear of dehydration made manifest water bottles around. You look funny to us and we can’t help it. Don’t buy bottled water, tap is fine to drink. But there aren’t drinking fountains around. A lot of drinks in bottles and cans charge a deposit fee you’ll get back when you return the empty container to the supermarket - your kid will know the drill.

  If you’re planning to cross borders be prepared for actual border checks. Our version of ICE crackdowns is making the federal police force delay EU cross border traffic with pretty much EU-illegal ID checks. We spend absolute millions of Euros, accruing a gazillion hours of overtime to catch two illegal immigrants or thereabouts. Political theater with waiting times for all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How difficult would it be to live in a modern-day developed country without a smartphone?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Doesn’t difficult very much depend on what you think matters? You’re instantly missing out on anything app, anything QR-code related (ordering food in some restaurants, links, etc.), membership cards that no longer exist in physical form. Some places sell certain tickets online only and then you may need a printer or you’re SOL. I’m sure in missing something so that’s not extensive.

  But at the same time, if you have a dumb phone, you can still stay in touch with friends and family. You’ll be missing out on images being sent that are bigger than 2 pixels. But you wouldn’t be completely out of the loop. And if you have an internet ready computer at home or at the next door library, just not on you at all times, I think that’s crucial. Without that you’re ending up in all sorts of trouble.

  I would say it’s doable if you are good at not giving F’s. If at the same time you only want to use cash or just no credit cards you’ll be making your life much harder though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Park shades not working⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Become active in your local politics. That’s where this urban design sausage is made. I’m gonna go ahead and doubt that your post here will reach many decision makers and urban designers.

  The reason why you can angle that parasol is because it will cost more money. Anything the public can use will be abused and then broken. We cannot have nice things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Never accept a pasta served by an “Australian mushroom.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does it damage my phone in any way it I use a faulty cable to charge it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No one here can tell you for sure what’s wrong with your cable. So no one can answer if it will be good or bad over time. Slow (normal) charging is better for your battery than fast charging. A wobbly wire might stop and restart the charging process, which might be detrimental to the battery over time.

  But it could also be that your port is so clogged up with pocket lint that the contact in your phone is affected and that’s why fast charging no longer works. Something could be broken in the brick you use and that’s why it won’t work any more. It could be that the cable was bent so many times it’s broken. It’s probably that.

  You could try to narrow down where the error lies. If you use a friend’s cable does the same thing happen? Friend’s fine-working cable in your power brick? If you got a phone repair kiosk in your neighborhood, maybe ask them if they could clean your port. If they’re friendly, they can probably help you narrow down this problem also.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If your approach at dating hasn’t materialized in anything, perhaps it is time to change your approach. For me, the best things happened when I wasn’t trying at all. Be social, be courteous, be nice - and as the owner of a penis: non-threatening.

  You have self identified a problem of anxiety. If your next step is to criticize all “females” as being difficult in terms of dating, you’re missing a beat here and making a bad word choice. The problem may be more of a you-problem than a them-problem. Also, no matter the primary sexual organ situation, people can pick up on both an air of entitlement or the scent of desperation.

  Also, all cicadas shout for sex but not every cicadas gets laid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To win the show Alone, could someone smuggle a GPS locator inside of their anus?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If there is no checking in place, like an airport security check and/or check for devices emitting radio waves. Also, the producers know where the candidates are at, don’t they? If they spot regular drone flights in the area, I think the game will be up as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who had it worse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Now i’m torn. On the one hand I want to dismiss your counter argument as a counter factual and therefore there is no need to even glance at it. On the other hand, the omnipotent dick is part of the equation and he can control these things and I kinda see where you’re coming from. I would say he is being more of a d though because he is rubbing Picard’s nose in how unprepared humanity is in the stars. The fact that his finger snapping detour shortened the encounter timeline with the Borgs may have had the one positive effect: forewarning for the feds. And that may have put them in a position to win by the skin of their teeth. So your counter argument holds some limited and not massive amount of water.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who had it worse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Q is just a dick. He could’ve brought Voyager back home but didn’t and then involved Janeway in that continuufederacy civil war. He exposed Picard and crew to the Borgs and didn’t lift a finger when he got Locutussed. I think in terms of dead people he may have screwed Picard over more. I may be wrong but I think more people died in that cross section being cut out by the Borgs as a direct result of Q finger snapping the D out to meet them. But at the core, he just does stuff because he’s a bored omnipotent dick and he makes everyone in his path suffer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no accounting for taste.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do people hate coldplay?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They are the epitome of the adage that their earlier stuff was better. For me, they jumped the shark when Roman Catholic bells were ringing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says criminal “geoengineering and weather modification activities" could have played a role in recent Texas floods⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Florida Man strikes again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a font/typeface designing program that is available for Windows or Linux that supports creation of variable fonts and OpenType features?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe 10 years ago I tried designing a font in Inkscape. It was possible but more of a gimmick. I then installed Fontforge and very quickly decided I wasn’t going to learn how to use it, didn’t have the bandwidth. But the tools are there. Both methods have a learning curve but I think have enough instruction resources online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In languages which use complex written characters (such as Chinese's logographs), is there an equivalent to English's "text speak" shorthand?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s difficult 2 transpose what u can do in English just 2 other languages written in the Latin alphabet for centuries. English has a remarkable and quite confusing amount of homophones that is absent from other indoeuropean languages. The apostrophe as a letter skipped marker is fairly universal. But beyond that it’s already a different ball game in other more similar languages. 2 to too, 4 for, r u - that’s very English only.

  Simplified Chinese characters are a hint at what they did on the Chinese mainland to cut down on writing time. Beyond that (and I don’t speak the language so 🧂) there are single character abbreviations for countries. 美国 is America and 美 suffices as shorthand, which means beauty otherwise. Your example phrase is “R u coming 2nite?” In English we use the present progressive tense here, which doesn’t exist like that in Mandarin. It would be phrased as “Come tonight?” The question mark could be replaced with the character that functions as a question marker by itself. And I think you can do this in 3-4 characters and I think they might just beat you to it in a bilingual texting competition in terms of speed.

  The mainland population may also be more adept to obfuscate their speech especially online. So similarly pronounced character combinations take over the meaning of a term the censors are actively looking for.

  The Japanese like shortening stuff, mostly loanwords, to unrecognizable words. The word for part time work is アルバイト (arubaito) taken from the German for work (Arbeit). Cool kids have whittled it down to baito. A remote control has become a リモコン (rimokon) in normal parlance. Overly long Chinese character combos like 自動販売機 for a vending machine get shortened to 自販機 dropping characters that can be inferred (if you speak it).

  I also want to add that text speak is heavily influenced by restrictions on text length and charges for each text. Non Latin script characters take up more than one Latin character per Chinese character for instance. It’s probably 5+ in decoding per character. So you reach 160 letters quite quickly and that’s why SMS in China was very cheap and quickly adopted a system where message threads would be sent and put back together on the recipient’s phone. In Japan they used email from the start, even in dumb phone T9 texting days. They had no Twitter-like restrictions on text length so they didn’t need to be shorter than what their thumbs could successfully fumble together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Found a 2009 YouTube video about a green, healthy looking fir tree growing inside a man's lung. CNN video shows a surgeon and the patient being interviewed.. was it a hoax?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think what you’re not picking up on is the whole Ms. Moos vibe on CNN. She is basically satire. She always jumps on the most outrageous stories and narrates them in that annoying pseudo journalistic voice and has done for decades. The stories may be actually true but you should never assume that they are. They are a knock knock joke for people who watch 24h news channels.

  I don’t know anything about this case more than having watched the CNN video. Mr. Fir-lung and his doctor needn’t be actors. He could’ve really had it in his lung but played up the “haha, maybe I breathed in a seed” line because it got him attention on TV and paid interviews. And he doesn’t mention how he was in a landslide being chased by a bear 5 years ago and that’s when he accidentally inhaled the debris. The doctor may just have mentioned in a subordinate clause that it looked as if the sprig was growing in the lung but never actually claimed it did. Or he also believes in homeopathy. Or he also got paid for the interview. There are a thousand explanations why we get presented the story like that. But the biggest red flag remains that Jeanne Moos was reporting on it.