kane_magus: (Default)
Requiescat in pace, Peter David.

I wouldn't say he changed Star Trek forever, since it was "just" a non-canon TNG novel, but still, it was a very good non-canon TNG novel. I liked the concept of Trelane being a young member of the Q Continuum.

Most people probably knew Peter David for his comic book stuff, but for me, it was his Star Trek novels. In addition to Q-Squared, as mentioned in the article above, other Trek novels of his that I really liked were Vendetta (the one that claimed the the Doomsday Machine was an ancient anti-Borg weapon, and also brought in its bigger brother), Q-in-Law (the one in which Q met Lwaxana Troi, Deanna Troi's mother, which was something that sadly never happened in the show proper), Imzadi (which tells the tale of the first meeting between Will Riker and Deanna Troi, and also involves the Guardian of Forever [and he wrote a sequel called Triangle: Imzadi II, which also involved Worf and Thomas Riker]), and I, Q (a book he co-wrote with John de Lancie, in which Q gives himself the task of preventing the destruction of the universe as we know it, with some help from Picard and Data), among a whole bunch of other stuff. I haven't actually read any of his New Frontier stuff, though. And pretty much anything else of his that isn't Star Trek-related is stuff with which I have very little familiarity.
kane_magus: (Default)
A post on WIL WHEATON dot NET.



"Wil Wheaton on His Star Trek Family and His New Podcast Storytime with Wil Wheaton"

"Hi everyone, happy Tuesday! I am so excited for this week’s episode. I’m talking to the one and only Wil Wheaton! You know Wil from his roles as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: Next Generation, Gordie in Stand By Me and his appearances on The Big Bang Theory. Wil is also a super-nerd and a prolific audiobook reader. He has a new podcast called Storytime with Wil Wheaton, where he reads a new short speculative fiction story each episode and I highly recommend it! We had such a lovely conversation— Wil is a deep thinker and one of the kindest people I know. I can’t wait for you to get to know him a little bit better! Stick around after the interview for the hindsight, where my producer Jeph and I talk about the episode, as well as some upcoming live podcast recordings, our new Patreon and oh yeah, time travel!"



Apparently the only thing you have to do to get me to watch an entire hour and a half episode of your podcast is simply to have Wil Wheaton on as the guest for that episode. Like so.

Also, it's kind of funny, because I'm sure most other geeknerds (or is the proper term "nerdgeeks"? *shrug*) like me would know Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica. Here's the thing, though... I have never seen anything of Battlestar Galactica, either the 2004 version or the original show or anything else, outside of maybe an occasional clip on Youtube or something that I don't even remember now. (I always tend to get it confused with Babylon 5, as well, which is another geeknerd show that starts with the letter "B" and of which I have yet to see a single episode. How far in the toilet is my geeknerd cred now?) Nor have I seen any of that other nerdgeek stuff like all that Star Wars stuff mentioned on her Wikipedia page there. What I have seen a fair bit of her in, though, is Longmire, because there is an over-the-air TV channel which I don't recall the name of right now that my sister watches, and it airs a metric assload of Longmire episodes, back to back, on at least a weekly if not daily basis, and I see bits and pieces of it whenever I happen to exit my room to go the kitchen or something (also stuff like Stargate SG-1 and The Closer/Major Crimes and Rizzoli & Isles and NCIS and whatever else that channel [those channels?] tend to air, but that's beside the point). Beyond that, I have no other experience with pretty much anything Katee Sackhoff has done, unfortunately. At least as of right now. So far. Yet.

Okay, so...

There's a fair bit of overlap here with what Wil said in the Mayim Bialik podcast and what he has said on his own blog, but there's a lot of stuff that's new, too. That's one of the cool things about Wil is that even if he's telling largely the same story as one he's told before, elsewhere, he's still able to put a new spin on it. It's not just the same thing, over and over.

At one point, early on, Wil says that if he could give up all of his acting success if it meant that he would instead have a normal childhood where he had parents who weren't terrible, he would do it in a heartbeat. However, later on, about halfway into the episode, when asked about if he could time travel and change something, would he do it, he says that if he could go back and change the bad things about his childhood, he would not do it, if it meant that it led to him never meeting Anne, his wife. It was an interesting contrast. His acting career he would sacrifice in a moment, if it meant he could instead have had a good childhood with loving parents, but not his wife and her kids that he later adopted as his own. By the way, his stories about his wife's children, separately, asking him to formally, officially adopt them when they were each 18 was very touching.

Oh, and the short story they were talking about is Wikihistory. I'm glad Wil mentioned it because it gave me an excuse to read it again (this will be the fourth of fifth time now). In fact, I literally paused the video, then went and read it again, before returning to the video. It's definitely as good as he says it is (though he did get some of the details about it wrong, i.e. there was no "baby Schlimmel" or whatever).

And the fish story is this one or one of several like it told by Michio Kaku.

Finally... I haven't gotten around to it as of yet, but I think I'm going to start actually making the time to go through It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton now. Perhaps even getting started right now, in fact.

"There's always going to be shitty people in the world, that's just how it is, but we can choose whether we're going to be one of them."
kane_magus: (Default)
A post on WIL WHEATON dot NET.

Also, this, which he has embedded in that post there:



"'I Survived Being a Child Star' Wil Wheaton: How to Heal Trauma & Believing Aliens are Out There"

"Wil Wheaton (TBBT, bestselling author, award-winning audiobook narrator, host of It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton) is back in the MBB studio, and he's opening up like never before about his deeply personal journey as a trauma survivor. From grappling with the scars of being raised by emotionally immature and narcissistic parents to surviving abuse on a movie set, he shares the emotional tools and therapies that have helped him heal, including EMDR and IFS therapy. He dives into the mind-bending connections between quantum physics, nonlinear time, and reparenting your inner child, while exploring fascinating topics like extraterrestrial life, simulation theory, and telepathy. Get ready for an eye-opening conversation on how trauma has shaped every aspect of Wil's life, his thoughts on the dangers of spiritual charlatans, and his cautious approach to psychedelics. Don't miss this thought-provoking as we connect the dots between science, spirituality, and the unknown!"



From Mr. Wheaton's post above:

"You also get to see me get triggered in real time, realize it, recover from it, and address what happened. It’s a little embarrassing to see myself fuck up like that, in public no less, and be reactive when I want to be responsive, but I feel like it could be a valuable teaching moment and that’s worth a little embarrassment, if it’s helpful to literally anyone else in the world."

Anyway, outside of occasional full episodes of Some More News or Last Week Tonight (which I usually watch at 2x speed), or shorter clips from things like Castle Super Beast (which I also usually watch at 2x speed), I don't normally make time to just sit back and listen to podcasts like this. But I did that for this one (at 1x speed, even), and I'm glad I did.

And it seems like I, too, have some "homework" now, which is to watch Arrival at some point and maybe also look into Sugar.
kane_magus: (Default)

I still despise April Fools' Day, but things like this make it less sucky.

Sucks that this isn't a real thing, though. I mean, an actual, serious version of this, rather than the blatant parody, at least.

(Via here.)
kane_magus: (Default)
Man, fuck off with that horseshit.

The Vidiians sucked ass (aside from Danara Pel, which this article doesn't even mention), and "Phage" was, at least for me, the absolute nadir of Star Trek: Voyager, which I've said multiple times before.
kane_magus: (Default)
A post on WIL WHEATON dot NET with an amusing, semi-embarrassing anecdote about an incident that occurred on the bridge of the USS Enterprise-D.

There was also a follow up comment to the Reddit version of the above linked post.
kane_magus: (Default)

Even ignoring how it affects MMOs, which I do not and will not ever play and vastly do not care about[1], the whole "Discord has replaced dedicated, semi-permanent forums," just in general, is one of the absolute worst, most dogshit things that has happened to the Internet. To hell with Discord.

Aside from that specific bit about Discord, the entire first two thirds of this video can be considered reason number four billion and whatever of why I do not play multiplayer games with randos anymore, in general.

Also, Woolie apparently completely forgot he was a streamer until Pat reminded him at the 33 minute mark. And the discussion that followed after has been added to the list of reasons why I will not ever be a streamer, either.

[1] - Outside of the rare few that have a decent solo-player experience, like Star Trek Online and The Secret World (or Secret World Legends or whatever the fuck it's called now), neither of which I've touched in over two years and eight years, respectively. And the one time I touched STO more recently, I barely got out of the tutorial shit before quitting out, uninstalling, and not touching it since, so the last time I really played STO was much further into the past.
kane_magus: (Default)

"Hi. Companies owned by Elon Musk are now essential to how nations explore space and get connected on satellite internet. Perhaps Musk and other billionaires shouldn't be able to do unfettered capitalism in the cosmos? Especially when they claim to be driven and inspired by stories of moneyless space communism?"



Added the "middle-finger-worthy" tag right off the bat, just because it's all about Sissy SpaceX.

Yeah, calling Musk "the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America" is most certainly not the wonderful thing all those chodes think it is. And you'd think that Donald Trump would look dimly on Phony Stark horning in on his turf like that. Both of those guys could fit the title of "greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America." As long as we all agree that that is a grievous insult, mind you, and not, like, a positive thing to call someone.
kane_magus: (Default)
"StarTrek.com honors the late actor and his contributions to the Star Trek universe."

Aw, that sucks...

Vic Fontaine was one of my favorite characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
kane_magus: (Default)

"Hi. Today, we're taking a look at American men – are they in crisis? Why do they turn to misogynistic manosphere creeps like Andrew Tate? What else can we offer them besides anger and contempt?"



(Beware: right off the bat, Warmbo is on the screen again. As such, this video will never be as good as it could have been. Fortunately, though, Warmbo has only a very small role in this video, at the beginning and at the end. "Stollie" on the other hand... *weary sigh*)

If you don't watch any other part of this video, at least watch this part. Not because it's good or funny. It's not. It's depressing and terrible. But I think it needs to be seen.

Barely teen boys saying horrific shit like "Fuck the women," and "All gays should die," and "We love women... but not, like, transgenders" (the latter said, questioningly, in response to that "Sneako" guy saying "No, no, we love women," which was itself in response to the initial "Fuck the women, fuck the women" dumbshit). It shows what effect all the assholes discussed in this video like that guy are having. (I'd never heard of this "Sneako" dipshit before this video, and I hope to never hear about him again after, either. Like Cody said, fuck that guy and everyone else like him, but not literally, because they're gross.)

Anyway, as one of the comments under the video said: "I'm tired of alpha males, I'll wait till the full release when they've patched out the instability."
kane_magus: (Default)
"Teens are opening up to AI chatbots as a way to explore friendship. But sometimes, the AI’s advice can go too far."

This article is interesting as much for the comments as for the article itself. The comments are vacillating between (to paraphrase) "Yeah, I get it, talking to real humans is hard because real humans are shit," to "I don't see the harm in it, but yeah, I wouldn't take what an AI says at face value without outside verification," to "This is dangerous and will be the death of humanity as we know it."

(I'm kind of a mix between the first and second opinions, with only the slightest dash of the third one, myself. Mostly the second one.)

One comment is (direct quote):



We really just gonna pedal-to-the-metal speedrun making every overtly horrifying scenario from Black Mirror into reality, while simultaneously criticizing Black Mirror for being corny as shit and lame now, because all it does is tell us stories we go out of our way to make true within 5 years.

This shouldn't be a thing at all. It's monstrous, full-stop.



I haven't seen any of Black Mirror, so I don't know how "accurate" that statement is, at least in the context of this The Verge article, anyway. I have to assume they're talking about this? That's what came up when I searched Google for "Black Mirror artificial intelligence," anyway. If there's more than that that's actually relevant, I didn't come across it in the minute or two I devoted to searching. *shrug*

What I can say, though, is that Star Trek has dealt with this topic quite a lot, in its own way, and at least a couple decades before Black Mirror ever existed. And that's not even all of it (as of five years ago, at least, as there's been more since). Basically, all we need is for someone to invent hard light holograms now, and we'd practically be almost there already.

As for me, I've messed with Character.ai (as recently as a couple weeks ago), AI Dungeon (back when it was still cool, before it became total shit), and NovelAI (I havehad a long-ass on-going story thing I mess with fairly frequently and occasionally dabble in "one-shot" story things), and it's all interesting enough, sure. I don't mistake it for a friend or a psychologist, though, and all that I've tried have absolutely given horrible "advice" on occasion. I think it's mostly fine for this purpose, within reason, with moderation, but when people start confusing this stuff with reality, that's where the problems start.
kane_magus: (Default)

I was going to save all of the "undead Pat returns to Montreal from the west coast of Canada and visits Woolie at Woolie's streaming set up for a while" arc and post the clips all at once, but this is good enough to have its own post.

*puts on Trekker/Trekkie hat (because I don't give a shit about the supposed distinction between "Trekker" and "Trekkie")*

Well ackchyually, Pat, we didn't watch "like 200 episodes where people go faster than warp 10." Because warp 10 was the hardline "you cannot go this fast" limit for all of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager up to that point, and also after that point (outside of the occasional wonky shit such as this, which almost always involved godlike entities like Q or The Traveler or the Caretaker doing godlike entity shit). There were a rare few cases in The Original Series where something went faster than, like, warp 8 or so, and even those cases were seen as extraordinary. The only times I recall them explicitly going above warp 10 like it was a normal, everyday thing were in a couple episodes of The Animated Series, and some of the non-canon novels (and, I guess, the non-canon future of "All Good Things...", though that, again, involved Q). The showrunners for TNG and beyond decided to retcon the fact that you could exceed warp 10 in those earlier shows and explained it as a "recalibration of the warp scale" to account for the fact that "faster than warp 10" was seen in TOS and TAS, making it so they didn't really go faster in the earlier stuff than the speed that was recalibrated to be "warp 10." Hell, in Peter David's novel Vendetta (written years before "Threshold", before even Voyager itself [or Deep Space Nine, for that matter] existed) which was basically a (completely awesome) "what if the Doomsday Machine fought the Borg" work of official fanfiction on David's part (did I mention it was completely awesome?), he explores what happens if one were to reach warp 10, and it's pretty interesting. (Hint: it's not "you 'evolve' into salamanders.")

The above, specifically, is a textbook example of Pat's Stand, Crazy Talk, activating.

Beyond that, though, Pat's completely right in that Star Trek: Voyager mostly sucked asshole (though "Phage" is still my least favorite episode, more so than even "Threshold"). Even Enterprise was better, for the most part. And yeah, all that shit about Chakotay and the fake Native American consultant was absolutely true, unfortunately.

Oh, and that thing Pat talks about where the original Harry Kim died and was replaced by another version of himself... yeah, that happened. But then, Kim is not even the first to whom such a thing happened. Just a year before, on Deep Space Nine, the original Miles O'Brien was similarly killed and replaced by a temporal clone.

The planet of angry black people was, sadly, a thing in Next Gen, true enough. That was the super racist first season episode of Next Gen. There was a super sexist first season episode of Next Gen as well. And the Irish sex ghost thing was real, too. And the Worf spits acid thing was real, too.

And yeah... when they mentioned Quantum Leap and immediately went nuts laughing, I knew exactly what they were talking about. That wasn't too great, either.

And I remember at least the first season or so of Sliders. Or, at least, I remember that Sliders was a thing that existed. The only thing I actually remember from Sliders is that they jumped to a world that was almost like their original world, except that (among other things that were revealed later) green lights meant stop and red lights meant go.
kane_magus: (Default)
"Sorry, Zack Snyder, the Dark Knight should remain a non-lethal crime fighter."

Whenever I read things like this, about Batman's "no kill" rule and all that shit, it reminds me of a particular Shortpacked page:



Here is the page from the original comic, for comparison.

Oh, and if you don't follow Batman comics at all, that first panel is a description of an actual story that happened a decade and a half ago, minus the "meeting his original self" bit shown up there.



I can just imagine Zach Snyder making a Star Trek movie.

Snyder stated, "The Enterprise traveling faster than light is canon. And I'm like, 'Okay, the first thing I wanna do when you say that is I wanna see what happens,'" elaborating on his belief that, "You're making your starship irrelevant if it can't be in that situation."

Then we get a Star Trek: Sublight movie or some stupid bullshit like that, where it takes the Enterprise over 16 years (instead of about a day and a half at maximum warp) just to reach Proxima Centauri (the next closest star to Earth, after the Sun) from Earth at maximum impulse speed (which is supposedly something like 0.25 light speed), let alone Vulcan (64 years from Earth [instead of just 6 days]) or Qo'nos (448 years [instead of around a month]) or Ocampa (roughly 300,000 years [instead of "just" 70 years at maximum warp]).

So yeah, I think all of the above is about equally as silly as saying "I'ma make modern Batman kill chumps in my movies."
kane_magus: (Default)

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. At least for the Next Generation game and the Starfleet Academy game anyway. Those were the only two I actually played myself as a kid. I did try the DS9 game in recent years on an emulator, but I bounced off of it after five minutes or so. I also tried to replay the Next Gen game recently and... ehhh. And I haven't even bothered with the Starfleet Academy game again lately, because... ehhhhhhhhh.

I only remember one specific thing about the Next Gen game, even though I owned and beat that one, and that is that there was one planet that I think had some kind of screwed up, poisonous atmosphere (or maybe no atmosphere at all) and if you beamed down with anyone besides Data, they would immediately begin choking and die if you didn't keep some ventilation fans turned on, so it was easiest to just only send down Data by himself to that particular planet. So that was fun.

As for the Starfleet Academy game, I never owned that one, but I did rent it once for a weekend or so. Not sure if I ever managed to beat it. Probably not. And for that one, the only thing I remember was that if you dared to approach the starbase after your mission was over with your ship still in red alert mode (i.e. shields up and weapons armed), you got chewed out because doing that is apparently against regulations or something. I don't recall if it automatically failed you, but it did at least hurt your rank for completing the mission, so I guess if your score was already pretty low, it could be enough to bump you down into failing the mission. And... I think the starbase started shooting at you if you didn't turn off red alert fast enough, maybe? So that was also fun.

And he's right about there being other, better games from that era. As I've said in previous posts about this (such as this one here), I much preferred the old point-and-click adventure games on PC from that era, i.e. 25th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, and A Final Unity. (I still don't really get why GOG hasn't managed to get A Final Unity up on their store after all these years. I'd buy pretty much in a heartbeat if they did. They have those other two, after all, along with several others.)

I'm still hoping that Resurgence will also scratch that same itch that the previous P&C adventure games did (whenever I finally get around to buying it after it's released in May or whenever).
kane_magus: (Default)
A rare article about Wil Wheaton that I post about which doesn't come directly from his own website.

I really need to get back into watching Star Trek: Lower Decks. (And Prodigy... and Strange New Worlds, of which I've actually seen nothing yet...)
kane_magus: (Default)
(EDIT 6) Infinite Craft. Because I forgot to actually include the link until now. (/EDIT 6)

Apparently, I am the first person to discover "The Battle of Wolf 359."

I may update this more if I get more "first discovery" things.

(EDIT)

Okay. I got "Question" somehow. When I combined that with "Captain Kirk," I got "Who" as a result, for some reason. When I combined "Who" with "Time Travel" I got "Doctor." But then... "Doctor" and "Who" is apparently an invalid combination? Lame.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) "Captain" and "America" doesn't give "Captain America." However, for whatever reason, "America" and "Superman" gives "Captain America." Go figure. (/EDIT 2)

(EDIT 3)

I'm not going to make a whole lot more edits to this, but I'll just say this: if you ever get "Paradox" or "Question," they're really helpful to getting a bunch of other weird shit when combined with other things. Also, "Good" and "Evil" are good for getting the opposite of things. I'm kind of trying to see if I can actually get "Opposite" as a thing, though I haven't yet.

(/EDIT 3)

(EDIT 4)

Okay, one more and then I'm done for now: I manged to get "Politician." When I combined it with "Villain" (which I got a while back, while messing around with the superhero stuff above), the result was "Trump," and the image associated with "Trump" was 💩 (i.e. the poop emoji). It's going to be hard to top that.

Some additional stuff with that...
  • "Trump" and "Paradox" gives "Reality" as a result.
  • "Trump" and "Evil" just gives "Trump" again. (A lot of combinations seem to do that, so it may not mean anything.)
  • "Trump" and "Question" gives "Fake News."
  • "Trump" and "Hell" gives "President." (I got "Trump" somehow before I got "President," since that was a new one.)
  • "Trump" and "White House" gives "Prison."
  • "Trump" and "Food" gives "McDonalds" (another new one for me).
  • "Trump" and "Doctor" gives "Quack."
And... fuck I already lost it, but I combined "Trump" with something I already forgot, because I was just trying random shit, and it gave me "Vlad." I quickly went to combine "Vlad" with "President" (that's how I forgot what had given "Vlad" in the first place) which gave me "Putin" (and I would've been disappointed if it hadn't). And combining "Trump" and "Putin" gave "Bromance" as a result. Yeah... whoever made this thing knows what's what, that's for sure.

I just wish I remembered what I combined with "Trump" to get "Vlad"... hold on... I thought it was near the top so it shouldn't take too long... let's see... and fuck it, I'll list any new or particularly funny combinations as I go.

Huge bunch of bullshit )

AH! THERE IT IS! "Trump" and "Dracula" gives "Vlad." I guess it wasn't near the top, after all. Okay, mystery solved. (May have more to do with "Dracula" than "Trump," I guess?)

Anyway, I'm gonna keep going, with the rest, including all the new shit above I unlocked with "Trump" combinations.

More bullshit )

And... I'm down to the bottom of all the ones I've unlocked so far, including all the shit that was unlocked by combining with "Trump."

...

...

...

...Yeah, I'm done for now.

(/EDIT 4)

(EDIT 5)

I somehow managed to unlock "💩 Donald Trump" (as opposed to just "💩 Trump") which raises a load more possibilities. For example, I unlocked "Stormy Daniels" by combining "Donald Trump" and "Adultery," and I unlocked "Incest" by combining "Donald Trump" with "Ivanka." ¬_¬ (Combining just "Trump" with "Ivanka" only gives [wrongly] "President.") And using "Incest" on "Donald Trump" unlocks "Ivanka Trump" (as opposed to just "Ivanka.")

Oh, and I also got "first discovery" on "Who is Donald Trump?"

Okay, that's enough for tonight. If I post about this Infinite Craft thing anymore, it will be in a new post.

(/EDIT 5)
kane_magus: (Default)
It looks like this game will be finally coming to the personal computer. Good. I've been waiting for... *checks date on that last post* ...almost two years for it to get released (which it still hasn't, yet, as Q2 could be as late as June, and that's assuming it doesn't get pushed back at some point for whatever reason).

So, now, I can throw it on my wishlist and wait still more for a 60-75% off sale, because that's what I do for pretty much all games now, but especially for games that wasted my time with going the paid beta route via Epic Goofy Shit. At least all the bugs and glitches should be (hopefully) worked out, now that it's almost ready to be actually released.
kane_magus: (Default)
Remember that "Star Trek: The Next Generation, but in the style of Star Trek: The Animated Series" thing I posted about last year? Well, the same people who made that also did a bit from Star Trek: Voyager.


The episode they chose to animate is one of the most reviled episodes out of all of Voyager.

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