Im pretty sure I saw this as a visual gag in a Muppet Babies comic book in the 80s! I think it was issue #13… I might still have it packed away somewhere

It looks to me as if 0.10 to 0.80 takes up as much vertical space as 0.01 to 0.02. They “yadda yadda‘d” the middle values because mouse was the only one that went that high.

Original sin: AI edition

I think the controversy of Janeway’s choice is largely due to the show’s failure to address the orchid of it all.

As I see it, Tuvix is not “Tuvok + Neelix,” but also isn’t “something new.” I maintain that Tuvix is primarily the orchid, which has subsumed the essence and personalities of two Voyager crew members and is asserting itself on board the ship.

All it would have taken is for Janeway to have maintained (or be convinced by another) that this was the case, and it would be the obvious choice to split them back up.

Of course that would negate the tension of the episode, but it could be left as “not everyone on board agrees that this is who/what Tuvix is, but Janeway believes it so that’s why her decision isn’t immoral.” We could have the same kinds of “was Janeway wrong?” debates, but some of the rough edges would be smoothed out, I think.

My understanding of the concept was that it was something like multiple channels of data being sent along the same wire. So long as the frequencies are the right kind of different they’ll essentially exist completely independent of each other.

Maybe this requires a minimum of two time dimensions so that the variance can result in the different beings following time along different “tracks”?

I took Troi’s awareness of the beings to be a result of the intermittent overlapping bits of time where they did overlap. Like, it happened too quickly to perceive visually, but enough for the empath to have something to pick up on.

Timothée Chalamet will have the slightest a hint of a British accent

MechWarrior 2? Man, that takes me back…

Martin and Waldron did some good work here! Especially when compared to the other D+ writing we’ve been getting lately…

Ah, sorry. It stands for “Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price.”

In the U.S. the law doesn’t allow a manufacturer to require that retailers sell their product at a particular price, but they’re free to “suggest” one so that’s how we ended up with the MSRP.

It doesn’t carry any real weight, but it generally serves to anchor consumer expectations for a product’s value. (It also gives retailers an easy metric to compare sale prices against.)

The MSRP for Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges in the mid-80s, adjusted to today’s U.S. Dollar, would average around $150-200.

I don’t think games should cost that much, but we stuck with the $60 price point for literal decades so it’s not completely unreasonable for someone to talk about raising prices.

(I also write this while having only bought one game? two? In the past year.)

Both films my family had no desire to pay theater prices to see, but if it’s available at home & there’s nothing else going on? Sure, why not?

BTW, in both cases we were disappointed. Those scripts could have used a lot more work before going into production. #thanksChapek

Cool article. It looks like they only tested this with wasp faces, though — still inconclusive as to whether the wasps around my yard hate me personally.

“Fair” in the context of this phrase is meant to convey “beautiful” but literally meant “light or pale skinned.”

“Maiden” is meant to convey “young woman,” but literally meant “virgin” (as in “maiden voyage”).

This is why they want us to return to the office.

I’m guessing that if you have the right kind of Pal, you could figure out a way to Pay them to help you figure it out…

Genesis 5:4:

”The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.”

• microwave ovens
• speakers (especially battery-powered Bluetooth, since they aren’t connected to anything)
• LEDs (light without noticeable heat)

The Prime Directive seems at least a little bit hypocritical if it fails to discriminate between species on a planet.

I’m thinking about how there are dolphins serving on some Starfleet ships. Was the PD undeveloped when they were introduced? Was there a pre-warp history of Earth’s humans and cetaceans working together in similar capacities (such that they could be seen as sharing a collective technological culture)?

I already quote Mario’s “Let’s a go!” whenever I’m trying to get my family into the car. It’d be a hoot to break that out each time and watch my bridge crew try to contain the groans and eye rolls.