Apparently your tap water is dramatically colder than any house or apartment I’ve lived in.

Yes, putting ice in water does make me enjoy it more, and no, letting the tap run doesn’t do nearly as much to cool it down as ice cubes do.

It’s really depressing how any internet discussion about global warming is full of comments like this which only exist to downplay small but existent improvements that others have made. It’s whataboutism, plain and simple, and only serves to discourage people from doing anything at all.

This guy getting a more efficient stove isn’t going to save the planet, but at least it helps. Your comment (and many others in this thread) doesn’t do anything at all about our climate problem, and mostly serves to make other people feel stupid and inadequate for even trying to do something.

There is so much, so fucking much, that needs to be done to save our planet. If you think that political change is the only thing that will “really” matter to save the planet (it’s obviously going to be a huge factor), and you are so deeply committed to the ideal that the only things worth doing are those which directly further said political change, then you have serious work to do on your messaging strategy because what you had to say here clearly isn’t causing global change.

Alternately, if you think the situation is so impossible that nothing can be done to save it, go find a different void to yell into and stop trying to drag down those of us who still have some hope.

I’m very fond of Jack Frost. It’s as corny and delightfully bizare as one could want from a Russian mythology movie made in 1965 USSR, and the riffs are obviously great.

Ahh yes, Civ IV. From ye olden days, when the dev teams cared about such weird and obsolete ideas as testing the game before release, or creating an interface that tells the player what the fuck is actually happening. Or useable asynchronous multiplayer, or an AI with enough of a clue to play the damn game competently… I could go on.

Some people apparently liked V’s whole “don’t build too many cities, we don’t want to have an actual empire here” deal, which definitely isn’t my thing but does create less micro. But most of the mechanics were reasonable and the UI shared more or less enough info to follow along. They also opened up the code after the final expansion so modders could do some really great things.

IV had a lot of really good ideas, and zero polish. The current version of the game is laden with silly bugs, ride with bizarre balancing choices, and hideously opaque with simple questions like “how much research have I put into this tech”, “how much production overflowed off this completed build”, and “how likely is this unit to kill this other unit, vs simply damaging it.” They haven’t opened up the code to modders, nor have they put any effort into fixing these frankly silly errors themselves.

Civ IV is great because of relatively simple mechanics which allow a lot of interesting choices in how to construct and develop your empire. It accentuates this by getting all the boring stuff right: bugs are few and minor, the interface is communicative, etc. it’s not perfect in either regard, and yet somehow it far exceeds its successors in these simple categories. This is how you make a good turn-based 4X game actually fun, even with 2005 graphics.

And yet, V and VI sold extremely well, and VII seemingly will as well, despite inevitably being a grossly inferior product at release which will be dragged most of the way to a truly finished state over five years of patches and DLC.

I guess this is very “stop having fun meme”, but why the hell are the only games in this genre (of all genres) trading balance, bug fixes, and comprehensible interfaces for fancy graphics? Is it really not profitable to make a game like Civ IV in 2024?

From the Washington Post piece:

But the study doesn’t go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump.

• It doesn’t examine other social media, like the much-larger Facebook.
• Nor does it address Russian hack-and-leak operations. Another major study in 2018 by University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggested those probably played a significant role in the 2016 race’s outcome.
• Lastly, it doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all.

And

“Despite these consistent findings, it would be a mistake to conclude that simply because the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter was not meaningfully related to individual-level attitudes that other aspects of the campaign did not have any impact on the election, or on faith in American electoral integrity,” the report states.

This is an excellent post.

Wrong number of wheels too.

Varitek?

I feel compelled to note that being promoted from Ensign (O1) to Lieutenant Commander (O4) would be a triple promotion, skipping both Lieutenant Jr. Grade and Lieutenant.

Grief is complicated, and two years is no time at all to recover from the death of a parent. It makes complete sense that watching something you associate with him would still be painful, and there’s nothing to be gained by forcing it.

Eventually you’ll reach the point where reminders of your father bring up happy feelings, with the pain of losing him still present, but not overwhelming. That won’t happen fast, but you will get there. That’s the time to give TNG another go, and see how it makes you feel.

Hang in there, friend.

I feel compelled to recommend this guide by a long time Daystrom Institute contributor. It does an excellent job identifying episodes as essential, unnecessary but fun, mediocre, or outright bad. A good place to work from if you want a more flexible recommendation of what to try and what not to.

That scene is a triumph of Federation ideology.

Finding the wormhole was a lucky accident, but everything else which lead to that apparent deus ex machina came about from Starfleet doing exactly what was needed to get the Prophets on their side: not with the intention or expectation of that ultimate result, but because it slotted right in with what the Federation wants to do anyway.

Sicko and his crew communicate with these strange life forms in they find, and make an effort to not only understand them but respect their wishes. They offer enormous practical support to Bajor and attempt to encourage them to join the Federation formally, but they respect the wishes of the Bajorans even when highly inconvenient (such as the abrupt pivot away from Federation membership that preceded the Dominion War). In short, Sisko and the government backing him legitimately earned the trust of both Bajor and the Prophets by being explorers, diplomats, and excellent allies. The military payoff they got is hardly the point, but they earned it.

Would any of the other races have earned the favor of the Prophets the way the Federation did? The Klingons, Romulans, and obviously the Cardassians would have taken over as brutal occupiers if they felt the need to get involved with Bajor at all. The Ferengi would have ruthlessly exploited Bajoran resources in their own way (which we know the Prophets were no fans of, see their temporary rewiring of Grand Nagus Zek), while the Borg would have simply consumed everything they found useful. Here, it’s the uniquely decent actions and values of the Federation that win out.

This is one of the many things that Strange New Worlds (and Lower Decks as well) have got right. Space battles in SNW are beautifully animated, but they aren’t overwhelmed with excess visual spectacles and they tend to be fundamentally simple: you shoot at us, we shoot back or try to find some helpful obstruction to hide behind, etc.

Even Prodigy’s big space battle in their finale manages the task to some degree, despite it’s scale. I remember watching it felt oddly sluggish, as the ratio of ships on screen to weapons being fired was surprisingly low, but it definitely made it easier to keep track of whatever specific event the camera was focussed on.

The voice of an individual in the collective is roughly equivalent to a vote in a democracy: it’s real and it’s there, but there are so many other votes/minds involved that the chances of yours having any influence at are are negligible.

I value democracy and community, but I’m not willing to put every single action I take,however small, up to a public vote.

Assimilated drones immediately lose all autonomy, and can never regain it without outside influence (which they will likely be compelled to resist). It’s functionally suicide, except that your body and mind continue to be used for whatever purpose by an entity you have effectively no control over.

I understand joking about the benefits relative to the frequently unpleasant world we live in now, but I have serious concerns about anyone who would rather be a Borg drone than an ordinary 24th century Federation citizen.

Of course Kurn is victimized by bad kerning.

Umm, yes sir. My pleasure, sir.

Admiral, this ship is scheduled to take 4,000 people to Delta Vega by stardate 52743.5. Are you seriously asking me to detour all the way to Deep Space Nine?

Congratulations, we’ve officially made it big.

On a more serious note, though, I’m genuinely heartened that in just 27 minutes this spam comment was reported by 10(!!!) different people, allowing us to quickly see it clean it up. Keep up the good work y’all!