smoothbrain coldtakes

I just hope he can have a good night’s sleep, is all.

He looks like he did before he was famous; just totally fucking burned out.

My Cousin Vinny is one of my favorite movies, I am sad I did not get the reference immediately :(

Utes (yoots). Short for utility vehicle, which is mostly anything with a bed.

They actually have modern El Caminos in Australia. They’re called Utes!

Unfortunately Holden (Chevy) has stopped making them in favor of the Colorado, which is basically just a pickup.

Given the fact that it’s almost a foregone conclusion that PP is going to win the next election, I think countering disinformation through “influencers” did not work.

This article takes a bunch of time to really just say nothing. Like of course if you ask non-techies what brands they can think of they’re going to rattle off Disney and Starbucks before Nvidia.

The average person doesn’t know Nvidia the same way they don’t know other hardware manufacturers down to the component, especially for datacenter scenarios. They’re not going to be able to list things that are driving forces in the tech industry, because it’s not anything they will be able to interact with day-to-day. The average person doesn’t run the LLM themselves. PC gamer knowledge is also pretty peripheral

As the most valued company during a gold rush, does it really matter how much the average person knows your name if all the people with the money already do? It’s not like my mother and my sister are going to be buying graphics cards to run LLMs any time soon. There’s clearly a clientele for this and it’s not the average person. The fact that they produce consumer equipment is literally not at all what’s giving them their new valuation.

I bought this when it originally launched, and unfortunately never really found the time to play a campaign.

We were workshopping a TMP-era story based around a crew serving on a Miranda class vessel. Kind of a “back to basics” sort of campaign. I had really high hopes because Star Trek is absolutely my favorite universe to roleplay in.

I hope a bunch of people pick this rulebook up and have a fun time with it!

Hello, yes, I’d like to use my fingerprint sensor please.

You can check the md5 hash checksum provided by Microsoft to verify the authenticity. Massgrave gets it from Microsoft, it’s a legit ISO just rehosted.

Atmosphere got ionizing radiation, bro

Sure, the fanservice can be a lot.

My main thing is just that it’s clear how much McMahan loves the source material and it’s great how he can operate within the parameters of the universe with reverence despite being jocular.

I wouldn’t say mishandled but I would say both Disco and Picard’s first two seasons were incredibly sloppy due to a clear lack of planning, vision, and the difficulty of transitioning to a fully serialized format.

By contrast Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds were really able to find their footing quickly because they had season-wide arcs but outside of that they were generally episodic and allowed for a lot more exploration of the core of the universe. This is just a better format for the franchise in my opinion.

I find Kurtzman is occupied with making the series more cinematic than it needs to be. Overly cinematic Star Trek results in eye bleeding lightshows like the finale of Disco S2, while grounding the shows a bit more allows for more character growth and development. You can’t just always have Sacrifice of Angels all the time, you need to cut it with some Take Me Out to The Holosuite. I find that SNW and LD have found that balance for me.

I am very aware of Kurtzman’s influence on the franchise. I think he’s not the right guy to be in charge. It really feels like this is a Dave Filoni/Kathleen Kennedy situation but in Star Trek.

I dunno man, LD is like half fan service and half universe building, and it’s my favorite thing they’ve produced in the last decade and a half.

Can we just get Mike McMahan in charge of everything, please?

The Traveler!

Shows up, warps the crew to the center of the galaxy, refuses to elaborate.

Yes, transporters were originally made to avoid the high production costs of models, which would have been necessary to use for shuttles back then.

Very smart imo.

I think putting the face onto the source is what made it lose the value, unfortunately.

My comparison is what they did with the Borg and the Queen. Wolf 359 is a terrifying, tragic ordeal, made all the more serious by the fact that it was done by one cube that could not be negotiated or reasoned with. As soon as the Borg had a way to negotiate and reason, they became less scary because they had understandable motives and goals that could be bargained with, as excellently demonstrated by Janeway.

Ultimately, I agree with you that it’s kind of more of a TOS-y sort of plot device. I do feel like back then they really followed the science being indistinguishable from magic logic, and we’ve progressed over time to wanting more hard and serious technobabble. I think that’s kind of a disconnect for me, personally, is that they had to dip into a serious explanation for something that effectively functions like magic.

SNW rocks. I’ll follow Pike and the crew anywhere.

We can replace the words “magic” with “strongly telepathic” and it’s basically the same problem.

It’s a great idea to fuck warp travel right on its head as a concept, but the execution was majorly lacking for me. I would have much rather had a continuation of the plot from Force of Nature where warp had significantly damaged subspace gradually (like a climate change allegory), rather than a universe-wide explosion that happened all at once in a flash.