CSWorldChamp

🎶Love lift us up where we belong…

I like that idea.

How could the driver not have been aware of that? It would affect his steering.

I always thought it was a shame that for “The Drumhead” they chose to use an admiral we had never seen before. Not that I’m advocating for it to have Nechayev. But when Cartwright was implicated in the conspiracy in Star Trek 6, it hit extra hard because he had been around a while. The emotional impact in the drumhead was lessened by it being a “villain of the week.”

Check and check.

I didn’t get into Harry Potter until my future wife convinced me to give them a try in about 2006. But one I got to book 7, I felt a special kinship with him, because it was revealed that he was my year in school. Class of ‘98!

I’m a xennial. You can be too. I never watched power rangers, I watched Voltron.

lol with us it was stuff from the interior of fast food restaurants. My friend had a whole table setting from Pizza Hut (table cloth, napkin dispenser, condiment racks, with condiments…) removed piecemeal, one at a time.


“If Chins could Kill!” A friend gave that to me as a gag gift when I went into acting.

🎶Oh probability, don’t ya mess with me…

I'm behind...

Perfect.

This is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.

Came here to say this. Hell of a piece of tech.

He wouldn’t have. Not where there were more qualified, higher ranking candidates. Just like the Geordi situation. https://preview.redd.it/v34qyaxd343h1.jpeg?width=346&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8636bfdd13ddb10ba2fbfde0cd1e524f6c6a7303

Nitpicks aside, the principle is still sound. You’ll notice Worf was not a department head in S1, either. Promoting him to security over a full lieutenant like Yar would’ve raised some eyebrows.

In light of Picard’s anecdote about Geordi, it actually makes a ton of sense that Geordi wouldn’t have been chief engineer from the get-go. He was a shuttle pilot when he met Picard. He was the lowest ranking member of the bridge crew (Lieutenant JG) when the series started. The chief engineer is a lieutenant commander; two ranks up. The is the Federation’s flagship. The officer positions are prestigious, and sought after. Picard would have to carefully spend his political capital to get the people he wants. Geordi made a positive impression, but Whizkid or no, you don’t just promote a wet-behind-the-ears rookie past all the higher ranking officers and put him in charge of an entire department based on your hunch about his work ethic. Even if your hunch turns out to be right, the resentment his sudden promotion would create in the people you’ve passed over would create a serious morale problem; Insubordination toward the “dumb kid” captain put in charge, and grumbling about the old man at the top, who “doesn’t appreciate my years of experience and expertise.” This kind of thing could tear the engineering department apart. What’s more, Picard would face pushback for making such a decision from his own superiors, needlessly straining those relationships as well. Those other (4?) chief engineers had doubtless cashed in all their political points to pull strings with whatever admiral to get that assignment. They were all obviously qualified on paper, and have the recommendation of someone in a position of power. Frankly, Picard would have needed them to fail before he’d have the political capital to promote the guy he wants. You don’t push all your chips in on the shuttle pilot you just met. That would be an unnecessary uphill battle the whole way. Better to just keep the promising Rookie close at hand, adjacent to the position of power, letting him grow and develop so that he’s ready to step in when the need arises.

In light of Picard’s anecdote about Geordi, it actually makes a ton of sense that Geordi wouldn’t have been chief engineer from the get-go. He was a shuttle pilot when he met Picard. He was the lowest ranking member of the bridge crew (Lieutenant JG) when the series started. The chief engineer is a lieutenant commander; two ranks up. The is the Federation’s flagship. The officer positions are prestigious, and sought after. Picard would have to carefully spend his political capital to get the people he wants. Geordi made a positive impression, but Whizkid or no, you don’t just promote a wet-behind-the-ears rookie past all the higher ranking officers and put him in charge of an entire department based on your hunch about his work ethic. Even if your hunch turns out to be right, the resentment his sudden promotion would create in the people you’ve passed over would create a serious morale problem; Insubordination toward the “dumb kid” captain put in charge, and grumbling about the old man at the top, who “doesn’t appreciate my years of experience and expertise.” This kind of thing could tear the engineering department apart. What’s more, Picard would face pushback for making such a decision from his own superiors, needlessly straining those relationships as well. Those other (4?) chief engineers had doubtless cashed in all their political points to pull strings with whatever admiral to get that assignment. They were all obviously qualified on paper, and have the recommendation of someone in a position of power. Frankly, Picard would have needed them to fail before he’d have the political capital to promote the guy he wants. You don’t push all your chips in on the shuttle pilot you just met. That would be an unnecessary uphill battle the whole way. Better to just keep the promising Rookie close at hand, adjacent to the position of power, letting him grow and develop so that he’s ready to step in when the need arises.

As a person with small children, one of whom is autistic, who has been living on less than 5 hours of sleep a night for *about* 7 years: hey, *fuck you.* Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. You caught me at a pretty shitty time.

Our tooth fairy brings a “Sacagawea” dollar (there’s actually many varieties now) and 4 quarters. Our daughter feels like she’s receiving pirate treasure.

This is not just you wearing rose colored glasses, it’s a measurable phenomenon. American prosperity peaked in 1979. That’s when the very rich started siphoning everything up for themselves. Adjusted for inflation, we as a group are poorer than our parents. The price of everything has continued rising, while wages have remained flat. So in very real way, life is harder than it used to be. https://preview.redd.it/4c68vjuj7p2h1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e9c6d2f7eb6d08eb404b730f722414bc16bf4329

I saw this when I was 10 and this scene *traumatized* me. I had never seen anything so violent in my entire life.

Came here to say this!

So, Riker! F\*ck your way out of THIS! *If you can...*

Ludwig Van and a bit of the old ultraviolencez 

Some idiot’s going to put it in charge of deadly weapons before long. They seem like they’re just dying to do it, don’t they? But the result will not be some unbeatable skynet, it will be a tragic, preventable automated war crime, where everyone points their fingers at everyone else afterward, and no prosecutions ever happen.

In the press releases, all they can talk about is how it’s the greatest new thing that’s already transforming the world. But behind closed doors, all they anyone can talk about is that no matter how many billions they pour into it, it’s never even twitched the needle toward profitability. The only people making money are the chip makers, who are charging premium prices for inventory that hasn’t even been built yet, for data center that don’t even exist yet. It’s a trillion dollar money pit. The only thing keeping this craze afloat is that the worst people in the world keep shoveling billions and billions of dollars into the flames in the vain hope that somehow, someday, it will enable them to fire all their employees. They are trying to build a god so they can pray to it for money. And when it all crashes down, they’ll expect society to bail them out like the banks did in 2008.

I’m seeing a lot of “or’s” here, but I think most of these should probably be considered “and’s”. You can be gifted *and* autistic *and* ADHD.

The only thing i take is occasional allergy meds for my hay fever. Other than that, I'm completely substance free. I had to quit caffeine. For a while there, I was up to 3-4 diet mountain dews every day. I was getting heart palpitations, and I had this crippling fatigue. The stuff didn't even pep me up anymore, I had to drink it just to feel normal, and that only lasted an hour or two before the fatigue set in again. LUCKILY, I had another xennial problem - my first colonoscopy. So as I'm shitting my brains out, and I can't eat or drink basically \*anything\*, it was a good opportunity to quit cold turkey. I was going to feel like shit so matter what, so adding on caffeine withdrawal didn't make difference at all.

2015 was the last good year. There have been none since.

My music tastes trend more GenX than millennial, so my go to is Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” 

So Star Trek:TNG LIED to me! On the Enterprise they went mad without REM sleep.

I’ve had that dream, too! I would call that a variation on the theme I’m talking about.

Ok, I have to know what vice prevents you from dreaming…?

I’ve heard that his kids have seen Home Alone multiple times, but haven’t put together that the kid is their dad. He said that’s an illusion he’s going to maintain as long as possible.

World War II was 50 years ago, and Vietnam was 20 years ago.

 For me it’s this one. And the other day I was like “what was up with all the money spent on commercials for breath-freshening gum in the 80’s? Did people not know how to bru-oh wait everyone’s mouth tasted like an ash tray.”

Robin Williams.

It’s easy to take that attitude because data’s the only one. Imagine the LLM situation transposed into the 24th century. Imagine for a second they are mass producing data’s. Imagine they are getting top star fleet jobs, while thousands of non-synthetic lifeforms are being laid off in the name of efficiency. The real world has begun looking more how Isaac Asimov imagined it than gene roddenberry…

When the show first aired, and ever since, of course I’m like “how can Pulaski act like that to poor Data?” 🥺 But here, now, today, in May 2026, I *totally* get it. I would absolutely be the Luddite, saying “get that fucking clanker out of my sight.”

Here you go: r/mst3k

At least they’re not trying to pass themselves off as “Zennials” or we’d have to fight.

My dad was a computer programmer. We had a second phone line for 2400 baud dial-up in like 1987.

"I Wish I Was in New Orleans" by Tom Waits. It's a soulful ode to his friends. Listen to it a dozen times, and you realize that the "New Orleans" he's longing for is not a place, it's a time. And he can never, ever go back. Now that my first friends have started dying, I think about this song almost every day.

Andor, at least, is sci-fi.

Reddit. That’s pretty much it.

Tom Waits “Mule Variations” album. He was also the first musician I saw live in concert on purpose. (Worked the beer tent for a Tom Petty concert before that, but I don’t think that counts.)


Very. And I often wonder if we will be the last (only...?) computer literate generation. We watched it grow up. Even we laymen, we saw it progress from the C64 through DOS, windows 3.1, and everything beyond. Even those of us who don’t really understand it have *seen* what’s going on under the hood. It’s not mystical. It’s a glorified calculator. It is a finite thing; merely a complex tangle of IF/THEN logic gates. That’s *still* what it is, but kids these days are first encountering computers in the “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” phase. The actual operation of the thing is buried under layer upon layer of UI. To the uninitiated, it might actually seem like magic. Not finite, but infinite. Or like there’s a personality under there. Or a soul. I worry that without those decades of watching it in its infancy, they won’t know how t manage it. Or let me put it this way: If someone ever hands world’s car keys to some singularity-minded AI, I don’t think it will be a xennial.