They are generating “reviews” which have absolutely no basis in reality, for products they have had 0 interaction with. They are deceiving consumers in order to gain a financial benefit. This is fraud, they belong in prison.
Imagine how quickly search results would improve if shitheads like this were getting sued and arrested on a regular basis.
The really frustrating part is that cheap generic stuff skyrocketed too. Walmart embraced inflation enthusiastically, and their knockoff mountain dew went from $0.62 to $1.70. Supply chain issues I’m sure…
I used to get that stuff 10 bottles at a time, and it was one of the few things that made it worth going there. Now I just get whatever is on sale at the local employee owned grocery chain. The price difference is negligible, almost everything else is cheaper, and I get to support some place that isn’t evil.
I find it interesting that there is almost no one in the somewhat disapprove camp. More people strongly approve than somewhat approve, but clearly there is some ambivalence and nuance out there among those who approve of the decision. But if you disapprove, it’s all or nothing. Sounds about right.
Well, since you say Christmas or not, my favorite show any time is Babylon 5.
But for Christmas stuff, Hogfather is my favorite tradition. Also Die Hard, and the Christmas episode of Justice League.
Just realized I forgot the time that his wife got turned into a 10 year old. A 10 year old who got mad at him for being uncomfortable with physical affection at a time when she is going through something crazy and wants to feel comforted. Forget the Kobayashi Maru, that right there is the real no-win scenario.
Now if only I could go back to forgetting that episode.
The more mundane, day to day stuff is where there’s a big difference.
(Young) Obi-Wan gets super powers and a highly respected position in society that allows him to operate independently on a day to day basis.
O’Brian gets dragged out of bed in the middle of the night because a hypochondriac feels a tingle, and after extensive diagnostics show nothing is wrong, he’s ordered to take the transporter apart piece by piece and put it back together again.
During a disaster where he is the most experienced person left on the bridge, he has to take orders from Troi (who needs him to explain everything to her)
Has arachnaphobia, gets stationed somewhere that’s overrun by giant spiders, just has to deal with it.
Let’s not forget that Miles fought in a war against the Cardassians, which caused some serious psychological scars that don’t seem to be getting addressed. Those same events broke his commanding officer, and Miles is the only one who really understands why.
Then he goes on to take a quiet post at a space station in the middle of nowhere, only for it to become the frontline of an even bigger war.
Especially crazy since everyone’s already wearing badges that double as communicators and tracking devices.
Let’s not forget that time when primitive 20th century freezer jockeys were thawed out on the Enterprise D and a sleazy 80s business man was able to do pretty much whatever he wanted with the computer. When Picard yells at him, he replies that if there were things he shouldn’t be allowed to do, why didn’t they set the computer to not allow it? And Picard replies that people shouldn’t have to be told they aren’t allowed to do certain things, they should be able behave without the computer forcing it.
So, the reason they have such a huge security issue is that they run everything on the honor system. Though I suppose this was right after Worf took over security, so I guess that makes sense.
Give Tom a break. He got forced into being the nurse because he took biochemistry classes before getting kicked out of the academy.
Plus, he’s juggling nursing duties with his full time job as the pilot. And his side gig as a commando team leader. While moonlighting as a spy. And despite all that he’s still finds the time to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth century earth. And let’s not forget that he also designed engines with a top speed of infinity. He’s the most competent man in Star Fleet. Not bad for a dropout and ex-con.
Pretty sure if you Tuvixed Paris and O’Brian, combining Paris’s competence with O’Brian’s work ethic, you’d get some sort of god.
Yesterday’s enterprise was the one that got me into TNG as a wee lad. It has action, character, and raises deeper questions with a good scifi premise.
The fish guys? I love those things.
Babylon 5 just has the best crowning moments of awesome. Someone needs to figure out how to distill that shit and bottle it.
I laughed at titanic.
You want to talk moments that kicked you in the soul? Lore saying “I love you… brother” as Data is deactivating him.
Maybe it just hits too close to home after being in a similar situation with my own evil brother. But that’s one of those moments that always catches me off guard. Especially since the rest of the episode isn’t all that great, so it’s easy to let your guard down.
While I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s a few other honorable mentions in the “I wasn’t prepared to feel emotions today” category:
For a second I was looking at this picture and trying to remember which episode of Red Dwarf this was from.
Maybe the game just has rubberband AI.
If every halfway respectable news outlet sounded the alarm and made Trump’s threats to democracy and the rule of law the dominant story from now until election day, he’d still have 85% of his supporters. Some would be OK with it. Some would say he’s still better than Biden. Most would never see it because they live in a media bubble that tells them what they want to hear. And more than a few would call those stories hit pieces and climb into the bubble to be safe and comfortable.
We do need the media and everyone else to sound the alarm. And even a small shift could be enough to make the difference. But as long a large portion of the population is listening to outlets that unabashedly spew extremist propaganda, we’re going to continue have this problem.
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about switching to Linux with my next system since about a month after I built my current system, over 4 years ago. That’s how long it took for me to be sick of Microsoft’s bullshit in Windows 10.
That said, I’m not looking forward to figuring out how to get into Linux. It’s probably easier than I think, but having done 0 research (as I don’t need a new system yet), the impression I have is that there’s a ton of stuff I’m going to have to figure out before getting started.
If we aren’t being strict about warp technology specifically as the measuring stick, I think the gate network itself would qualify, even if they weren’t the ones that built it.
That said, the principle of noninterference likely should apply to some extent at least. After all the trash talking they’ve done over the years about people in the 20th/21st century, it would be crazy to let a military unit from that era get access to anything that might help them advance technologically. Especially when they’ve already got a history of capturing and reverse engineering alien technology. And all the more so when it becomes clear that any technology they do get their hands on will be used almost exclusively for the purpose of fighting alien civilizations (and perhaps even others on their own planet).
In the long run, if a stargate found it’s way onto DS9 or Bajor and permanent relations were established, I could see the federation providing aid to the Tau’ri to help them fend off the Goa’uld and/or the Ori, which they could justify because they would be preventing an advanced civilization from exploiting a technologically inferior one. But I have to think it would take them a while to get to that point.
SG1 and DS9 would be a weird crossover.
You have the humans of the enlightened future meeting a team of military personnel from the past, lead by a man who tries to avoid enlightenment whenever possible. He’d probably end up in Quark’s playing darts.
Carter is going to immediately frustrate any attempts to limit damage to the timeline (not that it makes sense given that they’d have to be from a parallel reality) or invoke the prime directive. She’s going to be full of questions, and she knows enough about advanced alien technology that she’ll probably be able to figure out more than they’d want just from observation. She’d also probably figure out how to use the wormhole to get back home, being something of an expert on the topic.
Daniel is going to have the unique experience of being an archeologist that is now a relic of the past. Not much for him to do as a linguist since they have universal translators, though it would be funny if they brought it up and he thought they had all just been speaking English, since everyone in their galaxy does for some reason. It’d also be funny for him to be recognized by the prophets or Q, as though they knew him from his brief period as a vorlon or whatever.
I think Dax and Teal’c would hit it off, they have so much in common.
And things would get very confusing if someone activated an emh.
Also probably for the best that the Atlantis team isn’t there, as O’Brien would have some awkward questions to answer. Besides, they’re already too busy crossing over with Enterprise and answering their own awkward questions about Tripp.
Oh, and I really hope Jellico is visiting the station.
Any Republican that supports impeaching a right wing Supreme Court justice (let alone 6 of them) is going to be committing career suicide. It would be handing vacancies to the Democrats to fill, and potentially locking in a left leaning court for decades.
Now, obviously they should be able to put the good of the country and the rule of law above things like partisan politics and their prospects for re-election. But we’ve already had several rounds of purges on the right that have wiped out anyone with principles or conscience since those things get in the way of being blindly loyal to Trump.