data1701d (He/Him)

“Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?”

- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations

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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: March 7th, 2024

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  • I had no idea what Posadism was until you mentioned it. Looking at it, I think elements of it are coincidentally in there, but I don’t think that’s totally what it’s trying to convey.

    For one, Boseman, Montana definitely didn’t look that socialist, and yet Cochrane developed a warp drive; it was the new connections and widened view of the galaxy that facilitated the development of socialism. Sure, the Vulcans helped, but it was humans who had to change.

    Also, I feel like “aliens helping in revolution” is sort of antithetical to the concept of the Prime Directive.

    Overall, I think Star Trek is less about through ufologic socialism and more about peoples figuring out socialism for themselves; space and aliens are mostly just a plot device to explore.




  • I think part of my Prodigy meme problem was I tried to encode in a bit too high a resolution (720x480). When retesting it today, I had a 49.1 MiB file, verses with a WEBP encoded at quality level 90, I got it down to 3 megabytes while still looking pretty good. I also kept having an issue with APNG white lines that I could never figure out.

    Also, the WEBP was a bit larger than that - I wasn’t satisfied with FFMPEG’s default quality level of 75, so I experimented and decided on 97, getting a size of 333.8 KiB.

    P.S For funzies, here’s the WEBP version of that Prodigy meme I was talking about (done in 85):


  • “Generations of warriors from our house have jumped with this jump rope. Use it with honor, my son.”

    On a side note, I have no idea if kids these days do jump ropes. Heck, when I was young not too long ago, jump ropes were just those mythical things from the TV - I don’t know if I ever saw one on a school campus (granted, I’m also on the spectrum, so it may have just been I was so bad at physical activities like that that I ignored them).

    I’ll just predict there’s a good chance someone’s going to respond something like, “they’re always on them tablets these them days”, to which I say, Yes, that’s a factor in the problem, but I also feel like there’s declining social opportunities for kids in general. If I go on, it’ll turn into a rant that I don’t think fits the tone of Risa.







  • Gul Dukat on Empok Nor: I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class, but they’ve overcome their shyness; now they’re calling me “your highness”, and a world screams, “Kiss me, son of god.”

    Any plot involving Joran Dax: Each night I lie awake, completely alone. A voice is speaking, and I tremble, for it’s not my own, my own. I can’t ignore it, although I try. The intrusive whisper fascinates me.

    VOY Endgame: Person from today, here is you in 2082 2404.

    Weyoun: My evil twin, bad weather friend.

    Murf in PRO: Mysteerious whisper. Mysteeeeeeeeeeeerious whisper.

    LD Minding the Mind’s Mines: And what they found was just a statue standing where the statue got me high.

    ENT finale: Everybody dies frustrated and sad

    When Dukat killed Jadzia (or Rick Berman on the floor of his residence tomorrow 😉): Now it’s over; I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want, or I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do.


  • Let me guess: “Birdhouse in your Soul” and “Istanbul”? (Was Constantinople. Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople. Been a long time gone, Constantinople. It’s a Turkish delight on a moonlit night. Every gal in Constantinople lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople, so if you’ve a date in Constantinople, she’ll be waiting in Istanbul. Even old New York, was once New Amsterdam. Why’d they change it? I can’t say; people just liked it better that way.)

    TMBG’s back catalog is very chungus, though - lots of stuff about death.










  • I agree with your positions about short seasons and brand new big bads.

    However, I don’t think TNG, and classic Trek at large, have a future totally devoid of “the pains and pitfalls of present-day life”. For instance, Captain Maxwell blows up a bunch of Cardassian outposts, and there was that whole incident with the Pegasus and the cloaking device. These are clear instances showing in TNG’s world, we haven’t completely grown out of the darker parts of our nature.

    I think the ideal of Star Trek is there is a future where we have overcome many of our problems, and when new (or old, sometimes) arise, we can work together to overcome them and improve ourselves.

    In some ways, I think that Lower Decks embodies this extremely well. Because it’s supposed to be a comedy, it liberates the show from a lot of modern sci-fi conventions; this allows a largely utopian environment for our Federation characters where they’re free to help each other evolve far beyond the borderline insane sitcom archetypes they started the show as.