Man this takes me back.

Encarta and Paint were where I spent most of my computer time as a younger teenager. The trivia games on Encarta were dope, I also spent a lot of time walking around the 3d castles and ancient ruins. And a lot of time in the ummm… Art section. Learned a lot about myself from Venus of Urbino.

Used to waste time by painting giant graphic and bloody battle scenes between stick figures in paint. Did it pixel by pixel! Good times!

TNG and DS9 are the only two series that I really know well enough to make these recommendations for.

I would highly recommend watching TNG before DS9, even if she likes DS9 better. TNG and DS9 work best as companion shows, with TNG building up a lot of DS9 plot-lines in its latter seasons. I would also highly recommend against starting with any episodes involving Q or the Borg, or any of the series “highlights”. Let those plots build, and you don’t want to spoil some of the best episodes in a sampler. My go-to TNG introduction picks are:

-Cause and Effect

-Darmok

-Measure of a Man

DS9 can be harder to pick introductory episodes for. Its more serialized nature means that a lot of later episodes have a lot of spoilers. I would highly recommend against picking any episodes that highly involve the Dominion or the Dominion War, let that plot build itself up. That does however, leave us with a lot fewer options. My DS9 introduction picks are:

-Duet

-Past Tense

-Bar Association

100%. The graphics may be dated but gen 2 is peak Pokemon aesthetic. Peak sprites and soundtrack.

There weren’t enough hand emojis 👋👌, mama Mia’s, or references to spaghetti. No wonder he didn’t fit in.

Mike using his YouTube money to buy and preserve old TV and Movie props is the best arc. Maybe in his retirement he can curate his collection

Picard starts every day by broadcasting “Space… The final frontier” to the crew

I still enjoyed the first game but wasn’t one of the lead devs on KCD a capital G Gamer? I remember some… interesting tweets from him. Was he booted or did he change his ways?

Edit: Derp, should have just read the article before commenting. Fascism eats its own yet again.

Is he? The two have many shared interest sure, and maybe he has some dirt on Musk. I feel like if Putin was the “grand puppet master” he’s often made out to be then the war in Ukraine would be going much better for him. The article above seems to indicate that Putins influence has waned considerably since 2016.

Pure speculation, but could Trump no longer be as beholden to Putin as he so clearly was in his first term? Musk seems to be holding his reins now, and maybe he realizes any Kompromat the Russians may have had just doesn’t matter any more in the face of his cult of personality.

That said, it seems to be in both parties best interest for Putin to get out of the war while Trump is in office. A president favorable to Russia gets a big win on the world stage, and Russia gets to quietly back out of a conflict that has been a complete disaster for them.

Unrelated to the opsec, why is a SpongeBob Movie premiering on Netflix? Isn’t Nickelodeon Paramount?

That’s why I dislike these kinds of memes that say, “Oh, I shouldn’t be working all day; I should be living a life of leisure and free to create”.They feel like the conservative strawman of the “lazy leftist who just envies the rich”.

Living as the meme describes inherently requires the exploitation of labor. Unless a society becomes technologically advanced enough to achieve fully automated post-scarcity, meeting a person’s needs still requires a certain amount of human labor. The issue under capitalism is that some people do live as the meme describes, and they do so by exploiting the labor of others through capital. As a result, the rest of us struggle even more.

Found Red Skulls account

Oh I agree completely. There is a fascist aspect inherent to Superheroes. Cap is just one lf the less egregious ones.

Captain America is a weird one to include. Not denying it’s propaganda, everything is, but throwing Cap in with copaganda is such a surface level take. He’s propaganda for American exceptionalism sure, but also embodies it in an old school New Deal way. The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.

Imo Iron Man is the much more harmful propaganda. You can pretty much draw a direct line between the characters rise in popularity thanks to the MCU and the rise of Elon Musk.

Dream set idea: Huge 1701-D set.

Though not to scale, can be opened to reveal three interior decks. Top deck contains the Bridge, Picard’s Ready Room, and the Conference Room. Middle deck contains 10-forward, Sickbay, and a Crew Quarters with a Poker Table. Lower deck contains Main Engineering and a Transporter room.

Minifigs of the Bridge Crew, Guinen, Barclay, Wesley, Ro, Ogawa, O’Brian, Keiko, and a handful of misc crewmen. Throw in Spot and a Judge Q too.

I’ll believe it when I see it. That said, I’d be willing to shell out for a Rivendell size and quality 1701-D or DS9

And Cyberpunk

One RPG that does a really great job of circumventing this is Morrowind. Early in the story there are several natural breaks where the PC is encouraged to do side quests and immurse themselves in the world. Once the main quest gets going it starts to take precedence, but the world ending threat builds slowly at first.

Disappointed that Marina Sirtis wouldn’t interview, though I kind of get why. Her role as a woman on Trek is certainly one of the more… complicated ones.

There’s no way Musk “works” 100 hours a week. How do you think he’s found all this time to spend with his new bestie Donald? By all accounts the guy spends a significant amount of his time playing video games and on Twitter. His “work” is lunch meetings and zoom calls with the board where he just spitballs a bunch of nonsense.