Apparently, Patrick Stewart is coming back as Picard in a new Star Trek!

[conuly]

Does this mean we're finally getting some shows that are a. in the prime universe (not the reboot) and b. really, really in the prime universe? I like Disco just fine, but with those tech levels there is just no way it's the same universe as the main series, nor even the spinoff reboots.

********

How Ancient Arts Are Inspiring Modern Electronics

“Most chicken diapers are machine washable...”

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Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor

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A slaughter in silence

Comments

[ratcreature]

I can't believe chicken diapers are a thing.

[conuly]

And yet, people evidently pay top dollar for them.

[ratcreature]

It's still bizarre. My brother kept pretty dwarf chicken as pets for a while, and was quite attached to them. Not to the point of dressing them in diapers though. I'm not sure they would have tolerated it either.

[conuly]

Listen, if there are people out there willing to shell out an hour's pay to diaper their chicken, who are you to stand in their way? What I want to know is this: is it too late to get in on this action?

[ratcreature]

At least the international market is still wide open. The organic hipster city chicken exists here (my brother had chicken enthusiast magazines, also an expensive chicken coop that still failed to protect them from becoming hawk food eventually, organic hemp bedding and so on), but I've seen no sign of any chicken diapers.

[wpadmirer]

Okay, I'm stopping after the oozing Speedos and the dogs using deception to get treats.

The oozing Speedos, for some reason, amuses me.

The dogs using deception to get treats - was this test invented by someone who never owned a dog? I could have told you that!

[conuly]

You need to prove these things with SCIENCE, though.

[wpadmirer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which reminds me that in the 8th grade I did a whole science fair project on how dogs communicate with people. I recorded (sound) and described behaviors that dogs I knew communicated what they wanted with their owners. No one at the science fair took me seriously, but clearly I was WAY ahead of my time.

[malkingrey]

with those tech levels there is just no way it's the same universe as the main series, nor even the spinoff reboots

Hollywood in general has a problem with that sort of thing, especially in cases like Trek where the current state of tech in the biz is so much higher than it was for the source work. Figuring out how to use one's own newer and fancier tools to show the same or a less developed tech level as something that's already been done is, I suspect, something that requires a sort of extrapolative thinking that most people can't do. And it's probably not as much fun/doesn't get you as much kudos as using the same tools to come up with something shiny and different.

[conuly]

But it's so mixed up! On the one hand, the UT is a bulky novelty device*, and on the other hand they've got the hologram phone system that was brand new in the middle of DS9.

No, the only way to make it work is to just assume it is in a third continuity altogether. Multiple universes - even putting aside the Mirror Universe - are canon in ST, so that's fine. We've even got a nice handwave for the fact that this is in yet-another-AU: the temporal cold war, the only piece of ST that's canon in the prime continuity and the reboot. (And I just assume that the destruction of Romulus was a massive loss for "our" side, because I can't imagine that this was the plan the whole time.)

* The UT is, quite possibly, the least realistic piece of tech in all of ST. I say this because I my grasp of linguistics is a hell of a lot stronger than my grasp of physics, but still.

[malkingrey]

The UT is, quite possibly, the least realistic piece of tech in all of ST.

I know, I know . . . that one pinged my implausibility meter hard even when I was a high-schooler and only just discovering the existence of linguistics as a discipline. (A paperback copy of Charlton Laird's The Miracle of Language showed up on the spinner rack in the local corner news-stand where I also bought most of my early sf/fantasy, and I bought it and read it and was hooked. As influential texts go, that book did a lot to determine the subsequent course of my life.)

Looking at the problem as a writer, I can see why they took what was originally a one-off Plot Device and turned it into a piece of standard tech . . . juggling multiple languages is right up there with dealing with zero-gee in terms of making the storytelling process more difficult than you normally want it to be. There are a number of good sf stories which feature languages and translation problems, but if you don't want to make those things the focus of the story, they become a hurdle to be overcome.

(I don't mind quite so much the fanon interpretation of the UT, which ignores the magical linguistics of the original plot device in favor of making it something that has to be continuously programmed and updated, and which mostly facilitates instantaneous translation between known languages.)

[conuly]

Yeah, I know, unless you really want to have people translating shit all the time and misunderstanding each other and getting into wacky mishaps it's better to have a UT. But still.

(And it's better than using crazy alien languages as flavor a few times and then never again. T'Pol speaking to her mother in Vulcan only when humans are in the room just looks rude. On a similar, non-alien note, I've never forgiven Sound of Music for having the Germans speak with a German accent while the Austrians don't. Also, it's wildly ahistorical, but that's the part that bugs me.)

[archangelbeth]

(The loss of Romulus, in Star Trek Online, was eventually revealed as being due to Iconians. Who had a reason, it turns out, and there is MOAR TIME TRAVAL and Captain Player Character comes back and saves Earth and everyone else.

Since we get Star Trek Online's Romulan Republic, I can live with this. ...honestly, the Romulan Character Tutorial+Rom story arcs really affected me. I thought my main would be my Caitian (catgirl captain for the win!), but no, it's my little ex-Borg Romulan. There's this huge sense of Romulan unity or something that the level 1-10 arc generates, and I really loved it.

Also, Obisek has the sexxayist voice, and hiiiiii I would like to subscribe to the Reman Resistance's podcast, please.)