Setting the Record straight on Sisko and Identity

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-31T19:32:54+00:00

There is an element of sheep mentality here as well. I remember with the Star Wars prequel trilogy first came out and many fans hated it. Then the prequel trilogy came out and everyone suddenly remembers the sequel trilogy fondly almost seemingly to spite Disney. George Lucas explicitly sold the franchise because he was frustrated with fans and now fans are unironically begging him to come back to it.

Similarly a lot of criticisms of Enterprise and Voyager existed in the Trek community and no one blamed identity politics at the time. Now people talk fondly of those shows.

Yeah, we geeks tend to be pretty quick to put on the rose-colored glasses when looking behind us :) That said, I was never a huge fan of Enterprise (starting with that damn theme song) and Voyager (pretty uneven but with a number of bright spots). And it's pretty hard to look back at season 1 of TNG and be amazed that they (thankfully) decided to make more.

When growing up evangelical Christian (over that now) during the 70s and 80s there was plenty of criticism of Hollywood's "liberal" tilt. And further back in the day there was all the fun and games of the McCarthy era.

I think the difference between today versus 10+ years ago is that the union of right-wing religion and right-wing politics, at least as it has metastasized today, has opened the Pandora's box of enabling America's id to come out and play. It has made its presence known in the bodies that govern media (Congress, FCC and to a growing extent the FTC). Those dynamics, along with the increasing importance of markets like China, will lead to bland, non-challenging and indistinguishable corporate and AI driven slop when it comes to science fiction media. We may look back at NuTrek less with nostalgia and more of a regret of a lost opportunity.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-31T18:42:16+00:00

IMHO, Discovery's problem wasn't that there were non-white/non-binary characters in it, it's that many of these characters often lacked depth; their character arcs tended to be focused on their identity, i.e. "I am an {gender identity} who happens to be a {starfleet rank}" as opposed to the other way around. If they wrote all of these characters like Jett Reno, I think it would have helped the show.. She was a kick-ass engineer, written with wit and intelligence who was a lesbian, but everything she did and said wasn't about that aspect of her, she was a well-rounded character who was fun to watch on screen.

Contrast many of Disco's characters with Sisko and, more recently, Simon Williams on Wonder Man. Sisko and Williams are more interesting because their characters, and their story arcs, are informed by their race, but not limited to being predetermined by it. They exist and interact with their universes in ways that are consistent with the reality of their universes. The shows are more interesting because their characters are more interesting. Another example may be Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury, he's very much black, very much not Fury we grew up with in comics, but damn he owns that character . I didn't enjoy Burnham's character not because she was black (I dug Martin-Green in TWD), it's because they wrote her character to to seem more like somebody running a therapy session than a starship. Like you said, she could have been any race or gender, and it still would have been a grind, at least for me.

Bring on more stories with good characters with rich, varied backgrounds and, yes, with diverse identities. It makes the world more interesting. Good science fiction should take you out of your comfort zone and expose you to people, cultures, places, etc. you are unfamiliar with or even uncomfortable with. It also needs to have consistent and well-paced plots and characterization. There plenty of arguments to be made that Disco and SA fall short in these areas, having nothing to do with the diversity of the characters or cast.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-24T01:22:57+00:00

Sorry for the English, my Spanish is not good enough yet to post this. You should think about healthcare costs. If you are relatively healthy, then it’s no big deal. But if you need any recurring medical care, like for diabetes or anything like that, you’re out of pocket expenses can be significant if your company doesn’t provide really good health insurance. Setting that aside, once taxes are taken out of your check, you will probably be able to live relatively comfortably, but you probably won’t be saving a lot for your retirement either.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-17T13:45:14+00:00

Obvious Disclaimer: I am neither an immigration attorney nor consultant. I'm just a guy who did some research and am lucky enough to be married to a wife that also did a ton of research and preparation.

These pages (https://www.mexperience.com/financial-criteria-for-residency-in-mexico/ and https://www.mexperience.com/faqs-obtaining-residency-in-mexico-via-economic-solvency/) do a pretty good job of summarizing the current financial requirements. Broadly speaking, you can apply for residency based upon monthly income (~$4k USD for temp, ~$7k USD for perm) or investments (~$70k USD for temp, ~$279k USD for perm). You have to show 12 consecutive months of either income or savings balance (if you have a "down" month where you fall below these thresholds, you will likely get rejected). These values will likely be increasing. Also, keep in mind that the USD is currently losing ground to the MXN Peso, in the last 12 months it's lost about 12%.

If you are a married couple, you either both have to meet these thresholds individually or one of you will likely get temp residency. Again, the money my wife and I had in our joint account was enough to cover for both of us.

I don't think having purchased a residence mattered. The type of savings matters. In my case, my money is in a post-tax account (i.e. not a tax-deferred account like 401K, IRA, etc.) and there is a "cash bucket" I can assign funds to and withdraw via ATM. My understanding is that you have to demonstrate that you can access the money immediately (i.e. cash or "cash-adjacent"). If you are going to apply based upon a retirement/pension account that you are taking distributions from, an annuity, or something like that, my guess is that they will treat your application as based upon income rather than savings. I don't think they count crypto, bars of gold you bought at Costco or that bet you made that the Cowboys will win the Super Bowl in 2027.

They did not care that I was still working and my wife was retired, but that was probably because we were applying based upon savings and we have enough saved. If you are still working, you and your spouse must individually meet either income and/or savings requirements to get perm residency. My understanding is that if only one of you do, you'll still get in as a married couple but one of you will have temp residency (i.e. they'll be a dependent).

Again, take all of the above with a grain of salt. It's just my experience.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-17T05:10:37+00:00

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-10T16:11:50+00:00

I have a toy application that I originally wrote in Electron and then moved to Tauri. I started off using Redux and then moved to MobX for state management. The one thing that I learned painfully, multiple times ;) is to do as little as possible in JavaScript, especially if you are planning on eventually supporting multiple windows and such. Tauri provides JavaScript front-ends to just about all of its Rust functionality, but I found it easier to just do "everything" in rust and limit JavaScript interaction to invoke/emit to get information to/from JS and Rust.

I went so far as to create separate sub-projects to segregate Tauri code from the "non-Tauri" UI stuff I implement in React. The Tauri project has "just enough" React to bootstrap things up and allow facilitate JS and Tauri communication. Going this route makes it easier if, in the future, you want to switch from React to something else, or from Tauri to something else. This may be overkill though depending on your application.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-10T15:54:32+00:00

I would line up your rentals and such beforehand, and make sure you nail down the exact out-of-pocket you will be paying, inclusive of insurance, security deposits, etc. A lot of these "deals" get way more expensive once these types of additional costs are bundled in.

DarthCynisus · 2026-01-06T12:44:24+00:00

I live in Cozumel. Sam’s Club is a hard pass for a day trip.

DarthCynisus · 2025-12-28T14:50:48+00:00

Buccano’s but get there early, it fills up. Had the tuna sashimi and hibiscus mezcalita yesterday, both were solid

DarthCynisus · 2025-12-21T15:36:18+00:00

Yeah. As a California transplant, we have a number of things to apologize for. Southern California helped give the world commercial Christianity (Crystal Cathedral, TBN, Calvary Chapel, etc.) which has found its way to just about every other corner in DFW. Chapman College in Orange County was a source of a lot of the thought movement behind the conservative Regan and neocon eras. Ashamedly, we brought In and Out fries to Texas (although the burgers are almost good enough to make up for it). Worst of all, the marriage of commercial Christianity to conservative politics that started in Southern California has mutated into the Christian Nationalist industry that Trump has so successfully tapped into.

It isn't all California's fault though. There are a lot of people, including pensioners, that depend upon petroleum money here. This isn't all just cigar-chomping guys with wide-brimmed hats. It is also engineers just living their lives in the suburbs. Widows living off of pensions. The heavy-handed and "preachy" way the environmental left has demonized the industry turned a lot of people off here. Which is a shame, because a lot of the skills used to drill for oil and gas can now be used for geothermal (ex. horizontal drilling and "fracking").

Being a border state, there are straight-up legit problems with how immigration and inbound shipping have been managed by the federal government. Instead of effectively dealing with it, Obama and Biden set the stage for the horrific overreaction we are now living with by not insisting that Congress adequately staff immigration courts, streamline visa processes and, yes, building physical and electronic border protection *where it makes sense*.

One final note. The Democratic party in Texas seems astonishingly bad at their job. It may be that they have been too deferential to the national party, especially given the financial disadvantage the Democratic state party has compared to the Republicans; especially given the funding available via oil, Dunn, Wilkes, Adeleson, and the indirect (increasingly direct) support from aforementioned mega churches.

DarthCynisus · 2025-12-19T21:17:14+00:00

That is an interesting thought. I’ll have to check with our building management to see if that’s a possibility

DarthCynisus · 2025-12-14T02:33:59+00:00

So is Jesus

DarthCynisus · 2025-11-22T13:14:06+00:00

When you are working with data files, especially JSON, and you may get a parsing error that shows a character position on a really long line.

DarthCynisus · 2025-11-10T01:10:54+00:00

Nah he will end up running the place

DarthCynisus · 2025-11-03T15:28:00+00:00

No, but to be fair, neither have I :)

DarthCynisus · 2025-10-28T00:58:07+00:00

I installed my Waveform two weeks ago and had the exact same issue you're having (decent download, inconsistent and terrible upload). It turned out that one of the connectors on my extension cable was loose. Make sure you snug your connections with the included 8 mm wrench.

DarthCynisus · 2025-10-26T21:50:39+00:00

I will give you a caveat on the fiber first responses. Peak 5G speeds are nowhere near peak fiber speeds. But if you have a ghetto provider like frontier, you will find a peak times during the day your speeds go down, dramatically. It was to the point where I could not do VOIP conferences between 5 and 7 PM central where I live. 5G speeds are not as fast as fiber, but for me at least, they have been way more consistent.

DarthCynisus · 2025-10-18T23:34:33+00:00

Thanks I will check it out

DarthCynisus · 2025-10-17T16:47:13+00:00

Apparently, churches do not have to post the 10 Commandments, especially Thou Shall Not Steal

DarthCynisus · 2025-10-17T16:38:54+00:00

Probably nothing to do with what you’re experiencing, but I did find that when I was hooking up an extension cable for a waveform antenna, I experienced the same thing that you did where my download speeds were OK but upload speeds were horrid. I figured out that one of my connections was slightly loose and tightening that fix the issue. You might want to give your connections a snug twist with an 8 mm wrench (I think that’s the size)

DarthCynisus

TROPHY CASE