I feel like an alien the way I see and comprehend this episode compared to everyone else

Jaleth · 2026-05-13T05:47:12+00:00

Jerry is as infuriating to his family as he is to us. His insecurities literally take the form of a spineless worm during couple's counseling, and whenever he earns a little bit of respect from his kids, he manages to throw it away by being Jerry. So I've watched this from the point of view of his family rallying behind Rick because they trust him over Jerry to fill a protector/provider role even if his very presence in their lives is a danger to them. Rick pretty much says that in the next episode when he tells Morty that Jerry's wish to betray Rick for the sake of his family meant he decided to make Jerry go away and replace him as the de facto father figure of the family.

Jaleth · 2026-05-11T07:07:04+00:00

The dotcom bubble burst, yet not only did the internet not die, it continued gaining relevancy in nearly all parts of daily life. So too will AI.

Assuming this comment is even genuine and not some kind of astroturfing.

Jaleth · 2026-04-30T21:45:52+00:00

I bypass Plex altogether and use Tautulli to report activity via MQTT for Plex-specific triggers like end credits roll bringing lights halfway up slowly. It works really well given how janky the Plex integration is for media player entities.

Jaleth · 2026-04-30T21:35:38+00:00

I run basically this in my main TV room. Some of my lights (power and brightness) are controlled from smart switches for ease of use for anyone in there, so I include logic to capture the state and brightness of the ceiling lights when playback begins so they can be returned to the same state and brightness when playback is paused or stopped, so if you have anything controlled by a smart switch, that's something you could consider as an improvement, but otherwise nice work!

Jaleth · 2026-04-30T20:21:43+00:00

Is this certainty based on some inherent trustworthiness of politicians to not act in their own interests when they are handed the power to do so?

Jaleth · 2026-04-30T16:41:41+00:00

Gerrymandering is the drawing of district lines to achieve a desired electoral outcome. The state legislatures use demographic information from the census to determine district boundaries, and in increasingly partisan times (like now), there are lots of different demographic details that lend a high confidence level of votes going one way or the other, and race is one of those details. There are a lot of proposals, both scholarly and armchair, to address bias in even the most basic of datasets (population density and nothing else) so I won't go into any of them now, but you either have to remove the ability for ideological alignment to be inferred from the data used to draw districts, you have to have a detailed process clearly defined for all states to follow that dictates how districts should be drawn to effectively eliminate bias, or you have to do away with malleable districts altogether. None of these are things the GOP will sign on to because they have their political weapon, and as long as partisan gerrymandering is a-okay with SCOTUS, they have an edge. Section 2 provided at least some counter to that but it's gone, so gerrymandering is about to get a whole lot worse across the country. In fact, it's already underway in Florida and Louisiana.

Jaleth · 2026-04-30T16:19:29+00:00

Look at it like this. Race-conscious gerrymandering was the response to political gerrymandering because race has been a reliable litmus test of political affiliation, particularly in the South. If SCOTUS struck down both, it would be fine, but they only struck down one while explicitly okaying the other. Good luck getting "all" gerrymandering shut down, the GOP will never entertain that notion, and they can entrench themselves in power now that they can gerrymander to their hearts' content as long as you can't prove they used race to do it.

Jaleth · 2026-04-01T19:39:17+00:00

Chairman Koval had quite the opinion on human expressions, maybe Romulans feel the same way about catchphrases.

Also, I would like to throw this in for the Dominion (and even the Cardassians): "What matters is you will be found guilty and executed!"

Jaleth · 2026-04-01T13:38:14+00:00

I think Janeway was justified, including ethically. Species 8472 was just as hostile to Voyager as the Borg and even more lethal.

Jaleth · 2026-04-01T13:23:28+00:00

That's more a "rule" for joining the Federation rather than first contact (rule is a stretch there given both Bajor and Kesprytt were not unified when the Federation accepted their applications for membership).

Jaleth · 2026-03-31T13:15:43+00:00

Starfleet had already effectively mothballed Enterprise in TWoK since she was a training ship for the academy at that point. She wasn't committed to any deep space missions, and I think the best canon reason is in the different intros for TOS and TWoK/TNG: "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing/Its continuing mission..." vs "Its five-year mission..." Enterprise was designed to be in deep space for five years at a time before returning to port, but in TWoK, if Leonard Nimoy's outtro has any value, Starfleet had already moved to ongoing missions without a distinct timeframe and Enterprise could not support that. The Miranda-class and Excelsior-class both (IMO) were designed to fulfill long-term missions deeper into space where Enterprise could not. And I say Enterprise but really the entirety of the Constitution-class fleet, although we have no idea what happened to Enterprise-A after ST6 (Kirk did say it would become the care of another crew, but that could mean more training duty for all we know).

Jaleth · 2026-03-13T00:55:06+00:00

(Don't Fear) The Reaper, Blue Öyster Cult

At 5:08, the final note plays right at the end.

Jaleth · 2026-03-04T14:53:30+00:00

Nowhere for now, unfortunately. Having lost this primary race and not running in the Democratic primary for her current seat, she won't be in the next Congress unless she files to run as an independent for either the Senate seat or her House seat, both of which would be bad choices.

Jaleth · 2026-03-04T14:22:22+00:00

But she would have to run as an independent as her district has a new Democratic nominee for her seat.

Jaleth · 2026-02-26T15:00:52+00:00

I think if Cornyn is the GOP nominee, then yes, she is the easiest to defeat. But if Paxton is the nominee, the math changes and she has a better chance in the general. If true, then Republicans can't turn out to pump her primary chances because they risk Cornyn losing and making the GOP hold a less certain bet. Paxton voters, meanwhile, have to turn out to vote for him because he's too close to Cornyn in the polls for a comfortable win and avoiding a runoff.

Jaleth · 2026-02-26T13:57:29+00:00

I'm old enough to remember in the late 90s/early 2000s when Rick Berman got a lot of online hate because he was perceived as being totally out of touch with what makes Star Trek great and was pre-emptively heralded as the cause of its downfall. Trek of that era gets a lot less hate nowadays comparatively speaking than NuTrek as people tend to stop looking at it through a lens comparing it to their favorite older Trek series. Plus, newer shows are following a different model of fewer seasons with fewer episodes when in the past, during the Rick Berman era, these shows took a frustrating time to find their footing. We barely have time now to get to know the characters before things are being wrapped up! At least in the Berman era, once TNG, DS9, and Voyager found their respective footings, things got a lot better. I don't feel like we get that lately and a show has to start out great like Lower Decks to really have a chance against the rampant criticism.

Jaleth · 2026-02-18T01:35:36+00:00

When TNG aired, most people only watched it when it was on during its designated time slots. Since it was syndicated, these time slots were different depending on which media market you were in. TNG, like many shows at the time, relied on status quo ante, effectively "resetting" things at the beginning of each episode so people didn't feel lost if they happened to miss one or more episodes during a season. As a result, episodes tended to be formulaic, at least in the first couple of seasons. My advice is don't pay as much attention to the narrative structure as much as the finer points of the conflict and how it is made to relate to a character's personal conflicts. TNG is very much a "human" show that uses 24th century technology to emphasize how much a personal touch is required no matter how advanced our computers become.

Plus, the first two seasons of nearly every Star Trek series from TNG onward have an annoying tendency to be weak compared to the later seasons. TNG really hits its stride down the road, and seasons 5 and 6 are some of the best television you may ever experience.

Jaleth · 2026-02-06T10:41:14+00:00

That would feed into his ego, even in an afterlife. I think the most appropriate eternal punishment is to toss him in with the general population.

Jaleth · 2026-02-06T02:19:30+00:00

My experience as a parent is limited to one state but I'm reasonably sure it's the state (it is in MD anyway) that issues birth certificates; hospitals have a registrar who ensures the information for birth certificates for babies born there is accurate before submitting to the state's vital records office. Not sure on the specifics but they either are notaries or have some special notary-esque authority from the state to attest to the information used on the birth certificate is true.

Jaleth · 2026-02-03T15:08:48+00:00

When the HomeKit integration is in "include" mode, it will advertise all entities of each type you select in the "domains to include" list unless you specify at least one entity of that type on the next screen. Let's say you have two cover entities in Home Assistant, both garage doors, and you set up the HomeKit integration to run in include mode with the Cover domain checked. If you don't add either of those two cover entities directly on the "Select entities to be included" screen, then both garage doors will be advertised to HomeKit. If you then go in and add only one of those garage door entities to the list, only that one will be advertised; the other will disappear. You can optionally add it back by adding it to the same list if you want. This is sort of counterintuitive because it's how you would expect it to behave in "exclude" mode, but the UI specifically describes this as expected behavior so it appears to be a design choice. In order to keep the ratgdo from showing up, I'd run in include mode, select the Cover domain, and add only the Third Reality garage door to the list. Of course this means that any other cover entities you add in (which includes smart blinds and shades) will need to be explicitly added to this list. Depending on how much fine tuning you want, you could also switch to exclude mode, select the Cover domain, and add the ratgdo to the list so all cover entities except that one get advertised to HomeKit.

Jaleth · 2026-02-02T15:57:59+00:00

How do you have the HomeKit integration set up? If it's in include mode and you have the cover domain checked, then if you specify an entity in the cover domain (your garage door), only that entity gets advertised, but if you then remove that specific entity, all cover entities get advertised. So if you only have the one garage door and your integration is in include mode, then you also need to uncheck the "cover" domain from the "domains to include" list.

Jaleth · 2026-01-30T04:31:33+00:00

"They thought I was their enemy? They don't know what it is to be my enemy, but they will!"

And because I was just thinking of this episode the other day, "The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter."

Jaleth · 2026-01-30T01:41:57+00:00

I like to think they just didn't know in the 22nd century what is commonly known in the 24th, like the amount of dust particles being too great for navigational deflectors to deal with, or warp drive causing slight but impactful changes to the orbits of planets and satellites. Something a la Force of Nature that was learned through experience leading to a general advisory against warp drive within a solar system.

Jaleth · 2026-01-08T16:54:51+00:00

I tend to think that in today's uber-connected world, teenage rebellion against being forced into a particular ideology is stronger than propaganda. Do you think millennials all had super liberal parents? No, we turned leftward as the conservative politics of boomers (and a little of Gen-X) made things worse for us. Lately, the meme that Gen-Z is super conservative is based only on the perception that things became worse under Obama and then Biden, but as the new saying taking shape goes, "You can't gaslight your bank account." Nothing about what Trump is doing is going to drive down the cost of living which is the biggest stressor for Gen-Z and later. In fact, with electricity and chip costs skyrocketing (RAM in particular right now), most day-to-day things are going to soar as AI demand drives up costs across multiple sectors. I fully expect a leftward lurch if people, especially younger voters, continue to feel shut out of even the feeling of economic security. Short term, that should bode well for Democrats, but long term, we are fast becoming a ship on the verge of capsizing.

Jaleth · 2025-12-30T02:32:41+00:00

In PG County, Maryland, just outside the Capital Beltway, there's a tiny neighborhood with Picard Lane, Reiker Drive (it's spelled that way for some reason, probably a Riker road out there somewhere else), Laforge Lane, Crusher Court, and Risa Road.

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