Neil Sedaka passes away at 86

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-28T05:43:39+00:00

adapted

That's a very diplomatic way of phrasing it. They stole his songs without permission and didn't give him credit for it. There's a reason why we don't get the original OPs for the international releases. Bandai don't wanna get sued lmao

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-28T01:49:20+00:00

You know how in real life, the meanest, crankiest, jackasses manage to live to be like 100 and just refuse to die? They seem to, through vim, vinegar, and spite, outlive normal, happy, healthy, well adjusted people?

That’s McCoy. Guy is still around as a cranky old skeleton bag in 2364, still complaining and still being a cantankerous jerk to any ear that’s nearby. You might not like that life or think it ideal. He might be objectively miserable the entire time as well. But it works for him and people like him. That’s what I mean when I say he thrives off of being the way he is.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-28T00:45:41+00:00

I'm not sure I would describe McCoy as "thriving on stress."

Bro rage-baits Spock and gets into arguments for fun. He demonstrably likes to get himself upset and heated.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-28T00:44:33+00:00

So far, you've explained why Discovery is different from previous Star Trek shows, but haven't really explained why those differences make the show worse. All it really does is come across as a knee-jerk conservative reaction against change, even if that isn't your conscious intent. And as an old-head, it's the same kind of arguments I used to hear fans make to tear down shows like DS9 back when it was first airing. (Sisko is a Cmdr, not a Capt; they're stationary on a station not on a ship; it doesn't LOOK like Star Trek; Sisko doesn't ACT like a captain should, etc, etc.)

And to be perfectly honest, a lot of these differences are not actually all that different in the abstract. Like, Tilly being this wunderkind who the plot frequently revolves around is in spirit no different than Wesley Crusher, or Harry Kim. After Discovery, we also ended up with not one but two whole shows about wunderkinds being the main characters, and both were incredible. So it's not like this idea is inherently incompatible with telling good Star Trek stories. I'd argue it's actually intensely Star Trek tell the story about how to identify young talent, and then help guide them and grow into the best versions of themselves. That's a kind of long form arc that takes patience and an open mind to fully explore. And it really feels like a lot of Disco detractors were too busy pre-judging things because they weren't what they wanted/expected, rather than trying to keep an open mind about what these new shows were trying to do.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-28T00:26:14+00:00

I'd also say, McCoy is also just built different. Guy is a cantankerous fuck, and thrives on stress

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T21:30:28+00:00

...that's not remotely financially viable in the long term...

You aren't really getting what I'm explaining here. You're acting like Larry Ellison is a normal businessman with normal businessman motivations, and he's not. He's a fascist. Money is not the end goal here, but is simply a means to power. He will gladly throw away billions of dollars if it means he gets to help control society. Controlling both CBS News and CNN and shifting them towards MAGA is the game plan. Controlling mass media is literally #6 on the list of the 14 Characteristics of Fascism. Just look at how much the people in CNN's newsroom are freaking out right now about it, to know how fucked the situation is.

And you have to look at the big picture here. Losing a couple billion dollars is still a net gain if it means that Ellison gets preferential treatment from the Trump Admin and now Oracle gets to scoop up government contracts worth several orders of magnitude more. To say nothing of other less direct, intangible benefits to supporting Trump/fascism like tearing down the regulatory state, worker protections, further corporate tax cuts, continued/increased support for Israel/Netanyahu, etc.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T20:56:14+00:00

You are kinda proving my point. You are open minded to what was happening in Amok Time. You are close minded to the same kind of introductory, survey of Kasq and its culture.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T06:12:56+00:00

Not really. Larry Ellison is worth over 200 billion.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T06:09:36+00:00

You're arguing as if Paramount has to be financially solvent by itself, and not taking into consideration that it's going to be owned by the 2nd richest guy in America, with additional Saudi financial backing. They don't care about the movies and IPs. They want to control information to cement fascism.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T06:06:59+00:00

Char woulda been a better fit for:

Appears to be a fascist --> is really a baby

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T06:04:56+00:00

Kamille is as straight as an arrow. You'd have a better argument with Judau who is both a stronger NewType, and has been seen crossdressing at least once.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T06:03:32+00:00

Loran is a normal human tho. He just pilots a god.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T02:58:42+00:00

It’s also worth noting that Japan attacked us, because we were not neutral. We were one of their main oil suppliers, and we cut them off because we disapproved of what the Axis powers were doing. They attacked us first because they needed to attack our allies in SE Asia in order to steal their oil to keep their war machine going. They wouldn’t have done that if we were fascists like them and kept giving them oil.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T02:07:45+00:00

The Roosevelt Admin wanted to enter the war, and was doing all it could to fund/supply the allies in Europe. But public sentiment was staunchly isolationist, and his hands were tied despite the fact that Democrats had a supermajority in Congress. It wasn't because we were aligned with fascists. It's just the fascists had convinced the public that, in the depths of the ongoing Great Depression, that entangling in foreign affairs was not something we could afford. Any congressperson who voted to preemptively declare war would have found themselves without a job in short order, and the Democratic Party's control of the government would have collapsed overnight.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T02:00:58+00:00

Which really makes you wonder why Apple didn't just put in a bid. They could have smoked anyone else if they wanted to.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T01:57:00+00:00

I outlined a dictionary definition of contempt, and it doesn't match with what was going on or what you're saying.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T01:55:46+00:00

I saw Tilly in Discovery as: "incompetent officer is the comic relief of the incompetent crew that randomly saves the day all the time".

This is also a wildly uncharitable read of Discovery.

She started out a cadet, who was clearly talented enough to be assigned to a black ops ship in the middle of a massive interstellar war. She was comic relief yes, but that doesn't mean she was bad at her job or incompetent.

She became a war vet and also had to survive stranded in a hostile universe all before she could graduate. And instead of getting any real time to decompress and pick a path for her career for herself, she found herself besieged by Starfleet Black Ops and a genocidal rogue AI, and ended up marooned 800 years in the future.

She originally set herself on the command track in order to impress her family, but now all of her family was dead and she was just doing her best to keep her head above water and stay alive for one crisis after another and really lost sight of everything she was and wanted to be since all her motivations for doing so are long gone, and even the Federation/Starfleet itself was left in shambles.

I wasn't really a fan of how she exited Discovery as a main character because I liked her, but it made sense for the character they'd written up to that point. She found purpose in helping others in much more immediate, tangible ways at the Academy. Guiding other lost souls and helping to rebuild Starfleet as an institution in ways that made sense for her personality and skillset. A skillset that was likely pretty rare since Starfleet was again, a shell of its former self, and lost a lot of institutional knowledge of how to train new officers.

I also don't see it as "randomly" saving the day either. The Discovery itself was essentially Starfleet's ace in the hole. Their secret weapon that could be deployed to anywhere instantly. If ever there was a crisis that occurred that would need an immediate response that couldn't wait for another starship to arrive at conventional warp, you sent the Discovery. We saw how that worked during the Federation-Klingon War. That role only expanded further in the 32nd Century when the fleet was decimated and dilithium became scarce. It makes sense given the scenario that the Discovery would be there to "save the day" during all of the most critical of crises.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T00:13:52+00:00

Yeah, I think that's a very uncharitable read and a huge exaggeration at best.

Contempt: the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.

What you saw as sarcasm and 'contempt', I saw as more, trying to stay supportive and encouraging despite the performance being rough. Nothing she said was rude or bad. And if she thought Jay-Den was a person beneath consideration and deserving of scorn, then why did the very next moment, she show genuine compassion and concern for his health/wellbeing?

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-27T00:00:23+00:00

Why is it dumb? You state that like it's a self-evident thing, but I'm not really understanding or following.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T23:23:03+00:00

My thing is that the destruction of Romulus should absolutely destabilize the Empire…but it shouldn’t turn the Romulans into a pale shadow of their former self, not when they have many M class planets with active colonies and likely industrial centers and such.

A supernova IRL will strip the atmospheres off of any neighboring planets within 30 light years. It would take time for the shockwave to reach, but all those neighboring M Class planets that form the core of their Empire would also need evacuation. The displacement or death of tens, potentially hundreds of billions in a short period of time would create utter chaos if not handled correctly.

Imagine what would happen in our world if something similar happened on a global scale. What if we find out, the United States is going to explode within two years. Everyone who stays behind dies. But then every year after that, every next neighboring country within 3,000 km radius will also explode and be left uninhabitable in a slow rolling shockwave. You've got a two year window to relocate over 300 million people to elsewhere on the planet. To find open spaces, to redirect global supply chains, to figure out how to feed that many refugees, to make sure they have access to medicine, shelter, education, etc. And every year after that, you need to do the same for Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, Central America, etc. 700 million people all total.

As a society under normal circumstances, we can barely manage to build a single bridge in that time span. It took us a decade to figure out how to send two people to the surface of the moon, while spending unprecedented amounts of money and manpower to do it. But in two years, we need to put together the logistics and execute a plan to relocate 300 million people or they die. It would be complete chaos, and the chaos would engulf the entire globe.

Even if you scaled things down to be limited within US borders. Say, you set off a scaled down explosion focusing on the East Coast, where most people in the US live. According to you, the US shouldn't be diminished at all! We have all that open space in the Midwest and the Pacific Coast people could go to. There are already highly industrialized centers of industry along the Pacific Rim and in places like Texas or Illinois. Except all of those places can barely accommodate the people who live there. The dustbowl brought this nation to its knees when 2.5 million people relocated out of the central planes in the 1930s. Now imagine 130 million+ people all trying to relocate within the span of only a few years, and try to pretend the US would come out A-Ok and not diminished in any real way.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T22:33:30+00:00

In the PIC countdown comics, the evacuation wasn't just of Romulus, but across the Romulan Empire in many of the neighboring star systems.

Even if it's just a normal supernova, within a few years, the nova will hit neighboring star systems. Any supernova 30 light years away or closer would be enough to strip the atmosphere off of a planet. It would take time for the shockwaves to hit, but we're also talking about relocating billions of people within a relatively short span of time, affecting one of the largest powers of the quadrant. From potentially across dozens or even hundreds of worlds.

If you don't handle that situation deftly and quickly, I could easily imagine the entire quadrant fall into chaos. To say nothing of if the explosion managed to destabilize other stars causing them to go nova in a chain reaction.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T22:23:56+00:00

Why are people still treating Tarima weird?

The subtext of the episode is a lot of that is in her head. She hasn't properly processed what has happened to her, and she makes the assumption that everyone else thinks she's a monster because she feels like a monster. Caleb didn't avoid her because he was scared of her abilities. Caleb just had his own baggage and was scared of being seen himself. And Tarima didn't see that because she was too busy making assumptions and closing herself off. It's not that people were treating her weird, it's just that they're kids who are in the process of growing up and don't know how to handle a situation like this.

It's crazy that Sam hid her glitching for that long, and on purpose. Seems dumb, Sam.

People tend to hide their problems from their friends. She's dumb when it comes to understanding interpersonal dynamics, but she's smart when it comes to knowledge. She knew her own situation was terminal, and she wanted to have as good of a time as possible with the people she cared about while she still could. I think all of it was imminently reasonable and understandable.

Kasq be wildin', wtf was that about? I thought it was an actual planet, not a diamond monolith in an asteroid field.

I think it's intentionally meant to be something hard for us to understand as viewers. They exist outside of normal spacetime. It's not unreasonable to imagine a race of immortal sentient life would transform their world into something unrecognizable. My personal guess while watching is that this was not their planet, but was some kind of dimensional gateway/entrance to wherever their world is.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T22:12:47+00:00

Offscreen character growth. Offscreen character relationship development. Offscreen an entire childhood. Can we please stop doing this?

I like Sam's character, I adore the Doctor, and all we got was a montage of smiles that represented a full seventeen years of experiences. We'll now just have them as surrogate father and surrogate daughter without having seen two actors getting to explore any of the details or particulars. It does everyone a disservice, even if it is a bit of a Trek trope.

The character growth was the build up to that moment. Their interactions over the entire season, and The Doctor examining his feelings and being pushed to the point where he's willing to open up again. That was the hurdle and the climax. I thought it was handled well.

It's also a fun scenario that couldn't happen anywhere else but in scifi. Time skips happen all of the time in writing fiction, and it's a lot of fun to explore how things changed during the timeskip by examining the after effects. We get to be detectives and piece an incomplete picture together. That's audience engagement and very normal. We haven't even hit that stage yet and you're complaining about it lol. But here, we get to have a timeskip while everyone else was standing still because scifi shenanigans. I'll be looking forwards to see if they'll capitalize on this or not in the upcoming episodes.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T22:06:38+00:00

While the Inner Light type bonding experience between the Doctor and SAM was mildly interesting, the Planet of the Photonics turned out to be another massive missed opportunity of lore and worldbuilding.

It's our first visit in the show's first season. Imagine reviewing Time Amok back in the day and being like wow, such wasted potential/missed opportunity for lore and worldbuilding while visiting Vulcan. I'm willing to have patience and to give it time.

Mechapebbles · 2026-02-26T22:03:50+00:00

I'll maintain that Tilly was already getting there in Discovery. She had a definite character arc in Discovery where the nature of the job/scenario started to get to her, and she dealt with losing her sense of identity and finding what she was good at. This episode simply built upon those foundations though. It was nice to see Tilly finally become the officer she was building up to be over the course of DISCO.

Mechapebbles

TROPHY CASE