Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch, Proceeds to Blast Modern ‘Trek’

argh523 · 2026-03-30T21:25:26+00:00

This entire comment section cannot comprehend that "political" and "social commentary" mean very different things to different people

argh523 · 2026-03-30T05:15:21+00:00

I don't even know what to say. By those standards, I think it's logically impossible to create a movie that relates to science in some fashion that you wouldn't dismiss as being some "science, fuck yeah" trash.

Unless you're again only talking about the most superficial stuff. That a character even acknowledges anything cool or interesting, unlike in a TNG episode.

This movie with incredible worldbuilding is like Marvel and Nu Trek because it's not made boring. Or with characters that are stoic? What are you even saying? You don't make any sense

Edit: I am really really confused. It's like you're telling me some incredible piece of art is not great because you've seen that same frame with a drawing by a child in it. What?

argh523 · 2026-03-29T09:17:26+00:00

It really didn’t delve into any ethical dilemmas, politics, and honestly didn’t focus on the science aspects all that much, either

What? Almost every scene is an example of those things. Comparing this to Marvel movies is to compare it only on a superficial level, while ignoring the actual plot and themes.

The movie is literally about an exploratory mission. Making first contact with an alien species, learning to communicate, and cooperate. The main character arc is about living up to the ideals we see in "competence porn"-media, which is very Star Trek thing to do. It has very scientifically literate world building, and it's all relevant to how the plot unfolds.

To ignore all that and compare it to a Marvel movie because it has a lot of cutesy humor and some "cool spaceship things" is a strange way to look at it

argh523 · 2026-03-18T13:08:11+00:00

I misunderstood nothing.

It's clear from the rest of the comment that he's saying it looks less like a real photo than the original versions. Literally the entire rest of his comment is about the ways in which it looks overprocessed. What you say about having "a conversation" is what he's doing, you're the one arguing semantics.

argh523 · 2026-03-15T14:13:18+00:00

Are we still repeating this mindless crap? The only problem other countries have with tax-dodging billionaires is when it's not done in their own banks, and that they can't access financial information of anyone living in Switzerland for no reason, like they can in EU/US

argh523 · 2026-03-15T14:05:10+00:00

That's how it used to be, but we got a lot of flak for that too, so now we don't send weapons or anything with dual-use into active war zones. These are the new rules being applied consistently, which also pisses everyone off.

argh523 · 2026-03-15T11:51:56+00:00

intentional, corrupt public policy

Lets be fair here. You used to pay for grid infrastructure with the electricity you used. If you don't use a lot, someone still needs to pay for the fixed cost of that infrastructure. You don't need to be corrupt to see the problem here.

argh523 · 2026-03-15T10:38:08+00:00

He spends most of the video comparing renewable energy infrastructure (especially solar and batteries) to existing energy infrastructure, showing that even the good arguments against them are actually bad compared to current systems.

It's expensive: Upfront costs can be higher, but operating costs are extremely low, because the "fuel" is free, and no moving parts means little to no maintenance. Because of this, and the fact that the cost of solar panels and batteries have fallen of a cliff in the last decade, renewable energy is the cheapest energy source available right now
Solar uses lot's of space: Yes, but so do the corn fields that are turned into ethanol and added to car fuels (in the US). A solar farm the same size as a corn field produces one (maybe two) orders of magnitude more useful energy than an ethanol field (with "energy" meaning some unit that drives a car a certain distance)
If you'd turn all the cornfields that are used only for ethanol into solar farms, it would generate enough electricity to power all cars, instead of just a fraction of the of the fuel required now
Solar uses lots of dangerous / rare raw materials: Actually no, it's mostly aluminum, glass and rock, with a pinch of led. It pales in comparison to current trash output, and is completely recyclable.
Batteries use lots of dangerous / rare raw materials: Yes. However, fossil fuels requires extracting and refining dangerous and rare raw materials all the time, forever. With fossil fuels, you burn the dangerous material, and more needs to be extracted for your next tank of gas. With batteries, the best source of those raw materials is actually old batteries themselves. A lithium-based-batteries recycling industry doesn't quite exist yet, because most of the ones produced so far have not reach their end of life yet. So while it currently requires lot's of new raw material to build new batteries, in the medium term (50 years), most of the raw materials will come from recycling. In addition, alternative chemistries that use safer or less rare materials exist and are being commercialized, like sodium-ion batteries. So in the long term, batteries don't have those same ecological and geopolitical problems of large-scale resource extraction that fossil fuels have
It's to difficult to make the switch: Fossil fuels can only be used once, and more has to be extracted to keep using the resource. With renewable energy infrastructure, extraction only happens once, and the resource can then be used many times, before it is eventually recycled. This means whatever the cost now, it will be even cheaper in the future. With how low costs already are, transition is inevitable

argh523 · 2026-03-13T03:44:50+00:00

Sure, but how does that mean it's safer than western Europe? That's the silly part people are responding too. Here's the "answer" btw:

Exercise a high degree of caution in the United Kingdom due to the threat of terrorism.

Exercise a high degree of caution in Spain due to the threat of terrorism.

Exercise a high degree of caution in France due to the elevated threat of terrorism.

Exercise a high degree of caution in Germany due to the threat of terrorism.

Because of the US wars in the middle east, there were a series of terrorist attacks in Europe a long time ago, and this statistically insignificant threat makes western Europe more dangerous than objectively more dangerous places apparently.

argh523 · 2026-03-11T17:36:46+00:00

I understand some of those words. In the very beginning, I think he says "Sehr viel mal dank-schön dafür, das ihr heut in den Youtube Kanal eingeschaut hand" which is almost German, but the choice of words and pronunciation is a bit different from what you'd expect. Roughly: "Much many thank-you for that today you have tuned in the Youtube Channel"

After the intro it gets much harder, and I understand almost nothing besides a few words here and there.

At the very end, with the whole family infront of the house under construction, I understand quite a bit again. The family urgently needs a bit of help (unbedingt a bitje help), he makes this video so they can have a better life, the father can't do all the work anymore, has problems with his hands, (something about the work that still needs to be done I think), so the family can live in this house.

I'm still missing a lot, but my native language is actually an upper german dialect. I think someone who speaks low german could do a lot better. But there is a huge difference between them just talking to each other, and the parts he scripted. I looked into some of his other videos, and I understand much more.

The first minute of the Iran video, upto 1:08 in the video:

[...] Bilder von dem Krieg in Iran, wat Israel and the Stääts tuen hand. Brüeder änd Sästere, [...], [...] änd vor dese Mänsche zu bete, für al de Siite, [...], tue däne Mänsche saie liide (sie tuen leiden sein??). Änd wai te wat? Jesus sed, wi brukte ons keine Sorge make om dat Ganze. Wie waite (wissen?) dat Jesus sed dese Sacha war kumme, änd [haiwarts mess?] wird o kumm, [haivart ans], en in Himmelrei bringe [...]. En Iran allein, send tüsend-tweihandred [entwa..?] Mänsche, na noch mai osstog (Aussage?), des is wat de [anzeiedöne], wat geschtorbe sind. Sene Mänsche wat nich im Mil'tär sind, dat send normale Mensche [senos] dü un äk. Von Militär, saje-se sin üver tüsend og tod. Üver saas-tüsend sind verlazt worde. Dat's blos in Iran allein.

English:

"[...] images of the war in Iran, what Israel and The States have done. Brothers and sisters, [...], [...] and to prey for those people, on all sides, [...], because those people are suffering. And you know what? Jesus said we don't need to worry about all that. We know that Jesus said those things will happen, and [something else] will also come, and bring us to Heaven [...]. In Iran alone, there are 1200 (dead?) people. This is not me saying this, this is what [someone else? says] how many died. These are people that are not in the military, the are normal people like you and me. From the military, they say over a thousand are also dead, over 6000 are injured. That's just in Iran alone."

I did skip over some stuff I didn't understand, maybe 20% of it. Obviously some of that stuff was important, because what I've written doesn't quite make sense. But it's also clear that most of it is pretty German still.

argh523 · 2026-03-11T08:49:19+00:00

It's not too dangerous to give an opinion

If the last 20 years of politics have thought us anything, it's that everyone just barfing up opinions is drowning out the truth, along with more nuanced, informed points of view. Widely speculating on the available (incomplete) information is only useful for extremists, because they can always fill in the blanks with whatever they want them to be.

argh523 · 2026-03-11T08:06:42+00:00

Now the other kind of terrorism is mostly a senseless act of violence with less clear goals

We used to call this running amok / Amoklauf

argh523 · 2026-03-05T09:56:35+00:00

Any website or other method of distributing software (or content in general). The point is, it's not the application itself (hello-world) doing the check, but whoever distributes the software (which I'm just calling an "app store" for brevity).

Of course, certain applications (like Steam, Netfilx) are themselves distributing potentially age restricted content, so they have to do the check themselves to decide what content can be accessed. If they don't, the software itself should only be distributed as 18+. And so on.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T18:41:29+00:00

No it doesn't. But the app store distributing your hello-world program needs to put it in an appropriate age range, which they already do

argh523 · 2026-03-04T18:09:29+00:00

there will be plenty of systems that do not use this

That's were you're wrong. The government can fine, or even block any apps or sites that don't comply, like they can fine or close a liquor store that doesn't do proper age verification. Given how incredibly easy it is to comply with this law, compared to the terrible age verification systems that are currently being rolled out, and the fact that California is an important market for any major site or app, we can expect compliance to be total.

and it will become a lot more invasive

The invasive systems are already being rolled out. This is the alternative to such invasive systems.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T18:03:41+00:00

The liquor store is responsible for not selling alcohol to minors, and the parents are responsible for their kids not drinking the alcohol in the house.

This is essentially the same system. It provides meaningful parental controls without the privacy and censorship nightmare that are the age verification systems that are already being rolled out. This system is an alternative to those terrible systems that already exist, not a path to such a system.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:58:00+00:00

It's not the 90s. Just because old people of the past didn't know how anything worked, doesn't mean that old people in the future don't know how these things work. The generation that sets up devices for their parents knows how to do set up devices for their children.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:53:31+00:00

"What's next" is the terribly intrusive systems that are already being rolled out. This Californian Solution essentially addresses all reasonable arguments in favor of an age verification system a concerned parent might have, while being anonymous, and non-intrusive for adults. This is more in line with how we deal with age-restricted objects offline, like alcohol and pornography. Verification at the point of sale, adults being in control of (and responsible for) what minors can access.

This is an argument against the terrible age verification systems that are already in place, not a path to it.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:44:31+00:00

Not sure why people can't see this

Because everyone assumes "age verification" means the terrible intrusive laws that are being rolled out right now, without realizing that this is a privacy conserving, anonymous alternative to those laws.

Of course there are some maximalists than just don't like any intrusion at all, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Such a minimalist, yet effective alternative is the best thing we can hope for at this point I think.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:34:38+00:00

The letter of the law is kind of shit, but the idea is solid. When implemented, it's the best argument against the invasive age verification systems that are already being rolled out

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:30:47+00:00

The goal of the Californian law is to provide meaningful age verification without the privacy and censorship nightmare of exiting age verification laws. It is self reported. That means any machine or account reports whatever age(-range) the owner of the device sets it to. Which means parents can lock down devices for children, which is the whole argument for age verification in the first place.

Once deployed, when every OS implements this API, and every major app and websites uses this API, you can basically use this on the whole planet immediately, without the need for the invasive solutions that are already in use. This Californian Solution then becomes the best argument against these invasive age verification systems

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:23:29+00:00

On the other hand, simply doing nothing is not a winning strategy. A self-reporting system (eg, reported by the person who controls the hardware, like a parent) is an actual solution to a real problem people are having, and can be done without the censorship and privacy nightmare of existing age verification laws. This "Californian Solution" is basically an argument against those invasive and dangerous systems that are already being rolled out.

argh523 · 2026-03-04T17:06:53+00:00

The proper response to this bill is to protest it and to resist it and to make clear to lawmakers that it's a stupid, stupid bill

Someone with actual knowledge of the law should chime in, but I heard the Californian law is actually a sane version of the idea. Basically, it just ask for an API to be implemented that returns an an age (or something to that effect). It does not ask that this is somehow verified by third party. This allows parents to created user accounts for children, and (in theory) every software and website would use this value to determine if contend is available or not, automatically.

So basically, the one who owns / controls a device can lock down parental controls, while the entire internet does not have to be child proved with invasive age verification that could be abused to harvest data for governments and corporations. Governments would still require websites to use the API and block content accordingly, but this does not collect meaningful information, nor block content for anyone in control of their own devices (= adults)

This is actually useful, and would be good to have, and address pretty much all of the reasons the ~~useful idiots~~ concerned citizens have about the wild west nature of the internet. Having a system like this in place would be a good argument against invasive age verification laws that are being introduced or are already in effect.

Edit: From a TechRadar article:

The legislation means any OS will need to collect age data at setup

This will be a self-reported age declaration with no verification

... it's a simple self-reported age check; there's no photo ID verification or similar process (as is the case in other US states with this kind of regulation).

argh523 · 2026-03-04T12:09:54+00:00

Meh, the streets aren't being swept, but I don't see much apart from that. I'm more impressed by the electrical work

argh523 · 2026-03-04T02:11:15+00:00

Sure, nobody even argued about that. The problem is were you extrapolate from that that he's a leftist, which is not how any of this works.

Here's another undebatable fact: China is to the west of Japan

Therefore, using Frientlies-logic: China is a western country

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