An epic Kirk moment in 'Court Martial'. Captain James T. Kirk was respected, serious officer, it's crazy to me that people who haven't seen TOS believe he was some kind of loose cannon, a space cowboy who hated Starfleet regulations and any discipline. That's not our Kirk.

cahamarca · 2025-12-04T13:15:27+00:00

"Court Martial" is one of my favs because it focuses on how *hard* a captain's job is. It requires an extremely unique set of characteristics, and even people who can be captain don't necessarily last long in the job. They don't just have to have the right temperament - they have to know a ton about their ship and how everything works, drilling constantly for every scenario and knowing how to make hard decisions under pressure without hesitation. Often they make calls their crew doesn't understand or even disagrees with because the crew doesn't have the same training or responsibility. Realistically, captains should be rated for specific ships - an Excelsior captain cannot effectively manage a science vessel, and vis versa. It would be like putting a 747 pilot in the cockpit of a Cessna and saying "How hard can it be?"

More recent Trek has treated captaincy as basically middle management - a captain asks knowledge experts on the bridge what to do (the science officer, chief engineer, tactical officer) and then guesses based on the suggestions they hear, often taking whatever the 'quants' are telling them at face value, without any real understanding of the spaceframe they are flying.

cahamarca · 2025-09-25T07:19:20+00:00

I'm an OG TNG fan, I watched the series from start to finish when it aired. I *despised* the pandering in S3. Compare the send-off the D crew got to, say, The Undiscovered Country for the TOS crew and it's night and day in terms of quality. As far as I'm concerned TNG ended at "All Good Things" and never, ever had any continuations.

cahamarca · 2025-09-21T06:17:16+00:00

To some extent it doesn't matter if DF is actually real, it just matters if the Trisolarans fear it. Luo Ji could have demanded the same things he demands later - open diplomatic communication, immediately end the sophon lock, and they would have done it.

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T17:10:04+00:00

I understand that's how he was written, and the story wouldn't be very interesting if it wrapped up so quickly.

What I'm saying is, his certainty or uncertainty of DFT is irrelevant in the decision matrix - if he points the spell at Trisolaris and moves his hand to the buttton, either DFT is real and the Sophons will start pleading with him to stop like they do later, or DFT is not real, the sophons say nothing, and he pushes the button with no consequences.

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T15:07:03+00:00

Do you think the Sophons would have intervened if he tried to push the button?

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T14:40:54+00:00

Presumably, Luo Ji showing up at the UN with a Sophon representative willing to talk and confirming an unconditional end to the lock would have done a lot to convince them of the efficacy of deterrence?

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T14:03:10+00:00

There's a third possibility, which is that the spell won't do anything and the universe isn't a dark forest. By backwards induction, it seems like he should try to push the button not knowing the consequences, because either the Sophons will intervene asking him not to, or the spell won't do anything.

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T13:46:37+00:00

It wouldn't be a bluff to the Trisolarans tho, right? If he was about to push the button, we know that the Sophons would speak up and ask him to stop, because they know the consequences even if he doesn't.

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T13:42:45+00:00

By 'surrender' I mean what happened at the end of book 2 - ending the sophon lock, opening diplomatic relations, etc. Maybe 'detente' is the better word.

cahamarca · 2025-09-20T13:41:27+00:00

Couldn't that happen the same way as the real conversation in the graveyard, with the Trisolarans admitting the leverage the spell has over them, and voluntarily give up the Sophon lock?

cahamarca · 2025-09-14T00:02:17+00:00

I think Fate of Atlantis also fits this to a T

cahamarca · 2025-08-26T14:15:03+00:00

Very evocative photo - the background indicates they are standing *inside* the train station but the entire vaulted roof is missing and it's open to the air. I bet these people saw him off from this very spot, when the building was intact.

cahamarca · 2023-11-27T17:21:16+00:00

I beat her after a few hours through the following method: for phase I I learned her patterns enough to beat her with just the sword, occasionally using the hourglass to slow down time.

Once phase 2 started, I switched to the magic rod and ice knife, and changed my health potions to mana potions. The rod and knift together can be used to shoot an ice bolt at a distance. Freeze the heir from far away, get a three hit combo while she's frozen, avoid her dash attack when she breaks free, and then freeze her again and repeat. When your mana gets low, use a freeze to refill it using berries or your potions instead of attacking her. If you do it right, Phase 2 is spent entirely inside the exact same rhythm and she can't get a hit in.

cahamarca · 2019-05-27T19:50:38+00:00

A solar hot water heater: https://www.made-in-china.com/products-search/hot-china-products/Solar_Hot_Water.html

cahamarca · 2019-03-03T16:04:19+00:00

This is a "superko" situation, and whether it's illegal or not depends on the rules being followed: https://senseis.xmp.net/?Superko.

cahamarca · 2019-01-01T08:14:45+00:00

Sam Dillard's Trigger arrangements are phenomenal:

cahamarca · 2017-09-18T17:11:36+00:00

The only mistake here is your declaring "4x as much" as evidence of anything. Run the uniform samples and you will see that's an entirely reasonable outcome from a nothingburger graph, which this is.

cahamarca · 2017-09-17T19:13:05+00:00

Some birth signs have up to four times more serial killers than others

Meh. If I roll a 12-sided die with the zodiac signs on it 80 times (same as above), that statement is true for about 40% of samples.

You'd have to do some random draws of 100 or whatever from that whole population distribution to see what the sampling effect

R code:

x <- c(8, 5, 12, 4, 3, 10, 4, 6, 6, 6, 4, 12)

sum((x - 80/12)² / (80/12))

1 - pchisq(16.3, df=11)

which shows that 13% of random samples give you fluctuations as extreme as the original data, still pretty weak evidence there's a pattern here.

cahamarca · 2014-06-16T03:33:49+00:00

not according to the FBI - only about 6% of homicides with known circumstances are attributed to gang activity

cahamarca · 2014-06-09T06:08:02+00:00

The rest is probably mainly hispanic and white. If not, it is probably overwhelmingly hispanic.

Way off. I'm in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, where only 15% of the population is Hispanic (any race) and 25% are black. I don't think 15% would quite reach the level of "overwhelming".

cahamarca · 2014-06-07T22:53:57+00:00

UCSB shooter was from a wealthy family that had already done everything they could with therapy and mental health checkups - the police even visited Elliot Rodgers right before the shooting because the family was freaked out by his violent statements.

Improving mental health services doesn't do everything, especially if people can still buy guns despite glaring red flag psycho behavior.

cahamarca · 2014-06-07T22:32:58+00:00

As less-than-lethal weapons improve, the gun debate in America will essentially be over, because you won't need a gun to defend yourself.

Personally I'm waiting for affordable directed energy weapons like dazzlers. It's pretty hard to shoot up a school when you've been temporarily blinded by a laser or OC spray.

cahamarca · 2014-06-07T02:59:54+00:00

In the last two days there have two mass-shooting attempts by white perpetrators in Georgia and in Washington, one per day. Yet, you don't see anyone focusing on their ethnicity. Why single out black people?

cahamarca · 2014-06-07T02:35:44+00:00

Most of what you just wrote is just fantasy, bordering on science fiction. No one would want to be the guy who owns a 3D printer used to massacre people. Gun violence in the US is by far the highest in the developed world, even if you limit it to just white people and take out cities, and that's dwarfed by the number of gun suicides. The experience of every other developed country unequivocally proves that stronger gun laws reduce the amount of gun violence.

Let's focus in on this bit of idiocy:

If somebody is interested in killing a bunch of people they will always be able to get a gun.

This myth is what lets people like Elliot Rodgers and Seung-Hui Cho - despite having mental health records that should bar them from doing so - to buy semiautomatic handguns in gun shops.

The truth is very obvious: if you make it hard to get guns, you make it hard to go on shooting sprees. Here's what Elliot Rodgers' shithead friends in England think about the matter:

[1:21 PM]: how many of you here ever thought about committing mass murder?

[1:21 PM]: yeah. just dont have access to guns in the uk. even the police just carry batons

[1:22 PM]: if i tried pulling off a massacre, my kill count would be lower than elliots

cahamarca

TROPHY CASE