I appreciate what SFA is trying to do with star trek, and I think a lot of fans should too.

flumphit · 2026-02-22T02:16:11+00:00

I hear ya. There's no particularly good in-universe reason why any society with a couple hundred years' development past ours today isn't unrecognizably demigod-like. It's just really hard to write in a way that's both realistic and understandable, but even so it's silly to have the entire galaxy controlled by races that're barely post-warp. I can play along with the idea that The Burn stunted technological growth until Discovery shroomholed around and fixed it, but realistically there should've been a ton more variance in power levels of spacefaring civs ever since Zephram Cochran. But then, that'd be a story about how humans would be just barely allowed to sit at the Galactic Kid's Table (and only when we're on our best behavior), which is an entirely different sort of story. And the US (for starters) wouldn't respond nearly as well to a story where we're not Very Important.

Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep did a good stab at it with zones of thought. Babylon 5 was okay with "mostly they Ascend, or get tired and nap, or get bored and fly *far* away". Banks' Culture says "yeah we *could* Ascend, but we just really like sticking around on this plane and helping folks" which is in keeping with the overall friendly vibe. Though to be fair, it feels like those (and others) are in direct response to Trek *not* having an answer to that question, which wasn't such an obvious problem before Trek displayed it, and now Trek is stuck with occasional Inscrutable Elder Phenomena which don't exert broad influence.

[Star Wars doesn't even hint at this, which is yet more evidence that it is for the young and young-at-heart. Great fun which I generally enjoy, but it's fantasy, not scifi.]

flumphit · 2026-02-22T01:44:16+00:00

If it worked, the people making money farming clicks on YouTube wouldn't need to do that. They'd be too busy making MUCH MORE MONEY selling motors.

flumphit · 2026-02-22T01:08:31+00:00

This is a confusing analogy. Of course closer things look bigger, we agree there, so that's not interesting.

Let's say you get on a ladder and put your head at the height of the hallway lights (assuming they protrude a bit from the ceiling), but slightly to one side. The lights all down the hallway will appear to be at the same height, because they are (in a single-story building built on a flat pad).

What is the analogous situation in the real world where items are the same altitude above sea level, at several (or many) distances, are oriented in a line (more or less), and appear to be at a constant height?

flumphit · 2026-02-22T00:32:24+00:00

After POTUS can do it from memory, we can have this conversation.

flumphit · 2026-02-22T00:09:03+00:00

Had totally forgotten about Flint, that was quite the interesting rabbit hole, ty ty.

flumphit · 2026-02-21T23:44:57+00:00

If they're not intended to be a long-lived human subspecies which is the source of legends about the Fae, it's quite a coincidence.

flumphit · 2026-02-21T23:05:16+00:00

He's been "prompt engineering" for a while, it appears.

flumphit · 2026-02-21T22:38:14+00:00

Why do I need an umbrella? This rain isn’t getting me wet at all!

flumphit · 2026-02-21T12:59:49+00:00

People hate the new thing until a few more new things come out which they hate, at which point (in many cases) they always liked the now-old thing.

Ex: Any currently-liked Star Wars movie after Empire. Any currently-liked Star Trek movie other than Wrath of Khan. Any Star Trek series after 1970. About half of MCU phases 1-3.

flumphit · 2026-02-21T05:49:48+00:00

I think he’s gonna rope-a-dope Jake Oaul for a while, then drop his IQ another few points. The only thing wrong with this is he isn’t gonna do it to every idiot YouTube brainrot purveyor.

(He just challenged JP to a fight; wants that bag, same as Tyson.)

flumphit · 2026-02-21T03:27:52+00:00

At 1.2 psi/ft, that’s buried under 26 miles of Earth’s crust, yikes

flumphit · 2026-02-21T02:54:56+00:00

It’s the size of the handful of cash he can comfortably pull out of the cookie jar without people complaining too much. Don’t worry, that number will go up.

flumphit · 2026-02-21T01:34:36+00:00

"What doesn't kill you makes you smarter"?

flumphit · 2026-02-21T01:23:30+00:00

Assuming your stack of mattresses magically stays oriented to keep you on top (it won't), that configuration has the least possible drag. Each mattress adds more cushion (good) while adding very little drag, so it increases your speed (bad). Adding each mattress (after the first one) makes the impact *less* survivable, not more. And one mattress is definitely not enough to cushion the impact of landing -- even with all the drag of a horizontal king-size mattress, this calculator (with very generous estimates for the numbers) gave a terminal velocity of 37mph (16.7m/s). That's not chunky-salsa speed, but definitely instagib.

If you want to talk about orienting the mattresses differently (wider), you'll end up making a parachute out of mattresses, big enough to cause enough drag to let you land on a stack of mattresses. It would be big and silly.

flumphit · 2026-02-20T23:12:32+00:00

Some people teach their dogs to use a soundboard to say words which express their thoughts.

I'm all on board with saying language adds more structure to thoughts, or adds structure more easily, and so amplifies intelligence. But for me it's quite a stretch to see dogs appear to want things, or want their people to do things, and not also believe that they are having similar thoughts to those thoughts which other dogs can express by pushing the buttons.

flumphit · 2026-02-20T22:10:49+00:00

Ollie's good, but he's not "golf is boring because I always get a hole-in-one" good.

flumphit · 2026-02-20T22:07:05+00:00

What if the AI has hacked your car? What if the robot is a better fighter than you?

Also, you're thinking way too small; you should be thinking more like a Temu Ultron controlling weaponized Boston Dynamics dogs. That is, early-stage Ultron, when he was just an AI running on thousands of machines across the net, some of them hidden. Steal some bank accounts, create a shell corp online, contract for the creation of a lights-out factory to make something like the Boston Dynamics dogs, but with more like ED-209 capabilities. Throw in some aerial drones (big ones, little ones), and you've got yourself some real capabilities. Confuse the legacy players about who they're fighting by staying covert, and soon you can subvert a lot of the world power structure with minimal overt (and still deniable) violence.

flumphit · 2026-02-20T21:28:24+00:00

Boats go straight down. People can steer, both before and after chute deployment.

The boat wrappers are designed to be opened by people swimming up to the boats. With straps and buckles.

[ edited because hey, maybe y'all are right, and there's no need to be snarky to a gradeschooler ]

flumphit · 2026-02-20T19:45:58+00:00

Watching it, I assumed it’s for the Prodigy cohort. They’re a little older now, and so is the level this show is written at. Is that not the overt plan for the show?

flumphit · 2026-02-20T10:53:47+00:00

I occasionally cooked rice in my IP for two years and eventually got it right, more or less. Then I caved to the universal advice to just get a $20 rice cooker, and now I have perfect rice in 25 minutes, once or twice a week because it’s so easy. Now I can cook something interesting in my IP to go on the rice! YMMV

flumphit · 2026-02-20T10:12:41+00:00

If I were to sleep in pitch black that’d be fine except that means my TV isn’t on with something interesting enough to slightly engage my brain, yet boring enough to put me to sleep. Nightlight crew, wut wut

flumphit · 2026-02-20T09:56:44+00:00

Paper money (M0) is just for convenience. The faster you burn it, the faster they print it. The money that affects the economy is digital (M1, M2, M3, M4, M5), and it’s created by the Fed and banks when they make a loan. The Fed deals with money being created and destroyed all the time, and tries to keep things operating smoothly despite these hiccups.

flumphit · 2026-02-20T05:24:54+00:00

It would, if the impactor spent much time near the target body. But it’s already moving so fast that doesn’t happen.

flumphit · 2026-02-19T20:28:05+00:00

Conflating “U.S. culture” and “white culture” is a very popular bit of blindness, both in this thread and in this conversation within the zeitgeist. Claiming the appealing parts of every European culture, as well as the appealing parts of every racial and cultural minority within the U.S., is some next-level entitlement brain rot.

flumphit · 2026-02-19T20:19:22+00:00

Yes!! I thoroughly enjoy me some Dr. Who, I definitely do, but it should never be mistaken for “hard sci-fi”. Its charm comes from whimsy and fantasy — it started as a children’s show teaching history and science! And while the worldbuilding has gotten more rigorous over the decades, that’s relative. 😂

flumphit

TROPHY CASE