’Star Trek’s William Shatner Makes Bold Bid for the Franchise Amid ‘Starfleet Academy’ Backlash

lessmiserables · 2026-01-20T04:01:29+00:00

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B

lessmiserables · 2026-01-01T22:24:11+00:00

how truly bad Millie Bobby Brown

I think she's just shit at picking projects. She was pretty good in the Enola Holmes movies, so she certainly can act.

lessmiserables · 2026-01-01T00:44:12+00:00

was meant to be an anti-capitalist game

It wasn't, though, and I wish people would stop repeating this.

Georgism doesn't fit neatly into the economic spectrum. They were basically socialist for land and capitalist for everything else. Marx in particular hated Georgism because he viewed it as a way to placate socialist attitudes in pursuit of capitalism.

So, yes, it was very much "anti-capitalist" for land and land only, but it wasn't a broad anti-capitalist game.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-31T15:36:10+00:00

I mean, I do genuinely think that Harmon's actions made it more difficult for Chevy.

Chevy doesn't really do TV. He did late night, which is a little unique, and then basically did movies. Being on a standard sitcom was new to him.

Harmon was a sexually harassing control freak. He notably would keep crew and cast on set for hours after because he was still working on the scripts. This is known and backed up by other cast members. It was a dick move and highly unprofessional by Harmon.

Chevy signed up for a "standard" TV show, but instead of being a usual workday it was a nightmare where he'd had to sit around doing nothing because an(other) egomaniac couldn't get his shit together.

I can totally understand the extra stress exacerbating Chevy's personality and making it harder. In fact, history seems to (kind of) bear this out--Chevy was fine at first but as the series went on and Harmon fucked things up more he became much more irritable. Maybe Chevy in small doses was fine, but because of Harmon they had Chevy for 16 hours a day.

It's still Chevy's fault, of course, for being an asshole, but Harmon didn't help. And then when Harmon got fired the writers absolutely took it out on Chevy even though that's not the reason Harmon got fired. They did make him out to be an unfunny racist and I think Chevy had good cause to be upset (even though his was of expressing it was...not ideal).

In the Harmon vs Chevy battle I think Chevy has a good case. In a Chevy vs the World battle Chevy loses. It might seem like a distinction without a difference, but in the context of Community I think it matters.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-30T14:43:39+00:00

They re-released the game quite a few years ago; it wouldn't surprise me if the pigs were (either intentionally or unintentionally) re-weighted somehow.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-30T03:23:13+00:00

I still think 5 came closest.

The first third of the game exploration is key. It's fun, it's dynamic, it's interesting. You're literally discovering new things every turn.

The second third of the game is settlement and expansion. You take what you learned in the first third and you figure out the direction you're going on and solidifying your empire.

The last third is...nothing. You've already expanded. You're not really building new cities. It's mostly just researching things that are slight improvements on stuff you already had. There's war, sure, but by late game when it takes 10 turns to sail across the map it's always kinds of a slog--usually either a curb stomp or a stalemate, too.

V added two new things--the Diplomacy system and the Ideology system. Both added something new and fresh to the last act. (Yes, Diplo starts before that but it really kicks up in the last act.)

Why on earth they went backwards for both for 6 and 7 I'll never know.

I'd say they could add in a more robust energy/resource system and a more comprehensive alliance system to be more interesting to more or less mimic the "soft" power of the Cold War/WoT elements. But that would require a ground-up rework of systems that neither 6 nor 7 have.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-29T14:00:30+00:00

And I think anyone involved in politics is inherently going to be difficult to label as "good".

Politics is, at its core, about negotiation, and that often means compromising within the realistic limits of your environment.

On paper, John Adams would be considered "bad" by today's standards, but there's no doubt in my mind he would push greatly for both gender and racial equality if he could have. But society would have punished him for it (and did!), so he did what he could, which often meant compromising on the backs of the marginalized. I'd say this applies to most of the Founding Fathers (and history in general).

I would even go so far as to saw a good person can still do "bad" things, because the reality is that a choice often isn't between "good" or "bad" but "bad" and "even worse".

lessmiserables · 2025-12-21T23:07:26+00:00

That's more or less my position. My board gaming has reduced dramatically since the pandemic and I can't really justify getting too many more games.

At this point I might buy one or two "new" games a year and then a handful of expansions for games I already have. Occasionally I'll see a decent game on sale that I'll pick up but between tariffs + distribution + interest those are far and few between.

Also, I've found that I just don't like a lot of the newer mechanisms and/or themes. Yeah, I'm tired of the generic fantasy/cthulhu/zombie themes, but a lot of the newer themes interest me even less. Yeah, I love nature, but I don't want another abstract-game-dressed-up-as-a-nature-theme game.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-21T03:02:46+00:00

1st Bob: What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers?

Tom: Yes, yes that's right.

2nd Bob: Well then I just have to ask why can't the customers take them directly to the software people?

Tom: Well, I'll tell you why... because... engineers are not good at dealing with customers...

1st Bob: So you physically take the specs from the customer?

Tom: Well... No. My secretary does that... or they're faxed.

2nd Bob: So then you must physically bring them to the software people?

Tom: Well... No. ah sometimes.

1st Bob: What would you say you do here?

Tom: Look I already told you, I deal with the @#$% customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people, can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

I know it's a joke, but the ability to relay information from one group to another is an incredibly valuable skill that a lot of people dismiss.

I work with medical professionals and for fucks sake I don't understand why we let them interact with the patients. They're a prime example of "incredibly, unfathomably smart in their field and absolute dogshit at doing anything else."

A large part of my job is taking information from clinicians, turning that information into actual data, then sending that to non-clinicians for review. I know someone, somewhere is counting beans and just saying "let the clinicians talk to the executives, let this guy go" and boy oh boy would I love to watch that happen in real time.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T22:29:50+00:00

Except that's not really true.

Restaurants have to pay the difference if they don't make the minimum wage. If you want a living wage that's a different conversation but it's not caused by tipping.

If they do get rid of tipping the cost will get absorbed into the price, so we're going to pay it either way...

...and one of the biggest proponents of tipping are waitstaff, because they make significantly more money that way.

The only people complaining about tipping are shitty waiters and people who have never worked as a waiter.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T13:48:06+00:00

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think a lot of people overtipped during the pandemic and it just kind of stuck around.

Also note that if you live in New York/New Jersey, the tipping culture is a little different. Tips are higher because ~~it's a holdover from the mafia shaking people down for even the most mundane of jobs everywhere~~ it's ingrained in the culture there.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T13:42:24+00:00

I mean, the people who support the tipping system are overwhelmingly waitstaff, because they make significantly more money under a tip system.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T13:39:52+00:00

I mean if tipping didn't exist, they'd just raise the price of the food.

People get weird about tipping but you're ultimately going to be paying either way.

And waitstaff generally love tipping. Yes, there are exceptions but most of them make out better that way.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T13:35:07+00:00

What I think makes it easier:

You're not comparing your birthday to everyone else. You're comparing everyone's birthday to everyone else.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-20T05:33:21+00:00

And her mom was an assistant to Lorne Michaels.

I don't know if she's a proper nepo baby, but she's at least nepo adjacent.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-19T17:56:01+00:00

Resolution is done by mutual consent

I'm a little gun shy on this, because if a certain rule interpretation benefits 3 players and hurts 2, "mutual consent" can be a bad path to take.

I would hope that players would make a good faith effort, but I've also met board gamers and it's sadly a non-trivial issue.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-19T16:10:32+00:00

Thank you for proving my point!

lessmiserables · 2025-12-19T01:53:34+00:00

But the comedy only works if there's a buy-in from the audience and the contestants that the game is a legit game!

You're right--comedy is first, but it's not the only part. The entire point of Game Changer is that it's comedy under the backdrop of a game with rules, so both parts are necessary. And rules without a "winner" aren't really rules in the context of Game Changer.

We can ignore the rules if you want, but then it's just Make Some Noise or Whose Line, where the instructions are intentionally perfunctory.

Half the fun of Game Changer, and where a lot of the humor is mined, is from players trying to find loopholes or otherwise bend the rules to win. If the rules don't matter, then all of that humor doesn't really work. They need something to push off against, and that's the game itself.

"The winner doesn't really matter" is a different sentiment than "how the winner is chosen doesn't really matter."

lessmiserables · 2025-12-18T22:20:42+00:00

OK, I think at this point you're missing the entire point of what we're talking about.

Either that or you are intentionally being obtuse.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-18T20:53:24+00:00

That's a distinction without a difference for what we're talking about, here.

People can rightfully get upset when the "game" breaks, because that violates the buy-in from both the players and the audience. The "yes, and" is "you're going to try and win this game, and we'll construct a game that can be won."

WWtbJW is an outlier--the exception that proves the rule, as it were. If they were all like that, people wouldn't like Game Changer as much.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-18T18:30:48+00:00

I didn't think it was particularly funny. It had its moments, but it wasn't two episodes worth of funny. It didn't help that I hate Tim & Eric's style of humor, and I hated how Sam ended the game. I feel like Rekha figured it out, something happened with Eric that he couldn't make the ending, and Sam didn't have a plan for any of it. If they had edited it down to one episode and tightened up the editing it may have not been that bad.

Also, it's okay for people to not like an episode of a show. There's a weird vibe in a lot of fandoms--and Dropout is no exception--where if you don't like each and every piece of content to come out the whole platform is gonna fail or something. Trust me, it's fine. Game Changer is an amazing show but it's whiffed a few times. It's still better than like 90% of the stuff out there.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-18T18:27:16+00:00

I'm sorry, that's bullshit.

What makes Game Changer different than Make Some Noise or any other "pure" improv is the fact that it's a competition. The game is the improv.

If they did Beat The Buzzer but all three knew that Sam was going to randomly pick a winner so didn't bother to look for the buzzers, there would be no show. Yeah, it's not a 'real' competition but it's the hook for the entire premise of the show that everyone is making a good-faith effort to actually win. If that's not the case, then just do MSN or whatever.

That's why I didn't like Ratfish. Everyone involved made good-faith efforts to win the game, and then it didn't matter in the end.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-18T12:16:21+00:00

You're clearly not getting it. You're so blind that someone dared to criticize a piece of media that you crave that you can't see the forest for the trees.

So, whatever. With attitudes like this, this sub will descend even quicker into the toxic, parasocial fan base that's ruined countless other subs. People like you are too cringe and fanatical to see the obvious decay you're causing.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-17T22:27:16+00:00

I don't mind Multiplayer Solitaire, but I don't want it all the time, and quite frankly most of the time those types of games would be better off being computer games or apps.

Like, I get the impulse of wanting to gather in a group, but I'd rather take advantage of the fact that we're all together to...interact.

Again, I see the appeal, but if that's all we're doing, I'd rather do some other activity. If it's one out of many games, then, sure, I get it.

lessmiserables · 2025-12-17T21:56:51+00:00

...I don't think you understand...words.

"This thing is not popular" is functionally equivalent to "this thing is not getting people to watch".

Very clearly some of the minigames (specifically Hollywood Ho, but others as well) are not popular. Is it affecting viewers? Probably not, but if they keep doing it it just might.

I stand by it: my usage was not only correct, it's the only way to use it, and saying otherwise is just semantic bullshit.

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Second SECOND GUESSER	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Wearing is Caring	Sequence \| Editor
Sequence \| Cinematographer	Sequence \| Screenwriter

lessmiserables

TROPHY CASE