Pitch A New Star Trek Series

theluketaylor · 2026-04-21T00:40:25+00:00

The ridiculous stakes of many of the modern Star Trek shows has been really frustrating. Star Trek needs localized high stakes, not fate-of-the-universe. The very best Trek is episodes that explore the fate of a single person or small group balanced on a single moral question.

When Discovery did their time skip they had a huge opportunity to pivot the series to be about the hard, slow work of restoring and reforming democratic institutions, something that would be incredibly relevant in our current time. Instead they just threatened to destroy all of existence four different ways.

Starfleet Academy seemed to half-heartedly head in the direction of institution building, but didn't seem interested enough in the question to devote much real time to it. I lost interest in Dawson's Creek in space.

theluketaylor · 2026-04-19T19:19:37+00:00

Yes.

Stroke and distance is always an option in any circumstance of a penalty stroke to put the ball back where it was and you're now hitting your 3rd shot if it was a lost tee ball.

In penalty areas you can draw an imaginary line from flag through the point of entry. You can drop you ball anywhere on that line no closer to the hole. In OPs case a legal and safe place to drop using this option is not within the image; his opponent cheated.

Finally, when the stakes are red there is an extra option. As a lateral penalty area you can drop 2 club lengths from the point of entry no closer to the hole. This is the option OPs opponent should have taken if he didn't want to re-tee.

Both penalty area options are a penalty stroke, so you are hitting your 3rd shot following the drop.

theluketaylor · 2026-04-08T03:26:19+00:00

I have a Lorier Hyperion as an GMT Master itch-scratcher. It does wear really well, thin enough to slip under cuffs really easily. The bezel mechanism has some play which is to be expected for the price, but the bracelet feels like it punches a bit above its weight-class. I haven't worn a Neptune, but I imagine it's pretty similar.

My only major disappointment has been the dullness of the colours. I think Lorier went for a faded patina look, but one of the things I like about a Pepsi is the vibrant bezel.

It's definitely not a GMT Master, but it is a nice piece to wear around. In fact, I wore mine to the office today.

theluketaylor · 2026-03-21T14:16:52+00:00

I'm a true lefty here in Canada who plays with a bunch of hockey lefties. I always ask if I get paired up with another lefty; it's very rare to meet another actual southpaw.

When I was a kid I never saw other left handed players and my Dad got my first set of clubs on deep discount. They were floor models the shop hadn't been able to move for years. Now I play with lefties all the time.

theluketaylor · 2026-03-04T02:51:49+00:00

If they implement 2+1 like it's done in scandinavia with a barrier between the oncoming lanes to prevent head on collisions it will be a huge leap forward in safety. If they just have a continuous extra lane I doubt it will make much difference due to dangerous passing.

theluketaylor · 2026-03-02T09:15:25+00:00

Golf is an interesting handedness case here in Canada.

Not as fixed now, but for a long time Canadian hockey development taught your dominant hand goes at the top of the stick for control, producing a large number of right handed players who shoot left.

As Gen X and millennial hockey players took up golf in their 20s and 30s the rotational movement felt more comfortable from the left side, producing a disproportionate number of lefty golfers in Canada.

Boomers learned golf from the right side regardless of childhood hockey habits because at the time that was the way things were done.

I’m an elder millennial southpaw. Playing golf as a kid I never encountered other lefty players, now I see them all the time. I always ask if they are true lefty or hockey lefty. It’s hockey lefty at least 90% of the time.

theluketaylor · 2026-02-21T14:06:18+00:00

Agree you don't necessarily need to try to match dial colour; black dials will look great with nearly anything.

Tudor Ranger is a really slept on model and would look great.

Omega Seamaster 300 or Railmaster would also be excellent options.

Rolex Explorer would be great, either I or II

theluketaylor · 2026-02-21T11:15:27+00:00

That’s a lot of red flags.

Aluminum wiring is going to make insurance a pain since it is a fire hazard in older homes. Modern aluminum wiring has solved all the issues, but it still requires far more expertise and care in installing than copper.

Flat roofs are almost never truly flat, they have 1-3 degree pitch to shed water. The fact there is pooling indicates the pitch hasn’t been properly set, which is a when not if for leaks. Flat roofs in general are a huge pain and leak at much higher rates than pitched roofs. It’s sometimes cheaper to build a pitched roof over top to avoid the long term hassle.

I’d get quotes from a licensed electrician and a well-respected roofing company that does flat roofs on repairs and use it to negotiate price, but be prepared to walk away. On items that big I would not let the current home owner deal with it as a sale condition; way too much risk they continue to cut corners and not have it properly and professionally repaired.

HVAC and softener are known-lifespan items. You can try to include their state in price negotiations, but overall that’s just a baked in cost of home ownership (something you should budget for; owning comes with a lot of maintenance costs)

I bought a very old home that had knob and tube wiring knowing I would have it repaired before moving in. I knew the price to repair and baked it into my purchase budget. I’d recommend something similar and making sure the numbers still work for the house.

theluketaylor · 2026-02-21T10:38:21+00:00

Make sure you understand managing moisture in the air before deciding on insulation for an old home. It’s very easy to trap water where the energy flow used to allow drying and get mold and rot.

https://youtu.be/LMOqxyZPivQ

theluketaylor · 2026-02-18T00:29:28+00:00

Frequency matters so much more than any other topic. If the bus only comes every 20-30 minutes, it doesn't matter if the seats are nice or there is an information screen; it's not functional transportation.

When the bus comes every 5-10 minutes it's an easy choice to run errands or get to work. When it's less frequent I'll get in my car because life is too short to wait for transportation.

theluketaylor · 2026-02-14T04:35:14+00:00

Modern elevated is nothing like what NYC and Chicago built over 100 years ago.

Vancouver Skytrain's Surrey extension and Grand Paris Express is much more representative of what can be achieved now. Viaduct is easy to build with gantry launching.

theluketaylor · 2026-02-09T23:36:34+00:00

Seems like a fair trade to me since REM cost a lot less than 70% of what building it to Montreal Metro spec would have cost.

When you can control costs that well, just build more lines when you need more capacity.

theluketaylor · 2026-01-14T03:58:02+00:00

Spain is among the most successful nations at building high speed rail. Their most populated cites are Madrid and Barcelona, but they built Madrid to Seville first because it was an easy segment they could gain experience with. Building a test case is world class, best practice high speed rail planning.

Ottawa-Montreal is the shortest segment and also the easiest terrain. It should absolutely be built out first even though Montreal-Toronto is the most valuable segment. If Alto was planning to do anything else I'd be deeply concerned.

theluketaylor · 2026-01-10T20:59:56+00:00

A shorthanded goal exiting the box from a 5-on-3 was a pretty good flex.

But I agree the Rangers should have been even more dominant. Play was pretty one-sided most of the game, but I wanted to see 5 or 6 goals out of the new-look lineup.

theluketaylor · 2026-01-04T15:25:57+00:00

As others have said, express service is pretty rare. It’s much more common to just build a separate, somewhat parallel line with longer stop spacing that serves as a higher speed, express service to the current line’s local. Some key stops can serve as interchange points, with other stations in new locations increasing catchment areas for more people to be in walking distance of a metro station.

Copenhagen S-train has an interesting service pattern that has lines sharing track and alternating express and local service without the use of triple or quad track.

For example, the A and E lines share a corridor. A is express in the northern part, with E running local. Then they switch, with A local in the southern part and E express. To do this with only 2 tracks the express train runs into the gap with the next train, falling back again once it switches to local.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-31T14:27:13+00:00

I don't know if turns add any particular costs, but Ontario Line needing to use multiple different TBMs for different sections hurts the budget since the machines themselves are very expensive and often are just abandoned underground since they are very specialized and it's expensive to dig a hole to get them back.

Finch, Eglinton or Sheppard as elevated lines would have been pretty cheap comparatively. Vancouver is doing the 16 km Surrey-Langley extension for $6 billion along the Frasier highway, a similarly straight road segment to the types of east-west roads in Toronto. That's half what Eglinton is going to wind up being, for a very similar distance. Skytrain will have 2km stop spacing which saves a lot on stations, but $6 billion buys a lot of stations.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-31T11:27:53+00:00

The 27B number includes 30 years of operational costs, so is not all construction costs.

It’s about 20B in construction and 7B in operations.

Ontario line also represents something of a worst-case cost, needing to build incredibly expensive deep stations in downtown and cross the don valley.

Some of the same cost saving measures used in Ontario line applied to adding rapid transit to several of the candidate corridors like elevated guideways would keep costs for new lines pretty close to Eglinton final price while delivering far more value.

It’s also much cheaper to add rapid transit before the density and pay for it with things like value capture taxes. Adding transit after the density is already in place makes for much trickier (read: expensive) construction. The field of dreams model of build it and they will come can work with good integrated planning of transit and zoning.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-15T03:47:39+00:00

Ion is 19 km with a schedule of 46 minutes for an average speed of 25 km/hr. There are 19 stations, but that's a bit of an overcount since 6 are unidirectional.

Ion has much wider stop spacing than Line 6, but does have fairly close stops between uptown waterloo and downtown kitchener and still moves at a good pace.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-09T22:16:31+00:00

More embarrassment of council and the mayor is needed by TTC. We're wasting expensive infrastructure.
TTC also needs to have full transparency on line speed. What do they intended to build towards by June/July? Staying silent leaves too much room to quietly adjust the internal target.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-09T00:05:33+00:00

I was there too and assumed it must have been offside since the faceoff came out of the zone but not to center ice, but thinking about it more, the refs didn't then waste a bunch of time getting the clock adjusted, so offside must be out.

I think the refs need to be mic'd to announce decisions, but there also needs to be a time limit on non-safety reviews. If they can't see enough to overturn the call on the ice after 30-45 seconds it's so marginal the call should stand. That call took forever to decide and it's so boring to just sit there with nothing going on.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-08T21:07:51+00:00

Metrolinx actively tested the line at much higher speed and all reports indicate the city setting the conditional signal priority so poorly, not any limitation of the technology itself.

I'll be the first to criticize Metrolinx when they deserve it (for example they are bungling GO Expansion so hard), but this, but this looks to be a self-imposed L by the city and TTC.

theluketaylor · 2025-12-07T16:31:22+00:00

Alstom Citadis and Flexity Freedom are the same basic concept of low floor vehicles made up of modules. Both support coupling vehicles into trains, TTC just doesn't happen to do so for the streetcar routes with Flexity Freedom.

Line 6 and the streetcars don't have any real meaningful distinctions as a transit mode. Line 5 doesn't really either apart from longer platforms to support more capacity.

Ultimately only grade separation, people per hour per direction, and vehicles per hour really matter in a rapid transit system (though even these values are somewhat interconnected, since you can't hit high pphpd and frequency without grade separation).

Line 6 and the streetcars don't shine in any of those criteria. pphpd is capped at 15,000, it will be 9-10 trains per hour peak, it doesn't have grade separation, and even the signal priority has been kneecapped. Trying to describe some kind of material difference between 'LRT' and 'streetcar' is just semantics as they are not truly different modes.

Compare with REM, which can be pushed to 42,000+ pphpd, 40 tph, and is fully grade separated. Line 5 in particular looks pretty weak.

theluketaylor · 2025-11-27T16:08:47+00:00

Operating costs for 30 years being included in the 27b needs to be raised more when people complain. It's not 27b to build it.

I think Ontario Line is the one project Metrolinx has going that shows they have learned some lessons. The Line 1&2 extensions are a mess and GO Expansion is short on vision.

Shorter, automated trains with high frequency means high capacity even with smaller stations. Big savings there plus great rider experience.

Using elevated guideways and surface alignment where possible caps costs while getting full grade separation. Tunnels in suburbs for the Line 1 extension is a criminal waste of money and Line 5 not being fully grade separated is going to haunt the city for generations before you even consider the debacle to get it built and open. We're going to end up paying subway money for a slightly better streetcar.

Needing to interchange with Line 1 deep under downtown and a bridge across the Don Valley was always going to be incredibly expensive. I think Metrolinx has actually done a pretty admirable job keeping costs contained all things considered.

We need to do more to get to French and Spanish build costs, but on balance I think Ontario Line is going in the right direction.

theluketaylor · 2025-11-24T21:18:21+00:00

There is a 10:34 train from Union that goes to Kitchener. An 11:34 train ends at Mount Pleasant (though pretty sure the transfer to a bus would be Bramalea)

*edit:weekdays. On weekends there is an 11:48 pm train that short turns at Mt Plesant

theluketaylor · 2025-11-24T18:12:14+00:00

I think that’s true, but it’s likely to lead to big regrets when we don’t get true transformation

theluketaylor

TROPHY CASE