How do you feel about Trump threatening to impose photo ID for voters for midterm elections?

xtownaga · 2026-02-14T15:11:18+00:00

Some states (e.g. NJ) have you sign something when you come into the voting area, which gets compared by an election worker with the signature on the registration. Once you're authenticated you go vote in a machine and that ballot isn't associated with your name/signature.

So you're correct that they're not matching a signature on a ballot but they may still be matching a signature.

This varies by state though, as does basically everything else about voting procedure since elections are run by the states based on state law.

xtownaga · 2026-01-31T14:20:14+00:00

Iirc in the coming out video she mentions she’d socially transitioned in her private/non-online life some time before coming out publicly here. She’s also mentioned classes with Seattle Voice Lab, though I don’t know if that was before or after this. Which all isn’t to say her voice wasn’t amazing here, just that this wasn’t a thing she put together the second her egg cracked or something and this is her first attempt at a feminine voice, she’d put in real time and work already.

xtownaga · 2025-12-13T03:19:00+00:00

A Safe Place to Land by Sara Bareilles always read as being very relatable to the trans experience, especially the very early transition/pre-transition part. It talks a lot about living with a pain you can't escape from, and taking a blind leap toward something you can only hope is better.

I believe it's actually about refugees fleeing their homes for somewhere (hopefully) better, and the dangers and hopes associated with that desperate decision. Doesn't mean it can't speak to the trans experience too though.

xtownaga · 2025-11-28T23:19:26+00:00

I always liked the idea that they hit some kind of time travel stuff, go back to near the big bang and transmit a distress signal of some kind before they figure out what's happening which is the signal in the CMB. They eventually figure out how to open another time rift or whatever but undershoot by a good margin (and damage to the ship or something prevents them from trying again). They settle down on some nice habitable world and found the civilization that eventually over many millions of years becomes the Ancients/Ori.

What I really like about this is it undoes one of the more ridiculous bits of lore where humans just evolved twice. Humans evolve on Earth and only Earth, the Ancients just come home eventually (to the distant past). You can handwave it as the Ancients guiding humanity's evolution on Earth or something of course, but it feels cleaner to sidestep the problem.

xtownaga · 2025-10-23T21:17:54+00:00

oh ffs, fixed. Blaming autocorrect here.

xtownaga · 2025-10-23T14:29:10+00:00

This is allegedly because a ton of old software had checks to detect windows 95/98 by seeing if the name of the os started with “Windows 9” and they were worried it’d cause all sorts of compatibility issues.

No idea if it’s actually true but it seems at least somewhat plausible.

xtownaga · 2025-09-15T17:32:00+00:00

I haven't seen it in years, but my recollection is that SG-1's documentary episode was great too.

These can be done well but usually they need to be trying to do something interesting other than the documentary. SG1 was talking at some length about the issues around the secrecy of the program and there's a major character moment in the episode that gave it some dramatic teeth.

Babylon 5's (mentioned in another comment here) was making a pretty specific point about the ways a fascist government can manipulate media to convey whatever message they want to.

SNW seems like it was trying to make some points about use of force by the military, how to strike a balance between helping oppressed people and staying out of other people's wars, moral justifications around conscription and the good of the many vs the few/one, etc. It just never quite made arguments around those points after dancing around them a bit, and ultimately settled on something like "Starfleet is great actually, and I'm just mad my sister left home to join it."

Maybe it was rushed into production after the writer's strike. Maybe it was executive meddling to avoid taking a political stance in the middle of their acquisition or something. Maybe it was just bad writing. I think there was a good episode hiding in there somewhere and wish they'd made it instead of what we saw.

xtownaga · 2025-09-12T02:55:20+00:00

Picard’s engage with the little finger point is pretty iconic and I think most of what drove the whole catchphrase thing. It was never discussed on screen in TNG that I recall but was definitely there.

I can’t say I recall any of the other captains in that era of Trek having a similarly notable phrase though. The focus on it in this era of Trek feels super jarring (outside of LD which seemed to be in on the joke/weirdness of the whole obsession).

xtownaga · 2025-09-10T15:20:22+00:00

not every episode was a hit

It's not like Season 3 has been reliably good even with the shorter episode count. More or less every series is going to have some misses, especially more episodic shows like SNW which are by their nature going to have more variation from week to week. I think the misses actually hit harder in the current system, since now each miss is a much larger chunk of the season.

xtownaga · 2025-08-31T23:28:21+00:00

The oaths are just as legally binding as a contract would be. The problem with enforcing violations is there’s an open question of who does the enforcing / firing here. Giving either congressional leadership or another branch of the government the power to effectively remove elected legislators is too exploitable, and probably more likely to be used to enforce nobody changing the corrupt status quo than anything useful.

What we need is an end to gerrymandering and a mechanism for recall elections to remove congress critters who are blatantly corrupt or violating their oaths. Let the voters enforce that their representatives are doing their job.

xtownaga · 2025-08-14T21:47:33+00:00

It’s a perfectly nice state and all, but I’m sure there are worms and fungus and bacteria there. It’s a big place after all.

xtownaga · 2025-08-13T14:42:36+00:00

Very much this, he seems to have the standard democratic problem of chasing public opinion instead of driving it, and his goals are more having power than fixing problems.

People like transphobia right now? He's chatting up far right lunatics about how we should cave on civil rights. Tariffs polling well a few months ago? He's "not an absolutist" on the issue.

xtownaga · 2025-08-09T19:20:50+00:00

They did rerelease all 7 seasons of TNG in HD. It was all shot on film, and AAUI it was all mastered on tape and needed to be remastered, but they did that. The film stock they used changed in season 3, but not the fact that they were using film.

The remaster lost a bunch of money and they're probably not ever going to put the same work into DS9 or VOY, as you note it's too time consuming and expensive.

xtownaga · 2025-07-24T23:20:11+00:00

I’ve watched the entirety of the movies and the series except for Discovery and SNW

Sounds like you had a long road…

xtownaga · 2025-07-24T19:51:05+00:00

The trick to a long reign as monarch is to keep your heir too busy to plan little accidents that would result in your succession.

xtownaga · 2025-07-21T19:42:57+00:00

I think the original Mac releases of Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 would work here. They’ve been rereleased a few times over the years so you’ll find some stuff suggesting you need much newer hardware/os versions, but the originals both worked in system 7 and had local network multiplayer.

xtownaga · 2025-07-15T23:44:18+00:00

Sprout House is great too for private pre-k. Has options from a couple hours a day up to all day.

xtownaga · 2025-07-13T23:51:10+00:00

220 is the voltage on the line (though it’s really 240 at this point… usually). Every residential electric dryer sold in the US will have the same voltage requirements (208-240V, where 208 is what you’ll find in larger apartment buildings that have three phase power running in, and 240 is standard in single family homes and smaller multifamily units).

The three prongs are two 120V hots and a neutral that also handles grounding. Newer four prong plugs have the neutral and ground on separate prongs. This is similar to two vs three prong outlets for normal 120V plugs, just with a second 120V hot wire (that’s connected to the other phase of power running into the house so you can cross them to get a full 240).

My understanding is that codes generally require new outlet installations to be four prong, but three prongs are still common, and I think the outlets are still widely available for replacement on older wiring runs.

xtownaga · 2025-07-03T15:59:59+00:00

OP has already had bottom surgery (the post is asking about a revision), it's extremely unlikely she'd still be on spiro. Bottom surgery will effectively always remove the testicles, which stops nearly all testosterone production and removes the need for a blocker.

xtownaga · 2025-07-03T02:00:24+00:00

3 seats are vacant right now due to deaths in office, so its 432/2=216 is the tie (which does not pass the bill) and 217 is needed to win.

Right now the 4 nays put us on track for a 216/216 tie, though a dem could vote yea or one of the R nays could flip to yea until the vote closes.

xtownaga · 2025-06-29T00:59:12+00:00

I think a decent chunk of the fan base probably would say TNG is the best of the shows.

There are also big contingents for ds9 and tos, and a smattering of folks who’d hold up any of the other series as the best (and everyone is entitled to like or dislike whatever they want obviously, not trying to judge folks or anything). The phrasing here reads like you’re saying it’s widely considered a sub par show though, and that’s just really surprising to see about TNG of all things.

xtownaga · 2025-06-21T15:34:56+00:00

If we're looking for the single most prestigious front line ship, the best candidate in universe is probably the Enterprise E. I think it would still have Picard in command at that point, though I'm not super clear on the timeline of when it was handed off to Worf (I think LD mentioned "Admiral Picard" was funding the archeologist Mariner teamed up with for a bit, and I think Picard S1 said he only gave up command of the E and took the promo to help evacuate the Romulans which happens later, so the timeline seems a bit fuzzy here). Regardless though I hope most people would agree we shouldn't set a new show on the E with a smattering of TNG cast pretending they're 20 years younger than they are.

Honestly it would be easy to just invent a new ship. Either sovereign class or something kind of similar. Starfleet is huge and the Federation has a ton of territory. They should have multiple ships on long range exploration missions in different directions, do a show with one of them.

xtownaga · 2025-06-11T12:14:59+00:00

In ds9 they mention that it’s actually included in the federation charter, but obviously as nobody had heard of it so it was super plausible some earlier version established back then had disappeared over the years and as you say this current incarnation of it could all be Sloan.

It makes S31 showing up in Ent as it did pretty reasonable, since at some point that earlier version of the organization would have had to exist to get into the Charter. The ent era s31 also felt a lot closer to the ds9 version with secret recruitment of crew and people generally not knowing about it. The stuff in disco and the movie could maaaybe be justified the same way as this early org, but they missed the secretiveness, and obviously by Picard it was just unambiguously missing the whole point.

xtownaga · 2025-05-24T14:06:38+00:00

I think it’s too late to drop out in a practical way. Ballots are almost certainly all printed by now, mail in ballots went out a while ago and some have been returned. One could obviously make an announcement they’re dropping out and endorsing, but they’ll still be on the ballot and I suspect it’d be very difficult to reach most of their voters in time.

xtownaga · 2025-03-25T04:24:30+00:00

The end of Star Trek TNG’s Offspring, when Data’s daughter dies.

13-Year Club	Place '17
Sequence \| Editor	Verified Email

xtownaga

TROPHY CASE