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williams_482

@ williams_482 @startrek.website

Posts
53
Comments
156
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Spore drive?

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  • As others have hinted at, sharing a yes or no answer and pasting a link to a youtube video with no further context is not an adequate Daystrom submission. Citing a source is certainly acceptable, but your comment should make it's own self contained argument supported by those sources, not rely on users clicking through to an external site to understand what you are trying to say.

  • What are some things about the past people get wrong today?

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  • What are some things about the past people get wrong today?

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  • A bit of column A, a bit of column B.

    Yes, 50% child mortality skews life expectancy statistics heavily, but any 40 year life expectancy estimate is clearly filtering out at least some portion of childhood deaths. By our best estimates: of the 48% of people who survived age 10, slightly less than half were dead by 45. Of those who clear 45, less than half reach 65.

    Those early deaths aren't driven by "inferior physiology", but disease and malnourishment (as the previous commenter noted). It was possible to live into your 80s, but you had to be very, very lucky to pull it off.

  • What are some things about the past people get wrong today?

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  • Feudalism bad: yes and no. It meant everyone had a job and housing. Homelessness didn’t exist until the end of feudalism.

    There were absolutely homeless and destitute people in feudal societies. Quite a lot of them, really, although the individuals in question likely didn't live very long. We have many references to beggars from this period, as well as some insight into attempts to curtail them.

    Someone who finds themselves displaced from where they used to live can't just wander onto some lord's land and start farming. That land is already full of people who are producing just barely enough to feed themselves (after said local lord's taxes are accounted for). A typical peasant family has more labor available than is required to till their rather small allocation of farmable land, which itself is often insufficient to feed them. Any surplus labor is spent working land of one of the local "big men" to cover the gap. Supporting an additional person off the street, even one capable of putting in a good shift, is no easy task in this period.

    It's easy to romanticize the past from a great distance when looking at the problems of our present, and produce some wildly incorrect conclusions as a result. Feudalism (to the extent that this term refers to any specific system at all, scholars don't use it very much these days) was a deeply unfair system with a host of structural problems, and had far fewer safety nets for the unlucky members of society than any developed country has today.

  • Why I think Starfleet Academy takes place in 3191 and not 3195 as currently stated by Memory Alpha

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  • One of the big problems for 23rd century Discovery and SNW is that year zero on the TNG system seems to be in the early 2260s, during or after the events of those shows. If they wanted to maintain the familiar Stardate references in captains logs, etc, they had to fudge the numbers somehow.

  • Star Trek Social Club @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x01 "Kids These Days" & 1x02 "Beta Test"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    How does someone get a splinter on a starship?

  • Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x04 "A Space Adventure Hour"

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  • The "Riker Maneuver" blooper absolutely killed me.

  • Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Platinum Edition is free to claim on Epic

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  • Did they ever open up Civ VI's code the way they did for IV and V? Prior to VII coming out, they hadn't left any way for modders to do the kind of deep dive total conversion mods which happened with the older games.

  • [Old Post] How did Nog go from not literally being able to read to outranking Harry Kim?

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  • Harry never got promoted because the writers never figured out how to evolve his function on the show.

    This one is a bit of a copout, because Kim's official role as the ship's operations officer would absolutely have been appropriate for a higher ranking officer. It's the same job Data held as a Lieutenant Commander on the Enterprise; if anything, the strange bit is that it was given to a green ensign in the first place.

    Ultimately, the real explanation is a much sillier bit of bad writing. According to Garret Wang, quoted here:

    Kim was probed, beaten, tortured and held the distinction of being the first Voyager crew member to die and come back to life. What more does a guy have to do to get promoted to Lieutenant for frak’s sake? To add further insult to injury, other crew members such as Tuvok (Russ) and Paris were being promoted, demoted and then re- promoted throughout the seven-year run of Voyager.

    I’m not trying to be negative here; just saying it like it is. During the fourth season, I called writer/producer Brannon Braga and asked him why my character hadn’t received a promotion yet. His response? “Well, somebody’s gotta be the ensign.” Geez, thanks. Thanks for nothing.

    Why it was important that "somebody’s gotta be the ensign" is a mystery to me.

  • Modder behind the 'Swiss army knife of PC gaming' deletes their 20 year-old Steam account with anti-Valve manifesto: 'By the end of my bitter dealings with Valve… there was zero hope'

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  • I've been running steam on an unsupported OS (osx 10.13.6) for almost a year and a half now, and the only issue is a banner at the stop claiming that steam will stop working in 0 days.

    I don't remember what if anything I did to make this happen, but I've had no trouble buying, downloading, or playing games in that time.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • Lemmy does not currently have an equivalent to Modmail where a moderation team can all send or receive messages.

  • Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?

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  • Brighter lights

  • Potentially big lore to address in the remainder of Strange New Worlds regarding Klingons.

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  • I'll stand by the position that the Enterprise augment virus arc was an error, and the "explanation" for Klingon ridges is the same one you should use for the bridge of the Enterprise looking like it was cobbled together from plywood and plastic beads. This issue was best left to Worf's lampshade in DS9 Trials & Tribleations.

    It's really interesting which visual differences humans will accept unthinkingly and which we will demand answers for. The Klingon ridges thing comes up constantly, but I have yet to see anyone earnestly ask why all the characters in Lower Decks have huge eyes and unnaturally uniform coloration, or why hand phaser beams in TOS go so much more slowly than later phasers and why everyone agrees to stay really still while they are being fired.

  • Cyanide & Happiness - Random Comic Generator

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  • 15 April 2025

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  • Reading the caption before seeing the image definitely weakened today's comics for me.

    Captions of Far Side comics are often effectively punchlines, clarifying whatever weirdness was drawn in the comic. Reading the words and then seeing the image feels disjointed, and loses a lot of the "punch."

  • A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. This is what it looks like today

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  • It's because citrus at high concentrations kills earthworms. Citrus in compost in normal quantities relative to other compostables seems to be fine, but you shouldn't be trying to compost a huge pile of just pulp and orange peels in your back yard.

    As for why this worked here, I'm sure there are a whole lot of things that aren't earthworms living in a formerly rainforested spot in Costa Rica which can break that stuff down over 15 years.

  • The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind

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  • Nomadic people don't just wander around aimlessly, and there are big differences in how desirable different territory is for nomadic hunter-gatherer humans. The principle is the same as with nomadic pastoralists: your group has a territory which can sustain them when hunted on/gathered from/grazed/etc over the course of the year, and your group will wander within that space in a deliberate pattern. If some other group decides to "just move on to" your group's territory, hunting the animals and foraging the plants that your group knows they are going to need to survive the year, that's an existential threat to you. And you can't "just move on" yourself without wandering into the territory of yet more groups whose territory borders yours, and who will react violently to your presence for the same reasons.

    Given the choice between fleeing to who knows where and fighting who knows who for the privilege of moving, or staying right where you are and fighting for the land you know your group can survive on, you stay and fight.

    Humans spread out across the earth as the losers of these conflicts (those who survived, anyway) fled until they stumbled on new-to-humans territory, often displacing or eradicating groups of more "primitive" hominids they found there. This process continues until just about everywhere which humans can reach and which can support human life has humans in it. But expanding populations, the occasional natural disaster, and normal human frustration that their territory sucks while their neighbors have it great (which was often true; again, not all land is the same to a nomadic hunter/gatherer) meant that these conflicts were constantly reignited.

  • The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind

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  • There was organized violence deployed by groups of humans against other groups of humans long, long before anything we would recognize as warfare. Particularly brutal violence too, because the objective was not to conquer other people (something which only makes sense once agriculture is the dominant mode of sustinence), but to either drive off or exterminate a rival group so you can use their territory for yourself.

    And we don't even need to talk about people here: we have records of chimpanzees fighting small scale wars of harassment and extermination against neighboring groups.

    Pre-modern, pre-civilization, pre-aggriculture, pre-you-name-it human life was far more violent than what we deal with today.

  • A huge question regarding alternate timelines related to Picard.

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  • Regarding the future uniforms, the same uniforms appear in most portrayals of "future starfleet" during the TNG era, such as DS9 The Visitor. I don't believe they are meant to indicate a connection between alternate futures beyond being the next step for Starfleet uniform designs (although the uniforms shown for a similar time period in Picard turn out to be different anyway).

    Regarding your question more broadly, yes. And also no. Both, really.

    I'm not sure Q recognizes or cares about the distinction between spinning up an entirely bespoke simulated reality for Picard to do his thing in, versus altering the past such that branching timelines are created and shuttling Picard's consciousness between them before ultimately closing them off. Or whatever other myriad mechanisms an omnipotent being would have for triggering the events portrayed. Nor is there any real way for us the viewer or Picard the participant to distinguish between those things. What is real, what clearly matters both to Picard and to Q, is that Picard did pass a test, and that Picard remembers those events in a way which will influence his future actions and relationships.

  • Featured

    List of support/meta communities for each instance

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  • Sure. /u/williams_482

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    List of support/meta communities for each instance

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  • I still have a Reddit account and am willing to help people figure out Lemmy registration, but I do not moderate any active Reddit communities.

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x10 "The New Next Generation"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x09 "Fissure Quest"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x07 "Fully Dilated"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x05 "Starbase 80?!"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x04 "A Farewell to Farms"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x03 "The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel"

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x01 "Dos Cerritos" and 5x02 “Shades of Green”

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    "Author, Author" highlights the societal dangers of automatons which convincingly simulate consciousness

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Why was the genetic engineering research at Darwin Station in TNG 2x07 "Unnatural Selection" legal?

  • Brentford FC @feddit.uk
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    xG Map for Brighton vs Brentford

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    williams_482 @startrek.website

    xG Map for Brentford vs Luton

  • Brentford FC @feddit.uk
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Frank explains Hickey absence

    www.brentfordfc.com /en/news/article/first-team-aaron-hickey-brentford-injury-update
  • Brentford FC @feddit.uk
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    xG Map for Brentford vs West Ham

  • Daystrom Institute @startrek.website
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x10 "Old Friends, New Planets"

  • Brentford FC @feddit.uk
    williams_482 @startrek.website

    xG Map for Chelsea vs Brentford

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    williams_482 @startrek.website

    Brentford's anti-discrimination workshops: 'We have to prepare them... they will encounter it'

    theathletic.com /5001119/2023/10/27/black-history-month-brentford-anti-discrimination-workshop/
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    williams_482 @startrek.website

    xG Map for Brentford vs Burnley

  • Reddit @lemmy.world
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    /r/AskReddit Comments Per Day, Graphed