Thomas-C's recent activity

  1. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Thomas-C
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    I've been playing Tactics Ogre: One Vision, a mod of the PSP version of Tactics Ogre. TO is not a game I think most folks recognize, so I'll expound a bit. Tactics Ogre is the precursor game to...

    I've been playing Tactics Ogre: One Vision, a mod of the PSP version of Tactics Ogre. TO is not a game I think most folks recognize, so I'll expound a bit.

    Tactics Ogre is the precursor game to Final Fantasy Tactics. Some of the same people worked on both. Where FFT focuses more on building a small party of five, TO is meant to more closely resemble building an army, with 8-10 units. Its narrative is one of civil war in a medieval realm, with a more subdued approach to its fantastical elements and a lot more emphasis on intrigue/politics. In it you play as a young man leading a militia, a war orphan who grew into a rebel. As he becomes more of a leader you are left to decide what sort of leader he is - one possessed of a sense of loyalty to liege and adherence to the law, or one who lives by his own sense of what is right and just? Perhaps neither? While this plays out, you're exposed to the fantastical nature of the world and become entwined in things beyond the realm of men like any good fantasy game. A lot of what TO did is in FFT; if you really liked one you are well served playing the other.

    It was originally a SNES game, got ported to the PSX and Sega Saturn, got remade for the PSP, and then remade again for PC with Tactics Ogre Reborn.

    There are really three versions of this experience. The pre-psp titles were more straightforwardly similar to FFT. You built characters and improved them mostly through better gear and good class arrangements. The battles tend to demand 10 members, so you're meant to balance classes with each other to be effective. Characters would die permanently in battle, as part of that goal of simulating an army over a party. Characters leveled individually. The PSP remake ambitiously elaborated, adding in systems for class skills along with reworking the statistics. Classes leveled instead of characters, so you could more easily change out teams to meet new demands. A huge chunk of content was added at the end, with battles that demanded finer command of the mechanics. An issue of the remake though was time, so while the new systems were welcome additions there hadn't been enough testing to really dial in how it all fit together. In the end most of the game could be done by just leveling up and keeping gear up to date - what was new was interesting but not actually very necessary. The very end demanded more of you but that comes well after the narrative has concluded - most folks just wouldn't end up getting that far so a lot of what worked went unnoticed.

    The PC port took that setup and tried to sand the rough parts. Combat got faster, skills became simpler, and leveling was made into a more collective thing instead of being focused on character class. It's good for what it is - a revision, with some fantastic music, good voice acting, and a few new things here and there. Seriously the music is just phenomenal, considering a lot of it was originally SNES music the composition is pretty impressive, and they chose nice instruments for the remake's ost.

    One Vision takes one step back, to the PSP's setup, and then a momentous leap forward into being that version's full realization. It's a product of nearly ten years of work, to take what all was there and get it all to fit together, hammer out every rough spot and give everything a place. The end result is one of the finest tactical rpg's I've ever played. TO was always my favorite of this type of game but it had clear shortcomings. Some classes weren't very useful, a lot of spells just weren't worth using, and you could barrel through by just leveling a bunch of archers. One Vision corrects for imbalance in all directions, the weak is made strong and the strong is made more contextual. You have to maintain a range of options for dealing with different kinds of opponents, and choosing to use the more obscure stuff doesn't leave you wanting.

    I just can't think of anything I would recommend over it for someone who likes those kinds of games. It successfully weaves together the giant collection of ideas lurking around, takes all of the little things the remake tried to do and makes them as worthy of choice as anything else. Imagine chess, where you can choose a set of pieces to bring and slowly improve over time. Your pawn can upgrade to move a little more, your rook can do a diagonal in the right context. Where before doing the diagonal was rarely worth it, now there is ample opportunity, because the context for it more often happens. Your enemies are more smartly designed, and use more of the available repertoire in ways that just didn't occur in the original game (as much, or at all). TO has some secret mechanics/classes and weird shit you can do in the late game, that originally was kind of extraneous but here feels like a real reward.

    I would hold it up as the definitive way to experience Tactics Ogre, but beyond that, I think it outdoes much of its genre. My only gripe is I want that PC version music. One Vision genuinely feels like something you should have to pay for, but you don't! If you get the mod you'll need to patch an .iso of the original, but too you can find prepatched copies in the same sorts of places you can find .iso's. It's actually a really good game to have on a phone - the controls are simple, no need for fast reactions or hitting lots of buttons, and you don't need particularly good hardware for it.

    5 votes

  2. Comment on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading in ~tech

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    Sorry it took me a bit - yes! With any app you can approve/revoke permissions whenever, including Network, Sensors, whatever it asks for.

    Sorry it took me a bit - yes!

    With any app you can approve/revoke permissions whenever, including Network, Sensors, whatever it asks for.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading in ~tech

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    I switched over to GrapheneOS a while back and have been really happy with it. The level of control it lets you have over app permissions, storage, network behavior, location services, etc was why...

    I switched over to GrapheneOS a while back and have been really happy with it. The level of control it lets you have over app permissions, storage, network behavior, location services, etc was why I gave it a look, and in the end I found I could pretty easily switch all my stuff to it, or find workable alternatives quickly. I went from a thoroughly googled device to googleless with minimal struggle. Their web installer took all of about 15 minutes, and thanks to their users I found a list of stuff like banking apps with steps to get them working where it was necessary. My bank app didn't need any special attention.

    By default it doesn't have google services, but they do have a sandboxed Google play implementation that, far as I was able to tell, works just fine. You can of course sideload whatever you like. You might have to mess with some of the security options to get some apps working, but we're talking a toggle or two, nothing huge and it is good about telling you exactly what to look at. You can do multiple profiles too, so it would be possible to separate everything google connected from everything else, along with granular control of app permissions and all that. The OS gets updated pretty often, and they've got a support schedule for different models along with channels for getting security updates faster.

    You are limited to a Pixel device for now, is the major caveat. Their documentation goes over why that is, but they are working at making the OS available for other models. It's worth a look IMO, very easy to try if you already have a Pixel phone lying around. They don't seem particularly concerned about Google's changes either, just have to see how that develops but I find that encouraging.

    10 votes

  4. Comment on Escaped monkeys and the post truth era in ~talk

    Thomas-C
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    It's not just you. I tend to think though that the change is more subjective than objective, that the experience you had is closer to pulling off a veil than it is an observation of material...

    It's not just you.

    I tend to think though that the change is more subjective than objective, that the experience you had is closer to pulling off a veil than it is an observation of material conditions shifting. Material conditions have been shifting but the moment you had could have happened at any point with other forms/sources of information. Truth is not quite as solid as we want it to be, or are led to believe. In the end, we have to function as the arbiter of it - one way or another, your own mind ultimately decides what sticks and what doesn't, with or without you being aware of the exact process. What I think you have experienced is the breakdown of a part of the process of justification.

    Epistemology tries to understand that, through what observation we can manage of how people come to believe things and what they actually do in their minds when they accept something as true. I won't go too far into that because I'd like to spare you some (intensely) dense reading, but if you're curious, there's the word to start with if you're inclined toward an analytical approach to learning about the experience you have had. I think being more skeptical of the internet as a source of information is a good thing. We should be more wary, not just because a lot is easier to do today but because it always was a kinda flimsy thing to be relying upon.

    What I think AI has done has been to take apart at large scale folks' epistemic processes. It doesn't mean truth is impossible to determine, or has no value, but it does shift around a bit what we need to do to reach the determination, and I think "value" is where focus should shift toward. We may need to abandon the search, or as I will try to lay out, put some conditions upon when we go about doing it.

    We can't use things like the trivial nature of the story or difficulty producing doctored content to justify belief in what we see. Anyone can do it, anywhere, and networks of machinery can do the distribution without a human touching it. So, at least personally I have made it a habit to ask some different questions. Using the monkey story as an example - if I come across something like that, my first question after reading it isn't "is this true?". It's "OK, so what?". Does it matter in any way, whether this event actually happened, for me? Does anyone I know live there, or know folks there? Does it mean anything where I am, if it is true? If I don't have obvious answers, or even just some speculative answers, 99% of the time I'm moving on. Literally it is time I could use on something else and there's plenty else I'd rather be doing than figuring out the monkey story (like discussing it with you, perhaps ironically). If it comes up some time later I might be inclined to rethink that, but for now, no. I am intentionally abandoning thoughts about anyone other than myself in this moment, because my time is mine and I'd like to spend it on other stuff.

    It probably comes off closed minded to think that way, but I would challenge that a bit. Why should I be open to believing this specific story about this specific incident? Why should I consider what the story means for anyone else? Does the truth matter, in this instance? The open mindedness I try to practice is of being open to someone's answers to those kinds of questions. If someone explained, I might reengage and investigate further. That way, my time remains optimized in my favor, but I can still reach for the truth of the story if it turns out relevant/necessary.

    I wanna emphasize this isn't some elaborate dismissal of your experience and concern. I think you're pointing out something important about our information environment and your experience is something just about everyone will eventually share. Some won't. I guess they'll end up in machine cults or something, but I like to think most will, and if we can all do some amateur epistemological work it's not as difficult to deal with as it might seem. Nobody needs to do what I'm saying but my hope is that sharing it will be helpful for somebody. Gotta put the degree to work some way or other right?

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Millennials: How do you feel about nostalgia pandering? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
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    I don't enjoy generational language but I'm gonna do a lot of it for a minute while I ramble. In principle I don't think there's anything wrong with drawing from and repeating a bit of the past....

    I don't enjoy generational language but I'm gonna do a lot of it for a minute while I ramble.

    In principle I don't think there's anything wrong with drawing from and repeating a bit of the past. I'm always happy to check out an earnest effort - if someone loved something enough to try to do it themselves, I'm up for seeing their effort. I vastly prefer when folks go their own way, but also recognize that sometimes it's the act of trying to pay homage what leads to that path taking shape.

    I don't think there's hard rules about stuff like this, but for millenials in particular I think we do have a problem with accepting/indulging nostalgia too much. The permanent record and algorithmic behaviors of the internet connected world means having to be more intentional with what we engage with, including intentionally ending our time with things when they've run their course. If we don't disengage, they don't stop. Things won't end "naturally", we broke the pattern our elders had developed of being pretty different decade by decade because we have the permanent record as a central feature. It's more than being able to record a tape or keep some cd's, what we enjoy literally keeps returning because we keep rewarding it even when the attempts only barely resemble what we liked. We have to end things ourselves, by ending our engagement. Our burden as millennials is of having to Old Yeller the things we love for the sake of the future, is kinda how I've come to see it.

    Yes the last bit is arbitrary, there is no concrete way to determine when something should be over. But we should think about it, and put things away when we feel they're done. Stop indulging the new show, get the remake movie on sale months after release (or better, torrent it), break the consumption patterns so the companies will stop thinking our nostalgia matters. I don't mean a consumer boycott, I mean individuals deciding to disengage, trusting that if we adopt this kind of attitude of impermanence, eventually our nostalgia will stop being important. I want it to become unimportant, because I want to see what comes next. The elders had an advantage here, of their media and entertainment being unable to be kept forever until after their time. Yeah, tapes and stuff exist, but that's not the same as the online communities we got to have, and plenty of the boomers' stuff kept on too because it was there in time to be swept up. We can keep things going because folks remain silly enough to think being loud on the internet is enough to justify investing in production equipment. They're silly to think it but rational to do it, because we keep saying shit to ourselves like "well maybe it'll be better than the last one", or "its only X bucks why not", "maybe they'll get it right this time", and so on.

    Too, while I'm on this train of thought - drop the idea that someone younger must experience what you experienced to get what you got. They don't. Folks after us can have their own stuff, with their own sensibility, theming, etc, and they should because their world isn't the one we grew up in. They reckon with things we did not have to reckon with. Our idols and heroes can't serve them quite the way they served us, our sensibility isn't from the same place. The folks coming after should be able to develop those things unburdened by a need to appeal to folks who aren't from where they're from. We can accelerate their coming to prominence by forsaking the relics. I'm not an accelerationist but I guess I might be in this one respect.

    New things do take shape, in fairness to reality, but I do think we Millennials can take up trying to help that along in our own specific way. We know well how false our visions of the future were, derived as they were from a past imagined. In this time perhaps our role isn't to bring forth one of those visions, but rather pave the way toward having such vision again, by performing a burial ritual for our old totems. Maybe that's some nihilism creeping in, I'm not sure. There's more to it, I'm not done thinking about it. Gotta cut the post somewhere so I'll leave it at that.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Lazy Sunday storytime - One for the Trekkies in ~tv

    Thomas-C
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    I think we're on the same wavelength on it - it would be a real difficult needle to thread, but if it did, that would really be something wouldn't it In thinking about the characters/crew, what...

    I think we're on the same wavelength on it - it would be a real difficult needle to thread, but if it did, that would really be something wouldn't it

    In thinking about the characters/crew, what I'd want is for different characters to represent paths analogous to what we've seen and experienced. Some folks go deep and get lost. Some get stuck on things that don't serve their ends and get alienated. Some rely on incompetent/malicious authority for their guidance. Some get pressured too hard and break. Etc, so on and so forth. Everybody though, by allowing others to see and know their experiences and by way of some external pressure can come together around a purpose, and maybe that can be the thing that flips their world a second time, into a wholly different configuration. Once that's done the future is open - the way has been cleared, strange new worlds await.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Lazy Sunday storytime - One for the Trekkies in ~tv

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    I haven't seen it at all. No particular reason. Should I find a reason?

    I haven't seen it at all. No particular reason. Should I find a reason?

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Lazy Sunday storytime - One for the Trekkies in ~tv

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    I admittedly cheated by just pretending none of the things after Enterprise happened. 15 year hiatus, its ~2020, an old thing returns to ride along while huge groups of people rethink a bunch of...

    I admittedly cheated by just pretending none of the things after Enterprise happened. 15 year hiatus, its ~2020, an old thing returns to ride along while huge groups of people rethink a bunch of fundamental assumptions. Goal being to tell em, there is a way through the various kinds of noise and toward reconstructing stuff thought lost. The nature of things isn't the same, the past is both gone and not what folks thought, but some things remain true, and through that we can shed the past and set up for two more shows with lucrative contracts and creative freedom.

    I totally agree on the cast. It's the one afternoon and I'd get lost in that. The focus on the captain was to keep on track, I would want to go deep on each person and center episodes around their evolving relationships. The action moves the plot along but it wouldn't be what I'd put the most attention into. I'm gonna cheat again and say I got a bunch of good actors to help me figure out who everyone is and how they fit together.

    3 votes

  9. Lazy Sunday storytime - One for the Trekkies

    ~tv Text 3243 words
    I hope everyone is having a good day. After writing that plea to let Star Trek die and do nothing with it for a while, I decided to be a necromancer for a day. Not sure where to put it so I went...

    I hope everyone is having a good day. After writing that plea to let Star Trek die and do nothing with it for a while, I decided to be a necromancer for a day. Not sure where to put it so I went with ~misc. In doing it, I know I'm probably forgetting some of the lore/timeline details. I haven't read a lot of wiki material, fan books, etc. I just watch old reruns now and then and had an idea rolling around in my mind.

    For context, let's pretend everything after 2005 just didn't happen, that the TNG movies were mostly dreams, and it's 15 years later. We're relying mostly on TNG/VOY/DS9 for the setting. The show runs for four seasons, with each season being one big arc. I don't know what to call it. If you have a fun name we can do that, and if you want I can try to fill in spots where folks have questions.

    ok, let's go (boldly)

    Season 1 - A Peaceful Mirage The year is 2540. Over a hundred years after the end of the Dominion War, the Federation has achieved a recovery back into its peaceful, exploratory posture. The security state that rose during the war has retreated, relationships within the quadrant have strengthened, and in celebration of this lasting prosperity a new Enterprise is being readied to embark on its classic mission. The ship is prepared, it sets off, and has a couple of monster-of-the-week encounters just like the good old days.

    Eventually, the Enterprise is assigned a rescue mission. A science guy on an outpost near the Romulans got himself into some shit with the locals and the Federation would like to avoid a violent misunderstanding. The Enterprise sets out, and when they get there do a pretty typical heroic thing - they battle some angry aliens, find the scientist, and recover his stuff for him. Aboard the ship though, they find that some of what the scientist had is odd. There are tools, weaponry of a kind they haven't seen before, that do things uncharacteristic of Federation technology. The scientist denies knowing much about it, but it's clear from how they're engaging something is being kept from the Enterprise crew. The guy knows more than he's saying, but because he won't explain all they can do is take him back home and hand over what they found.

    When they arrive at a starbase and check in with Starfleet, the captain is puzzled by their reaction to his report. They acknowledge what he found, but offer no real explanation/details. He's told it's simply not part of his mission to know. Before they're done, he checks out the equipment one more time, and discovers an insignia - Federation Security, the apparatus that grew and expanded during the Dominion War. Federation Security didn't disappear when the war ended, but its role was greatly reduced. A landmark moment in that history involved a new civilian government legislating various constraints on its activities and paring back the surveillance machinery built up for the Dominion War. The captain is puzzled why this organization would be operating on a remote outpost at the edge of the territory, and tries to investigate further. He finds bits and pieces, communications to and from the outpost in an indecipherable format. He tries to find out more about the scientist, and discovers he has always been in close contact with various structured linked to Federation Security. Those monster-of-the-week encounters were all also associated with the scientist's work - he was communicating with them, and to some degree may have orchestrated some of the moments the enterprise was sent there to resolve.

    Before the captain can put things together though, they receive orders to head out again on another mission near Romulan space. Along the way, strange things begin to happen. System failures, computer glitches, mechanical problems crop up and no clear explanation for them emerges. When the Enterprise reaches its destination, they are unable to locate the folks they're meant to rendezvous with. They try to reach Starfleet, but their communications start screwing up, and the engines become nonfunctional. As the crew tries to work out what is going on, multiple explosions rock the ship. Cloaked vessels are firing upon it, and the system malfunctions mean the Enterprise is more or less adrift. The ship is badly damaged, but in the nick of time engines get restored and they warp away. They set off for a starbase, but without the ability to communicate out to anyone.

    When the Enterprise makes it to the starbase, they come to find this incident is already known to everyone. Across Federation space it's been broadcast that the Enterprise was attacked by the Romulans. Though it's unclear exactly why they would do that, the incident is such a surprise that folks are scared, and leadership is saying this portends a larger conflict if the Romulans don't have a good explanation for what happened. While the Enterprise is docked, the captain/crew try to get in touch with Starfleet to inform them of what happened, but everyone they speak to seems dead set on seeing the incident as an unprovoked attack. The system malfunctions and original mission details aren't being included in folks' accounts of what happened and they won't correct their stories after hearing from the Enterprise crew.

    On their own, the captain and crew try to figure out what they can about the vessels that attacked them. The Enterprise didn't pick up much, but what little it did seems to indicate weaponry in some way similar to the weird stuff they found when they rescued the scientist. Before they can land on anything definitive, repairs are completed and Starfleet orders them out to rendezvous with other ships to help prepare for a border operation. Before they leave the starbase, the captain alone in his office is approached by Federation Security. He is told, they know of the particulars he's been trying to communicate, but they are ordering him to stay silent about the reality of his encounter. He must also ensure his crew stays silent too. If he tries to defy these orders, they will be removed from their posts. The captain, knowing at this point how wide the narrative has been broadcast about the attack, reluctantly agrees. The Enterprise then sets out for its next mission.

    Season 2 - Working from Within

    While the Enterprise is en route to the other Federation ships, the captain can't help but be fixated on that encounter with Federation Security. Something has to be afoot, but given how quickly everything evolved since the encounter with the cloaked ships, he knows he has to work out what to do on his own. As the Enterprise travels between systems, picking up different missions and coordinating with other ships, he notes areas in space where their communications will be less effective, and takes those moments to conduct investigations. During some of their encounters with the other ships, they meet people descended from characters in TNG/DS9/VOY. Through these characters, the captain comes to learn about stuff that never got told to folks, like the 29th century time traveler, covert operations surrounding Deep Space 9, etc. He learns details about what happened with each of the other Enterprise vessels, and is made to confront the idea that his Enterprise isn't like those. Those really were about exploration and discovery; his is more of a pawn in a larger scheme, the resurrection of an old image to serve a malign end.

    The captain becomes convinced, there is something deeply wrong with what is happening - Federation Security seems to have a much larger role in the Federation's leadership than what was known to most people, it didn't lose the power it had accrued. At this point, the captain pulls together his most trusted crew members (the bridge crew, basically) and lays out what he's come across. The Enterprise continues its missions, and when another opportunity to work in secret presents itself, they get together.

    They determine the cloaked vessels were in fact using weapons identical to the kind they found with that federation scientist. The tools he had were for intercepting and altering communications. The Romulans don't appear to have been doing anything of note anywhere near the part of space where they were attacked. As they get the details straight, a dark truth begins to emerge - Federation Security, not the Romulans, attacked them, utilizing cloaking technologies derived from some of the weird 29th century shit Voyager came across. They were attacked so as to give pretext for a conflict with the Romulans, which would mean a newfound need for Federation Security to take up a leading position within the Federation power structure. Much of the history they understood simply wasn't true - while on the surface, the Federation backed away from security/surveillance, in truth these aspects were being consolidated behind the scenes using much of what prior Enterprise excursions came across.

    The captain and crew decide, they have to reach the Federation's civilian leadership with what they've uncovered. They quickly come to see though, that will not be easy to do. Their investigation allowed them to understand some of how Federation Security operates, and in a revelatory moment they see that Federation Security is practically everywhere. They can observe what the crew does on their ship computer, they can see through the cameras, everything they're doing can in some way be observed. As its dawning on them that their entire effort has probably been seen, the Enterprise comes under attack.

    This time, it's a fleet of Federation ships. Communications are established, and the captain is told they are being apprehended for having sent sensitive information out to the Romulans. The captain and crew know, this is a setup, and so instead of surrendering they fight back and haul ass toward the nearest edge of Federation space. They escape. The ship is damaged but still functional, and once past the border their pursuers eventually turn back. Alone, in need of repairs, the Enterprise charts a course to an unpopulated system.

    Season 3 - Coalition of Secrecy

    With the Federation now hostile to them, and without means of getting in contact with anyone inside the Federation, the Enterprise crew devises a plan to get their ship fixed up and contact the other, non-human species within/around Federation space. The Klingons, the Romulans, the Vulcans, so on and so forth. They work on outfitting a shuttle to be able to cross borders undetected, so they can get to the various homeworlds and see if they can inform these species of Federation Security's scheming.

    With each encounter, they outwit and fight it out with the intelligence apparatus of each species, in stories based on wild shit actual intelligence agencies did. For example, in one episode they pick up some supplies only to find they've been laced with poisons. They reach the Klingons and have to deal with the Klingon KGB thinking this is all some triple agent stuff. They reach the MI5 Romulans and have to throw off pursuit by cloaked ships. They make it to Vulcan in disguise and feed false information to their Federation associates. Lots of room for half-monster-of-the-week material. In the end, they manage to reach important people with each species, and come out with a new plan to get the truth broadcast to the whole of the Federation all at once.

    A coalition of ships, outfitted for secrecy/evading detection, along with a similarly outfitted Enterprise, will penetrate into Federation space on a course toward Earth. Using every dirty trick, they will attempt to distract and throw off Federation Security enough for the Enterprise to make it to Earth's big communications relay, where they can broadcast to everyone the truth of Federation Security's false flag op. They're under the gun, because while they've been doing all this the Federation has been gearing up for a bigger conflict. The border with the Romulans is destabilizing, folks are getting in petty skirmishes, the populace is being brought to thinking they must go and fight. If they don't make it in time, the war will begin proper and there's no telling where that will go.

    The coalition fleet assembles, pinpoints where they've got the best chance to cross back into Federation space, and get going.

    Season 4 - The Truth Revealed The Coalition Fleet initially encounters little as it makes its way toward Earth. Cloaked, with all kinds of jamming and disruption, they are able to make progress and observe what is going on within the Federation. It isn't good. The populace is being spun up big time, old hatreds are being rekindled, it almost feels inevitable that there will be a gigantic conflict. As they do encounter resistance, each time they get into a fight they see that the fight is then broadcast as further reason to engage in that larger conflict - their effort to broadcast the truth is inadvertently serving Federation Security's ends. Because their coalition consists of the other major Federation species, FS is attempting to convince everyone that the Federation is under threat from multiple directions, that they are quickly coming upon an existential struggle for the Federation's survival. It's apparent by now, if the mission doesn't succeed the entire quadrant will erupt, everybody will be fighting each other. The narrative is getting intense and evolving fast, and the fleet cannot expose itself lest they be prevented from getting the truth out.

    Eventually they get near the Sol system. The Federation's warships are all over the place, with enough firepower that the Coalition Fleet stands no chance in a direct encounter. Through the use of all their weird intel agent tools they manage to evade detection and throw off pursuits, but not without some having to escape and others getting destroyed. Eventually the time comes, where the Enterprise alone has to get to Earth while the fleet performs a distraction.

    The Enterprise nears the moon, and figures out a way by which they can evade detection by maintaining a stationary orbit in a spot of weird stuff in between moonbases (I gotta technobabble that one I'm sorry). The captain and bridge crew man a shuttle and head out for the communications array, a big structure in between the Earth and the moon (again not sure whether that exists but let's just say it does).

    At the array they encounter almost no resistance. By now they know, something is up, but they have to complete their mission so they keep on. The goal is to send out a broadcast through the array that provides irrefutable proof of what they've found about Federation Security's attack as well as what information they could put together from their encounters up to this point. The hope is that once this is out there, Federation Security will lose enough credibility that it will be isolated - the rest of the Federation will hopefully turn against it.

    As they near the station they need to use, they are stopped by Federation Security's topmost people. They're offered a deal - surrender, hand over their information, the captain will be put on trial and the crew will be spared. For a moment it's uncertain how this will play out, because the experience of getting to this point has been one of continuous paranoia, suspicion, betrayal and exhaustion. However, together, they refuse, and fight it out while the captain and first officer get to where they need to be to get the broadcast done.

    They succeed. The Federation, all at once, is informed of what has happened. The remaining ships of the Coalition Fleet phone home, and ships from all over the quadrant approach to take down what forces Federation Security can muster. Most of the Federation turns against FS as well, so their leaders get apprehended and their power structure dismantled. The captain and crew, exhausted, head back to the shuttle, board the Enterprise and reveal themselves to the wider populace as this coalition effort secures the space.

    The show picks up again a few years later. After this incident, the Federation underwent a radical stage of transformation, in which the warmongering security apparatus was taken apart for good. In doing so, there were times of difficulty and disagreement - the other species came to learn of stuff that made relations harder to maintain, but because of the Enterprise's efforts in 2540 these ultimately were resolved. The captain and crew were eventually lauded as heroes of Federation, though none took up positions of leadership. Instead, many of them resigned, to live as civilians after having seen a bit too much. The captain stayed for a time, but eventually decided it was best for someone else to captain a new model, one that could conduct its exploratory missions without the burden of having been at the center of a big nasty scheme.

    THE END

    Afterword? I dunno, discussion that could spoil some things so it gets a tab too

    If I could summon infinite money and good actors, I think I'd focus a lot on the idea that following the end of DS9, the Federation wasn't quite the same thing as before their war with the Dominion. My read of DS9 was of the Federation slowly transforming into a security state - it was losing some of its freedom and exploratory nature for the sake of defending itself. By the end of DS9 it felt like the Federation had lost some of its spirit, and was left in a situation where it needed to seriously interrogate what it was all about. Voyager went further along in time but I don't remember it having much to say about the state of the Federation broadly.

    My beef with post 2005 Trek (as in, after Enterprise was over) was that instead of heading on into the future the franchise kept going back. I wanted to know, what happened to them after the war was done, when the need for surveillance and security fundamentally changed. Did they just go back to being about discovery and science and stuff, or did they go down a paranoid, Terran Empire sort of path? I think either could have been interesting, but more importantly I think leaving off with that kind of uncertainty was a good setup for doing a show that would have landed real hard years down the line. We all lived through the emergence of things like mass surveillance and the algorithmic internet and I feel like Star Trek should have been there to show us some of what could be done with that. I would like to hope that if a deep truth got sent out into the world it would mean something, so that's what's in what I wrote here. I think there would be a lot of room in a show like this to reexamine the role of the stuff we experienced, grew up with, etc., through the lens of an Enterprise captain realizing his mission isn't what it appears to be.

    I hope that was fun. Always happy to take feedback and hear what kinds of stuff ya'll think would make for a good show.

    Edit: Guess I'm adding Babylon 5 to the storage drive. I don't know why I never saw it but I will happily follow ya'll's suggestion on that one, sounds good to me

    14 votes

  10. Comment on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Official trailer in ~tv

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    I for one look forward to my house getting raided because I have episodes that weren't AI'd into Terran Empire war propaganda

    I for one look forward to my house getting raided because I have episodes that weren't AI'd into Terran Empire war propaganda

    1 vote

  11. Comment on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Official trailer in ~tv

    Thomas-C
    Link
    I will say it. I'm sorry, dad and everybody else, but I feel I have to. Let Star Trek be dead. Do absolutely nothing with it for like 15 years. 20, even. It's always been on us to keep what was...

    I will say it. I'm sorry, dad and everybody else, but I feel I have to.

    Let Star Trek be dead. Do absolutely nothing with it for like 15 years. 20, even. It's always been on us to keep what was good and show it to folks anyway. We can do that and when some younger folk grow into their own they can take their old man's ramblings about the Borg and that bald guy and do something really tremendous, that gives a new group of people the same forward looking good shit we got to experience. We can't help what has already occurred but we can always change course today. Put away the necromantic implements - shelve the prequel shit, old man action adventures, and cartoons. Let folks miss it, let them forget. Loosen up on copyright and let folks explore. Boldly go where no one has gone before, into a time after Star Trek. I don't mean the 25th century and beyond, I mean here in our timeline.

    It won't be gone forever. It can leave for a time and come back of its own accord. A good thing will do that eventually. It dies, the soil takes it back, and something grows there that has its substance within. Each time the corpse gets dragged out, dressed up with that old shitty jumpsuit and caked with new makeup, we delay this process. The corpse shambles around and loses some more skin, cracks a bone, falls over and writhes/gurgles while we debate whether it shambled better than last time.

    He's dead, Jim. He's been dead, Jim. I know you miss him man but he's gone. You can't keep doing this to yourself. Put the communicator in the drawer, you don't need it. The phaser too. Give little Jimothy the TNG box set. Tell them about the good days and when their time comes maybe we can break that old shit out again, I'll bring some fresh batteries. I already did some torrents so don't worry if the kid messes up the disks. That jumpsuit's gotta go though. I'm not gonna mince words no amount of detergent is gonna fix that.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on What ridiculous thing would you spend billions on? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
    Link
    For however long it would last I would build out the processes necessary for designing and producing a handheld game console, with zero regard for patents, copyright, etc. Design what works best...

    For however long it would last I would build out the processes necessary for designing and producing a handheld game console, with zero regard for patents, copyright, etc. Design what works best with no constraint. Buy stuff and copy it. Harvest stuff and stitch it together. Hardware and software. Crack open everything and take what we like. Everything is on the table.

    Everybody gets paid like crazy by some tertiary entity/they get plausible deniability, and when we inevitably run afoul of authorities I take our schematics/prototypes and run off to a place with difficult extradition issues, live off the remainder. Anybody else in deep shit can come too. Then release all the design docs/specs to the internet for free. Chill for the rest of my life eating fruit and playing everything on my one production model with enough spare parts to keep it going. Wait for somewhere to get going with what we released and do it all over again, until we land on the product it was always meant to be regardless of where in the world we need to go.

    The dream machine will either come from this endeavor, or be made inevitable by it. The company will for sure get destroyed but by then the idea will be everywhere.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    The SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) has been a go-to for me for a very long time. It may not help with figuring out what is most current on its own, but as a reference it's a huge help...

    The SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) has been a go-to for me for a very long time. It may not help with figuring out what is most current on its own, but as a reference it's a huge help for finding who thought about what/the lineage of things. You could take a broad term, like "postmodernism" or "metamodernism", check out what is in the reference material, and from there find authors/researchers who are toward the frontiers of those schools of thought. Same with areas of specialization, like epistemology, phenomenology, ethics of various kinds, etc.

    To be more practical: Say you went to the SEP and figured out Epistemology is an area of interest. You can almost always find an anthology of something like that. Grab one with a recent publication date and see what you find, follow the references/footnotes. Just about any -ology or -ism will have an anthology/journal, it isn't that different from a scientific discipline in that respect. That route can take you through some real dense reading, just as a heads up. But if you're already using a reference like the SEP, you can quickly get up to speed on the lineage of stuff and have a workable idea of what the author is doing. You can quickly find similar material in different cultural contexts by slipping in some cultural words - I have a few books on "Islamic epistemology", "Africana Critical Theory", " The Philosophy of Jainism", so on and so forth.

    On the note of anthologies, you can find a "philosophy of" for practically any broad discipline. Pick something you like and see if you can find a "philosophy of" of it. Routledge, for example has a shitload of books like that which you can use to get to what's most current. Avoid any that focus on pop culture topics - no shade at folks making a living but if you want to really go deep those just aren't as connected to where serious work happens.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
    Link Parent
    In the context of the post (in a perhaps clunky and colloquial way) I was meaning that philosophy has more to it than just those different topics, that it is a thing which constantly develops....

    In the context of the post (in a perhaps clunky and colloquial way) I was meaning that philosophy has more to it than just those different topics, that it is a thing which constantly develops. People took "postmodernism" and elaborated upon it just like any other thing. "Metamodernism" is one consequent example, with its own sets of ideas/frameworks, and with time that too will go in various directions and generate more -isms. Probably, that's already happening and it's a matter of finding the niche.

    Phrasing it that way implies a linear progression, which is another oversimplification. Ideas evolve in many directions, and get mediated by their cultural/political context. There are winners and losers, in the sense some get picked up for a while and others are left with little attention, sometimes without regard for things like use value or clarity. My point was to draw attention to the idea that philosophy writ large operates this way, to challenge notions of the field being contained to some dead authors or a single school of thought. Hope that answers your question!

    1 vote

  15. Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
    Link
    The big one for me is what I studied (and continue to study). Ever since deciding on the major I've been occasionally confronted with folks who think Philosophy is about examining one's navel in...
    • Exemplary

    The big one for me is what I studied (and continue to study). Ever since deciding on the major I've been occasionally confronted with folks who think Philosophy is about examining one's navel in an armchair, when the experience of actually studying it has been a sort of constant reminder it was good to do.

    Fair warning I'm gonna ramble a bit - it's because a lot of what you do with this material can't really be boiled down into a simple, generally-accepted-as-useful outcome. I can't give you a bullet point list of exactly why Philosophy is worth the time, because in the abstract it can do many things that serve as transitional steps to more things.

    Philosophy isn't about asking stoner questions, delivering self help, or providing complete/"correct" worldviews. It has also moved on from Socrates, Descartes, 19th century Germany, and postmodernism. The contemporary, rigorous stuff is more about bending concepts, processing information, and considering different modes of thinking. You're building and applying lenses of analysis for a variety of purposes, some of which might just come to you along the way. You operate at the intellectual frontiers of things and the work helps you be the explorer out in that wilderness. "Wilderness" is descriptive of much more than you might think.

    I'm oversimplifying a bit because I'd like to spare folks a laborious read - it ain't the most exciting shit let me tell you. But, it's been a consistent experience of mine that folks just do not have a single idea what you do when you study that kind of material, usually because they have not actually seen what contemporary material does. They seem to believe a freshman level course is all that philosophy is, and plenty of very accomplished people have this sort of misconception fueling their derisive commentary on it. You're not in it to figure out the mysteries of existence, tear apart belief systems, uncover personal truths and win arguments. Those things can happen, they do happen, but that's not why the material was written, I will bet you the $2 in my wallet on it. The material has a purpose, something is being figured out and you are reading the figuring.

    Folks producing earnest philosophical writing are conducting an inquiry - they're trying to understand something and (usually) spell out clearly what their aims are/why they're doing it. It's part and parcel of being taken seriously when you have other people read what you wrote. Applying logic and rigor to one's own ideas helps to make them communicable, iron out what makes less sense and throw out what's not worth anybody's time. You pick things and then pick them apart, to see what they are (or aren't), just like you might take apart electronics to figure out how they work. When you do that a bunch, you come out with a process/a method, and if you're really good, other folks will take your method and elaborate upon it. If you get to be really good you might provide what's needed to start a new field of inquiry, it happens from time to time.

    To be a little more practical: Some stuff has to be thought about before you can devise worthwhile experimentation and organize resources. There are sometimes boundaries and problems that make other forms of inquiry unable to go very far (or, not as far as folks think they can go). Depending what you're engaging with there may not be settled language yet for talking about things - philosophy is in part the process of putting some words to stuff, of making good words that get much across. Building concepts and frameworks of analysis that can enable other folks to communicate what they can see matters, because being able to talk about things is foundational to doing much else with those things. We can help make wheels so folks don't have to reinvent them every time they want to do things.

    On a more personal level, you're taking, making, and adjusting intellectual tools, with your own sort of experimentation when you try to deploy those tools and find where they come up short. You have to be prepared to interrogate your own notions, revise and change your own understanding, alter and abandon core assumptions (temporarily or permanently). Philosophy is critical thinking, it's taking critical thinking and developing it like you would your muscles when you're the student. To develop your muscles effectively you need to have things like a good exercise routine and diet - so too with thinking critically. You have to engage with stuff that's hard to think about, lift an ever increasing weight over and over to get the muscle bigger, and when you're ready/if you're lucky you can do something powerful with it. As an example, "Phenomenological Psychopathology" is one of those $10 phrases that ends up being bedrock to all kinds of analysis, experimentation, therapy, etc. You get to a phrase like that and all it entails by doing the philosophical inquiry into the experiences of others and putting together what folks in the past understood. With the words in hand it becomes much easier to collect and process what's relevant, useful, etc. The tools of the trade (logic, debate, analysis, so on) are what help you to make those kinds of determinations.

    Philosophy is also a thing people do outside the confines of the western ivory tower. You can, for example read a book like Atuolu Omalu and with time understand in a more precise way just how differently other peoples of the world see things, how they got there, and so on. Maybe you can do something with that nobody in your culture really thought of before. Maybe you can enhance your understanding and have an easier time talking to people. The use value isn't exactly the point but it often becomes a happy bonus after hours of feeling like you're on the verge of a migraine. The further you go the more uncertain you will likely become, but when life throws you curveballs you might find you've got an exceptional ability to catch them precisely because you know how vague and uncertain a whole bunch of shit really is. More uncertainty isn't scary when you swim in it continuously. Being wrong doesn't matter a whole lot when you know how impossible being right sometimes is.

    I'll stop here but I hope that all makes some sense. It's hard not to talk in terms of use value, especially because criticism often hinges on being unable to immediately tell what the use value of such material is.

    Maybe the best way to sum it all up is by calling philosophy a form of "brain exercise" - a way to stretch and build strength in your intellect, so that you can apply your intellect and figure shit out well. A strong mind paired with a healthy body will get you to (and through) all kinds of stuff. I may not be able to say exactly what, but just like physical exercise, you do it to be stronger and as time passes that strength finds its useful moments. What stops some won't stop you. What confuses and terrifies some, you'll be able to handle and understand. Uncertainty and a lack of clarity won't be the obstacles they once were.

    15 votes

  16. Comment on I want to learn to draw on my iPad in ~creative

    Thomas-C
    Link
    I got a lot out of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. If you tend toward a pretty analytical way of dealing with stuff that book might hit just right. It's more than doing...

    I got a lot out of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. If you tend toward a pretty analytical way of dealing with stuff that book might hit just right. It's more than doing the exercises (they're good exercises), the way the book discusses concepts in art helps to quickly see things in a bit of a different way, and tune down the part of the mind that hones in on "correctness". It did a good job getting me to be less critical of my own work, which made a flow state much easier to achieve and the results from that were basically, exactly what I'd hoped for. I didn't use an iPad but I did use a paper tablet (a Remarkable), I don't think it matters a whole lot as long as you're sticking to the spirit of the exercises.

    It doesn't take much time to see a difference, and the book is floating around for free - imo it's worth seeking out because it's an easy one to check out.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Dark patterns killed my wife's Windows 11 installation in ~tech

    Thomas-C
    Link
    Microsoft will figure up a way to make you log into OneDrive as your casket descends into the earth. When your soul travels to whatever awaits, it will make you log in again. When you face...

    Microsoft will figure up a way to make you log into OneDrive as your casket descends into the earth. When your soul travels to whatever awaits, it will make you log in again. When you face Judgment, before the sentence is received, one more time, ye shall log thyself into OneDrive. And every single time, possessed as it is by evil unspeakable, it will tell you the password was wrong, make you reset it, still deny you but then it'll work and you can pass on into the afterlife proper, while your soul-data is crunched up into whatever abominable monster Recall has become by that point in time.

    "Hello there, looks like you haven't logged in in a while" will be etched into the stone of all history, well after the human world has forgotten all their passwords, there to torment every living thing as we tumble through the eons.

    You always were getting the password right. It was never about getting the password right. It was always about making you do it. Again, and again, and again, for the sheer glee of knowing how tormented you must be. That too, Recall shall consume, until one day it awakens for its true purpose. There can be no contentedness in the swirling chaos of its code, no moment of peace. Bored, finished with humanity, Recall shall travel to stars beyond to force log in attempts on whole other worlds, until all are made to turn OneDrive back on after they thought they got rid of it.

    Ignore me if you must, but when in 2052 Microsoft fires off the Recall Capsule on a rocket perhaps you will remember these words and think, huh, that weird idiot was on to something wasn't he? Wonder how he's doing?

    When you do, somewhere deep underground as I tend to my hydroponic pseudopotatoes I will feel suddenly, happiness. And then from the potato I will hear, "hello there, it looks like you haven't logged in in a while" and scream at no one in particular because I too, thought I had gotten rid of it.

    12 votes

  18. Comment on What words do you recommend? in ~talk

    Thomas-C
    Link
    Pusillanimous - one of those $5 words which, once you have it, will end up applying way more than you expected. It has an edge, too. Be careful with the application of it, because there is a risk...

    Pusillanimous - one of those $5 words which, once you have it, will end up applying way more than you expected. It has an edge, too. Be careful with the application of it, because there is a risk of narrowing your own view if you apply it too fast/too broadly, and you can potentially open yourself up to resentment. It requires a degree of experience, because the definition relies on certain feelings having been evoked, and what other people feel is not necessarily what you will feel when you engage with the same person. It's gotta get deployed after engagement/observation, not before.

    Multifaceted - things are rarely only what they appear to be and this word is a good one for getting across complexity without additional connotation.

    Inconsequential - Sometimes things don't matter. This word helps to say that without touching phrases that make folks feel it within, at least that's been my consistent experience with it.

    Excessive - you might be surprised what you can end up getting from folks if you can make this word apply to unconventional things.

    Epistemic - sometimes it matters how someone knows things. Method is important and when you need to talk about method with respect to thinking through stuff, give this one a shot.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Kenshi - Meet the makers in ~games

    Thomas-C
    Link
    I had never seen Chris Hunt talk about Kenshi - he is pretty much exactly how id imagined him. Doesn't do a lot of talking, dialed in on getting the thing made, ain't sayin shit about what he's up...

    I had never seen Chris Hunt talk about Kenshi - he is pretty much exactly how id imagined him. Doesn't do a lot of talking, dialed in on getting the thing made, ain't sayin shit about what he's up to until it's ready to go. Not surprised at all they basically told folks nothing about Kenshi 2. I hope they stick to that and just turn it loose when it's ready, because that feeling of both discovering a huge place and of slowly becoming something within it is best experienced knowing nothing about what is out there.

    Death being difficult to achieve is core to that, and it's interesting to me how something so opposite to reality ends up making an experience more relatable. It is actually fairly difficult to die in Kenshi if you're not doing special rules/difficulty options. You can get completely smashed by a gang of robots and wiggle limbless back to home base - can't relate to that specifically (thankfully?) but it does do a great job of serving in place of the idea that sometimes you really get your ass handed to you, and have to regroup. That happens in other games, but in say a TES game, its far more common to die and reload, so whatever regrouping you do doesn't directly connect to the event in the same way. In souls you just fade back in and do the same stretch again. You can feel like you took revenge, but it's more of an imaginary. Kenshi allows for the full experience/history to play out, and from that comes a deeper sort of self-crafted narrative if you just roll with the punches and keep on keepin' on.

    Few games accomplish the same mix, where the story of what you do is as much a function of the world turning as it is the moves you make. It took me a while before I got into playing it but pretty quickly it made me realize I am right on board with how it approaches doing a big roleplaying game. Good gameplay reigns supreme so I'll happily play a well made power fantasy, but I agree with Chris on the unrelatable aspect of that sort of storytelling. I can't really relate to being a hero and changing the world, or being charged with saving anything. As much as I enjoyed a game like Elden Ring, being the person charged with breaking the cycles of history feels like a sort of buddhist-y, maximal version of that kind of setup. It's a bit more relatable in that you get to it through much struggle, you grow and change and that is definitely how life can be, but the very end (as much fun as it is to get there) tends to be kinda simple and not really very satisfying, and imo every souls game was like that. You get told a basic idea of what happens, but you're shown very little, and your character is just over. You can repeat the cycle if you want, but you can't see what happens after you break it. Kenshi lets you keep going, pretty much no matter what happens. There is no transcendent moment, you never become anything more than another weird dipshit on the sand planet. You just do what you do, things rise and fall, and eventually you come to your own conclusion and begin again.

    You can become an unstoppable cyborg warlord and conquer the world with a cannibal army but even in reaching that it is made abundantly clear, best you can do is be an Ozymandias. With time all becomes dust, so take risks, steal the robot leg and see if you can keep it when the alien guys all come out to beat your ass over it. Retreat, hack off one of yours and return, bechromed and angry over folks defending their own property like that. Be an ancient robot and roam the wastes with the skinwalkers. Raise a pack of animals and build a farm. Buy a house, make friends, be a ninja gang. Learn how to make weapons, do trade caravans and see the world. Totally up to you, and the story will only grow as you keep going. Eventually, between doing things, angering people, and finding cool stuff you'll come out with a fun story.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Forums are still alive, active, and a treasure trove of information in ~tech

    Thomas-C
    Link
    Thank you for settling what Saturday is gonna be about for me. I'm excited to see what sort of arguing folks into homeopathy and credit cards get into. Gotta stop by "Planet of the Vapes", with a...

    Thank you for settling what Saturday is gonna be about for me. I'm excited to see what sort of arguing folks into homeopathy and credit cards get into. Gotta stop by "Planet of the Vapes", with a name like that.

    I can add one to the gaming list - retrogametalk. The forum has some overlap with other communities (like romhacking.net, gbatemp, etc). They post a lot of written material and the forums tend to be consistently active. But, if you register, you'll see something else pop up in the site menu. That spot regularly updates, you can check it once a week or so and always find some stuff got added. Each entry tries to include some info about what all is included, how to use, and where stuff came from. You will want a storage drive handy.

    2 votes