Quark's

This article provides highlights from a fascinating podcast.

Here are a couple of extracts/examples.

I think this is extremely important, because when you think about why this was able to occur, which gets into the second part of this answer, cable was this beautiful, socialistic almost experiment, right? It was this idea that you wanted your competitors to perform extremely well. You wanted ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN3 to perform really well, because that bled down to the lower average from demand, lower average from viewership, lower average from overall subscribers within the pay TV model. The more people that were taking in this $300 cable system, the less churn that you were seeing and the less you had to worry about each one of your single titles performing, because there was this security blanket of revenue coming in that was creating these extremely high profit margins.

I think the misconception that a lot of these legacy companies took was they looked at that and said, “Therefore, there is strong demand for our content as well on our own individual apps.” But they didn’t actually learn from the TV-everywhere, TV-anywhere situation, which was consumers don’t want a lot of apps. They want everything in one place, and they’re willing to pay for it. This was the beauty of pay TV. They didn’t necessarily want Bravo or they didn’t necessarily want ESPN, but they wanted enough of it that they were willing to say, “Yeah, OK, we’ll give you $200.”

A Canadian was one of the original innovators to create ActivityPub. Who knew?

Good to see a basic survey of the concept and history written for a mainstream audience.

All Tuvix related arguments should now be .03% more efficient.

I really like the potential for this community to let us discuss and compare the broad scope of Trek against the broader cultural conversation of sci-fi. So, I’m throwing out conversation starter in case there’s anyone else ready to play…

Major Vanguard series book spoilers ahead! (Seriously, it’s a great series and I don’t want to spoil its puzzle.)

Star Trek takes a lot of heat as a franchise for taking and reworking concepts and tropes from any and all other literary and visual media works.

As recent examples, Picard season three’s final episodes have been criticized for ‘copying Star Wars’ while SNW’s season one episode ‘All Those Who Wander’ earns derisive comments along the lines of ‘It’s a straight up copy of Aliens!!!’

More famously, in the 1990s, Paramount had to defend itself against claims of IP theft in DS9 by the creator of Babylon 5 who had pitched a space station-based show at one point. (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to make their own judgement about how similar or different are the overall story arcs of the two shows.)

I’ve always thought however that Star Trek excels in taking ideas from other media and then reworking them in its own universe with its own characters. ‘The Cage’ owes a lot to MGM’s Forbidden Planet (as does some of the original visual code of Star Wars for that matter), but The Cage is very much an original work. Voyager’s ‘The Thaw’ is a retelling of the movie adaptation of King’s ‘It’ but I like Voyager’s rendition far better.

I was truly surprised then when I caught up with watching The Expanse to find that the central mystery, the ‘protomolecule’ seemed to be a direct lift of the Shedai meta-genome of the excellent Star Trek Vanguard novel series that had been rolling out over the previous decade.

I’d been wishing that CBS would adapt Vanguard into a serial streaming series, but when I binged through to the third season of The Expanse, I thought that anyone who didn’t know the Vanguard book series had concluded just as the first Expanse book was published, would see a Vanguard show as derivative of The Expanse. The later seasons of the Expanse just seem to go more in the same direction, even continuing with overlapping plots with some of the Vanguard follow-on Seeker books.

As it happened, I had tried reading the first book of The Expanse book series, Leviathan Wakes and its sequel, when they first came out but DNFd. I didn’t make the connection to the Vanguard books at that point.

I did nonetheless find the first Expanse novel Leviathan Wakes very derivative, seeming to tell stories of miners and exploitation that were better done in CJ Cherryh’s Company Wars. The protomolecule mystery wasn’t really clear enough for me to see its close correlation with the Shendai meta-genome at that point.

Trek tie-in authors (David Mack, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore) created the meta-genome for the Vanguard Series to explain the basis of the Genesis project that first appeared in TOS movies. It also provides a genetic technical backbone across the Litverse, such as for later 24th century technologies like the dermal regenerator and other medical wonders.

Vanguard’s backdrop of vulnerable colonists and ancient technology is a classic going back to TOS, but Vanguard puts it in a long running suspenseful frame with inter species competition for new territories.

All of this has been percolating in my head for a few years.

Anyone game to discuss?

I saw in the news the actors are not allowed to do any promotion of current or past works including:

• Tours
• Personal appearances
• Interviews
• Conventions
• Fan expos
• Festivals
• Panels

If the strike is not resolved by August 3rd will Star Trek Las Vegas be delayed? My wife and I already arranged time off work and made other reservations to coincide with our trip. I am extremely nervous if everything will be able to moved, if we still be able to attend the new dates, or if not, how much of it can be refunded.

How long do you think the strike will go on for? Have there been any official updates from the event organizers? I don't see anything about it on their website or twitter so far.

Edit: ~~Armin Shimerman tweeted they are not not prevented from making appearances related to past projects! This is encouraging, but still seems like it might be iffy for actors on the currently airing shows? Hopefully there will be more communication soon.~~

Edit 2: ~~Anson Mount suggests the con wont be affected since they're making personal appearances. I do hope he answers the next reply asking for explicit confirmation of his attendance though.~~

Edit 3: ~~Creation Entertainment finally confirmed the con will continue as planned, but that doesn't necessarily mean every panel will still be held.~~

Edit 4: Creation Entertainment deleted the previous tweet and posted a new one saying the conventions will continue as planned with the current guidelines in mind. People attending the currently ongoing Creation Entertainment event for The Vampire Diaries Orlando are reporting the panels are not allowed to discuss the show at all, even though it has already concluded.

Edit 5: Armin Shimerman and Anson Mount are now uncertain about STLV. I really hope they are able to negotiate an end to the strike soon. If they can't manage that or reach an agreement for independent conventions, I will be out of pocket for some of my arrangements, but I'd much rather Creation Entertainment postpone the con than force us into a convention without actors who are able to talk about Trek.

One of the joys of ST:SNW for me is sharing the experience with my kid, they way my mom shared TNG with me in the 80s/90s. And I grew up with micromachines and those 1-2 foot long ships (the ones with a few buttons that made noises and lit up), many of which are still in a bin in my mom's basement.

When I go looking for something my kid could play with, all I can find are snap-together models. Fine, OK, but not the same as something he can fly through our living room making a warp speed wooosh sound. It's really a shame they don't have any good SNW ship toys. I'd buy some in a heartbeat.

Many years ago now I tried Artemis. For those that don't know it's a bridge simulator with each station being run on a different computer. We played it at a LAN and did a ship vs ship battle. (In hind sight we should have disabled nukes). It is fun and you really do feel like you're the captain of a star ship.

I have also tried the VR Star Trek Bridge Crew and that was kinda cool but the VR aspect made it feel more alienating compared to physically looking at someone.

I may have the chance next year to run a bridge simulator at a local con' so I've been looking into it again. Holy heck I've gone down the rabbit hole. There are so many options and I'm keen to check them all out. I've even found some amazing LARP's that make use of the bridge simulators.

What's your experience with bridge simulators? (I feel like I've said bridge simulators too many times now).

Just an amusing thought. He's easily my favorite character in DS9 and I'm a socialist.

Back in the 2000’s, I was decently involved in the tech world, especially privacy and following/using FOSS. I fell off in a major way as the strain of work and college took over and I just didn’t have the energy to devote to the cause and maintenance of my own resources. During the pandemic, I deleted my Facebook account as I watched friends and family become hateful. I stopped using Twitter as well and finally deleted it when the Musky Boy took over. Reddit was still a community I had trust in as it was relatively anonymous and the user experience was customizable so I could avoid the worst parts. With Reddit’s anti-user and especially anti-accessibility moves I woke up. Y’all at startrek.website gave me a safe starting point to the Fediverse, and I dove back into taking control of my computing experience. How has the upheaval of corporate social media changed your online life?

Receiving positive feedback from Wall Street since the WGA went on strike May 2, Warner Bros Discovery, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount and others have become determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio exec blatantly put it.

Three episodes into "Secret Invasion," I have to admit I'm prett underwhelmed. By all rights, this series should feel like a spiritual successor to The Winter Soldier, but it's falling flat for me on nearly every level.

The cast is doing a great job, Ben Mendelsohn in particular, but they're being let down by the material.

Also, the die-hard "Agents of SHIELD" fan in me is just waiting for Director Mackenzie to show up and save the day.