I am not a Black Mesa employee! I am a (Carol) Freeman!

Might I ask which:

1. Which Thinkpad? (CPU model and graphics would be helpful)
2. What resolution and refresh rate of monitor?
3. What does the trackpoint do during this? I know you said it’s not the mouse, but I’m just curious.

If it’s a modern-ish Thinkpad (like ~2018 or newer), these problems are weird and I have no advice to offer, but if you’re one of those guys who daily-drives a Core 2 Duo Thinkpad, I’m curious how they do when hooked to a 4K monitor.

IIIIIIIIIIIII’lllll TAAAAEEEEEKKKKK YOOOOO HOOOOOOEM, AGAAAAAAAIN KATHLEEEEEN!

Honestly, there’s a point of enlightenment where somehow, this over and over is better than the alternative.

For instance, when I was a kid, my mother once tuned into one of Vegas-area FM radio stations, and they must have been having budget issues because the songs they played real “zingers” like some weird late 80s/early 90s version of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” with a robot announcer and “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”… sung by Elmo from Sesame Street.

I turned in my early ballot back on October 30th.

Mostly glad for the national results (holy frick, Texas!), although a few bad propositions passed in my state, and my congressional district stayed red where most of the rest of the state went more blue than usual. At least I kept an idiot out of the governor’s office.

No, not until 2027. I don’t really know why this meme was posted at this exact moment.

Will Riker is going to have a bad time, then.

Honestly, if we’re going to commit war crimes, let’s at least do it in style.

Gosh, I love that quote; just rewatched Generations last night as part of my memorial activities.

Indeed, the bermagot does slap.

I’m a recent ex-Mormon, so that’s why I’ve never had it before.

It took a couple tries to get it right (I didn’t let it steep long enough the first time), but I sure like the sensation of what feels like drinking an orange or lemon peel.

You sure that’s not just Prepotente from Dungeon Crawler Carl?

I always find it really funny when they guess someone has only watched newer stuff and can’t fathom that they’ve seen almost everything.

As stupid as it is, at least this attempt at reviving Winamp doesn’t seem to have any rhetoric about how it’s going to be “built for the glorius inevitable agentic AI future revolution from the ground up” and talk about how “curating music has never been easier” because their “most advanced music AI in human history” takes away the need to have any personality, taste, or ears of your own.

I mean, the Blu-Rays are still easy enough to find and rip, although you have to spend $40 on season 1 because they never released reason 1 as one set. But honestly, giving Paramount cash in any form isn’t that compelling.

I basically just gave three (or at least 2, as the DISCO one maybe is a bit iffy) examples of modern Star Trek scrutinizing the means despite the obstensibly good ends.

Also, another example is S2 E2 “Ad Astra Per Aspera” borderline almost literally puts “the moral cost of the means” (keeping good genetically modified people like Una out of Starfleet) that is ostensibly done for the ends of preventing another Eugenics Wars. I wouldn’t hesitate to call this episode one of the best in the whole franchise, very much in the tradition of court case ethical discussion episodes like “Measure of a Man”.

I don’t think one can make a blanket statement about newer Star Trek quitting “believing something”; sure, it may be uneven in quality (maybe more than classic)*, but dismissing all of “NuTrek” out of hand is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

: I mean, there’s whatever DIS season 2 was, Section 31, most of PIC, etc., but also, it’s not like good swathes of classic Trek aren’t also kind of crap - I mean, there’s the time Riker murdered his clone and nobody batted an eye, as well as TOS S3, TNG S1, and the inconsistency of VOY. Even in the good classic episodes, it’s not like every one is “do the ends justify the means” - in addition to other ethical themes, classic Trek still had room for simply "Cool sci-fi s** happened and we have to deal with it", not to mention episodes focused on interpersonal drama like “Data’s Day” or any of Deanna’s “Oh f*** my mother is on board” episodes.

Hey, sneaking Alexander onto the holodeck is more than Worf ever did as a father.

I would say it depends.

I mean, the ends not justifying the means is kind of the entire point of DISCO S1 (whether or not the rest of DISCO embodied it is a different matter); Burnham has to let go of what Lorca summarizes as “Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings.” or in other words, the ends often justify the means.

Also, SNW is better about it, than say, PIC; for instance, SNW S3 E7 “What is Starfleet?” from 2025, for all its flaws (including in some ways being very similar to TNG “Tin Man”), basically has the crew going “WTF! The ends (saving an alien race from a war they didn’t start) do not justify the means (enslaving a sentient space whale)!” Also, SNW 1x06 is basically “ends don’t justify means”, although mostly because it basically copied “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”.

I’ll have to see if this is in the officially published edition, but I’m currently at my dorm and both my Tech Manuals are at home.

One I bought in a used book shop in Sedona, and the other I got with a big load of Trek books that someone gave away back in 2025.

Uploading a gz source archive to a Git repository is absolutely cursed. Still, looks like a cool project.