This is an interesting discussion. I've had an abiding hatred for Kurtzman & Orci for more than a decade but I actually kinda like the direction they dragged Star Trek. A buddy of mine storyboarded the first couple movies; it was abundantly clear that they were doing something completely new while also doing what they could to preserve enough canon to keep the nerds on board.

There's a tricky balance to strike there. On the one hand, Roddenberry & Co populated a pretty interesting universe that has lots of things to explore. On the other hand, it's been tromped through incautiously over the ages so you don't have enough internal consistency to explore it without tripping all over yourself unless you exercise some skill.

Star Trek has traditionally followed a nautical metaphor, which is interesting because Gene Roddenberry was a pilot. Star Wars splits the difference between aerial & nautical with fighters whizzing around everywhere (and bombers... smdh) but Star Trek, for whatever reason, rarely ventures beyond "runabout." That gives you a basic "ocean-going vibe" that, whenever Trek fucks with it, turns to shit. At the same time, one of Roddenberry's maxims was anything that happened during an episode had to be resolved by the end of the episode, returning the show to ground state and enabling the episodes to be watched in any order. Kurtzman's direction has been definitely not that which started out interesting but collapsed under its own weight after a couple seasons. There are only so many places to go if you stick with the nautical metaphor and without the nautical metaphor is it really Star Trek?

Get some young hungry directors, producers, and writers passionate about really great science fiction TV, and tell them to pitch me the next Trek as if nobody had ever heard of Star Trek, Starfleet, the Enterprise, or Kirk.

There was definitely an attempt at this. Kurzman and Orci were the it-girls of sci fi when JJ Abrams lens-flared the shit out of Star Trek in 2009. They blew up Vulcan and tied off the entire prior universe behind a time paradox just to shut up the convention-goers. But they also ignored Ron Moore & Naren Shankar, both of whom grew up on TNG and both of whom have done some stellar shit. Gene Roddenberry was a notorious pain in the ass to work with; I have no way of knowing this but I'll bet Eugene is definitely preserving enough canon that the Roddenberrys keep control of the show.

Set an entire series in the Ferengar. A series featuring the Marquis.

It's worth pointing out that Deep Space Nine was originally envisioned as a vehicle for Ro Laren, newly-promoted Maquis double agent, to operate as a bordertown sheriff out past the easy enforcement of Star Fleet. Unfortunately Gene Roddenberry couldn't keep his dick in his pants and Michelle Forbes noped the fuck out of working in the Star Trek universe until both Gene and his wife were safely dead so we got Hawk from Spencer For Hire instead.

Maybe and entirely Mirror Universe series set in a fascist Federation.

Fuckin' they did an entire goddamn season of this on Discovery and it was super-tedious.

Even the Klingon Empire could be somewhat interesting.

I definitely got the sense that there was a Klingon gambit in the first season of Discovery. Unfortunately the new Klingons were tedious, uninteresting shithead analogs for Islam, rather than the promising culture developed by Ron Moore and explored through a few movies.

But come up with a concept that isn’t “hey, look, we got the TNG crew out of retirement, please clap”

Star Trek is home to what, 5? 6? different concepts and I agree, what started out promising with Picard rapidly became Return to Gilligan's Island. Discovery is definitely an exploration of 'return to zero' writing. Prodigy was a new direction no matter how you slice it. Lower Decks has been almost entirely bereft of vintage characters.

or “Hey, we heard you guys like Harry Potter, but have you seen Star Trek: in school”.

The Starfleet Academy idea became Lower Decks, which knew exactly when it should quit. Clearly the team still loves that Starfleet Academy idea which, if it's done right, might be closer to Riverdale than Harry Potter. I'll withhold judgment as I have done since it first reared its head in 2009. I get the sense that they really want to make that one work which is why they keep shelving it whenever it gets dicey.

In short, start trying to figure out the interesting settings in your universe for great science fiction series, then make episodes that fully explore the concept and the settings.

Again, I feel like they're definitely trying to do this while also servicing the "we herd you leik Spock" contingent. Keep in mind that the median television viewer is sixty fucking five years old.

Now I'm curious - what "modern takes" have you read?

I'm of the opinion that LoTR fucked up fantasy the same way Star Wars fucked up sci fi, but there are a few bright lights.

I think LotR was the first to have elves and hobbits and dwarves and orcs in the way that's instantly recognizable.

And I would argue that counts for less than you think. One of the things I like about modern fantasy is the trope that Elves are assholes. Tolkien was basically at "look how cool this lost race of ubermensch are" while modern fantasy is basically "elves love the smell of their own farts."

I agree that its a cozy story, and 1000% caste system, though imo LotR is a lot more thoughtful and I'd argue that the whole 'magic is fading and evil will eventually win but we'll fight while we can' tone makes it not all twee feel-good fluff.

On the one hand, it's a bunch of children's books. On the other hand, it very clearly reflects Tolkien's understanding and trauma of The Great War. I think it's the duality that bugs me; by trying to be both it does neither well.

The thing about American fantasy of the era is the good guys and the bad guys were human. You couldn't hide your actions behind ethnic tension. America fought a war over slavery; the British didn't think it was worth fighting a war over genocide until it was on their doorstep.

GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture.

"Cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms" being the author's summaries of not only GEB (1979) but also Dawkin's The Selfish Gene (1976), I am fully ready to argue that GEB was an intellectual's retreat from Reagan. American culture was big on trite wordplay back then. It was largely insufferable.

I interviewed Beborn Beton Monday. Contrary to what everyone thinks, this song was inspired by The Cure, and is about the MeToo Movement.

Forum - Metroland

As if Public Service Broadcasting decided to do Kraftwerk at Davos

They aren't sold in the US.

American appliances are sized differently. An American oven is typically 30" across, and can be 36." European ovens are 24". Can you buy 24" ovens in the US? Absolutely. They aren't what we're used to over here, though - you need that massive cavity once a year for the turkey because of course you do. American washer/dryers are also sized to do laundry once a week while European/Asian washer/dryers are sized to do laundry more frequently.

I'm on year 6 with a Miele dishwasher. I had a Bosch burst into flames, I had another Bosch last 13 months, I had four GE water pumps replaced under warranty in nine months and I've had a Miele that ate a whole goddamn cherry pit and just rattled it around for a week before finally cracking it and spitting it out.

You will not find a single appliance manufacturer whose entire online presence is defined by anything other than all the people who hate them. Meanwhile the conventional wisdom has come around to "things with lots of parts have more parts to break" as if that shit came down the mountain or something.

There are two chaebol appliance manufacturers. One is good, one is terrible. I have four appliances from the former and the one that came with the house from the latter has already failed - Samsung doesn't think that the ability to come back gracefully from a power failure is an essential function for a refrigerator. And there are two family-owned, privately-held appliance manufacturers. One is Miele, the other is Sub Zero-Wolf.

Desolation Called Peace is great. It's the whole "courtly manners" schtick that Martine does so well combined with a first contact story.

I feel like I tried NK Jemesin at some point and she bugged me. I think it was a follow-up from Nnede Okorafor, who I also didn't care for.

I have added Ancillary Justice to my waitlist.

except the nineties sucked

We knew we were fucked the minute Smells Like Teen Spirit hit. It's like "okay, the jocks are going to take Soundgarden from us" but it was worse than that, we got fucking Creed instead.

Look. The 60s were inventive. All new forms of music were created. The 70s were reactive. Government was bullshit, America had lost its first war, time to put on a leisure suit and do some lines. The 80s were nihilist. Fuckin' Reagan was going to kill us all if the ozone layer and acid rain didn't do it first. But the 90s were straight bullshit and I will fight you on this.

70s nostalgia: Eagles, "Hotel California"

80s nostalgia: Bryan Addams, "Boys of Summer"

90s nostalgia: Smashing Fucking Pumpkins, "1969"

Jaron Lanier made the point that musical innovation stopped fucking cold with rap and the '90s brought us the fucking Fugees, the least innovative R&B act to ever win a grammy, which paved the way for NSync and Britney Spears. Music was a mutherfucking wasteland from like '92 to like the first P!nk album and you know it.

Lanier isn't entirely right - I'd argue that Trap and Witch House are innovative enough to warrant their own rankings but look into my eyes:

Taylor Swift IS nineties/zeroes nostalgia

And you wonder why people look longingly at vaporwave.

- The Mercy of Gods by James S A Corey.

Appreciate the recommendation. It struck me as "The Expanse meets The Tripods."

this entire album rules

I'm ready to print up Pelican Brief t-shirts

Yeah it's all Eugene Levy in Splash until someone finds a mermaid, and then it's suddenly the Sackler Chair of the Department of Astroarchaeology at Columbia.

I wanna say no because I WANT TO BELIEVE but I'm going to say yes because if there's a legit use case for platinum-manganese wire I'm really curious as to what it is.

You'll be much more successful at your search than I was because you are not a golden retriever in goggles in this field.

After a 22 year absence, Bel Canto decided to put out an album. It's become a go-to.

Apparently you missed this

I would. It's quick and it establishes the fundamental character arc and background of everyone my age.

It is fundamentally a book of disaffected ennui and I think it's useful to see that every generation goes through disaffected ennui in their 20s. The complaints of GenX aren't the complaints of Millennials aren't the complaints of GenZ but they rhyme.

They don't fuckin' rhyme at all with the 'boomers.

No, fuck you, too. You don't fucking quibble over specifics, you ignore everything I fucking say so you can find some corner that allows you to be crazy. Here's what I fucking said to you THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO

You've got some decisions to make, my friend. Because between the way the politics are going and the way the environment is going, you're in Taliban country.

And I don't see a mechanism by which things get better.

I believe what I say and I say what I mean and you know what? What I've been saying is pretty consistent. I can look back on my wild-eyed bullshit ideas from ten years ago and go "mmmyeah, pretty much" about 98% of the time. So it's not fucking optimism - it's a studied assessment of the situation at hand as I see it and understand it, and I share that.

And 99% of the time it fuckin' whooshes right the fuck over your head because you're too busy trying to find some reason to freak out.

Spiritedness is fine but when you fucking put words into my mouth for fucking jollies it's fucking over.

I'm fucking sick of this shit and I don't fucking deserve it.

how the fuck is that my fault

It's possible

That maybe I feel this more than you

It's possible

That maybe this is what I've been screaming from the rafters for forty fucking years

It's possible

That much of your outrage of the Supreme Court you learned from me

But that didn't fuckin' stop you from needin' a hit of that Outrage Juice that keeps your blood pumping. It didn't stop you from taking a swing at me, the guy who has always been careful to address what you're saying, not who you are. The guy who drops whatever you've got going on minute by minute, hour by hour, life by life, to address the thing you wanna bring up. Naaah. You decided you wanted a fucking fight and the way you were gonna get it was by ridiculing me.

This is one thing where nobody can come up with an upside and here I am, trying to get through my fucking day, and you decided that you know what? The Internet has decided it's cool to piss on "centrists" so here you are, knowing I'm always good for a laugh. I'll humor your bullshit no matter how tangential. I'll come back with something, anything to try and turn your mood around and what did you fucking do with that?

You made up an opinion for me and decided I should defend it.

FUCK YOU.

Fuck you.

I've been pretty clear about what a catastrophe the Supreme Court is since Day Fucking One.

You've got this bullshit idea that "well ackshully" I'm just an apologist for whatever it is you don't like but let me say it again - fuck you.

Some of us have had the attention span to piss and moan about this shit since the MUTHERFUCKING EIGHTIES and if you wanna try and score points off me fucking come correct.

It's not my fault you don't have the attention span to be mad at something other than the cause du jour. But it is your fault that you'd rather piss on this strawman you have of me than actually hold a reasonable facsimile of me in your head.

I deserve better and you know it.

Triple fuck you.

Once more with feeling: fuck you.

This shit is easier than most people think.

There's a motion control company that makes their servos play tunes at IMTS for 20 plus years.

Fuck Y'all Heather speaks for me