Scourge

Because I find it unsettling on a personal level when my wife and I, in the privacy of our home away from the world have a conversation where we make a joke about buying a banjo, and then every day for the next three weeks everywhere I go is flooded with targeted banjo ads. Verbal conversations, away from everything but our phones and computers.

Because I find it unsettling when I go to a site I have never gone to before and it greets me with my name and already knows where I live with the shipping details even though I clicked “I do not consent” on every data pop-up that I’ve seen in the past five years.

Because people are selling that data, my data, data about myself, and I get none of that profit and it was done without my consent or knowledge.

Because a company having my information should be something I need to personally allow, not something I need to ask and beg them not to obtain.

Because I can think of very few, if any, benevolent purposes of using that data, but there is a legion of malevolent reasons for it, and of the ones I have seen, all of them fall into this category.

All this being said, I should not need to have a reason. The onus should not rest with the individual to prove that they deserve undisturbed privacy, it should rest with the institutions that want this information; that it is a requirement to obtain this information for valid reasons and not frivolous ones, or ones rooted in greed or ideology. Like a search warrant for example.

I would pretty much accept any technology that brings me closer to being a full android or lengthens my lifespan. Artificial brain, tracking tech, etc. I would be willing to accept a lot of compromise for eternal life and I feel this route is probably has the best chance of actually happening within my lifespan. Cyberhorror aspects aside, I figure once the lifespan increases, given an infinite period of time eventually the problems will sort itself out. If it gets too awful I assume I could probably maintain enough control to off myself at some point so it’s all good.

Also, I know the chances are still very small, fractions of a percent or whatever, but its non-zero and most other avenues seem to be just flat zero outright.

PS3 controller for sure. I used it the most growing up, it never really changed so I got super comfortable with it and always performed well with new models right away, it has the best feel in my hands as it fits perfectly into my palms, and my thumbs are more comfortable with the thumb sticks where they are compared to the X-box controller. PS4 controller was also good overall, but I liked the slender handles on the PS3 one more.

I was very disappointed with discovery. I was okay with season one, but I don’t even like the single long-story arc format to begin with. For me Star Trek is supposed to be episodic, science, philosophy, and ethics heavy content. Screen glare, constant massive explosions, over-the-top action sequences, and thin characters and plot just made it boring and indistinct from any other sci-fi I could watch. Stand alone, if it was not called star trek or in the star trek universe it would still be okay overall, but I showed up looking for Star Trek and got something that didn’t fit in at all with the Star Trek I knew and wanted more of.

Strange New Worlds has taken a big step in blending decent action into episodic content that feels like a back to the roots revival of the what the series was and should continue to be.

On a moderately related note, I fucking hated Picard after season 1 too, and season 1 was ruined (from what I’ve heard because I just didn’t watch anything after halfway through season 2) by taking away what was the final moments of a fan-favourite character.

For some reason I have a hard time understanding, new series and content in Star Trek seems to be following some… I guess I’ll call it “modernization of storytelling” where the structure and soul of previous content is being entirely overwritten with long drawn out epics that don’t challenge the viewer at all and rely on CG and SFX to fill in for the meat of the show. The meat of the show should be good writing, good character development, and yeah, to be a bit preachy about ethics. The story of the show should be the story of Starfleet, not the story of one shitty captain being special.