data1701d (He/Him)

“Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?”

- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations

  • 132 Posts
  • 313 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: March 7th, 2024

help-circle


  • To be fair, the Kelvin timeline had about 25 years to diverge technologically and aesthetically, considering the USS Kelvin was destroyed in 2233. 25 years is more than enough for the Starfleet design philosophy to completely change - look at the Enterprise C vs the Enterprise D.

    The USS Kelvin looks pretty prime - a little fancier because of modern VFX, but not more advanced than the SNW Enterprise. I would chalk down discrepancies to just evolution in production effects; I mean, doesn’t even the NX-01 look more advanced in many ways than the TOS Enterprise? Effects getting anachronistically better in Star Trek is not new, and I don’t think it signifies a “back propagation” of timeline alteration.

    Also, I don’t think Kelvin Vulcans are that weird; I think it’s mostly consistent with canon. Spock’s childhood in the film is practically a recap of TAS: Yesteryear, while the Vulcan education system seems consistent with the testing Spock did on himself at the beginning of Star Trek IV. The government and culture feel consistent with most depictions.

    Additionally, the idea of infinite multiverses has been canon in Star Trek for a while, heavily suggested with TNG:”Parallels” and outright confirmed in Prodigy and Lower Decks - Wesley even explicitly names the Kelvin timeline as its own parallel universe called “the Narada Incursion” in PRO.

    I think the variance in temporal mechanics in the franchise can be chalked up to the different methods in which time travel happens - each method is its own “User Interface” where your actions can affect reality differently. Some of them are more traditional time travel narratives, some are loops, some are parallel universes you can return from, etcetera.

    Ultimately, I think the Temporal Prime Directive comes down to what you said; each timeline is its own “world” and it’s just best to leave them alone.

    I think the plot of PRO is a perfect example of why the Temporal Prime Directive matters even in less-than-linear mechanics; going to the future can cause the future to alter the past, which causes the past to alter the future again and thus the past in a different way, and so on. Basically, messing with time and realities in any way is a dumpster fire in the making.






  • From what I’ve heard, ROCm may be finally getting out of its infancy; at the very least, I think by the time we get something useful, local, and ethical, it will be pretty well-developed.

    Honestly, though, I’m in the same boat as you and actively try to avoid most AI stuff on my laptop. The only “AI” thing I use is I occasionally do an image upscale. I find it kind of useless on photos, but it’s sometimes helpful when doing vector traces on bitmap graphics with flat colors; Inkscape’s results aren’t always good with lower resolution images, so putting that specific kind of graphic through “cartoon mode” upscales sometimes improves results dramatically for me.

    Of course, I don’t have GPU ML acceleration, so it just runs on the CPU; it’s a bit slow, but still less than 10 minutes.








  • When I say, “It is difficult to think of how they could coexist”, I mean if they refuse to be kind and coexist with others, meaning that they’ve truly refused to coexist and thus renounced that right.

    I agree there need to be consequences for being horrid, I just think human rights need to be considered in those consequences as not to become horrid.

    Also, I sort of view human civilization as a whole through the lens of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. In many ways, we’re still in the pre-conventional stage where we still behave based on punishment and reward, and for humanity to survive long term (if we can), we need to strive as a society towards the post-conventional stage where we are largely beyond pain and punishment. We will likely never attain the post-conventional stage much like a circle can never be perfectly round, but we must approach it the best we can.


  • Yes and no. I think some people are intolerant out of true hatred and will choose to always act in bad faith. It is difficult to think of how they could coexist.

    But also, a lot of people are just intolerant because they don’t actually know the people they’re hurting, only what they’ve been told. If they actually got to know the people their vote affects, they might have second thoughts - maybe not change their votes, but at the least be more prepared to live in a tolerant society. Automatically taking away this sector of the intolerant’s “right to coexist” (assuming this is an accurate interpretation of your point - I don’t intend to sealion, so correct me if I’m wrong) denies them the opportunity to learn and evolve as people and turns us into the intolerant in a sense.

    This does not absolve them of their wrong, this does not mean we don’t take concrete action against intolerance in society (and unfortunately, sometimes it does mean taking away people’s “right to coexist” if they refuse to coexist, although we should avoid it as much possible), and this does not mean these people shouldn’t face the consequences of their actions.

    Honestly, I often very angry about the intolerant, and part of me wants to feel they’ve renounced their humanity (the good part, anyway) in some sense, but at the end of the day I have to remind myself such thoughts are not conducive to building a good society (that is, assuming we still have a chance for one, which is not a given).





  • I mean, that’s fair.

    I feel that somewhat by accident, Lower Decks does better capture some aspects of classic Trek than other series, namely being mostly episodic and bringing a sense of humor back to Trek, and it sometimes even attains a level of dramatic skill comparable to the best of classic Trek (namely above all else the exchange between Mariner and Ma’ah in the S4 finale). Also, I’m honestly really impressed that Lower Decks managed to get me attached to its characters and make it feel like they’ve evolved so much in a total runtime less than that of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

    That said, Lower Decks does lack the mellow charm and the long(er)-form storytelling of classic Trek. However, considering the Trekiness they otherwise pulled off, I kind of wonder how the Lower Decks writers would do if they were given the opportunity to do a 50 minute “standard” Trek series; I think they might be able to do pretty well.

    Similarly, with SNW, while it has some of the strongest writing of social interaction, the sci-fi aspect is often weaker than it should be. For instance, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” is almost a brain-dead premise in terms of science fiction, but executed so well in terms of the social dynamics and character writing.

    In other words, I can see your desire for a no-compromises, no catches Trek.