Agreed, the whole “every episode is a different genre” is tiresome. I think that would have been fine for just one season, with some reason for that season to be like that. The show feels inconsistent and discontinuous, which is generally not what people like to experience. A good show may have both good episodes and sucky episodes, but still stand as at least the sum of its whole, if not more than its sum. SNW is kind of the opposite, where even if you have good individual episodes (and they’re not all good), the whole does not stand together.

I do appreciate the experiment in television and story telling (one of the reasons I loved Fringe way back when, even when the “science” was pretty awful), but I think they should have learned earlier. Oh well, too late now.

The thing that surprises me is he was arrested instead of promoted.

As cheers_queer has experienced, “flood” means something specific in insurance. It’s wise for everyone to check your specific policies (even if you’re not currently experiencing water in your home). Water that comes up from your pipes/sewer, fresh water that enters your home over land, and salt water can be referred to and covered (or not covered) separately, depending on your specific policy.

Is this a real screen capture or are you having me on? Because did someone really ship this out???

I understand where you’re coming from, and it wouldn’t apply in this specific context (where locals had rejected the poor boy), but in a general sense, the idea is to partner or invest in such a way to enable locals to lead the change efforts, or at least have a significant stake and voice.

In the business world, there are often silent investors who back entrepreneurs. Their financial input make a business possible, but leave the operations to the entrepreneur. The investor backs the entrepreneur, and they both profit.

It’s a different model and it takes more time and effort to find local partners to build up their capacity over time, but enabling locals will get stronger long-term results for the recipients of charity. It’s the difference between providing food packages to people and giving people agricultural tools to provide food for themselves in the long run. Obviously, in a situation of dire need, providing food is an immediate need, but only providing food instead of also providing tools keeps the recipients in a dependent situation. If they’re dependent on foreign charity forever, it’s just another form of control and colonialism.

What this woman had done, by caring for this poor boy, was long-term investing in him. Now he has an education and will be able to work and care for himself.

In Canada, a court ruled that Air Canada was liable for its AI chatbot. Air Canada’s lawyer(s) attempted to argue that the chat bot was a separate entity responsible for itself, an astonished judge said, “lol no” (not an exact quote). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit-1.7116416

But that’s Canada, and Target is not here (anymore), so…
Not relevant to the company at hand, but there is some precedence somewhere.

Your choice of wording is telling. You compare child commitments to leisure commitments, as though people without children only have leisure to think of. While the comparison is children and no children, making one side obvious and the other side highly variable, but, for example, many people care for other family members and extended networks who are not biological children. It is definitely not leisurely to care for a parent with dementia.

The problem isn’t that parents should get special understanding and special treatment, the problem is that capitalist society (distilled into the work scenario) values productivity over humanity. Automation, and now AI, were supposed to let us work less and still sustain the same output, but instead, we’re demanded to produce more and more, and we’re pushed to work even more than before.

Its the classic strategy of making the poor blame and fight each other instead of fighting the ruling class together.

The first episode was just set up. The entire rest of the season is the actual show.

Hey, thanks. I wrote that response to be jokey, and I didn’t expect an actual, useful reply in return. I will check that out, thank you.

Oh, I can recognize good code from code that works… I’m just not skilled enough to produce the former. (Does that put me ahead of most people by default?)

Thanks for articulating it this way for me. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me, at least in my situation. I reported my boss to the directors. He was (still is) planning to cut a guy from our team, claiming he costs too much. But when I did the math, I found that my boss’ personal expenses on food, gas, phone, vehicle, etc. (with increasingly unaccounted-for amounts) are more than that guy’s pay.

My boss isn’t worried about the financial health of the organization, he’s worried he won’t be able to keep spending it on himself if he has to pay the workers.

I can’t believe it took Starfleet that long to figure out what Nustopher took. Do they not have inventory in the future?!?!

I’m pretty sure Caleb didn’t mean the things he said to Darem and Genesis. He was trying to convince them (and himself) to leave. That’s why Sam said he’s full of shit.

Truly, I don’t understand why, but there are fully grown adults who believe that anything an LLM says is true. Maybe they think computers are unbiased (which is only as true as programmers and data are unbiased); maybe its the confidence with which LLMs deliver information; maybe they believe the program actually searches and verified information; maybe it’s all of the above and more.

I know a guy who routinely says, “I asked ChatGPT…”, and even after having explained how LLMs are complex word predictors and are not programmed for factual truth, he still goes to ChatGPT for everything. It’s a total refusal to believe otherwise, but I can’t fathom why.

To be pedantic, Ake was there, too. (She said the Doctor and Sam were not the only ones who spent 17 years on Kasq.)

But to be not pedantic, I thought the exact same thing. What kind of resilience building experiences could she have had in that environment? Falling and hurting her knee? I feel that one is the biggest tantrums (some) kids have are over food, and Sam doesn’t even eat. Reading does increase people capacity for empathy, so there is that opportunity for her, but even so, there’s a vast difference between sympathy and resilience.

I hope they actually fill this in in a reasonable way. Even though this episode was beautiful in some ways it still had some glaring problems.

You’ve written into your mind that he was a competitive asshole before the academy, but the entire point is he was not like that until he got to the academy. He had to be perfect for his parents, not an asshole. You’ve decided that perfect = asshole, but that is not supported. You can watch that episode again and listen to what he says about his parents.

We’ve known very little about Khionian society till now. Darem was competing hard with Genesis because his parents would, if we believe he was being truthful, leave when he made a mistake. That’s what that episode was about: him dealing with the insecurities caused by his parents’ neglect (and realizing there was another way). He and Genesis had a bonding moment over living up to their parents’ expectations. They wouldn’t even call him back, hence his going to Reno saying his PADD was broken as it wasnt receiving calls. And Reno saw through the situation and talked about people who do show up for him, referring to Genesis.

I understand why they didn’t want to put all the time (and money) into everyone’s make up, but, story-wise, that was pretty inexcusable.

I mean, have you really never met anyone who’s one way around some people, and another way with others? We should all be so lucky! I’ve had co-workers who are total assholes to colleagues, but become simping ass-kissers in front of higher-ups. Or kids who are angels at home and absolute terrors at school. Or the other around: they’re angels at school and terrors at home.

Darem was sweet, deferential, and dutiful for Kaira (and his parents’ approval), and then he let himself loose for the first time at the academy when he didn’t have any of that baggage on him. That’s not at all different from kids who grow up in strict homes, then basically go hog-wild when they go off to college, and then later grow out of that wild phase.

Personally, I hope Jay-Den and Darem become/stay close friends. I think boys and men need more close, intimate, platonic friendships as a whole.

The change in Darem was the whole point of the Calica/prank episode. He went from needing to be the best (because of his parent issues) to apologizing to Genesis, supporting her as their team leader (with the prank as well), and telling his parents he’s found another way.

With the Miyazaki episode, he immediately gave Genesis credit for the idea of how to find the cloaked ship, and while he didn’t have lines for it, when she was getting frustrated with the search, his body language and gestures were essentially encouraging her.