Babylon 5

deleted by creator

Every few years I get someone into B5 and rewatch the series along with them. And every time there’s one or two more cast members gone.

Have to make a few assumptions to make this workable. Im assuming we’re only allowing things that were made as a TV series, so not counting specials or anything that jumped from another medium like radio or theatrical releases. And we’re only including fiction, so news and the like wouldn’t count. And we only include things that have ended and only count the original run of a series.

With all those caveats, my best guess is I Love Lucy. Started in 1951 and the actor that played their kid is still alive, though he didn’t join the cast until 1955.

When my SO does this I always reference this scene in Duck Soup as a way to gently point out what they’re doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcbglml9KRo

1. Don’t make promises unless you know you won’t have any problem keeping them.

2. Depending on the context, being early can be just as bad as being late.

3. Taking ownership is good in an environment where honesty and accountability is respected. There are far too many people that are just looking to assign blame, especially when it involves nuance or technical details they don’t fully understand.

4. Assuming reasonable discussions where everyone is acting in good faith. There are absolutely times when you need to shut down an argument before it gets a chance to grow.

5. Don’t be a dick. But you don’t have to cover up everyone else’s dickish behavior, particularly when it negatively impacts the rest of us.

6. Communicate clearly. But sometimes maybe is the correct answer. Uncertainty is a part of life and needs to be factored into decisions.

7. Bring solutions if you have them. But not every problem has obvious solutions and sometimes it’s more important to point it out quickly than it is to be the one with the answer.

8. Under promise and over deliver is generally good advice, but there are also plenty of situations that are strictly pass / fail and extra effort is wasted. Be efficient with your energy and only spend it on stuff that matters to someone.

9. Be supportive and build others up… within reason. Don’t be full of shit.

10. Honest feedback is important. Unless it’s a numerical score used for performance metrics, in which case the requirements are almost certainly unreasonable and anything less than perfect or nearly perfect is basically a disaster.

11. Learn and think, don’t just jump to conclusions. Hard to object to that as long as you aren’t wasting everyone’s time or showing an embarrassing level of ignorance.

12. Don’t let your emotions stop you from thinking clearly. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore them completely. If nothing else, needing to be dead inside to do your job is probably a good indicator that you should find another job.

The sound… of MEAT

In this case, the post was asking for people’s expectations regarding this story specifically, and the response is entirely valid. It’s very reasonable to think that this one news story isn’t likely to be the tipping point.

It’s different when people reply to every story that is in any way bad for Trump with a comment about how none of it matters, nothing will change, and no one cares. As though anything that doesn’t result in Trump being immediately impeached, incarcerated, or inhumed is completely worthless. Much like how sit ups are useless because no matter how many I do today, I still won’t have a six pack when I’m done.

All those comments do is demoralize people and discourage them from trying to support opposition to Trump in any way.

Average age of a first time homebuyer is now over 40. Even at a reasonable interest rate, most buyers would die before they actually own the house.

Wasn’t expecting to plug the Children of Time series again this week, but here we are.

Electricity is basically magic. It only seems mundane because we take it for granted. If sorcery, the force, investiture, or any other fictional magic system you could think of were real, we’d harness it, get used to it, and stop thinking of them as magic too.

Dont let familiarity diminish the sense of wonder. Understanding doesn’t make electricity less magical, it just makes you a wizard.

I am not saying that we will necessarily go down the road to fully automated luxury, or that if we do that the journey there would go smoothly. The current “AI” bubble is an unsustainable mess which is causing a lot more problems than it solves. In the long term, we are looking at the development of incredibly powerful and dangerous technologies that can potentially reshape society.

I mainly just wanted to highlight the weird, shortsighted reasoning behind this post. The argument that we need to keep cashiers so that we have a human connection feels a lot like arguments for going back to an agrarian lifestyle. It’s a losing argument that requires glossing over a lot of downsides and ignoring much better alternatives.

People should have to work shitty service sector jobs so that I have someone to talk to. Because obviously I will never encounter other humans if they aren’t being forced to trade half their waking hours for money. What am I supposed to do, talk to people who aren’t being forced to put up with me if they don’t want to lose their income?

The “AI” being pushed on us now is trash, but if we do eventually get to the point of being able to automate away the vast majority of jobs, we ought to use that to free people from the need to work. Give us UBI, make robots do the shit that you wouldn’t do for free, and let us all have free time to do the things we actually want to do.

Not to mention that the bullshit in AI videos made by the left would absolutely get called out in every propaganda outfit on the right. It would just give them more ammo (without the usual lies).

But even more important, it will grant legitimacy to everyone who responds to damning video evidence by claiming it was AI. We don’t need to make shit up, the reality is already horrifying. All AI will do is make it harder for people to believe their own eyes.

Had a coworker who was riding a motorcycle on the highway by a semi when the tire next to her blew out. She ended up dropping the bike and sliding along the road. Fortunately she was covered head to toe in protective gear, but it’s still amazing that she wasn’t seriously injured.

Thanks to a bullshit Texas law, you have to have 3% ownership in Tesla to sue them as an investor. And I doubt many people who still hold more than a token amount of Tesla stock would be inclined to sue anyway. All the sane investors got out of there a long time ago.

Don’t worry, the feds will throw enough money at Tesla (and Musk’s other businesses) to keep him richer than God. Plus, he’s seizing control of the regulators who oversee financial institutions, any creditors who come after him could be risking serious retribution.

Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson; She’s a slutty moron you should know.

God I love that episode. Just a fantastic performance and great writing. There’s so many layers to it, and in particular I just love how ominous and terrifying the vorlons become the more you think about what they’re doing here.

On the other hand, Star Trek made Piglet Jack the Ripper, and the thought of him in a top hat and mutton chops running around the hundred acre woods stabbing hookers is also quite enjoyable.

If there’s one thing that should be clear from Trump’s reelection it’s that there is no limit to what the Republican voters will support.

Anyone who was going to leave the Republicans has probably done so by now. All that’s left are the MAGA true believers, single issue voters, the echo chamber dwellers who would be outraged if they were aware of news from the real world, and compartmentalists who block out all warning signs coming from their own side as no true Scotsman conservative supports that stuff and even if they did it’s still better than the other side.

And of course, there’s also the low information voters who don’t know about any of this stuff and just want egg prices to go down or something.