As with all things, Starfleet of course has the have the unstable, bleeding edge version on their spaceships. I’m sure Vulcan holodecks are much safer lol

I do think we’re supposed to recognize that Rom is actually very skilled though. We see it through Nog’s opinion of him, and how well he does after he joins the Bajoran maintenance crew, despite his first initial awkward interactions. And restrictions often improve creativity in real life, so it makes sense to me that he’d have some unique skills, compared to engineers from Earth, who are used to being able to requisition anything they need eventually. You even see some of it aboard Starfleet ships, like when Geordie meets Leah Brahms, and has to defend all the changes he’s made to the warp engines on the fly, or in the Upper Decks episode of Lower Decks, when Billups is teaching the ensign about maintenance.

It’s part of the whole idea of the show, that these other people, even ones we might not initially get along with, have valuable perspectives. “Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations.”

You got me with this one lol

He basically got payed $10K per year in prison. The article calls that a paltry amount, but when the president is intentionally tanking the economy to distract from his crimes against humanity, defectors go on sale. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this

It’s a Changhong, they’re one of the biggest TV manufacturers in China. I bought mine second hand though, so I can’t offer you a link, I’m afraid

It’s a bad look

Data makes the perfect +, because his brain is made from Positrons!

A story? I’m currently writing like 5 lol

I have a novel that I’m through like 1/5 of, though I have it mostly outlined. It’s a fantasy story set on a world where the sun heats the surface of the planet beyond habitable temperatures during the day, so the people live in caverns. The main story is about two civilizations that separated hundreds of years ago after a cavern flooded, the differences that grew up between them, and the conflict when they finally meet their forgotten cousins again.

I’m also working on a fantasy novella about a construction worker that got trapped in a dungeon he was helping to build, when the enchanted defenses were activated before it was complete. He spends the first section, over 80 years, trapped in complete darkness within the small antechamber inside the main gates. The magic keeps him alive as basically a skeleton, so the story is about his experience feeling his body rotting away around him, the mirror of the dungeon that deteriorates over time, due to environment, and adventurers, and what he does to cope.

I’m also working on a sci-fi novella, inspired by Dr. Who. It’s a space mystery about a hospital ship with a monster on board, and the main characters are a maintenance worker for the hospital, and a multi-dimensional alien that manipulates events throughout time, on the basis of the quantum uncertainty principle. Basically, the idea is that there’s wiggle room in Time, and you can take advantage of that, as long as you don’t get spoiled for what’s supposed to happen.

And I decided it would be a good idea to not just write a fanfic, but to completely rewrite one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Skyward, by Brandon Sanderson. I’m working on the outline for that right now. The idea is basically a What-If, where the main character decides to listen to everyone around her, and give up on becoming a pilot. If I do it right, I should be able to rewrite the whole series, with the same beginning, and the same end, but with extremely different events in the middle. It should be fun.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, I’m also doing a ton of writing to create a Westmarch setting for a D&D game with some friends. I’m setting it in the Forgotten Realms, and trying to use as much official lore as possible, so this has required a ton of research, but has been really fun. Between Evereska and Cormyr, at the headwaters of the River Reaching, stands the perfect mountain to hide a dwarf city built in the upper reaches of the Underdark. Players are going to have to adventure through the abandoned dwarf city, to get into the darkness below

IIRC, they often use the same casing as for torpedoes (which Star Fleet does also use as coffins)

My PCP recommended me to a specialist office that does neurological testing at scale, so I was able to get through it all pretty quickly. I asked about it at my yearly insurance physical in March, got an appointment for online testing on the 3rd, and got my results two weeks later. I was surprised by how easy it was. I have pretty good insurance from my job.

Here’s the specialist I used

I’m not sure if they take patients outside Michigan or not, but everything I did was remote, so I don’t see why they couldn’t. Their reviews on Google are bad, but my experience was great, and I’ve had friends say good things about another doctor also at this practice

Asking someone to write fantasy without putting their own lived experience into the writing would be counterproductive anyway. Good characters should have a little bit of yourself in them

Listen, my 9/11 Rogue/Sorcerer just hit level 10, so he can spend sorcery points to subtract d8 damage! I promise, he’s viable! 😭

I’ve definitely found that I do better when I can keep 100 different things balanced against each other. It gives me somewhere to go when I hit a wall. It can obviously get overwhelming when something goes wrong though

I feel this big time. I go to sleep with an audiobook on, so I have something to focus on. Otherwise, it takes me forever to sleep, because my brain keeps distracting me

It’s not a cheat code, you’re enriching yourself! Could very well be exactly what your anxiety needs!

Maybe that is the driving force of life in the universe … to want to get it on with anybody and everybody no matter the species.

I believe the Vulcans call that, “Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations.”

Salt vampire?

IIRC, there’s a line at the end of those episodes about the Klingons doctor working on restoring appearances. Guess they were at the back of the queue

It could probably translate some slang, but this type is context-basef, like Tamarian. We could assume a Federation translator would know that context, but who knows what knowledge was lost in the 21st century?