Kirk

An absolute banger. Bandcamp link: https://lukeski.bandcamp.com/track/one-night-in-quarks-bar

Since Discovery, despite the Star Trek writers repeatedly beating us over the head with this, I still somehow didn't catch onto the pattern. If there is a through-line to all the new shows, the notion that acknowledging one's own vulnerability is a sign of individual strength, and that showing support when others are being vulnerable around you, is also a sign of individual strength.

This may not feel "woke" in the way it's usually understood, but I really think it's pushing a long overdue envelope, and one that is arguably more important to our times than a half-black half-white face representing the "illogical" nature of racism.

For example: when I read the angry tweets about the new series (ie; the "pussification of men", etc.) I can't even force myself to see them as coming from anything other than weak, scared people who are too afraid of what the world would think of them if they expressed their authentic selves. They want to scare the rest of us into being as scared as they are, because they believe it will make them feel less alone. But loneliness can only be fixed by showing vulnerability.

And that's the root of the problems in our modern era, isn't it? Deeply insecure people hurting others in a desperate effort to not be hurt themselves. They haven't always portrayed this concept in a graceful way, but kudos to Star Trek for keeping up the tradition of asking its audience: "What is it you're so afraid of?"

Inspired by a recent talk from Richard Stallman.

From Slashdot:

Speaking about AI, Stallman warned that "nowadays, people often use the term artificial intelligence for things that aren't intelligent at all..." He makes a point of calling large language models "generators" because "They generate text and they don't understand really what that text means." (And they also make mistakes "without batting a virtual eyelash. So you can't trust anything that they generate.") Stallman says "Every time you call them AI, you are endorsing the claim that they are intelligent and they're not. So let's let's refuse to do that."

Sometimes I think that even though we are in a "FuckAI" community, we're still helping the "AI" companies by tacitly agreeing that their LLMs and image generators are in fact "AI" when they're not. It's similar to how the people saying "AI will destroy humanity" give an outsized aura to LLMs that they don't deserve.

Personally I like the term "generators" and will make an effort to use it, but I'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts.

After watching the trailers for Academy I generally liked what I saw, but Holly Hunter felt oddly reminiscent of Geneviève Bujold as Janeway. I even made a comment somewhere on here that was like "I need to be sold more on Holly Hunter".

The marketing made her out to be a "barefoot bohemian who loves old books and records and lounges around the bridge" which honesyl did not appeal to me but I ended up absolutely loving it. She is somehow nailing being a Starfleet captain without falling back on any familiar tropes.

I have a button that triggers a script for bedtime to turn off all lights, and, if pressed again, checks to see if all lights are off and if so, turns a few (like the bathroom light) on.

My problem is one or two of the lights (connected via Zigbee2Mqtt) are often powered off at the switch on the lamp, meaning HA still sees them as "on" until the power is restored and they can be turned "off" via the app. The lights cannot be turned "off" (in HA) manually.

Is there any good solution for detecting when a light goes missing and turning it "off" in HA?

I've always wanted to find out what happened to that guy but also the mystery is part of what makes it so compelling.