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The Huddled Asses of the French Pedestal

2025-07-13 

Earlier in the year, one of my favorite musicians had scheduled a show in New York City for July. Having had some big life changes late last year that left me with a LOT of empty, unrestricted freedom, I wasted no time adding her to my calendar.

The day before the event, however, I realized the show was for 7pm. This isn’t an unreasonable hour, but due to my infinite stupidity I imagined it was much earlier than it was.

Realizing I had a wide open morning and afternoon leading up to it, rather than leave for the train into Grand Central Station at, say, 3pm and get there spritely and ready to go, I got it into my head that I could make a whole-ass day out of it.

I wouldn’t characterize this a critical error, but it certainly shifted the course of the day’s events.

You see, one of the other things I’ve always wanted to do was visit the Statue of Liberty.

I don’t know why. While I’ve always enjoyed the statue and what it represents, I’ve never been particularly in love enough to want to visit.

But, lingering in my mind all these years, has been the opening stages of Deus Ex

Castle Clinton. Battery Park. The (only vaguely accurate) layout of Liberty Island itself.

These are things burned into my brain by the game, but I never had any real world frame of reference. Every time I’d heard those places referred to in real life, I’d get a little giddy and imagine checking them out for real.

And that’s largely what fueled my decision to hastily buy tickets for the ferry to visit less than 24 hours before the concert: kill two birds with one stone.

So I spent the hours leading up to the trip doing intense research: What do I need to know before going? What are the security restrictions? (There are many, I went through two airport-style security checkpoints.) How the fuck do I navigate the New York City subway system?!

But I educated myself fairly well (or so I thought), bought the tickets — including the last ticket for access to the pedestal section of the statue, and then proceeded to get only about 4 hours of sleep before having to leave at 7am.

This was Blunder #1.

It wasn’t strictly my fault, I swear. At least as insofar as conscious decisions made by my brain go: I actually did try to get to sleep by 11pm. But I was so giddy and excited, with my head full of plans and possibilities, that it took me literally hours to finally fall asleep.  I would just lay there, my eyes closed, swirling blobs of color and static filling the black void, with thoughts about express and local subway service and 4 trains and transfer stations bouncing around my brain folds…

But, eventually, mercifully, the sandman claimed me…

I woke up on time, if groggy and dazed. I had my morning tightly structured: leave by 7:15am for the 8:22am train. Arrive at Grand Central by 10am. Take the subway to Battery Park by 11:00am. Check in with security by 11:30am to board the ferry at 12:00pm. Each checkpoint had a separate entry in my calendar so I would be fully aware of where I should be, and when.

I had this shit locked down, son.

The ride in was smooth. Well, aside from an asshole doing 90mph who almost rear-ended me at full speed on I-91. But other than that, I’d even gotten to the Metro North station so early that I just missed a train that would have gotten me to NYC 30 minutes earlier. Oh well. It was a nice station, at least. A fine way to burn a half hour.

Once aboard the train, I accumulated several friendly ride-mates to share the cramped seating with along the way.

Stepping out onto Grand Central among the crowd of travelers is always a weird thrill for me. So many different people all making that journey into the Main Concourse and parts unknown.

Thanks to my early recon the evening prior (videos I’d found on YouTube), I knew exactly where to head inside the station for the 4-5-6 subway line.

The OMNY card stuff worked flawlessly. I had visions of angry red rejection LEDs flashing at me as angry New Yorkers cursed me out behind me. Instead, the green light went off immediately and I squeezed my way through the turnstile, and looked for the signage to take me downtown.

It was all going like clockwork!

That is, at least, until I stepped off the subway car several stops too early.

And then proceeded to do it again.

But it’s okay: I budgeted my time for this eventuality. The NYC subway system is not that complicated, but it does introduce many bespoke elements that a bumpkin without any experience will need time to acclimate to.

They don’t prepare you for just how oppressively hot it is in the subway. None of the “how to” videos bring it up.

So here I am, sweating, trying to remember my ‘training’: what did squares and circles mean, again? Is this gonna zip past my station? Why are some stops clearly marked and visible outside the car window, while others aren’t? Why do some cars have working speakers with station announcements, while others don’t? WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO HOT?

Damn it, I was confident. I thought I was ready. And, largely, I was. I just made a few questionable choices fueled by a tight time table.

Eventually I got into the swing of it, things clicked, and I eventually made my way to the Bowling Green stop. (If you’re from NYC you’re probably vomiting over how easy that should have been. It’s a straight shot from Grand Central. How could I fuck that up? Inexperience makes all buffoonery possible, my friend.)

Stepping out of the station into the light of day — significantly cooler I might add — I was immediately accosted by the numerous tricksters attempting to woo the naive into taking their bootleg Statue of Liberty ferry. There’s only one direct source for ferry tickets that disembark on Liberty Island, itself. The others, as far as I know, are parasites that take you on a ride around the island, so you can “see it” and then return to land. A mere cock-tease of liberty, versus the real deal.

Having already acquired tickets online, I was able to get in line for security immediately. They weren’t kidding when they warned of “airport style security”: I had to dump everything but my underoos into a bin. When I attempted to grab the bin as it exited the x-ray machine, and help keep the line moving (thinking I’m doing a good thing!), I got hissed at by the security girl for getting too close. Oops.

But soon hundreds of us are huddled outside once more, lined up for the ferry. It seemed to take forever to get the thing loaded. But when you get inside, it wobbles side to side, and you’ve got to kind of re-learn how to walk, as if you’re a baby foal. But you quickly get the knack of it, thankfully.

Soon, the swaying ferry takes to the seas and — my god — the cool breeze coming off the ocean, flowing through your hair, is quite possibly one of the most erotic sensations I have ever experienced on this Earth. It was an incredible feeling juxtaposed against the oppressive sun beating down, like two enemy combatants duking it out across your face and scalp.

The ferry soon arrives at Liberty Island, and as I disembark I notice the other mass of people clumped together, baking together under the sun, eagerly waiting to take our place. And with it, a vision of my own future.

The official Statue of Liberty ferry includes several different “experiences” you can purchase. Aside from a few specialty ones, the primary options are: General Admission, which gives you basic access to Liberty Island. This is a large area around the statue with modest amounts of park land, a museum, and opportunities to spend more money: food, drinks and an embarrassingly expensive gift shop (housing the only bathroom I could find). The other experiences include access to the statue itself, which is not part of the basic admission. You can go all the way up to the statue’s crown. (How the Ghostbsuters got up there with zero notice is beyond me.)

The other option gives “access” to the Pedestal that the statue rests upon.

Both of these options are only about 30 cents more than the regular fare, shockingly, but are limited in availability. The crown, for example, was sold out well into late September, time of writing. The Pedestal was also sold out, but only for a couple days in advance — at least until I refreshed the page later in the evening and found one slot had opened up: mine.

As I stepped out onto the island, above the heads of the crowd you see it: the statue. It is, at once, both smaller, and exactly as big as I’d imagined. It’s kind of a weird, shape-shifting illusion for me. It’s size makes perfect sense in person, but in all the photos over the years it always seems a great deal larger than real life. Yet I don’t dare call it disappointing.

The structure of the Liberty Island is generally like a large, wide ring-shaped path around the statue, with grassy park land and trees and some smaller buildings filling in the gap. The park is filled with people from all walks of life. It’s truly impressive the variety, reflecting the promise of the statue itself. A beacon for diversity.

You can spend as much time as you like on the island; the ferry leaves and arrives regularly. You just queue up when you’re ready to go. So there’s no pressure to hurry: you can take your time and really enjoy the park.

Random observation: it’s interesting seeing the seagulls and chickadees. They’re very much used to humans. I had one so close it probably would have jumped into my hand if I’d held it out with some popcorn in it.

Don’t sleep on the museum: it’s full of an impressive collection of artifacts from the creation of the statue, and it’s debut in 1886. There were moments in the museum that actually made me, surprisingly, a bit more emotional than I’d expected, given the state of the world right now. Being so strongly reminded about the soul of this country and the hope and better future it was supposed to represent for the downtrodden of humanity, and seeing it now being ravaged more than ever by greed and a rising fascist tide… while being surrounded by visitors from all walks of life. It was inspiring, mixed with a tinge of infuriating.

Eventually I had to take advantage of my Pedestal access before departing.

This was Blunder #2.

The Pedestal is what the statue was built on top of. To gain entrance, you have to pass through a second airport-style security checkpoint, since they apparently these two security teams don’t trust each other. At least this time I didn’t piss a security guard off.

I’m not sure what I expected from the Pedestal, but in essence it’s 215 steps (10 stories) of climbing up a narrow stairwell. Every couple stories there’s enough space to pause, gasp, wish you’d collapsed and died, and then keep going. Rinse, repeat quite a few times.

When you finally get to the top, you’re greeted with a small room with four exits: one proceeds up to the crown, if you’re so blessed (which leads to even narrower, steeper stairs). The exit back down the Pedestal. And two passages taking you to opposing ends of the Pedestal observation deck.

And by “observation deck” I mean a painfully intimate, slender ring around the top of the Pedestal where people’s genitals scrape roughly against each other as they try to get a glimpse out over the island that’s barely any more impressive than the view they can get from the top deck of the ferry that brought them there.

The large, powerful fans they had installed inside the top of the Pedestal were almost a strong consolation prize, at least, that I spent most of my brief time there, in front of.

My weak, burdened ankles bravely gave it their all as my pathetic frame slammed down on them 215 more times as I made my way down the exit stairwell.

By the time I exited the Pedestal through the large turnstile, my stamina had been destroyed and I’d paid 30 cents for the privilege.

I slowly, painfully crawled my way to the dock to queue up for the ferry. The plan was to hit Ellis Island next, and then get to the Bowery Ballroom for the concert by 6:30. (It was great: the subway exit was RIGHT in front of the door.)

But after the ferry filled up, and I melted into the chair on the top deck and I felt the glorious wind, once more, racing through the hairs of my broken body. I realized I would have to let down the spirits of the Ellis Island immigrants. I remained on board as the ferry departed and filled with a new group of passengers fresh from their own Ellis Island adventures, and we made our way back to Battery Park.

Leaving was easy. The exit is an unceremonious dumping of human remains behind a park restaurant, as elderly Asian men attempt to beguile the weary, departing passengers with promises of 5-minute hand-drawn caricatures and an array of cheap tchotchkes of their fresh trip to both amuse and delight the money out of their wallets. Feeling like I’d been freshly drained by a vampire, I barely acknowledged their existence, shambling slowly past all of them as I meandered my way out of the park.

At this point, it was only about 4pm.

The concert — (remember the concert?) — which was the entire point of the trip started at 7pm, and I had no idea how long it was going to be. I’d estimated between that, the subway trip back, the train ride back to Connecticut, and then the drive home from the train station… it would be well after midnight, if not later.  And the concert was a standing room only affair with no seating.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Fuck that.

I hopped back into the Bowling Green station and took the subway back to Grand Central. By this point a smidge of energy had returned, but barely. Enough to walk around the enormous station a bit, find a Starbucks and some iced coffee: black.

The next train was minutes away, so I hurried to Track 20, booked my return ticket on the MTA app, and got on board. I found a nice, cozy corner: a window seat, and an outlet for my charger. I plugged in, took a long swig, and curled up by the window as the train departed back home. By this point the concert had already started, but there’s nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment.

Despite having to jettison my original plans, I fully acknowledged that this trip was not a failure. I had a nice, full day, doing something new that I’d always wanted to do. Sure, I may have overestimated my stamina for the trip and overbooked my plans. (And later realized my face was sun burned, probably contributing to my drained vibe.) But I cannot possibly feel “robbed”: quite the opposite. I had a mostly incident-free day full of adventure and amazing experiences.

And hopefully, the first of many such trips in this brave new era for me. 🍻

Updating the firmware on the SI4732 “mini spy radio” on Linux

2025-03-21 

Just a quickie. If you’ve picked up one of those $40 SI4732 mini “spy radio” devices, you quickly find out two things: it’s adorable and looks great. And the interface is fucking horrendous. The click/double-click with rapid timeout design is incredibly frustrating, almost rendering the device, if not useless, then at least deeply unpleasant to use once the novelty wears off.

But that can be easily, hopefully, rectified with updated firmware. And behold! It exists: https://github.com/G8PTN/ATS_MINI/tree/main/FIRMWARE

As of 2025-03-21, the most recent I used was ATS_MINI_v0_28.zip. Inside the zip are three files starting with ATS_MINI.ino.*.

If you don’t have esptool installed already, do that.

Plug the device in. Turn it on.

Find out which port the device is on — on my machine, it’s usually /dev/ttyACM0. But it might be another /dev/ttyACM device. (I saw it use /dev/ttyACM1 once.)

Assuming it’s /dev/ttyACM0, this should get you going:

esptool --chip esp32s3 -p /dev/ttyACM0 write_flash 0 ./ATS_MINI.ino.bootloader.bin

esptool --chip esp32s3 -p /dev/ttyACM0 write_flash 0x8000 ./ATS_MINI.ino.partitions.bin

esptool --chip esp32s3 -p /dev/ttyACM0 write_flash 0x10000 ./ATS_MINI.ino.bin

Generative Melodrama

2024-01-16 

I’ve found the overly-melodramatic, anti-AI crowd with their blanket dismissal of anything and everything related to the topic are easily as obnoxious as the douches sticking “AI” into every possible crevice, and hailing it as competition for Jesus.

I know I’m asking a lot, but can’t we have a middle ground acknowledging that there’s pros and cons and try to find a productive middle ground? There’s intolerable extremist propaganda coming from every direction.

Eeh… who am I kidding? There’s been “gonna take our jobs” pitchfork crowds for every major technological milestone. I’m certain there was some swift Sumerian who bitched about the wheel taking his job running around

Review: Leave the World Behind (2023)

2023-12-09 

As one of the billions of fans of Mr. Robot, after seeing the trailer and finding out the film had direct connections to the show… well, there was no way I wasn’t going to throw this on the moment I could.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, there were moments where it felt like it dragged on a bit too long. And I think part of what made me feel that way was that the film doesn’t hide it’s sinister intent: right from the opening credits everything is cast in suspenseful music and suspicious moments.

As viewers, we know a bad mystery is about to unfold, and we’re left watching as the characters catch up to where the audience is. So when the story takes the time to spend with the characters, I find I don’t care as much unless their interactions directly inform the greater situation.

Admittedly, it ALL matters, in an abstract sense. Looking back, I can see where it fits into the film’s story. But more than once I found myself looking to see where I was in the film’s runtime. Something I’ve found to often be a bad sign. Not always, but it was one here…

But these moments are spread apart. Typically it keeps the mystery unfolding enough to keep things interesting.

The cast is decent and nuanced. Except for the son character who exists to be a dumb, cruel big brother. Thankfully the bulk of the bad things happen to him. He’s kind of disposable from a story/audience standpoint, so good call? (Through no fault of the actor, of course. It’s just how he was written.)

But my biggest criticism and disappointment: it gets far too blunt with the ‘message’. The film literally has characters verbally exposit the core messages — telling us things that should be explicit in the story and not directly spoken. It came dangerously close to having “MESSAGE INCOMING, PAY ATTENTION VIEWER” flash along the bottom, like the EAS alert on the TV. Have some faith in the audience, for chrissakes.

Still, the film’s gorgeous cinematography makes it’s intriguing and terrifyingly realistic plot (as far as cinematic hacking exploits go) a real treat. Definitely worth a go; a decent, frightening epilogue to Mr. Robot, if it’s literally intended to be that on some level.

And even if it wasn’t intended, it works quite well as one.

(I also have to wonder if this was intended to be split into four 30-minute episodes: it’s split up into “PART 1: CHAPTER TITLE” cards. 🤔)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The 36th Anniversary of that Bloody Thing

Q: Why, Forty, as a fan of Max Headroom, do you inexplicably hate the so-called “Max Headroom Incident” involving an act of TV piracy in the 1980s. You appreciate signal piracy. You enjoy Max. What’s wrong with you? It’s the 36th anniversary of the hijacking!

The real Max has no ass to spank.

A: I’m glad you asked, random stranger. It’s because I fucking love Max Headroom. As a TV show. As a talk show host. As a movie. And as a character.

And it absolutely twists my tits to realize that the first and probably only thing people will remember about Max, in the future, is this stupid, one-off incident of a dumb-ass interrupting an episode of Dr. Who while wearing a mask, rambling incoherently, and paddling their naked ass.

Don’t get me wrong: this, by itself is very funny. On it’s own merits it’s terrific, in the spirit of things, and it does overlap with some of the major themes of the TV series (e.g. “signal zippers“).

But Max Headroom — as a whole — deserves a much, much better legacy than this.

So I will continue to grump. Just don’t take my grumping about this too seriously.

And I promise not to keep writing posts as questions nobody asked; I am merely creatively bankrupt.

Why don’t I just sign up for YouTube Premium?

Time to get your tubes tied.

As is common knowledge at this point, YouTube has decided to crack down on the practice of using ad blocking on the site.

I was able to get most of this garbage to go away sufficiently enough with some CSS-fu (and there’s more drastic measures you can take). It’s made the site a bit clunkier to use (I can’t scroll down to the comments, for instance, but that’s often a blessing). But for the most part, life goes on. (And FreeTube has been pretty great, for what it’s worth.)

Over on Hacker News, whenever this topic comes up, there’s always one asshole who asks “why don’t you just pay for Premium”.

I instantly scoffed, but it I was willing to consider just why this wasn’t an option, in my mind. And here’s what I came up with:

  • I don’t have ethical issues against pirating. I do, however, go out of my way to buy physical media of the shows and music I love. I can afford to do so, and I want to support and encourage the artists I love.
    • Naturally, corpo trash loves money and they’ve realized they’re in a position where they can get rid of physical media entirely and just temporarily license you a stream of bytes. Which is an odd choice considering the whole streaming model is struggling now.
    • I suppose I’m partially at fault for helping user in this whole digital-only world, given how successful it’s been in the video game world with Steam, and now home consoles ditching physical discs. I love Steam. It’s surprising it’s taken so long for it’s curse to catch up with us.
  • I don’t trust Google anymore. Well, I never fully did. But the veil has been slipping lately. It’s a company circling the drain, raiding the cushions for money (see also: this whole adblock thing).
  • YouTube has been free for nearly 20 years. The site opened in 2005. They built their entire empire on the backs of people uploading their content for them to sell ads on. I’m not saying a content distribution system of its scale isn’t nothing, but good luck holding out your hat for alms at this point. It’s a bit late in the game.
    • Interesting to see so many of the surviving “Old Internet” sites from the 2000s collapsing now, for various reasons: Reddit, Twitter… strangely, Facebook is just kind of idle at the moment. I can’t imagine that will last.
  • YouTube’s shitty automated policies have been constant thorn in the side of creators. The victims of it have few options for recourse. Well, that’s true at least if you aren’t one of their more profitable accounts. Or maybe you get lucky and catch a sympathetic Googler’s eye on HN.
  • Their corporate-friendly “copyright strike” bullshit has made documenting and educating people about retro content (music, movies, etc) a real minefield to the point where creators fear even playing a snippet from something without risking retribution. “Fair use” essentially becoming a game Russian Roulette.
  • You can’t even swear in a video without risking demonetization now? Fuck off. Kowtowing to advertisers just like the old media.
  • The Algorithm(tm) watching every little mouse twitch to shovel new content in your direction — not YT specific, but, personally, I’m done with that Orwellian shit.
  • Professional video creators are basically being held hostage: they can’t even seek greener pastures because this is _where the audience_ is. And YouTube knows it.

So yeah, Google doesn’t get any of my fucking money. I don’t give cash to those who’s policies I disagree with.

I’ll support creators directly where I can, give to Archive.org, and promote decentralized ways of hosting content.

Wherein I Disqualify Myself for the Office of the Presidency

2023-08-23 
Generals gathered in their masses…

A recent Kurzgesagt video discussed the trope where a President is being pressured into deciding whether to respond to a ‘probable’ nuclear attack. The confidence level is not 100%, however, but there’s a ticking clock with only a ridiculously tiny window of time to decide to launch a counter attack.

It made me really think and realize what my answer would have to be in that high pressure situation:

Don’t press “the button”.

  1. If I launch, the odds of nuclear war and annihilation of both sides becomes 100%. We’re done.

  2. If it’s a real attack, at least someone will still survive this. It may not be “us” and “our values”, but humanity would go on. Probably. I mean, don’t get me wrong: it’ll absolutely change the world, but at least millions of innocent people would be saved. They just won’t be “ours”.

  3. If it’s not a real attack, well… I guess we’re all getting real drunk tonight. 🥃

The only way the choice to not counter-attack is the “wrong” is if you’re a military hardliner with a thick “us vs them” mentality, with their patriotism so far up their ass that they’ve lost sight of the big picture of humanity.

Of course, this breaks down if you know that I won’t retaliate. Then you’ll just steamroll me.  The other side still has to believe there’s a chance you’ll counterattack in a real scenario, to maintain the ‘mutually assured destruction’ balance.

Since I’ve laid my cards out here, I guess I won’t have my finger (not) over the button in my lifetime. 😉

Unchanging

2023-04-19 
I spent my whole life making sure I’d never change.
And now, later in life, I fear I may have succeeded.

Greasemonkey: Drudge Report Highlighter

2023-03-13 

One of my secret shames is that I regularly check Drudge Report for breaking news (especially now that Twitter is compromised).

Drudge is a scumbag. But he’s a useful scumbag. He seemingly posts 24/7 (with some help, no doubt) every little bit of breaking news.

His preferences lean right, but at the end of the day he leans wherever the clicks are — so he’s not exactly what I would describe as a die hard conservative, if the story is big enough.

That means he links to tabloid sites, like The Sun, and others.

Very low-quality garbage, along side regular mainstream news sources. It sucks.

So, last night I got the idea to write a Greasemonkey script to iterate all the links on the page and style them appropriately if they’re from a blocklist. That’ll help me judge, at a glance, the likelihood that King Charles was actually seen shapeshifting into a lizard or not, and I can skip it.

And here it is, in it’s imperfect glory:

// ==UserScript==
// @name     drudgereport-highlighter
// @version  1
// @grant    none
// @run-at 	 document-idle
// @include  https://drudgereport.com/
// ==/UserScript==

el_links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");

const tabloidDomains = [  
  "mirror.co.uk",
  "thesun.co.uk",
  "the-sun.com",
  "dailymail.co.uk",
  "dailycaller.com",
  "radaronline.com",
  "bild.com"
];

const conservativeShitholeDomains = [
  "washingtontimes.com",
  "foxnews.com",
  "infowars.com",
  "breitbart.com",
  "newsmax.com",
  "freebeacon.com",
  "realclearpolitics.com"
]

const secondClassDomains = [
  "dnyuz.com",
  "nypost.com",
  "newzit.com",
]

function basename(url) {
  try {
    let back_offset = 0;

    if (url.includes("co.uk")) back_offset = 1;

    let foo = url.split("/")[2].split(".");
    return `${foo[foo.length - 2 - back_offset]}.${
      foo[foo.length - 1 - back_offset]
    }`;
  } catch {
    // lazy hack
    return "";
  }
}

for (el of el_links) {
  domain = basename(el.href);
  let updated = false;
  if (tabloidDomains.filter((d) => d.includes(domain)).length) {
    el.style.backgroundColor = "darkred";
    el.style.color = "white";
    el.title = "Tabloid";
    updated = true;
  } 
  else if (conservativeShitholeDomains.filter((d) => d.includes(domain)).length) {
    el.style.backgroundColor = "#FF0000AA";
    el.style.color = "white";
    el.title = "Conservative Shithole";
    updated = true;
  }
  else if (secondClassDomains.filter((d) => d.includes(domain)).length) {
    el.style.backgroundColor = "darkcyan";
    el.style.color = "white";
    el.title = "Second-class Domain";
    updated = true;
  }
  
  if (updated) {
    el.style.borderRadius = "4px"
    el.style.padding = "0 0.25em"
    el.title = `${el.title} [${domain}]`
    
    let tag = document.createElement('span')
    tag.innerHTML = domain
    tag.style.fontFamily = "sans-serif";
    tag.style.fontSize = "8pt";
    tag.style.color = "black"
    tag.style.backgroundColor= "white"
    tag.style.padding = "0 0.25em"
    el.style.paddingBottom = "0.20em"  
    tag.style.marginLeft = "0.25em"
    tag.style.borderRadius="10px"
    el.style.textDecoration = "none";
    
    el.append(tag)
  }
  
}

console.log("drudgereport-highlighter installed");

Review: Picard 3×01 – The Next Generation

2023-02-16 

Not a bad opener at all.

At first it felt like the direct TNG callbacks were a bit much, but it’s the opening episode — there’s an allowance for that kind of thing. Sets the tone. Builds a framework.

It definitely feels different. Better. Probably my favorite premiere out of all three seasons. But each of those were actually quite good before each of them fell off the rails pretty rapidly. It remains to be seen if Season 3 falls into that trap. But I get a good feeling from this. With how badly prior seasons have left me soured, I still feel something I didn’t expect: hopeful. 🤞

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Realtime Observations:

  • In the 25th Century… (oh lord, laying it on thick out of the gate)
  • No title sequence…?
  • Rainy ambient background is great with headphones in the scene with Picard talking to Laris.
  • Aaaand just like that Laris is off the series? Maybe she’s back at the end, too? 🤔
  • An EAGLEMOSS on screen with stand and everything. Okay…
  • Oh, wow, a whole Amazon store listing of Eaglemoss ships on display. Not sure how I feel about that. Breaks immersion a bit too much.
  • “The fat ones”. Geesh.
  • Both Picard and Riker giving speeches at Frontier Day.
  • So Bev gives this dire message where she’s clearly heavily injured, but let’s fuck around real casually about it at the bar. Factoring in how long it took for them to get together, hatch a plan, take the Titan in one direction, then double back, etc. It had to be at least week if not more before they even got to her. (Trek’s been known to bend time and space, so this is not nearly as damning as it might ordinarily be, but it’s still irritating.)
  • Fifteen minutes in and the number of obscure, statistically unlikely TNG callbacks in a row is already closing in on intolerable. (EDIT: it mellows out.)
  • M’talas Prime… a bit on the nose, no? I mean, naming shit after the crew is common but what’s next? Kurtzman IV? (That actually has a good ring to it…)
  • “Inspection face”
  • Sexy Titan-A flyby. I’ve long said Trek has lost that grandiose majesty, and this brings some of that back.
  • The score really is great, though it sometimes feels like a bit too direct of a copy/paste affair. From great source material, at least.
  • “Crash” LaForge. She’s got chops. She didn’t feel like stunt casting.
  • Picard/Riker banter is almost a bit much, but JUST on this side of fun.
  • Shaw’s dinner ASMR with headphones is a bit disturbing.
  • Yep, Shaw is a real dick. Hahah. Maybe a bit too much of one? I bet we come around on him, though, before he dies.
  • On snap, he’s got Locutus beef with a general anti-Borg racist streak. (“Commander Hansen” for instance.)
  • Picard and Janeway inspired her to “join Starfleet”? I thought she tried to get in post-Voyager but was denied. That was on THIS SHOW it was mentioned. They said even Janeway’s considerable sway at the time couldn’t do it… which is why she joined the Rangers. Bah.
  • A red statue. Who the fuck has a red statue, except to use for someone’s cryptic clue? 😛
  • Holy shit! Now we’re playing with portals. That was exceptionally different and genuinely horrifying. But I can’t imagine how someone can get to Earth, do THAT, and not immediately get stomped in orbit. We don’t know enough about it, though, so… we’ll see?
  • Butt to butt shuttlecraft-on-ship action.
  • Androids get an adrenaline rush? Oh right, we’re sweeping that whole “golem body” thing aside.
  • Picard made Bev a classical mix tape!
  • “Her son!” — no shit, Marcus.
  • Opening credits are at the end. An interesting choice. Some fun clues in the end-credits LCARS.
  • 53 minute episode but felt twice that long. In a good way.