QHC

Never heard anything bad about Pine. Are you thinking about Chris Pratt, perhaps? Because he has certainly gotten some heat for his alleged affiliations with far-right religious/political groups (because those are the same things now, apparently).

They can keep their guns if they pass mandatory training.

Most cops don't ever fire a weapon on duty over the course of their entire career, so most of them don't actually need to be armed all the time.

Jokes can usually include a message, and often are more effective at delivering that message than a serious monologue with full citations.

Therefore, saying something is meant to be silly or a joke does not do anything to address whether the message behind that joke is a good one or not.

follow-up to the micro-budget British slasher that went viral last year for its childhood-bludgeoning premise, became one of the most talked about films of 2023

I have literally never heard of the original movie.

Do 'journalists' just get to decide something is massively popular because two people talked about it on social media?

Resistance is futile!

These are PEOPLE!

Out there, there are no saints!

Completely agree. The first two seasons are criticized for using leftover TNG scripts. While I think a lot of that is due to the nature of episodic TV production in the 90s, I also think those seasons are incredibly necessary to establish the context of the Federation and how that differs to other cultures in the galaxy (and even on the fringes of the Federation itself). The connection to TNG and the overlap with Voyager also goes a long way to establishing the ethos and morality that the rest of the DS9 story is commenting on.

Take away that foundation and backstory, and you just have another generic space opera.

I am usually on the other side of this argument, in that my main enjoyment of Star Trek is the exploration of ideas and morality plays that we get from TOS, TNG and the early seasons of Voyager. The utopian setting and unrealistic morality of all the main characters in TNG especially are what makes an episode exploring the nature of individuality or whatever topic work so well.

I enjoy DS9 for what it is, but it also set the stage for modern Trek which is so obsessed with "realism" and galaxy-spanning plotlines in a way that I do not enjoy. If I want to watch just an episode or two, I always reach for TNG or Voyager, but if I want to do a longer re-watch then DS9 is definitely my preferred choice.

Episodic is not always a bad thing, and sometimes it is actually a very important feature! I wish modern TV writers and producers would have the same perspective about serialization, but in reverse.

TNG had some multipart episodes and some plot lines that ran across the better part of a season, but the entirety of DS9 takes place against a continuous plot line.

"Entirety" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, IMO. While there is a general setting and eventually a serialized plot, it really doesn't get to the point where there's a continuous story until at minimum season 3 and in practice doesn't stop being episodic until even later.

Even once the main baddies are introduced--which does not actually happen until the final episode of season 2--there are still multiple self-contained episodes that have nothing to do with any kind of ongoing story or character development.

Don't get me wrong, compared to TNG and even Voyager or Enterprise, DS9 definitely had a story in mind that took multiple seasons to tell, but it's not like things were carefully known from the beginning. Lots of details change or are quietly retrofitted to fit better once the writers knew where things were actually headed. And that's fine, by the way! There is still a great story to be told.

I agree with all of this. The Borg Cube especially was very difficult to assemble, and I've done some pretty big official Lego sets so I'm used to a good challenge. I had to resort to gluing some parts in place, as some of the plates were bent and just would not stay in place while I worked on the next side.

I also really came to dislike the tiny black pieces they use to add studs to the bottom of some bricks. Too small, too hard to insert, and way too easy to just roll away and never be found.

That said, the final product looks fine and nobody ever questions if they are legitimate sets or not. I don't regret the purchases, just didn't enjoy the build process like I normally do.

the rule is you have to consider everyone for employment that can be employed

Emphasis added to the original comment to help those with poor reading comprehension skills.

Why would a refugee or asylum seeker "never have a chance" at getting hired by a company like SpaceX? Seems like that is part of the problem, no?