Rewatching ST:DS9 Continuing from Part 1 (s4e11 “Homefront“), Sisko and Odo puzzle over Starfleet’s reports on the planetwide power outage, noting that the elite cadet group Red Squad was first recalled, then assigned to unspecified field duty. Though the streets are empty except for the security guards, Joseph Sisko opens his restaurant, seeing the guards…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The wormhole is opening and closing for no apparent reasons. The Bajorans think it’s a sign from the Prophets; Sisko is convinced there’s a scientific explanation. Dax has been pranking Odo — breaking into his quarters while’s regenerating in his liquid state and slightly rearranging his furniture. A security video reveals that a…
Be careful of the parts of news stories that rely on ifs and coulds and maybes. Having said that, this is fascinating exploration of what’s at stake. It’s a fact that OpenAI’s business model involved training its large-language model on copyrighted material, without acquiring legal permission to do so, and without any mechanism to share…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Plot contrivance particles somehow force Bashir to live out his superspy holodeck fantasy. I know this episode has its fans, and I have to admit Garak’s outsider commentary almost saves it from Facepalm Planet, but coming so soon after the s4e9 “Little Green Men” homage to sci-fi B movies and the s4e8 “The…
Whether a source is biased towards the left or right is not as important as to whether the story depends on facts and fact-dense analysis (best), fact-supported and fair opinions (okay), or taunts, propaganda, and fabrications (fringe stuff that’s harmful to our civic well-being). This version of the Ad Fontes chart shifts the AP a…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Kor (the charismatic and brilliantly campy John Colicos) recounts the battle from s2e19 “Blood Oath.” He’s stretching the truth quite a bit. “Yeah, but who cares?” asks O’Brien. “He tells it well.” A starstruck Worf is sensitive about his outsider status, but Kor not only accepts him, but recruits him on a quest…
In a writing-intensive class, students need to write extensively to the point that the teacher cannot possibly grade all of it. — Edutopia via NCTE Good advice from an article by Kara Douma, reprinted by NCTE. I need to hear that. The referees don’t score every practice. The coaches don’t give you feedback after…
I was so glad to see my daughter in this show at The Theatre Factory a few years ago. Flashback!
It’s been a while since something got me into a movie theater. Obviously I wasn’t in a rush. I recently rewatched 1-4 with my son, to get ready, and I took an afternoon off in order to catch a matinee. I enjoyed it. There was no standout scene that in my opinion quite matched the…
Rewatching ST:DS9 A plot contrivance particle field sends Quark, Rom and Nog to 1947 Earth, where they’re mistaken for “Martians.” In the teaser, Nog auctions off his childhood belongings as he prepares to leave for Starfleet Academy. Quark makes an apparently magnanimous offer to bring Nog to Earth “in style” on a shuttle his cousin…
Thanks to watching many, many YouTube tutorials on #Blender3D and #Unity3D, this summer I’ve created about 100 engineers, clerks and technicians to wander about the ship’s many levels. This was my full-time summer project for about six weeks, and I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned. I’ll still work on this when I get the…
Very excited to see this project coming together at the University of Toronto. As a grad student, my first scholarly publication was an explanation of my own 2D simulation of the York Corpus Christi pageant. On Saturday, June 7, 2025 (rain date Sunday, June 8, 2025), starting at 6:30am and continuing past midnight, we will…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Worf grumbles to Kira that Odo seems permissive about Quark’s shady doings. On a runabout, O’Brien stops himself just before saying he wishes Keiko were more like Bashir. Plot contrivance particles get the runabout crashed on a planet and the spacebros captured by Jem’Hadar ground forces before the opening credits roll. The leader…
Whereas Twitter was once a fountain of authoritative information, X is a platform where trolls can pay a small fee to have their ugly content boosted ahead of reputable sources. X is a platform where identity verification no longer exists and impersonation is only a paid subscription away. X is a platform where journalists are…
We ask students to cite encyclopedia articles, dictionaries, news interviews with experts, and in-person conversations. A generative text-generation tool that scrapes published work and uses a statistical model to emulate a response that mimics the way the humans in its database have responded to similar prompts is formally something like a conversation, and the MLA’s…
Rewatching ST:DS9 On a dark and stormy night, a man gives himself an injection, and a rain-soaked young woman shows up at his door, on a quest to ask the famous writer Jake Sisko why he stopped writing years ago. We flash back to young Jake tagging along on the Defiant ostensibly to see a…
Rewatching ST:DS9 We cold open into an action sequence, as security teams sweep the station with phaser rifles, looking for a Changeling. Sisko, now with a shaved head and goatee (actor Avery Brooks’s preferred personal style), enjoys a dinner with Kassidy Yates in his quarters, until he’s interrupted by a vague message from Dax. A…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The cold opening has Jake gearing up to say something dramatic, which turns out to be celebrating his dad’s promotion to captain. During the festivities, Ambassador Krajensky injects some exposition about joining the Defiant on a patrol of the volatile Federation-Tzenkethi border. In the Defiant engine room, O’Brien hears a noise, but dismisses…
I was searching for how to change the default font in the WordPress editor, but the answers I was getting were overwhelmingly for how to change what the user sees in published posts, which I already know how to do. Bing’s response was right on target. It probably helped that I knew the specific name…