themoken

Non-existent is probably hyperbole, but I think it's pretty reasonable to feel that way after your kids have grown and you realize you never made the time to really focus on them. Even if you have a nominal relationship later, it's as an adult, it's only certain times a year, it's focused on the grandkids etc.

I am about 80% through it as an audiobook (waiting for it to come back from the library) and I agree. Great to listen to him, tons of non Trek info I didn't know that is still quite interesting.

Not the best husband to be sure, but I do like that he's pretty up front about it. Seems like his first marriage was effectively over as soon as he found American success and his wife (understandably) didn't want to abandon her own career in the UK. Hard to listen to Capt. Picard be unfaithful (with Vash no less!) but I felt for him more than most egomaniac rock stars who fuck anything that moves.

EDIT: Also loved how he hates Thatcher for demolishing all of the programs he used to get trained as an actor coming from a poor background. There was a lot of mutual aid in his early life that seems non-existent today.

If you haven't read Patrick Stewart's autobiography that just came out, Making it So, you should. Or, even better, listen to him read it in an audiobook.

I read "The Idea Factory" about Bell Labs, focused mostly on inventing the transistor, but it included their consolidation into this lab and just how state of the art it was. The book implied that it was the first corporate "campus" designed more like a university than a factory or office.

The book really made me understand that AT&T / Bell Labs was the hot tech firm of the early 20th century, long before getting to computing advances (C, UNIX) I was more familiar with.

Hello fellow ex-IBMer. I came to the corp from an open source background and I was happy that my LTC coworkers seemed to despise software parents despite the huge pressure from management.

I wonder how much of this is that IBM fell out of the patent lead and decided to just take their ball and go home. Or how much is RedHat influence shifting the mindset away from the patent Mexican standoff with everyone else.

I used (u)xterm for like 20 years before discovering that Konsole is solid and beautiful. My whole tiling setup is backed up with KDE apps now.

And there's also William Gibson's entire Sprawl series, which would be very cool to see on a screen.

I love the Sprawl books, and Neuromancer has been in development hell a few times IIRC, but I'm hesitant.

Reading Gibson's words, they're so evocative, but a lot is left unspecified and the reader kinda fills in the blanks based on the feeling he is conveying. A show pins everything down visually and I'm afraid even Neuromancer would get rendered as generic cyberpunk without Gibson's unique style.

All of the arguments I see for Discovery are based on representation and that's literally the only thing the show got right. It's like yeah, it's great to have a diverse cast... I just wish they were on screen doing something good. Trek lives and dies in the writing, all the acting, effects, and out of universe concerns won't save it from absolutely horrendous writing.

If they'd have done SNW style plots with DSC cast, it would have been amazing from the beginning.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

As some have mentioned, this could be a/another backdoor pilot for Legacy where Seven more or less takes the torch from Picard, similar to Picard taking it from Kirk in Generations - although that was obviously after TNG instead of before.

I... Don't hate this. He meets Kirk too, which could be captain wish fulfillment. After his nephew is killed in such a stupid way he just exits reality and never returns.

First Contact, like you said, is revenge on the Borg and saving Earth.

Insurrection is then him inventing the perfect woman to save and finding the fountain of youth.

Nemesis he fights an evil, young version of himself, which has gotta be worth a few years of therapy.

This is First Contact erasure and I won't stand for it.

The Bell Riots could still be pivotal even if nuclear war is on the horizon. The people running the government would be different, or, more abstractly, the progressive mindset affects how America recovers afterwards. Perhaps without the Bell Riots, we diverge into the Mirror timeline, for example.