And this printable Altoids tin just feels like salt in the wound 😆

Though it does make sense if you want that form factor / nostalgia but are working with a device that uses WiFi/BT and want to keep the antenna internal. The plastic faux Altoids tin wouldn’t block the signal like the real one would.

I guess with so many microcontrollers now offering Wifi and Bluetooth, the end of the Altoids era was inevitable.

Awesome. I really enjoyed it as well as the other tie-in novels for PIC.

If you’re planning to buy (you should but I won’t judge lol), here’s a tip if you use ebooks [dot] com. Put everything you’re interested in into a wish list (might need to register an account) and check in on it every few days. Sometimes books randomly go on unannounced sales for $1.99. It’s listed at $13.99 now, but I got “The Last Best Hope” for $1.99 by sheer luck when someone recommended it to me a few months ago.

I realize there’s major differences between writing a novel and writing a screenplay, but yeah, they should definitely try to involve them. Maybe it’s just cheaper to hire screenwriters than it is to license a novel and adapt it?

I had similar thoughts on it, but then I read the prequel novel which fills in a LOT of blanks. The backstory in PIC S1 is only touched on in dialog but I feel like it should have been the first half of the season. It makes so much of the story in the show make sense.

Specifically:

• Why Picard had such a dramatic, passionate, and public split from Starfleet
• Who Raffi is, why she’s actually way more awesome than she was portrayed in S1, and why she and Picard are such BFFs now (and their falling out / why Raffi is angry at Picard)
• How Worf got command of the Enterprise-E (not really relevant until S3 but still good addition to the backstory).
• The full scope/scale of the aborted Romulan evacuation
• Bruce Maddox’s role in the creation of the synths, why the synths were created (because certain starship components required hand fabrication), how the synths were different from the Soong-type androids, and his relationship with Dr. Jurati.
• The absolute political shitstorm that was happening within the Federation because of the amount of resources being (re) allocated for the effort. In the show, we got one line from Admiral Clancy but it’s a very important part of the backstory that’s covered in detail in the novel.
• Why neither Picard nor Starfleet Command are really in the wrong. The situation was shitty / “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” no matter what way you looked at it. The show clearly takes Picard’s side, but it’s much more complex than that.

All of that context was lacking in the show and only vaguely touched on in either throwaway lines or cryptic dialog.

I read the prequel novel (and the rest in the series that happen between seasons) and am on ep 3 of a PIC S1 rewatch. Everything just makes more sense this time around with all of that in mind.

So if you’re only a few episodes in, do yourself a favor and pause that. Go buy, pirate, and/or otherwise obtain the prequel novel and read it first.

Link: https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/209722657/star-trek-picard-the-last-best-hope/una-mccormack/

Sounds about right. I held onto my 16:9 OnePlus 3 until the battery completely gave out in 2023 or so. It was the perfect size, and I hated the 2:1 ones that came after. Tried a OP Nord N200 for about a week but returned it.

Daily driving the Minimal Phone now. It’s not the highest resolution by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s 4:3 and makes current phones look even skinnier than when I was used to 16:9.

The only thing preventing me from looking into this further is it’s yet another tall-skinny phone. I don’t know which manufacturer popularized that ridiculous aspect ratio, but I hate them and everyone who followed suit.

I don’t disagree, but prioritize to what people need to know in daily use instead of burying the lede in a sea of boilerplate.

I’m old, so I remember product info/safety labels before they turned into this. If you need gloves for something, step 1 was usually “Put on gloves”.

Exactly. And cut that in half if you’ve consumed any alcohol in the last ~12-24 hours.

That’s the kind of information that should be front and center without having to search the tiny text in the whole label.

TBF, you can read just about anything in Walken’s voice and it sounds like a disinterested threat lol.

These ah, boots, are made for Walken
And that’s just what they’ll do because
Some day…these boots…
Are gonna walk all over you.

(Does a little dance because it’s Christopher Walken and he dances in every movie he’s in. Look it up.)

I got the other one once someone explained it to me, lol. I just didn’t make the Macy Gray connection at first.

Ugh, I’m not optimistic enough to dispute that. Surely there must be a sane middle ground between unregulated free-for-all and forcing people to read through a whole MSDS just to see if they should take 1 or 2.

Safety regulations are written in blood, but warning labels seem to be written in stupidity and litigiousness.

Ah, yeah. That makes more sense. I’m right on the line between Gen X and Millennial so my mind went to the Nancy Sinatra song

(Hoping I get the joke as an old Millennial)

So, those boots, in fact, aren’t made for walking?

Yep. They just knocked on Banner’s door at a very inopportune time.

Probably Nico Borie

Edit: Oh, goddamnit. My dyslexic ass read that as Michael Langdon. I’m gonna leave this up for a laugh at my expense but disregard.

Oh, nice. I didn’t catch what account posted it when I clicked on it.

It was the other day, too. It’ll probably be gone by tomorrow though. But keep uploading it for sure.

If you stop hearing from me, that’s exactly what happened; look for that van.