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Questions from Friday. I got too busy to post my own responses on concerts. Got to see Vieux Farka Toure this past Saturday. Amazing show! Totally blown away by his guitar playing. Not like, wow, he rips (which he does), but more the hypnotic, transcendental state it puts you in. Truly incredible. Seeing Dutch electronic group Weval June 22nd in the City. Super excited. If you like MGMT, LCD Soundsystem, or any music that is indie/electronic/psychedelic inspired, you should see these guys.

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DBD AV Club

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New Kids in the Hall season is cringey in all the right ways. . . Amazing comeback.

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I went to the New Parkway theater yesterday to see Conan the Barbarian. What made this unique is that there was a live band in the theater performing their original score for the movie. They're a post doom metal band from SF called Sleepbomb, and I happened to meet in the Netherlands at Roadburn fest. Most of the dialogue was cut from the film except narration and what i guess would be consider key moments in the film.

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When did doom cross over to post-doom? Or is this like a post-rock/doom thing?

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"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." Dont need any more dialogue than that

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Going to finish this week: We Run This City, For All Mankind S2 rewatch, and after a lackluster first 5 episodes, Top Chef 19 has really picked it up with the last 3. I think this season's chefs have less conflict and less personality and aren't quite the high end chefs like previous seasons (Buddha and Evelyn aside). but starting with the Bethel Church episode, then NASA and now Galveston, it's been back to usual Top Chef standards.

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FAM S3 next month!!!

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

On a stretch of some dreadful TV shows since I finished rather quality ones Slow Horses and Ozark earlier in this 17-day road trip that had the Chitwood pups see Phoenix, AZ/Mesa Verde & Black Canyon of Gunnison NPs/a concert at Red Rocks/a rapidly growing Sheridan, WY/Paradise Valley, MT near Yellowstone/Whitefish & Kalispell, MT near Glacier NP/Yakima, WA & Mt Rainier NP/Portland, OR/Dunsmuir, CA & a low Shasta Lake/Healdsburg & Napa/ the family homestead in the East Bay before a return to SB today...clapdoc, if you need me to book you a room at the Madonna Inn, lemme know, as it’s our rest stop on the way home to SB...

But finished S1 of Outer Range on Prime and found it quite silly...as if the writers of ABC’s The Rookie took a whole bunch of edibles before watching Yellowstone and the X-Files and just said let’s combine the two of them and be done with it. Seemingly a dumb show.

The Staircase on HBO...2 episodes in and director Antonio Campos seems to be deliberately deceptive in his directorship of a couple of Brits playing a weird Durham, NC family. Would love SGBear’s take, as I don’t recall the national story when it was active.

The Lincoln Lawyer series...based on Michael Connelly’s character, also a film starring the Texan that played Wooderson in Dazed and Confused. Turned it off...

Need to get off the streaming schneid, so to speak, and find a good series to watch...any suggestions?

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Agreed on Outer Range being silly, but I ate it all up. I'm a believer that it is a modern reinterpretation (*cough*) of the Kronos story from Greek mythology.

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That’s fair!

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Barry S2. (19/19, HBO Max) So, so, so good. Season 2 evolved beautifully from S1. S2 was an amazing blend of slapstick humor, a little too-close-to-home damaged human issues, and ultra-violence. Binged and couldn't wait for more.

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I found myself binging through all three seasons but only 24 episodes total of "Humans" recently. It's a joint British (Channel 4, I think) and AMC production about conscious "synths" (human-like robots) starring Gemma Chan. The third season even featured the Ted Lasso Jamie Tartt actor in a minor role.

It's probably one of the better SciFi shows that I have watched in recent years.

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Portland

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I've been there three times, once as a kid, the epic trip when the SAAB died in Wyoming. Twice as an adult, I guess long before homelessness was out of hand, or traffic. Stayed with FotF. Seemed like a very nice, very white City - was already a foodie place.

Funniest thing I read, there was a booster magazine that had an article that basically was trumpeting that Portland wasn't provincial any more - if you have to say that, yeah, you still are.

Also, didn't go to any strip clubs.

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One of my target cities for employment.

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I have been to 42 of 50 states, but Oregon is not (yet) one of them.

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Also, I was surprised how frequently my buddy and I were given recommendations for strip clubs in Portland. I gotta shave my beard off because I'm clearly giving on some dirty ol bastard vibes.

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The strip clubs are great in Portland.

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It’s not you, there is a surprising number of stripe clubs in Portland, many of which are owned by people whose other business interests are not strictly above board.

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in the US. Most are above board, but there are many who appear otherwise. And strip clubs in Portland are just like dance clubs in SF. Everyone goes, it isn't a seedy old man sitting in the dark thing. Most are well lit and have much more going on than the girls on stage.

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May 16, 2022Liked by SGBear

"it isn't a seedy old man sitting in the dark thing" well what even is the point

Once I was in NOLA the Wednesday after Labor Day and the place was deserted; I was walking past a strip club on the fringes of the French Quarter and one of the young ladies standing outside to drum up business immediately recognized what sales pitch was going to work and told me that they had really good ribs and cold beer. It didn't work, but I respected the effort.

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and Oregon is full bar, full nudity. None of this pasty and panties bullshit.

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And I believe all had kitchens and food.

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

oregon law requires food if booze is served

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Which likely means their strip clubs are also not above-board....

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They seemed pretty above board to me. I went to Portland for a bachelor party and everything seemed legit to me.

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

Booooooo… ;-)

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Trust me, the group of guys I went with were the type of guys to find out if they weren’t.

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There is a vegan, co-op, dancer owned strip club whose ATMs only give out $2 bills. Once we went to lunch and the guy who paid pulled out like $30 in $2s.

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One of the guys I worked with in NOLA had previously had a colleague whom he described as “country as hell” and who absolutely swore by the $2 bill for visits to strip clubs - with the deathless declaration “spends like a single gets results like a five!”

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Sounds on brand for Portland.

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never been to the West Coast one, although i am pretty sure i would like to live there above many other places from what i have heard.

Portland ME is pretty nice too.

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The city surprised me and not in a good way. I would not want to live there. A large homeless population. A downtown riddled with building vacancies as companies flee the problems caused by Covid and the BLM unrest. Wildly inconsistent weather. Expensive. I prefer Portland ME.

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I'm with you. I wanted to enjoy it, but it left me feeling rather uneasy. Large homeless population, overwhelmingly white in all the yuppie hipster worst ways, and very insular. Plus, traffic is horrible for a midsized city.

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It certainly isn't helped by the fact that they squeezed in highways around hills and through old neighborhoods and had nowhere in which to expand, that's for sure.

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Yeah, the 84/205 junction and stretch to get around downtown is horrible.

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Portland is basically a smaller San Francisco in terms of homelessness.

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On the positive side, the Japanese Gardens are amazing, beer is super cheap/delicious, they have good food, and the young ladies apparently don't mind chatting up guys with dirty ol bastard vibes.

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I am overwhelmed by consumer choice with the variety of beer one can get there

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Swing over the mountains, and down to Bend, the next time you are in the area. Microbreweries have become an art form in the area.

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All I can tell you is that what you’re seeing is almost not from BLM unrest, that was contained to a pretty limited section of downtown. We can send one another postcards from the competing Portlands because you won’t catch me living in Maine 😂

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Yeah - agreed. The BLM unrest was only like 3 blocks around the courtyard - PDX is doing pretty well otherwise. One of the best food scenes in the country, great public transport for an American city, bike friendly, has way better East and Southeast Asian, latin american, and African food than a city of it's size (and whiteness) should.

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when my brother and sister in law moved back there from Seattle, he said he was struck that while the east Asian selections weren't as good (especially Japanese foods), the improvement in Mexican food alone made up for it.

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Elsewhere in college

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MASS CASUALTY EVENTS

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I mean what does one even do?

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We need to do to gun rights what the GOP is doing to abortion rights.

Pack the Court. Reverse Heller. Let it rip.

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[Most rational people] How about education, improved mental health programs, and some gun control tightening.

[Fox News]: "it's video games"

[Democrats] "It's social media"

https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1525974474234990594

https://twitter.com/timkaine/status/1526165061529743367

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“We’ve tried nothing and it’s not working “

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Truth

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HOY EN LA RONA

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Today I woke up to find the room spinning oddly when I tried to stand up -- didn't settle down for several minutes but was finally able to get in the shower and on with my day, though things still spin whenever I change body altitude. A quick google tells me -- vertigo is a fairly common long covid symptom. Hope it plays nice with my brain fog and fucked up taste.

Also, for the second time in six weeks I have just received a notification that my office building has again been declared an official outbreak site by the state. GOOD TIMES.

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Could be vertigo having nothing to do with Covid. My sister in law basically had to give up horseback riding (and sell her horse) when she started having occasional such experiences, for obvious reasons. That started a couple of years before anyone ever heard of Covid.

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Well that sucks re: the vertigo on top of the other symptoms. As for the office being an official outbreak site, @who could have seen that coming@

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Me and the family just got Covid tested before our vacation and we were all negative. Hopefully that remains true for when we return from vacation.

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depending on where you go. there seem to be "video visit" type testing appts these days where they watch you swab yourself and give you a thumbs up in a short amount of time.

good for overseas where you still need to test to re-enter US

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I was looking at one the other day, not that I have any international travel plans https://www.qured.us/return-to-the-usa

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Just filed that away for this summer. Hopefully we won't still need them by then, but I've been thinking about how to manage it since I fly Italy - London the day before I fly London - SFO!

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it's a smart service offering.

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Hong Kong has a public testing center (used to be the parking service building) just outside the airport where you pay like $20 and wait for 6 hours to get the all clear .. . or you go inside (like I did) pay $50, stand in zero line and get your results in 3 hours sitting in one of the few open restaurants.

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I wonder if it might not be time to retire this recurring section, since as far as I can tell various levels of government have more or less given up on managing the various variants.

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At this point, I find masks a very interesting social study. Clearly everyone was wearing them when they were required - except for the most hardcore shit-stirrers. Ever since that judge gutted the CDC's power and overturned the mask mandates, it is an odd collection of masks and non-masks. I'd go into one place and it'd be 100% masks and go into another place at it'd be nearly zero. I used to think people have a plan on how to deal with Covid (or lack thereof), but now I'm convinced people are mostly motivated by social queues rather than a view about epidemiology.

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By and large I’m wearing a mask if I’m inside with people I don’t know, which in practice means stores, turnpike rest stops, etc. I’ll make an occasional exception - e.g. popping into the restroom for an beergarden the other night - but generally that seems like the epidemiological advice to follow so I do.

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This is my MO as well, though I've done some indoor dining.

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lately the only indoor dining I've been doing is an occasional Friday lunch with my manager - usually because that's when we both want to get out of the house, and there is no plan for return to the office. (Actually the plan is no return to the office). But 1) the place we go is usually pretty quiet, and 2) we haven't been in a few weeks... and in the meantime, outdoor dining season is now upon us.

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true. personally, i dont even think about taking a mask (much less wearing one) when i leave the house. luckily we have a few spare ones on the car ...

on the other hand, our democracy continues to crumble more and more each day, so i am sure a coronavirus section is perfectly warranted for a LONG time to come!

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Rates remain “higher than expected” in the county where I live. We used to get fantastically detailed emails from the pediatric practice my kids use(d) with better public health information than most papers etc.; now they just send emails on an as-needed basis to remind people that they can still catch an airborne disease if they’re around people who have it and nobody’s wearing masks 🤷🏼‍♂️

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your tinder bio

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

fucking substack dbl opost

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OUR RICKETY REPUBLIC

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Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. running for U.S. Senate suffers a stroke as does a Maryland sitting senator. Both are Ds. Is this some kind of GOP plot? Makes as much sense as the conspiracy theories the GOP is throwing around.

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I suspect the operative conspiracy theory will be people saying it was from COVID vaccines

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This is a good one and the theory that QAnon will adopt.

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And then on the other side of the spectrum, we will have people blaming it on COVID infections without evidence.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1526049348500463616

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PRO

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Max Scherzer denied Japanese Ambassador from throwing out the fist pitch. Mets apologized and said we'll let you come back another time.

https://brobible.com/sports/article/mets-japanese-ambassador-max-scherzer/

Now if the situation was reversed, and the US Ambassador was embarrassed in the same way at a Japanese baseball game, I'm sure it would have become a huge political issue.

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Hannity and Cucker would be lining up to blame it on Biden and as proof that the world doesn’t respect the US under Biden.

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James Hahn with his second straight top ten. Made another quarter million.

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Pat Bev throws shade at Chris Paul.

https://twitter.com/espn/status/1526211143122960385

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was not expecting a blowout win by the Mavs. figured it would be close (maybe).

at least the W's get home-court advantage in the next 2 series, so that is good.

on the other hand, it is not clear how best to stop the Luka show. doesnt seem like he should be that good, but he is ...

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I'm not sure what to make of this Mavs team. Obviously they are pretty good, since no one makes it this far without being good. But they also seem to be a one-man show on offense, which theoretically should be stoppable.

They also put on a great defensive performance in the last few games against Phoenix, but again that seems to coincide with a total collapse in the Suns' own performance, so I'm not sure how much to ascribe to either.

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The Suns performance was one of the more shocking playoff performances (bad or good) I can recall. With Ayton probably on the way out and CP showing again that he can't quite sustain it through a long season and playoffs, their title window just shut.

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That collapse was absolutely stunning. I couldn't believe that a Chris Paul team seemed to be running no offense at all, just passing the ball around and then someone tries to go Hero Ball and chuck one up. And to get worked like that on your home floor . . . wow.

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I agree.

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Two Cincy Reds' pitchers combine to no-hit the Pirates. Lose.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore/_/gameId/401354753

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After a couple of good performances to try and stay out of the relegation zone, Everton managed a spectacular return to (poor) form and went from being up a goal against Brentford within 20 minutes to losing 3-2 having had 2 players sent off with straight red cards. I imagine it was great content for neutrals 🫤

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CAL

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Bears get a QB from Louisville via the portal. https://twitter.com/TylerJensenQB/status/1526289671117869056

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Go Bears!

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[FB] Cal updates their bag policy. Gallon ziplocs or clear backpacks okay. A small clutch also allowed, but no purses, tinted plastic bags, or the dreaded fanny pack allowed. Exceptions made for diaper bags.

https://admin.calbears.com/news/2016/8/14/general-new-clear-bag-policy-for-cal-football-games.aspx

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Nats did this for baseball this year. They have so many restrictions now about how to buy tickets, what you can bring, etc. that I don't know if I'll go to a game anymore and I used to go to 20 or so a year.

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[MT&F] Freshman Mykolas Alekna broke the NCAA record for discus (68.73m), breaking the nine year old record of 68.16.

https://twitter.com/CalTFXC/status/1525967883410341888

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warp factor five Sulu

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In Star Trek, warp speeds are not linear (i.e., warp 8 is not 8 times the speed of light). Warp speeds depend on the series, but TOS defines warp speed as:

v = c*w^3

Where “v” is speed, “c” is the speed of light, and “w” is the warp factor. Thus, at warp 8 you could reach Alpha Centauri in 1.5 days. I’m not sure if that’s streaky starlight fast, but certainly more of an appropriate time scale for weekly installments of interstellar adventures.

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May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022

And to be even more pedantic, it gets more complicated when you get to the Next Generation era of shows, where it is exponential until warp 9 (v = c*w^(10/3)) and, for some reason, warp 10 was redefined as infinite speed (more precisely, you occupy all points in space simultaneously).

Going at warp 10 has the nice side effect of turning the traveler(s) into newt(s). I think it was one of the dumbest episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, but YMMV.

Sources:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor#Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation

https://www.ditl.org/scitech-page.php?ScitechID=17&ListID=Sci-tech

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Super Guy? Uh Super NERD! (but thanks)

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I was going to start with “NERD ALERT!”, but I figured it was redundant since I was responding to a reference to Sulu

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Thanks. 1.5 days is more along the lines of original Trek.

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Interesting and I had no idea that’s how it worked. I just assumed it was linear.

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One of the more interesting concepts was the Bussard Ramjet. Reaching speeds of 40-50% the speed of light using magnetic field intakes to capture loose hydrogen molecules and deuterium fusion it would reach Alpha Centauri in 8 years or so. However, due to relativistic effects ship time would be shorter than time kept on earth, so that those left on Earth would age at a greater rate than astronauts on the ship. The idea has pretty much has been discredited by now as not feasible.

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ST: TNG “Where No One Has Gone Before” aka The Traveler episode is one of my favorite episodes. The Traveler manages to propel the Enterprise at exponential speeds faster that warp 9 and takes the crew to the far edge of space.

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i didnt realize that was such an early TNG episode especially since the Traveler comes backs later when Wesley is older ...

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Yep, it was the first season. While the Traveler comes back later, I wish they would have developed his character more and gave him a Q type storyline throughout the series.

Little known, the actor who plays the Traveler was a finalist for the character Data.

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Warp is the term for the structural longitudinal threads in a rug (or other woven object) that is laid down first and one weaves the "weft" into it.

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I went to some Imax movie about space (I think the Air/Space Smithsonian) and it had talked about if one were to somehow make it past where the finite amount of mass was in the universe, you'd be in the infinite void. You'd be a one divided by the infinite nothing... where the lack of anything means that existence ceases to exist. No up or down as there is nowhere to go toward. No temperature. Not even time exists out there because everything is relative, except when there is nothing. That concept hurt my brain.

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there are some models of the universe w/ no mass (obviously theoretical) and only governed by the cosmological constant (Lambda)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Sitter_universe

while not realistic, they are good to stress test current theories in extreme cases.

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ST Strange New Worlds .. watched the first 2 enjoyable episodes.

they are releasing only one week at a time so i was bummed last night when i realized i would have to wait.

you can warp speed around the universe in distance, but not in time!

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I liked it a lot,only seen the first one so far.

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I know that most of the online complaint about it is from the right, but I also thought the direct reference of Jan. 6th on this show was a bit too on the nose.

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