spending a week in space

[amw]

I have been on holiday all week. This week was a twofer of Children's Day and 清明節 Tomb Sweeping Day, so i took a couple days annual leave and made it a full week off. My plan was to do some traveling, although i was discouraged a bit when colleagues told me it'd be even harder to find a hotel over 清明 than it was over the 228 holiday. Well, i would

Comments

[siglinde99]

First off, I’m glad to are feeling better after your week of rest and relaxation. Second, this is the kind of thoughtful post that made me friend you. I have been a Star Trek nerd forever. I love the stories that seem plausible, but are also at least a little hopeful. It’s why I am most drawn to certain dystopian books (Margaret Atwood is a perennial favourite

[amw]

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq as part of the War on Terror. I agree that those justifications were weak and a distraction from dealing with other countries that absolutely harbored terrorists. I supported the invasion because Saddam Hussein was a dictator and i wanted to see him gone. I think in some ways the coalition forces failed the people of Iraq when they crossed the border in 1991 after liberating Kuwait but then pulled back before taking Baghdad

[siglinde99]

True regime change and democracy take a really long time. We like to think twenty years is more than enough, but we took several hundred years and still aren’t fully there. It is tempting to focus on the countries that are “closer” but I think that just adds to the inequalities that foster violence and corruption. And I don’t think any of these countries will end up with a democracy that looks exactly like ours, but we also need to accept that there are other ways to ensure communities and individuals have a say in how they govern themselves (and are governed). One of my university profs once said that the best way to help Africa become peaceful and prosperous was to put a giant (metaphorical) fence around the continent and just leave them alone to figure things out. It would be brutal for a while and it would take a lot of guts to let it happen. And of course it’s not realistic because there are too many foreign interests. It wasn’t realistic even in the days before mass migration and the internet, but it was an interesting thought

[geminiwench]

I hate that shit where we are trained to feel like resting *is* wasting/wasteful

[amw]

I've never gotten around to read Cory Doctorow's books, but he's been on my radar a long time because he is quite visible in computer nerd/hacker circles

[geminiwench]

I recently read "The City & The City"... and it was definitely a fun read! It turns into like a noir police story

[king_of_apathy]

Sounds like a week well spent.

I never played the original Mass Effect, so started the series with 2. I was halfway through and liking it before I accidentally deleted my saved game and couldn't be bothered to start over.
Mass Effect 3 was great.
I know Mass Effect: Andromeda didn't get nearly the same love, but I still enjoyed that one too.

[amw]

Playing Mass Effect nowadays is admittedly a bit janky, even in the Legendary Edition. I think it's worth it for the story, though. The game feels the most focused and well-paced of three. I think think a lot of games tend to become a victim of their own success, so sequels get bigger and more ambitious and try to be more things to more people and in doing so they lost what made the original great.

That said, i enjoyed playing Mass Effect Andromeda too. I don't remember much of the story, though, which perhaps speaks to how "safe" it was. I do remember one aspect of playing it that stuck with me was that you are supposedly peaceful settlers but then you still have to kill hundreds of grunts to get through the storyline... Which is a common situation in computer games, but it felt weird and colonialist at times. Maybe i should go back and play it again.

[amw]

I just started a new game of Mass Effect Andromeda again to remember what it was all about and now i remember! The new galaxy being destroyed by that weird creeping dark matter infection! That was a great concept. And activating the ancient artifacts to clean up the environment, that felt epic too. Overall the game did have some good ideas, although clearly the themes didn't stick with me the way the ones from the original game did. I think it just didn't tell the story in a way that felt compelling to me, maybe because of the whole family melodrama angle which i found extremely tedious. Or maybe there were too many side missions to make it feel tightly plotted (similar kind of problem to Mass Effect 2 imo). I think i will play it again now. Either way the controls are a million times better than any of the previous trilogy. I wish it had been better received and gotten a follow-up. Although, from what i hear, there is a new Mass Effect game in the planning. Not clear yet whether it'll be Andromeda or Milky Way, though.

[king_of_apathy]

I'd forgotten all about the plot of Mass Effect: Andromeda until you mentioned it, so i guess it can't have made a huge impression on me! But i do remember it all played very smoothly.

I'm curious as to what Starfield on the new XBox will be like, but i still have a big backlog of games on the PS4 to get through, and not much time to play them, so that's likely a few years away for me!

[opakele]

I found Farscape several years ago, watched for a while and eventually wandered away. The very early shows were great, but I lost respect for the show as it went on. When the two main characters joined Stargate, I believe the hope was the pair would fire up waning interest and the exact opposite happened for me.

It is hard to find good Sci-Fi anymore.

There is nothing wrong with listening to your body and just taking a break.

Take care of yourself.