But ratings are different from profits! A show can be very highly rated and unprofitable. And that’s precisely what Times article describes. It also goes into the shifts in viewership that are likely responsible for the loss of revenue and profitability. McDonald’s wouldn’t keep selling the Big Mac at a loss… they’d either hike the price, cut the cost, or stop selling it. It sounds like CBS was trying to improve the situation but the gap was widening, not narrowing. How long do you expect them to lose money on the show before cancelling it?

I am a fan of the show and am sad it was cancelled. But if you look at the facts, it’s far more likely that this happened due to financial reasons.

While the timing does feel suspicious, it’s pretty unlikely that it was an implicit or explicit part of the settlement. According to NYT it’s been losing money for years, despite having good ratings:

“The Late Show,” a fixture of the network for over three decades, was racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year, and the gap was growing fast, according to two people familiar with the show’s finances.

…

“The Late Show” began losing money at least three years ago, two people familiar with the finances said.

While sometimes losses make sense in business (eg Costco’s $1.50 hot dogs), I doubt this was one of those cases. I personally think the cancellation was a separate decision, though still related to the Skydance acquisition, because they probably wanted to cut unprofitable shows in order to improve their valuation.

I think the bigger issue is that it’s so believable that this could have been a quid pro quo! When you pay $16 million to settle a meritless lawsuit with the president as a bribe so your business deal goes through… you’ve lost all credibility. You’re shown you’re willing to bend the knee to the self-appointed “king”.

I’m not enjoying hearing one of my preferred pop culture references being explained like you’re a fucking museum tour guide lol

That’s a fair criticism and I’m not telling you your opinion on the show is wrong. But Discovery did have its fans, and I think it’s disrespectful to them and especially the cast & crew to say they deserved to get the Enterprise ending treatment, just because you didn’t enjoy the show.

The dislike of Discovery is a totally valid opinion, but this is a poor & disrespectful take. The show did a lot. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t my top trek show. Any trek deserves a proper, respectful send-off. You can point at the finale that we got and say that it wasn’t great, but honestly what do you expect with a few extra pages of writing and barely any shooting time? The actors and writers deserved an opportunity to actually end things properly, and instead they were given next to nothing and they did their best to make do.

Stories like Reid Tomasko’s - and others who’ve had Tesla buy back their defective Cybertrucks - highlight how the EV ownership journey can take unexpected turns.

I wish they wouldn’t conflate these dumpsters with EVs as a whole.

I like this idea a lot, it might become my new head cannon!

Possibly. But how much more wear & tear would this be compared to the wear put on the warp drive, which gets incredibly frequent use? If that warp drive can withstand it, why not the shield emitters?

Yeah, I think the power-saving argument (#4) is potentially strongest, especially if the plot needs it to be for a given episode.

But I’m having trouble thinking of a situation in the shows where the maneuverability was limited by the shields. Certainly there are plenty of cases where power was routed to shields, maybe even the power that was meant for propulsion. But I think in general, those would be cases where power was already limited, or the need for defense was much higher. In general, I don’t think I recall a trade-off where shields restrict maneuverability or speed.

I totally agree that I love the variety of options! But I would be very happy if one of the options was that we get filler/bottle episodes for a few weeks per season, but every season is 26 episodes long. They could just spread the budget for 10 episodes across all 26, and make the VFX less… shiny.

(Of course, I don’t actually want actors to be worked to the bone like they were in the 90s…)

A pretty cool episode. Top takeaways:

1. I’m going to miss Captain Ransom. I think it would have been fun to have a season or two of him. Only Discovery has had the balls to hand over the Captain’s chair to another during its main run, and I think that is a good thing.
2. Starbase 80 is now set up as a new DS9-style show. A starbase guarding a dimensional portal. God I hope that happens. I just hope they pull off the ensemble cast that made DS9 such a classic.
3. I hate the tease for Rutherford x Tendi, it’s so mean to tease it in the finale :'( But really it’s so cute.

Plenty more I missed of course.

Rewatching in preparation for the finale, and I keep feeling that the voice of Curzon Dax sounds quite similar to the voice of Odo in DS9. I’m quite aware that Rene Auberjonois passed away not that long ago: may he rest in peace. And I guess he was voiced by Fred Tatasciore (Shaxs), which I can hear too. But I keep hearing Odo which is really nice.

Lol I actually have very few open USB ports, thus why I choose to put the mouse cable in the spare one on my monitor. And I charge my phone on a wireless charger plugged into the wall?

Anyway I’m not telling you you’re wrong for charging your mouse after work or whatever. I’m just saying that designers are wrong if they don’t give consumers the option to use their mouse while charging its battery. That’s just basic.

“I use it one way, so everybody must use it that way.” Found the apple engineer lol

I mean while we’re sharing anecdotes, I use a wireless Logitech mouse and I plug it in and continue using it when I get a low battery warning. I can’t charge it overnight because I plug it into my monitor’s USB port which powers down when the monitor sleeps.

We exist! Lol

Yes.

Silicon isn’t the same thing as silicone 🤣

The idea is that the string of lights has a male end and a female end. That way you can have several daisy chained and just plug the one with the male end into the outlet. But if you plan it wrong then you may end up with the wrong end in the wrong place, in which case yeah, use an extension cord or hang the lights all over again.

Oh and it’s actually relatively safe this way… Each string of lights normally has a fuse in it, so it prevents the cords from carrying more current than they are designed for.

Yep! That way you can daisy chain several in a row.

That makes about as much sense as saying that pip, gem, npm, cargo, or nix should called be the default package manager on Mac OS…

The default package manager is the default because it manages the system’s software. RPM, Deb/apt, pacman, etc. Homebrew is like pip or docker or cargo or snap or whatever else. You can set it up if you’d like but it’s certainly not a default. (Though I’m not trying to dispute that it’s good 😊)

Mac OS doesn’t have a good default package management solution (though they would if they just opened up the app store and added a CLI). It’s ok to admit it, and say that third party folks (who Apple does not support unless I’m missing something) are powering a pretty good third party experience. If only Apple cared about people who wanted a truly free an customizable computer, they could make a great OS :)