I’m not sure I fully agree there. I think it’s absolutely accurate to say that Andor didn’t need to be Star Wars. Like, you absolutely could file all the serial numbers off and get a show that works in more or less exactly the same way.

With that said, I think Andor absolutely benefits from being Star Wars, in a couple of a ways.

The first is that they can skip all the broad strokes world building. We don’t need the concept of the galactic empire explained to us, or the general structure of how the senate works, and so on. The big pieces are all in place, so they can get straight to the small scale world building instead. This would be a solvable problem if you were creating something new, but its definitely nice that they get to skip straight to the important bits this way.

The second, bigger benefit (IMO) is the juxtaposition created by the tonal shift. Something that’s very notable about Star Wars is that the tone and the content are often rather at odds with each other. George Lucas is on record as saying that in his mind the Rebellion were the Viet-Cong (with the obvious implication that the Empire is the USA). That’s some fucking heavy shit. Luke’s adoptive parents get brutally murdered by agents of the state, for absolutely no crime at all, and this inspires him to take up with a group of, well, terrorists. I mean, this is literally the same as a young Palestinian joining up with Hamas. Star Wars is about some really, really heavy shit, but it also starts with the line “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” This is a fairy-tale about magic space wizards, but also a story about insurgents blowing up a massive military installation, and eventually performing a coup and assassinating the head of state.

Over the years, the story around Star Wars has leaned increasingly into the “magic space wizards” side of things. It’s seen as a family friendly property, something for kids to enjoy at Disneyland. The creators of Andor set out to intentionally shock the audience by creating something that leans hard away from that family friendly image. Andor is a fucking dark story, about desperate people adopting brutal methods in the face of brutal oppression.

And they’re not just doing that for shock value. The point of this is to tell a story about the ways in which we idealise “rebels” in one breath and condemn “terrorists” in another. To many people, Luke is a hero, but that young man who joins up with Hamas is a monster. Reality is complicated and messy. Hamas are a real political group, with a real ideology, and despite the monstrous oppression they face, some of that ideology really sucks. Their targets aren’t “Storm Troopers”, they’re often civilians, or conscripts. On the other hand, many of those conscripts behave in ways far more monstrous than anything the empire is ever depicted as doing.

Andor is a story about fascism, about the absolute necessity of resisting it, and about the monstrous personal cost that resistance can demand of us. By setting that story against the backdrop of a “family friendly” property I think it really does a lot to drive home the disconnect between our ideals of resistance and the cold, hard reality.

Honestly, fair (and I say that as someone who is a huge, huge, HUGE fan of Andor). Like, if you’re looking for some cheesy fun science fantasy schlock about space wizards, do not watch that show.

Fun fact; in the scene where K2SO slaps Cassian while pretending he’s a prisoner, Alan ad-libbed the “And there’s a fresh one…” line, and Diego Luna immediately cracked the fuck up during the take, but being a total pro he manages to (almost) hide it behind his hand while pretending he’s holding his face. Alan’s delivery was so good that they kept the take.

Andor is the kind of show where I would literally recommend it to someone who hates Star Wars. It’s just such an incredibly raw, powerful, and vital piece of media. One of the finest works of anti-fascist art I’ve seen in a long time.

Anyone who hasn’t watched that show is robbing themselves. Moments like “one way out” and Luthen’s “sacrifice” monologue are going to live with me for a long time. Season 2 can’t come soon enough.

Also B2EMO is the best droid in all of Star Wars (Fun fact; his voice is the puppeteer’s, but it wasn’t supposed to be. They were planning to overdub, but then the guy did such an amazing job on the set that they just gave him the role).

The Kobayashi Maru sequence is a perfect summation of everything wrong with Kelvin Kirk. He’s basically a fratboy. He just lies and cheats his way through problems by the seat of his pants with no forethought or consideration. Actual TOS Kirk is an incredibly smart, educated and thoughtful leader who constantly questions his own beliefs and motivations. He understands the burden and the cost of leadership, and always strives to meet that burden, and he truly believes in the Federations mission to be build a better world for all.

This is why I love Strange New Worlds. SMW Chris Pike is, genuinely, the best version of Kirk in any Star Trek. Smart, thoughtful, emotionally intelligent, cares deeply about his crew, but also funny and likable. And, when need be, kind of a badass.

Seriously underrated movie

I’m not entirely sure how you would rig the lasgun to fire in a way that hits the shield, while it’s falling from the sky. And I believe it’s random whether or not the shield blows up, so you’d need to drop several for safety.

But at the end of the day, deliberately engineering explosions using shield-laser interactions still contravenes the convention against atomics. The great houses all have plenty of nukes, they really don’t need bootstrap solutions. The problem is political, not technical.

I’m pretty sure the answer is that building a lasgun and a shield is more expensive than building a nuke.

Like, the reason they don’t use nukes in Dune isn’t because they don’t know how to make them, it’s because if you ever use them you’ll immediately unite the entire Landsraad against you. They have very strict rules against it. And creating a pseudo-nuke as you described still falls under the convention. So, sure, you can do it, but it’s wasteful and pointless. Only reason to do it is if a lasgun and a shield is all you’ve got handy, and you’re willing to become public enemy number one for the galaxy.

Ah, the Skaven solution.

I’d argue that the obvious desired state is simple; people should not struggle to afford housing. Every other consideration is secondary to that. The question is just how to get there.

To be decided by committee. We’d have to study both options and examine the potential negative and positive impacts.

In general the goal of the rent formula would be to keep average rents at a low percentage of average incomes. That means a typical two person apartment should clock in at, say for arguments sake, around 20% of monthly minimum wage. So even if there was some flex in rental prices, it should basically be impossible for anyone to struggle to make rent.

That said, I think it would definitely be important to ensure that an increase in desirability in an area doesn’t end up punishing the existing inhabitants. That way lies gentrification. This would tend to argue against factoring in desirability. A waiting list system will naturally push people away from areas that are highly desirable, since no one will want to wait that long for somewhere to live. I suspect that alone would be a sufficient solution, but again, I’d like to see it studied.

Obviously, there are problems this can’t solve, but they need their own solutions. More walkable neighbourhoods, better public transit, these are the kind of factors that would help reduce housing pressure on specific areas by making everywhere more desirable to live. Same goes for ensuring fair distribution of resources to schools and other public amenities, and so on.

First off, let’s assess the purpose of this question. If you’re implying that an argument against a system is invalid without a fully thought out proposal to replace it, you’re engaging in pointless sophistry. If someone says “I think my leg is broken” you don’t ask them to tell you exactly how they think it should be fixed before you believe them. We don’t have to know the solution in order to realise we have a problem.

With that caveat out of the way, I’m personally a big advocate for getting private capital out of rental markets. I know a lot of people just want to eliminate renting altogether, but I agree that this is short sighted. It either relies on the idea that everyone owns their home, which isn’t always practical, or that people simply have homes provided at no cost, which opens up its own complications. Basically, while I am in favour of the total destruction of capitalism, I don’t think that has to mean getting rid of money. Money is a very useful way of tokenising resources so that they can easily be exchanged. This allows for more efficient distribution of the correct resources to the people who most need them.

What I want to see is rentals at a price that everyone can afford l. Obviously, in an ideal scenario this would be paired with UBI to ensure that no one ever goes unhoused, but we’ll focus on the housing side for now.

If given total power over my country’s political system, I would look to implement a scheme that would ultimately result in rentals being handled only by Crown corporations (not-for-profit entities operating at arm’s length from the government) created with a mandate to provide affordable rental properties. These corporations would invest building and buying housing in their area in order to fulfill this mandate. They would also be required to offer rent to own schemes. Rental rates would be set by a formula that would account for factors affecting the desirability of a property such as location, square footage and amenities. Conflicts would be solved by waiting lists.

Private rentals would be outlawed (with possible carve-outs for situations like a property owner who is temporarily away from their primary residence - even in these situations, the rental would be handled by the Crown corp with the collected rents passing to the property owner, minus a handling fee). Most likely this scheme would be phased in over time, allowing investment property owners to sell off their properties to the Crown corps. Investors would take a hit on this, but any economic downsides will be more than offset by the upside of the vast majority of the populace becoming, in effect, significantly wealthier (in GDP terms the economy would certainly shrink, but GDP is a terrible measure of economic health).

Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: This is the rough outline of a proposal. Were I actually in a position to implement it, a LOT of details would be worked out in committee, with advice from respected experts. This disclaimer shall be henceforth known as “The Sign”. Do not make me tap “The Sign.”

Just because you can find one example of a good use of a bad system, doesn’t make it a good system. That’s like saying that monarchy was good actually because you can name some good kings.

it just has not worked when it’s been done so far

Big, BIG “citation needed” on that one chief. Just speaking from my own experience growing up in England, council housing schemes were fantastically effective at getting people into housing with reasonable rental costs. And similar schemes have been successful all across Europe. I’m told there are similar success stories in the US as well.

I think you’re just picking one or two bad examples and just treating that as the whole dataset because it fits your prior assumptions. It’s easy to do, because people complain when government efforts don’t work (and often they complain even when they do; there are plenty of “bad” government programs that are actually fantastically effective, people just moan about their imperfections to the point where everyone assumes they’re broken) but rarely celebrate the successes.

Because landlording, as a practice, is a fundamental flaw in the system we live in.

That doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, but it makes you a part of a bad system.

To some degree, we’re all part of a bad system. Every time we buy a latte, or a smartphone, we’re participating in a broken system that causes unimaginable harm. Half the shit you own was probably made with slave labour.

That’s what “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” means. It’s not saying “don’t consume”, it’s saying the idea of living a morally pure life in a morally defunct system is impossible.

We don’t yet know what a future post-capitalist housing system will look like. Maybe your particular scenario is one that will eventually be seen as perfectly acceptable.

For now, if you feel what you’re doing is completely justified then you can simply assume that the hate isn’t directed at you. You don’t have to jump in and justify yourself at every turn. That’s no different than being the guy who has to yell “I’m not like that” every time a woman talks about how shitty her interactions with men are.

And even if what you’re doing isn’t a moral good in the world, it may simply be that it’s the best you can do in a bad system. We’re all just trying to survive, and capitalism demands that we be morally impure in order to live, because there are no morally pure ways left to live. Again, you don’t need to justify that. We’re trying to fix a broken system. No one here called you out personally by name.

Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.

Anything is bad if you do it badly. It’s ridiculous to dismiss an entire concept because you can name examples of when it was done wrong.

Bad drivers exist so no more cars. Bad laws exist so no more laws. Bad governments exists, so no more governments. It’s an asinine way of arguing.

Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.

There’s a few reasons, but number one for me is how incredibly clean the UI is.

Plex is a mess. Half of it is just premium shit they’re trying to convince you to use. The actual “stream my own media” functionality is buried at the bottom of the menus.

Trying to get nontechnical family to use Plex was always a challenge, just because of how busy it is. I’ve never had this problem since moving to Jellyfin.

I got you comrade.

Luna: New Moon by Iain McDonald. It’s most often described as “Game of Thrones in space”, which does convey the general tone of warring families well enough. But to a sci-fi fan, a better description would be “A deconstruction of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” McDonald basically tears apart the libertarian politics of Heinlein’s book by imagining what a purely libertarian society would actually look like; the conclusion being, it would be fundamentally feudal. Hence, the Game of Thrones style politics of warring great houses / corporations.

What makes the books a worthy recommendation though is that they’re just incredibly well written. As well as constantly interrogating social and political questions, they’re note perfect character studies, with a huge cast of characters, every one of whom is richly drawn with layers upon layers of depth and complexity. It’s the kind of book where it’s hard to even figure out who the “villains” are because every characters’ worldview, intentions and desires are so well thought through. Instead you simply have a group of believable human beings cast into a complex situation, as the reader watches conflict inevitably arise from their differing goals and intentions.

And if all of that sounds very dry, the remarkable part is that it really isn’t. McDonald has plenty of fun with his premise, giving us a world of genetically engineered assassin flies, combat drones, dust bikers, werewolves, free-running water thieves, PhD ninjas, courtroom duels, and giant dicks drawn in lunar regolith.

(Yes, I am basically now just the guy who recommends this one book series every time, but I’m gonna keep doing it until more people know about it, because they’re just that damn good).

For something like a quick and dirty Old Fashioned I just add a dash or two of orange bitters

Oh that is genius. I doubt I would ever make much use of this myself (hell, I don’t even own a VR headset), but I can 100% see the appeal, and the audience it’s intended for.

VR games have generally been a very limited product in terms of their appeal (mostly because its almost impossible to solve the movement problem, and games mostly depend on movement), but I think VR does hold fascinating potential as a tool for long distance social interaction. The ability to give the feeling of sharing physical space to online interactions is something that only VR can really offer.