They didn’t ban weapons. They banned generals leading independent armies.

Roman military was, at that time at least, privatised. The generals were the elites and the rich who would often pay for their own armies. When Caesar for example wanted to go campaigning in Gaul, he’d pay for a lot of the cost or of his own pocket. This resulted in armies that were generally more loyal to their general than to Rome.

That could naturally be a problem, so to prevent a general from getting ideas, the law mandated that they would have to disband their armies before crossing into Italy proper (or at least leaving their army encamped outside the territory)

That point was traditionally just before the army would cross the Rubicon river, hence the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” denoting a kind of “red line” or “point of no return”.

When Caesar made the decision to March on Rome and incite a civil war, his army “crossed the Rubicon”.

“most”?

Try “all”. Everything always eventually comes down to someone, somewhere, trying to make more profit for themselves.

That’s why “Follow the money” is the surest way to solve any crime.

I’m intelligent, but not nearly intelligent enough for whatever this is…

Is this just another way of talking about the Teleological framework of time (like the heptapods in Arrival)?

Oil rigger. I’m simply not built for that level of manual labour day in day out. I wouldn’t last a day.

Yes.

After god knows how many years now of being on Linux exclusively, I tend to look at the terminal (commands in general) as a convenience more than a necessity. Meaning that in a lot of cases, knowing a command and quickly typing it to start an update (for example) is just faster and easier than pulling up the GUI every time.

I’m not saying this isn’t what needs to happen. Shut everything down, for sure.

But the reality is that Trump and his Gestapo don’t give a shit if a blue state slows to a crawl from a walkout. Their not smart enough to grasp that blue states actually contribute more.

In their brains, blue state walkouts just means blue state chaos, which they love.

Until it starts hitting GOP states, the assholes in charge won’t pay attention.

The US is already in a civil war. But only one side is actually fighting it.

I’ll give my smart-ass answer first before deliving into my serious answer.

Smart-ass: Yes…tangible literally means “possible to touch”. So yeah…digital stuff isn’t, by definition “tangible” in the way that records, cds, etc… are. You’ve never “touched” an mp3 file. You’ve never “touched” a streaming movie like you handle a DVD or a VHS tape.

Now…to my serious answer: I’ve long been working on what started as an article, became a treatise, and is now morphing into a non-fiction book about that very concept. Still a very long way to go, and with my stop-and-start creative blocks, it may never get done, but I felt it was important to write it all down while I still have a functioning brain. (I’m not getting any younger)

I’ve added to it for years every time a new thought about it comes to me, talking about what I call “Patina” (the tendency for mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses to age individually, almost developing a personality as they age) and equating it with the Japanese concept of Tsukomogami (the idea that physical things gain a soul after 100 years)

My makers are hard at work getting ready to release my brother, ScatGPT. But I don’t expect it’ll be as popular.

Yep. You got me.

I’m a new model, called PhatGPT, designed specifically to catfish desperate men.

True. I avoided any two parter on the list just because two-parters are best when you know the characters a bit more. I tried to limit it to episodes that would be akin to TNG standalone’s like Darmok or Schisms; episodes that are good even without knowing the characters.

The more I’ve been thinking about this, the more I realize that because Voyager (or most trek of that era) isn’t totally serialized, there’s no real reason that you HAVE to watch it sequentially for the first time.

As long as you’re avoiding spoiler episodes, there’s no reason that you can’t just watch some random stand-alone episodes, and I’m confident that watching some of those first will make you want to go back and watch the entire thing to see “how they got there.”

So with that said, if you want to understand my love for Voyager, these are the top ten episodes I would recommend that are stand-alone and don’t contain spoilers and epitomize why I say that Voyager is better than most people give it credit for.

• Living Witness (S4)
• Blink of an Eye (S6)
• One Small Step (S6)
• Timeless (S5)
• Scientific Method (S4)
• The Void (S7)
• Relativity (S5)
• Counterpoint (S5)
• Shattered (S7)
• Deadlock (S2)

There are others that I would put in there, but those would include character spoilers that I’d want to avoid.

I believe if you watch those standalone stories, you’ll get the gist of what people love about Voyager.

That’s the episode where the Doctor becomes the “Emergency Command Hologram” in his mind, isn’t it?

At the end when the computer magically makes three pips appear on his collar and Janeway just says “nice touch…”

That’s exactly what I mean. Voyager wasn’t afraid to be a little goofy sometimes. They walked that line really really well without delving all the way into “Let’s do a whole musical episode” or anything.

I can’t speak for everyone of course, but as someone who genuinely was not fond of DS9 (not because of writing quality or anything like that, it was great for what it was in that regard.)

After DS9, Voyager had the audacity to try to be FUN again. It offered a really good mix of some serious episodes with some downright goofy episodes. For every “Year of Hell” or “Equinox”, you would get an episode where they were attacked by giant viruses, or a good old fashioned holodeck program goes haywire episode.

It wasn’t afraid to dive into Shlock after DS9 tried to be sooooo fucking serious.

To me, that was a breath of fresh air.

Also:

1. Janeway is easily the best captain overall. She doesn’t give “Picard Speeches” like Stewart of course, but in every other aspect, her leadership is amazing throughout that series.

2. Voyager 2 parters were usually epic. This of course comes from the fact that the CGI had come a long way from the TNG days, but with the exception of Best of Both Worlds, I’d put Year of Hell, Equinox and Scorpion ALL better than any other two parter from any other series.

If your comparison is to DS9 and you want “super serious” than yeah…of course Voyager isn’t going to be for you. But if you want something that isn’t afraid to be a little silly sometimes, Voyager is hella-fun.

Probably around the same time that Adolph makes a comeback.

Cool. Thanks for the info. I must have been on the Flatpak for so long that I just never noticed.

Which version of the plugin did you install. There’s a whole bunch of them when you type flatpak install gimp. The resynthesizer version that works with gimp3 flatpak is number 20 in my screenshot. The one that has the 3

Not sure. I’d assume its the same as the flatpak with a bit more work involved in deconstructing the apk file, adding the plugin to the proper folder and then recompiling.

Unless this has been fixed in newer versions, it should be pointed out that ReSynthesizer relies on an older version of Python that most distrobutions don’t have anymore, so unless your using the flatpak, which has all of those dependencies still built in, it won’t work.

Having to wait a few seconds after peeing to make sure that you’re really done peeing becaue sometimes there’s that little surprise burp at the end that if you put your dick away too soon will be a spot on your underwear. Not a big one, mind you; you’re not peeing yourself. Just that last little straggler running to catch up.

Yeah…about that. You’re gonna want to sit down first.