This is the definition of “when all you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.”

This is actually the opposite. The only problem they give a shit about is nails, so they are breaking all their other tools by bashing them into the wall.

That’s not always the case. If a house has a well and later gets water from a utility, they will often keep exterior taps running well water because it’s a lot cheaper than abandoning the well. So, technically, you could have water that’s safe to drink inside the house but still have unsafe water outside.

Also, if the house has filters or other water treatment that generally isn’t used for the exterior (though that’s typically more about taste and mineral content, rather than anything hazardous).

Had a coworker who was riding a motorcycle on the highway by a semi when the tire next to her blew out. She ended up dropping the bike and sliding along the road. Fortunately she was covered head to toe in protective gear, but it’s still amazing that she wasn’t seriously injured.

And it’s even more complicated by the fact that Talia was already the replacement for Lyta. And that the revelation about her being a sleeper was never meant to happen unless she left. Oddly enough, that exit was actually recycling the plan for Takashima had she made it past the pilot, only she got replaced… by Susan.

Plus there’s Garibaldi. His interest in Talia mirrors Zach’s interest in Lyta. Garibaldi’s interest is never resolved because of Talia’s exit. That they tried to reestablish that idea with Zach and Lyta implies there was a plan. Given where things go with Garibaldi and telepaths (including Lyta) that might have been very interesting.

Instead, Zach’s interest gets folded into the Byron plot. But Byron is also a late addition caused by the whole cancelation and uncancelation around season 5. If they hadn’t lost multiple cast members and rushed key plotlines to fit them into season 4, things would have probably been very different.

Babylon 5 has two women start a relationship… sort of.

They set up a frienship that was supposed to turn into a romantic relationship, but one of them left the show, cutting that subplot short. They still try to work it in, as the last couple episodes before the character exit heavily imply they are romantically/sexually involved, but nothing is explicitly confirmed until the next season when the remaining character briefly opens up about having loved the now absent character.

It’s not much, but it’s still pretty big for the early to mid 90s.

If we’re going with Star Trek, I have to say TNG season 3 is the one that gets me the most. That little flute soothes my soul. Although I do also have soft spot for the incredibly chill DS9 opening.

X-Men, Batman and Gargoyles all have fantastic openings.

I always loved the fact the Game of Thrones opening showed the specific places we would visit in each episode.

Babylon 5 has a different intro each season, and the season three opening in particular hits really hard the first time you get to it.

Brisco County Jr had a theme that was so inspiring, NBC bought the rights to use it for the Olympics.

I didn’t say they were equally stupid. I said one explanation was most likely correct, but thr other wasn’t completely implausible.

Yes, faking an attempted drugging for attention/politics/whatever is less likely to get someone killed. But it’s so a really fucking stupid plan that had to actually be completely premeditated. Just look how well it worked out for him.

The potential child abuse plan is monstrous and risks killing them, but pedophiles do risky and horrible things all the time. And at least the part of the plan that involves showing the cops the drugs can be seen as a bad decision made in the moment by someone panicking and not thinking clearly.

The article says that he did both of those things, but it isn’t clear on what happened between those two events. Did he put the pills in and go straight to the cops? Did he give the ice cream to the kids? Were the pills clearly visible or were they buried?

I agree that the most likely explanation is that he was trying to create a story and/or attack DQ and its employees. But it isn’t totally implausible that he might have been trying to drug the kids and pivoted when they found the pills. He has to be an idiot either way, they are both terrible plans.

Breturn

This administration and the Supreme Court have been systematically shredding the constitution and destroying the rule of law. They have declared the president to be above the law, are eroding the limits of executive power at every opportunity, and have essentially declared that the rights of the people can be ignored without consequences.

This might seem great to an authoritarian when they are in power, but the flipside is that it fundamentally changes the moral equation faced by the opposition. Normally those who actually have principles and want to maintain the rule of law are going to show restraint and reinforce the norms. But when the other side responds by becoming an even bigger threat, there must be a tipping point after which the danger of using unjust powers against your opponent are outweighed by the danger of allowing them to continue damaging civilization and risking their return to power.

The gerrymandering situation in California and Texas is a perfect example of this. In principle, gerrymandering should not be allowed. But if we want to protect democracy, it is more dangerous to let one side cheat than it is to respond in kind.

I would like to believe that we will be able to close pandora’s box and return to something resembling normalcy some day. But with each new abuse of power and each attack on the laws and norms that are supposed to keep the government in check, it gets harder to see a way out that isn’t horrific in its own right.

The context is important, but all that needs to be said is that she is a main character that died in the first season. It’s actually the firsted episode with Tasha that I saw when Istarted TNG and how I’ve introduced others to the show. There’s no details needed, no history, just the knowledge that she is dead.

Depends on what you are looking for. Trek does a lot of different things and can appeal to people in different ways.

I like measure of a man and yesterday’s enterprise for TNG. Both work as examples of a lot of the best aspects of star trek, and come early enough to jump into the series while skipping the crap in season 1, at least until they know they like the show.

For context, it’s incredibly rare for a grand jury to not indict someone. The bar is incredibly low and there is no one representing the defense. Failing to secure an indictment once is an embarrassment and a stain on someone’s career. To fail a second time in the same case basically guarantees beyond a shadow of a doubt that the case is utterly without merit and that everyone involved should be fired immediately.

To put this another way, this is like a surgeon amputating the wrong limb twice on the same patient. The first time is undeniably bad and raises serious questions about how it could happen. The second time it happens, we don’t need to bother with all those questions before concluding that the people responsible need to go.

Voting will still be necessary. Gerrymandering can’t directly affect statewide races. But it can determine control of the House of Representatives and state legislatures.

The long term solution to gerrymandering has to happen at the federal level, but unfortunately the current Supreme Court is going out of its way to dismantle voting rights and protect Republican gerrymandering schemes. And congress isn’t going to do anything to stop it while Republicans are in the majority… a majority that only exists because of gerrymandering and voter suppression.

I don’t like it, but having partisan gerrymandering on both sides is better than doing nothing and letting Republicans cling to power because they get to play by a different set of rules.

They aren’t bad movies, just not great. Better than Lost World, but not so good that I would be lamenting the terrible sequels if it weren’t for the far superior installments.

All I’m saying is that there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between being disappointed in the terrible sequels that came after the first movie vs the terrible sequels that came after the second movie, especially when you aren’t all that attached to the first movie.

It’s all a matter of perspective anyway. Yes, Jurassic Park never got a good sequel but then it never really needed one. It was a complete story that did not call for any kind of follow up. To me, that makes the sequels less disappointing, because I don’t expect anything more.

Aliens ends with unanswered questions and lots of obvious potential for follow up stories. Star Wars gave us an entire universe full of potential stories to tell, whether it followed directly from the original trilogy or did something new in the same world. That the potential is wasted by making terrible movies makes them so much worse to me.

Personally, I’d argue that Alien and Terminator weren’t amazing either, and it’s only Aliens and Terminator 2 that were actually great movies. They’re still franchises with one really awesome installment followed by utter trash. And honestly, I think I’d take Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World over anything else the Aliens franchise has produced since.

I’m not saying they are definitely worse than the JP franchise, just that they’re close enough that reasonable people could disagree.

Alien and Terminator have both had nothing but shit since their second installments.

If you look at only the movies, Star Wars is at least as bad after the original trilogy. Rise of Skywalker is bad enough to make me wonder if there was intentional sabotage going on.

But for my money, the best example of a franchise that starts strong and then turns to absolute garbage in the sequels is Highlander. The original is a classic that was never meant to have a sequel. Then it got a bunch of sequels, the majority of which have been frequently cited as among the worst movies ever made.

• Highlander 2 is a ridiculous betrayal of the original that wanted to be cyberpunk and retconned the immortals to being aliens, which just gets dumber the longer you think about it,
• Highlander 3 is an apology that erases 2, but also negates the original’s ending for no reason other than to do the exact same plot over again… poorly.
• Highlander 4 erases all the movies and instead follows the TV show, killing the hero of the first movie as a poorly realized attempt to pass the torch, butchering the lore of both the movie and the show, and just being so awful that they chose to spend their time and money making deceptive ads with stuff that was never going to be in the movie instead of finishing the movie. Seriously, they released it with unfinished effects shots and missing scenes that were vital to understanding the plot.
• And then there’s Highlander 5, which was a straight to Syfy channel movie that actually makes all the previous ones look good by comparison, Listing everything wrong with it would just be describing the entire movie.

Hell, the anime is the most faithful movie follow up, and it doesn’t have any of the characters, takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland, and introduces God, destiny, reincarnation, ghosts, druid magic, cyborgs, giant robot spiders, etc.

And because even if it did get released, it would only have info used to get an indictment of Maxwell. Damaging info on clients and associates would not be included.

It’s not that Kivas needed killing, it’s that data values life and would not kill to free himself, but will kill Kivas to prevent him from murdering others. Once Kivas was in custody Data had no interest in harming him.

So, the lesson would be that it is not virtuous to stand by and do nothing while some rich asshole is killing people for his own petty reasons, and that the logical course of action if no alternative exists is to shoot the fucker.