I’m just imagining being the poor sap working for a foreign power trying to extract useful information from his cottage cheese brain.

“Do you have nuclear subs in the South China Sea?”

“We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame. … The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.”

“Where! Are! The nuclear! Subs! Deployed!”

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”

Also, this is just a really negative set of statements. “I DON’T want X, Y, and Z.” Even giving anon a pretty big benefit of the doubt and assuming they didn’t state it like “No fatties,” they aren’t really saying what they want in a partner, just a bunch of standards by which they would judge somebody.

The search for a romantic partner should involve more positives than negatives. You should have ideas about what things you like in people and yourself, and what interests and activities that you’re passionate about and would like to share with someone. If you start with a laundry list of things that you don’t like, that’s not just going to be off-putting, it’s going to be limiting you to thinking only in those terms, rather than finding something that brings you joy, and finding someone that has that in common with you.

This is my hole, Charlie Brown! It was made for me, you blockhead!

Capt. Picard:

The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don’t deserve to wear that uniform!

—TNG, The First Duty

• Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction / Kill Bill

• Stand By Me

• Dirty Dancing

• The Lost Boys

Draft horses: “Am I a joke to you?”

Honestly, I think the biggest problem is that Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao have negative chemistry. They probably cast her in TNG thinking that O’Brien was a second-tier supporting character, and that she had good “nervous bride” energy for her first appearance in “Data’s Day,” and that would probably be about it for the character. It’s not the actor’s fault that a fictional pairing that wasn’t very well thought-out on the writers’ and casting director’s part didn’t turn out to be strong enough to survive as a primary plot driver.

That said… I would have loved to see Miles and Keiko go through an amicable divorce. They virtually did, between Keiko basically throwing Miles and Kira together during their pregnancy and Keiko’s long-term journeys to Bajor. It wouldn’t have been that much further to just have them realize that they’d grown apart and agree to separate, and it could be a way for Star Trek to explore a subject that a lot of people had real-life experience with. I don’t suppose that mid- to late-90s Star Trek producers would have gone for it, but there was some real narrative potential there.

That is one of the stupidest takes I have ever seen, and I’ve been on the internet since AOL chatrooms.

Not voting makes politicians less accountable to you. If you somehow organized everyone who thought like you do, regardless of your agenda, and convinced every single one of them to not vote, then you would achieve the lofty political goal of… absolutely ensuring that no politician would ever try to pursue your goals.

Voting, by definition, is what makes politicians give a shit about your cause. There’s a reason why the Greek word meaning “one who does not take part in public affairs” is the root of the modern word “idiot.”

There was a Limited Run Games release , and although they seem to be sold out online, I saw some physical copies in their retail store just the other day.

I’d be curious to see that chart for a Toyota Yaris. I drove one for a few years and it was almost unnerving how little hood it had.

(Assuming such technology could be viable and not, you know, horrifying like it sounds it would be…)

[Headlines ten years after the invention of the robot “wife”]

WHY ARE GENERATION ALPHA WOMEN KILLING TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE?!

and

GEN ALPHA WOMEN SAY THEY ARE HAPPILY SINGLE: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM??!

and

DEATHS FROM LONELINESS AMONG GEN ALPHA MEN ARE WAY UP: WHAT’S GOING ON?!

There’s a tough lesson I learned about trying to get my friends into board games: It’s easier to turn gamers into your friends than it is to turn your friends into gamers. I’ve learned that some of my friends are never going to share my interests as much as I’d like, but that just means I needed to find people who were already in whatever hobby and start hanging out with them and some of them will eventually be your real friends.

Making and keeping friends as an adult is way more difficult than it seems it should be, but it’s a painful reality.

Star Trek: TNG

Batman: The Animated Series

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

I think you mean his fake whistle-playing hands.

I think they were trying to build a Pulaski-Data relationship that mirrored the McCoy-Spock relationship, where McCoy would say something shockingly racist like calling Spock a green-blooded hobgoblin, but then Spock would insult him right back and it was all in good fun so it was “okay.” The problem was that Data wasn’t able to give as good as he got, so it came across as Pulaski bullying the sweet autistic kid, which did not work as well as McCoy-Spock.

“You’ve got a little schmutz on you” just feels like the right way to tell people there’s an unspecified substance on them.

It’s very easy to play the Nazi card.

I went to a Viking festival and had a great time, but I wonder about how often they have to look askance at the people who are really into runes and Thor hammer symbols.

With as much as they talked about the irrevocable destruction of the global ecosystem coming up in a matter of months, and then the constantly rotating day-night cycle, I imagine it would be possible to find out if your in-game time played actually was more or less than that deadline. It would be hilarious if the world was going to end in six months but then the math showed that you actually spent more than a year running around shooting the fins off of robo-pterodactyls.

Sexual positions are locked behind tiered paywalls. The most basic ones are free, but as they get more interesting, you have to pay increasing royalty fees.