I had such a troubled relationship with The Expanse S01 as well.
I read the novel and thought the writing was meh, so I dropped it at some point.
Then my friends were telling me the show was great, so I gave it a go but got bored at about the same point and stopped.
So other friends insisted it was great, so I tried it again with my GF. She complained about the show, but we decided to really see what this show was about and stick with it no matter what.
Turns out I thought the story was heading into some sort of "space zombies" tale, but I couldn't have been more wrong. And the characters I thought were so bland and indistinguishable in S01 gained so much nuance that they're now so clear in my mind years later.
It's definitely one of my favorite sci-fi shows of all time. I guess it's worth listening to your friends and sticking with things sometimes.
I kinda think Voyager failing the test despite Janeway is still a symptom of a representation issue. The test was designed because there are plenty of fully fleshed out female characters in fiction, but usually they exist as exceptions in a man's world and creators still feel too awkward writing women to have two or more of them having meaningful exchanges.
I'd say that despite Voyager being a trailblazer for representation with Janeway, it still had these exact issues. At least until Seven of Nine came along.
It's still important to note that the test is in no way a formal analysis, and not even its creator claims this.
We all played with the new toy and found it terribly flawed and boring.
That, plus I don't need Bing to pretend to be a person and give me an organic answer loaded with hallucinations. We all know how to google stuff and parse the raw results.
Thank you. I see so many people say this was one of the best scenes of the prequels, but I can still remember my stunned disappointment when I saw it in theaters.
Yoda is supposed to be this great sage who is so powerful he never cared about violence or fighting skills. But lolnope, turns out he can actually fight, and when he does he looks like a monkey who did a rail of coke then grabbed onto a glowstick.
I did, and it's a vast argument to make based on two data points. That the bottom 10% of the U.S. and Finland have the same PPP says nothing about the wealth of the rest of the population, just that the rock bottom of both countries is more or less the same. Not to mention, socialized services probably means Finland and Sweden's bottom 10% probably has higher life expectancy than the U.S.'s bottom 10%.
The author takes PPP (Purchase Power Parity) per capita of the UK as a whole versus individual U.S. states. So what does it mean that Mississippi on average has a higher PPP than the UK? Two things:
The UK gets dragged down by it's poorer regions; and
The U.S. has enough ultra-rich people to drag its PPP up despite a large swathe of its population being poor.
Another way to look at it is, if wealth distribution was fair in the U.S., even people in Mississippi would be better off than the average Brit.
But invariably you do not need to go very far to get off the beaten track and find much better deals. Explore and profit.
Pro tip: that's true absolutely everywhere in the world. It's crazy how much cheaper and better the food is a mere three blocks on foot from tourist attractions. Can't read the menu? Look at what people are eating, and point at what looks good.
That was true back in the days when you could mine your own coins and hold them in your own wallet, but with all the KYC requirements these days, it's pretty hard to get, say, BTC that's not traceable to you.
It's not impossible, but it's certainly not as easy as cash.
I wasn't talking about Twitter's profitability or lack thereof. I meant it was a breeding ground for trolls, brigading, bullying, and disinformation long before Musk took over. Musk made it worse, but it's funny how some people remember pre-Musk Twitter as this bastion of integrity and civil discourse.
Worth remembering that Twitter's problems didn't start with Musk's acquisition. He just redirected the city sewers into what was already a cesspool. Then took a piss in it for good measure.
I like it and I think I can say with confidence that I've made the switch from Reddit to Lemmy as my default "internet frontpage."
Still rough in spots, though. The defederation drama is making this a bit of a rocky experience, so I'm not sure I've landed on my final instance just yet. I understand this is an unavoidable aspect of the Fediverse (i.e. relations between instances), but I still haven't settled on an instance where I can say, "Yep, this is the one for me."
On the positive side, I love Infinity for Lemmy, even with some of the remaining bugs, and I love that I can open a discussion that's on the top of my feed and I can still have meaningful interactions with the community. I hope my favorite subs from Reddit will eventually come to life here, because then I'd be golden.
Overall, this all feels like a fresh new start and I love it.
I was in China two months ago. While WeChat and AliPay are ubiquitous, it's not true that China is cashless. You can still use cash pretty much everywhere, but expect vendors to have to rummage for a bag of cash behind the counter then panic as they don't remember how to count money.
But honestly, it's not that different from Europe and North America. When I'm in, say, Canada or France, I'm using a Visa credit card through Google Wallet for absolutely everything. Not sure I trust Google and Visa any more than WeChat.
I had such a troubled relationship with The Expanse S01 as well.
I read the novel and thought the writing was meh, so I dropped it at some point.
Then my friends were telling me the show was great, so I gave it a go but got bored at about the same point and stopped.
So other friends insisted it was great, so I tried it again with my GF. She complained about the show, but we decided to really see what this show was about and stick with it no matter what.
Turns out I thought the story was heading into some sort of "space zombies" tale, but I couldn't have been more wrong. And the characters I thought were so bland and indistinguishable in S01 gained so much nuance that they're now so clear in my mind years later.
It's definitely one of my favorite sci-fi shows of all time. I guess it's worth listening to your friends and sticking with things sometimes.