Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈

#MedicalSlogansOrMottos #HashtagGames #StarTrek

I’ve been experiencing a number of symptoms on this account for several weeks, at least.

Outbound toots are delayed by a great deal (~1h). They don’t show up on others’ TLs until long after I’ve posted. I suspect this varies by the other instance. I sometimes get much faster responses from certain users despite a general, overall delay of about an hour.

When there is a reaction or response to a post, I first see it on the Notifications tab in the UI (web or app) & often more or less right away. Then much later (typically an hour or so), a push notification shows up.

I suspect this has something to do with my instance, c.im, though the status page is always green. I wonder if it involves versions of #Mastodon or something (currently 4.4.3 on c.im). I’ve always assumed it would eventually clear up, but no sign of that yet.

So I think before long I may start another account. Idk if I’ll migrate this one or just have a second account. At least, maybe I can prove that the delay doesn’t follow the change of instance. Not sure what else it could be.

So I’ll go digging again, but in case anyone has opinions, any recommendations for new instances? I want to avoid the big, populous ones like mastodon.social. I chose c.im in part for high limits on posts (8 poll options, 5k char limit, etc). I also use the search function extensively. I think it’s not available by default, so not every instance has it. (Not sure if that’s right.)

#Fediverse

@Binder@petrous.vislae.town

All this talk of junk drawers has called to mind something that happened about 10 years ago, while I was living in rural Washington. I went to the local transfer station to drop off some recycling. I had several kitchen bags full of aluminum cans & then another bag with mixed plastic & metal to separate. It was a nice autumn day, partly sunny & 70s (F)/20s (C).

The dumpster for cans had two large, hinged lids that could be opened from the top but were, as usual, closed. On the side of the dumpster were a couple of mail slots for dumping in cans. I got to work and dumped the several kitchen bags, making a huge racket. Then it got quiet as I collected the empty bags & started to separate the last bag.

And then I heard a sound of metal cans shifting from inside the dumpster. I turned to look & lo, there appeared first a hand & then eyes & a nose behind one of the mail slots. I stared in disbelief. A man’s voice said, “I lost my cell phone.” I think maybe I said something banal like, “Fine by me.” Mostly a bit stunned, I finished my business & left.

#wtf #truestory

Johnny Carson used to tell a joke about an indigenous North American tribe called, “The Fukawi,” who would introduce themselves to settlers in English: We’re the Fukawi.

The same joke shows up in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” when Felicia (Guy Pearce) is driving the bus just before it breaks down. Felicia begins to tell the joke about an indigenous Australian people called the Fukawi. At that moment, the bus breaks down & they all disembark.

Bernadette (#TerenceStamp) delivers the punchline:

Oh, Felicia. Where the fuck are we?

There was an interesting bit in #Andor, I think S2E3, which was, “Sagrona Teema.” (Though I may have both those details wrong.)

In the prep for the actual wedding, Mon & Leida are alone. Mon tells the story of her own wedding day, when she was 15, another traditional Chandrilan arranged wedding. She said her mother was drunk & she never forgave her for it.

But then Leida expresses some cold feet & Mon launches into a speech declaring that her daughter doesn’t have to go through with this horrible arranged marriage. To which Leida replies, with a look of disgust:

I wish you *were* drunk.

In the first season, at one point when Vel visits, she laments Leida lapsing into the conservative “Old Ways.” But Mon tells her it’s all Leida & her friends ever do or talk about.

Mon, space hippy & freedom fighter, wants to release her daughter from the burden she herself has born much of her life. (Perrin. lol) And Leida is severely disappointed that her mother would shit all over The Old Ways on her own special day.

In part, the wedge between the two characters helps set up Mon’s flight from Coruscant in Ep 9. She’s leaving her family behind. But with both Perrin & Leida, the separation began much earlier.

However, it also illustrates a younger generation growing more conservative to the dismay of their elders. Leida never knew the Republic. She’s a child of the Empire.

#StarWars

So by popular demand, more or less, in the last #HangTrek puzzle I did 2 important things:

- No allstartrek mention of the guppe bot or AllStarTrek tag. This keeps the puzzles out of the watch parties.
- Only use the StarTrek tag on the 1st poll & then just hang subsequent polls as replies in a thread off the 1st. This keeps the noise down on that general tag, but still advertises the puzzles when new ones start, so new players can more easily find HangTrek.

I think those are the main mechanical improvements. I also reduced the footprint of the polls by avoiding lots of boilerplate noise.

HangTrek is sort of a lawless wasteland with no rules, as it should be. (lol) I think it’s sort of like poker night, where the dealer changes after each hand & it’s dealer’s choice. A lot of what happens is up to the host.

It’s up to the host how they want to do most things. But I’d suggest at least the 2 mechanical steps above for anyone hosting HangTrek.

This came up specifically in regard of HangTrek. There, the allstartrek guppe bot started life when a watch party migrated from Twitter. I basically horned in on their bot at one point & some others followed suit.

Regarding #SarlaccPit, I’ll probably start doing something similar there, but there’s been no specific complaint. The starwars guppe bot is pretty general purpose & appropriate as far as I’m concerned (not dedicated to a specific purpose like a watch party). The only problem might be that it will always boost reply posts. If you want to keep the noise down on the main StarWars tag by omitting it from replies, mentioning the bot defeats that.

I suppose it’s my own neurosis or something, but I think:

>>> Private messages on Mastodon are really creepy. <<<

There are pretty rare occasions when it is justified for a very good reason. For example, though it’s not a very good idea to toot passwords in the first place, don’t send someone a password in a public toot. Journalists, lawyers & others may accept tips or other sorts of contact that should not be public. There are very few such reasons, as far as I’m concerned. And most of them are probably better suited to Signal. (Mastodon private replies are not end-to-end encrypted.)

Private replies to an account that doesn’t follow you show up in the sketchy notifications area, which isn’t the best way to get to know someone. You’re in the dubious company of Fediverse Chick & Mastodon Support. I don’t see those notifications right away, if at all.

It amounts to someone I don’t know sidling up and whispering in my ear. On Twitter it was, “sliding into my DMs.” Ew. There’s no need for it. If I could disable it with a setting, I would. Maybe I just haven’t found it yet.

Please don’t send me private messages here. For the most part, you can expect them to be entirely ignored. That particularly goes for HangTrek & SarlaccPit guesses.

I’ll pin this on my profile & otherwise try to keep my antisocial vibe to myself. Thank you, as someone often says, for your attention to this matter. We now return to our regularly-scheduled horseshit.

[Some old written humor from the 20th cy that floats around in my head]

M R DUCKS
M R NOT
S A R
C M WANGS
L I B
M R DUCKS

#humor #DadJokes #NotTerriblyFunny

One episode of #StarTrekDS9 I haven’t discussed since recently watching through is “Trials and Tribble-ations” (S5E06). I’ve thought about it often & thought: There’s so much not to discuss. It’s a well-known episode based on one of the best-known #StarTrek episodes of all time.

Most of the episode has several DS9/Defiant crew members onboard the Enterprise & K-7 during “The Trouble with Tribbles.” There are a number of scenes with them superimposed in period uniform within the original scene. This was done in the vicinity of 1995. Today this would be unremarkable. It was nice work, at least, for the time.

Bringing back Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin (one of those names I assume, in any given room, only I’ve known most of my life) intent on sabotaging the past to redeem his failure was a nice way to approach the story. That Orb of Time came in handy pretty often in the writers’ room.

As a die-hard #StarTrekTOS fan who doesn’t really give much of a shit about anything since 1982 & can hardly spell Picard, I have to say that the scene in the bar on K-7 where Worf explains what the deal is with Klingons & Tribbles is one of the highlights of the entire franchise. I have a hard time getting through it without dissolving in tears & giggles when he gets to “mortal enemies of the Klingon Empire” & the Klingon invasion of “the Tribble homeworld.” Such a glorious addition to Trek Lore. “Do they still sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt?” Stop. lol

@allstartrek@a.gup.pe
#AllStarTrek

If any software engineer types are looking for a project around #HangTrek or #SarlaccPit, I’d love to be able to have a scoreboard. I was thinking you could write a script in Python or whatever your language of choice is & then crawl through the Solved toots. A simple start would be just to list a running total of how many puzzles each player has solved. You can get fancier by tracking how many rounds each solution took, who the host was, etc.

I was thinking it might be easier to start with the #startrekgifs game, which is automated, so there is less variation to deal with. Everything comes from one account. And so on. In the word games, there are different hosts & each one does things a little differently, so digging out the information might be a little trickier. The GIF game keeps its own scoreboard, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some different stats, like a summary of each week in addition to the running totals the bot publishes.

Food for thought.

There's a scene near the end of "The Muse" (DS9 S4E21) where Lwaxana Troi tells Odo she's in love with him & knows he'll never be in love with her. I was recalling the episode & I suddenly had a sense of déjà vu.

@allstartrek@a.gup.pe
#AllStarTrek #StarTrekTOS #StarTrekDS9 #TheMuse #TheNakedTime #MajelBarrett

The meaning of TOS rank braids on uniform sleeves was spelled out lo, these many years before, in the Star Fleet Technical Manual (1975):

Ensign: 0 stripe
Lieutenant: 1 stripe
Lieutenant Commander: 1.5 stripe
Commander: 2 stripes
Captain: 2.5 stripes
Commodore: 3 stripes
Admiral: 4 stripes

But I notice just now looking through shots of “The Menagerie” & “Where No Man Has Gone Before” that this scheme was not used at all. Most characters seem to have a single stripe, including Pike & Scotty.

Recently I saw an image of Anson Mount as Capt Pike with what to my eye are a Commodore’s bars (3 solid stripes). I had the impression he was Captain in that series. I’m guessing SNW retconned the stripe scheme.

I won’t be surprised if this is down to another wardrobe malfunction like the insignia shapes or something like that.

@allstartrek@a.gup.pe
#StarTrek #StarTrekTOS #StarTrekSNW

The Star Fleet Technical Manual (Franz Joseph, Ballantine, 1975) was a constant companion of mine a kid, starting, maybe, in 1977. For example, the page below was my first instruction on the Greek alphabet.

I ran across a PDF for anyone interested. I think you can also find vintage hard copies on eBay or wherever used books are sold near you. (If you're bloody lucky.)

I may post some more screenshots here in a thread. Some are just gorgeous & until this morning I'd forgotten them for more than 40 years.

https://archive.org/details/star-trek-star-fleet-technical-manual

@allstartrek@a.gup.pe
#StarTrek #StarTrekTOS