Love it, but CMUSA is better because alphabetical.

But also I get the feeling he’ll take Mexico coming before the US personally :P

Not trying to get into an in-depth discussion (because I know nothing) but from the outside looking in, going tit for tat and hoping the next guy’s better (or that Trump doesn’t make himself President for life) doesn’t seem like a good long term strategy. Tariffs may be necessary (convo above) but ultimately are going to hurt the people of the issuing country the most and at a time when most are struggling already.

Trump’s not the US and people in the US definitely shouldn’t get punished for his crap (unless they actively voted red, abstaining…sucks but I get it tbh), but he’s just proved he’s willing to start a trade war with friendly nations and the US has proved it’s willing to hand the country over to someone like that. Twice. Trying to find better firends (in terms of trade deals and whatnot) seems like the smart move here. Every other nation having to jump through hoops any time this guy wants to earn brownie points with his supporters doesn’t seem like a good foundation for a trade agreement to me.

That’s fair. If someone punches you, you punch back. You don’t get beaten up in the moment in hopes that you get to jump them a week from now. The “both” option suggested below may be better but that still means it’s regular everyday people getting fucked over with higher prices in CA over something they had nothing to do with (I can still sympathize with the US but one can also argue the US voted him in, Canada did not).

Dunno enough to know how well it’d work but I read a comment here the other day saying Canada and Mexico shouldn’t retaliate with tariffs but instead opt out of their side of UMCA and just not uphold US IP laws. They could individually or together invest heavily into forming companies that provide cheaper alternatives to whatever crap US companies pull for recurring revenue. Stuff like legally mandating that phones have a local-made app store pre-installed, subsidizing or outright investing in really well made and well maintained jailbreaks, third party repairs, and third party spare parts for stuff like John Deere products, Apple produccts, Tesla products…pretty much eat the tariffs on exports to the US, don’t retaliate with own tariffs so prices locally don’t go up, but hurt US profits everywhere else by becoming a provider of cheaper but still reliable (probably more reliable tbh) alternatives to anything US.

I’m kinda disappointed that’s not what’s happening rn

Edit: USMCA, not NAFTA

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Ah, thanks! It was driving me mad

Disclaimer: Only Trek I had watched beforehand was Lower Decks (loved it) and SNW (loved it) in that order. With that said, here are my opinions nobody asked for:

• S1 had its flaws but I was there for dark, depressing, and moody.
• SNW cast carried the fuck out of S2 and the plot was good too imo.
• First half of S3 was promising…but they fucked it up so utterly and completely in the second half that it was hard to take the rest of the show seriously afterwards.

I had to forward through starting from the second half of Season 4 just to get through it. It got so ridiculously boring. I was hoping it’d get better and I could watch normally again but it just didn’t.

Watching TNG now and I’m loving it. Can be a bit slow sometimes but still enjoyable.

Edit: Does boost not do spoiler tags?

Lots of countries just don’t care about you downloading pirated content though, they just punish distribution.

I don’t really have that problem but for the places that do punish downloading, I hear VPNs can be helpful to mask your traffic and that ISPs don’t really care enough to pursue as long as you’re not blatant about it and have plausible deniability (“no, I just downloaded a linux ISO that happened to be exactly the size of a whole season of <insert show>, total coincidence”)

Obviously not legal advice though.

Sounds like you saved yourself 2 more aneurysms haha.

I actually liked a lot of S1 and S2 (S2 being peak because enterprise crew just carry the hell out of everything) but I also like edgy and dark media and can overlook a lot if the tone is done in a way that grabs me.

S3 looked promising until the “big reveal”. Couldn’t take it seriously after that. Forced myself thorugh S4 and S5 but those were just straight up annoying. I can’t stand it when things go wrong just because the protagonists are being stupid, or getting held back by some weird moral stance they clearly didn’t have 3 episodes ago. What’s even worse is when it’s so generic I can accurately predict how a 40-60 minute episode will end within the first 10.

Coming directly from Discovery and SNW, the sets and how everything was shot definitely felt dated at first I won’t lie. But it took a couple of false starts, and then actually watching it for more than 10 minutes for me to be super immersed and forget about all of that. Still on Season 1 and I really like the stories being told so far. I’m watching an episode here and there when I’m in the mood but I get the feeling I’m gonna reach a point where I binge the whole thing in an unhealthy amount of time haha.

My intro to Trek was Lower Decks so I’m also excited to see all of the crazy stuff they referenced in passing there :D

Same, I needed more after SNW and wasn’t quite ready for the way 80’s - '00s era Trek was filmed. I actually liked the first two seasons and thought season 3 was okay.

Spoiler alert:
But then we learned about the source of the burn.

And then season 4 happened. And then season 5 happened. It felt like all of these were leaning into my least favorite things about Discovery. By the finale, I was fast forwarding through everything just to get through it.

Watching TNG for the first time now and loving it way more than Disco :)

I know there’s still a long way to go but maybe the future won’t be as completely horrofying as I thought. Fuck the facists and fuck the nazis, well done France!

This was so god damn good!

Ariamis or Ariandel?

This PR/meme is my spirit animal

Yooooo I also had an S3. That phone was a TANK! I dropped it on some rocks and smashed the screen once so I had to get a screen replacement but that was the worst of it (and completely understandable). Aside from that it was a fantastic phone and very durable! I had it on LineageOS Android 7 (or 6 idk) before it got stolen :(

A series are pretty solid. My sis has an A32 and it’s great. I’d daily drive one myself if it wasn’t for the notch haha

Oof $300 for a repair is rough, especially considering you can get a refurb Note 9 or 10 for less than that (US or EU at least). What are you daily driving now?

S Pen is one of those things that I didn’t think I’d use much but I keep whipping out for this or that. It’s kinda great!

Galaxy Note 9. It was the last fully featured phone Samsung made with a headphone jack, an S-Pen, and no display cutout. The only phones that have come out since that are even close to as fully featured are the Sony Xperia phones.

I bought one brand new a few months ago because my S7 died and I couldn’t justify dropping $1000 on an Xperia phone. It’s an EU model bought from US Amazon so I definitely overpaid, but it’s been worth it so far. Definitely holds up imo.

It’s obviously not flagship level, but it’s still a solid mid-ranger. It doesn’t get software updates anymore so officially, I’m stuck on Android 10 and an old security patch. However, I can upgrade to One UI Android 12/13, or whatever the latest AOSP is through the magic of custom ROMs if it ever starts to bother me.

Edit: The only issue I have is that the fingerprint reader isn’t as fast as I’d like it to be. I’m not sure if it’s common or just a me issue despite searching a bunch so any help would be appreciated :)