Dec 23
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Release First Photo Of Baby Lili In Holiday Card
Posted in: Today's ChiliHappy holidays, from Archie, Lili and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex!
Dec 23
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Dec 23
'Star Trek: Discovery' finally embraces standalone storytelling in its fourth season
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe following contains minor spoilers for season four, episode six of ‘Star Trek: Discovery‘ (and vague discussion of episode seven).
There’s a bit of a trend or tradition among Star Trek shows, starting with The Next Generation. Somewhere around season three or four the show finds its way and actually becomes good, if not great. This isn’t a phenomenon limited to Trek, of course, but only Trek has a specific name for it: growing the beard. This is in reference to commanders William Riker and Benjamin Sisko, who both started their respective shows clean-shaven but grew beards around the time The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine got noticeably better. And Discovery might finally be ready to do its own metamorphosis, but instead of a beard it’s a change of format that has fans talking.
One of the complaints about Discovery’s first three seasons — besides the grimdark tone, the infallibility of Michael Burnham and all the crying — was that it largely embraced a more serial format, where each episode was another installment in one long ongoing storyline. Sure, there were occasional one-off adventures, but each episode was still firmly focused on the larger story.
CBS
Season four started off in the same manner, with the season premiere and second episode dedicated to setting up the new status quo of rebuilding the United Federation of Planets and introducing this season’s big threat: the Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA). However, unlike previous seasons where each episode would have been focused on one step toward finding a solution, the problem-solving has taken a back seat to a largely standalone A-plot.
The shift could be first seen in episode three, where Burnham and her crew are tasked with tracking down a rogue member of the Qowat Milat (as I described them to my editor: ninja nuns). The DMA is more of a C-plot in this episode, with the B-plot position occupied by the story of Gray Tal and his new android body. Episode four was Tilly trying to train and keep a group of Starfleet cadets alive (in a plot reminiscent of Voyager episodes ‘Learning Curve’ and ‘Good Shepherd’). Episode five saw the crew tasked with evacuating a planet threatened by the DMA. The anomaly may have been the instigating force in the episode, but it was in fact interchangeable with pretty much any other planetary threat since the episode was focused more on Michael’s struggle to free six prisoners on the surface.
CBS
This week’s episode finds Discovery traveling into a subspace rift created by the DMA and becoming stranded, with the ship’s newly sentient AI Zora unable to lead the crew to safety. However, while the anomaly is once again the cause of Discovery’s problems it’s also, once again, an interchangeable threat. The real drive of the episode is the problem-solving to get the crew out, and the personal struggles of characters like Zora and Cleveland Booker.
Next week will bring the Dark Matter Anomaly back to the forefront, but that’s only logical since the seventh episode marks the rough midpoint of the 13-episode season as well as the end of our calendar year. It’s not unusual for many television shows to use this time to “check in” on their major storylines and advance those plots to the next phase. But it is unusual for Discovery in that it doesn’t represent as clean a divide as in previous seasons: season one went from the Klingon War to the Mirror Universe, season two went from the mystery of the Red Angel to battling the evil AI Control. Next week’s episode represents a smoother transition than previously.
CBS
That smoothness is mostly due to the fact that the ongoing storyline hasn’t been given as much time to openly flourish, instead bubbling in the background while the show instead focuses on character-building single-shot adventures. Standalone episodes might feel outdated in an era of streaming and binging, where viewers can get their answers right away so there’s no need to make each individual chapter feel “complete.” There’s no chance to become unsatisfied by the content of an episode when the next one is merely seconds away. Even shows that premiere week by week have fallen into the trap, assuming that most viewers will binge the show later on anyway, with only the diehards watching each installment as it drops.
But for most of its existence at this point, Star Trek has been a franchise for the die-hards. The people who can’t wait for the next episode, the people who will read and write recaps on their favorite pop culture sites and those who share theories on social media. Paramount+ has put a lot of its chips on the strength of this die-hard base, stacking its production schedule with five different Star Trek shows that rarely overlap, meaning a fan who wants to see everything as soon as possible will need to maintain their Paramount+ subscription all-year-round.
CBS
While fan complaints may have played a big role in Discovery’s decision to switch to a more episodic format, it’s likely that the desire to keep fans on the hook for the show’s entire run played an even bigger part. When Discovery was the only Star Trek show, and one of the few Paramount+ offerings period, it was common for viewers to only sign up for a subscription when they wanted to binge something — sometimes even within the free week the service offers to new customers. Shows like Lower Decks, Prodigy and the upcoming Strange New Worlds already operate with a more episodic format, meaning Discovery could have created a “hole” in an ongoing subscription for viewers, a chance for them to take a break from Star Trek and from paying $6 a month.
With an episodic show it’s a lot harder to ignore it while it’s running; each episode represents a complete viewing experience, making the wait between episodes less excruciating. And when Discovery encounters new worlds and new adventures every week, it gives the fans something new to talk about, instead of rehashing the same old theories about the ongoing storyline again and again until the season ends. Star Trek was just made for episodic viewing, and embracing the format will make it easier for Discovery to hold fan interest over time.
Dec 23
COP26 was not a fist-in-the-air moment, and not the victory against climate change that humanity had been banking on. Sadly, politics and commerce put a hard thumb on proceedings, limiting the action possible. Commitments to “phase down” coal, rather than a firm pledge to eliminate it outright, show how far we still have to go. But the event also served to highlight the extent of what needs to be done if humanity’s going to survive beyond the next century.
One “victory” out of the event was the belief that ensuring global warming held at 1.5 degrees was still possible. It’s worth saying, however, that 1.5 degrees isn’t a target to meet so much as an acceptance of impending disaster. In October, the IPCC explained that such a temperature increase will cause significant upticks in the frequency of extreme heat waves, monsoon-like rainfall and widespread droughts. Extreme weather events that may have taken place once every 50 years a few centuries ago could become a regular, and fatal, occurrence.
All the while, the facts of the matter are unchanged: Humanity needs to avoid adding new carbon emissions while also tackling those we’ve already emitted. That means an aggressive reduction of every man-made carbon-emitting process everywhere on Earth, the total reformation of agriculture and an unprecedented rollout of carbon capture and storage technology. And, ideally, that process should have begun the better part of two decades ago.
There are many dispiriting facts about the world, but one that always hurts is the fact that coal plants are still being greenlit. Global Energy Monitor’s data has plants currently being permitted or under construction in (deep breath) China, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Mongolia, Vietnam, Singapore, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. As Reuters says, each plant will be expected to run for at least 40 years, severely damaging efforts to go Carbon Negative. Not only is it in everyone’s best interest that these plants don’t go online, but wealthier nations have a moral obligation to help provide the funding to help at least some of those names move toward clean energy.
Tunvarat Pruksachat via Getty Images
The problem is that electricity is going to be the most important resource of the 21st century, especially if we’re going to tackle climate change. Many key technologies, like transportation, will ditch fossil fuels in favor of electricity as their primary source of fuel. The world’s demand for energy is going to increase, and we’re going to need to generate that power cleanly. The US Center for Climate and Energy Solutions believes that, by 2050, the world’s power needs will jump by 24 percent. So where will we get all of this clean power from?
Fusion has, forever, been held up as a magic bullet that will totally eradicate our worries about energy generation. Unlike Nuclear Fission, it produces little waste, requires little raw fuel and can’t produce a runaway reaction. Unfortunately, Fusion remains as elusive as The Venus de Milo’s arms or a good new Duke Nukem game. ITER, the internationally-funded, French-built experimental reactor won’t be finished until 2025 at the earliest and is still just a testbed. If successful — and that’s a big if — we’re still a decade away from any serious progress being made, at which point mass decarbonization will already need to be well underway.
That means any power decarbonization will have to come from the renewable technology that’s available to us today. Nuclear, Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Tidal power all need to be ramped up to fill in the gap, but the scale of the task in the US alone is staggering. According to the EIA, the US generated just short of 2,500 billion kWh using fossil fuels in 2020. If you wanted to, for instance, replace all of that with nuclear power, you’d need to build anything in the region of 300 reactors, or increase the number of solar panels installed in the US by roughly a hundred percent — and that’s before we talk about intermittency.
James Trew / Engadget
One thing we can do, however, is to reduce our demand for energy to lessen the need for such a dramatic shift. That can be, for instance, as easy as better insulating your home (in cold climates) or improving the efficiency of AC systems (in warm climates). Another smart move is to ditch the car in favor of public transportation, walking, or getting on your bike. There is evidence that e-bike adoption is becoming a big deal, with Forbes saying that sales are tipped to grow from just under 4 million annually in 2020 to close to 17 million by 2030.
None of this, however, will matter much unless we can also find a way to pay off the debts humanity has racked up over the last century. The IPCC believes that we need to extract up to one trillion tonnes of atmospheric CO2 in the near future. This can be done with massive tree planting works, more of which needs to be done, but also this process may need a little help.
That’s why a number of startups have been working on industrial processes to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Right now, such a process is very expensive, but it’s hoped that as the technology improves, the cost will start to tumble. There’s also a concern, of course, that running schemes like this will give polluting companies and nations a free license to avoid reform.
As much as we can hope that this technology matures quickly, the rate of progress needs to get a lot faster a, uh, lot faster. For instance, Climeworks’ Orca, its new flagship carbon capture plant in Iceland, will extract 4,000 tons of CO2 per year. If we’re going to reach the point where we can avert a climate catastrophe using extraction alone, we’ll need this capacity to increase by about a hundred million times.
The point of this is, broadly speaking, to outline how much more sharply our attitudes toward the climate need to shift. If we’re going to succeed at defeating climate change then we’re going to need to go onto the sort of war footing – where resources are devoted to nothing but solving the crisis – that few can ever imagine undertaking. But, as most of the resources point out, the only way that we’re going to stave off the damage after dragging our feet for so long is to go all-out in search of a solution.
Dec 23
As if you needed another reason to be angry about the world in 2021, there’s been a spate of seal killings in Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed this week that a young female monk seal found dead on the island of Molokai in September was shot in the head. The tragedy marks at least…
Dec 23
In 2021, archaeologists learned more about a famous bog body known as the Tollund Man, daily life in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius’s fateful eruption, some of the oldest human handprints on Earth, and much more. Enjoy these 11 postcards from humanity’s ancient past.
Dec 23
A Tribute to ‘The Carrie Diaries,’ The Forgotten And Underrated ‘Sex And The City’ Prequel
Posted in: Today's Chili“Before there was sex, before there was the city, there was just me — Carrie. Carrie Bradshaw.”
Dec 23
Amazon iPad sales drop the prices of Apple's latest WiFi and cellular models
Posted in: Today's ChiliAmazon is giving you the chance to grab some of Apple’s latest iPad models at a discount before the year ends. Both the WiFi version and the cellular version of the basic iPad released just this September are now being sold at the lowest prices we’ve seen for the devices on the website. You can get the 256GB WiFi model for $449, which is $30 lower than its original retail price of $479. If you want a tablet with mobile data, you can get the 2021 iPad with WiFi and cellular for $580 instead — that’s $29 less than the device’s original price of $609.
Buy 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 256GB) at Amazon – $449Buy 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular, 256GB) at Amazon – $580
The tablet’s 64GB model is on sale, as well. You can grab the WiFi-only variant with smaller storage space for $320. While the device isn’t exactly deeply discounted, that’s still $9 off a tablet you may have been planning to get anyway. The 64GB 2021 iPad with WiFi and cellular connections will set you back $449 on Amazon right now, which is $10 less what it will cost you on the Apple Store itself.
Buy 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular, 64GB) at Amazon – $449
We gave the basic 2021 iPad a score of 86 in our review, where we praised it for being affordable, now made even more so with these deals. While it doesn’t come with a big redesign, it has double the storage space of its predecessors. We found its A13 Bionic powerful enough for multitasking standard use cases, like browsing the web, playing games or watching videos, without lagging or showing any kind of significant issue. The device has a new 12-megapixel front-facing camera that’s identical to the one found on the more expensive iPad mini, as well.
Speaking of the iPad mini, its 64GB cellular model is also at an all-time low of $629. That’s $20 less than the device’s retail price, so it may be time to grab one if you’ve been considering a smaller tablet for your needs. We praised the 2021 iPad mini in our review for its significant redesign, including an all-screen front, TouchID-capable top button, second-generation Apple Pencil support and USB-C charging capability.
Buy 2021 Apple iPad Mini (Wi-Fi + Cellular, 64GB) at Amazon – $629
Dec 23
Eric Clapton Gets Defensive About Suing Over Bootleg CD After Social Media Backlash
Posted in: Today's ChiliEric Clapton, part-time guitar player and full-time asshole, will waive the legal fees he’s owed after a court in Germany found that a woman had tried to sell a bootleg Clapton CD on eBay. But it seems Slowhand’s hand has been forced, as it were. Clapton’s change of heart is all in response to the social media…
Dec 23
“Bolstered by my new secret identity as an erotica writer, I decided it was time to come clean with my family.”
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