I don’t generally like AI generated images, but this is great

Yay, learning!

I don’t think you’re necessarily missing anything. Lower Decks is probably my favourite Star Trek series by a decent margin, but I think that people’s varying tastes is part of the Trek experience.

Like the first Star Trek I ever watched was TNG, with a partner who hated DS9 because of how far it was from the much more utopian tone of TNG. My best friend, however, loved DS9 most of all for that exact same reason. I can’t tolerate The Original Series because of how campy and cringe it is, but I have friends who love it for that.

If you hate Lower Decks, then your perspective is one I can’t really relate to, but that just feels like regular old Trekkie solidarity to me - with a show so varied, inevitably there’s going to be diverse viewpoints. That in mind, I’m not going to try and change mind, I’m just going to highlight why I love Lower Decks.

My favourite bit about Lower Decks is that it feels like a love letter to Trek, in all its forms. There’s a lot of references I don’t get, but I don’t need to get them to feel the warm fuzzies of knowing this show was made by people who are, first and foremost, fans of Star Trek. I like utopian sci fi because the state of the real world means that I can find real hope in the fantasy because in my heart, I believe in humanity.

Alongside all of that idealistic space exploration though, Lower Decks doesn’t shy away from the more pernicious aspects of Star Trek, and Starfleet/the Federation. The humour isn’t always my taste, but I think they use it well to poke fun at Star Trek, the show, but also the world within. The sometimes critical lens that is taken is part of why it feels so much like a love letter to Trek - if you truly love something, you’ve got to take the bad with the good and not pretend that everything is perfect.

What section would you put it under? It isn’t clear to me where it would fit

My God, that’s hilarious, thank you for sharing it. I enjoyed “I am like the Statue of Liberty: I accept everyone, even the wretched and the huddled and people who enjoy Haskell.”

For future reference, the extra stuff is everything after the question mark. It’s not always bad stuff; the question mark is for a bunch of queries, including links to specific time stamps on YouTube videos. Adding ?t=42 to the end of a clean YouTube link will start the video at 42 seconds as an example: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?t=42

Although these “query strings” are sometimes useful, most of the time, they’re just for tracking purposes and can be removed with no issue. “If you don’t know what it does, it’s probably not needed” is a good rule of thumb

True, that. Reminds me of the trap I’ve build for myself in many areas of my life. I grew up poor so even when I have money, when I see something expensive I want, my first instinct is “could I learn to make that myself?”. I’m very good at making things, so the answer is usually yes, given a decent chunk of time to learn.

Unfortunately, at risk of sounding like a humblebrag, I am now too good at too many things. Because I, in theory, could make the thing and already posses the tools and knowledge to do so, I’m even more averse to buying the thing. However, the better I get at Stuff, the more limited (and expensive) my time is.

It’s the same liminal space of "the plaster could be removed, but it’s currently not worth it.

It’s a bit absurd.

Let’s imagine OP was trying to scam the company. The sheer gall of asking for approval on a scam would be so audacious that honestly, it wouldn’t be safe to have an employee like that working on anything of value. The level of “fuck you, I don’t care” that it would show would mean that the safest thing to do with an employee like that would be to fire them.

The guy didn’t ask the basic question of “has OP given us any reason not to trust them?” If the answer to that was “yes”, then maybe flying them out to the UK to act on the company’s behalf isn’t a great idea. And if that doesn’t seem likely, then it’s probably an employee trying to help and they should be encouraged