Quark's

I don't keep ongoing pay subscriptions to streaming services. Not a judgment of those who do; just my personal preference. I've done one month of Disney+ at a deep discount (to see season one of The Mandalorian) and two months of Paramount+, both times in the past. With Lower Decks' upcoming 4th season and SNW's "Those Old Scientists," I've been thinking about subbing to Paramount+ again. However, with the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, I've been wondering if not subscribing to Paramount+ would be in support of the strike.

From what I've found, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are not currently calling for not subscribing to, or cancelling subscriptions to, streaming services.

Actor John Carroll Lynch on Twitter on July 18, 2023, quote of part of his video (he had previously called for cancelling streaming service subs):

https://twitter.com/MrJCLynch/status/1681324518806278144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"I still think it's a good idea, but I've been informed by the union that they do not require that and they don't want that. I don't know why — something to do with the negotiations that I don't agree with, but I do follow the union recommendations, because that's what this is all about."

On Tumblr, author Neil Gaiman replied to a question about cancelling streaming service subscriptions to support the strike. July 12, 2023:

"The WGA has not called for anyone to boycott any of the streamers or to stop their streaming services yet. It's not "crossing the picket line" to watch something on a network that we are striking against. ("Crossing a picket line" is a very real, specific thing with a real meaning.)

I've seen it being discussed, but until the WGA calls for it, I don't suggest doing it."

https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/722696522150641664/hi-mr-gaiman-i-always-thought-if-i-were-to?source=share

Mr. Gaiman's Tumblr response also has a link to a June, 2023 L. A. Times column, "Column: Is it time to boycott Netflix? How streaming consumers could shape the strike" which I'm posting here because sometimes links to online pages are ephemeral.

So, okay Paramount+. You'll soon be getting some quatloos from me.

Three episodes into "Secret Invasion," I have to admit I'm prett underwhelmed. By all rights, this series should feel like a spiritual successor to The Winter Soldier, but it's falling flat for me on nearly every level.

The cast is doing a great job, Ben Mendelsohn in particular, but they're being let down by the material.

Also, the die-hard "Agents of SHIELD" fan in me is just waiting for Director Mackenzie to show up and save the day.

Quarks is fun! Come right now! Don't walk, run!

I for one am having a lot of fun in this place. Small communities which are growing and changing are the most fun. The distributed nature of this platform means that I bet we all have a lot to share with each other.

Other Communities

I game a lot and so far of all the gaming communities I've found, the one at Beehaw is my favorite. In one month I think I've discovered more interesting indie games there than I did for the entire past year on Reddit.

I also run a few home servers mostly for Plex and home automation so I've been digging the Self Hosted community over at Lemmy.world. It seems just as knowledgeable if not more so than the equivalent communities I left behind.

Apps

As a former Apollo addict, thank god Voyager exists. I've been dabbling with Memmy as well, but Voyager just goes right down my existing dopamine pathways and I keep coming back to it. Didn't like Mlem at all, which is unfortunate since the name and icon are great.

What have you found out there?

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I swear, I thought this might be a fine time to revisit Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" essay.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Welcome to startrek.website's fourth community, Quark's!

This community is a general off-topic zone for the insightful and good looking explorers of this Lemmy instance. Why make an off-topic forum for a Lemmy instance, you ask? As you are probably already aware, this Lemmy instance is different from most as we are phaser-focused on Star Trek. But the fans are just as an important part of Star Trek as any other part, so we want to provide a place for Trekkies to be Trekkies together as we embark on the adventure that is growing the Fediverse together.

Put differently, if the rest of this instance is the rest of the station where we are all "on-duty"—talking about Star Trek—together, this community is for having a blood wine, Aldebaran whiskey, or even a root beer together.

What kind of stuff might you chat about here? Good question! Some examples might be...

• Lemmy and the Fediverse at large. What are your second, third, and fourth favorite instances? Have your found fun Star Trek or sci-fi content on other ActivityPub based services such as Mastodon or Pixelfed? Have you found an app you like? Talk about it here!
• Other sci-fi have you been reading, playing, and watching? What do you recommend? What book is your all time favorite? What game did you get in the Steam sale that you can't stop playing? What show are you binging that almost interfered with keeping up with Strange New Worlds season 2?
• startrek.website itself. Young platforms and new communities love to talk about themselves; some people are into that and some aren't. We're scoping that kind of discussion to here so it can be easily found or ignored depending on your desires. More to the point, sometimes we need a place to talk about startrek.website itself. Information related to downtime, instance upgrades, and important security updates will be posted here.
• Anything within reason and good taste, really. It's an off-topic forum!

The one rule is don't make Odo come down here, i.e. don't be a jerk. We're converting all your tabs from latinum to Fed credits so drinks are on the house. And of course, this is more suggestion than rule, but don't get sucked into a conversation with Morn. You'll be stuck here for days.