> helps my ADHD mind organize large chunks of random information.
I keep seeing this and I'm pretty envious! You must have a different form of ADHD than I do. For me, trying to use AI to build anything is terrible for my attention, it turns everything into a miserable slog because it's so hands off.
AI helps me get into flow state because I can have a rambling conversation with a chatbot and work through ideas and what abouts. eventually it helps me forget to a place where flow is easier to maintain.
Computer used to be a job for a cadre of women who did math. That job went away when computers, the physical machine, got enough software that those women were no longer needed.
The reason there are no raises and no promotions is because of this "just be thankful you have a job and income at all" mentality that exists in the current environment
It’s wild how different things are at different levels over time. When I started about 8 years ago, any technical skills and experience on your resume / LinkedIn would have recruiters reaching out non-stop. That died out over the last 3 years and I didn’t have anyone reaching out for jobs. Recently I updated my profile to state I’m a staff engineer and suddenly I’m getting messages like nothing ever happened. Senior engineer? Maybe one recruiter every 3 months.
This works because so many benefits are tied to work requirements. It's a systemic issue. Our employers enjoy the backing of our policy makers. If your health insurance (let alone you + your kids') becomes too expensive, it means taking time off to do things like train for a better job, risk starting a new job, etc., are untenable.
I think Mando season 1 is what Star Wars should be. A space themed throwback to old pulp novels, cowboys and samurai and pirates, with a veneer of lasers and spaceships painted on top.
Andor is great, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
> But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
This is the way. I saw the first Star Wars the week it opened as a tween and it rocked my world. Both SW and Raiders of the Lost Ark had a clear vision of building on the proven structure of the old B&W movie serials like Flash Gordon but updating them with modern storytelling tools and larger budgets. It was a truly great concept and then Empire raised the stakes higher and even better.
You're right that Mando Season 1 was an attempt to get back to the original concept and it got close. Skeleton Crew is perhaps the only other SW series where the core idea was to update a proven structure of the past in a pure and focused way - except it chose a different genre than 1930s serials. Initially I didn't know what to make of Skeleton Crew but once I got that it was building on the 1980s tween adventures like Goonies, I appreciated how it absolutely nailed what it was going for. My own kids are now older than Skeleton Crew's target audience, so it obviously wasn't for me but I applaud it as Disney's only other pure attempt at applying the 'big idea' that made OG SW great to another genre.
As a sci-fan who loved the original IP to the point of reverence, even bad Star Wars is usually at least interesting but it can also be frustrating when it evokes echoes of the OG by being set in the same universe without even trying to be great in the same ways as the OG. For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe. It might be even better if it had been unshackled from the rules of the Star Wars cinematic universe and was a new, original sci-fi IP.
> Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe.
I think it shows the potential of using the Star Wars setting to tell a wide variety of stories. However, although I loved the original trilogy, I wouldn't class myself as a huge Star Wars fan - probably more of a Trekkie.
Unfortunately, all the Trek shows have been canceled, so it looks like you're not going to have much to watch for a while. There's a final short season of Strange New Worlds done and coming soon, followed by the last season of Starfleet Academy and that's it.
For the first time in decades no new Star Wars series or movie is even rumored to be in development. Paramount has brand new owners with very different ideas and even Alex Kurtzman's (current Head of Trek) contract is expiring and hasn't been renewed. It's not clear SkyDance has any appetite for funding mega-expensive prestige sci-fi series. The currently unaired episodes were already finished or in production when SkyDance took over and they've approved nothing Star Trek since. When production wrapped, the huge sets built for both SNW and Academy (the most expensive in Star Trek history) weren't even put in storage, Paramount just had them dumpstered instead.
I actually thought SNW was pretty good as it was getting back to the core of what made TOS and TNG Star Trek good. But my 17 year-old daughter had sub-zero interest in Starfleet Academy and she was the target demographic. Sadly, things aren't looking good. The 60th year of Trek could be the last. Personally, I'm hoping that Paramount at least sells the Star Trek IP to someone - maybe Netflix or Amazon? All the billions that were being thrown at buying streaming market share for over a decade has dried up, so it's a bad time for an expensive property whose last few outings weren't big hits to be looking for a new home.
I also enjoyed Strange New Worlds (including the musical episode) and was hoping that was the direction that they were taking. Starfleet Academy seemed to be heading away from the original focus on science fiction ideas and instead tried to be Starfleet 90210, though bizarrely, I did enjoy watching Holly Hunter's performance and thought that is was more fun than annoying. Tig Notaro's character is also very watchable - they should make whole series based around her. Kerrice Brooks was also excellent as SAM and her performance won me over after initially thinking her character was just designed for comic relief.
However, the best modern Star Trek has to be The Orville.
Oh... you had to go and bring up the musical episode. :-)
Let me preface with: I actually like some more modern, top-tier musicals. I saw Wicked on Broadway with the original cast and was blown away by how good it was. Greatest Showman has 3 killer songs and I have 3 or 4 songs from Rent on my playlist, even though I've never seen the play. As for the broader musical genre, I don't mind the best of Lloyd Webber and I respect the craft of Gershwin and Sondheim but don't enjoy it enough to listen to - and average-quality musicals just aren't my thing.
That said, the SNW musical episode featured shockingly good songs in the musical genre and several of the cast are extraordinary singers. While I appreciated the way SNW committed to going all-in on an edgy concept, and it was clearly a labor of love which consumed many unpaid hours... to me, it just isn't Trek. Even a very good Trek musical can only exist in an uncanny valley for me. I know people who loved it. I get that they were watching it and feeling "OMG, I love that Trek is 'boldly going...' with such creative experiments!" and "OMFG, they can really SING!", "the songs are actually GOOD!" but those are all meta-thoughts, and if most of my thoughts during first-watch are meta-thoughts, something's wrong. Another sign of trouble: I can't actually recall any of the major plot points of the episode.
I grew up in the 70s and fell in love watching TOS re-runs after school and dutifully watched all the ST movies
during first-run, liking the even numbered ones more. Then as an adult, I loved TNG's entire run. As we said about OG Star Wars earlier in this thread, Trek represents a strong core premise to me (Roddenberry's concept pitch to NBC for TOS was "Wagon Train to the Stars"). And I'm fine when they play with the premise a little. I didn't mind when TOS did 'humorous' episodes, Mudd's Planet is still a classic and even Trouble with Tribbles didn't bother me. But when an IP with such a strong core identity strays too far from the fundamental nature of "what it is", I start to lose connection with it.
As I said about Andor, it's not that I reject branching out creatively. It's more that beyond a certain point, it's gone so far it starts becoming a different thing. To me, that's a sign it should have been born as it's own thing from the start. That lets the new thing define itself, find its unique core and be great on it's own terms. But when the root IP is one with decades of legacy core identity, anything that should be a new thing inherits creative baggage the size of a planet. This is bad because the new thing will inevitably start creatively rubbing up against the constraints of the root IP.
A simple litmus test for any high-concept in this context is to ask "Would it work if it was launched as it's own series in this existing universe?" I can imagine a Mudd's Planet spin-off series focused on Harry's adventures working great. It would benefit creatively from being set in the Star Trek universe and could even strengthen the Trek-verse in occasional cross-over episodes. Now ask the same question about a musical sci-fi series. How much would it creatively gain versus what it loses from being limited to the Trek-verse? The benefit would mainly be brand recognition drawing Trek fans to early episodes but, by definition, it's so different it'll inevitably have to stand or fall on its own. How would a musical cross-over with a different Trek series even work? As someone who's never seen Lower Decks, I found the SNW / LD cross-over episode not only weak but disorienting. The problem wasn't animation, it was tonal divergence between two things that work apart but not together (a sign that Lower Decks probably didn't gain as much from being in the Trek-verse as it lost). Two inverse examples are the excellent movie Galaxy Quest and John Scalzi's outstanding novel Red Shirts. Both are obviously completely inspired by the Trek-verse, but not being Paramount licensed, they are based on "a generic long-running, beloved sci-fi TV series" and neither suffers for it. In fact, they each diverge from the Trek-verse in several ways that allow them to be even better in ways they couldn't have been if they were set in the Trek-verse.
That's why I'd rather see a new musical sci-fi series have the freedom of creating it's own universe that best serves its unique creative needs.
I'll add one other thought which just occurred to me: Most of the serious fans who like the "gimmick" episodes such as the musical and Lower Decks cross-over, like them because of the gimmick. Whether the specific reason is that it's so different, creative, fun, well-executed etc - it's still about the gimmick. While various gimmick episodes certainly have their fans, those episodes are not commonly found near the top of "Best Episodes Ever" lists.
Conversely, there are a quite a few creatively bold Trek episodes which branch significantly into different genres, yet don't go too far which are commonly found at the top of "Best Episode Ever" lists. For example, TOS episode "City on the Edge of Forever" is considered one of the greatest episodes of not just Trek but any sci-fi show - and it's a 1930s noir detective story! Yet when you read descriptions of it, it's not described as "that noir detective episode", it's more "the amazing Star Trek story Harlan Ellison wrote." It's not remembered for the gimmick, it's revered for the story. Similarly, TNG episode "Inner Light" is an adult drama that could easily be a non-sci-fi fantasy movie starring Tom Hanks - yet is ranked in the top five TNG episodes of all time. The key difference is they are great episodes with gimmicks, not episodes with great gimmicks.
> For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe
Yes, exactly. Andor could easily have been a story of French Resistance against Nazi Germany during WW2
Star Wars is definitely at its best when it is not just being Star Wars
Well George Lucas did borrow a lot of stuff from samurai films (The Hidden Fortress being the main one), so that is a return to its roots. Personally, I think that Firefly did the cowboys in space a lot better, but maybe that's due to better writing. I did enjoy the Mandalorian, but it's a bit too shallow.
The concept in Mando is pretty much a direct rip of Lone Wolf and Cub, so I think it's really doing "Samurai in Space" more than "Cowboys"
Of course the cowboy and samurai pulp genres are pretty similar and borrowed a lot from each other. Lone Gunslinger with a code of honor versus a Lone Swordsman with a code of honor
Most places I've worked, devs were basically afraid to prototype
Either you would get chastised for wasting time with prototypes, or worse, your prototype would end up in production
I think the software industry really needs a cultural reset to embrace slower and deliberate development to build quality, but unfortunately AI has us racing recklessly in the wrong direction
I am so tired of it. Are there any companies out there that actually give devs time to build quality software anymore? I'm so burned out of the "move fast and break everything" grind
Quality must come from engineering. If you’re depending on a product manager to ask you that you can improve the quality of the code, you already lost.
So it requires soft skills, proper framing and ability to iterate quickly on quality-related tasks without leaving junk and multiple-versions behind.
But I completely understand push back for “doing improvements developers want to do”: A lot of developers confuse quality with familiarity or even complexity/verbosity. So business people have a reason to be reluctant.
And as an engineering manager I also had to push back several times. The thing that makes money is not the place to learn new skills, for example.
> It's definitely not a new thing since LLMs came around, if that is what you were implying
It is on a scale that it is required now. Previously you could say "it'll take me a week to decipher the mess", now they can just say "can't you use an agent to make it fast?".
I don't mean to make a personal attack here, but you're one of the names I most associate with being AI positive on this site. In fact that's pretty much the only reason I recognize your name at all. Maybe I've misread your previous posts and the stuff from your blogs that have been posted here, but that's the vibe I've had from you.
That said, slop is going to be a massive, natural, and utterly predictable consequence of AI. I think if you are generally AI positive then you definitely don't get to complain about slop.
I'm actually credited on the Wikipedia page for "slop" for helping spread the term - I wrote about it right as it was emerging https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/8/slop/ and did some press interviews to push it around then too.
I consider covering AI misuse as part of my "beat" that I write about - there are so many bad ways to apply this stuff, and shining a light on those and explaining why they're bad seems like an important thing to spend time on.
I keep seeing this and I'm pretty envious! You must have a different form of ADHD than I do. For me, trying to use AI to build anything is terrible for my attention, it turns everything into a miserable slog because it's so hands off.
I miss getting into flow.
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