You know, there are times when you wish TV didn’t look so real. Now that I’m watching this episode, last of Philippe Georgeo on Discovery, I yearn, subconsciously of course, for the good old days of TNG. A time when the story was soft and smooth and there is a Federation blue halo around the corners of the TV. (Maybe it was just an old TV) But this Tera Forma business is… horrifying.

Consider just a few weeks ago, Burnham was giddy to a spin in the elevator for a new love eye candy.(OMG that slow spin into la-la-love-land, that’s so 1980 Asian rom-act kungfu shows…,) . and now I’m looking at her deranged quivering lips betraying and rebetraying poor old georgeo. I … my mind , I just can’t shift my brain quickly enough to handle this . That blue that you see… that blue is the new intro when DSC goes into mirror universe.

The mirror universe is so glamorous, the uniforms, the foes, the fights. But grinds very very hard on my mind. Georgeo, Emperor Georgeo’s mental changes, her view of how to make her empire work. But alas, too much has her old self done… This heart breaking story, of her killing her daughter a second time for self preservation. This is a poignant illustration to us to all start doing the right stuff… don’t wait a thousand years and come back in time and try to undo all the wrong you have caused. Because it can be too late.

The send off was terrible too. There are times when you just wish fiction weren’t so realistic… too real in too many ways… like a farewell to Yeow…

I have to honestly say, I am very afraid of section 31 series…. it could fail in so many ways. Scripts seem big problem, considering DSC didn’t know for half a season that “Number one” is a nickname and that they should be referred to as “first officer” in most formal settings, who knows what gaffe lie ahead. Ratings popularity is a big problem. I’d hate to see Yeow fail to woo American youths, but, that, as Saru would say rather sadly, seems like a very likely outcome. Another thing that one can’t help but notice, from Ready Room Side Trek, is that Yeow is quite a personality off screen as well. Several collaborators like actors, directors and choreographers mentioned that she gets her way. (And mind you, she is the only one such comments are made about. Are you really going to tell me that there are no “characters” in Trek actors? Seriously? Why single her out in public?)

There is a little bit of a cultural skirmish, as Yeow is older and Star of many non-trek shows, with her fans,…, that she has a less geeky take on Trekverse. She’d rather say Trek things in people words than to say people things in Trek words. Which is fine… but when you see her talk about fight scenes, the geek in her really comes out. It’s kind of a different kind of geekiness. Hard to explain, but anyways, it’s there for the world to see. Honestly, her presence makes me feel her character from Crazy Rich Asian. She is a movie star, in all the ways we mean it in America, but she is a star to other people not American. Now she happen upon this land where her kind(old, female, Asian accented, new to the genre, take your pick),…, is not normally big stars, and people just can’t stand her strutting her stuff around like she’s quite something. She is, just not to these people. And this time, is there a family lawyer or hubby she can call to buy the hotel? IDK.

Having her own show hopefully will also mean some more well deserved creative control. It will be challenging for other producers as well to make it all work—their creativity will surely be properly challenged to make this all work. Asian standards of civility and modernity are going to be a little bit different from Trek’s. Recall China was the federation of its days, it was the one brining medicine and technologies to lesser people. It was the one introducing workable social order to the wild people. There is a certain amount of that pride still ingrained in the cultures of Asia. These Asians, they take pride in being more noble and the bigger person and peace and all that, too. Maybe we can find miraculous synergy yet when you bring in an Asian.

And yes, we still want to keep trek trek and that’s a sure thing no matter what. Somehow, Trek has done it again. It is a microcosm of a macrocosm of our current time world. Here comes a talented and experienced foreign actor, her contributions are greatly appreciable, but we, in America, struggle a little to maintain our cultural identity (the Trekieness of Trek)… this Ready Room action is so meta-meta-meta for me, I am drunk on this reality of reality right now.

But sentimentality aside, we should applaud the Trek overlords that is pushing to make this happen. Hard, impossible, never done before, that is the homeland of Star Trek. We laugh in face of certain death and we cheer for the underdog that has with all certainty of science furious death, we fight monsters a bijillion times more powerful, we reconnect nerves in the CNS with our bare hands by doing it very fast, we entertain extinction as a footnote in our history, we enter radioactive reaction chambers… to save our forever-friends… we must forge ahead, whatever the future, we must keep going, quite boldly, to where no one has gone before!

Let’s go!

(I will appreciate up votes for Saru to make that his action word.)

It’s blaspheme, but so you think to younger kids watching trek that the Burnham-Georgeo farewell in DAC s3e10 is more poignant than the Kirk-Spock farewell in the Wrarh of Kahn)

P.s. I went back to tos and watched the City on the Edge of Forever. It seems that Yeow’s shocking-as-heck-to-me comment about the “goodie two shoes” of Federation characters on DSC s3e10 ready room was a reference. That observation actually also came from Edith Keeler about the Federation officers. Edith Keeler was the girl that Kirk must let die to preserve history. In that tos episode. Wow, people used to fall in love so much faster. Kirk declared he’s in love after very short exposure to this women. But in DSC, Burnham falls in love with book until after a year-long friendship. My, my, how times have changed…

I’ve been reading articles about California wealth tax being proposed presently Assembly Bill 2088. At first reading this tax is ludicrous. Anybody who spends 60 days in any calendar year is liable to pay 40‱ annually for the following 10 years! (So without wealth change, compounding and inflation it’s 4% of your money for a 60 day stay.

Preposterous! What insane mania has driven our politicians to do such a thing?

Well, actually, it kind of fits the zeitgeist of liberal politics. It is very extreme by all standards. But the believe is that wealth inequality fundamentally destabilizes our economic future and kills the environment. So we need to take organized and radical action to overcome this thing that no one poor individual can overcome.

I think nobody can deny that there is great benefit to having smart and rich people around. Even if they’re just here to spread their genes, it’s good for humanity. But wealth inequality could potentially impede spread of others genes that may in the future be of great benefit to us. And plus, in addition to humanity’s prosperity, we do kind of want people at the present to be happy and healthy, and last but certainly not more and less important than all a priori, creatively productive.

So, why don’t we have both. Let’s have our wealth tax. But let’s also create an open forum, the Pnyx of silicone valley. We shall invite all that are willing to abide by the rules of the venue to come and pitch in public. No streaming allowed. You must be present here to present, learn and understand and invest. The state shall invest from wealth tax into these ventures in addition tom private investors. The venue is to be fixed and the conventions take place in the open, regularly, rain or shine. (A great benefit of California location is climate will allow us this latitude of venue year round.) This will be the Globe Theatre of next millennium, always imitated but never fully replicable.

Such a proposal seems silly in the day and age of traveling conferences like TechCrunch disrupt and a myriad of crowdfunding services. But if we want to have a wealth tax, and we don’t want to legalize prostitution (I’m not firmly against it), gambling (again, not voting against it), dangerous drugs (against), polygamy (mu?), and the likes, the only way is to emphasize physical proximate and in-person intimate presentations. It isn’t especially bad considering we are in danger of losing touch with real human to human interactions.

Anyone who follow the rules can come onto the stage physically at their allotted time and make a pitch and ask for money or other forms of support in this public forum. Spectators may cheer or jeer or throw cash at presenters. They may even join presenters on stage in support. We can build the greatest physical venture society on the planet.

We can make California greater by innovating in synchrony in our society, climate and economy.

Disclaimer: yes I own real estate in California. No I will not be affected by wealth tax if it comes to pass this moment.

An extension of permission function from action space is the decision theoretic preference function. The preference function maps one of each prospects (in our case an action from an action subspace) into a preference value that come from a totally ordered set of possible preference values. In the case of action space, it would appear that each preference function must be invoked with two parameters. v is the value function, is the action and gives us a context of all actions being compared(the action subspace of consideration). This will make it easier to define the value function so that it can calibrate its outputs to give meaningful values that are ordered correctly according to true preference.

It is somewhat difficult to come up with an instantaneous decision that alters ordinal utility due to availability of another prospect, with everything else held equal. However one can certainly construct a situation where sequential decision making is available:

1. Dig for gold
2. Buy a shovel
3. Buy a sandwich

If contained only choices 2 and 3, one is hard pressed to chose 2 over 3. However when contain all three available actions (for the foreseeable future), suddenly 2 is preferred over 3, and over 1. One would certainly rather buy the shovel, then dig for gold over digging for gold rather than doing so barehand before or after eating a sandwich.

Holding all else equal is important. Some purported change in ordinal preference due to addition of choice is hidden behind other information changes

1. Eat apple
2. Don’t eat apple
3. Eat just worm in the apple

Clearly if contains all three possibilities, . But without option 3, . The truth is that 3 should not affect the ordinal preference between 1 and 2. The knowledge of whether there is a worm in the apple or not is part of all else that we hold equal. Erroneous addition of 3 not only added an action prospect, but also added the knowledge that there is a worm in the apple. So when all else is really held equal, an addition of an action prospect should not affect ordinal preference between existing actions.

Cardinal preference is a different matter. A simple requirement we may impose is: utility value function always return non-negative reals and that sum of value among all choices add to 1. In this case additional prospect changes cardinal value of all actions due to the requirement that values sum to 1.