Listening to Vulcan Hello recently, Scott said something that my brain found very sticky while discussing why a ninja-nun character (on Star Trek) went on a murderous robbery spree:

She had to take her excellent but limited skillset and apply it to this problem

I love this — excellent but limited. This character was really good at killing people with swords, and when faced with a problem she needed to solve, this limited skillset was what she had available. No matter how excellent this skillset was, it was never going to solve the problem … cleanly. Had she been a little more skilled at making persuasive phone calls, or something similar, she probably could have handled the situation with less loss of life, but that’s not a choice she was able to make.

We may not all be ninja warrior nuns, but I think this is a (the??) universal life experience — solving problems with our own limited (hopefully excellent, occasionally) skillset. I think you can view anyone’s actions through this lens and gain at least some insight into what is driving their choices.

Here’s the clip from the podcast:

— Vulcan Hello - Episode 34, Discovery S4E3: “Choose to Live”

I don’t know who out there needs to hear this, but if you haven’t seen Patriot, drop everything and start — you’re in for a treat! I’ve been saying since it debuted that Patriot is the best thing on TV, and as much as I adore Ted Lasso, six years later my opinion hasn’t changed.

The acting is wonderful, the story is exciting, but the dialog is what pushes it over the edge for me. The way the characters speak is so wonderfully weird. The odd cadence, the repetition, the repetition of specific words … it feels carefully crafted in a way that just sticks in your brain. It’s a damned shame it got shit-canned by Amazon, but the seasons that were made are such perfection that I’m not even mad about it. Seriously, just watch this show. It’s cool.

This family trip to France was one of the best we’ve taken, but when we got home I realized I had taken less than 5 videos the whole time. Needless to say I felt like an idiot, especially after being so deliberate about shooting video on earlier trips, and always being grateful I had.

In the end I stripped out the videos from all the live photos taken on my phone, and was able to cobble this together. A disappointment as a piece of work, but a wonderful reminder of an incredible week.