True. I avoided any two parter on the list just because two-parters are best when you know the characters a bit more. I tried to limit it to episodes that would be akin to TNG standalone’s like Darmok or Schisms; episodes that are good even without knowing the characters.

The more I’ve been thinking about this, the more I realize that because Voyager (or most trek of that era) isn’t totally serialized, there’s no real reason that you HAVE to watch it sequentially for the first time.

As long as you’re avoiding spoiler episodes, there’s no reason that you can’t just watch some random stand-alone episodes, and I’m confident that watching some of those first will make you want to go back and watch the entire thing to see “how they got there.”

So with that said, if you want to understand my love for Voyager, these are the top ten episodes I would recommend that are stand-alone and don’t contain spoilers and epitomize why I say that Voyager is better than most people give it credit for.

• Living Witness (S4)
• Blink of an Eye (S6)
• One Small Step (S6)
• Timeless (S5)
• Scientific Method (S4)
• The Void (S7)
• Relativity (S5)
• Counterpoint (S5)
• Shattered (S7)
• Deadlock (S2)

There are others that I would put in there, but those would include character spoilers that I’d want to avoid.

I believe if you watch those standalone stories, you’ll get the gist of what people love about Voyager.

I would very much want to see the same for Canada. But Canada would have to first change it’s open border policy with the chuckle-fucks to the south. Don’t want to give those nut-jobs an easy round-about into the EU. MAGALAND --> CANADA --> EU

That’s the episode where the Doctor becomes the “Emergency Command Hologram” in his mind, isn’t it?

At the end when the computer magically makes three pips appear on his collar and Janeway just says “nice touch…”

That’s exactly what I mean. Voyager wasn’t afraid to be a little goofy sometimes. They walked that line really really well without delving all the way into “Let’s do a whole musical episode” or anything.

I can’t speak for everyone of course, but as someone who genuinely was not fond of DS9 (not because of writing quality or anything like that, it was great for what it was in that regard.)

After DS9, Voyager had the audacity to try to be FUN again. It offered a really good mix of some serious episodes with some downright goofy episodes. For every “Year of Hell” or “Equinox”, you would get an episode where they were attacked by giant viruses, or a good old fashioned holodeck program goes haywire episode.

It wasn’t afraid to dive into Shlock after DS9 tried to be sooooo fucking serious.

To me, that was a breath of fresh air.

Also:

1. Janeway is easily the best captain overall. She doesn’t give “Picard Speeches” like Stewart of course, but in every other aspect, her leadership is amazing throughout that series.

2. Voyager 2 parters were usually epic. This of course comes from the fact that the CGI had come a long way from the TNG days, but with the exception of Best of Both Worlds, I’d put Year of Hell, Equinox and Scorpion ALL better than any other two parter from any other series.

If your comparison is to DS9 and you want “super serious” than yeah…of course Voyager isn’t going to be for you. But if you want something that isn’t afraid to be a little silly sometimes, Voyager is hella-fun.

I can’t think of a single time that appeasement backfired!

Obviously /s

Probably around the same time that Adolph makes a comeback.

Is THAT what you’re having a hard-time grasping?!!

You do know that people put things for sale BEFORE the buying happens, right? It’s called THE MARKET.

If you’re selling a house, you put it ON THE MARKET and wait for someone to make you an offer.

Now let’s say you have a house on the market and you want 400,000 for it. But in your city, a lot of people are moving out and there are far more houses on the market than there are buyers. So you have to lower your asking price in order to entice a buyer to take yours instead of someone elses. You DEVALUE your house to make the sale; take less money than you originally wanted. Doing so devalues the other houses for sale since they have to do the same, and the entire market for “Houses in city X” drops.

If, alternatively, you’re the only house that’s for sale in your city and there are 10 families looking to buy it, your house’s value RISES. Rarity equals Value.

The same rule applies to stocks and BONDS. The US takes loans from other countries by selling them bonds. Those bond’s value is based on a few different criteria (stability of the country’s currency, etc…) But the important one here for your understanding is that the value is partially based on it’s rarity. If all of the US Treasury bonds get dumped into the market simultaeneously, they’re not rare anymore, and thus the value drops. If the value of the US Bond drops, it ripples through the economy.

It’s supply and demand. The more there is of a certain thing ON THE MARKET, the less valuable it becomes. That’s the rule for everything, from stocks and bonds and real estate, to beanie babies and pokemon cards.

Care to provide a contradictory source? Or are you just going to say that anything that doesn’t agree with you is “bullshit” without backing it up with actual economic sources?

Also, just to add another source that MAGA would find “legitimate”, this is from Fox Business.

China holds $761 billion in U.S. debt, making it the second-largest foreign holder after Japan. A mass sell-off could drive down the value of U.S. bonds and cause yields to spike, sharply increasing borrowing costs for the federal government. It could also weaken the U.S. dollar and send shock waves through global financial markets.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/chinas-trade-war-weapons-rare-earth-ban-us-debt-dump-could-cripple-american-economy-defense

But hey…I’m going to wait for your sources beyond “trust me, bro”.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but is anyone else thinking that the entire end-goal of this is to have the Venuzuela money handled directly by his administration so that he can keep his shit going when Congress finally (hopefully) cuts his purse strings?

The one thing that the government hasn’t been able to change is the fact that Congress controls the money, not him. Seems to me that Venuzuela Oil is his play at getting a private fund without them.

I’ll trust the economists on this one. Honestly should have just done this from the beginning rather than trying to explain things.

When foreign countries start selling off U.S. debt, the immediate impact is on bond prices. A surge in selling increases the supply of bonds on the market. Just like any other asset, when supply rises dramatically without a corresponding rise in demand, prices fall. And when bond prices fall, yields—another way of saying interest rates—go up.

source - https://www.investingdaily.com/137830/what-it-means-when-the-world-dumps-u-s-debt/

That’s not how markets work.

But you’re clearly a troll just being intentionally obtuse for shits and giggles. It’s on me for not having realised it earlier.

Have a good day.

Dumping their bonds into the market isn’t cancelling their debt. Its making all that debt available for OTHERS to buy. Supply goes up, value goes down.

In other words, if all of the US debt was out up for sale at the same time, is value of the US dollar would crater.

I don’t think you understand how inflation works…

Oh, believe me. I agree. But this is what they SHOULD be working towards improving LLMs for, NOT better ways to steal art.

What experrs? American experts?

They’re kind of forgetting the big elephant in the room that is the fact a lot of US foreign debt is owned by Japan and China, with the majority of the rest of it being held by countries that will be very very pissed off with this move.

If trump is stupid enough to pull the trigger, and those countries decide that a potential physical war is becoming inevitable, they’ll for sure dump all of that debt, all at once; killing the US economy and it’s ability to make war. War needs fuel. Despite Venzuela, Trump won’t have enough of it once his economy tanks.

Having to wait a few seconds after peeing to make sure that you’re really done peeing becaue sometimes there’s that little surprise burp at the end that if you put your dick away too soon will be a spot on your underwear. Not a big one, mind you; you’re not peeing yourself. Just that last little straggler running to catch up.

This is what it’s supposed to be used for. Things like this are where LLMs are a benefit to society. The ability to “intelligently” process incredible amounts of information fast lends itself to things like this. Or helping Air Traffic controllers do their often hectic jobs, or sifting though the trillions of gigabytes of data that come in from space telescopes looking for anomalies, etc… etc… etc…

THAT would make me excited about AI. More…of…this…

But instead they use it make people even more lazy, and make corporations able to make billions more by firing real humans.

Yeah…about that. You’re gonna want to sit down first.

Nope.

I’m terrified to come to the realization that Trump took a gamble; rolled the dice on the idea that he could do whatever he wanted, and the rest of the world would be so terrified of economic chaos that they would just shut up and let him do it with only “sternly worded” statements to the contrary.

And the fucker was absolutely right. He know’s he was right. The moment no one immediately did anything about Maduro, he knew it was okay to do it again to any other country that he wants to.

We’re fucked. Not because of Trump. Trump could be done in fast and easy by a global embargo. His regime would last a week at most when faced with getting nothing from overseas.

We’re fucked because the rest of the world is to feckless to do that.