Friday, June 20, 2025

Welcome back to Wolmania. It's been a shaky week for American democracy, and peace in the middle east, and lots of other important topics. This newsletter will not, unfortunately, help with any of that, but the show must go on. Well actually the show need not go on, but I'm going to stick with it anyway.

Item 1: a link

I try not to link to David Friedman's Ironic Sans newsletter too often (given how much more work he does to put it together, it feels like stolen valor for me to keep going back to the well), but I enjoyed this recent interview with Jörg Hillebrand, who got so obsessively into Star Trek: The Next Generation that he created the Star Trek Observations website (and associated social media accounts) to chronicle his, well, observations – about episodes of the TV show. He was so thorough that he ended up helping the people making sure the Star Trek: Picard legacy sequel was consistent with canon.

How do you know so much about Star Trek? Do you keep a database, or do you just have an amazing memory?

I just watch a lot of Star Trek. I became a Trekkie on October 20th 1994 and started “taking notes” while watching on that day. In 2002, when The Next Generation was first released on DVD, I took screenshots in addition to taking notes, so I created my Star Trek screenshot database, which helps me to quickly find things in an episode.

If I want to know how the ready room has changed over the course of a season, I go through my ready room screenshots (around 100 for season 1 of The Next Generation) and note down differences. I then rewatch all the ready room scenes of that season to get new HD screenshots and really look for changes not visible in the original screenshots.

I then post my findings online or write an article for EAS [that’s Ex Astris Scientia, an encyclopedic fan site run by Bernd Schneider].

As one does.

I've chosen not to spoil any of Friedman's tidbits (nor to do any work of my own to find other tidbits to share with you), but there are some good ones in the newsletter (one of them is even in the URL). Check it out.

This week's newsletter is a good one, too, about how due to the complex history of American copyright law, the iconic Jaws poster illustration is in the public domain.

Item 2: a list

Countries of the United Kingdom, Ranked:

1. Scotland
2. England
3. Northern Ireland
4. Wales

Item 3: a media recommendation

Item 4: word of the week

Percipient

She was perspicacious when she observed that I am percipient.

Item 5: a photograph

See ya!

How about those Oort clouds? Great stuff.

Thank you for reading. I'll be traveling next week, and I reserve the right to leave you hanging until July. But Wolmania will return.