Muehe

But if the Vietnamese video game industry is actively harmed by Steam, an American company, using its vast resources to outcompete Vietnamese publishers, then what is your opposition to this that doesn’t encompass a de facto defense of free market capitalism?

Not GP but the article didn't say that Steam outcompeted local developers by "using its vast resources". On the contrary, it alleged that local developers cannot compete on Steam with international developers, because those do not have to apply the local regulations:

Citing it as "an injustice to domestic publishers", Vietnamese studios reportedly say that local game development "will die" if Steam is able to keep releasing games without the same government scrutiny as domestic games.

A somewhat shaky argument considering that the same is true for many other countries applying their own local regulations, which Vietnamese developers do not have to follow.

But anyway, what is my opposition that doesn't encompass a de facto defence of free market capitalism? The damage to the users. What about all the Vietnamese people losing access to Steam's online features, which are arguably necessary nowadays for many games, especially multiplayer ones. And for what? To benefit Vietnamese businesses? Not very socialist of you comrade Vietnam. *smh*

In any case, this is all pure speculation at this point, since both parties have yet to make a statement about the situation:

At the time of writing, there's been no formal word from Vietnamese authorities or Steam about the "ban", [...]

That said, my current head cannon goes something like this:

Vietnamese devs: Dude, these regulations on games are killing us. We can't compete on Steam with games like these.
The Party: Okay we hear you. *bans Steam*
Vietnamese devs: Wait, what? (← we are here)

Edit: formatting

Not to say that I'm leaning towards the conspiracy interpretation, but all those questions have somewhat plausible answers. So let me play the devils advocate here.

Why would boeing go from plainly assassinating somebody, to then trying to kill somebody with influenza b, a usually easily survivable infection for somebody in his age range?

Well if you conjecture that both deaths were indeed a murder then that means Boeing's hitmen just fucked up the oldest trick in the book, making it look like a suicide. Makes sense to switch methods.

Why wouldn’t they just assassinate him too? Everybody already thinks they did it, it’s not like they saved any face by using such an unlikely method.

Plausible deniability. One whistleblower "suicide"? Suspicious. Two whistleblower "suicides" shortly after each other? Very suspicious. They may be an immensely powerful company, but that doesn't mean they are entirely invincible.

And how the hell did they even manage to do it?

Maybe they just saw the victim being in the hospital with a naturally occurring influenza infection and helped an already likely secondary infection along, virtually guaranteeing a fatal outcome? Not sure how lethal MRSA is exactly, but doesn't look all that friendly from a quick Wiki glance.

Again, not that I'm saying this conjecture is true. But the circumstances and the timing of it all are just a bit too suspicious to not at least entertain the hypothesis. I mean it's not exactly statistically relevant, but 2/14 is still a ridiculously high mortality rate for being a Boeing whistleblower.

So people will speculate. Presumption of innocence is a law seldom obeyed in the court of public opinion. That doesn't mean the conspiracy theory is either true or false.

Well please correct me if I'm wrong here, but to my knowledge consumption in private is just entirely unregulated. If you have a house right next to a kindergarten you could consume in there at any time. The part of the law I looked at (§5 KCanG) beyond public consumption just regulates consumption in the "immediate" presence of minors and on military bases.

So while it technically applies to edibles too, in practice it doesn’t.

Well it does, if you are stupid enough to be open about it towards a cop. So good to know anyway.

And yeah, cities have a lot of people and a lot of children, no shit.

And like I said, I'd even be fine with that if it was equally applied to anything you smoke. But the ban doesn't include tobacco, doesn't even refer to smoking at all in fact, and in its current form essentially bans public consumption for entire neighbourhoods. So I would posit there is some room for improvement.

Yeah I worded that badly. It's allowed if you are in the line of sight of a protected locality but more than 100m away. The law specifically states line of sight means less than 100m.

Yeah... Wasn't too sure about rule 4, lol. Sorry.

The outdoors ban only applies "within sight of or less than 100m away from" places where children might gather, like schools, playgrounds, and so forth, with the idea being preventing them from suffering passive consumption. Which I wouldn't have any problem with if it were applied equally to tobacco and other inhalants as well by the way, but it isn't. Plus as you might see on the image (if I didn't fuck up my resolution too bad) this means that virtually more than half of down-town Berlin is off limits if you want to be on the safe side.

The law says "consumption of cannabis" by the way, so yeah, technically edibles are out too...

Maybe not quite that bad, like they still have to apply the federal law, meaning possession and private consumption are still legal and there is nothing much they can do about that. But I wouldn't recommend it without knowing what you can and cannot do very precisely. They will certainly push the boundaries. Just don't consume publicly in Bavaria.

Rest of Germany should be fine if you use the bubatzkarte and don't have more than 25g (~0.88 ounces).

pet open source projects that no one else ever seems to contribute to, not [...] software that holds up civilization

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Agreed. Sad it was cancelled right when the background plot (heh) was picking up some speed and the show seemed to have found its stride, but overall it was a bit too Battlestar Galactica for me anyway.

A lot of the narrative structure was further developed by Brad Wright with the Travelers (2016) series in which it worked quite well from the start. Also sadly cancelled before its time though.

Sam is a woman with reproductive bits on the inside, but she can hold her own. You have shown us this many times. Why do you insist on both showing and telling us over and over and over. Sam kicks ass on her own, it doesn’t need to feel forced.

Given that most of this happens early on I always saw it as a somewhat heavy-handed approach to make it unequivocally clear to the machos in the potential audience that they aren't welcome to the fandom. I mean have you met the patriarchally inclined? They aren't the brightest bunch. Reading between the lines is hard for them...

Given that you have already received some replies which I largely agree with I'm going to focus on some of the specific points of critique you raised.

The mystery and intrigue gets overshadowed by sexism,

I mean I can't really say that this isn't portrayed in the show, especially in the first few episodes, but I can't recall any instance of it being portrayed as a good thing. Quite the contrary actually.

jingoism,

The show is indeed rather militaristic, but given that the antagonists are a species of parasitic aliens with a god-complex

spoiler

(a plot point which gains more nuance in later seasons as well by the way)

I always saw this as a thinly veiled metaphor for armed resistance against the divine right of kings. So I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it jingoistic, although overtly militaristic is certainly a fair assessment.

characters that can be summed up on a postage stamp

As you already surmised this gets fleshed out a bit more later on, but stays more or less the same. Most characters, certainly the main cast in any case, stay rather archetypical with some character development happening though.

and plots and scenes that are contrived and clumsy.

This happens throughout the entire series unfortunately, but it varies a lot from episode to episode rather than from season to season. There are some rather interesting interpretations of common and uncommon sci-fi tropes throughout as well.

do they ever solve how the female token character is being treated?

Since you didn't exactly point out your problem with her portrayal I can only guess what you mean, but yes, I do think so. There are also other women joining the supporting cast (and even main cast in the last few seasons), leading to less frequent failure of the Bechdel test.

Does it ever stop feeling cheap and schlocky?

Not quite, but the first two seasons are certainly the worst in this regard, mixed in with most of the retconning happening to their content.

All that said, there is a reason the original show has 10 seasons at 22 episodes each, three movies, and four spin-offs, and if you can stomach early Star Trek TNG (or even TOS), you will probably enjoy at least the SG-1 series overall.

IMHO the first season is the weakest, second season is not great not terrible, 3-8 is the peak, 9, 10, and the two TV movies trail off a bit although still better than the first two seasons.

If you want to skip some seasons you should be aware that most of them have a "clip-show" episode towards the end that recaps the season and embeds them into the larger narrative happening in the background. I'd say the bad episodes are worth stomaching for the context though.

Atlantis spin-off is worth the watch if you liked SG-1 overall. Chronology is a bit weird though, SG-1 season 9 and 10 and Atlantis season 1 and 2 overlap.

Universe spin-off you can skip unless you got really invested.

spoiler

Universe ends without wrapping up its underlying narrative in any way since the show got canceled.

Haven't watched the animated spin-off, Origins was meh.

In conclusion, it's probably worth giving it a shot if you can manage to not take it too seriously.