I fully agree. In this vein, I also think that Romulans and Vulcans should prefer green-tinted lipstick rather than red. In a few episodes in DS9 they actually did this, but most of the time they just default to red and it really doesn’t feel right.
The game is already out, has been for a few months. It’s on Steam, Windows & Mac only.
The game is built on top of Stellaris, with all of the space empire building that entails. It is sort of in the same vein as Civ, but it’s more real time and not turn based, and lets you get more into the small details in some ways than Civ does.
Douglas Adams would probably agree with you about Fenchurch. He is on the record about regretting how he wrote that book. Apparently he was struggling with depression when he wrote Mostly Harmless, and sort of took it out in his writing.
There’s a website/app called italki that has the specific purpose of allowing you to practice talking with native speakers. It’s paid per session, and offers a variety of levels of complexity.