It’s crazy that this is real. It looks like a comic someone would make to make fun of the idea. Like the fact that they’re watching some guy shoot someone, then the burger commercial comes on and the guy stands up and cheers “McDonalds!” Before sitting back down to watch more of guy shooting other guy.
This is peak “dumb Americans” humor, and they’re using this unironically to describe their business idea.
Yeah. I don’t know what the % breakdown is, but I get the sense that while the general community is inherently anti-corporate/anti-commodification, there are some that view this in the left wing sense of communities supporting each other and some who view this more of as a consumption/voting with your wallet individualized choice. They recognize that some or even all corporations are bad, but think opting out of those structures without directly challenging them is all that they need.
But like I said, idk what the actual distribution of these views are. It’s just the sense I get from seeing some of the comments.
Yeah. It’s more like:
Researchers: “Look at our child crawl! This is a big milestone. We can’t wait to see what he’ll do in the future.
CEOs: Give that baby a job!
AI stuff was so cool to learn about in school, but it was also really clear how much further we had to go. I’m kind of worried. We already had one period of AI overhype lead to a crash in research funding for decades. I really hope this bubble doesn’t do the same thing.
Agreed that it’s something I need to overcome. But I still think collective action is the only way forward. Half our problems stem from everyone acting as individuals divorced from community.
Admittedly not much anymore. It’s hard organizing people in the face of systemic opposition under the best of circumstances, but I’m also incredibly unhealthy. Socially awkward and anxious is only the tip of the iceberg of the personal problems I have that make it hard for me to engage in real life activism anymore. I’ve tried, but it’s not really something I can do at the moment. I can barely do anything at the moment for that matter.
That said, there is some small value in trying to convince others to think about these problems and develop class consciousness. I’m not claiming it’s much and it’s stressful/depressing knowing I’m not doing more, but at least I’m not trying to get people to stick their heads in the sand. I’m not actively making things worse.
Part of the problem is the atomization of society. We’ve have vanishingly few truly public spaces to build the kind of connections with people necessary to form shared political causes. People spend most of their lives either:
In their private homes, suspicious of anyone who tries to interact with them there.
In private workplaces where management surveils employees and tries to stop organized activity.
In private businesses where you are only welcome as individual consumers.
Online on platforms that are privately owned and designed to manipulate behavior and social interactions towards interacting with more advertising. Controversy is only allowed to the extent that it gets more eyeballs on ads and doesn’t upset advertisers.
Back when I was more involved in electoral politics, I found it extraordinarily difficult to reach out to people to organize them, either because they were in spaces where political campaigning wasn’t allowed or because they have become distrustful of strangers.
It’s suffocating any kind of broader public consciousness and I don’t really know what to do about it.
I am tired of living in a world with all of these problems. Whether or not I have the luxury to ignore them is besides the point.
Just like the Simpsons or XKCD, there’s always a relevant Star Trek episode. It’s unfortunate none of my friends have watched any.
One of these countries is the largest military superpower the world has ever seen, has invaded or meddled in countless countries around the world for their resources, and has one of if not the most expansive domestic surveillance system… and the other country is Russia.
Russia has it’s own problems, but they’re not the threat that the US is to the world.
Nobody is saying it isn’t. But if you genuinely care about the harm it causes and don’t just want an excuse to throw political enemies in jail, then the solution is obviously not to criminalize its use. The correct thing to do is to provide social and health services to addicted people to get them off of it.
All criminalization does is ruin the lives of the people it targets and enrich the prison industry.
I think the show has some decent themes that connect together alright. There’s a bit of a free will vs determinism thing going on. A bit of what is a human/transporter problem with the robot, the emperor clones, and Harry’s mind copies.
But there’s also a lot of other noise that kinda makes the show too unfocused to properly explore those ideas. There’s some war on terror/fall of Rome imagery. There’s the weird religious stuff around the Church of Seldon. The mentalists wanting to put their leader into Gale’s body, etc.
Watched Firefly and loved it. Too bad it got canceled before it’s time.
This was probably something I should have said in the OP, but TOS is definitely my least favorite of the franchise. (outside of some of the new stuff.) We watched the first few episodes, bounced off the camp, went on to watch TNG and beyond, then eventually looped back around to it. This time we did finish it. It has it’s moments and I can appreciate what made it special for its time, but it just feels inferior to everything that came after it. To me, TNG is the thing of when I think of Star Trek more-so than the original.
As far as New Trek for me,
I really like Lower Decks.
I watched S1 of Picard and really didn’t like it. Heard S2 was also terrible but then S3 people like a bit more? Is it worth just skipping to S3 to watch that or nah?
I haven’t watched any of Discovery since I heard it wasn’t great. Same question: If it gets better later, is it something I can skip to or would I need to watch the earlier seasons since it’s got a longer running story?
I watched SNW and… it’s… alright I guess. I can see why people say it’s getting closer to watch older star trek was, but it didn’t really do it for me. Idk if I can really put my finger on it. The characters kind of just feel wrong.
Also, semi-related to SNW, but I’ve seen this elsewhere (like in the JJ Abrams movies or other pop culture references to Trek): While I don’t like TOS as much as the post TNG stuff, one thing I did pull out of it was that Kirk was… a more nuanced character than his later depictions in other media. All of the non-TOS depictions I’ve seen of Kirk make him out to be some reckless, arrogant fly-boy. But he’s just not. Sure, he flirts with aliens or gets campy a lot more than others, and he’s no Picard as far as diplomacy is concerned, but for the most part he’s played as an experienced captain that has his sense of duty and responsibility to his crew and mission. I get that in the JJ movies and SNW he’s younger, but it still just feels like a flanderized version of what people remember him as.
We watched that recently. Pretty good show. It kind of makes me wish Star Trek had some better ecology episodes. Although now that I’m thinking about it, Star Trek would have had a hard time with that kind of stuff because of the costumes and effects. You can make a lot weirder creatures with animation.
I played through ME1-3. I didn’t know it was inspired by Star Trek but I could see it. I will say to anyone else that reads this, ME 1 feels really old and janky at this point. I got through it and enjoyed the story, but the gameplay was an unpleasant experience. ME 2 and 3 do a lot better in that regard, but then you have to get disappointed by the end of 3… so…
Watched Atlantis but not Universe. It was on another streaming service and we read it got canceled relatively quickly. Still worth a try?
I’ll have to rewatch it in a few years to refresh my memory enough so I can keep saying “This is like this one episode of Star Trek” to my friends all the time.
Huh. Watched the TV show and haven’t read the books. It did feel a little odd in a way that was hard to put my finger on. Maybe it’s that? What’s the pitch on the books if they’re that different from what I see in the show?
We watched Atlantis then some of the movies. When we looked into SGU it was on a different streaming service and we read it wasn’t great and got canceled early. Still worth seeing the little that’s there? Does it feel like it got to end on its own terms or is the cutoff jarring?
This was a surprisingly good show. I guess the only things I can really say that disappointed me about the ending though are:
It felt kind of rushed. This could have used like one or two more episodes. Like there were 3 parts shoved into one episode: Whatever happened between Mahiro’s meeting and the concert, the concert, then the epilogue. So we kind of had to skip a lot of stuff to fit it all in one episode. Did they not talk between the meeting and the concert? Was their relationship just in suspended animation until they met after the concert?
I’m surprised they never addressed the kiss. I don’t know where I’d expect that to go, but it’s weird that they just never talked about it again and just left it as a tease for the audience. Idk, it’s not the biggest deal. They still had an interpersonal emotional arc independent of any yuri bait. But why include that at all if it wasn’t even going to affect their relationship in the slightest?
But setting all that aside, great show even within a pretty packed season. Fun characters with relatable problems and a story that kept a good pace at least until the last episode.