Miles O'Brien

The sad truth is a lot of religious people believe that the end times won’t come unless the earth isn’t livable anymore.

A even LARGER group of religious simply think their sky person will give them a new earth that’s perfect so why bother protecting this one.

They and their supporters are complicit in the murder of the planet at best, and are trashing everything on purpose, trying to claw back any and every support of things that can make it a better place.

Legit every time someone from the US says “indian” and it’s not immediately obvious in context, I ask “do you mean people from India, or Native Americans?”

I mean, yeah, being required to do something or else you’ll be starving and homeless is pretty fucked up and worthy of a day being ruined.

Many of us are resisting, but there’s so much more in the way of organizing in the US that isn’t a problem in other countries.

I’d love for us to band together like I see France doing. Shut down entire cities just by simply being in the street protesting.

However, it’s a lot harder to get people together on something when half the people who want to help are one paycheck from being homeless and starving or dying from their untreated illness without Healthcare.

It’s harder to organize when the people who want to organize are spread out over 300 million square miles.

It’s harder to organize when historically any left-leaning group is constantly hounded by the Alphabet Squad (fbi/nsa/dhs/etc) and Republicans will abandon their guns before letting performative gasp a black man have one.

Many of us are resisting, but when 1/3 of the population is cheering this shit on, 1/3 can’t be bothered to make up their minds, and the entire system stacked against the remaining 1/3 that will at least vote for a chance at change.

Personally I’m helping network immigrants and their families near me so they have a plan of action if something happens and they need to leave quickly, physically protesting when I can, training firearms with some of the LGBT people I know, and trying to get some of the “on the fence” crowd I know to see reason.

It’s not much, but it’s what I can do without becoming just some dead nut job in the street.

I’m sure that England has been glad to be rid of us for quite some time. We haven’t been very good allies in my lifetime, let alone before that.

I’m also equally sure plenty of Americans today would rather be somewhere in the UK.

I’d argue that with the government, we are there at face value, but the next level down “behind the lie”.

It’s very much to me felt like they’re saying these things knowing that nobody believes them, like when the stereotypical TV mob boss says something like “I’m broken up about the death of your brother” with a smirk. We all know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, and they’re daring us to do something about it.

And also I’d argue that for the MAGAts, they’re already a few pegs below the bottom. I’ve literally been called a terrorist this past week for pointing out Renee good was trying to turn away and leave, and Alex Pretti was unarmed and being beaten while not fighting back when he was executed.

Nationalists will attack anyone who doesn’t hold their exact narrow worldview from their narrowly defined area, regardless of which nationality they hold.

American nationalists are just called “republicans” (although plenty of democrats could be considered nationalists, it’s a bit of a “not all squares/rectangles” situation)

My parents are definitely in the “resist status-quo change” group, but I would argue they do understand “the cause” at least when it comes to American politics. They’re vocally against fascism in private, but any sort of resistance is illegal and therefore wrong. And it’s too bad these politicians are doing fascism, because they’re supposed to be good God-fearing types who just want abortion to stop.

Without an ounce of thought behind it, my mother will say medically necessary abortions should be allowed, and vote for someone who loudly tells everyone they won’t allow any at all. Will say ICE shouldn’t be executing people, but will happily support funding for them. Doesn’t like that the US keeps putting its military boot into other countries’ doors, but still says “support our troops”

I don’t get the fascination with sports either, but I get emotional about the stories in video games. I imagine someone who loves sports but doesn’t care for video games might view my tears over pixels as pathetic. My outrage at imginary injustice from a judgemental npc as ridiculous.

I have all these feelings for random collections of pixels on a screen. They can have their feelings for random groups of people.

I have to stop myself from mocking my brother in law for yelling at his TV on apparently bad plays, because I definitely have yelled at my screen before over a death, or plot twist.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make a heating system directly powered by solar panels. It doesn’t have to be enough heat to make a person comfortable in a t-shirt, but just enough to allow normal battery operation.

I’m sure that depends on a lot of factors like shed insulation/wall facing direction, etc, and burying the battery bank would probably be more effective.

to find an expanded & bloated lithium ion battery pack

Intrusive thoughts: “go on, poke it with a knife. See what happens firsthand”

As usual, the opponent of recycling things is simply “it’s too expensive”

The ultimate failing of the future, as always, is current reliance on capitalism.

Why recycle when you make more money by blowing up the planet and ripping out the good stuff?

It’s a scene from Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.

Here we see the characters Anakin Skywalker (left) and Padme Amidala (right) sitting in a field while on the planet of Naboo, Amidala’s home planet. Anakin is poorly hitting on her like the awkward teenager he is.

However, instead of referencing sexual fluids, he is speaking in reference to the overall system of governance that the Republic has become.

I am not trying to be condescending so please don’t take my extended explanation as such, I just assume you have no idea what any of it is since you asked a question that would be answered if you had seen and remembered the movie at some point.

You should know! I consider it important information that is necessary for life, as now you get to imagine every songbird tossing in a “cunt” or “good on ya” while twittering away.

English IS my first language and it still tripped me up. It’s an easy thing to swap, especially without much context.

I read it as “to break off” not “to temporarily interrupt”

I’ve started yelling “NO PRONOUNS” and “USE HE/SHE BECAUSE HE/SHE IS NOT AN OBJECT” at my conservative relatives and acquaintances who complain about pronouns and gender-neutral anything.

No, Deborah, the non-binary person who helped you figure out your phone today is not the cause of societies’ downfall, nor are they responsible for high grocery prices.

They complain about pronouns, but use them constantly. Clearly they don’t truly know what a pronoun is. They complain about gender neutral stuff, but use neutral language all the time.

So I’ve been loudly pointing out every time they do.

I’ve been uninvited from a lot of future family gatherings. oh nooooooooooo

I usually skip s1&2 of tng when I re-watch except a few key episodes.

Some things just don’t click with me, or are just too on-the-nose to take seriously.

TOS is particularly bad when it comes to themes that boil down to “don’t be racist and sexist”, but they’re all a product of the times. And CLEARLY we still have those issues today, but it’s preaching to the choir vibes when I watch them.

I don’t have to like any of the shows, but I do feel I still need to support them, otherwise we might not get more because the corps that own the IP don’t hear enough praise.

I can appreciate that it paved way for more shows while also not caring for it.

With apologies to everyone who loves it, I don’t particularly care for TOS. Yet without it I would have none of my favorite shows.

In fairness, I think everyone involved in both shows realizes they aren’t meant to be the same kind of show. They aren’t meant to be compared.

I enjoy both, and I think I enjoy SNW more as a trek show, but I like lower decks more as a general show. It’s probably just my lowered attention span, but I do like the 20-30m format and more comedic tone of LD. Especially the comedy, since gestures wildly at the world y’know.

I watch them at different times, in different moods.

felt like a space show with Trek slapped on sometimes

So many shows in established IP feel this way because that’s exactly what happens, even if not the original intent.

The Halo TV series was never intended to be Halo until it failed to get picked up as a standalone Sci fi show, and then they replaced names and locations in the same way a 5th grader might use “Find&Replace” to change names in a word document (think Michael Scarn vs Michael Scott). It’s so obvious they wanted to be their own independent thing and shoehorned in all the Halo parts.

Discovery FEELS like they want to make a star trek show, but that they ALSO want to tell their own story. I think every creative wants to leave an impact on things, otherwise why bother trying to tell the same old story that’s been told before? So I’m perfectly okay with each series being a different tone, with different perspectives on things (I like to think inter-series contradictions are simply results of different points of view).

That said, discovery definitely feels like the “Pick Me” kid in the IP. It’s trying too hard to be “different” sometimes, and it clearly wants to be set in a “relevant” time while also being technologically on par with other shows we’ve seen already, two ideas that are incompatible. There’s over a hundred years of difference between discovery and Voyager, which I think was the latest-running series in terms of stardate?

Discovery could have been a lot better, I think, if they had stayed closer to classic trek-type stories, but I’m still glad they tried steering away. You don’t know your limits if you never test them.