Just don’t call in Jellico, it will not go well.

Not in widespread use, but they have the designs for a pretty badass sniper rifle that uses a transporter to beam the bullet past obstacles and place it directly in front of the target, paired with a headset that can see through walls.

Now that I think of it, they also established in first contact that kinetic weapons are effective against the borg, since Worf’s blade and Picard’s holographic tommy gun were able to get past the borg defenses. Seems like maybe they should have replicated some guns and ammo, or possibly just taken some from the planet below.

After saying it twice and not making progress:

“Darmok and Jalad at fucking Tanagra”

Robert Jordan spent a lot of time writing about women dominating other women.

The problem is that we have so little media that is both trusted and trustworthy. That so many people don’t actively seek out reliable information and think critically about it. Many just find a source that confirms their bias and feeds their emotional state, while others just passively absorb from those around them and on social media. And once you’ve bought the lies and misinformation, anyone that tries to tell you the truth becomes suspicious, because you know they are wrong.

And because the never ending stream of bullshit is both a lucrative industry and a source of immense political power, there is a vested interest in keeping it highly polarized and partisan. They have to tie it to your identity and tell you that this is what your country stands for, so that you know that everyone who disagrees is an enemy.

Anti-vaxxers are nothing new, but they were never so openly embraced by a political party (to say nothing of those who have claimed that vaccines are suddenly against their religion, discovering a prohibition that no religion has ever had prior to 2020). They don’t care how many people will suffer or die because of their actions, as long as they can benefit from it politically. Sadly, this is a fairly consistent theme on the right.

I’ve just been hoping for the long shot that a plane carrying both of them will go down before the electoral college meets. If it also takes Musk, Johnson, Kennedy, and a bunch of others from his inner circle, so much the better.

They love authority figures telling other people what to do. Freedom is me being free to do what I want and you being free to do what I want.

Removing the anatomy portion of sex ed is absurd, but we’ll just file it under the same “everything I don’t like is porn” reasoning they’ve been using. And at least I can understand how someone can think that teaching about birth control only encourages sex.

But what the actual fuck can anyone say to defend removing any discussion about consent‽ I honestly can’t understand it. There’s literally no reason not to cover it unless you object to the idea that rape and molestation are bad.

What’s next, teaching kids that strangers in vans have the best candy? That adults will often reward those who give special favors? The importance of keeping uncomfortable experiences a secret?

Yet another reason why I don’t wear pants.

I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it’s insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.

There shouldn’t be anything preventing me from figuring out women’s bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don’t know them and they probably don’t want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.

The alarm app I use allows for playlists to be used as the alarm, and I have a different one set for every day of the week. It’s not quite as effective at preventing me from tuning it out, but that’s balanced out by the fact that I have to solve puzzles and math problems to turn it off. Combined with an alarm clock that has a light that slowly turns on in a simulated sunrise and it’s pretty effective.

I used to have a TV which had a setting that would turn it on and go to a specific channel at a set time. I would set it to go to the history channel every morning because they would play random stuff from their archives in the morning, so it was impossible to get fully desensitized. One day I’d wake up to the history of candy, the next day it’d be the history of stealth aircraft, the next day it’d be the history of the klan (that was not the best way to start the day).

Back when I worked in an office I would put up badass president pics Fourth of July. Too lazy to find them, but stuff like Kennedy riding a robot unicorn on the moon, FDR in wheelchair themed power armor, Roosevelt gunning down big foot in a forest fire, etc.

At home, the only significant decorating I do is for Christmas. There’s enough misery out there, and I choose to embrace the joy and the appeal to the better side of our nature. So we have lights, fake candles, and so on, and we put up a tree that gets a new ornament or two every year which fills it with memories. And as a finishing touch we hang a banner declaring “All creatures will make merry under pain of death”

President Pterry Pratchett please.

Duckman, though that was not for kids.

Ren and Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life both had stuff that was bizarre and only allowed in a kid’s show because it was over their heads.

Batman TAS and Gargoyles both had some heavy shit. The latter also had a guy die by having fire erupt from behind his eyeballs, and a scene where a surgeon explains a gunshot wound in visceral detail. God I love that show.

The Lion King is an experiment being run by the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The music is diegetic and is used to modify behavior.

We know they can implant images and subconscious commands, and that this is perceived through music. That’s why they can coordinate musical numbers on the spot, and why sudden changes in behavior and attitude are accompanied by music.

In particular, the most critical character change comes when Simba wanders off to be alone, sees a vision in the sky, and the soundtrack kicks in with an extended version of the alien music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Suddenly he’s doing a 180 and running back towards his assigned role in the story.

That’s why you start by printing more printers.

Ground News because I want to see what’s going on in news across the media spectrum and they make it a lot easier.

Discord nitro classic because I don’t have a better alternative and I get the features I actually need at half the price I’d pay for the normal subscription.

A VPN because none of your goddamn business.

As I understand it, the Amish aren’t strictly forbidden from using electricity or technology so much as they aren’t allowed to include those things in the Amish way of life without approval. Different communities come to different conclusions about what should be allowed, but in general, if it’s a device they aren’t going to own, they tend to be a lot more permissive about it. I would imagine that most would have no problem with voting machines, since it’s basically something they would only interact with outside of their normal daily lives.

How inclined they are to vote, I have no idea. A quick googling shows plenty of talk about courting the Amish vote, but that has less to do with Amish views on the topic and more to do with the fact that they are warm bodies in a swing state.

I love The Thing, specifically because it’s smart and has great atmosphere. And as with Tremors, I like seeing people behave intelligently and adapt to try to overcome the threat, rather than just having people be idiots so we can watch them die.

That said, it goes way past the line for my SO, who makes less of a distinction between gross creature effects and violent gore effects. Plus, it’s not like there isn’t some fairly extreme violence as well. The defibrillator scene for example.