Yes, that’s what I’m referring to. Remember how many moderate Democrats ate that shit up and anointed him the working-class whisperer? He wants that back.

If I had heard that as a kid in 1992 I would have thought I was crazy, and I wouldn’t have been able to find out if it was real until I learned how the internet worked in 1999.

“Tea. Earl Grey. Fucking hot.”

Sneak it into any episode, the less expected the better.

It’s 2032. The Democratic ticket is Mike Pence and J.D. Vance. Their key issue is immigration, where they argue that immigrants should be sent to labor camps instead of exterminated. They are easily defeated by Trump, who’s entire campaign consists of telling incoherent stories about celebrities until he trails off into a series of racial slurs. The Democrats believe they lost by being too soft on immigration, but they’re optimistic that they can have a productive relationship with Vice President Benjamin Netanyahu.

I read this as him attempting to stand up to Elon and regain some of the political relevance he had before he joined the Trump ticket. Of course, it’s not gonna work. He’s gonna get curb-stomped (potentially literally, at this point), and by 2028, the Democrats will be campaigning with him.

I like watching old sci-fi to see how the tech of the day was reflected in the tech or the, “future.” The original Enterprise looks like it was run on colorful 8-tracks. The TGN Enterprise looked like it was full of microwave touch-screen interfaces. The Abrams Enterprise…looks like an Apple store with a big chrome throttle. The original Alien movies probably hold up the best; aside from the CRTVs, that technology still seems like a plausible future.

For me, what becomes even more dated than the old tech are the cultural attitudes. The original series is supposed to be an egalitarian, utopian society, but they men treat the women like it’s an episode of Mad Men. TGN, on the other hand, is trying so hard not to be sexist that the romance scenes sound like they were written by a virgin who only learned about sex from HR meetings.

I didn’t mind the first Abrams movie. I thought the story was pretty mediocre, but it looked good visually, and they captured the characters nicely. The second movie went off the rails, though. They invented interplanetary transporters and cured death. It feels like that would have had massive, status quo changing consequences for the entire franchise, but I guess not.

The original movies certainly have more action in them than the series (though they’re definitely not as action-packed as the Abrams movies), and they’re also not as interested in exploring sci-fi concepts as the show, but to me, they’re defined by fan-service more than anything else. They found an excuse to put the characters in modern times, let Kirk create peace with the Klingons, and literally met God.

A lot of Star Trek fans didn’t like them. Star Trek trends more towards, “traditional,” sci-fi, which is more focused on exploring scientific and philosophical concepts in fiction (think Jules Verne or Isaac Asimov). What Abrams produced was basically just an action movie in a futuristic setting. It’s sorta like how, even though Star Wars is set in an advanced galactic civilization, it has more in common with the fantasy genre than traditional sci-fi.

That doesn’t necessarily mean classic Star Trek is better or smarter than the Abrams movies or Star Wars. In fact, a lot of Star Trek is cheesy, dated, and kinda dumb (and not just the original series; even TNG has a lot of cringe in it). However, it does mean that the Abrams films were a pretty big genre shift that put a lot of fans off.

That’s a great example of something they shouldn’t have done, not some they should have done. Believe me, there’s plenty of intervention that I wish the military and intelligence communities hadn’t done, but the way the comment is framed, it seems like this person is implying we should have done more, not less.

Why would the U.S. have started trying to expand democracy after the Cold War? They were willing to support anti-Democratic coups in Iran, Syria, Brazil, Iraq, Bolivia, and probably dozens of others I’m forgetting. America was promoting capitalism during the Cold War, not democracy.

The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy.

I mean…what did you want us to do? Invade Europe?

Everyone has this drawer, but this one is too organized. It appears to be 100% kitchen tools. You need to add a deck of playing cards, a bunch of soy sauce packets, a few half-used books of matches, a few take-out menus, and some loose keys in order to do this drawer properly.

…well, again, I definitely think that would be a bad thing. Truly terrible. Definitely wouldn’t be happy to see the billionaire class living in fear of the people they’re exploiting. Oh no. Stop. Police. Murder.

Fair enough, but that’s a variation of a variation, and pretty obscure (I’d heard of the Fat Man variation, but not the Fat Villain).

But if CEO deaths started matching school shooting numbers things would likely change.

I mean, that’s basically what I’m saying, but that’s not really the Trolley Problem. That’s basically the French Revolution. (And, again, should any law enforcement agents happen to read this, I’m definitely not trying to incite violence against the billionaire class, no matter how badly they deserve it or how much better the world would be for it).

I see what you’re getting at, but this isn’t the trolley problem. The trolley problem is predicated on the idea that killing one will save many, but it’s assumed that everyone involved is innocent. It’s a philosophical question about moral choice; is inaction that allows many to die more moral than an action that directly kills one? If the one person being killed is somehow culpable for the deaths of the other people, that changes the entire equation.

Also, that’s not even what happened here. One person was killed, but just as many people are going to die today because United Healthcare. No one was saved. Maybe if dozens of CEOs were gunned down in the streets, that would change something, but one dead CEO isn’t going to do anything.

(And, to any moderators or FBI agents reading this, I’m of course not advocating for that. Can you even imagine? The ruling class that has been crushing the American working class for decades suddenly getting put down like rabid dogs? With the very weapons that the gun manufacturers allowed to flood our streets in order to maximize their profits? Makes me sick just to fantasize think about it.)

• It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).

Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.

Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.

That’s why like Emma Vigeland. She’s calm, cool, and pretty open minded, and when things do get confrontational, it’s Tim Pool that’s screeching, not her.

Yeah, I fell off of TYT in 2017 or 2018 for a lot of the same reasons I can’t stand listening to right-wing pundits; a lot of smug and little information (mostly from Cenk). I hadn’t heard anything about Ana Kasperian. What happened with her?

There are some leftist podcasts that I like, but they are kinda just angry and unproductive, like The Insurgents; I only listen to them when I’m deeply angry or they have a good guest. The Lever is probably the best new left-wing podcast I’m listening to right now, and the Majority Report is always great.