The only downside is living in a universe that has the Borg. They are existential terror incarnate.

That said, they seem to always get defeated one way or another. Just make sure you live in a major federation star system and you’re golden.

Yes, water is indeed wet.

You dont understand how the American two party system works. Let me explain it in simple terms.

You have one party that is corporate light; that’s the democrats. And you have another party that’s corporate get fucked in the arse; that’s the Republicans.

Both parties serve their corporate masters first and foremost before any consideration of the common man. Neither party will challenge this status quo in any meaningful way. The difference is that one is willing to be a little more giving than the other fiscally.

But the reality is that the entire political process is captured by vested financial interests that own politicians and work together so that over the long term it all gets shitter and shitter for the common people and they get richer and richer.

The only way out of this is to primary every politician in the democratic party that have any financial ties to the elites. To money.

That’s most of them.

So many generalisations and a complete lack of understanding of there being other valid ways of conducting a relationship beyond what you’ve experienced yourself or seen with your own eyes.

True love is like any other feature of a relationship, only as enduring as the health of that relationship. That takes work, communication, and many other aspects too numerous to list here. It is complex and not easy to define. But it can endure just fine.

If it makes you feel better to think that relationships based on true love don’t last, by all means continue in that fantasy. But it is a fantasy and I think it says more about your fear of what you’re missing as someone who’s likely stuck in an arranged relationship, or stuck in a culture where that is expected of you, than it does about how enduring true love can be.

Agreed. Although with the caveat that, had there been more stringent regulations surrounding misinformation and manipulation in political and media discourse for the UK, Brexit would never have been able to occur. Leave got there (and only just) through a multitude of lies and emotional manipulation.

Direct democracy is the ideal end goal of any democratic system. But for it to work, people need to be educated, healthy, stable, and both interested and invested in the political process.

We’ve a lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Yeah my bad, my math was off and wasn’t looking at it across the multiple years. Makes sense. Cheers mate.

Never encountered fake pot until Covid.

For some reason the increase in demand meant that the streets became filled with synthetic cannabinoid sprayed weed, pesticide sprayed weed and other adulterated products.

It definitely happened before, but it happens much more frequently now than it ever had in the past.

It happens for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. Whether thats to increase the grow weigh, the intensity of the high, the ability to spray it with synthetics after washing it for the real THC or the cheapness of spraying the plants with pesticides for bugs: all of it is to make more money without caring about the consumer.

Legalise it, regulate it, health and safety it.

That slight raise is arguably relatively normal-ish variation. It probably represents the problems with capitalist lack of social care and resources to some degree. But 99.99% of people are still eating.

It’s still bad, it’s still unacceptable, it’s still ridiculous for a wealthy nation and shouldn’t happen, but it’s also not huge, it’s a tiny fraction.

To parse the math, if it keeps rising that would be concerning. But look at the scale… that “3” That the USA reaches isn’t percent. It represents circa 1 in 33,000 people which equates to about 10,000 people in the entire USA.

Whereas according to the same source, North Korea’s famine produced at least 450 sufferers every 100,000. That, represented 1 in 222 people.

Weirdly this actually doesn’t tally with a lot of other sources. So I’m left scratching my head about it somewhat. The above reference suggests only 100,000 people suffered from the famine in North Korea yet, the minimum other sources put as having died in said famine is 360,000 and the maximum of 2,000,000.

Am I missing something? This does not compute.

Edit: Ah the context I was missing was the famine occurred over multiple years. Each year was 420 per 100,000 or below out of 20 million.

It is beautiful.

But, it is missing the puckering of a witch’s sphincter.

Not so much.

To generalise, and to exclude those sitting at the extremes and talk more about the majority, I think we often all share a lot more in what is considered virtuous than either side is often willing to admit. That’s the core objective morality we share.

If one has a decent awareness, they can apply their compassion broadly, rather than just locally, thereby make moral decisions not just in their local reality, but for strangers as well.

When that awareness is lacking or has been intentionally or unintentionally dismissed, that’s when basic gut emotions can be stirred up, manipulated and used to other groups contravening objective morality.

I find this is often the difference between right and left thinking. Both are usually moral in basic terms and at the core, but it’s the breadth of the application of that morality that decides the quality of their morality. There’s much to agree on, and little that is truly up for subjective debate if that awareness is present.

Hence the idiocy of the term “woke” which is just another word for awareness.

It’s through this viewpoint I’ve found the most success in deprogramming radicalised right wing friends. But it takes time, patience and a lot of energy in gently expanding that awareness over large amounts of time.

Hello friend. I was also in your position not so long ago and really feel for you so much. But have hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel youre in, and you’ve taken the first and hardest step in admitting to yourself that it’s a problem. Seriously well done.

There are two things I would suggest you consider if you feel you have the energy to start to tackle this:

The first is that, I believe current methods of getting “clean” and “sober” are inconsistent in their outcomes for a reason.

Whilst total sobriety works for some people, it is my belief and experience, that going completely cold turkey and abstaining from a social and common drug like weed forever, is the hardest route forward long term. I have observed that for those that choose this path, they will always to some degree, feel the pull towards that drug regardless of the length of time they’ve abstained. It will be a constant battle for the rest of their life. To some degree this is sobriety on a knifes edge.

I saw this in the midst of my addiction and decided this wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a new relationship with my drug of choice. One where I challenged every unhealthy behaviour I’d developed with it. One where I gained control back piece by piece. One where I rewired my brain so much that I could say yes or no depending on the context and reasoning occurring inside.

And so that’s what I did. I started by weaning myself off by working out how much I smoked and choosing to weigh that amount at the start of every day. I’d then decrease this little by little every day, getting used to the feeling and effects of taking that control and running out at the end of each day. This forced my front brain to take charge amdnstart to plan where I’d have this limited amount.

Over two months I eventually whittled it down to one joint a day. It wasn’t without slip ups, but it was important that I accepted these, and instead of criticising myself, got straight back on the horse.

Once I made the jump to zero, I felt it important to give myself a length of time entirely off of it. To deal with the effects of withdrawal, such as night sweats, nightmares, vivid dreams etc.

Then once that period of time, for me six months, had elapsed, I made a list of all the unhealthy behaviours that I had built up over the years with weed. And reintroduced the weed with those in mind, challenging them each individually. This ranged from being able to say no to it when being social, to stopping at a certain point of the evening (one and done etc), to preplanning when I’d order it so that I was free and available to waste that time, so it didn’t impact my life.

For you this will be unique to your addiction.

I can now happily say I’m at a point where 80% of my addictive behaviours are dealt with. Where I am in control and weed is no longer my mistress. The balance has swung in my favour. But I still have some work to do :).

Secondly, I would advise you examine the reasons why you may have been attracted to weed in the first place.

The route cause of your issues will vary depending on your own individual history. But for me things like childhood trauma, ADHD and health issues formed the core parts of my need to use weed as a means to hide from the adult world.

Tackling these greatly helped alleviate the gut feeling of needing weed as a means to cope. Now it forms a part of my social life, as a means to accentuate and elevate a night, or a day at home, rather than a means to close off and hide.

I hope you find this helpful and I wish you the best of luck moving forward friend. Should you choose to go down this path, know that regardless of the slip ups, you’ve got this. As long as you can be gentle with yourself, you can always come back to it.

Peace and love :)

Yeah, let’s just ignore what’s actually good for the kids. What matters is appearing as close to our political enemies as possible.

Fucking honestly.

What portion of the tankie userbase do we think are Chinese intelligence assets? Or at best, shills?

The down vote shaping on this thread I think supports this notion. It’s something that I have seen and personally experienced on Reddit. And, it seems that liberal left wingers are invariably the target.

My experience has always been that tankies, regardless of community, are exceedingly rare in the wild of a western nation. With leftist views usually comes compassion, and that prevents the development of authoritarian views.

There is something wrong with the proportions on Lemmy. There’s more going on than fringe local western tankies. Perhaps Dessalines insistence that Signal was a honeypot, is a projection about Lemmy.ml?

I can’t comment on For All Mankind, I haven’t watched it yet, so I will take your word for it. I can only speak about what’s in my sphere of awareness, but it sounds like you’ve not had a good time with it.

I have to ask, did you not mean to level your criticism of BSG post season three, rather than post season two?

Three is arguably the best season of the series. It had so many highlights, from the devastation of New Caprica, to the climax at the end of the season that the series spent three seasons building towards. There’s so much to point towards in that season that was truly excellent sci-fi.

If you made a typo/mistake, and you actually meant post season three, I can understand your view point and completely agree that from then onwards it wasn’t quite the same. But where we differ is in regards to blame. I think you’re missing important context.

There was a writers guild strike at the end of season three, and it completely derailed the series from then onwards. In fact, it wasn’t the only series that suffered in such a fashion at that time. It’s worth having s read about it if you have the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_the_2007–08_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike_on_television

I don’t think it’s just to lay this particular criticism at Ronald D. Moore’s feet.

I am also struggling to reconcile what you’ve said about his weak portrayal of women in For All Mankind when he did such an incredible job on BSG. If that’s the case I’m heartbroken.

The reason why I am so enamoured with the idea of an RDM helmed Trek is because Trek has shown consistently that it thrives when it leans more into standalone series over serialisation.

Its current hybrid approach is a strength that SNW and SFA has shown works. This is something I feel RDM has shown he can do excellently in the past. BSG was an excellent example of hybrid serialisation until the strike. And for his series work, his writing credits in TNG alone are exemplary:

“Yesterdays Enterprise” “Data’s Day” “Ethics” “Disaster” “Tapestry” “Sins of the Father” “The Pegasus” etc…

You’re absolutely right friend.

But I also think there’s an argument for exploring the effects of trauma in modern Trek.

As a modern society, we are so much more aware of how trauma is perpetuated today. But there’s also so much room for depth in that understanding. This is narrative fuel. It’s definitely a topic rich with potential for exploration within Trek. But it needs to go deep and remain clever. Psychologically and philosophically grounded.

But, this is where their line of inquiry seems to stop in the writers room. Instead of coming up with novel and unique ways to create traumatic situations for our characters, that don’t challenge and eventually break the universe these stories inhabit, and that delve deeply into the nature of trauma and its effects, we find our characters living in a quasi-utopia that speaks more to our time period and asks questions but gives no answers.

This utopia is one that I could imagine might have existed more in Archer’s time. But in the 3100’s is, even with the burn taken into account, unbelievable and disappointing.

This is where a show runner with a bit more awareness, intellect and gut could create more believable and novel scenarios for our characters.

What I wouldn’t give for Ronald D. Moore at the conn.

I really would love Kurtzman to fuck the fuck off at this point.

He has never understood Star Trek at its core. The intricacies and nuances that never should have been messed with; and the superfluous excesses that could be. This is obvious in so many ways. But none more than how he has pushed the narrative in lazy directions repeatedly; yet consistently these were shown not to work. It took him the entire run of discovery to learn this lesson! And even then, never completely.

It has only been relatively recently, when the shows have embraced Trek’s historical strengths in order to create a new vision, that shows have started to truly excel and grab both fans and public attention. But even then, there’s a lack of bold vision and gut. These shows are timid when it comes to exploring ethics and philosophy in ways the 90s and 60s shows never were for their time.

For me, I think fundamentally it speaks to a dumbing down of story telling. It speaks to a lowest common denominator prioritisation by shown runners. It speaks to networks who never take chances.

With Kurtzman it has seemed that each iteration had a predictable path involving a big threat that must be extinguished by the end of season. High stakes with extreme predictability. Because of this prioritisation, so often it felt like the characters served the story, rather than the other way around. That’s not how you get people to care for characters on a show.

Trek was never about this. Historical Trek was about exploring modern ethical dilemmas in a safe sci-fi environment first and foremost. Secondary to that it was about showing how human beings could exist in balance with each other and other species. We need this positive vision now more than ever and yet modern trek feels like a shadow of its former self. It feels too often like skin deep lip service. But, it is improving iteration to iteration.

So please Alex, fuck the fuck off and give some other splendid bastard a shot in the big chair. Unless Ellison intends to replace younwithba fascist. In which case I’m your biggest fan.

PS (and slight SFA spoilers): Did no one else briefly turn off starfleet academy after they tased Nus Braka, even though he was in court, unarmed and only mouthing off? I was outraged that SFA began in such a manner, it didn’t serve the plot, and was wholly unnecessary and disporportionate. It made no sense in the context of the rest of the season.

SFA then ended with a slap and punch to Nus’s face. The casual brutality bookended an otherwise great series. It was a baffling choice, unless it is viewed as being a means of desentising the audience to unnecessary violence from the state. Then it makes perfect sense. That, that is perhaps the thin end of the fascist wedge.

It’s not even Blairism friend. It’s corporate light bullshit with a dash of authoritarianism thrown in. At least under Blair, services were well provided for. There was no NHS black-hole and social care wasn’t at breaking point. There was no laying authoritarian ground work for a incoming fascist frog by abandoning any pretense of personal freedom.

Whilst Blair never really challenged the status quo in any meaningful way, be that reform of either house, evolution to PR or tackling the wealthy’s grip on society, he didn’t actively seek to worsen it either. For many, his government levelled the playing field economically; and his funding of services benefitted generations of Britons.

Starmer’s government is a thinly veiled imitation. One that wraps quasi-austerity in a spending bow whilst making one authoritarian move after another. Lurching from age verification to increased powers to stop legitimate protest.

They are not the same. We’d be better off with a lettuce. But will probably end up with a fascist frog thanks to him betraying his mandate.

I dont mind the presence of these articles. I like to be in the know. I like the opportunity to engage in a constructive nuanced discussion that you can no longer find on Reddit, and can be found in abundance on Lemmy.

What effects me most is that, whether honest (human), not (bots) or covert (intelligence agencies), the defeatism, acceptance and obeyance in advance is the fundamental barrier to meaningful change. It catches, it spreads and it demoralises. It is the boot on our collective necks.

We need to be more mindful of spreading our nihilism to each other, unless we’re happy being part of the problem. More solutions, more raising each other up, less wallowing.

When pressed, he refused to declare Zionism racist in that interview. That’s quite different from saying zionism isn’t racist; he just wouldn’t say that it was. Also, he’s kind of right isn’t he? From a nuanced perspective, it’s Netanyahu and his party that have largely created the fascism at the heart of Israel, so I appreciate his point. But, I suppose theoretically, the fact he went to reflect before changing his position, could indicate a needed to gain permission from the person he is owned by before changing his stance.

This week he has said specifically, that zionism is racism under pressure from his party. I don’t see that as the act of a committed zionist, but then again is it just verbal buttering? He’s seemingly willing to go so much further than Starmer, Badenoch or Farage in his anti-Israel speech. If he was owned by Netanyahu like so many politicians are, he wouldn’t be able to say this freely surely? It also shows he’s willing to go with consensus of his party which is also a good sign.

That said I’ve been fooled before by music to my ears; so it comes down to a matter of trust doesn’t it? Do we trust him? There’s no telling before reaching power. He’s been transparent about his finances at least; and doesn’t appear to have been bought like many other politicians. But whether or not he’s a Trojan horse for the left, who has a hidden master, is impossible to see at this stage.

Here’s a paraphrased quote from Zack Polanski: “Zionism is Racism”

What are you even talking about? Israel owns all the other major parties, except the greens! That quote is 100% more than any leader of any UK party has ever said regarding Israel or Gaza.

Three very different sources on this:

• https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/polanski-indicates-support-for-greens-zionism-is-racism-motion/

• https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-green-zack-polanski-zionism-is-racism-motion/

• https://news.sky.com/story/israel-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza-but-casualties-and-destruction-are-utterly-appalling-says-uk-government-13427380