TheLepidopterists

joined 4 years ago
[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Hey do you think it's kind of weird and self aggrandizing that you named the whole website after yourself?

Disengage

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 36 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Considering that Musk agreed to shut down Starlink access within "israeli" territory to people the "israeli" government didn't approve access for, I wonder if South Africa would have grounds to imprison him for aiding and abetting genocide?

Probably not getting deported anyways but it's a fun idea to roll around in my noggin

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 8 points 11 hours ago

I feel like (emphasis on feel, I'm just spit balling) reducing how much of the internet exists on mobile devices could help.

We had "social media" back in the day in the form of old school (non-news aggregator) webforums, live journal, Myspace, chat rooms, etc, but you had to sit at a specific desk in your house to utilize it. You probably weren't also playing videogames, you weren't streaming Netflix, you weren't doing it between every step in a multi step chore.

I think raising the barrier to entry a little (and getting rid of styles of content designed to addict people specifically, including most social media designed in the last decade or so, maybe a little further back even) makes it something people will do for a bit, before moving on to other activities that are possibly more social.

If Instagram is only checkable on a desktop, you're not going to ignore your friends to scroll it when you go out to a restaurant with them.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 32 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Nah, this dude is definitely just longing for the days when his racism was less challenged but there were good elements.

Smaller cars. Kids were allowed to play outside. Sports gambling was a thing you did with Jeff at work instead of a hyper addictive app on your phone. My understanding, though I was just a kid myself so this could be wrong, but my understanding is that neo-nazis were around but not nearly as many people felt comfortable openly supporting them.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 2 points 22 hours ago

I don't think a mostly for-comfort utility should be the last to shut down

I don't think

mostly for for-comfort

should

Pretty sure this entire line which began and summarizes your whole comment is literally 100% opinions, and they're your opinions.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 4 points 22 hours ago

Lmao, don't tell db0

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 16 points 22 hours ago

I was talking to my father in law today and he's worried that it's going to skynet us or like, make us dependent on it and then quit helping or something.

I tried explaining that it's not a robot, it's not an AI, it's not C-3PO. It's a very elaborate autocomplete. It can't even do kindergarten level arithmetic consistently, which a basic calculator can accomplish, and it's because it's just autocomplete.

"Yeah, but what if it starts teaching itself."

I love the man but God damn people think this thing is so much more than it is.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 14 points 22 hours ago

It's crazy that the absolute lowest mortality rate the empire ever managed was still like double the Soviet Union's mortality rate during the middle of WW2.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 14 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

Delusions of grandeur about the people who ended the Holocaust is wild coming from the petty tyrant of a reddit knockoff that they named after themselves.

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 19 points 22 hours ago

Jesus Christ, what could possess a man to do that

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 24 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Being so ideologically rigid that you'd let children starve to avoid "state authoritarian bureaucracy" is not actually something to be proud of, lib

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 16 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

"A type of economic success achieved multiple times under "the tankies" and under literally nobody else would definitely have been achieved under the liberal government that the October revolution overthrew" is too farfetched and historically unfounded to even make a good historical fiction what if novel.

 

Full spoilers for both of these Season 3 Star Trek TNG episodes:

Season 3 Episode 14 "The High Ground"

In this episode the Enterprise is on a "mission of mercy" to deliver medical supplies to Rutia IV a planet which nominally has a planetary government, but which is dealing with an insurgency from a group called the Ansata who clearly view the planetary government has a colonialist entity.

While Cpt Picard, Dr Crusher and a few others are relaxing in a cafe after the delivery there is a bombing. Picard orders everyone to beam up to the ship but Crusher insists on staying behind to treat the wounded. She is captured by Ansata members using personal teleporter technology.

At this point the perspective splits in two, following Crusher as she lives with and learns about the resistance movement, as well as other crew of the Enterprise talking to the head of security forces in the occupied continent, and brainstorming how to get Dr Crusher back.

In the Dr. Crusher scenes, you learn that the planetary government has wiped out whole cities regularly tortures people, and killed the leader of the resistance movement's 13-year-old son while he was in detention, but considers the guerrilla actions/asymmetrical warfare of the resistance to be terrorism, which apparently Starfleet agrees about?

Data and Picard have a conversation in which Picard states that terrorism is never justified and that he doesn't believe that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" lenin-dont-laugh and Data points out that sometimes a political movement has no other viable choices, and that "terrorism" has successfully achieved political aims in the past, mentioning a couple of examples including the 2024 unification of Ireland connolly-shining . Side note episode was produced while the Troubles were ongoing and did not air in the United Kingdom or Ireland to my understanding, and wasn't available completely unedited until the mid-oughts in the United Kingdom.

The Enterprise crew works with the Rutian of security, who hints that she would like to have access to Starfleet weapons to put an end to the war, and they say no because they consider themselves neutral in this conflict, but do agree to help her track down the until now hidden headquarters of the Ansata rebels in an attempt to rescue their doctor.

Crusher and Kyril Finn, the leader of the Ansata have a discussion where he points out that using violence to accomplish your political aims is only considered terrorism by the people in power when their enemies do it, or by historians when documenting failed attempts to gain power. He compares himself to George Washington which feels unfair to the Ansata to me, because as far as I can tell none of them are pro-slavery. Beverly is offended and defends Washington against being compared to these objectively better people (amerikkka TV show after all).

She claims that Starfleet is neutral in all this, but he points out that by trading with the Rutian government, especially providing medical supplies only to their side of the conflict (she is a bit disdainful of the fact that the Ansata stole some of the medical supplies for their own wounded) they've involved themselves.

Eventually they use their personal teleporters to try to blow up the Enterprise, to draw the Federation into war with them, because they believe that they will have an easier time negotiating, if the Federation is a third chair that negotiating table. But are unable to detonate the bomb before it's teleported into space. They do capture Picard during the attempt.

After this, the Enterprise crew and the colonial government conduct a raid on the Ansata Base that Enterprise has located. During the raid Kyril Finn is murdered by the head of Rutian security, which the Enterprise crew objects to but does nothing to punish, she says that as a prisoner he would have generated violence, but she believes that as a martyr the violence will calm down. This seems backwards to me just from a practical standpoint?

Regardless, a teenager who is a member of the resistance picks up a laser rifle and points it at the head of security, but the Enterprise crew convinced him to put his gun down, at which point Rutian soldiers arrest him and haul him away, presumably to torture him to death in detention like they did to Finn's son.

A Starfleet officer opines that maybe this is how peace starts, with one boy putting down his gun. Of course, this ignores that the colonialism that precipitated all of its violence is no longer being resisted presumably?

Overall, this episode strongly reminded me of the current genocide in Gaza, and fortified. My opinion that actually Starfleet is not that good. Lying to themselves about being neutral in an imperialist struggle while materially supporting the imperialists and helping to track down the resistance is pretty disgusting.

A second episode that recently left a mark,

Season 3, Episode 16 "The Offspring"

Data gets back from a robotics conference, and ensconces himself in his lab for a while. Eventually, he reveals that he has created a new Android with a positronic brain, who he has named Lal, which apparently means "Beloved" in Hindi.

Lal has a strangely featureless face, and no genitals. This is because Data is a very good father, and plans to allow his child to choose their own gender and appearance.

Several different heartwarming and or wacky events occur throughout the episode, due to Data's daughter (she chooses to be a female human) lacking experience with human culture, and basic knowledge of the world around her, while Data spins the episode raising her and asking Beverly Crusher for parenting advice.

Eventually some piece of shit admiral from Starfleet (again, Starfleet bad, kinda) comes along and demands that Lal be handed over to Starfleet Research to be raised. This causes a big conflict because, at this point in the show we've already established that Androids are people with the full rights and freedoms of any other member of the Federation. As a result, this is essentially breaking up a family for absolutely no reason, and Lal, having developed emotions, becomes terrified of the thought of being separated from her father causing a cascading positronic brain failure. Data tries to repair her brain, but is unable to do so and spends her last few moments attempting to comfort her. She tells him that she loves him, and he says that he wishes he could share the feeling. She tells him that she will feel it for both of them. At this point I started sobbing. Shortly after Data tells the rest of the bridge crew that his daughter has passed. Give him their condolences, but he states that she'd made such an impact on him that he could not consign her to oblivion, and transferred her memories into his own.

I don't think this one would have hit me as hard before I had kids, but at this point in my life it's gut-wrenching.

On a lighter note, there is a scene where she's observing flirting while working Guinan's bar trying to learn about human social interaction. When Rokwr walks into the bar, she picks him up from behind the bar and gives him a kiss, and at this exact moment Data also walks in, witnesses the scene and asks Riker "What are your intentions with my daughter?" This was pretty funny.

 

Uh, spoilers I guess for TNG season 2 generally and TMoaM specifically.


We're watching TNG for the first time (not counting seeing random out of order episodes when my aunt was watching me decades ago) and so far season 2 is definitely better, but the dehumanization of Data has been driving me up a wall.

This fuckin doctor who isn't Beverly Crusher consistently treating him like a thing and even being smug about it as she learns that she's wrong was bad enough to start with

But now we have this asshole calling him "it" repeatedly and saying that he's Starfleet property, doing the "well if one of Data's best friends doesn't make a sincere argument that he's a nonperson, I'll just immediately declare that he's a nonperson" etc.

Just unreal "justice system" brain worms. Oh is the question of whether this individual, who clearly has feelings and desires, deserves to have literally any personal rights more fitting for "saints and philosophers" you dumb lawyer hog

And finally the smug science nerd space fascist right here.

This guy's insistence that in spite of not understanding Data's construction at all basically, he should be allowed to vivisect him and poke around in his brain was absurd. Like, once people start asking him any questions about his plans for the experiment he immediately makes it clear that he doesn't know shit and hasn't considered the dangers to Data at all. The moment during the trial when Picard demands that he distinguish the traits that Picard demands has and Data lacks that makes only Picard sentient and he whines that the question is "difficult" holy shit I was funing. He loses the court case obviously but frankly I am mad that (and I know that TNG isn't this show) nobody shot him in the head with a phaser.

 

So I was just on SLS yelling at some lib that was complaining that the sub is not targeted at libs, but was actually left on left infighting because we "didn't propose solutions and were aggressive toward pro Kamala posters" or whatever.

When it started getting circular I reported them for genocide apologism and they quit responding (I assume they caught a sub ban) and then like 2 minutes later I got a permanent site ban for "harassment or bullying" pointing at a week old top level comment I made on /r/bisexual on a deleted thread calling for people to vote Kamala to stop project 2025. The comment was "I will never vote for genocide and fuck anyone who will."

Now I can't talk about ttrpgs or other similar shit on reddit, but that is what I get for communist-posting and nerd-posting on the same profile.

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