I don’t know if you’ve seen (or read) Red, White, and Royal Blue, but I just have to relate this dialog (the context is Alex, the son of the US president, starting a romantic relationship with Prince Henry, third in line of succession to the throne):
Henry: “You thought I was a dumb blond, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly, just, boring,” Alex says. “I mean, your dog is named David, which is pretty boring.”
“After Bowie.”
“I—” Alex’s head spins, recalibrating. “Are you serious? What the hell? Why not call him Bowie, then?”
“Bit on the nose, isn’t it?” Henry says. “A man should have some element of mystery.”
I just gave it a skim. It’s a terrible paper. It’s badly written - that intro is far too long and is out of place - and the methodology is terrible.
I’m not even sure that the question they’re answering (“Given N misogynists, how many are incels?”) is what they should be asking (“Given N incels, how many are misogynists?”).
No one has said that being a misogynist means you’re an incel. The hypothesis is that inceldom and misogyny are correlated. I mean, how many papers have been written about the pickup artist culture and its relation to misogyny? The incels are the ones with their noses pressed against the metaphorical window reading about how there’s a male subculture that is openly misogynistic and still has sex, with an inferred causal relationship there (“If you treat women like crap, they will have sex with you”).
I’d give it a closer read if I had to review it, but even their selection criteria (Amazon Turk volunteers) is bad. If anyone made it further than I did I’d be happy to hear that the analysis is okay or something, but I’d reject this paper.
Can someone explain this one to me? They’re Cognizant employees, and Cognizant is a Google contractor. That’s the contention, at least. Google writes Cognizant a check, Cognizant writes them their checks, and so on. I know there’s additional requirements like directing their work or setting their hours that Google denies doing, but leaving that aside and granting their contention is right and Google is a partial employer…
Everyone agrees that the Google appeal process is what’s delaying this. They agree that cognizant would negotiate if Google wasn’t appealing. Why not drop Google from the suit?
I think he’s sorry he did it, but that he’s the exact same person who did it, if you see what I mean.
Like, he’s sorry he stuck with the guy, he’s sorry he went as far as he did, but not because it was morally bankrupt. He’s sorry because he was stupid and is paying the consequences. I don’t think he’s sorry because he realized that being a liar and a grifter is wrong, or that being a tax cheat is wrong, or that making sure rich people get away with anything they do is wrong.
He’s sorry that he committed to going down with the ship because he thought it’d actually just stay afloat, but then got tossed overboard by the captain and rest of the crew anyway.
First, twitter removing a post/banning a user/enforcing a policy is free speech. The government preventing it is anti-free speech. The government cannot tell the New York Times what to publish or not to publish, and it likewise cannot force twitter to do so. I cannot force the Washington Post to publish my op-ed on how bananas should be banned because they’re phallic and make me uncomfortable. Twitter has the right to suspend the UAW account, or delete all of its posts, or whatever it wants to do.
People are upset because Elmo uses his right to suspend and so on as personal vendettas. He’s erratic, unstable, and impulsive. Again, it’s his company and it’s his right. Hell, given that he’s destroyed between 70% and 90% of a $44B company’s value by indulging in his idiotic whims, I wouldn’t expect anything different. A literal dart-throwing chimp would be a better manager. It’s obvious why Jack Dorsey got a guaranteed buyout at $54.20 when he agreed to hold onto his $1B holdings during the transition. He could now technically shut down twitter by removing up to 25% of its remaining valuation. If the Saudis got a similar deal, that’s another $1.5B. So Elmo isn’t just paying $1B per year servicing the debt he took on to stupidly buy a company in an industry he knows less than nothing about, those guaranteed buybacks are like additional loans that can be called in at any time If he did end up tanking the value of the company down into the $4B range, it is closing in on being worth less than $0.
So this is to be expected, just like him fucking with the NYT and anyone else he disagrees with is to be expected. People can still call it out as indicative of who he is.
And you know this is nothing like censoring hate speech or dangerous disinformation. You’re just making a bad faith argument.
You’re in for a really good experience. Gene Roddenberry had a very specific vision for Star Trek. The federation was his vision for humankind. He wanted us to be those people - at least, to want to be those people. So the federation became something of a Mary Sue. It’s something I really love about the show - it’s good to have a Lancelot around
DS9 has two things that set it apart from previous (and some subsequent) Treks. First and foremost, there’s a full story arc that travels throughout the series. It does have some more episodic, us, episodes, but it was the first Trek with a storyline that wasn’t about exploring the galaxy. TNG had some multipart episodes and some plot lines that ran across the better part of a season, but the entirety of DS9 takes place against a continuous plot line. The fact that they’re (generally speaking) not Boldly Going anywhere is kind of a metaphor.
It also explores some much darker themes than the other Treks, including colonization, genocide, terrorism, and what we might give up when we believe the ends can justify the means. It’s a side of the federation that Roddenberry wanted to reject, but I think having it throws his vision of what humans can be into even sharper relief.
Like with the other Treks, it takes about a season or so before the writers and actors settle into the characters. I happen to agree with you about Sisko. He’s the most military-like of any Trek captain I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to say anything else because you’re going to love watching everything unfold.
This is a pretty terrible article that takes an important issue (financial insecurity in the US) and manages to say absolutely nothing about it.
Half of Americans describe “financial freedom” as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
Okay, so they don’t define “financial insecurity,” but leave the definition up to the people taking the survey? And the definitions themselves are all over the map and don’t have an objective interpretation. “Meeting financial obligations?” That just says that people want to be able to live within their means, but not how they live.
Even the bit about savings accounts is problematic. A lot of people don’t have savings accounts because most people don’t bank that way any more. In our parent’s generation (and I am speaking as someone who is 50) savings accounts were where middle class and below people kept their money because it was an interest bearing account and things like the stock market and bonds were intentionally well out of reach of the average person. I do have a savings account but I really don’t need one and its balance has absolutely no correlation to how much money I have.
The percentage of people living paycheck to paycheck, the amount of savings (in terms of monthly expenses), or having to defer things like medical treatment or car repairs are all more meaningful metrics, IMO. Even net worth inclusive and exclusive of the primary residence would be meaningful.
The fact that the situation you mention in the spoiler is acknowledged in the show to be problematic from both a professional and personal perspective is dealt with in the show, iirc. It’s something Ted needs to come to grips with, and is in no small part related to his internal troubles. It’s not played for laughs or character development, and to the extent that the therapist wasn’t reported or sanctioned it is unfortunate but realistic.
That’s entirely fair. I unfortunately have less time for personal reading than I used to, so I end up either being much choosier than I was when I was younger, or more often I go back to re-read ones I know I loved. It’s easier to fall asleep to those sometimes.
I will take a look at your suggestions. The last sf books I really enjoyed were the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. There’s not a lot of hard sf that centers on biology (as opposed to physics), but the author absolutely nailed it. I’m incredibly impressed with the premise and the story, but the science was correct while still being brilliant and innovative. Imagine a civilization of human-level intelligence giant spiders, but whose psychology and society are done as spiders, not humans in spider costumes. On the other hand, I tried Project Hail Mary by Martian author Andrew Weir, and the science was so bad that I made it only about a quarter of the way through before giving up. I don’t need all of my sf to be hard sf, but if you’re going to be writing hard sf you have to get the science at least plausible.
Anyway, I really liked Garak in the show and thought his arc was among the most interesting. This book, however canon-y it’s considered, answered a lot of questions that were raised or hinted at in the show with enough depth and resonance that I wonder how much he was able to draw on character notes and how much was coming out of his head-canon as a follow-on from just grokking the character so well.
After having this book lying around on my kindle for years, I finally finished it a few months ago. I think it is the only Trek novel I’ve ever read. Although I enjoy the franchise - in some ways more than I enjoy many of the actual shows - I tend to avoid franchise-driven novels in general due to a perception of poor writing.
Stitch is actually pretty well written - at least as well as one of the better episodes. Garak - he of ambiguous loyalties and sexuality - becomes a fully fleshed out character with a backstory and a complicated professional and personal life. Garak was and remains one of my favorite characters in the franchise, and this book lived up to the character and cemented his status. The author, Andrew Robinson, is the actor who played Garak, and I’ve always enjoyed interviews with him where he gives insights into his character. Originally, Garak was going to be more transparently bisexual, but the studio decided not to follow that line because it was considered too controversial for the time. Robinson, however, made sure to play the role in a way that let the viewers in on. that aspect of his character without getting a protest from the studio.
I will be picking up the audiobook so I can do a re-read. The fact that Robinson is the narrator means I’m going to be actively listening and not just playing it in the background.