Friday Ephemera

On nickel weeklies and dime novels.
Dime novelist and his tea, tea, I tell you, it’s in a teacup!!!

A whodunnit ensues.
[ Uncharacteristically resists temptation to make obvious Close Encounters pun. Checks temperature. ]

“Always respect the media.”
They’re just inventing their own reality now.
“Man’s best friend.”
Dogs are pack animals, you know.
“Today’s word is mindset.”

We don’t need you to stand by and hold hands and sing Kumbaya as armed white supremacists destroy entire cities.

Wait… did I miss something? You’d think that kind of thing would make the news.
Kind of ironic that a group calling itself “Students for a Democratic Society” should be so hostile to a replica of the Goddess of Democracy, though. They really need to sit down and take a damned good look at themselves.
I can’t help thinking of Mitchell & Webb’s Nazi sketch. “Hans… are we the baddies?”
“A brief history of gated reverb.”
Or, as I recall one reviewer perfectly describe it, “steelworks drums”.

A whodunnit ensues.
[ Uncharacteristically resists temptation to make obvious Close Encounters pun. Checks temperature. ]
Oh, come on Trevor, get your Pieces of faecal matter together!

We don’t need you to stand by and hold hands and sing Kumbaya as armed white supremacists destroy entire cities.
Wait… did I miss something? You’d think that kind of thing would make the news.
Oh, that did make the news, but that was also 1939 through 1945. Now, what the AntiFreeAmendment lot haven’t explained is what they have to do with any sort of understanding of history.

Robot conductor.
High-rise rafting.

“Pieces of faecal matter free-floated around the command module for several minutes.” A whodunnit ensues.
That never happened in Star Trek.

That never happened in Star Trek.
I’m sure it was a deleted scene from Voyager’s Year of Hell.

“love is in the air”
Looks like rape, because he did not get the forest’s consent.

Students for a Democratic Society was a Soviet-funded front group in the 1960’s. That they’re behaving like this isn’t terribly surprising. It’s in their DNA.
The Thor trailer was fascinating. Along with Kung Fury, it shows how much direction has changed over the years (one subtle thing it missed, though: average shot length has been getting shorter dramatically over time. There are too many quick cuts in that trailer).

In-store carpeting of note.
Via Obnoxio.

[facepalm]
I’m faintly surprised that record stores still exist.

I’m faintly surprised that record stores still exist.
I assumed it was a video game store. (o_o)

I’m a Marxist-Feminist Slut—How Do I Find an Open Relationship?

“The Case of the Trotskyite Trollop,” as Rod Dreher dubbed it. She certainly gets points for honesty–she summed it all up in her signature, “Marxist-Feminist Slut.”

This is a perpetual child who wants to be taken care of and have ALL the toys.
Well, that is the appeal of Marxoid posturing, a kind of political neoteny. That, and spite.

humans which were built to last

More like if humans were built to be eaten by something larger and fiercer…

The MFS also seem to have a case of the smugs.
She’s 32 and the clock is ticking. I wonder if the smug, or the pretence of smug, will stretch to forty.

The Revolution will be cosplayed.

Oh yeah, he went there.

Laughing at Blazing Saddles will be illegal.

“Laughing at Blazing Saddles will be illegal.”
Even the campfire scene?

Come for the ephemera, stay for the quotable comments.
Well, when you see minority students from comfortable backgrounds – students who enjoy racial favouritism in university admissions, and who are cossetted to a degree that few of us will experience – claiming to be oppressed by basic grammar, or by an allegedly “insensitive” buffet, or who claim that their “black and brown bodies” will be “erased” and “marginalised” by having to share an entrance lobby with other students, then the air of caricature is hard to miss.

Meanwhile, at yet another “elite” university, the campus newspaper Independent Editorial Board gets shut down for not being sufficiently Woke™.

Leaders of the student newspaper at Princeton University have disbanded the publication’s independent editorial board, a move that comes after the group put forth a string of right-leaning opinions, including denouncing the women’s center for its radical feminist agenda and arguing in favor of due process…Sarah Sakha, the current editor in chief of the Princetonian who led the decision to disband the board, had written an op-ed at the time denouncing the board’s criticism.
“The Board fails to acknowledge and recognize the valid intersectionality of racism and sexism. In fact, by branding such programming as singularly liberal, the Board perpetuates the harmful politicization of basic questions of human dignity and identity, which lie at the core of these issues,”…

Once, just once, I wish these asshats would come up with something original. Regarding Sarah’s claim that leftist boilerplate (interesting that zer called it “programming”) is not actually “liberal”, you will be surprised to note that:

Sakha, who also contributed to the Princeton Progressive, the Ivy League institution’s left-leaning political publication…

Unpossible ! RTWT, Sarah gets her Orwell on later.

noting that the series’ primary villains — an extremist Klingon sect — scream “Remain Klingon,” something deliberately reminiscent of “Make America Great Again.”
. . . . Make
We don’t care what you say you believe in or what you say your identity is and instead we care about what you do, anyone working with anyone else can play, complete separation of our government view and practice from the limited whims of some faith based church, absolutely you get to have your own beliefs instead of being told what to believe, you have the ability and opportunity to get stuff done where you can certainly do what others are doing and they can do what you are doing . . .
Great Again
Remain Kl
—hang on, which Klingons? Given that, As I Recall, this takes place before the original series and after Enterprise do you mean the rather more standard than not variety that has the forehead ridges, do you mean the ones with the Klingon Augmentation virus, do you mean the ones in a monastery or so, do you mean . . . .
Given that, especially with the US, country does not equate with DNA/food preference/propensity to inflict Morris Dancing/some other variable, perhaps a bit more clarity could occur???

“… the smug leftists whose disdain for half the country gave rise to Trump continue to frame half the country as the villains in their own culture.”
It’s all straw men, isn’t it? Trump’s a “white supremacist”, Meyers is posting “hateful rhetoric”, and “capitalism […] requires us to believe […] that everything we gain comes at someone else’s expense”.
I think the problem the rest of us have understanding them is that we didn’t appreciate the extent to which they actually believe this bollocks. We thought it was just the usual hyperbole of political activism. But that “secret Facebook page” unearthed by PJM wasn’t for public consumption. They’re talking among themselves in the same terms as they yell at everyone else. They’re actually living in this absurd nightmare of their own invention where evil lurks around every corner and they’re brave warriors fighting for justice and safety.
God help us all.

I think the problem the rest of us have understanding them is that we didn’t appreciate the extent to which they actually believe this bollocks.
I’m not entirely convinced they do believe it. For such people, in-group signalling is important and can get very competitive. Though I’m sure they enjoy flattering themselves. And I’m also sure they enjoy the pretext for spite. In this case, conspiring to harass and bully some guy who doesn’t care to play the same kind of game.

It occurs to me that, were he alive today, Martin Luther King would get exactly the same treatment from the Left as Ben Shapiro.
Oh hell, Dr King was denounced as an “Uncle Tom” in his own lifetime by more radical Black Nationalists.

Quillette takes the centrist obsession with objectivity and facts, the centrist’s only antidote to “fake news,” and applies it to academia.

Quelle horreur!!!

Jeeze, Darleen, how did you find those twerps?
Unfortunately, it’s not that hard.

“Quelle horreur!!!”
So… one of the world’s biggest businesses fires an employee for stating a mainstream opinion, Quillette publishes a sympathetic article, suffers a DOS attack in response, and they’re “playing” the victim?
Leftist Rule #1: Anyone designated “right-wing” is fair game.

So… one of the world’s biggest businesses fires an employee for stating a mainstream opinion, Quillette publishes a sympathetic article, suffers a DOS attack in response, and they’re “playing” the victim?
This is the new verbal judo coming from the left. About a year or so ago, before all this confederate statue nonsense started, on a friend’s FB post I questioned why Seattle had a statue of Lenin. Oooh, snowflake conservative is threatened by a statue. Language is wasted on these people. The only form of communication that they understand is physical.

3 Quarks Daily links to Quillette occasionally. This prompted one of their left-wing regulars to complain about linking to a “prestige alt-right” site. Naturally, she did not respond to commenters, including the site owner, asking her to explain what she even meant, let alone provide anything like evidence. Classical liberal, conservative, alt-right, fascist — it’s all just a fun game of taxonomic Twister as far as they care.

“Classical liberal, conservative, alt-right, fascist — it’s all just a fun game of taxonomic Twister as far as they care.”
Leftist Rule #2: Anyone failing to rigidly espouse all the current Leftist talking points without a hint of criticism is to be designated “right-wing”.

Another one for the “Giant Vaginas” series, I think:
http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/23/this-ceramic-vagina-jewellery-plate-is-all-anyones-ever-wanted-6950262/

an extremist Klingon sect
#NotAllKlingons
The villains don’t sound terribly interesting. I wait with bated breath to see how the other Klingons are portrayed – the ones whose preferred pronouns are net and ‘e’, who maintain that when you get down to it the Ferenghi are more Klingon than anybody, and it’s extremely problematic to think otherwise (in the current Stardate especially).

It’s on CBS All Access. Nobody’s going to watch it.
Between siloing off their content in a service that costs as much as Netflix and then insulting a good chunk of their potential audience, it’s like they’re trying to fail.
That said, the franchise is in an interesting place right now. Trek fans hate the movies, but they’re doing exceptionally well at the box office. The producers have implied this show is for those fans (by being very clear it is not in the new movie’s milieu).
Looking at what they’re doing, it seems increasingly clear they’ve decided traditional Trek fans are a small but affluent minority with monolithic tastes that will pay to have those tastes pandered to.
Sadly, based on the last couple of cons I’ve been to, I don’t think they’re wrong.

I wait with bated breath to see how the other Klingons are portrayed
One of the interesting bits of Enterprise was the episode where they finally answer the question “how the hell did a bunch of barely-literate comic opera barbarians end up a starfaring empire”. The answer is that the Klingons are literally Nazis – a once-diverse, peaceful, artistic and scientific society (“My father was a poet. My mother was a botanist.”) was taken over by a violent, nationalist political movement espousing a return to a Golden Age (this is where the Kahless cult starts, apparently).
Ten out of ten for continuity, minus several million for originality, as Douglas Adams might have said. The fact that if the Bad Klingons are Nazis, that perforce makes the Good Klingons the famously decadent and economically unsustainable Weimar Republic goes unmentioned, of course.

“Ten out of ten for continuity, minus several million for originality, as Douglas Adams might have said. The fact that if the Bad Klingons are Nazis, that perforce makes the Good Klingons the famously decadent and economically unsustainable Weimar Republic goes unmentioned, of course.”
Indeed. But it also holes the whole “warlike species” thing under the waterline, too. Which is probably intentional, to be fair, because it’s kinda-sorta racist… speciesist… er, whatever, and gives another opportunity to haul out the Warning From History storyline (and, as you say, totally fail to understand what that warning is, as usual).
However isn’t having a completely different evolutionary history that might endow a different sense of morality (just as other species on Earth clearly do) kind of the point of science-fiction aliens? They’re not human. They think differently. The Klingons are aggressive and warlike because they… are… alien. If they’re Just Like Us, then what’s the point of writing them in? You might as well have them as a bunch of rebel humans.
(Incidentally, that fat Welsh bloke buggered up Doctor Who in exactly the same way, trying to show the Doctor’s “human side”, as if he had one.)

If they’re Just Like Us, then what’s the point of writing them in?
The alien races in Star Trek have been allegories for real-world cultures or social mores since Day One, though. It was how Roddenberry sneaked his moralizing about current events past the CBS censors. The Klingons are the Russians, the Romulans are the Chinese, the Edenites are space hippies. Now, I happen to agree that SF should treat alien races more intelligently than that, but holding Star Trek to task for it seems unfair; they staked out their territory early and haven’t deviated from it.
The Voyager episodes that delved into Tuvok’s adolescence as an angry and hormonal Vulcan were some of the best alien writing in the entire franchise, I thought, but that kind of thing is extremely rare. Alien Nation did the best job of portraying a truly alien culture, but even then they were doing it explicitly as an allegory for racism against immigrants.

Hey, I’m going on what I’ve been told.
Even more oddly, they’re invariably made by women, who, one would assume, should know better. o_O

I always preferred Babylon 5 myself.
I’m sure I’ll be pilloried for saying so, but I don’t consider Babylon 5 to be science fiction. It’s fantasy. It’s not quite Lord of the Rings IN SPAAAACE, but you can see Rivendell from the bridge, if you know what I’m saying.
I quite enjoyed The Expanse, and I think near future solar system hard SF is a fertile milieu for accessible adventure stories. I’m pleasantly surprised it’s gotten three seasons.

Unfortunately, it’s not that hard.
What I find funny about that post in “theoutline” is how they go to great lengths to mock conservatives comments to Quillette articles, and yet “theoutline” doesn’t allow comments to its posts…