Time To Fire Up The Blessing Generator

Heh.
To be fair, I suppose we should remember that photographers often manipulate their subjects into posing in ways that appeal to the photographer regardless of how unnatural they are to the subjects. On the other hand, this is Harry. If I were a bad man I would ask ‘Which one is the the Duke?’

Heh.
That was hilarious, and now I can’t unsee it that way.
The first thing I noticed about that pic was how yte people she looks. Good grief – her hair is yte people, her face is yte people – she looks like any yte actress with a Hollywood tan. The Woke have really gone back to the One Drop rule, haven’t they. But if yte people are born with the Racism Original Skin baked in, never to be expunged, how does that work in someone who is only partly Sacred Black? Does the Sacred Black blood magically cleanse the person of Evil yte-ness?

Star Trek’s utopianism was tiresome and all, but it sure was a pleasant fiction.
I sometimes wonder whether people have remembered a different Star Trek than I watched (as a lad). I always remember Star Trek as primarily an adventure yarn. Classic episodes like “The Trouble with Tribbles”, “A piece of the Action”, “Mudd’s women”, “The Corbomite Maneuver” come to mind. Minimal wokeness in these episodes. Even so called “woke episodes” like “City on the Edge of Tomorrow” had a hefty doses of escapist action. In short, you watched it for fun – excessive preachiness actually was a turn off. Next Generation was different, but the best episodes were still the ones where there was some danger, time running out, damage to the ship, and such. Maybe because television seasons were longer in those days, you could afford a better mix of action, woke, funny. Now with a season comprising maybe only a 8-12 episodes it seems that storytellers have decided to jettison the fun and adventure.

There were episodes of the original Star Trek that were just good adventure stories, but there was also an awful lot of preachiness. “I’m half-black on the left, and he’s half-black on the right! KILL HIM!”
It was bad enough that my D&D group introduced a magic weapon called “Roddenberry’s Club of Subtlety” that did extra damage to any humanoid whose alignment differed from the wielder’s.
Also, as far as Banks and the Culture novels, I’d like to ask our literary/political critics if I need to stop enjoying any of my other favo(u)rite SF authors. For starters, I’d love a ruling on Vernor Vinge. Thanks in advance!

How to alienate the public.
Heh. Uncivil “civil disobedience”. What wrath hath Gandhi wrought?

Squid: You are missing the point. Nobody is telling you what to read or to not read.

There were episodes of the original Star Trek that were just good adventure stories, but there was also an awful lot of preachiness.
I’m going to blame a lack of budget for season 3 where most of the wokeness occurred. Hard to generate much action in episodes like “The Tholian Web”, “The Empath”, and the perennial favorite “Spock’s Brain”. So I think scriptwriters tried to make the series more cerebral – which in their minds was woke. Even in well crafted popular series there is still a lot of dross.

Nobody is telling you what to read or to not read.
…or are they?
If you haven’t already everyone should read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, it is the influence for a huge chunk of dystopian scifi from 1984 to THX1138.
If you are too cheap or too broke despite the 16 cent hot dog savings to buy it from David’s Amazon link, it is at Project Gutenberg.

I was idly wondering, like you do, about the Met Gala, and why someone thought it was a good idea to show the rich and sometimes competent enjoying themselves “Hunger Games” style unmasked against black-clad and masked servants. Are they really as dumb as I think they are?
And then it struck me, like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist.
They meant very much to do that.
All this display of status and power is intentional, because it is a test of their power, and when there’s no blowback, proof to themselves and to us who holds the whip-hand.
Nancy Pelosi’s husband can wheel and deal in the financial markets based on his wife’s position in Congress, and not suffer an investigation for insider trading.
Martha Stewart, however, did. This means that Martha Stewart, someone you expect to be protected, wasn’t truly a member of the Establishment. Nancy Pelosi and her husband are.
All those photographs of politicians enjoying potential superspreader events sans masks fulfill the same function. It reassures them that they hold the power.
But for some people — AOC, Greta Thunberg, Cindy Sheehan — they are puppets. Useful as lightning rods bleeding the contempt people hold away from the true sources of power, and cast aside and ignored when their usefulness runs out.
As for who is manipulating the strings, well, George Soros is one, as well as our various tech overlords. There are also plenty of families with money who have no desire for publicity, and make sure that they’re never mentioned. Sophy Burnham’s book “The Landed Gentry” (1978) describes many of them, such as the King Ranch, who still held onto their power and wealth today. These are the people we should fight, not their puppets.

If you haven’t already everyone should read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, it is the influence for a huge chunk of dystopian scifi from 1984 to THX1138.
Agreed. It’s on my list, although I still haven’t gotten around to it. Although one might counter that “influenced other writers” does not automatically mean one must read something, as the first work might be influential because of its ideas while being inferior in execution.

Although one might counter that “influenced other writers” does not automatically mean one must read something…
True, but I would counter that counter in that if something was inherently crappy it probably won’t be an influence, or if it did on odd chance lead to something superior, usually the converse is true – e.g., 90% of the “reboot”, sequel, and prequel movies these days. The Sharknado franchise is, of course, an exception.
Regarding Zamyatin, though, “influence” is a kinder and gentler way of saying “nigh a blatant rip off” particularly in the case of THX 1138 (which I like regardless).
Merits of execution can be debated endlessly (see discussions above) but Zamyatin is particularly prescient given that the book was written only three years after the Commie Revolution.

…early sf stories that were influential but are no longer read much because the authors were not the greatest stylists.
I will have to defer to your knowledge regarding scifi, though I was a child of Willy Ley and Heinlein for various reasons got more into history later and only read scifi occasionally after.
I now find A E Van Vogt virtually unreadable but I have friends who love him.
Which get to the heart of style and execution. Many people won’t, I think, bother to put things in perspective. Zamyatin writes in a style more ponderously Russian (looking at you Fyodor) than probably most contemporary scifi (though I had a hard time getting through the first “Dune” for that reason) and would likely be off putting to many rather than taking into account the time in which it was written.
I suppose it is the same for any genre, I know guys who will swoon over the Allman Brothers doing “Stormy Monday” but put wax in their ears rather than listen to the T-Bone Walker version on a 78.

I did not realize that Willy Ley had written any sf.
I think I probably should have said science speculation rather than straight scifi, but we had all the books he wrote aimed at kids back then, but one of my older brothers was big into scifi and IIRC Ley had stuff in Analogue or Galaxy or one of those subscription things.
…I would have found it very hard going if I had first read it in my thirties rather than teens.
Indeed that was my problem…
…people who could enjoy electric rock arrangements of very old folk songs but not the original arrangements.
Yep, Clapton, Baker, and Bruce doing “Crossroads” may be brilliant, but it is antipodal to Robert Johnson’s original – no reason one can’t appreciate both.

I find it fascinating that so many people here have friends who read books. And by “books” I mean anything other than Stephen King. I have one friend who reads books but he’s blind soWTH else does he have to do with his free time? Plus, I haven’t heard from him in a year. There was a guy I worked with years ago but…impressive.

My counterexamples to the tendency noted by pst314 (which is not to say it doesn’t exist) include three prominent authors in the field who happen to also be among my favorites: Poul Anderson, H. Beam Piper, and Jerry Pournelle. I only just finished rereading Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions last week and found it as lovely as ever.

Ping. In the immortal words of Kiss: “Girl, I wanna lay it at your feet”
Um. Bless you, sir. When dried, may your towels be soft and fluffy, not akin to cardboard.

Belated ping. 🙂

Worth every penny of the licence…

E come cough, check di human babe out and come drop one dead pickup line, before you know am, dem don enta di place.

Did you read the comments…
Mi web looker no dem talk back at BBC dey see.

Should you be seen laughing loudly at your own joke, may it be a bloody good one.
In the Glorious Socialist Utopia of Tomorrow you must always choose the lesser of two weevils.

My bad. I meant that question to Nikw211.
Though on Farnsworth’s post, I cannot believe they keep that up. That’s legitimate BBC? Stunning. First time I saw one of those articles I thought it was The Onion (I think they predate The Babylon Bee). It’s so absurd to me that the first couple of subsequent sightings I still thought it was parody because the absurdity was so absurd, contrary to how I usually remember things, I had forgotten. This has been going on so long..is there a formal, standardized grammar guide for it? If so, who maintains it? Are there competing authorities as to what is “proper”? Are there professional editors who review these articles? If so, WTF for? The whole edifice is stunningly absurd.

Mealworm banquet
That is a very manky-looking Chinese cabbage in the headpost photo.

Mealworm banquet
IIRC, we’re in the 3,048th wave of “eating insects is de future” (nod to the BeeB there) in my lifetime. The explanation of why we’re going to be consuming said bugs is always a bit vague, though… it’s always to “be better for de planet” or sumting…

Yeah. I get that it is widely spoken…’spoken’ being the key word. But it is a lingua franca and thus self-correcting within its usage domain. Aside from the BBC, is there a broad written use of it? Curious if many who use it would use it in written communication. Without instantaneous verbal clarification, could someone in the western most domain where Pidgin is spoken write several paragraphs of information and send it to a person that they never met in the eastern most domain of Pidgin and have reasonable confidence that such information would be clearly understood such that it could be acted upon?

Gender pay gap sighted.

The top 10 earning male models earned a combined total of $8 million last year, compared to the $83 million the top supermodels of the world acquired over the same year.

I blame the patriarchy.
“Worth every penny of the licence…”
In fairness, carrying the blessings of British civilisation to the uncultured peoples of the distant Empire is what the World Service was founded for. Good to see it’s still diligently carrying the white man’s burden in these less progressive times.