• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Yeah, but that is a very real ethical question about usage of it as a tool. We could have the same discussions about any kind of machinery. Those are fine questions to ask.

    I am more talking about those “ethical questions” that assume the so-called “AI” might be sentient, or sapient, destroy the entire world, destroy art as we know it, or have any kind of intent or intelligence behind their outputs. There’s plenty of those even from reputable news sources. Those that humanize and hype up the entire “AI” craze, like OpenAI does themselves with all this “we are afraid of our creation” sci-fi babble.




  • But you don’t have the authority over words. Words don’t have innate meaning given to them by some God; their meaning is defined by usage. And it’s very obvious that people use these terms very differently.

    They do not have a meaning, since almost each native speaker uses them differently. You are not the authority over their meaning, no matter how righteous you think yourself, and neither do I. Meaning is defined by popular usage.


  • But that’s just the thing. I too like utopia, but I want a believable utopia, not a Starbucks upper class version of what they think is “yass relatable”. I thought DS9 was actually a wonderfully utopian show because it showed that despite incredible hardship, people can still overtake their circumstances and keep a level head, good relationships and a just society. It was authentic to what I as a working class person experience, to what my life is; just an idealized version of it where others and society as a whole share my ideals and ethical standpoints. New Trek on the other hand tries so hard to appeal to progressive politics but fails at realizing the actual authentic circumstances of the working class and instead makes it into some kind of “Eurovision” or “Oscars”-ish upper class atmosphere thing. The recent musical episode was even more insulting in its “what rich people think is fun”-ness.

    Now that you mentioned it, I hate that they stopped talking about “duty” and started talking about “work” or a “job”. It’s not supposed to be labour! That’s the entire point of a utopia! Why does everyone treat their Starfleet career like an employment contract with annoying bosses and all? The Lieutenant next to me is my comrade, not my “coworker”. Do they think it becomes relatable because they - in this utopia - still deal with the socialized equivalent of wage labour?

    Everything in SNW/DSC/PIC looks, feels and sounds like a Marvel movie with unfunny quips and one-liners, or an advertisement at worst. They speak like the Microsoft boss does when he talks about Xbox - “millions of players all over the world come together to celebrate these incredible, amazing worlds that our people have created for you to express yourselves in” - it’s just marketing talk. It feels incredibly, incredibly sterile and corporate, but when DSC/SNW/PIC characters talk about Starfleet or the Federation, they sound exactly like that. The characters look like Hollywood actors, especially Pike; not like people I know in real life. Miles O’Brien could have been in my local pub; Pike looks and acts like someone who lives in a Californian villa and socializes with Jeffrey Epstein.

    Star Trek has turned from union shop working class entertainment to rich white Americans’ entertainment. I do not like that one bit. And it’s not like I hate everything new. I thought Lower Decks was really enjoyable outside of a few stinkers, and I keep reading the novels.




  • Okay, cool, those are your opinion. There is no common ground on these definitions. I may agree with many of those, I may not agree with others, but after all these are just our opinions.

    We both know that different people use these terms differently. The German political education ministry for example defines extremism as any anticonstitutional movement, and goes on to mention “caring too much about anti-fascism” as a form of left-wing extremism: Source Meanwhile, they define radicalism as an ideology unwilling to compromise their positions… or someone who seeks to combat the root of a societal ill. Source

    On the other hand, the ADL defines extremism as any belief outside of the mainstream, and even “conflate” it with radicalism: Source Meanwhile, the British government considers extremism to be anything opposed to “British values”, whatever those are, along with specifically mentioning people who condone the loss of British soldiers: Source

    I am sure that many, many people would disagree with these definitions both inside and outside of these countries, let alone across political ideologies. No matter how strongly you feel about defining these words to your liking, fact is that they do not have clear definitions and are useless in any kind of serious debate. As long as a pro-capitalist queer activist is considered left-wing by about half the population and right-wing by the other, there cannot be common ground.


  • I just am scared how they’ll represent Earth life in a new show. It will most likely be incredibly Americanized with every radical Roddenberry-ism and Berman-ism thrown out of the window. The “Federation News Network” (FNN) and all of the American cultural dogwhistles in Picard made me turn it off in the first episode. It just feels like we throw utopia out of the window and make everything just future-USA.

    They even reintroduced car culture and wide highways, American architecture and cultural norms.


  • The problem I have with the new shows is that they all feel acted, designed and written like American advertisements or stock videos. It’s hard to describe, but everything is glossy, polished and corporate-designed, and people never act or speak like the people I know in real life; they act and speak like influencers, vloggers and YouTube personalities. It’s eerie and I cannot immerse myself at all. It’s too clean, too bright, not industrial or lived in enough. Even the “relatable” scenes just remind me of what an upper class hipster writer in a glass-front writing room thinks is relatable.

    The people and sets on DS9 felt so real, so tangible, so relatable. The episode with Bashir’s parents comes to mind where the interaction between Julian and them was so gut-punchingly accurate to a regular immigrant working class family. The relationship between Ben and Jake. The entire character of Miles. The people in new Trek feel fake, like a Hollywood writer’s idea of a regular person. The politics in DS9 felt genuinely radical, in new Trek they feel shoe-horned in out of an obligation to be progressive with no meat behind it at all, just to market to a target demographic.

    Maybe it is because I am European, but DSC/SNW/PIC just feel SO incredibly American. Like Alegria art.