*Sfdebris.net

I'd also say there's been a tension between the Federation as a Utopia to aspire to and the Federation as a lens for critiquing our dominant culture since DS9. Traditionally, other alien species were used to critique our time. The Federation was supposed to be us after we defeated ourselves and ref...

Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 8:46 pm If your assessment were true, we're still be running our archaic political iterations.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'archaic political iterations'. There are all sorts of policies that hurt some politicians and benefit others - they're very quick to factionalize their 'reform' efforts.

Politicians don't gain any benefit from promoting policies that hurt politicians. It doesn't matter how much the populace would desire it - no one backs those policies, so no one could potentially benefit from public support, and everyone else would gang up on them. Pretty much all of the factionali...

Ken generates a surprising amount of pity and sympathy for an antagonist who symbolizes the patriarchy.

Riedquat wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 6:58 pm Let's be honest, something like this was pretty inevitable. It makes me wonder why Prigozhin backed out in the first place, because he surely realised anything other than success was suicide.

Perhaps Putin managed to get his hands on some of Prigozhin's loved ones?

How many diagnoses of transsexualism are there?

It rose from 3.9 per 100,000 in 2000 to 14.22 in 2014.

Figuring out who wants sex changes, and who gets sex changes, is far more complicated.

Captain America died of old age after going back to his own time - the time he was suited for, not the modern age he (very politely and patiently) hated.

Oh, please. It is very difficult for most men to sneak into women's areas, even dressed in women's clothing. But if physiological males can claim trans status, and have it honored, then they could gain access to such places without alarm being raised. The number of cases where men snuck cameras into...

A lot of corporations that are named after a founder have recently taken steps to distance themselves. In some cases like Papa John's (now Papa Johns) because the founder has embarrassed the company, but in many for no obvious reason.

I initially liked the Orville but grew to hate it when it stopped trying to be funny. I loved it, although I did miss the humor when they diminished it in favor of drama. But it was *good* drama, intelligent and thoughtful, even when I disagreed with it. Star Trek has taken the opposite track of ma...