Citizens United and Regulatory Capture.

It’s not a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be ultra wealthy,” it’s a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be unacceptably poor.”

If our civilization can generate wealth at an astronomical rate, then there is no morally defensible reason for anyone to be homeless, hungry, poorly educated, lacking medical care, drinking unsafe water, worked to death, or any of a number of other baseline metrics of civilization. All of those ills exist because wealth is funneled upwards at an unbelievable rate, leading to the existence of billionaires. All of that wealth should be used to raise everyone’s standard of living, rather than give a handful of people more power and luxury than ever appeared in Caligula’s wet dreams.

Of course the way that you accomplish that is by an exponentially progressive taxation system, and that will… probably make it impractical to be a billionaire, but frankly I think that focusing on helping the bottom end of the economic ladder is more productive than just talking about how it should be illegal to have more than a given amount of wealth.

I’ve got a film negative scanner. I’ve also got a big pile of old negatives. I keep telling myself that someday I’m going to scan all those old negatives. We’ll see.

There are people who, disturbed by “big government” today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand “less govern- ment.” Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.

—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981

Keiko wasn’t that bad of a character. She wasn’t a great character, but the biggest problem was that her actress, Rosalind Chao, had very poor chemistry with Colm Meaney, who in turn had great chemistry primarily with Alexander Siddig, and also with several other actors. This wasn’t a problem when she was cast in “Data’s Day” as the bride to be with nervous bride energy, if anything that’s an asset in such a short time frame. But then expecting that to work in what is supposed to be a long-term marriage is what led to perception of her being all MIIIIIILES all the time.

Now, I don’t know that mid to late 90s Star Trek producers would have been on board, but they should have written an amicable divorce plot for the O’Briens. Miles and Keiko clearly grew apart from each other over the course of the show. Between her extended trips to Bajor and the way she all but threw Miles at Kira, they were already about 85% of the way there anyway. A divorce would have been a great way to resolve that issue, and use Star Trek as it was always intended: to explore real life issues in a scifi universe.

Have you seen the one where Torres gets spilt into two beings, one Klingon and one human? It is fucked. I expected them to tell a story about how both halves of her are valid but… they did not tell that story. Massive fuck up.

Cumberbatch should have been Gary Mitchell. He’s got the right vibe for a man losing touch with his humanity as he’s consumed by his godlike abilities, and a movie expanding on Mitchell would cover more new and interesting ground than plagiarizing Wrath of Khan.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

As a member of the Oregon Trail generation, I can report that a couple of years ago I made a list of all the things that I was expected to not do when I was a cishet little boy and was afraid of being labeled “queer.” The list of forbidden activities included, but was not limited to…

• Singing
• Dancing
• Reading
• Wearing bright colors
• Taking too much care of my appearance
• Hanging out with girls
• Expressing emotions other than anger
• Being in plays
• Avoiding violence

As an adult I’d describe myself as… like a one or two on the Kinsey scale, but honestly much happier now that I’ve recognized that heteronormativity is a horrible fucking prison. Wearing bright colors is fun, I love who and what I love, David Bowie is attractive, and I’m no longer pretending otherwise.

One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way - prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs.

Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

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Even if the eyes weren’t all submerged:

Terminator 2: Boxing Day

Mad Max-mas

Django Unwrapped

It would be absolutely awful if someone used a LLM to generate infinite numbers of highly-detailed, plausible-sounding complaints that wasted the time of any humans assigned to address these forms.

A: Fucking impressive, holy shit. Good on them for having a plan that day.

B: I thought that was a fucking battleaxe in the foreground for a moment there.

I will always share this:

The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”

They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

If you’re interacting with something every day, talking about things like your phone case, your wallet, maybe a pocket knife or keyring, any of those objects should make you happy, or at least not cause you any anxiety. Think of how many hundreds or thousands of little interactions you’ll have with that thing, and multiply the feeling during that moment, and consider the net emotional total during the lifetime of the object.

I had a number pad that I was using almost every day, but it was a bit crummy, so I splurged and got a better one. If I have to use this thing all the time, then by God I’m going to enjoy using it!

Trump makes it an “official act” to send the Army division of his choice to Musk’s mansion, battering ram the door down, throw him in the back of the nearest C-17, and drop him naked at the gate of Camp Lemonnier.

I give my dog a treat. She drops some on the ground. I point at it and say “What’s this?” She sniffs every part of the ground around my hand. I pick up the piece of treat and hold it under her nose. “What’s this?!” She frantically sniffs around my wrist. She never finds the leftover treat bits.

Potate.