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Showing posts from June, 2023

Star Trek: Discovery

Rewatching the show's 4 seasons. It has many interesting aspects to it. It's more anthropological than previous incantations, and emotions are allowed. Yes, you struggle to be logical, but emotions help you bond with people and clarify your values. And you honor how you feel because it's important for you to do that.  I don't think Star Trek is liberal leaning because there are also attractive to conservatives safety obsession and other congenial ways of conservative being. It's both liberal and conservative. If you're a conservative who hates any kind of liberal ways of being, you could say it's liberal, but you have to understand your own political bias, and not just be enraged by the other way of being when both and none are present.  Michael's story is a kind of Dickensian setup, she's trained really hard as a Vulcan, but not accepted by Vulcans, and then she works really well, but to follow her logic makes her maybe aggressive, not because she&#

Boycott Reddit Monday and Tuesday

I'm pretty sure I'm going to mindlessly go to Reddit and then catch myself. It will be hard to pull myself away on Monday and Tuesday, but pull myself away I will. Reddit was born in 2005, and I joined in March 2012. I know because the app tells me when my "birthday" is. I have almost 30k in karma, a useless carrot that counts the reward of others upvoting your posts and comments. There was a time when I was karma chasing, and I work hard to not to that, but at times I find I do have feelings about being downvoted. The Buddhist community I dwelled in steered away from superficial and perhaps literal interpretations of karma, but of course karma is the idea that you plant the seeds of what happens to you with your own agency in the sea of circumstances. It helps you to take ultimate responsibility for your life. Reddit was created in 2005 by two University of Virginia students, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian . August 2017, Reddit’s major shares were acquired by Adv

Political thoughts

If certain people on the right are so afraid of replacement, doesn't that kind of speak to how it sucks to be a minority and maybe we should agree to have basic rights to exist in America? How about whatever happens happens, and you treat everyone well. Driving away non-whites seems to be a bad strategy. I know in this day and age everyone feels empowered to speak their truth, but it's also OK to be critical and dismiss certain opinions as incoherent and nation crumbling. Conservatives are confusing the culture war, a tactic of conservatives, with the conservative instinct and values, which is to not feel that government is the solution to problems. I can't help but try and translate conservativism to something reasonable, because I'm not hearing it articulated well. The right has become a spin producing with reality absent, or passing the hypocrisy test, so with my superior ability for empathy (sarcasm), I'm going to articulate some reasonableness.  Part of it can