Trek in 2024

This year we’ll be given two more seasons of Trek with SNW getting a third and Discovery’s fifth and final.

I do think SNW has the legs to make it to seven seasons like the traditionally successful Trek series, but I am completely happy that the disaster of Discovery is ending. The format of a multi-season storyline has only ever really worked on DS9, and it was a slow build-up, with massive rewards to the viewer, save for the horrible way they killed-off Jadzia.

The strengths of SNW aren’t just its episodic format, but the fact that it seems to have struck a comfortable balance between the ideals of the older Trek and the Discovery premise. SNW has the tortured protagonist, timey-wimey stuff, strong supporting characters, and the ever-present Treknobabble that helps twist the plot in ways that have worked since the ‘60s. What it could do more of is pull away from the TOS characters a bit more.

I know there are legions of Kirk and Spock fanatics that want nothing more than to see them in every episode and witness them in wildly outlandish scenarios…I get it, really. What I have always wondered about is the vast Federation. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of cultures and civilizations that we only ever hear mentioned. Why not flesh a few of them out, let them move toward the main storyline. The whole idea of Star Trek is to tell stories via allegory, so why always do it so blatantly through the eyes of humans? And no, I’m not advocating for a whole show built around the Klingons or Vulcans…I’m not that kind of fan.

In any case, I’m looking forward to SNW, and ecstatic about the end of Discovery.

Social Media

I joined the ZBB in 2004, a few years before sites like twitter and facebook really took off. I didn’t join twitter until 2014, and sites like reddit and discord weren’t of interest to me until much later. I’ve used them to reconnect with old friends, colleagues, and folks that have similar interests, as well as advertise my conlang work. However, not long after I joined twitter, social media began to show signs of malevolence and vitriol. I’m sure there’s no correlation…at least I hope not. ;)

Since about 2020 I’ve been less active, save for a spat of memes on twitter and the occasional conlang sample scattered around. I find the whole thing to simply be tiring and counterproductive. Are there good things on sites like twitter? Maybe. Do I find any sort of satisfaction from arguing with random strangers about politics or various aspects of linguistics, philosophy, or culture? Nope, not really.

I often think of myself as a moderate, or leaning progressive, but I’m far from a purist. I loathe the notion of holding everyone to some idealistic standard that is not only unrealistic, but some imaginary utopic dream. It’s serves no one. It helps only those that cling to such childish notions. There has never been a global phenomenon that didn’t involve some form of violence or hate, and whether that speaks to the form those phenomena take, or us as a species is very much up for debate…one that I do not care to participate in, at all.

I have no intention of deleting any of my social media accounts, but I think this election year, and the wider state of conflict across the globe is a good opportunity for me to test my own resolve and not engage. I will endeavor to refrain from all social media unless I have something of substance to offer, something unique to say or contribute. It just seems like a healthy choice. One that will most assuredly give me more time and space to focus on my creative pursuits rather than the sophomoric notions of worrying about who may or may not have blocked me on some made-up social network because they didn’t like something I said, or that I didn’t post an all-inclusive joke.

There are things I find great about social media, but the number of aspects that I find harmful currently outweigh those good things.

Stopgap

Now that Congress has passed a stopgap bill to fund the government, we can all rest easy for – checks notes – 8 damn weeks.

I tend to agree with only about a half to 2/3 of the DEM party on issues, policy, and governing style, but it has increasingly difficult to think of the GOP as even being serious adults. They seem to behave more like high school students…and not good ones. They aren’t serious about governing, or they would have a good-faith budget negotiation with the DEMs, they seem to want to impose their lifestyle and beliefs on the whole country, which is directly oppositional to their professed “small government” ideology, and they literally go out of their way to spend as much time as possible on television making ridiculously false claims about cultural/social topics that are of little-to-no importance to the business of governance.

This cycle of stupidity is quite possibly the most ludicrous thing about the US. Fascism, racism, and bigotry really seem to be the only actual ideas that the GOP have to offer, which is almost as sad as it is disgusting.

Eighth of August

I awoke. I prepared.

I got in a car, then a bus, then on a plane, then another bus.

Oklahoma was not on my bucket list, but I felt at home almost immediately, either due to the heat, or the absence of anything familiar to me. We got new bags, then new haircuts. They gave us clothes…all the same, all with the same dueling odors of newness and mold. They took us shopping, but only what they wanted us to have.

After seeing doctors, lawyers, bankers, and dentists, they promised us a new adventure. An experience. A new way of thinking, and doing things, an entirely new perspective on how to live. First though, we had to meet a few new people. These folks, with their unique headwear and special titles, would become our mother, father, pastor, mentor, and menace.

Around 10 days or so after arriving, we were put on a new kind of vehicle. One that many of us had never seen, let alone ever ridden in…a cattle-car. We were lambs, ready, finally, for our slaughter.

After the first two weeks, our minds were mush. We had surrendered much of our individuality. We had given as much of ourselves as any of us ever had before. But we weren’t done. We had seven more weeks.

Three days before the end, the climax, the dénouement, the action scene was at hand. Walk, stroll, hike, march. 25 miles through a cooling wood-line, surrounded, on all sides by live-fire ranges that were seemingly silent just so we could ruck past them toward our three-night camp-out.

Upon return, we were given the test of knowledge. General, medical, geographic, tactical knowledge.

After all of this, the minimal sleep, the poorly prepared food, the physical exertion and exhaustion, sacrifice of self…they gave us another piece of paper, and put us on another bus, to another plane, to another place, just to start all over again.

Comfortable lies…

Had a several thousand word essay about “belief” and how some beliefs can be actively harmful to the folks that hold them, and a threat to society at-large. Deleted it to just say; If you wanna believe that sparkly unicorns are pulling the clouds across the sky, sure, go ahead, but if you wanna believe that a pseudo-ethnicity religious group has a secret conspiracy to replace an entire country and plot violent responses to this absolutely batshit-crazy theory, then you are the problem, and your ideas are horrible.

The Easter Bunny is a mostly harmless belief…as is Santa Claus, but they are modern inventions bourn of a religion that has been the immediate and direct cause of millions of deaths over millennia. Beliefs can be benign; “I’m gonna win this game” is a harmless belief based on confidence, inside knowledge, or some other intangible, whereas “I’m gonna win this game because God told me I would” indicates a mental issue, or at the very least an overreliance on religious fervor. “I’m gonna win this game because God told me I would and anyone who doesn’t accept this should die” is an inherently malignant and malicious belief. The former does not always lead to the latter, but the movement is almost always in that direction. Stop that. Claims without evidence are as meaningful as ‘colorless fuchsia questions sleeping curiously’.