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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 11th, 2023

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  • It means puzzled and/or confused.

    Many authors seem to think it means amused mixed with some confusion or puzzlement or something else like that.

    Some dictionaries have started to include definitions along those lines, which is correct to do if that is becoming a common usage. But that makes the word bullshit because it no longer conveys a clear meaning. Unlike some words that gain new meanings through misuse, it’s usually not clear which meaning is intended from context. Usually I can easily imagine a character’s response to something to be either of these definitions so I often can’t understand the author’s intention. I often find myself taken out of the story while I try to understand which meaning I should use. Because of this I think the word has become useless and shouldn’t be used.




  • “A Transport For London camera study of 7,500 cyclists at five junctions found in 2007 that, contrary to popular perception, most cyclists do not run reds: 84% of the cyclists stopped at red traffic lights.”

    This surprised me. I haven’t noticed that many cyclists running reds. The tone seemed to suggest that was a good statistic for some reason. That is way too high. If 16% of cars ran red lights my life expectancy would be about three days. I’m in favor of cyclists bending or breaking rules to protect themselves but I don’t think running reds qualifies. Everyone should always stop at reds. I’m a bit of a scofflaw when it comes to some traffic laws but that’s too far.











  • Am I being deprived of Stamets’ memes because of some thin-skinned power-tripping douche mod?

    Time for a new instance. Any recommendations for a stable instance that federates with everyone (except for the worst, of course)?

    Edit: If anyone is confused, I meant to reply to this comment that links to Stamets’ recent rundown on the whole kerfuffle.

    Edit 2: I just learned something I’d like to share with anyone else that needs to know. If a user (Stamets, for example) is banned on your instance (startrek.website, for example) even here, a community on lemmy.world, you can’t see his posts. Not only that, but if he comments you can’t see any replies to his comment. There are a lot of comments in this thread startrek.website users can’t see.

    If you don’t want overzealous admins curating your experience on other instances, you might want to find a new instance.




  • roscoe@startrek.websitetoRisa@startrek.websiteBait
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    10 months ago

    The thing I love about this, the thing I always find funny whenever this comes up, is that these midwits are just too dumb to make the obvious argument. The argument that is “in their face” and “being shoved down their throats.”

    There is a rational, coherent argument to make their point. It’s one I disagree with. It’s one that, in my opinion, can only be made in bad faith with no purpose other than to be a concern troll, but it’s there.

    They always bring up Adira, Gray, Jett, Stamets, Culber, and anything else that’s gone up their ass but never any of the actual social commentary because they’re so thick it went over their heads and they didn’t even notice it. You can see it in this thread. They mention the characters and people respond with “but they’re just existing, how does that bother you?” They just bring up the characters again to a response of “yeah, we heard you the first time, what are they doing that bothers you other than existing?” And it just goes in a circle.

    There was never an episode of ToS where Uhura talked about how hard it was to be a black woman as a bridge officer, because it wasn’t. That’s the whole point. In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine, a black female officer is completely unremarkable. Whenever they wanted to engage in social commentary about race relations in the 60s they had to invent an allegorical race, time travel, or use some other device to make their point.

    The same thing is happening in the newer series. All those characters are just existing. Their sexuality and gender identity is completely unremarkable in the future Star Trek shows us. If those dipshits had two brain cells to rub together they would see the new series are full of allegories about not just tolerance, or even acceptance, but appreciation for beings with non-conforming expressions of self. If any of that did manage to trickle through their thick skulls they probably just twisted it into “yeah, people shouldn’t make fun of me for having a relationship with a waifu pillow.”

    If they weren’t so stupid they could easily give a half dozen examples and say “it’s too much,” “I got it the first time,” “focus on something else for a change,” or whatever other bullshit justification they came up with to oppose these themes. It would be a bad faith argument that I would disagree with but at least they could pretend they’re not bigots, instead of their current position which seems to be “I’ve got no problem with these people, I just don’t want to see them.”


  • roscoe@startrek.websitetoRisa@startrek.websiteBait
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    10 months ago

    I saw Starship Troopers shortly after it came out. Other than knowing his name and that he was a well known sci-fi author, I wasn’t familiar with Heinlein so I assumed he was a satirist. I picked up one of his other books and read half of it thinking I just wasn’t getting it before I suddenly realized “oh shit, this guy is being sincere.”