Depends how far the rot goes.

This has to have been a politically motivated act. Influence occurring behind the scenes. What if that extends to appeals or the high court?

Yeah but my point is that isn’t the BBC’s fault. It’s the governments we’ve had.

If we had an anti-authoritarian liberal government willing to give freedoms rather than take them away, they could start to fill the BBC with people who think likewise.

That would then reflect in the type of reporting.

Great idea, except when you realise that the BBC if funded entirely by taxation, would be completely at the mercy of any government in power.

Out of the window goes any shred left of impartiality.

What these other splendid bastards have said. You’ve missed the point friend. You’re seeing the result and not the process or the cause.

The BBC used to be a jewel in the UK’s public services crown. Now it’s been corrupted and starved; and you want to level the blame at its feet?

Ah yes, leveraged buy-outs.

We’re either going to look back on this period of time as absolute insanity in 4K. Or, we will have all long been culled by killer drones.

I hope for the former.

I have no horse in the colonial race.

But you do, your post history is entirely pro China. Each article you’ve chosen is limited in scope, looks at only small details; whereas I’m coming at this from a contextual point of view. Why are you trying to pretend you haven’t cherry picked your references to suit your political leanings? It’s baffling.

Also, Marxist-Leninist fits, thanks for your honesty. I’m with Lenin, up until he calls for a continuous revolution against all political opponents: that’s the point at which a righteous revolution turns into tyranny.

From my point of view, colonialism regardless of the flavour of it, serves only to impoverish and destroy the lives of a large number of working people. Its the opposite of what true communism should look like.

Despite this, I actually gave China a tiny bit more credit because at least they’re building infrastructure, the USA wouldn’t have done that historically. Even if that infrastructure is a debt slavery trap.

You’re welcome to think of me as loving the USA though. From where I’m sitting tonight that’s given me such a chuckle.

All your links are media arms of the Chinese government.

All of your points are quite literally Chinese governmental talking points with no nuance and no analysis from any point of view that isn’t pro-China.

And you call my post projection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Much like America’s more usual approach, it’s softer colonialism than what the Brits did.

The difference this time around though is the building of infrastructure. America didn’t do as much of that during its rise or prime. That said, it’s often just another way to get the nation indebted to China, it’s not like they’re building the projects for free and often enough the debt is more than the country in question’s economy can handle.

Colonialism is colonialism afterall.

This method is built on political manoeuvring behind the scenes through intelligence assets and corruption with infrastructural incentives masking debt slavery out in the open.

Here’s the list you asked for:

Angola, DRC, Zambia, Sudan, Mozambique, Gabon, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Pakistan Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Iraq and Iran.

The only downside is living in a universe that has the Borg. They are existential terror incarnate.

That said, they seem to always get defeated one way or another. Just make sure you live in a major federation star system and you’re golden.

Yes, water is indeed wet.

You dont understand how the American two party system works. Let me explain it in simple terms.

You have one party that is corporate light; that’s the democrats. And you have another party that’s corporate get fucked in the arse; that’s the Republicans.

Both parties serve their corporate masters first and foremost before any consideration of the common man. Neither party will challenge this status quo in any meaningful way. The difference is that one is willing to be a little more giving than the other fiscally.

But the reality is that the entire political process is captured by vested financial interests that own politicians and work together so that over the long term it all gets shitter and shitter for the common people and they get richer and richer.

The only way out of this is to primary every politician in the democratic party that have any financial ties to the elites. To money.

That’s most of them.

So many generalisations and a complete lack of understanding of there being other valid ways of conducting a relationship beyond what you’ve experienced yourself or seen with your own eyes.

True love is like any other feature of a relationship, only as enduring as the health of that relationship. That takes work, communication, and many other aspects too numerous to list here. It is complex and not easy to define. But it can endure just fine.

If it makes you feel better to think that relationships based on true love don’t last, by all means continue in that fantasy. But it is a fantasy and I think it says more about your fear of what you’re missing as someone who’s likely stuck in an arranged relationship, or stuck in a culture where that is expected of you, than it does about how enduring true love can be.

Agreed. Although with the caveat that, had there been more stringent regulations surrounding misinformation and manipulation in political and media discourse for the UK, Brexit would never have been able to occur. Leave got there (and only just) through a multitude of lies and emotional manipulation.

Direct democracy is the ideal end goal of any democratic system. But for it to work, people need to be educated, healthy, stable, and both interested and invested in the political process.

We’ve a lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Never encountered fake pot until Covid.

For some reason the increase in demand meant that the streets became filled with synthetic cannabinoid sprayed weed, pesticide sprayed weed and other adulterated products.

It definitely happened before, but it happens much more frequently now than it ever had in the past.

It happens for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. Whether thats to increase the grow weigh, the intensity of the high, the ability to spray it with synthetics after washing it for the real THC or the cheapness of spraying the plants with pesticides for bugs: all of it is to make more money without caring about the consumer.

Legalise it, regulate it, health and safety it.

It is beautiful.

But, it is missing the puckering of a witch’s sphincter.

Hello friend. I was also in your position not so long ago and really feel for you so much. But have hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel youre in, and you’ve taken the first and hardest step in admitting to yourself that it’s a problem. Seriously well done.

There are two things I would suggest you consider if you feel you have the energy to start to tackle this:

The first is that, I believe current methods of getting “clean” and “sober” are inconsistent in their outcomes for a reason.

Whilst total sobriety works for some people, it is my belief and experience, that going completely cold turkey and abstaining from a social and common drug like weed forever, is the hardest route forward long term. I have observed that for those that choose this path, they will always to some degree, feel the pull towards that drug regardless of the length of time they’ve abstained. It will be a constant battle for the rest of their life. To some degree this is sobriety on a knifes edge.

I saw this in the midst of my addiction and decided this wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a new relationship with my drug of choice. One where I challenged every unhealthy behaviour I’d developed with it. One where I gained control back piece by piece. One where I rewired my brain so much that I could say yes or no depending on the context and reasoning occurring inside.

And so that’s what I did. I started by weaning myself off by working out how much I smoked and choosing to weigh that amount at the start of every day. I’d then decrease this little by little every day, getting used to the feeling and effects of taking that control and running out at the end of each day. This forced my front brain to take charge amdnstart to plan where I’d have this limited amount.

Over two months I eventually whittled it down to one joint a day. It wasn’t without slip ups, but it was important that I accepted these, and instead of criticising myself, got straight back on the horse.

Once I made the jump to zero, I felt it important to give myself a length of time entirely off of it. To deal with the effects of withdrawal, such as night sweats, nightmares, vivid dreams etc.

Then once that period of time, for me six months, had elapsed, I made a list of all the unhealthy behaviours that I had built up over the years with weed. And reintroduced the weed with those in mind, challenging them each individually. This ranged from being able to say no to it when being social, to stopping at a certain point of the evening (one and done etc), to preplanning when I’d order it so that I was free and available to waste that time, so it didn’t impact my life.

For you this will be unique to your addiction.

I can now happily say I’m at a point where 80% of my addictive behaviours are dealt with. Where I am in control and weed is no longer my mistress. The balance has swung in my favour. But I still have some work to do :).

Secondly, I would advise you examine the reasons why you may have been attracted to weed in the first place.

The route cause of your issues will vary depending on your own individual history. But for me things like childhood trauma, ADHD and health issues formed the core parts of my need to use weed as a means to hide from the adult world.

Tackling these greatly helped alleviate the gut feeling of needing weed as a means to cope. Now it forms a part of my social life, as a means to accentuate and elevate a night, or a day at home, rather than a means to close off and hide.

I hope you find this helpful and I wish you the best of luck moving forward friend. Should you choose to go down this path, know that regardless of the slip ups, you’ve got this. As long as you can be gentle with yourself, you can always come back to it.

Peace and love :)

I can’t comment on For All Mankind, I haven’t watched it yet, so I will take your word for it. I can only speak about what’s in my sphere of awareness, but it sounds like you’ve not had a good time with it.

I have to ask, did you not mean to level your criticism of BSG post season three, rather than post season two?

Three is arguably the best season of the series. It had so many highlights, from the devastation of New Caprica, to the climax at the end of the season that the series spent three seasons building towards. There’s so much to point towards in that season that was truly excellent sci-fi.

If you made a typo/mistake, and you actually meant post season three, I can understand your view point and completely agree that from then onwards it wasn’t quite the same. But where we differ is in regards to blame. I think you’re missing important context.

There was a writers guild strike at the end of season three, and it completely derailed the series from then onwards. In fact, it wasn’t the only series that suffered in such a fashion at that time. It’s worth having s read about it if you have the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_the_2007–08_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike_on_television

I don’t think it’s just to lay this particular criticism at Ronald D. Moore’s feet.

I am also struggling to reconcile what you’ve said about his weak portrayal of women in For All Mankind when he did such an incredible job on BSG. If that’s the case I’m heartbroken.

The reason why I am so enamoured with the idea of an RDM helmed Trek is because Trek has shown consistently that it thrives when it leans more into standalone series over serialisation.

Its current hybrid approach is a strength that SNW and SFA has shown works. This is something I feel RDM has shown he can do excellently in the past. BSG was an excellent example of hybrid serialisation until the strike. And for his series work, his writing credits in TNG alone are exemplary:

“Yesterdays Enterprise” “Data’s Day” “Ethics” “Disaster” “Tapestry” “Sins of the Father” “The Pegasus” etc…

You’re absolutely right friend.

But I also think there’s an argument for exploring the effects of trauma in modern Trek.

As a modern society, we are so much more aware of how trauma is perpetuated today. But there’s also so much room for depth in that understanding. This is narrative fuel. It’s definitely a topic rich with potential for exploration within Trek. But it needs to go deep and remain clever. Psychologically and philosophically grounded.

But, this is where their line of inquiry seems to stop in the writers room. Instead of coming up with novel and unique ways to create traumatic situations for our characters, that don’t challenge and eventually break the universe these stories inhabit, and that delve deeply into the nature of trauma and its effects, we find our characters living in a quasi-utopia that speaks more to our time period and asks questions but gives no answers.

This utopia is one that I could imagine might have existed more in Archer’s time. But in the 3100’s is, even with the burn taken into account, unbelievable and disappointing.

This is where a show runner with a bit more awareness, intellect and gut could create more believable and novel scenarios for our characters.

What I wouldn’t give for Ronald D. Moore at the conn.

I really would love Kurtzman to fuck the fuck off at this point.

He has never understood Star Trek at its core. The intricacies and nuances that never should have been messed with; and the superfluous excesses that could be. This is obvious in so many ways. But none more than how he has pushed the narrative in lazy directions repeatedly; yet consistently these were shown not to work. It took him the entire run of discovery to learn this lesson! And even then, never completely.

It has only been relatively recently, when the shows have embraced Trek’s historical strengths in order to create a new vision, that shows have started to truly excel and grab both fans and public attention. But even then, there’s a lack of bold vision and gut. These shows are timid when it comes to exploring ethics and philosophy in ways the 90s and 60s shows never were for their time.

For me, I think fundamentally it speaks to a dumbing down of story telling. It speaks to a lowest common denominator prioritisation by shown runners. It speaks to networks who never take chances.

With Kurtzman it has seemed that each iteration had a predictable path involving a big threat that must be extinguished by the end of season. High stakes with extreme predictability. Because of this prioritisation, so often it felt like the characters served the story, rather than the other way around. That’s not how you get people to care for characters on a show.

Trek was never about this. Historical Trek was about exploring modern ethical dilemmas in a safe sci-fi environment first and foremost. Secondary to that it was about showing how human beings could exist in balance with each other and other species. We need this positive vision now more than ever and yet modern trek feels like a shadow of its former self. It feels too often like skin deep lip service. But, it is improving iteration to iteration.

So please Alex, fuck the fuck off and give some other splendid bastard a shot in the big chair. Unless Ellison intends to replace younwithba fascist. In which case I’m your biggest fan.

PS (and slight SFA spoilers): Did no one else briefly turn off starfleet academy after they tased Nus Braka, even though he was in court, unarmed and only mouthing off? I was outraged that SFA began in such a manner, it didn’t serve the plot, and was wholly unnecessary and disporportionate. It made no sense in the context of the rest of the season.

SFA then ended with a slap and punch to Nus’s face. The casual brutality bookended an otherwise great series. It was a baffling choice, unless it is viewed as being a means of desentising the audience to unnecessary violence from the state. Then it makes perfect sense. That, that is perhaps the thin end of the fascist wedge.

I dont mind the presence of these articles. I like to be in the know. I like the opportunity to engage in a constructive nuanced discussion that you can no longer find on Reddit, and can be found in abundance on Lemmy.

What effects me most is that, whether honest (human), not (bots) or covert (intelligence agencies), the defeatism, acceptance and obeyance in advance is the fundamental barrier to meaningful change. It catches, it spreads and it demoralises. It is the boot on our collective necks.

We need to be more mindful of spreading our nihilism to each other, unless we’re happy being part of the problem. More solutions, more raising each other up, less wallowing.