#I'm a product of the American education system

[everybody-hit-the-pyro-cue]

specialized education and gifted children programs are so fucked up I see the purpose but the execution and expectations are genuinely horrific I've yet to meet a single one of us that's doing okay besides from those who just reached their breaking point and chose to stop caring

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - March 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles! This month��s doodles, like every third month, will be free to the public, so take a look!

1. Zoo 'overjoyed' as lion cubs increase pride to 10

“The litter of rare northern African lions was the second batch to be born recently at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, after three arrived in November. […] "The youngsters will grow up side-by-side with their half-siblings, and I'm sure they'll love having an abundance of playmates."”

2. Ohio Appeals Court Rules Trans Care Is Healthcare, Strikes Down Ban For Trans Youth

“The ruling rested on two key findings: first, that gender-affirming care constitutes legitimate medical treatment, and second, that parents have the constitutional right to make healthcare decisions for their children.”

3. Oystercatcher Recovery Campaign Offers a Rare Success Story about Shorebird Conservation

“Fifteen years of coordinated conservation efforts have produced a significant recovery in the U.S. population of the American oystercatcher[….] Schulte predicted that the protection efforts will survive [federal funding cuts] because of the large number of non-federal partners involved.”

4. Fish-tracking robot aims to make fishing more sustainable in developing nations

“A solar-powered, transparent [robot] that can roam the waters autonomously for five days at a stretch, counting fish [… can help fishers] avoid the overfishing [… and] mean less fuel consumed by boats searching for schools of fish, and less degradation of nets due to trawling where there are no fish.”

5. Zoologist Rediscovers Grasshopper Species Believed Extinct

“[… T]he Appalachian grasshopper […] camouflages with its surroundings—perhaps part of the reason people haven’t seen it [since 1946]. [… A zoologist] had seen some reports on iNaturalist that he thought could have been the species[, …] and after surveying several locations, he found a female.”

6. Scaling agroforestry can support fisheries, local food production and cultural practices

“The research found that combining native forest protection (100,000 acres) with transitioning suitable fallow agricultural land to agroforestry (400,000 acres) could [reduce] erosion and boosting nearshore food production by almost 100,000 meals per year[….]”

7. A cell pulls off one of the 'Holy Grails' of biotechnology

“[… A] single-celled alga with a nucleus [… can conduct] a chemical conversion reaction that helps create some of the essential building blocks of life. […] One day, Capone says the nitroplast could be introduced to crops to allow them to convert their own nitrogen without relying on external fertilizer.”

8. FERC: Solar + wind set for a strong 3-year run despite Trump’s sabotage

“Solar accounted for 68.2% of all new generating capacity placed into service in January – more than double the solar capacity added a year earlier (1,176 MW). […] Around 30% of US solar capacity is in small-scale (e.g., rooftop) systems that are not reflected in FERC’s data.”

9. As ghost junk haunts the sea, ‘mermaids’ are fighting back

“Just two days after completing the training, Diana Garcia, one of the Sirenas, helped remove nearly 900 kilograms (2,000 pounds) of [abandoned] ghost gear and debris in the waters near her community[….]”

10. A Nest-Protecting Program Pays Off for Alabama’s Snowy Plovers

“Over the past two breeding seasons, 18 Snowy Plover chicks fledged—a major turnaround after five years of almost no chick survival. [… The team made] a concerted effort to educate the public about the need to give the birds space[, … and] people have not directly caused plover losses in Alabama recently[….]”

March 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[licorice-and-rum]

SOC and Neoliberlism

So, as promised, here it is my analysis of Six of Crows and how neoliberalism is amazingly portrayed in Ketterdam, and how the city is an example of what happens in a community that is not provided for.

Before we begin, I wanted to say that English is not my first language, and, considering I read SOC in Brazilian Portuguese, I might translate some names literally or differently from the English version but I think it's manageable to read and understand my point. If not, I'll edit the text.

The first thing we have to understand is how neoliberalism works and the theory behind it, and then we'll talk about how it's portrayed in Ketterdam.

So neoliberalism is a theory born more or less at the end of the 20th century (70s-80s), and it finds its roots in laissez-faire capitalism, meaning that it's a political current that tries to suppress and/or eliminate the State's influence from the market. The neoliberalist view understands that the market can supply by itself the population's needs without help or limitations imposed by the State.

The thing here is that most people listen to this and think neoliberalism is about electronics, cars, and other stuff. The truth is, that neoliberalism aims to suppress the presence of State-run facilities in ALL corners of society, such as health care, housing, water access, electricity, etcetera.

So, we can use the American and Brazillian health systems to understand it better, for example:

In the US, the ones providing health care for the population are great corporations - they decide the price of care, they work together with pharmaceutical companies to define medicine prices, and the laws that bind them are pretty much only offer and demand. There is almost none State intervention to provide the population with accessible health care.

However, this brings problems, of course: not everyone (actually, most people) has real access to health care simply because they can't afford it, or they can't afford it without taking a big financial hit, which threatens their other basic needs, such as food, housing, water, electricity, etcetera. Not everyone can provide for their medical needs, such as diabetic and disabled people.

That leads to:

(a) an increase in poverty;

(b) a decrease in educational levels - if you don't have the means to pay for higher educational levels because of health care debt, or if you're sick and need to go to class and tough through it but you're not really learning anything, and so on, which leads to a major workforce in base level production and a minor class who has access to this education;

(c) an increase in overworking people - meaning that we have a lot of people taking on several jobs to be able to pay for things like health care, which increases the competitiveness between people, making individualism levels go up and breaking up human beings' natural sense of community.

I could also talk here about how this breeds isolation and increases the potential for mental health problems but I think you got what I was saying.

On the other hand, we have the Brazilian health care system (SUS), which is a universal gratuitous medical care service through the whole country. Its purpose is not profit, it's providing health care for the community, so therefore, any SUS unit is bound by State law and run by the State. By law, every SUS unit must provide for anyone who enters its premises in need of medical care. Everyone, Brazillian and foreigners, poor or rich, must be treated if they need to. It's the law.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's all rainbows and flowers, there are definitely many problems in SUS. However, what I'm trying to showcase here is that, when the needs of a population are met, the population itself is more resilient, their life quality goes up and so does their participation in their community.

On the other hand, in neoliberalism, when the State is absent from these areas of community service, the market is, in theory, the one providing for the community. In practice, however, what we observe from neoliberal policies in cities with a great poor population in Latam for example, is that when the State doesn't provide for the community, the market is unable to step up for them because of their obscene prices.

The poor population that doesn't have their needs met by the State or the market sees a great boom in criminal activities within their spaces. That's mainly why criminal organizations are so present in slums and favelas throughout Latin America: criminal organizations are a way for the community to provide for themselves and, as a means to become more powerful, they provide for the community in exchange for their services (not to say they do that for the good of their hearts, of course not).

It's why it's so common, for example, that criminal organizations such as PCC in Brazil pay for kids from favelas to undergo Law school, for example.

And that's is where I wanted to go to start the conversation in SOC: one of the main traits of Ketterdam is the Barrel and, in the Barrel, we have the presence of many criminal organizations, such as the Dregs, the Dime Lions, the Menagerie staff (not the girls, ofc), etcetera.

This, as observed by Kaz himself, is one of the only ways to survive on the Barrel - you filiate yourself to a gang because you need to be able to provide for yourself and, more times than others, for your family as well.

Kaz's story is actually a perfect example of how Ketterdam is the representation of America in the early 20th century in full policies of laissez-faire (neoliberalism): as we can see in Titanic and many other historical fictions, the said American Dream had people believing the US to be this economical paradise where they could all enter the market and become millionaires.

The result of it is the Great Depression, of course, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

When Kaz and Jodi leave Lij for Ketterdam, Jodi believes he'll become a merchant - which is a pretty common belief of those who arrive at Ketterdam, as Pekka Rollins and Kaz himself state in Crooked Kingdom.

The reality of it, though, is much harsher, because the truth is that when you have a market that controls everything, as we see in Ketterdam with the Merchant's Guild (I think that's how it's translated?) and the Stadwatch as a police force, you see perfectly how neoliberal policies really work in real life:

You have a higher class who controls the market and the riches (question: who do you think got the money Shu Han sent to Ketterdam at the beginning of the first book: the people of the city/country or the merchants in the "government"?), and a lower class that, without support from the State or the market to have their needs met will turn to their own means to do so.

So you have the trafficking that brought Inej to the island, the unlimited gambling that Jesper was trapped in, the cons Jodi and Kaz fell for - it's all product of liberal policies.

And so, you have Ketterdam and its neoliberal policies (:

(I really love to make this kind of analysis, please, if you have something you want me to talk about, don't hesitate to ask)

[shithowdy]

Your tags on the 'hormones' post are illuminating! I can only imagine how hard it is to keep desperate, entitled people from hurting themselves when their need is so high for help but their finances (or reluctance to trust Big Medicine) relegate them to seeking that help from supplements. It's kind of how I feel about pet products: I was the lead on customer care for a Big Brand for like 4 years and I'm scarred for life. All that to say, your viewpoint on it is one I tend to look for when I see those essential oils/vitamin/fad supplements posts come around so thanks for sharing!

Yeah, even when they can be really self-righteous and weird about it, it's hard to not still think of people deep in the alternative medicine bog as victims. Despite largely being a monetary grift that at best does very little and at worst poisons you, miracle supplements are still an accessible grift to most people. In America particularly where healthcare is hidden behind not just financial but often also bureaucratic barriers, it's easy to lose faith in the system and turn to something that promises to fix what ails you and all you have to do is drive to the crunchy grocery store once a month and pay them $50.

Of course, the people refusing to regulate dietary supplements are the exact same ones refusing to do anything about the medical insurance industry, cashing out on both ends of the problem. It takes complete advantage of how many hurdles you have to go through by design, and that doesn't even touch on the shaky faith many minorities have in particular surrounding medicine for completely different systematic and legislative failures. Historic trauma (from James Sims' experiments, to Tuskegee, to Henrietta Lacks, and everything in between) combined with an enduring and overwhelming dismissal by doctors regarding symptoms has sown mistrust in pharmaceutical medicine among many black americans, leaving their communities particularly vulnerable to miracle cure grifts (irish sea moss is a big one right now). The proliferation of wellness MLMs among church congregations also helps to easily seed these beliefs in many minority communities, where community pressure is high and language/economic barriers make researching the claims a hurdle itself.

We often think of gaunt white women with birkenstocks and an ominous rictus as who mostly falls into the alternative wellness pit but that's honestly because they're usually the ones selling it on social media. Their audience, the ones who came to me showing me their tiktoks and asking if I sold this miracle pill, were largely minorities over 50 years old, usually women. The people who slip through the medical cracks the most.

And like... it's not going to change unless the process of getting proper healthcare stops being the arcane fucking ritual it's become, and education for doctors of all economic classes becomes more accessible. And unfortunately, as I post this on Jan 21 2025, I know it will only get worse before it gets better.

[ceescedasticity]

Not gonna reblog the thread but—

Speaking as a progressive educated American, I think progressive educated Americans are steered towards excusing bafflingly ignorant Americans as products of a poor education system because

The education system is extremely varied and some schools (and home-schooling) are in fact that terrible.

Not being ignorant could be interpreted as a privilege and you shouldn't blame people for not having a privilege.

If you write people off as willfully ignorant and/or stupid you will alienate them and hurt their feelings and you'll lose the chance to win them over and we need all the support we can get.

If the problem is the education system that's a problem you can fix. If the problem is a large swathe of voters in your democracy are willfully ignorant and/or stupid and you can't fix this… then what?

Many things that Americans have evidently claimed not to have been taught in school were definitely taught in my school. Some things Americans have evidently claimed not to have been taught in school I'm really not sure how they could have avoided learning even if actively seeking to preserve ignorance.

Deep down in my heart where I incessantly correct grammar and write scathing fic summary reviews and worry about my feelings only, I think these people are stupid and/or willfully ignorant and I wish they'd shut up forever and preferably go away.

But the party line is to smile and blame the education system and there are solid reasons for that.

[mermaidsirennikita]

i don't understand what these people are complaining about (american) media nowadays is so sexlsss why is everybody complaining about smut and spice and sex scenes?? genuinely what are they talking about because i have no clue.

btw i understand the disscusion is about about but i'm saying in general because i see these comments about tv and movies the most and lol...where?

I meant to respond to this earlier but don't wanna miss it entirely!!

But honestly, I think the issue is that America

a) America is founded not only on Protestantism but radical Protestantism to a degree that many countries aren't; and this gave way to what would eventually become the evangelical Christianity that we see today

and I'm not saying "all Christians bad" here; I am a Christian. As with virtually any religion, you have your really intense pockets, your more progressive ones, etc. But I think people often go "it's Christianity" when looking to why America is the way it is, when like. Yeah, but there's a huge difference between Catholicism (and even different types of Catholicism within that) and Protestantism. And then there's a huge difference between different times of Protestantism—evangelical Christians have a different experience than Presbyterians who believe in predestination (which is antithetical to conversion), PCA Presbysterians are different from PCUSA Presbyterians, and so on

but I do think that because America was founded by splinter group Christianity, it's really not that surprising that the Christians who've risen to dominate much of our cultural conversations are extremists who believe in bringing others into the fold, or rather, FORCING THEM. basically, America was a breeding ground for White Christian Nationalists from the jump, and those Christians want everyone to be afraid of sex because a fear of sex makes it easier for you to control women (think about the innocent women!), queer people (branded as perverts), and people of color (sexualized and fetishized to dehumanize)

b) America is a very young country; so not only was our nation born of radical religion, it also hasn't had as much time to work itself towards secularism. I mean, a lot of these "secular utopia" nations in Europe (spoiler: it's way more complicated than that) have also existed for longer, and have certainly been through their extreme phases

But yeah, it's honestly all gonna come down to racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, and where these people have really succeeded is in getting the younger gen to jump on board. It's actually more specific than "all of Gen Z"; it's the younger half of Gen Z especially. My sister is Gen Z and is as left as the day is long, but a kid maybe five years younger than her may be quite different. And the conservatives here have succeeded in dismantling our education system, and we're now seeing people who are the products of that system. No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2002. We're seeing the trickle down results. We have a bunch of people in this country who don't question what they're being fed, and then we have a right wing that, on top of all that, have learned how to weaponize progressive thinking for their own benefit.

So while older people still might be all "THOSE GIRLS ON THE TV ARE SLUTS", the younger people will go "omg, this consensual R-rated sex scene supervised by an intimacy coordinator is exploitative". They've been warped into believing that sex is bad and they must save the world (the women especially) from it.

And I mean, I don't think it helps that between the pandemic, these cultural shifts, general intense depression as a people, and technology encouraging antisocial behavior, a lot of younger people of all genders are, according to some surveys, not fucking.

They don't ACT like they're fucking, at least online.

It's also COMPLETELY FINE to not be fucking, btw. Totally natural at any age if that's what's right for YOU. But I think we have a decent amount of people who want to be out there, don't know HOW to get out there, have not developed social independence or really a lot of social skills, have a tendency to pass the buck tbh (.... I'm gonna connect this to being unwilling to make a phone call at 22 tbh ...) which makes it everyone else's problem, and lump all of that onto all the other issues and... you have a completely warped concept of sexuality.

Which is then weaponized by the right.

But yeah dude American media is like, the least sexy it's been in a long fucking time. At least when it comes to movies and TV. And I wonder. If that. Has anything. To do. With more people reading hot books.........

[incesthemes]

since you asked me this question for wincest wednesday...what are YOUR headcanons on the boys' knowledge of languages? :o

YES THANK YOU!!!!!! :) i love talking about languages and supernatural and languages in supernatural

so when i first watched through the show, i actually had a pretty extensive list of languages i thought they would have reasonably acquired some knowledge on:

classical languages (latin, classical greek)

native north american languages (particularly of the siouan and uto-aztecan variety, and navajo, all for geographical reasons)

some modern italic languages (spanish, french, italian, etc), maybe less so modern germanic languages

some old norse (mainly via the two eddas)

some japanese, picked up later in the series and mostly by dean (to honor bobby's memory)

some other ancient or dead languages (aramaic, sumerian, old english, etc)

a very small spattering of enochian, whatever is available for humans to learn

american sign language (sam only)

my reasoning for this was for practical reasons: these are the languages of the cultures that the monsters they hunt originate from, and so the lore is going to be accessible only or predominantly through those languages. especially later in the series, you see them interacting with non-english texts quite often (whether or not they know the languages in question is up to that episode writer's whims, i guess, continuity be damned). i also like the interpretation of both sam and dean as being highly self-educated, and since they're both rather serious about hunting, this would be a natural extension of the knowledge they'd need to acquire to actually excel in their work. for this headcanon, i really like dean being more practical in his knowledge of languages and sam being more academic because it aligns with their areas of specialty in hunting :3

HOWEVER, when i started my rewatch, i also watched the pilot commentary with eric kripke, and he said something very striking to me:

Blue collar, low tech guys and their weaponry should be blue collar, greasy, worn down. It's always been really important to me. I'm mean—I'm just—I'm from a small town in Ohio, and you know, it's always been important to me that these guys just be, you know, Motorheads... and... love classic rock... and know how to handle a chainsaw, and that was to me, more interesting than—spells and magic. And... even to this day in the writer's room they always bring that stuff up, and I'm always like, 'Forget it! Where are the chainsaws?'

it's very obvious in the final product that this was the intention of course, and as i continued to watch i kept this vision in mind. there are three things that have stood out to me since then:

in 1x04, sam tells dean that "christo" is latin for god. it's actually greek (for christ, not god), and it would also be in the wrong declension, which could imply that sam actually isn't really familiar with greek or latin. this could imply that sam is actually just parroting something he's been told in the past (probably by john), without actually knowing it himself

in 2x04, dean flips through a book in ancient greek, and later when they dig up angela's coffin, they find more greek lettering on the inside. dean calls the letters "symbols" which could imply he's not familiar enough with greek to even know what kind of writing system it has, or to recognize greek writing for what it is. sam, too, seems equally baffled at the "symbols"

in 5x05, sam interviews a hispanic woman in somewhat awkward spanish. when dean asks about it, sam replies "freshman spanish," meaning he hasn't learned beyond a freshman, introductory level of the language, and that he learned it through formal education rather than on his own

these moments are super important to me because they really cut through the idea that sam and dean have extensive or even moderate training in foreign languages. instead, they paint the picture of rather sheltered kids who were largely kept away from the world or only limited in their exposure. i imagine, from this, that john was the one who did most of the research on their hunts, and if sam or dean participated they were relegated to controlled, prescribed roles. especially from the 1x04 example, i can extrapolate that they probably haven't examined the information they've been given too deeply; it implies a level of blind trust in john's skill, to the extent that sam isn't even aware of what language he's speaking in to reveal a demon.

as a result my most up-to-date headcanon is that sam and dean both grew up entirely monolingual, and that they didn't actually even start acquiring new languages (sam's freshman spanish exempted) until their network was cut out from under them (bobby's death and then garth's disappearance) and they found the bunker, with its myriad resources to research and study and its stability to house a library for those purposes. before then, i can see them picking up on very minor latin, like a few words here and there, but not actively pursuing any of this learning until they were forced to learn it themselves. what languages they know or how deep their knowledge goes is wildly contradictory in canon so that means i can do whatever i want, which is exactly the point where i wrap back around into my initial headcanon and start adding those languages back into their bunker era repertoire of skills.

(for the record i do generally have opinions about how much they each know of each of those languages and where their strengths in language learning lie, because i think WAY too much about this)

to my own dismay (as a lover of languages and linguistics), i've found this interpretation to be much more in-line with kripke's vision of the show, whether or not the more subtle details were intentional or not (seriously, who on the set of this show decided on "christo," i NEED to know). It also gives an interesting dimension to their early life as being highly sheltered and isolated and kept away from the hunting life while simultaneously being inescapably part of it.

this is a really long way of saying "monolinguals," but in my defense i've been building this interpretation and headcanon for nearly a year straight now. because i pay way too much undue attention to the use of language in supernatural.

[zeze-mp3]

friendly reminder that this is how the american education system works:

Chemistry - B - 86.5%

Spanish 1A - A - 92.6%

Video Production - A - 93.5%

Health 2 - B - 83%

Statistics - C - 79.5%

Marketing - A - 95.8%

Sports History - F - 55%

English - C - 76.8%

TLDR: get your shit together our society is shit and the cut off for a failing grade shouldn't be 50-60%

full thing below ↓

If you're American, l probably wondering why tf this matters. I remember a long while ago reading a Tumblr thread of a bunch of people from Europe and I believe even a person from Brazil being absolutely horrified that 50% or 60% = F. Y'know why? Because it's bullshit. If you succeeded with 50-60% of the material, you didn't fail. The grading system is fucked. The entire education system is idiotic and I guarantee everyone here that I could fix it. Our education was made to pump out factory workers, and despite the very small miniscule changes that have been made, the system is stuck. The cogs are rusty and they need replacing. The entire idea of grading is outdated and doesn't work. We are a society based around reward and punishment, but most of all our society based on capitalism is falling apart. Kids are having a constant unending pressure of the idea of needing to work to make money to survive, I watch my 66 year old grandmother riddled with anxiety and depression and undiagnosed autism struggling everyday because she works 5 days a week and is bullied in the workplace. But this is the only thing she knows, it's engrained in her mind that she must work until she is dying from pain both physical and mental until she gets paid so she can continue to maybe just for one more month live comfortably in the middle class. And so I return to education, and all I can think is the rational fear of bad grades because society tells you that if you get bad grades you won't go to college and college is vital for your success and if you don't go to college you will end up becoming a depressing houseless meth head. But I can tell you right now that you can succeed without college and you can become a houseless meth head even if you're successful. And who set that system up? Who's going to give housing and rehabilitation resources to the houseless meth head? We are the new generation we are the change we can change. We can change the education system to help students flourish, like in finland. I don't want to be cringe but generation z is the end of an era and generation alpha is the beginning of another and I don't care if there's millennials or generation betas that want "in" because if you are willing to be apart of the change then you can be the change. That's my cringe thesis about the future generation. If my children have to live with the crushing weight and pressure to succeed I'm going to have a fucking problem. Put your heads back on and send a letter to congress, sign petitions, protest, become informed because unfortunately it's all on us at this point.

[ballet-symphonie]

what's the deal with joy womack ? I got into ballet after the whole scandal at the bolshoi and i've always heard bad things about her but I don't really know the story. Also she apparently lied about her position at POB?

Ooof I'll try to do the quick version based on what I remember, she is basically one drama after another, she tends to...misrepresent information. She left BT after saying she had to pay or even sleep with someone to get soloist parts. This was disputed by some, and confirmed by others.

After she went to work i the Kremlin Ballet Theatre of Moscow, she became a leading soloist with them, despite often calling herself a principal. There was some tension here as she was making vlogs filming class despite her coworkers asking her not to and occasionally sharing some no-so-nice information about her coworkers, things got messy when she divorced her ex and she left, even after she got promoted to principal.

After Kremlin, she won a prize at Varna in 2017, did some unsuccessful company auditions, and did short stints at Universal Ballet in Korea and guesting around Bulgaria and Poland. At one point she was going back Russian State Theatre Arts Ballet Pedagogy and Choreography (GITIS) for higher education in pedagogy. She has repeatedly expressed disdain for both the American and Russian systems, and there is a lot of speculation that this, along with her desire to be a principal *asap* hindered her career.

She was at Boston Ballet for a short period, but didn't like the setup, said she preferred being in Russian/European companies where they provided more individual coaching and often more benefits (housing) and with low layoffs...yet she has also repeatedly complained about the low pay/exchange rate when she was working in Russia. She left here when COVID happened.

After trying a couple of times, I believe she got a "contractuelle" position at POB, where you're generally hired for specific productions (eg, something with a huge corps, or for a specific choreographic nice that a dancer excels in). POB, with its extremely involved hiring and promotion systems/competitions, takes a while to move dancers into the corps sometimes. I'm not sure if she was offered a corps contract and didn't take it, or didn't get one, but regardless, she's no longer working with POB.

And now, if you go to her website she's starting a foundation and a school and company....? This is in addition to her freelancing around and the project prima bars that I think no longer exist and some film work. She's just a lotttttt and does not portray herself as the most self-aware or humble person.

As far as my personal interactions with her go, I know she came to audition at my company before I started my professional career and was not accepted. I took a couple classes with her in NYC by chance, the diva attitude was overtly present.

I didn't do much googling here, of course open to corrections of this mass of speculation

[street-corn]

January 29th, 2024 marks the 28th anniversary of the Star Trek Voyager episode "Threshold." This episode is often heralded as one of the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made and I've previously made the observation that everyone seems to dislike the episode for entirely novel reasons. While it's easy to predict that someone will dislike the episode, I find that the exact reason why can only be found by asking. Is it how it ruins established cannon? Is it the bad scientific understanding of how evolution works? Is it plot related as the crew avoids using an easy way home? Is it the poor parenting? Is it dialog and writing? Is it the lizard sex? There's usually a mix of reasons that I suspect one could use as the basis of Some Kind Of MBTI quiz.

However, rather than reveling in the episode itself, I want to address a bigger issue of how Star Trek fandom approaches its "worst ever episodes" lists that are a mere Bing search away. Too often I see episodes like Move Along Home (aka Allamaraine!) and Threshold at the top of "worst ever episodes" lists and I think its lazy or disingenuous to let these episodes dominate the conversation. Sure, the episodes are cheesy or campy, but they distract from the genuinely terrible episodes. The episodes that celebrate human rights violations, the episodes that propagate white supremacy, the episodes that teach the audience the wrong lesson, or the episodes that can cause physical discomfort to the audience. I would like to shine a light on a few of these episodes so we can properly discuss what it means to be a bad episode of Star Trek.

Tattoo Tattoo is an absolutely rotten episode. It's drizzled with misinformation and misconceptions about indigenous Americans. It states that indigenous people didn't have language, fire, and barely had any stone tool use (and implies they were too stupid to not migrate away from the cold.) So aliens, depicted as tall and strong, with blonde hair and blue eyes, taught them the basics of human civilization because there was no way this particular group of humans could figure it out on their own.

The Fight This episode is painful to watch. It's all of the worst parts about the Prophets of DS9 but without any allegory. It ruins cannon by making Boothby the Most Important Human To Ever Live. The episode, while late into the production of Voyager, continues the vision quest aspect of Chakotay, which ties it back to Tattoo. While not as offensive as other entries, it is worth putting on a list of actual bad episodes.

Cogenitor The NX-1 Enterprise meets some aliens with three genders. 98% of them are male and female but they also require a third gender to procreate, called the cogenitor. The cogenitors are kept as second class citizens. Their lives are owned by the state and their bodies are traded around to married couples that want to have children. They cannot own property, cannot vote, cannot socialize, are forbidden to become educated or literate, and are forced to wear gray drab clothing. Trip Tucker sees this and thinks its wrong. He teaches a cogenitor how to read. Unfortunately, the cogenitor uses this new skill to learn how oppressed their life is and how they are trapped in a system that cannot change, so they end their own life. Trip Tucker is treated as the villain of this episode. Gross.

Skin of Evil and Tears of the Prophets I'm bundling these episodes together because of their poor treatment of women and actresses behind the scenes. From a plot and writing perspective they do not treat their characters well. They can be summed up as "WTF moments." Behind the scenes it's extra terrible. From writing this I found out something fun and new…

Retrospect This is the episode where Tom Paris is convicted of murder and has to relive the memories of the murder over and over again. Behind the scenes, a certain producer was trying to spin that "women lie and never believe them about sexual assault allegations" while contract negotiations with Terry Farrel were going on. The plot is interesting, but the lessons the episode is trying to teach are wrong.

There are many other well known episodes that involve obvious racism and mistreatment of women, and I think they should make up the entirety of Star Trek's worst episode lists. But bundling campy and cheesy episodes like "Let He Who Is Without Sin…", "Sub Rosa", "The Way To Eden", and "Threshold" with the likes of "Code Of Honor" and "Turnabout Intruder" really confuses what it means to be a truly, awful, no good episode of television.

Anyways, let's watch some salamanders eat pepperoni pizza.

[calliesmemes]

SUFFS: THE MUSICAL

ASSORTED SENTENCE STARTERS pulled from the Tony award winning production SUFFS, a new Broadway musical about the decades-long Suffrage movement and the fight to secure women’s’ rights to vote amidst the turbulence of the First World War.

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

CONTENT WARNINGS include misogyny and swearing.

ACT ONE

❛ Welcome, gentlemen! ❜

❛ God bless the land of freedom we hold dear. ❜

❛ We'll tidy up our politics until they are pristine. ❜

❛ Don't we deserve a little prize? ❜

❛ Don't worry, it's all right. ❜

❛ Just hold your fury in. ❜

❛ That’s the only way we can win. ❜

❛ Don't get so defensive; don't be so aggressive. ❜

❛ I don't wanna be a meek little one in games they play. ❜

❛ I wanna march in the streets. ❜

❛ Should I try to take the lead alone? ❜

❛ My ideas just dwindle and die. ❜

❛ Will I truly be able to change the world? ❜

❛ I’ll be there on the day when we finally finish the fight. ❜

❛ What's the emergency? ❜

❛ How will we do it when it's never been done? ❜

❛ How will we find the way where there isn't one? ❜

❛ That was a great speech. ❜

❛ When we take on a tyrant, we burn him down. ❜

❛ That’s not leadership; it’s cowardice. ❜

❛ I'm so sick of rhetoric with no action to back it. ❜

❛ When we show up, we show up for all of us. ❜

❛ I’ve never felt so alive before. ❜

❛ I feel a part of something bigger than me. ❜

❛ I feel my word about to change. ❜

❛ I'm a great American bitch. ❜

❛ I'd rather be right than rich. ❜

❛ I seduce whoever I please. ❜

❛ Come on, we'll do it together, get up.. ❜

❛ I must honor the promises of my campaign. ❜

❛ Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. ❜

❛ We'll be glad to educate you. ❜

❛ Will I feel like a failure no matter what choice I make? ❜

❛ If I don't give my all to my calling, I'll never be able to forgive myself. ❜

❛ If we were married, I promise to cherish you just as a gentleman should. ❜

❛ You've got to admire the ease with which men can squeeze us into such a rigid role. Daughters are taught to aspire to a system expressly designed to keep them under control. ❜

❛ Don't let her get to your head, focus on your speech instead. ❜

❛ What was I thinking enabling her? ❜

❛ What if she ruins what I’ve been mounting for years? ❜

❛ You just publicly implied I'm a disloyal disgrace. ❜

❛ If you have something to say, say it to my face. ❜

❛ Why are you fighting me? I am not the enemy. ❜

❛ I want us to meet someone. ❜

❛ You really put the rage in suffrage. ❜

❛ I’ve got a surprise; close your eyes. ❜

❛ It feels like we’re right back at the start. ❜

❛ Too bad for them, they're up against a queen with a spine of steel. ❜

❛ You are the bravest person I've ever met. ❜

❛ Don't you wanna face the villain down and demolish him? ❜

❛ They ought to be frightened of you and me. ❜

❛ Dammit! Why are you the only person I can never turn down? ❜

❛ We'll hold a rally first thing. ❜

❛ Don't you think we've waited long enough? ❜

❛ I need to plan a memorial fit for a queen. ❜

❛ I used to wish I could be in her shoes. ❜

ACT TWO

❛ We rose up in defiance, yes we chose to risk it all. ❜

❛ The old way always dies. ❜

❛ I may not be a great man, but I am a man who upholds his vows. ❜

❛ You will sit down, shut up, and eat your food. ❜

❛ Hold it together; see it through. ❜

❛ Don't let despair get the best of you. ❜

❛ What a coward you’ve become. ❜

❛ Fight your own war. ❜

❛ You promised me we would burn him down. ❜

❛ What have they done to you?! ❜

❛ Decades of defiance take their toll. ❜

❛ God, I wish I had her courage. ❜

❛ All rumors in the press are entirely false. ❜

❛ You're deep in pain, you feel insane, and no one can talk you off the ledge. But that's exactly how those crooked kings want you to feel. ❜

❛ I know I’m intense — It's just how I cope in a world that's gone crazy. ❜

❛ All I've ever wanted is to change things for the better. ❜

❛ Is it so insane to want my own choice? ❜

❛ it's time we burn him down. ❜

❛ Thank you for finally sharing a cup of tea with me. ❜

❛ Who cares who gets the credit or the blame? What matters is the work gets done. ❜

❛ I know you think I'm this arrogant kid, but I've just always known it's my calling to see this movement through. ❜

❛ I feel like a parent made to reprimand my child. ❜

❛ I'm so tired of fighting. ❜

❛ God, how I wish we could really be wed. ❜

❛ I'm proud of you. ❜

❛ Even when you drove me to my wits end, the best thing I've ever been is your friend. ❜

❛ I won’t live to see the future that I fight for. ❜

❛ Progress is possible, not guaranteed. ❜

❛ You’ll rarely agree with whoever’s in charge. ❜

❛ The future demands that we fight for it now. ❜

[transfemme-shelterdog]

I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because you're not American, and thus are less educated on or aware of the history of low voter turnout in this country and how much of it is a product of poorly protected voter's rights and a system that is hostile to voters, especially marginalized voters. Without even taking into account the reasons for voter apathy.

Redistricting and gerrymandering is a big part of the problem, where districts lines are drawn specifically to work against left-leaning voter demographics, whether to ensure that the electoral goes to the right or where physically massive/populated districts only have a handful of polling locations that can often be impossible for voters to realistically reach.

To say nothing of the fact that voting is done on a single weekday and a lot of workers are unable to leave work to go in to vote, legally or illegally, or cannot afford the transportation to polling stations (combined with poor public transit nationwide), or the polling station is so overly packed that they're unable to spend the many many hours there to get their vote in for all kinds of reasons (have children and unable to get childcare, unable to take that much time off work because work only allows x amount of time out, cannot afford the pay dock for not working, etc). The identification required for voting can also be prohibitive to the act of voting, as you need your state's ID in order to vote within that state, and for anyone who moves frequently or recently moved, can end up being barred from voting, and getting new identification costs money (for the ID itself, transportation, time, etc). I specifically fell into this latter-most category as I moved states shortly before voting occurred and was unable to update my identification in time to be registered within my state, so I was not allowed to vote.

Many of these systems act specifically against marginalized voters: low-income workers, Americans of color, single parents or low-income parents, the list goes on, but it works against all voters in some way, shape, or form. This system is decades, if not centuries in the making, and is done by design since the inception of this country.

Americans taking the moral high ground of "Just go out and vote" make little effort to make it easier to vote--organizing carpooling to get people to the polls, pooling money together to aid those financially, arranging childcare services, etc.,--is something we already have to deal with, much less people from outside the country. I find it difficult to believe Canadians, Europeans, etc would have given a single dollar to an American asking for donations so they could get to the polls to vote, but would still take on a position of superiority over how things turned out.

Hell the DNC could have spent less time asking for donations to line their pockets and more time funding efforts to get voters to the polls but alas the democratic party is worse than useless and are far more responsible for how things turned out than the people who didn't or couldn't show up to vote.

Ok. Thanks for the info.

[pattern-recognition]

re:the brutalism post, what do you mean when you say "the landscape" of the US? My interpretation is that you're talking in terms of literal landmass and how populations are dispersed, so I'm confused about why that'd present a more significant barrier to successful socialist organizing in the US than it did in other, larger countries like China or Russia that have seen successful large-scale socialist/communist movements. I don't mean this as a gotcha - I really don't feel that I'm educated enough to know why it might be notably different in the US.

Where i was going with that post before it evolved into a discourse about brutalism, which i never really intended, was towards the atomization of American social life. More so than any aesthetics of architecture form and what they mean, I was motioning towards the ways in which the built landscape in the US is specifically designed to isolate people, dehumanize them, and make living as hard as possible for people without the privileges of wealth. The most obvious example is the homelessness crisis and car based infrastructure. it’s true that there are more empty homes in the US than there are homeless people, but even then those homes are of the most deleterious type, even compared to other capitalist nations like Francs, Britain, etc. American zoning laws, in most cities, eschew affordable high-rise apartment buildings for single family, two story at most, housing that forces people into having a vested interest, wether they like it or not, in capitalist real-estate speculation through mortgages and whatnot. The phenomenon of suburbia in the United Stated was specifically an anti-communist one and heavily parallels the Wehrbauer system in Nazi Germany. The latter, should it have come to fruition fallowing Gerneralplan Ost (the mass genocide of all eastern european peoples and subsequent resettlement of eastern europe by Germanic colonizers) would have been structured around a system of semi self reliant small business owners and peasants (and I use this word in the Marxian sense, as in small land owners in control of their own means of production) who would act as a bulwark against both physical reprisals by freedom fighters (the Wehrbauers were intended to be heavily armed) as well as an ideological one because communities where everyone is a petit bourgeois would be resistant to Marxist agitation. The parallels to contemporary American suburbs, as well as the settlement and colonization of the west through manifest destiny, should be obvious.

[blackoutfeverdream]

Why do people accept information uncritically?

I do believe it's their education- not only in priming them to be receptive to any perceived authority without interrogation but especially to gravitate toward whatever information gratifies a specific emotional and cognitive bias.

All education has this basic shape because the child's national culture reflects and is given contour by what the child will be taught. School is socialization first

hence why there's an obvious correspondence between academic success and respect for authority in the main.

There is no paucity of inspired rebels

but really, most people in a position of authority are masterful obedience school graduates.

Society chooses to reward this behavior with a mechanical system that seeks to reduce knowledge to an absolute Platonic Truth- questions come with right answers and the questions are right because the people who give out jobs and manufacture the answers say they are.

And the value of these questions and answers comes with a measurable price tag of a salary instead of any import to the world or even the self.

And this is a serious problem. Because respect for education is in justifiable implosion in this country.

Look what it manufactures.

I excelled academically and was persecuted and brutalized for it because

well

I was weird. I was trans and insane and the victim of things people refused to believe so I manufactured an entire delusional universe in my head instead and people believed that

so it stayed for far too long.

But a functioning psychotic negotiated that system with straight 4.0s, APs, dual enrollment

all without even thinking. It was ritualism- I knew how to fill in the answers because I was intellectually curious but if I hadn't loved books so much I would've been a dropout.

The people it produces are failures

the people it disappoints are failures

education is a failure. A society's government is a reflection of its people: Either its willingness to tolerate out of laziness and fear or its resolution always toward betterment.

Well we can see what kind of society we have.

Form

over

meaning.

So long as we vote, the whole Democratic Party lies down as if there isn't reason for the military to get involved not as a coup but as a countercoup. But no.

Because your stupidity is more important than the integrity of the country.

Your stupidity makes this system possible.

I'm stupid, too. My god- the things I didn't get to develop. The lies and decisions made without any presence of mind I see now in the third-person and scream and the cumulative horrorshow of my neverending insanity.

So why do people believe what they read on the internet?

Because it has the same shape as what's peddled as knowledge.

It touches cognitive bias made at formative age and never contradicted because education invariably dictates economic circumstance and access to education even in this compromised basal state is decided by what?

Closed cycles of intellectual and economic poverty widen by demography inevitability as capitalism just consolidates the idea of wealth in smaller and denser glaciers.

But their numbers are larger.

There was no plan in this country.

To believe in a conspiracy is magical thinking. No one started this with any specific intent to make Americans stupid.

On some level, oil company executives aren't caricatures: They're not really trying to burn the world whole

it's just their product does it and their education has taught them injustice is all right as long as a dollar comes from it.

Jeff Bezos probably doesn't salivate over how much he abuses his workforce. He just does it anyway because it's acceptable.

So does everything else to most everyone else.

So why do they believe what they read on the internet, even if it has a performative common language and form with what's ostensibly rebellious? Because they have a need for a specific emotional bias turned by circumstance but intellectually the same.

Conservatives tend to be angrier

they're dumber.

Anger makes people stupid.

I'm angry a lot. I'm a fucking moron in that state but it's my periods of tranquil lucidity I apply to productive ends.

But their anger doesn't get to stop.

Even here, if you're curious, watch the arc of angry people- socially more self-limiting, intellectually even more biased, and emotionally spiraling toward extremes.

Some of them clearly excel at the pretentious form of academics but they don't really have the ability to think past facile nostra that have no connection to reality

and that's much more MAGA than we give them credit for.

It's time to start treating knowledge without any bias, accessible to all thinking, as the cornerstone of a new social culture.

I don't mean an anything-goes libertarian society- I mean a sincere openness to interrogation of everything, every value, every ideal, every stricture because hollow ritualism has brought us to this point.

It could have gone any way

it still could.

At this point, Donald Trump could have a stroke and we might get socialized medicine out of it because he'll suddenly start speaking in Progressive glossolalia.

But it's unlikely.

We need to question how valuable our education even is when it produces this kind of authority.

And we especially need to question each other.

Social pressure can't substitute for thought anymore.

Nothing can.

What's interesting is that when you delve into a field and you develop a comparative and interdisciplinary familiarity with a subject, you're much more receptive to questions.

Self-doubt is something people close to the margins can't afford. It's the product of comfort.

We need people to be comfortable with knowledge again. I don't believe anyone is born stupid. That is a constructed atrophy.

We need an open society again

one that values wisdom and progress and it's really very simple.

We just have to show it and teach our children. It won't happen on the internet.

You don't really need a violence-in-the-street kind of revolution. Most changes that look like cataclysm in retrospect passed unmarked but certainly noticed by most people.

Just be good.

Think.

Accept that the discussion of ideas isn't a form of violence- that to ask a question isn't to insult or demean but seek another's perspective and maybe have an earnest exchange of understandings on the subject. Quite possibly a new better synthesis can form without the belief in a zero-sum economics of knowledge as owned and politically possessed and ideas as changeless ideals out of pride or personal attachment.

It isn't a novel idea. It's Socraticism. That's galaxies better than the vapid march of Prussian education.

It's more labor-intensive but so what? Education doesn't need to water itself down to expand; it needs to be exalted as a vital field.

Fire all the teachers in America right now.

I mean all of them, pre-K through postdoctoral fellows.

They need to be retrained

society needs to be replumbed.

Their talents won't disappear: Their passions need to be given worthy application.

Ours do.

The smarter people are, the more civil they are, also. Society just will be comfortable. It will be better.

People won't just believe whatever.

And there will be no place for oil executives.

[realjaysumlin]

Let's talk dollars and cents worth making sense to start building our own wealth within the Black Africans by doing a lot of things together from all parts of the world. I'm going to go over a lot of stuff here and I do hope you participate in this discussion because it changes everything for all of us.

First, let me start by the currency exchange rates which is more important than getting into the process of joint venturing together. I'm going to use the Ghana GHS versus the USD. $100.00 American Dollars estimated value is almost at a 10 to 1 ratio and sometimes it's even more. But I sent $100.00 today after 2:00 central time zone USA which is 7:00 PM in Ghana and the recipient received 1200.00 Cedis, which is the currency in Ghana Africa.

Instead of buying designer brands who are not giving us anything back to us but making racist ideologies directed towards all Black Indigenous People globally, we don't need to be spending our hard earned money with them, we should be making our own shit.

Africa is the youngest continent in the world with the average age of 25 years old. There are more educated people who are unemployed in Africa right now and we need to start putting these people to work, which is something that we can easily do.

Africa has the best seamstress and tailors in the world and we can get them to make anything for us. The best exotic hides can be found in Africa better and cheaper than any place on earth. If you want handbags made out of the best exotic skins and dyes Africa is the best option we have on earth.

The African People themselves are the most honest and nicest people you will ever meet. It's really the bad attitude Black Indigenous People who come to Africa with their brainwashed stereotypes about Africa. I have seen this so many times when I go back and forth.

First of all the American educational system is inferior to Africa, a child in Africa middle school is on the average of a second year college level compared to the Americans. You are out of your league if you think you are smarter than an African child and you don't have a college degree.

These beautiful children speak on the average of three languages compared to most of you that only speak one and if you think you are better than a Nigerian when it comes to cleverness? You are better off to make yourself a student to a 10 year old Nigerian child, you are no match on their level of education, even though Nigerians do have a sense of arrogance and high opinions and you don't want to get in a debate with a Nigerian, because you are surely going to win.

All that aside, Africa needs money coming in from those of us who live outside of Africa with higher currency exchange rates. We should be importing cash into Africa and they will be exporting products that we can sell here for profit.

The labor is cheaper in Africa just like in Asia but we need to focus on manufacturing stuff in Africa to be exported out to the UK and America. We can do this and I hope you will take the time to talk about this together because we don't need anyone but ourselves.

[digitalisnarcissus]

My problem with "they didn't teach us this in school" Americans is rarely what the American school system did or did not teach.

Yeah it's kinda worrying that you left school thinking that Alaska was an island or not knowing what a Poland is, but you're an adult!

You should not still be reacting with shock, anger, and dismay to every new piece of information because your one time education was not comprehensive enough. You live in the world. You will, if you are lucky, learn new things all the time until you die. Why are you calling the manager because they didn't stick everything you will ever need to know into your head before the age of 18?

Why is this piece of information about geopolitics now about you, aged eleven?

It's literally fine not to know things, it's neutral, I don't know a lot of shit, some of that's because I left school at 8 (don't worry about it) and some of that's because I'm an idiot.

Mostly it's just because no one person can know everything and we're all products of our culture.

Go read a little (or a lot) about the new information, or just scroll on with it now in you, I'm not your mum, all I'm saying is that you can skip the performative little song and dance, because intentionally or not it turns everything back into America being the centre of the known fucking universe.