Actually, you know what? Ever since I learned that Ira Steven Behr signed that grossly unfair letter against Jonathan Glazer, I've been forced to kind of reevaluate some of my interpretations of things in Deep Space Nine.

Like Section 31. I was willing to suppose that it was always and only intended to be villainous. But knowing as I do now that the showrunner who included it is perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to genocide, I'm forced to wonder...was it critical? Was it?

Like, let's consider canon here. In "Statistical Probabilities", Bashir and the other augments calculate, in no uncertain terms, that the Federation can't win its war with the Dominion. Their model even accurately forecasts things that happen later in the series: the Romulans declaring war on the Dominion; a full-scale revolt on Cardassia Prime. The end of the episode kind of pooh-poohs their model, like, "Well you couldn't even forecast what Serena would do in this room" but like...(1) the premise is basically lifted from Asimov's psychohistory concept, which works on populations rather than individuals, and (2) there's even a line of dialogue in the episode saying that the models become *less* uncertain the further you go in time. And indeed, the Federation ultimately wins the war not because any of their assumptions were wrong, but because there was another factor that they weren't aware of: the Changeling plague. The plague that had, of course, been engineered by Section 31 to exterminate the Changelings.

So again you have to ask: *was* this critical? Or was the real message that a black ops division willing to commit genocide is necessary to preserve a "utopian" society, no matter how squeamish it makes a naïve idealist like Bashir? And yeah, the war is ultimately won by an act of compassion, but only *after* Bashir sinks to S31's level by kidnapping Sloane and invading his mind with illicit technology. So...is this really a win for idealism?

And then we have the Jem'Hadar. They're a race of slave soldiers, genetically engineered to require a compound that only the Changelings can give them. By any reasonable standard, they're victims. And yet, the series goes out of its way, especially in "The Abandoned", to establish that they're irredeemable. You can't save them. Victims of colonialism they may be, but your only choice is to kill them, or else they--preternaturally violent almost from the moment that they're born--*will* kill you. And of course, I've long assumed that this was just a really unfortunate attempt to subvert what had become the standard "I, Borg" style Star Trek trope where your enemies become less scary once you get to know them, but like. I would say that there's pretty close to a one-to-one correspondence between this premise and the ideology excusing the mass murder of children in Gaza.

Or the Maquis. There's this line at the start of "For the Uniform" where Sisko tells Eddington that he regards the refugees in the Demilitarized Zone as being "Victims of the Maquis", because they've kept alive the forlorn hope that they would ever be allowed to return to their homes and...Jesus, when I write it out like that, Hello, Palestinian Right of Return. [The episode of course ends with Sisko bombing a Maquis colony with chemical weapons, though it is somewhat less objectionable in practice than I'm making it sound here].

And you know what...I get that DS9 is a show that's intended to have moral complexity, and to be kind of ambiguous in a lot places, and not to give you simple answers and so on. And I'm *not* trying to do the standard JK Rowling/ Joss Whedon/ Justin Roiland thing where a creator falls from grace for whatever reason and people comb through their oeuvre to show that they were always wicked and fans were stupid for not seeing it earlier or whatever. But I will say that these things hit different when you know that the series was show-run for five seasons, comprising every episode that I've just named, by a man who would go on to sign his name to a letter maliciously quoting Jonathan Glazer out of context to drag him for condemning an active genocide. And given that I've been a fan of DS9 for basically my entire life, this is deeply unsettling to me.

First of all, slavery still exists. It's called "slavery".

Secondly, every time I read one of these headlines I think "Just imagine how much more productive our society would be if it didn't have any humans in it"

I saw a post about tumblr user ages...

Reblogs are welcomed for that sweet, sweet increased data pool (aka getting more than 20 responses 😅)

i think what is so irritating to me about people bemoaning 'hookup culture' is that they're basically getting mad that other human beings aren't following thier own personal preferences. omg im suffering so much because people are doing whatever they want instead of what i want them to do. you could call this reactionary but on an even more fundamental level it's deeply pathetic

I'm sure all the media focused on the American Dream is annoying to Americans, but I feel like, given the dominance of American media worldwide, that it is even more annoying to the rest of us.

fun fact: Boston Museum of Science calls their evening lecture series “SubSpace”, which would be a totally innocuous math term except for the fact that, to make sure you know these lectures are higher-level and not aimed at their usual audience (kids), they chose to subtitle it “SubSpace: Adult Experiences”

😶

Trying to figure something out about myself; please reblog this for a larger sample size.

I don't want to ask AI a question. I don't want AI to write my sentences for me, at all ever. I don't want AI search bars to be the default and I don't want them to be in such a way that I can't opt out. I don't want this kind of AI in my life and there is no such thing as AI art, there is only theft of art from human artists by AI scrappers. I don't want any of this, I hate it. Maybe in a world that isn't driven by tech bro capitalism we can see machines doing all the dangerous inane things so humans can be free to pursue life and creativity. But that's not what's happening right now and I hate it.

He is a fine country squire

via indiarosecrawford Get ready with Frog - Pride & Prejudice edition! ❤️🐸 I'm pleased to introduce you to Frogzwilliam Darcy ✨

Jean-Yves Thibaudet • Marianelli: Dawn

𝑓ₒᵣ ⲕᵢ𝑛𝑔 ₐ𝑛𝑑 𝑐ₒ𝑡𝑡ₐ𝑔ₑ

Tories are sexual predators, surprising no one

A right-wing media personality from Alberta went viral this weekend for all the wrong reasons after posting a video on social media from inside a public washroom at the Ottawa International Airport.

Derek Fildebrandt, the Publisher of the right-wing Western Standard media outlet, recorded himself exploring a public washroom before boarding a flight home to Calgary after this weekend’s conservative Canada Strong and Free Network conference.

Six different people are visible in the background of the video — half of whose faces are identifiable — while Fildebrandt criticizes the presence of a menstrual product dispenser in a men’s washroom.

At one point, one washroom user can also briefly be seen using a urinal. [...]

Fildebrandt, a former MLA with Alberta’s United Conservative Party, says he has no regrets despite creating obvious privacy issues for other washroom users. [...]

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @abpoli, @vague-humanoid

Messenger! What news have you from the Yaoi front?

Burke's Queerage.

i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim