Wordle 1,829 4/6

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Today's was deceptively hard. A few red herrings mixed in with repeat letters. I had to do some 4D Waffle to get to the solution. Til tomorrow.

Tense, but a win is a win.

Marchetti intended the constant to be 1 hour round trip, so a half-hour commute one-way. It's an important distinction, since here in Atlanta the exurban commuter is clocking in at 1.5 hours or more into the city, well outside of what is considered tolerable. Multiply that by a million and you get some irritated people.

"14,000 roles primarily in management, alongside around 34,000 cuts within its operational workforce”

This should bode well going into the package shipping season. But hey, at least the stock price went up after the announcement.

I might be out of the loop - is this a known fascist, a public figure whose politics we know?

Either way, he is a Master Sargent in the US Marine Corp. He took an oath to defend the Constitution and not a single person or party. His power is bestowed by the people he is sworn to serve. If he is wearing that uniform with honor, that uniform is most definitely anti-fascist.

At that low of a resolution, everyone looks alike. Did OP hit his pixel cap for the month and had to be throttled down?

ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king!

DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Those of us possibly even older may point to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in '87. From Wikipedia, the fairness doctrine "required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints." In short, it's repeal paved the way for Fox News and led all the way to CBS under Weiss.

But to your point, there are 3 things on my platform that I tell anyone who wants to hear it. 3 actionable items:

1. Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
2. Repeal the Patriot Act.
3. Overturn Citizens United.

I didn't say it would be easy.

I'm missing context on this one. I walk away from Lemmy for ONE day and...

DS9 pulled off a political space drama that could rival Dallas or MASH and they got 7 seasons. I'm rewatching it again and I still can't believe that prime time viewers would sit through these episodes that are just 2 people arguing the nuances of humanity for 45 minutes. It's nothing like TV is today.

As far as a movie, I think the TNG movies weren't that Trek. They often took the characters in strange directions, favored more digestible plotlines, and wrote dialogue that you'd expect from AI. I value the television wellspring of Trek in the 90s/early 2000s. It is so cool, and that era is still bearing fruit today.

I would like to see more of the DS9 characters, and like to see what a movie budget would do, but I don't trust that a DS9 movie would've been given the reverence needed to make it right. It has been great to see Picard and the ST world in the later years, but I don't know if it makes the lore any better. I'm not sure that we are any closer to another golden decade of ST.

Thanks for posting this and helping me get some of my thoughts on DS9 coalesced. Do you have a DS9 movie plot you think would've worked? Those 'golden years' of Trek were also open to the most fan input, with concepts and entire scripts being submitted. If we had 26 episode seasons to play with, maybe they'd take our call.

You don't need AI to create soulless depictions of humanity, James Cameron already does that. I think he is just protecting his bread and butter from automation.

Snark aside, I grew up loving his movies. As a film student, I loved taking them apart in critique for his mastery of technical filmmaking. As a professor, I used the DVD extras from his films to show just how forward-thinking his knowledge was of VFX. But this Avatar garbage is just the result of a kid who finally leveled up enough to produce the comic book he wrote when he was 8. It's awful.

The image is from a short film: https://youtu.be/5iL1f-jV32A

George Stinney's execution is an example of how terrible we can be to each other. It has been depicted on screen a couple of times and is always gut-wrenching to watch. I just wanted you to know that this is not actual footage of him.

The Red Room hands out estrogen pills as yet another form of control. If you don't behave, you don't get your daily fix. You can tell the non-compliant girls by the lack of secondary sex characteristics. Ol Washboard Wendy over there is a rebel!

To extrapolate on the lesson inherent in the meme, there are wounds you can survive and those you can't. Once you identify the ones you can't survive, you add armor to protect yourself (and others) from future formerly-deadly wounds.

There are so many systemic things we can correct (and we will!), but what, as in the case of this plane, are the personal pieces of armor we can forge? What pieces of armor can we help others forge for themselves?

An obvious one is a support network of friends and hopefully family. I'm a cis dude who was touched by the image and would like to be a better ally.

I'm a staunch atheist who likes a holiday.

Jesus was most likely born in the spring or fall a few years earlier than we recognize, if he was even a single person or existed at all. The Church, as it did every time, took existing holidays and co-opted them.

The end of the Roman calendar year is an amalgam of pagan holidays that celebrate the shortest day/longest night. A lot of the traditions we associate with Xmas are celebrating the beginning of the lengthening of the day and the return to life/springtime.

Xmas has always been a meta holiday. Most are. Enjoy the company of friends and family just as people have for millenia, no matter what banner is hanging over the mantle.

"I didn't say she was crazy, I said she was fucking Goofy!"

Avalon on the island of Catalina. It's the one and only town on the island and there isn't really anywhere else to go. People use golf carts to get around. There are no gas stations on the island, so if you do have a car, you have to import your own fuel or use the marina.

Miniscule car infrastructure + laws limiting the number of cars on the island = no car culture. Bam.

From the article: "There’s something about the freedom of mobility and there’s something very American about it, and so, I also think that there’s a lot of people around the world that think about American cars, and they think about American road trips, and we want to invite the rest of the world. They’re going to come for FIFA’s club games, or they’re going to come for the World Cup, or they’re going to come for the Olympics, come and see sporting events, but then you can also take a week or 10 days with my family to travel around this great country. Stop at our great restaurants. Stay in our wonderful motels or hotels. Gas up your car with great American energy."

THIS is actual car-brain thinking. I see a lot of memes in fuck cars attacking individuals and the choices they are forced to make, but this article illustrates issues that we have to fight. It's got all the delusion you expect from a government source written by car companies: tying car ownership to freedom, oddly thinking that non-americans think about our car culture as a positive experience, and that wonderfully tone-deaf tagline.

Your city likely has some form of a transportation committee. Join it. Go to the meetings. The switch to Zoom has made it even easier to do so. My experience with our local zoning committee has reinforced that you have to fight like hell, even with your own neighbors, to do simple things like decrease parking requirements. Car-brain is real and it's propped up by decades of propaganda and policy.

Finally getting around to Andor S2 (I wanted to devote full attention so I had to wait for a break in my schedule) SPOILER AHEAD: I just watched the Ghorman massacre today. Wow. And so many notes from current events.

Andor S1 did an excellent job of characterizing the start of a revolution, I knew S2 wouldn't let me down.