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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Five years from now:

    Apple spokesman claims reports that eye-tracking Accessibility feature usage was sold ‘exaggerated’

    A spokesman for Apple dismissed reports that the company’s eye-tracking accessibility feature—designed assist impaired users with using their device by detecting eye movements—was also tracking their interest in potentially sensitive topics and selling the data to advertising partners and law enforcement agencies, calling the allegations “grossly exaggerated” and stating “the term ‘sell’ demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of Apple’s partnership agreements as detailed in the Terms of Service”. Whistleblowers claim the software runs constantly even when not enabled, and allegedly checks reading speed and pupil dilation to gauge interest in products and services, but also in “sensitive topics”. According to data mined by researchers from the University of [Blue State], this allegedly includes topics such as race relations and white supremacy, protesting and civil disobedience, firearm ownership, industrial sabotage, anti-corporate activism, abortion, environmentalism, police brutality, and political movements. Apple declined to comment further after the conclusion of their press release.








  • An early story meeting about this episode was attended by Patrick Barry, Gene Roddenberry, and Herbert J. Wright. Wright was wary that the concept of a matriarchal society had been too overdone. “So one of the major issues that we didn’t want to do was an Amazon Women kind of thing where the women are six feet tall with steel D cups,” he recalled. “I said, ‘The hit I want to take on this is apartheid, so that the men are treated as though they are blacks of South Africa. Make it political. Sexual overtones, yes, but political.’ Well, that didn’t last very long. Everything that Gene got involved with had to have sex in it. It’s so perverse that it’s hard to believe. The places it was dragged into is absurd. We were talking about how women would react, and Gene was voicing all the right words again, saying, ‘Oh, yes, we’ve got to make sure that women are represented fairly, because, after all, women are probably the superior sex anyway, and it’s real important we don’t get letters from feminists, because we want to be fair and we don’t want to infer that women have to rule by force if they do rule, because men don’t have to rule by force.’ Very sensible stuff. All of a sudden something kicks in and he changes: ‘However, we also don’t want to infer that it would be a better society if women ruled.’” His voice becoming increasingly louder, Roddenberry continued that this was because women were untrustworthy, “vicious creatures,” which he angrily blurted out in a torrent of hateful verbiage. Concluded Wright, “Then he looks out the window, looks at the outline, and says, ‘Okay, on page eight…’ and continues like that didn’t even happen.” (The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, p. 83)






  • I have seen this episode, and I really wasn’t a big fan of it. However, I’ve also seen the original series episode “The Way to Eden”, and I’d rather watch Subspace Rhapsody ten times back to back than sit through the “”““songs””“” in that episode ever again for as long as I shall live. Subspace Rhapsody may be more of a musical episode, but at least it’s music instead of being dissonant navel-gazing trash. The songs in The Way to Eden make me hate hippies more than J. Edgar Hoover and Eric Cartman combined could.



  • I know, because there wasn’t a typo the first time I wrote it. You see, gotchas like that usually work better when I haven’t already used the term before in a comment that you previously responded to. Don’t worry though, this in no way affects my impression of your ability to pay attention to what passes in front of your eyeballs.

    I do, however, take it as an admission that you had to resort to making fun of me to have something to say, just like how I already expect your next comment to be an attempt at affecting aloof detachment.




  • Feel free to skip the overwrought metaphor

    Well there goes 90% of the show, so no, you get the long version now.

    We’re both standing in the middle of a soundstage (lit like a European discotheque), and you whisper-talk at me at a volume 0.01% louder than the score:
    “I’d love to hear some of these examples of bad writing in the show! You can feel free to skip all of the overwrought metaphors.
    and I respond
    “Well if I skip the ‘overwrought metaphors’, I seriously doubt I’ll have anything left to talk about!” then you say something about how hard this is on you emotionally, I quietly affirm that I’m here for you, then you bitterly reject it, and then I pinch off a pithy-sounding bon mot that’s actually nonsense, and walk off, leaving you standing stock-still in the grip of Powerful Emotions. Then we repeat all of this six more times, taking breaks for vomit-inducing scenes where 15,000 suicidally depressed animators shove every single item in the effects library onto the screen.

    But seriously, I know you’re just sea lioning. It’s not possible to ask that question in good faith. Imagine if I snottily asked you to give me an example of bad writing in 1994’s It’s Pat, you would tell me “uh, fucking everything, piss off” and you’d be right to.


  • Suppose I cook you lobster ravioli as served at a Michelin-star restaurant. The filling is a perfect blend of lobster, salmon, egg white, basil, lemon zest, and seasoning. The poaching stock is expertly crafted from roasted lobster shell, carrots, celery, onions, tomato, and lemongrass, then deglazed with brandy, reduced, and strained till it’s perfect. Consider further that the pasta was made fresh by hand, and expertly stuffed, and served with lemon vinaigrette and tomato chutney, all prepared by an expert hand with fresh ingredients. It’s a perfect dish, one that has so many great things going on. It’s a balanced symphony of unique flavors interplaying perfectly.

    Oh, except I used cheap, nasty, frozen lobster and it’s still raw. Oops. Are you still going to eat your ravioli anyway? No. It doesn’t matter how many great things are very much still actually happening, there’s no point in eating it now. It’s ruined. All of it.

    Bad writing is the raw shellfish of media. It doesn’t matter how good everything else about the show is, because if it’s written badly, everything is ruined. It’s the one thing that can’t be forgiven and taints everything it touches at the source. Good intentions don’t make up for raw shellfish.