StillPaisleyCat

joined 2 years ago

Every show has a writer’s ‘bible’ that describes the backstory and main characters.

In the case of Lwaxana, a character written for Majel Barret Roddenberry’s wife, some fairly misogynistic stereotypes of middle aged women were laid out for the writers.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Two thoughts.

Most Canadians view changing your administration as a collective responsibility of all US citizens. Kind thoughts are appreciated but most of us are increasingly impatient.

Second, have you considered that, like many other Americans, you may be a Canadian by descent? And if so, any children you may have also?

At present, due to a 2023 Superior Court Bjorkquist decision on Lost Canadians in Ontario (unchallenged by the federal government), there is an exceptional situation where people born outside Canada who are descendants of people born in Canada can apply to claim citizenship.

See this page - the flag at the top gives the latest extension of the interim provisions (that override the existing law that the Court stayed).

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen/eligibility/already-citizen.html

While I wouldn’t normally direct anyone to Reddit, the CanadianCitizenship subreddit has a lot of information on people’s experiences in navigating the process.

See the FAQ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/s/rHN4JVQwQO

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

We need to let go of the rule of thumb that Canada is 1/10th the US in population.

It’s not just a nitpick to say that’s off now.

Canada has had a more rapidly growing population such that it’s been 1/9th that of the United States for most of a decade.

A quick calculation on current population estimates puts it as 347.5 / 41.5 million = ~ 8.4.

That said, Canada still has more manufacturing jobs per capita even with the correction.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

I appreciate that you recognize that so-called ‘labour productivity’* is primarily a measure of the quality and technological level of the capital that the labour is working with.

Too often, comparative measures of labour productivity and discussion focuses on hours worked, vacation days etc.

These are very much second-order.

Education levels are not second-order but Canadian workers are more literate and better educated across the board than the US manufacturing workers.

So, the real question in manufacturing (as it is in housing construction), “Why is the Canadian private sector so unwilling to invest in ongoing technological upgrading let alone innovation?”

  • ‘Labour productivity’ was originally a measure of how much a given number of workers could produce with a fixed piece of land. Crop improvements and technology increased that in the agricultural revolution.
[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

This really is a great piece.

Interesting first-person perspective on Carney as a fellow graduate student at Oxford.

But it was the latter half of the piece, that reflects on how Canadians who study in the UK or US are constantly subjected to overly aggressive declarations that deny Canada as a nation, which really hit home for me.

As a Canadian who attended graduate school in the US, I experienced almost verbatim every denial and put down in this piece.

And so many more constant and dumbfoundingly bizarre nonsequitur microaggressions. (One of the American I shared office space with lashed out that Canadians didn’t have any ‘real’ Black people so we had to borrow them from Jamaica to compete as athletes in Track and Field.)

So many of these offensive remarks were self contradictory - e.g.,

  • Canada doesn’t exist as a nation or culture but at the same time Canadian students are vocally criticized for being ‘so nationalistic’

  • there’s no need to include Canada in a listing of macroeconomic indicators of major economies because it’s ‘just a regional economy in in North America’ but only the US indicators are included. Meanwhile, California is profiled and discussed as a separate economy because it’s ‘so large’.

  • or a renowned professor who I worked for as a research assistant observing at some random point when he realized where I had done my undergraduate degree ‘Oh, you went to a real place’ - which given how difficult it was to get into that school and program, should never have been a question.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

Carating the underlying sexism in the writers’ bible for Lwaxana’s character is not a way to make mothers feel appreciated.

Especially, when a lot of the joke was that she was chasing Picard - who avoided women who were mothers mainly due to his actor’s aversion to women his own age.

Picard was an age appropriate match for both Lwaxana and Beverly, both mothers.

Instead, due to Patrick Stewart’s interventions, we got Picard chasing after his much younger real life romantic interest who played Vash, and more recently Stewart’s attempts to shoe-horn in his very much younger wife into a closing scene for Picard.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don’t think you needed [sic], just the comma that StarTrek.com omitted.

So, this is a big reveal - the scenario is a planet that has not been but now is a part of the Federation.

The viewpoint is civilian.

The resort workplace setting, like the old Loveboat or Fantasy Island, means that anyone can come by as the guest star.

Actually, most campaigns send out a collection team in the day after election day to take down the big sign as well as signs put up on public property. They also typically pick them up from lawns as requested.

Some will wait a day or two to celebrate the win but sign pickup

Most candidates keep the signs from one campaign to another. It takes a while for new signs to be printed at the beginning of a campaign. So, using old signs means getting signs up in the early days before your opponents and saving costs.

Can we talk about deaths per capita and military and civilians contributing to war effort per capita for a country that was NOT itself attacked?

Yes, there were U-Boats attacking merchant marines on the east coast and Japanese balloons flying in on the west. But the societal contribution to a war not in our soil was and is astonishing.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You’re tripping yourself up on the difference between British English and American English. Canadian English is tolerant of both forms.

Oxford, where he wrote his thesis, would require ‘an’ before ‘historic’. When Governor of Bank of England, he would have had to have been careful to use British English.

If you’re a Canadian using American spelling and grammar checkers to define your language, you might wish to reconsider that. MS Word does have Canadian and UK English options.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The production values are sufficiently high that it makes me think it might actually be from an episode to come.

Good to know.

Perhaps the major changes in the market might lead to some of the foundries rethinking their willingness to do smaller runs.

There are so many Canadian small producers that have stopped producing as manufacturing moved south for economies of scale..

 

Because we can’t ever get enough Bruce Horak content.

This brief piece is from Canada’s National Arts Centre (in Ottawa).

 

This is a major revelation from the trial.

The writer is a principal from Duck Duck Go.

Thought folks here might be interested.

 

This one is well done, and seems worthy of capturing as documentation in the Daystrom Institute.

Those charming two forward-facing eyes were instant indicators that Moopsy is a predator…but how dangerous?

It’s a tubby jumping spider without all those extra eyes and legs.

 

This NPR coverage is interesting.

"A lot of people don't understand how different our demands are from the WGA's demands," Bond said.

Bond said unlike the WGA, the actors union represents many types of performers — actors, dancers, stunt people — each with specific needs that need to be addressed.

Artificial intelligence, for example, is an especially existential threat for background actors, some of whom say they've already had their bodies scanned for reuse.

So Bond said negotiations with the studios' trade association, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) could take a while.

"The AMPTP is just going to use every union busting trick that they have," Bond said.

 

Many fediverse fans are exasperated that Paramount has (once again) missed the opportunity to take our money with official tie-in merchandise and left us to our own creations, or non-licensed creators.

While it says a lot that fans on a nonmonetizing platform are literally demanding that Paramount get its profit-taking act together, all this Moopsy fan-entitlement is currently being redirected into crafting energy.

So MakeYourOwnMoopsyMonth it is.

First out of the gate is a charming ceramic Moopsy demonstrating appropriate predatory behaviour on a blue crochet duck. Enjoy.

 

Simon & Schuster had a larger than usual array of ebook deals for September 2023.

October 1st is the last day for this group, a new set (likely fewer books) will come on line Sunday the 2nd.

If you haven’t given Treklit a try, these ebook deals are a great low cost way to get into it.

 

A solid round up of some of the broader industry issues as the WGA contract moves towards potential endorsement by WGA East and West leadership Tuesday in preparation for a vote by the members.

 

Amid some speculation about the questionable neutrality of major Hollywood media sources, owned by AMPTP members, CNN reports from “a source familiar” that WGA has been sent a ‘best & final’ offer.

So, stay tuned for the WGA leadership’s assessment.

 

Missed this report from earlier in the week…Paramount+ will be joining major streamer J:COM with a launch date for Japan of December 1, 2023.

For the many fans who’ve been waiting for a legal way to get new Trek in Japan, this is hopefully great news.

 

Many WGA veterans urged caution at getting hopes too high for what may come out of the AMPTP negotiating room later today, after a third day of talks between labor and management that involved four CEOs.

Notably, Paramount Global’s Bob Baklish is not among the CEO’s sitting in.

 

This ScienceOf.org interview with Professor of Genetics/Evolution (& Star Trek biological science advisor) Mohammed Noor on the biology, especially the r-selection reproduction, of the Gorn in SNW is marvellous.

Just the kind of uncomfortable but great biological thinking I was hoping we’d get into here at Daystrom Institute.

e.g. Can we think of the Gorn in viral terms?

Treating Gorn like this, each infected person could infect four more people, so the R0 for Gorn would be 4. Not wildly big, but large enough to do the job. Of course, the hatchlings would also be going after one another, so the analogy’s not perfect.

But if you want to think of the Gorn as intelligent, viral space dinosaurs, that does get the idea across.

 

It seems that with long hiatuses in new onscreen Trek ahead, genre coverage is starting to profile Trek novels again.

This set of ten weird but readable books isn’t necessarily the trippiest, but it does put the first of the Shatnerverse books at the top.

(Perhaps @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website there’s yet hope for Shatner’s wild imaginings to make it into S&S monthly Star Trek ebook deals promotional rotation.)

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