calvin onion suit

calvin onion suit…

My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency

Moreover, everyone gathers around to be tremulously compassionate and discreetly admiring: all this time, you lacked the Vitamin? And yet you persevered?

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.

I've never rated DS9 as highly as some trek fans do, and you are covering the reasons why. It's always struck me that this series undermines core concepts of star trek (and I'd argue that this was its primary reason to exist), and the revelation of Ira Steven Behr's position seems to fit perfectly for me.

Of course, then I think about how his proposed story arc for the hypothetical eighth season of DS9 on that "What We Left Behind" documentary literally had the Federation as the villain menacing a heroic Bajoran theocracy, because apparently secularism and pluralism are evil whereas traditionalism and isolationism are good, and it occurs to me that, maybe, you know...maybe I liked Deep Space Nine *in spite of* his vision for it.

local woman who claimed she will "cross that bridge when she comes to it" arrives at said bridge

golly gee im sure glad tumblr only took about TEN YEARS to accept my appeal for this lewd and graphic post

this? is this what you're referring to? yeah i think calling other people slurs is bad

reminder that the people this slur refers to, people with intellectual disabilities, are still campaigning to REDUCE/end its usage, not "reclaim" it. the r word used to be a medical diagnosis--it was never a 'nice' term and it was always used for ableist, and generally eugenicist, ends--and it is still included in several state laws, so self advocates with intellectual disabilities have been passing laws around the country to get this word out of laws. under no circumstance does it make sense to "reclaim" this term, especially if you are not affected by the ableism that people with intellectual disabilities face.

[Image description: Two Tweets by @ feIidaen that say: the reemergence of the r slur in common internet lexicon drives me up the fucking wall / everyone got a little to excited about reclaiming fruit and now it’s seen as perfectly acceptable to use derogatory terms with absolutely atrocious history as insults against other people even in the most progressive spaces. stop doing that. End description]

another required reminder for people, because bigots love to forget. Reclaiming is slur does not mean you get to use it as a slur. If you are using it as an insult, you're not reclaiming it, you are literally just calling people slurs.

everything i like about people's behavior is human nature and everything i don't like about people's behavior is capitalist brainwashing. this political economy shit is easy

my friend took in a stray and she’s the cutest kitty ever but he named her oil so whenever he sends a picture of her me and my other friends look like we’re roleplaying as the US military

in our defense this is oil

protect oil at any cost

tuo sllup dneirfyob flowerew ym nehW

TAHW ruoy

yM

??thgir taht gnidaer I ma ,yrros m'I

YM

?dehsurc gnitteg nolemretaw eht erongi annog tsuj er'ew oS

nolemretaW

‼️🇵🇸 Pro-Palestine protest group coordinates ‘multi-city blockade’ in US

🔸 Source: Al Jazeera (first two screenshots)

‼️🇵🇸 HAPPENING NOW: Protestors shut down the Golden Gate Bridge demanding an end to the US funded genocide of Palestinians.

🔹 Full caption: “HAPPENING NOW: Protestors shut down the Golden Gate Bridge demanding an end to the US funded genocide of Palestinians.

Despite Biden paying lip service to Americans for a temporary ceasefire after Israel murdered 7 aid workers, Biden and his administration continue to fund and weaponize Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians. On April 1, 2024, CNN reported that the Biden administration is set to greenlight "$18 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel."

The Bay Area demands an end to US funding and arming Israel, an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and an end to the siege on Gaza”

🔸 Sources: jersey.noah, abnormalize.being, michael_schirtzer, sairarao and modern_mowglii (video)

really cool article about the FBI ignoring a neo nazi mass shooter who would eventually commit a mass shooting at a gay nightclub so they could focus on planting a pink haired cop in a protest movement and get her to introduce these protestors to some hilariously obvious undercover cops posing as arms dealers. the SOMEX parts of this are serious tho they are using social media to gather info on protestors and target them and fabricate charges and make their lives hell and it is causing the death of movements like this.

augustus caesar was only 21 at the battle of philippi? he should have been at the clubbb

truly why was he gaslight gatekeep girlbossing starting in his teens. must not have had shit for young people to do for fun in late republican rome. "video games are turning boys violent" false, my man octavian had such a bad case of bored teenager disease that he overthrew a 500 year old representative democracy and became a dictator. never have I heard of someone who so badly needed a nintendo switch.

before you start getting too down on yourself for how you acted in your worst moments as a teen, remember it could always have been worse. you could have signed over two thousand death warrants for your political enemies. and you didn't do that. probably.

"irreversible side effects of HRT" all of life is irreversible. i cannot go back a single second in time

also i know what i want. i know the risks. everything has risk. i am already living! why am i living half a life because of what YOU fear? stop talking down to transsexuals

made a visual for this one 😎👍