So, yes, this.

I have a small celebrity gossip problem (I can stop any time!) and got to watch this all happen in realtime, including the slow motion trainwreck of fans realising that (a) the album is mostly about Matty Healy, an empty whisky-scented vape that was left in the gutter and somehow took on human form; and (b) also isn't very good.

And I like the odd Taylor Swift song, so I listened to that two-hour double album four times before I finally gave in and conceded that it was bad. I hope Swift enjoys the $1.28 in streaming royalties she gets, because I am not getting that time back.

(This explainer doesn't even get into the track "thanK you aIMee", which congratulates itself for not mentioning Kim Kardashian by name -- except it does -- and includes lines about Swift's mother wishing Kardashian dead, and the hope that Kardashian's daughter would hear the song. Even I, a world champion grudge-holder, think it's time to move on.)

[transcription of a reddit comment]

ew72 • 19 hr. ago

I'm a type 1 diabetic. I require insulin to live, multiple times a day.

When I was in middle school, many years ago, we didn't have insulin pumps and had to use syringes and vials like everyone else.

The school refused to let me carry it with me, meaning I had to go to the nurses office several times a day to inject. It's not just before lunch but could be any number of times depending on the current blood sugar levels.

The district then cut nurse staff to just spending half a day at two schools, and the nurse left before I had lunch.

I asked the office staff to unlock the office so I could take my insulin and eat lunch. They refused.

By middle school, I'd been dealing with t1 for about 5 years, and didn't take shit on the topic. I went to the school lobby, picked up the payphone (I just dated myself) and called 911, telling them, "Hi, I'm at (school), am type 1 diabetic and the office won't unlock a door and let me take insulin."

They sent a fire truck, and a bunch of firemen met me outside and walked me to the office and asked, while ignoring the staff, which room was the nurses office. I pointed to the door and he was like, "Okay boys, chop it down, this kid need his insulin!"

Suddenly, the office secretary could unlock the door and I didn't need to put it in the nurses office everyday anymore.

End id.]

Asthmatic kids have died because schools have policies about not letting kids carry medication on them and when someone is having an attack they often don't have time to make it to the office before it's too late, so tbh based on this, and since we live in the era of cell phones, I'm just gonna start telling asthmatic kids to call 911 if they can't breathe and they school won't unlock the office/can't do it quickly enough. Maybe if this shit happens enough times they'll get their heads out of their asses about putting life saving medical devices where they people who's lives are at risk can't get to them.

seriously though, why don't they let you carry your meds? I was at like a summer school for high schoolers and even then???

I assume the logic is that they don't trust kids to not mess around with them or idk give them to other kids or something? My high school said they didn't let kids carry around meds because they didn't want us "sharing" them which...what?? You can't get high off of an asthma inhaler or an epipen?? Insulin costs a fortune why tf would anyone share it with someone who doesn't need it???? And like, idk I can understand being a little nervous about a literal child running around with a syringe in their backpack, and we do put child-safety locks on certain things for a reason, but what they don't understand is that most kids who have life threatening medical conditions are very aware of the fact that their inhaler or insulin or epipen is NOT a toy and not something to mess around with or waste or let other kids play with. That shit gets BURNED into your brain. I had my first life-threatening asthma attack when I was a toddler, I was VERY well aware of what would happen if I didn't have my inhaler with me when I needed it, and I was extra careful with it, I never let anyone else touch it, I didn't even fiddle around with it which like, my ADHD ass fiddled around with everything, my inhaler was the exception.

Kids aren't as stupid as adults think they are, and disabled kids(asthma, diabetes, and life-threatening allergies are all disabilities, fight me) are capable of understanding the severity of their medical conditions and taking care to keep their live-saving devices with them without causing an incident. Also, while other kids can be assholes and bullies, the solution to that is to teach kids to respect their disabled peers and maybe have the teacher keep an extra inhaler or epipen with them in addition to the one the child has, just in case, and like even then overall in situations where a kid has an asthma attack or goes into anaphylaxis, a lot of the time the other kids are the ones who are helping the disabled kid and fighting with any teachers/adults who aren't taking the issue seriously. Children very much understand that these things mean the difference between life and death for their friends and classmates and a lot of the time they will try to help, which is honestly something to be encouraged! I want abled kids to know if the teacher isn't taking an asthma attack seriously they should raise fucking hell about it. Kids aren't stupid, they understand the severity of this kind of stuff. And if they don't we should teach them rather than force disabled kids to risk their lives just so abled kids don't have to learn to not be shitheads.

Also, a lot of abled people just don't understand how serious these medical conditions actually are, or assume people are over-exaggerating or faking to get out of class. My PE teacher in middle school legit thought I was faking my asthma to get out of class even though I had a doctor's note, even though he'd SEEN me have an asthma attack with his own eyes. He constantly put my life at risk forcing me to work out until I was wheezing and then acted pissy when I said I needed to go to the nurses office to take my inhaler almost every day. He was also supposed to send another kid or teacher with me to make sure I didn't fucking die on the way and half the time he didn't. I learned how to force myself to breathe through a mild attack just because it was the only way to keep myself alive in a system that legit didn't give a shit if I lived or died(which backfires because if you learn to cope people think you were just being lazy before, it's a stupid fucking cycle). People will say like, "oh you wouldn't tell a person with asthma to go without their inhaler or someone with allergies to leave their epipen behind" but people do that all the time, and it kills us. A sufficiently ableist teacher might not accept that a kid's life is in danger until the ambulance shows up, and even then sometimes they'll still insist the kid is faking or making a big deal out of nothing or pull the "well in my day kids didn't have [blank]" (newsflash Brenda, back in your day kids just fucking died of this!! that's why you don't remember them!!) or whatever. Sometimes the kid actually dying isn't even enough to convince these people children have actual medical problems that must be taken seriously. They just think kids are stupid and disabilities aren't real and it costs the lives innocent children every single year.

This shit extends to adult doctors too, my cardiologist got mad at me for not being able to do a stress test because speed walking for 5 minutes triggered my asthma badly enough I needed to stop and take my inhaler. He legit acted like asthma wasn't an excuse and that someone my age should be able to walk that fast for that long no problem, so I clearly just needed to work out. I had an asthma attack IN HIS OFFICE and he still acted like I was just lazy and out of shape. Even medical professionals don't think these conditions are actually that serious despite VISIBLE PROOF to the contrary. (And that's not even getting into adults who die in jail because police don't care about making sure they have their meds.)

And like, some of it is this like weirdly prevalent idea that kids can't be disabled? I'm nearly 29 and I still have doctors insist that I'm simply too young to have arthritis or chronic pain. People think only the elderly have real health problems and kids are just always magically healthy because acknowledging that young people can be disabled makes them uncomfortable. It's so fucking stupid but I encounter it ALL the time and it does so much harm. Doctors not believing my chronic pain until I was like 25 is part of why my pain is so bad rn. If I'd been believed earlier I could have had preventative treatments and my joints wouldn't be as damaged as they are now. I also had a disability advocacy group legit tell me they couldn't help me get on SSI because it would be too hard to prove someone my age can't work. It's insane. These days anyone saying "but you're so young" to me no matter how genuinely they mean it makes me want to punch them. Age has nothing to do with this. Stop projecting your discomfort with how fragile human health really is onto me ffs.

But yeah, it's legit a mix of thinking kids are too stupid to be trusted with their own medicine, left-over "war on drugs" bullshit ideology, people not believing kids can be disabled, and systemic ableism.

you would not believe the number of diabetic friends i had when i was growing up (because i’m also diabetic) who had some variation of this story. “a teacher once ripped out my insulin pump because they thought it was a cell phone or beeper” was particularly common, and that shit hurts because it’s like a mini IV giving you your life-sustaining medication (not to mention how expensive it is)

(the number is “every single one, myself included” btw)

This also goes for students with mobility issues.

I was diagnosed with what was then called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when I was ten. I had to stop wearing any shoes except high quality sneakers. (The doctor said Reebox or Nike, my parents were like, "We're not paying $150 for sneakers!" and got me Lynx.)

My parents wrote to the school office to explain that I would not be wearing school shoes going forward, but I still spent the next two and a half years being written up for uniform infractions.

CUT TO 1999, I'm 17 and I've just had a double bunionectomy. I have two whole broken feet. My school had this whole thing where they didn't provide lockers, and you had to keep your bag in an open rack outside your home room, and just keep going back and forth to it all day. And the campus was massive, so you could walk a kilometer just to get to class. I didn't even bother with a note, I was like, "This is stupid, I'm just going to carry my bag with me."

And, of course, I got in endless trouble for it. "My feet are broken!" was only occasionally accepted as a valid reason (I still hold a grudge against Ms Houston of the English department), so I did some lunchtime detentions before my Head of House had a quiet word with her colleagues.

Anika and Liz are caught in a time loop, which is actually a nice opportunity for a nap when you think about it. We’re talking about Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4, “Face the Strange”!

Anyway, Jason Isaacs is currently in Thailand, filming season 3 of The White Lotus, if you were wondering.

You're welcome.

enough about taylor swift already. reblog and tag the smallest, least known artist you listen to

doesn’t rhyme, taylor!

this is all real . google it

So generally I'm like, you can't judge a song by looking at lyrics alone, devoid of context many powerful song lyrics just look silly. And also, why can't an artist be silly with their lyrics? See, eg, Beyoncé going, "Look at that horse, look at that horse, look at that horse". It's absurd. It's genius. It looks like ass on paper.

Guys, I listened to TTPD/Anthology a bunch of times, and it really is that bad. It's an album of rough drafts set to music, and not interesting music. (The Antonoff-produced tracks are generic and while make nice driving music; the Dessner-produced tracks are more layered and interesting, but also not his best work.)

It's giving creative burnout, it's giving greedy billionaire wanting more money for less work, it's giving Anne Rice "actually I don't need an editor anymore".

Do not cite the deep magics to me, witch. I was there when it was written.

This isn’t old this is fucking XP

Wasn’t this like one or two generations ago

What generation are we on now

windows XP came out in 2001 (2001 was twenty two years ago) and its last update was put out in 2008 (2008 was fifteen years ago), since XP windowls has released Vista, 7, 8, 10, and finally the most curent windows version windows 11. so no XP wasnt one or two generations ago…. it was five generations ago…. and that is…. wow

That can’t possibly be right.

XP seems like it was only two generations ago, because most people skipped Vista to 7, and then from 7 to 10, and are only now being forced into 11 kicking and screaming

The first computer in my house ran this and nothing else.

(It was 1994, we were not early adopters. A couple of years later I got a 486 that ran Windows 3.1, and I dreamed yearningly of being able to afford a Pentium that could run Windows 95.)

Do not cite the old magic to me. I was there when it was written.

Sometimes I look at the Big Hair People in the comics I wrote back then and have to remind myself that, actually, they were, if anything, understated.

Okay but how did they all get their hair like this? I'd do anything to have this kind of volume.

It's permed, then heavily teased, then sprayed with about half a bottle of Aquanet while you blow dry the hair with your head upside down, then you blow dry the bangs while combing them higher and higher and spraying the other half of the can of Aquanet. You have to add so much hairspray that your hair feels lacquered.

I'm not even sure they make hairspray with that kind of hold anymore?

to get that kind of volume you have to be willing to put a hole in the ozone layer

When I was a small child in the mid-80s, I drew women like this:

When I got a bit older, I was like, "That's so silly, hair doesn't grow upwards, I must have been a really stupid child."

Until I started researching my middle grade novel set in 1986, which brought me to a lot of fashion magazines, and I realised that in fact I was an exceptionally observant child.

(But also, not every young woman looked like this. That big hair look was extremely fashionable, but a lot of girls were going for a sort of clean cut pixie look:

It's also worth noting that short hair on women didn't necessarily signify queerness back then. It was more of a "girl next door, can play with the boys" vibe.

A year or so later, season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation basically demonstrates the range of hair options open to middle class professional women: a feminine crop, long and overstyled, feathery and hairsprayed. Deanna's original hairstyle, the perm and headband, was deemed too youthful -- much like the very large hairstyles that opened this post.)

Alright!

I'm so excited that the never been to Australia tab is currently under 80%!

Amazed that we've got nobody who's been to all 8 states and territories. I've personally only missed WA, but for a lot of people it's NT.

I'm going to the NT for work later this year, and then I'll have visited all mainland states and territories and also Tasmania.

(I am also meant to go to NZ a week later. Pray for mojo.)

Anika and Liz beam down to Trill, don their finest red cloaks and hoods, and discuss the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery‘s season 5, “Janaal”. Including…

"Janaal" felt like a good episode of Strange New Worlds but a subpar episode of Discovery -- however, since I broke my ankle on Thursday, I really appreciated having a monologue at the end where someone explains what it all means.

Heartbreak High - Season 2, Episode 3: “The Feelings Pit”

HEARTBREAK HIGH (2022 - ) Season 2, Episode 2

My TikTok algorithm tells me that The Americans are super into Heartbreak High, and obviously they're right, but also, I feel like we need to put out an annotated version for international viewers to understand the jokes.

This feels like something. Is it something?

(I'm gonna say yes, because Discovery's overarching thesis is that utopia is a choice, and not always an easy one. And it begins with how individuals treat one another.)

Because she was an intentionally mysterious woman initially only seen in a single episode, and before she got an on-air backstory in the recent streaming series, Star Trek supplementary material developed contradictory information on who - or what - Number One, the female first executive officer of the Enterprise, was. To my count, she has four different, completely incompatible backstories in the comics and novels, and this is absolutely unique in Star Trek, which usually keeps it consistent.

Peter David, in his New Frontier novels, identified Number One as a long lived immortal human mutant (like Flint from the original series) named “Morgan Primus” who was an early genius in cybernetics and artificial intelligence, which is why the Enterprise computer has her voice. One of the names Morgan Primus assumed to hide her immortality was Morgan Lefler, and one of her daughters was Robin Lefler, Wesley Crusher’s love interest from the Next Generation Series played by Ashley Judd. Robin Lefler did not inherit her mutant ability to heal all injuries.

Alternatively, the DC Star Trek Comics of the early 1980s said that Number One was from an obscure planet of peaceful, open, friendly telepaths who resemble humans exactly, and that she was present at first contact with Starfleet. They explained that her blunt, direct, undiplomatic manner is due to her being from a telepathic culture that values total honesty. This would make her the first telepath on the Enterprise, with Spock and Arex coming later. Her planet was created before the Next Generation, but her species being a peaceful, open, telepathic race resembling Mediterranean humans who are not well known or commonly encountered in the original series era….well, that certainly sounds an awful lot like Betazoids to me. If this backstory is true, she may have been the first Betazoid seen on screen, in much the same way fans generally believe Trelane was either Q or a member of the Q Continuum.

D.C. Fontana’s only Star Trek novel, “Vulcan’s Glory,” was one of the earliest attempts to give the character a backstory, and was the most consequential long term. The first novel set in the era of the first Star Trek pilot with Captain Pike and a young Spock, "Vulcan's Glory" identified Number One as being an Illyrian, a race of human-like beings who specialize in species wide breeding programs and genetic improvement. This genetic superiority is why she was cool, intellectual, aloof, and a bit arrogant. Her nickname “Number One” came from the fact she was the supreme product of the hyper-competitive Illyrian system, and won at everything from academics to athletics. According to DC Fontana, her actual Illyrian name is impossible to pronounce, so when dealing with humans, she assumed the human name “Una Chin-Riley.” Una of course, being “Number One” in Greek.

As DC Fontana is such an important figure in Star Trek history and only actually wrote one Star Trek novel in her life, many future materials used the backstory established in “Vulcan’s Glory,” like the David Stern Pike-era novels of the 2010s....but more importantly, the Discovery and Strange New Worlds series, which canonized the “Una Chin-Reilly” name by using it on screen (I remember gasping when Pike called her Una in a Discovery episode, meaning they were going with the Fontana backstory, a detail that may not have been significant to the casual viewer). Since DC Fontana wrote “Vulcan’s Glory” in the 80s, a lot more information was learned about the role of genetic engineering in the Federation, however, and interesting things were done in that series to bring her in line with everything we’ve learned since in Deep Space 9 and Enterprise about augmentation and the society wide prejudice against it. For example, they established that the fact Number One was Illyrian was not public knowledge, but that she pretended to be human her entire life.

The one person who didn’t see fit to give her a backstory or even a real name was John "Johnny Redbeard" Byrne in his comic series about the Cage era Enterprise, who thought the mystery of the character was the most interesting thing about her, and he was deliberately cagey about any details. To Johnny Redbeard, she was just “Number One.” There was a running joke that every time someone says her actual name, or when we see her personnel file, it was blurred out, or somebody’s thumb was over it, and so on. It was rather like the running joke where Mr. Burns never remembers Homer Simpson's name. Johnny Redbeard loves mystery men and women who don't talk about their past, since that was the characterization he famously gave to Wolverine in his X-Men comics.

The one detail of Number One's past that is clear is that Number One in Byrne's comics is competent, mysterious, and has mystique, certainly, but she is completely human, without any powers. Byrne always got exasperated that his X-Men co-creator Chris Claremont added fantastical and far out details to the background of X-Men characters (like how Nightcrawler's girlfriend Amanda turned out to be a sorceress) because he felt "some people should just be allowed to be normal." Byrne always said his original idea for Wolverine's "true" backstory was that he was a Vietnam veteran in intelligence who volunteered for bionic experiments that wiped his memory, and disliked the idea he was immortal, and vetoed the very, very early Dave Cockrum idea Wolverine was an actual mutated wolverine who achieved sentience and a human shape (which early X-Men comics hint at). Byrne was reportedly enraged that they gave Moira MacTaggart a mutant power, as he saw her as just being a scrappy Scottish housekeeper.

Johnny Redbeard didn’t give Number One a past (other than to show she was on the Enterprise's shakedown cruise with Robert April as a rookie officer), but he did give her a future, as he showed an older Number One as a starship commander in the Kirk era (aging gracefully with a white tuft like Tongolele), and later, a flag officer in the Motion Picture era.

To what extent are these backstories compatible? Well, with what we currently know about Number One, that she hid her true species and status to avoid prejudice, it could be that some of the other versions were tall tales she spread to obscure her true origins. The John Byrne idea she served as an Ensign with Robert April in the Enterprise's very first mission hasn't been confirmed, but hasn't been denied, either. The Peter David "Morgan Primus" backstory is completely incompatible, but perhaps there are some elements to it that are true, like the idea that the early part of her career involved working as a computer engineer in artificial intelligence, which is why the computer has her voice.

What I love about all of these is that every single person except Byrne looked at an intelligent, competent, emotionally reserved career woman and went, "This is bizarre. This is so fucking weird. We're gonna need an elaborate story to explain her deal."

Actually, "love" might not be the word.

(See also Michael Burnham, who was inspired by OG Number One, and who also needed an elaborate story to explain her unemotional deal.)

(SOMETIMES WOMEN JUST HAVE A FLAT AFFECT AND THAT'S OKAY.)

(Not me, obviously.)

Anyway, I am resigned to the SNW canon, but I have very fond memories of reading the '90s comics set in the "The Cage" era, and that was always my favourite take on Number One.

On Raffi by Anika Dane is in the current issue of Star Trek Quarterly

The Diversity Paradox: Star Trek, Star Trek fandom, and the limits of fandom as progressivism by Liz Barr is in Speculative Insight

SECOND, it’s time. Anika and Liz are being called away from a fancy 32nd century cocktail party to stand in an empty void and discuss the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery‘s fifth and final season…

Unfortunately, recording this episode caused me to remember one of my regrettable contraceptive choices c2012. In my defense, it's not my fault that the prop for Kovich's "infinity room" doodad looks like a NuvaRing.

Someone help me understand this trope about some people not being able to "cook" with the replicator. Unless you're trying to customize or invent a new recipe each and every time you order, surely you can just say "spaghetti" or "baked potato" and get what you asked for? The replicators obviously have their own stock of recipes.

i used to think it was because janeway was Just Like That and would always be trying to write code to match her old family recipes or whatever, but i realized we only hear about problems with the replicator in her quarters, not the mini one in her ready room. and we see her taking it apart once trying to fix it, so it might just be an actual lemon and they can’t really just pick one up at a star base since that’s specifically a non DQ technology.

but as a trope i think it’s along the lines of “she can burn water” which is a thing we say today and shouldn’t be possible… but totally is, because some people don’t pay attention and choose the wrong pan or element or walk away without setting a timer and those all seem like transferable problems.

Because I love cooking, I have found myself thinking about the replicators a lot.

I imagine there is a Stock [Food Item] Recipe™️ bank programmed into each replicator. Then if you want something different, you have to program it yourself, right? Because there are a zillion ways to make everything you can think of. "Computer, mac and cheese." What kind of cheese? Is that going to taste more like the Kraft boxed stuff, or like you whisked up a roux and grated your own aged cheddar? Is the pasta always al dente, or do you have to specify? What's the precise grain content of the pasta? - etc.

(Imagine some 23rd-century influencer, creating a video series: "Top 50 Replicator Hacks To Add Flavor Complexity To Basic Dishes!" - and it's a cheery little Starfleet cadet teaching the world how to program properly-used salt and the equivalent of longer marinating times)

So it kind of makes sense that KJ, homesick for something other than Standard Computerized Food Item #8263547, would try to recapture her mom's home cooking. And if she's not a cook, I could see it being frustrating.

But also I bet it's for comic relief.

I get it's for comic relief (arguably funny...I have issues with how easy it is to make a "she's brilliant, but she can't cook, ha ha!" character, but let's not go into that here). The logic just doesn't work for me.

Other people ask replicators for all kinds of things, some of them made of multiple ingredients with many possible variations, and I'm assuming that at least most of the time they're getting the generic version. (Maybe you start making your own replicator database of preferred versions of things the moment you can order food and you take that database with you to all your postings, who knows, but...seems complicated.) Surely at some point KJ can just order a damn chocolate chip cookie or something without any sturm und drang.

@mylittleredgirl, you make a good point about the replicator in her quarters vs, ready room!

i mean, there are two separate issues here: the joke being made at her expense and fandom exaggerating it into a meme, and the in-universe technology explanation. i'm only getting into the second one, but unfortunately for my WIPs and your dashes, i'm Getting Into It:

KJ doesn't fail when ordering the equivalent of a chocolate chip cookie! her coffee is fine, even in her quarters. there are other snacks along the way. the fully edible earth peanut butter and jelly on her dining table had to come from somewhere.

I really hate the "HUR HUR CAREER LADY HAS JOB BUT CANNOT COOK" trope -- which I think is the real world reason for Janeway's replicator troubles -- but I love the idea that getting an individualised meal from it is a lot like trying to get Midjourney to produce an image which matches the one in your head.

And unlike drawing something from scratch, or cooking a meal by hand, you don't even end up with the satisfaction of having something which doesn't quite match what you had in mind, but it's yours and you made it. It's bad because it was made by a machine.

It's extremely funny that manbabies cry about Michael being the most important person in the Star Trek universe just because she's the protagonist of one series, when Jean-Luc Picard exists.

i'm trying to see something, so please feel free to share which one you picked, your age (or age range), and whether or not you think the show itself was good or bad!

My parents were extremely anti-Simpsons when it came out, but they split up in 1995/early 1996 and Mum was too busy dealing with *waves at all that* to supervise us closely. And then she actually watched some episodes with us and realised it wasn't as bad as she had been led to believe -- I vividly remembering her smugly explaining to Dad that it was in the genre of farce.

(She never became a fan of the really early stuff, which is where the moral panic began, but in fairness, Early Simpsons was pretty bad.)