Miles O'Brien

I think most genuinely don’t understand what it’s like living in a country the size of a continent, with hundreds of millions of people scattered all over, with a heavily militarized police force that has been trained to see anyone but themselves as a threat, surrounded by a significant portion of the population that would love the opportunity to murder you without legal consequences and the tools to do so, with your healthcare, shelter, food, and basically everything tied to your employment that could end on a whim, in a system designed to keep you perpetually exhausted so you can’t even begin to imagine a world where you are fairly treated, let alone have the energy to fight for it in any meaningful way.

I mean most Europeans live in countries the size of a single state, with relatively high population densities (comparatively speaking). “Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 100km is a long distance” and all that. I’ve traveled daily for work what some of my UK friends won’t travel to see family on holidays. The US is insanelt large, and any sort of organization is already an uphill battle from that alone. Get into the fact that most people can’t take a day off work without risking their livelihoods, and that opposition is armed and begging to be let loose, and protesting alone is hard to do.

Historically, any left-leaning organization that arms themselves gets heavily targeted by the Alphabet Squad (FBI, NSA, BATFE, etc) and individuals get harassed and tossed into prisons for the smallest infractions simply due to association with the leftist group.

Anyone who doesn’t look at the history of government opposition in the US when they demand action, all while saying we aren’t doing enough because protesting isn’t enough, is (hopefully ignorantly) telling you to go kill yourself.

8, but I settle into a 9 when I’m in a good mood

“you’re not resisting in one of my personally approved ways, therefore it’s worthless”

Big yikes

There was once an emergency medical flight coming into the hospital I live next to, but someone noticed that a person had parked dead center of the helipad.

The hospital was undergoing some construction, and the crew was on site at the time.

To my understanding, nobody saw what happened and no cameras caught it, but the car miraculously ended up about 40ft away from where it was parked, with orange-yellow paint scraped along one side and heavy equipment track imprints in the grass next to the pad.

The helicopter was able to land, and someone had to decide whether they wanted to admit to blocking the helipad and try to blame the construction company for damages, or let it go and drive around with a big dent in one side of the car.

I’m a big fan of “fuck quitting, make them fire you” and collecting a paycheck while doing basically nothing until they actually do it themselves. I’m not making their job easier when they deserve to get fucked over.

English IS my first language and it still tripped me up. It’s an easy thing to swap, especially without much context.

I read it as “to break off” not “to temporarily interrupt”

Having children.

That’s a mistake I’m not going to repeat.

For interacting with kids, I always try to act like I’m interested in the things they’re talking about. It doesn’t matter if it’s their tiny life goals, or that cool rock they saw yesterday that wasn’t as cool as the rock they saw last month at the museum.

Nobody was ever interested in anything I have to say, and even after being with my wife for 6 years, she’s still trying to get me to talk more. Even I want to share something, my brain still says “they’re not interested, don’t bother” and I just keep it to myself. That’s probably why I like to comment on platforms like this so much, I can speak my piece and then move on and if anyone is interested in replying, I get a (usually) nice interaction with someone for a few minutes.

My wife’s dead sister used to scream at her children when they spoke because she “doesn’t want to hear [their] bullshit” and whenever her youngest would start giggling at something she was talking about she would scream at her to shut up because she’s annoying. The oldest was old enough to remember all of this perfectly, the youngest just has night terrors she can never remember.

My wife’s living sister just ignores her 8 children when they’re talking. Almost never even looks away from her phone or laptop when they talk and goes “yeah, uh-huh, mhmm, yep” and so on to make it seem like she’s listening. The oldest has caught on and has started saying off the wall stuff like “my head came off at school and the teacher kicked it into the trash” and things like that to see if her mother even notices. Usually she doesn’t.

It’s not enough to just be technically listening. You have to show interest. It’s not always easy, and when you have a lot on your plate it’s even harder, but you can sit and listen to babbling for a few minutes, it won’t hurt you, and you might make that kid’s day.

I respect drag.

I cannot respect showering corporations with money to buy lights to cover your already unnecessarily large mcmansion in gaudy baubles, and waste enormous amounts of electricity for over a month just so everyone can see how much more “festive” you are than your neighbor.

The money wasted on the setup in just one of these pictures alone could feed dozens of homeless for a month. And I think feeding the hungry fits in way better with the supposed theme of Christmas.

demented rapist felon and a pathological liar.

It’s insane to me how little this narrows it down to someone who doesn’t already know who you mean.

And I’ve seen people on lemmy going on about how it’s all the US’s fault because some reportclaimed us arms and supplies were discovered, but like…

You didn’t HAVE to kill thousands of people for what you still call a protest movement.

Whether protesters are backed by the west or not, the response to murder everyone at a protest is unquestionably wrong.

Is… Is he straight up just planning to do Holocaust Part 2?

Because it really feels like he’s not even trying to hide his desire to recreate world war 2.

I’ve started yelling “NO PRONOUNS” and “USE HE/SHE BECAUSE HE/SHE IS NOT AN OBJECT” at my conservative relatives and acquaintances who complain about pronouns and gender-neutral anything.

No, Deborah, the non-binary person who helped you figure out your phone today is not the cause of societies’ downfall, nor are they responsible for high grocery prices.

They complain about pronouns, but use them constantly. Clearly they don’t truly know what a pronoun is. They complain about gender neutral stuff, but use neutral language all the time.

So I’ve been loudly pointing out every time they do.

I’ve been uninvited from a lot of future family gatherings. oh nooooooooooo

I think that’s just a properly funded IRS

I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong about having a type of advantage due to size, but I will say in actual fights, unless you’re against someone the size of Halfþor Bjornsson, it won’t matter enough to protect you.

And when it comes to knife fights, one person dies on the spot, the other gets to die on the way to the hospital.

Someone once said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”

Keep attending self-defense classes and learn to kick assailant ass the proper way!

I feel personally attacked.

I’m sorry everyone, I just like commenting and talking to people more than trying to be creative.

I usually skip s1&2 of tng when I re-watch except a few key episodes.

Some things just don’t click with me, or are just too on-the-nose to take seriously.

TOS is particularly bad when it comes to themes that boil down to “don’t be racist and sexist”, but they’re all a product of the times. And CLEARLY we still have those issues today, but it’s preaching to the choir vibes when I watch them.

I don’t have to like any of the shows, but I do feel I still need to support them, otherwise we might not get more because the corps that own the IP don’t hear enough praise.

I can appreciate that it paved way for more shows while also not caring for it.

With apologies to everyone who loves it, I don’t particularly care for TOS. Yet without it I would have none of my favorite shows.

In fairness, I think everyone involved in both shows realizes they aren’t meant to be the same kind of show. They aren’t meant to be compared.

I enjoy both, and I think I enjoy SNW more as a trek show, but I like lower decks more as a general show. It’s probably just my lowered attention span, but I do like the 20-30m format and more comedic tone of LD. Especially the comedy, since gestures wildly at the world y’know.

I watch them at different times, in different moods.

felt like a space show with Trek slapped on sometimes

So many shows in established IP feel this way because that’s exactly what happens, even if not the original intent.

The Halo TV series was never intended to be Halo until it failed to get picked up as a standalone Sci fi show, and then they replaced names and locations in the same way a 5th grader might use “Find&Replace” to change names in a word document (think Michael Scarn vs Michael Scott). It’s so obvious they wanted to be their own independent thing and shoehorned in all the Halo parts.

Discovery FEELS like they want to make a star trek show, but that they ALSO want to tell their own story. I think every creative wants to leave an impact on things, otherwise why bother trying to tell the same old story that’s been told before? So I’m perfectly okay with each series being a different tone, with different perspectives on things (I like to think inter-series contradictions are simply results of different points of view).

That said, discovery definitely feels like the “Pick Me” kid in the IP. It’s trying too hard to be “different” sometimes, and it clearly wants to be set in a “relevant” time while also being technologically on par with other shows we’ve seen already, two ideas that are incompatible. There’s over a hundred years of difference between discovery and Voyager, which I think was the latest-running series in terms of stardate?

Discovery could have been a lot better, I think, if they had stayed closer to classic trek-type stories, but I’m still glad they tried steering away. You don’t know your limits if you never test them.