Ohhh I have lots of opinions.   :D

I LOVE Lower Decks. Aside from having a name derived from one of the best TNG episodes, it is a master class on how to both continue a legacy franchise and still be fresh and new. Mike McMahan should be in change of all Trek.

Picard... This first season was ok. Some great concepts. I hated so much about the ending. Season two has been my greatest disappointment as a Star Trek fan, as measured between expectation and realization. The lack of character motivation, the awful pacing, and the aimless scripts are not good.

On the other crop of new Trek...

Discovery has gotten better with each season...
Prodigy is actually very good.
My expectations for Strange New Worlds is sky high, but with the team that is running live action Trek nowadays, I should be careful with my heart.

 

It has always been my absolute favorite. While the Expanse maybe more "realistic" and the trench run from Star Wars more famous, from a stroytelling and filmmaking point of view this is my favorite too. From one of my favorite Star Trek commentators:

https://youtu.be/Vbq9xy8aa0g

I hereby cast my single first choice vote for Ian Plätschisch. I cast my second choice vote for Brenier Tzaracompadra.

So many good friends have politely pressured me to begin this sereis since my high school days that I think I will finally have to give it a try.

Great! Let me know what you think.

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on April 29, 2022, 11:33:59 AM
Based on your description alone I just bought The Humans

This is a two for one review. I'll be looking at the excellent Syfy television show Resident Alien, and Matt Haig's novel The Humans. The two works share a great deal of initial setup as they feature protagonists who are aliens, the kind from outer space, who are masquerading as humans, and both are on a mission to either kill the entirety of humanity or limit our knowledge and a way to render us harmless to the rest of the galaxy. There are even some similar character elements between the protagonist other than their aliens, but the works to stand on their own and both have a great deal to offer.

Resident alien, based on a graphic novel/comic book series that began in 2012 is a television show starring the incredible character actor Alan Tudyk (Rogue One, Firefly, Dodgeball) that began in January 2021. The premise of the show is an extremely advanced species decides humanity is too dangerous and stupid to continue their existence and so in a preemptive move to guarantee their own safety they decided to take out humanity by spreading what appears to be some sort of energy weapon or biological weapon. In the first moments of the pilot episode the alien operative sent to complete the mission crash lands on earth near a small Colorado town where he is able to enter into an isolated lakeside home of a wealthy local doctor where he kills the doctor and shape shifts into his form, hiding the body in his freezer.

The show is darkly funny, for example the alien assuming the name of his victim Harry, learns English and basic human interaction from watching the never-ending reruns of Law and Order. You can guess how well that goes. Fake Harry discovers his victim was the town doctor and so he must now be. This also leads to a great deal of tension and humor as our alien Harry can barely disguise his utter contempt for the general idiocy of humanity. The only person he tolerates initially is medical assistant Asta, a Native American (actually played by a Native American actress). He is a brilliant doctor due to his specie's high level of intelligence and ability to quickly ingest information in a practical way, and quickly becomes valuable to the town where people like him and appreciate him despite his utter contempt for them. This changes Harry as he becomes closer and closer first to Asta and then to his neighbors in general and begins to have a serious moral dilemma about eradicating the human race. I cannot recommend the show more due to the high quality of the actors, the writing, and the overall tone of the show.

As a minor note of trivia, and for me a satisfying one, one of the lead executive producers of the show is Robert Duncan McNeill, a.k.a. Tom Paris from Star Trek Voyager.

In his novel The Humans, Matt Haig introduces us to a somewhat similar alien who adopts the name of his human doppelgänger "Andrew" after operatives from his species strip mine his brain for a modicum of personal details and kill him in the process. In this story advanced aliens have been monitoring earth for a very long time and have discovered that a particularly brilliant human, the aforementioned Andrew, a brilliant mathematician at Cambridge University, has solved one of mathematics most difficult and persistent problems dealing with the pattern of prime numbers. The solution will unlock the universe for humanity in a way that these advanced aliens, called The Host, do not believe we are ready for and may never be ready for. We are labeled as violent and greedy and actively engaged and destroying our own planet. We are not seen as trustworthy enough to be allowed into the greater cosmos, and so our protagonist has been sent to destroy all evidence of the discovery and clouding killing anyone the original Andrew has told about this discovery.

Much like Resident Alien we are introduced to this protagonist with the knowledge that he has participated in the murder of a human and has been assigned to murder still more, to serve what is presented as a greater good. However, to do this Andrew has to fully submerge himself into the life, family, and friends of the person he's imitating. It's here he discovers that humans are about more than violence and greed and that we are violent and greedy we have the potential for more.

This story relies less on cool gadgets and science fiction innovations and more on discovering the nature of humanity from an outside perspective. It also relies heavily on fish out of water humor, and as an opportunity to comment on some of the more ridiculous elements of our society especially western society. It is a common strength of science-fiction that it uses either unfamiliar settings or outside context characters to point out the foibles shortcomings and simply arbitrary elements of human culture that too many of us treat as sacrosanct or somehow objectively justifiable.

This novel was far more of an emotional impact for me than the television show resident alien, but then again, I believe that was at point. The author began writing this novel in the early 2000s despite its publication in 2017, due to his severe depression and suicidal ideation. He essentially has stated that he felt like an alien living outside of human society while being thrust into the middle of it and that writing this was a form of therapy. Indeed, the delay in publication which included several rewrites is reflective of its role in his personal therapy and how he set it aside until he was a different person and could look at the story more objectively, in aid of improving it for a general audience. Yet for all that generalizing it is still a very personal novel and emotionally resonant to me, as I have had my own moments of depression and a feeling like an alien surrounded by humans.

Has anyone had else had an opportunity to watch resident alien or read the humans by Matt Hagg? I'd love to read your insights.

One of my academic areas of academic research is the philosophical, socially constructed foundations of ethics, and the practical application of such. Civility is a subbranch of ethics. Ethics simply don't exist without human construction or choice. This is not a bad thing, as it give us the power to decide what type of ethics will let us build the type of society that we want. We are not locked into the past or our biological drives. Unless we choose to be.

What should the standards of public, civil ethics (civility) be? That we must decide for ourselves through authentic and respectful dialogue, but what ever the decision I would suggest these principles have a place on that list:

Transparency in Decisions - Any process to do with the public good should be conducted in the full light of day and in public, unless national security (as opposed to personal or political party advantage) TEMPORARILY demands operational security.

Fairness and Justice - The opposite of war is not peace, but justice. Functionally this means that when making decisions, you should proceed as if you were assigned a random role in our society, post-decision. (see John Rawls "Veil of Ignorance" https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/veil-of-ignorance).

Mutual Respect - When making public comments about your fellow citizens, especially when you are angry or your ego is bruised, you must ask yourself how you would feel if similar comments were to be made about you or someone you loved.

Social as Opposed to Legal, Enforcement - While the extremes of ethics can have legal definitions, the main enforcers of civility are the individuals who make up the society in question. I am not talking of vigilantism, rather the firm but respectful calling out unacceptable behavior especially when it is being practiced by a friends or cultural or political ally. Often this is best done in private, though apologies for public comments lack weight if not done in public. Civility is not a zero sum game where you must protect your team at all cost. This even more necessary when you are an elected or appointed leader, and those you lead act in a way that violates a civil norm. For civility to truly take route it must become a defining and defended feature of our culture.

P.M. Forni was a professor at Johns Hopkins University where he founded the Civility Project. As part of his work he created a list of 25 rules for considerate conduct. I have found them very useful in my professional and personal life. https://realwellnessdoc.com/2018/03/14/choosing-civility/.

Finally, some less than ethical people choose to use the term "civility" for adherence to an arbitrary or exploitive order that advantages them or their "tribe" disproportionately. This explicitly rejects the definition of civility used herein and should not be confused.

Why wait for something bad to happen before you create a process to mitigate it? In my experience that is problematic practice. One of the goals of leadership to to mitigate "black swans" or outside context problems from happening. That is not done by waiting for something bad to happen before you attempt to fix it.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on April 27, 2022, 11:32:30 AM

Quote from: Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. on April 27, 2022, 11:26:48 AM
Good legislation does not make rules for the ideal now or the best operators, rather it seeks to eliminate the opportunity for for maleficence and self-serving actors; not because our current administrators are so inclined but because it is well inside of common human behavior to do so. Better to legislate the barn door closed before letting the tyrant our of the barn.

I'm not sure how that applies here. The worst case scenario seems to be that future admins will refuse to create new subforums; if that ever happens we could pass a bill to deal with it then.

Please join us with you hot takes, thoughtful comments and burning questions at:  https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?board=38.0

Thank you.

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on April 27, 2022, 12:27:48 PM

Quote from: Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. on April 27, 2022, 11:42:19 AM
I hereby request a top level discussion board for the Talossan Science Fiction, Fantasy & Whisky Society be added to the Wittenberg under the "Special Interests" heading. I further request that the threads referenced below be moved to this board:

https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=1359.0

https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=1330.0

Done.

I hereby request a top level discussion board for the Talossan Science Fiction, Fantasy & Whisky Society be added to the Wittenberg under the "Special Interests" heading. I further request that the threads referenced below be moved to this board:

https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=1359.0

https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=1330.0

Good legislation does not make rules for the ideal now or the best operators, rather it seeks to eliminate the opportunity for for maleficence and self-serving actors; not because our current administrators are so inclined but because it is well inside of common human behavior to do so. Better to legislate the barn door closed before letting the tyrant our of the barn. 

Or calling someone stupid, or going after their mental health therapy...

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on April 23, 2022, 04:46:14 PM
I'm pretty sure that there's no way to make "being a jerk" or "acting in bad faith" or "accusing people of being bullies for calling you out for being a jerk" illegal, nor should it be in a free society. I don't want to live in a society where everything that's legal is considered socially acceptable, though.

However, such behaviour should attract a political cost. If parties do things like this and it's universally condemned, and perhaps even their own voters tell their leaders they went too far trying to get political advantage, then maybe it won't happen again.

Which is why this shouldn't be a pile-on of FreeDems/PdR supporters. It would be great to see at least one person who voted TNC saying that this isn't acceptable behaviour from the person they voted for as Seneschal.

This will be a LIVE, virtual, and hopefully regular casual event for Talossans of all backgrounds and stripes to be a little social with each other.

What to expect? During the first "open hours" I would ask everyone to take turns introducing themselves, sharing what they are drinking (doesn't have to be alcoholic, but it can be), and what one activity would they most like to engage in with follow citizens.
In the future I hope we can play party games, have live trivia, even some live music would be great. etc. It will be Zoom based, and you can drop in anytime during open hours. You don't need to show your face and you don't need a web cam, but if you do that will only add to the event.

Please check out this poll to help me decide when to schedule the fun. 

https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/dyP7k4Rb

Yes! Seeing, archiving, and indexing for public use!

Quote from: Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu on April 22, 2022, 03:41:09 PM
I do have a number of lectures available on a number of theatrical topics.  Would people actually be interested in seeing some of those things?