karaddin

It's definitely a claim I've seen made in a number of places, including in the media here as well - I'm just saying our experience isn't really data towards either side in this. There's also cross cultural confusion caused by some of the ways it's talked about, we only have 2 levels of school in Aus so when someone is talking in the American context and says "primary and elementary" that sounds like you're talking about all of school, and there is data showing the risk at 16 the risk is more aligned with regular adults so there is more push back on that. In reality the two schools you were talking about when you used that phrase earlier excludes those 16+ because those are in "high school" in that context.

Which actually fits pretty well with them deciding in Picard that she later realises she's gay or bi. It's far from unheard for someone at the level of maturity to have not figured out their sexuality yet.

Well the writers of Picard clearly agree Seven and Chakotay weren't right for each other, at least in the long term. I could see him vibing with Janeway but there's some real conflict of interest issues with the CO and XO being together. Not feeling Seven and the Doctor though.

I'm not happy about that version of Dolores staying dead, but having her deleted like that would feel cheap if they rolled it back. I hope we get another version of Dolores for ERW to play though. Maybe one recreated from Bernard's memories in the same way she recreated him.

What I'd seen on this front is that things which impact the lungs in adults can attack the digestive tract in children instead, and that this is being seen in cases of covid amongst kids. Unfortunately I don't still have the link handy but it also talked about something like "covid toes" with kids having toes turn bright red or purple due to... Some other effect I'm forgetting. Also I'd be wary of drawing any conclusions from the lack of spread in Australian schools, we have had only a little sustained community spread and over 50% of parents pulled their kids out of school before the formal shut down. You need to bear in mind that a big chunk of our cases, particularly the big spike, was due to cases from the Ruby Princess cruise ship, along with a couple of others, and the first wave of infections from those on the cruise ship that were allowed back into the community.

I'd say that regardless of whether Sanders supporters are that bad, picking someone to the right of Biden is a pretty bad faith move that would encourage more of them to be that bad. The absolute worst case (from the far lefts point of view) should be someone about equal to Biden, and asking for someone at least slightly left of him as a nod towards unity is reasonable. Picking someone to appeal to Republican voters over 1/3 of your own base would be an incendiary move that comes across as intending to piss them off. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what's being suggested as the pick here and "around Biden but younger" is what was meant, in which case that's fine. If the pick was someone significantly right of him though I'd be blaming him for alienating the voters as much as them not voting at that point.

Sounds a lot like the Australian one. Is the "active foreground app" requirement just for iPhones or Android too? I'm pretty sure ours is semi functional on Android, it's just the apple ones with that problem.

Just focus on the little things that you might be able to have direct control over. I'm pretty despairing over the direction of the world as well, so I focus my hopes for the future on the life I'll have with my wife and our cats with her kids grown up and moved out. Futile hope in the big picture can be really overwhelming when it doesn't pan out, but despair isn't healthy so I try not to dwell in it.

Yeah, it wasn't clear from my post but I'm in the "loved TLJ" camp - it certainly had it's flaws, but it had a story to tell and committed to it and the emotional beats landed for me. I turned my brain off and tried to enjoy RoS and I it did have some pretty visuals, but I still walked out of there annoyed at the way it tried up retcon TLJ and wasn't even particularly faithful to TFA. It just seemed like it was trying to beg the people that hated TLJ to like it through the power of pandering and fan service, but didn't make it make sense. And whoever thought revealing the "Palps lives" on fortnite was flying high on some galaxy brain takes. Yeah it's a popular game, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to a star wars movie audience and the overlap wouldn't exactly be 100%.

The one thing I'll give TRoS is that it seemed to unite many of the lovers and haters of TLJ with most of both being rather disappointed in the last entry.

Nah, I've got more productive things to do with my time than waste effort pretending he's going to be discussing anything in good faith. That ground has been well and truly covered before. If you don't accept certain minorities as equally human and equally deserving of rights then others doing the same thing hardly looks noteworthy to you. @Werthead yeah that's the sort of thing I'm not surprised by. Would probably give me pause if I was considering reading anything new from him, but the drastic plunge in quality after Serpentwar took care of that on its own. My 30-40 year old copy that I read probably 20 times as a kid can stick around though. Wurts would have upset me more as well, those Empire books were satisfying parts of me I wasn't aware of at the time.

I saw some speculation on the weekend that not only was Boris in a much worse condition than they made it seem, he's also still not in a very good way (given how long it can drag on) but that they're trying to avoid letting on as it runs contrary to the desire to paint the pandemic as something that can be bounced back from as things open back up. I'm not sure how many appearances Boris has made since his illness as I'm obviously not from the UK, but there's definitely signs of certain interests trying to AstroTurf an anti lockdown movement in Aus similar to the already thriving one in the US so I assume the same is going on in the UK.

I'll take my scant comforts where I can find them

It's not ignorance from JKR - it's probably heavily influenced by the social circles she moves in, but that is definitely not the same thing as ignorance. That social component is exactly why I think the TERF label is actually the right one in that case, because that's the vector for her exposure to and reinforcement of those beliefs.

They were already doing that just about life expectancy going down Sorry editing on my phone, the above is basically a reply to this as well.

She struggled with her human emotions, was overwhelmed by them and set herself on revenge and removed them from her code - she'd already expressed a desire to do that earlier in the season. I think she's mostly removed Dolores and should be seen as Wyatt at this point.

To the first - I had a realisation today that I think more than adequately explains why they wouldn't EMP the hosts in the park beyond my prior speculation - in addition to the control systems in the Mesa, it would have fried the parks environmental control systems which I imagine cost an absolute fortune. To the second - this didn't bother me at all, the control unit was just a higher privileged "freeze all motor functions" and he quite specifically kept her conscious and thinking while in that state. Her short range wifi control systems make sense as not being part of motor functions.

The USB was a red herring so Serac would think her plan had failed and let his guard down. Caleb removed the pearl from the one armed Dolores, Serac's goon at the start sees the pool of blood from her head and the pearl missing and reports it. The proximity alerts etc seem to be a virtual assistant that I assume all rich humans would have access to. Like a highly advanced Siri with no actual intelligence. Incite Stormtroopers... All the people capable of killing a human are in the outlier program and the guards are just for show? That's the best I can do, this is a problem lol. No answers for the rest but it didn't bother me.

I'm in Australia so wasn't sure when it's ok for everyone else. And she still did it in the moment of Order 66 last week, its just once she had time to consider her actions. Also I'd argue the show made her and Anakin treating the clones as real people contrasted with all the other Jedi whose lack of "attachment" let them feel more comfortable treating them as disposable, as one of the key points of difference. It's the reason the troopers cared enough about Ahsoka to paint their helmets in her colors, she's basically their kid sister. So I don't think that comparison is undesired.

I just think I'd say that about

I thought it all came together well, but I've been viewing Dolores as the hero with the goal pretty much this goal the whole season. The same thing about her purpose with Caleb, although I was wrong about how she got there. I think the thing with Maeve is twofold, she needed a) to see Serac was Rehoboams puppet, and Rehoboam had no intention of honoring the agreement and b.) Dolores wasn't trying to burn everything down, and was not just willing to sacrifice herself but had actually done so. That appeal doesn't work until Dolores is in that position. Bernard's and William's stories were both pretty much pure setup for the next season, they were largely pointless in this one but I expect to be central then. Halores looks to be the antagonist that Dolores was expected to be this season, which is the opposite of what I expected. Agreed with Kal on loving the world building/aesthetic. This felt like a real extrapolation of our current world and technology. The use of the Rico app is a kinda chilling distillation of the power of money.

I think I'll spare myself, thanks for the cliff notes.

I've apparently missed any specifics about him, what came out about him? Yeah it doesn't surprise me. Was neither the most surprising nor most upsetting British woman I'm aware of that's revealed herself to be a TERF in the last year or so. And everything since then has just reinforced it. On the "authors we read as children" front has anything bad come up about Feist or Janny Wurts? I was only reminiscing about Magician and the Empire trilogy a few days ago and was considering reading them again so I really hope not.

So I haven't seen how this was handled to know who I'm agreeing with, but the generally recommended behavior from people not trying to be assholes is to avoid painting a target on someone to be dogpiled if you have a significantly larger following. I'd personally peg that level as one order of magnitude higher than the other person. So tweeting about someone without naming them, and especially without using their @ would generally be the better way to go even if it might seem rude under normal circumstances. Replies are visible in feed to your followers if they follow both of you, so potentially an argument to be made for not even doing that. Quote tweeting on the other hand is the biggest way to put someone on blast to your followers, BUT it does give a notification to the quoted person so that should have addressed the objection I thought was mentioned earlier. Some people with large followings are in the habit of using quote tweets for replies to give their followers the opportunity to see their responses to questions etc, I'd cite Ty Franck (co-author of The Expanse) for a non malicious usage of this style, so it's possible to be in the habit of doing it without intending to put someone in blast. You really should try catch yourself from doing it when you're calling someone out like this sounds though. I can understand objections to social media, particular how the companies running it behave in their search of profit, but I don't see the objection in this case. All forms of communication have their norms and etiquette and Scot at least is someone who is very dedicated to that etiquette in other areas. The only difference in this case is that it's a new form of communication whose rules of etiquette are still in their fledgling state with many ignorant of them. Twitter in particular has given marginalised communities the capacity to form communities, find a voice and share news with each other on a scale they hadn't been able to before and to me that'l tips the scales in favour of social media more than the misuse of it by bad actors and people being shitty trolls tip it the other way. Surely people that would value the abstract concept of free speech more highly than I do can see the huge value in that. This is again more addressed at Scot than you sorry Reny, possibly should have quoted his instead, but I was also addressing your idea that historians would consider it a mistake. A large chunk of the problems with it could be addressed by the behavior of the companies that run it being appropriately regulated.

Just some further musing after seeing something I missed pointed out