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So, awhile ago, there was a 2015 TV show called SCREAM on MTV, about a slasher hunting high school students, and a complex mythology. Inspired by the feature films, the TV series was less a comedic, metatextual take on horror movies and instead explored the anxieties and trauma of school shootings through the analogous fiction of a slasher killing teenagers (played by early twentysomething actors).

Despite a massive launch, MTV's inability to market shows effectively and two short seasons (only 24 episodes in total) and about 300,000 viewers by Season 2 meant SCREAM never really had much of a chance. The show was beautifully shot and wonderfully performed especially with standouts Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna and the brilliant voice actor Mike Vaughn as the Lakewood Slasher.

The show ended on a pleasant note but with a lot of loose ends. Inexplicably, MTV renewed the show for a third season, but then fired the entire cast and crew and started a new storyline with new characters that had no connection to the first two years, and then found themselves with a 'third' season that was unmarketable: if aired as a third season, the viewers would wonder if this new storyline would be abandoned like the oriignal and not bother. MTV ended up not even airing this third season, selling the six episodes to an affiliate two years later that burned it off over three nights. 

Awhile ago, a YouTube vlogger who makes SCREAM commentary videos (footage of the films and TV show, his voiceover) declared he was writing a novel to wrap up the MTV SCREAM series, to be released in monthly chapters over his Patreon. After he finished this book, LAKEWOOD: A SCREAM STORY, I subscribed for a month and downloaded the whole ebook and... it is awful. Tenses jump from past to present. Commas and periods are missing. Names are mis-spelled. Characters do nonsensical things like knock on the door of the home in which they live instead of using their keys. At one point, a woman in a burning car decides to make a phone call rather than try to open the door and get out of the car. A police officer asks what he should do if he finds out the location of an active serial killer.

Out of curiosity, I tried putting this barely-readable volume through Google Gemini Flash 2.0, half-chapter by half-chapter to see what AI could do. AI could fix the tenses and punctuation and get them consistent and also spell characters' names the same way throughout. AI could even identify incredibly obvious errors like a woman knocking on the door to her own house. However, when it came to more complex issues, AI could be very hit and miss.

One impressive achievement for AI: the original novel had a sequence where a police detective learns that the serial killer broke into the police station and marked an abandoned train station on a map with a knife. For some reason, our detective in charge sends two uniforms to poke around instead of having the entire train station cordoned, secured and examined by a forensics team. AI was able to create a new chapter and address this, passing all the uniformed cops' dialogue to the detective character, adding in a forensics team, and following proper police procedure.

However, for scenes that consisted of bland exposition, AI could only clean up the grammar; it couldn't infuse them with deeper meaning. When scenes and sequences lacked a thematic purpose or point and consisted of characters reiterating the plot, AI could only clarify and refine what was there. It couldn't come up with jokes or deeper meaning or any meaningful statement on anything.

AI could broaden the descriptions with sensory details, describing carpets and lights and skies and coffee cups in excessive detail. However, these excessive details were often reused in other scenes; there seemed to be a narrow algorithm that often generated the same flickering yellow lights and cracked concrete whether describing a bowling alley or a house or a hospital. And none of it was purposeful in creating a lighthearted or frightening tone; it was just verbiage.

Reused descriptions were also very common in very uniform patterns of describing speech and body language.

The AI consistently provided each verb for speech with an adjective and then a needless dependent clause, or repeatedly used the noun "movements" and then attached two adjectives. The AI consistently used phrases like "the air was thick with" various smells and "her furrowed brow", often multiple times in a paragraph.

However, I found it had its uses. There came a point when just touching up the original prose was no longer effective and it was necessary to write new scenes. But I didn't have time to do it, so I would write a bullet point list of events, actions and key dialogue, and AI would generate a prose version of my outline.

This prose would have all of the problems mentioned above,  and either underdescribe or overdescribe actions, sensory details, settings tones of voice. However, it was a lot easier and faster to rewrite and replace poor but present prose than to write it on a blank page. The AI would sometimes make very cursory nods to the specific themes I tried to indicate in my outlines, or miss them entirely, but it still provided a framework for me to add it in whether through replacing or altering the descriptions and dialogue. At times, AI would provide only a two sentence summary of what I'd imagined as a more complex exchange; I could ask it to expand, but even that expansion would be repetitive and uninsightful until I rewrote it.

AI could help me get through a lot of the problems that often made me feel blocked in writing. At one point, I needed to know what police procedure would be for specific evidence. The AI, while a clumsy wordsmith, could describe the appropriate procedure and even put it in some poorly worded paragraphs for me to revise into my own voice. In another scene, I needed information that a medical examiner could plausibly provide from examining a body. AI could generate the jargon, although I stripped it back to the bare minimum.

At another point, I was stuck on how the characters could, outside a building, quickly get to the roof without going in. AI suggested some options (HVAC maintenance, skylight access) and a process by which the characters could ascend. When the characters were caught in a deadly situation and I couldn't think of a way out, AI could offer some ideas. As a result, problems that would normally stop me for days or weeks became something I could work through in an hour. Rewriting this person's fanfic would have taken a year and it wasn't worth that kind of time; AI allowed me to do it over the course of two weeks.

Slider_Quinn21 has talked about struggling with writing and I wonder if he might try AI. Not in these sense of generating a novel. But in terms of writing a bullet point outline for each scene, having AI generate a very poor but present version of the prose that he could then use as a raw draft to rewrite into a first draft.

Of course, there is quite a bit of find and replace needed as I went to work stripping out 172 variations on, "she stepped out of the car, her movements taut and tense" or "her voice troubled" or "the air was thick" or "the smell of stale beer" or "her face etched with worry" and all the highly repetitive writing tics.

I am not sure AI will get 'better'. These repetitive flaws might be amended, but it can't seem to address theme, meaning, insight or purpose unless a human provides those things first. Upon assembling the makeshift novel after a week, I determined that this SCREAM story was effectively a story about ableism and how society often stigmatizes people with disabilities. The AI could not see that, could not refine it, could not hone in on it independently.

When I pointed it out, AI could offer research and statistic and analysis and even refer to the theme in new content, but it couldn't create drama to explore and present it without me first providing an outline and key points for dialogue, and even when it produced those scenes, it was in repetitive prose that lacked intent and purpose and deliberate decision. It would emphasize scenic details that weren't relevant to the theme of stigmatization; it would focus on body language that was irrelevant to the scene being about societal disdain for disabilities.

I doubt AI writing will ever be good. It might have fewer repetitions, it might generate more verbiage pertaining to theme, but I suspect it will always lack artistic intent on its own. It doesn't create art. It generates words and presents data. I think more advanced language generation will be like modern CGI in movies: CGI has become more elaborate and more complex -- but it still looks like an advanced cartoon, you can always tell it's computer generated, and it never looks that real.

The best way to see AI writing might be the way CG can produce animatics. The AI writing is not a final product, but rather reference material to help a human write the actual story, just as Blumhouse will often use CG to produce a cheap animated version of a movie before deciding whether or not to spend the money on filming it with real actors and sets and locations.

AI will not make a bad writer a good one, but it can fix grammar and spelling and provide a subpar working draft, effectively a very rough and artless version of what a writer might imagine, and spare them the trouble of getting those first words down on the blank page.

Simon Rosenberg who turned out to be pretty wrong in predicting a Kamala win for the 2024 election, suggests a new strategy for fighting the Trump and Musk robbery of the US Treasury: criminal referrals.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/time … s-for-elon

I don't think I would trust any more of Rosenberg's polling analysis in the future, but in terms of strategy, he could be onto something.

The Jacobin had an interesting article pointing out: Obama and Biden weren't any different from Trump in deporting migrants. Obama and Biden were just a bit better than the rest at drawing media attention elsewhere:
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/democrats-t … guantanamo

However, Trump has thrown government and the entire globe into chaos whereas Obama and Biden were more stable and workable and weren't attacking Canadians via tariffs.

Good to know. And as I am empowered by my Tim Hortons discount card to speak for all Canadians:

We as Canadians collectively pledge to be tireless in defending our economy, sovereignty, natural resources and pilight's inalienable right to give his opinion of Kamala Harris as a weak and ill-prepared nominee who was selected and not elected, for pilight to give any personal opinion regarding any known matter of public record, and for pilight to do so without being accused of dumb and random crap that he never actually said.

**

Just now, at the clinic, I asked the nurse if she could take a second pint out of me. She said she could not, that I'd donated enough blood, and she asked what the problem was. I told her: I was afraid to go home and read Sliders.tv and whatever godawful thing a certain someone might have posted while I was out. She said she didn't know what that was and gave me another juice box.

You may wonder why I'm so torqued. Why pilight being insulted and harassed is infuriating. The answer is: I don't appreciate being taken advantage of.

I just reloaded my Tim Horton's prepaid card; I have the floor and speak for all Canadians for another half-hour. So, as I've established, we Canadians are a bitter and grudge-bearing lot.

We are still pissy over the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the unfair split of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, the USS Nashville sailing into the Great Lakes in 1907, the States trying to integrate British Columbia into a West Coast military command point in 1934. And I guess there was that time in 2012 when Slider_Quinn21 offered to help me write a SLIDERS story and didn't come through. These have all irked us nationally as Canadians, but the thing that really burns our collective Oka cheese: when someone breaks a deal again and again.

When someone makes a deal and they burn us once, we as Canadians are acrimonious. When you burn us multiple times, we become downright vengeful. Of course, we have to note that Slider_Quinn21 came back to help us with the SLIDERS REBORN fanfic in 2016, so we marked that situation as a promise kept.

But when Canadians make deals, we expect you to live up to them. And a certain poster here -- let's call him 'Bryan' -- has broken our deal. Repeatedly.

Bryan was told that it was not appropriate to arbitrarily accuse people of being Trump supporters every time he didn't like their less-than-uniform support of Democrats. Bryan was told that it was not acceptable to hijack conversations with unproven claims of voter fraud in 2024. Bryan was told it was not acceptable to hijack conversations with arbitrary accusations of Trumpism.

He was warned to stop, by my count, eight times. He kept doing it. He was warned that he would be banned if he kept doing this on two separate occasions, by my count. After the tenth instance (by my count), he was banned and it should have been over. It should have been finished. It should have been done.

But then God spared Bryan. Or rather: Slider_Quinn21, who is unto a god, gave Bryan a second chance. Slider_Quinn21 was the first person Bryan had ever attacked on Sliders.tv with accusations of Trumpism for Slider_Quinn21 worrying that Biden would lose in 2024. Slider_Quinn21 was the first target of Bryan's abusive and harassing tendencies... and Slider_Quinn21 forgave him and asked for Bryan to be pardoned and reinstated. I saw Slider_Quinn21's mercy and grace and I was moved and humbled by it.

I bowed to what God and Slider_Quinn21 asked of me and Canada. The deal was struck: Bryan could return so long as there was no further hijacking, unfounded accusations and unproven claims of 2024 electoral fraud.

Bryan has broken every term of our agreement, much in the same way Donald Trump has broken every agreement he's ever made. Every single one. Bryan has trespassed and stepped over every single boundary, just as Donald Trump has done the same in his life.

Bryan has proven duplicitous, dishonest, dishonourable and utterly untrustworthy. He agreed not to make false accusations. He agreed not to post his conspiracy theories. His last several posts have contained all of the supposedly curtailed behaviours with a declaration that he should never have ceased in the first place. Like Donald Trump, Bryan's word has no bearing on his conduct.

Bryan has no respect for boundaries. When told that to stop posting unproven claims of 2024 voter fraud and false accusations of Trumpism, Bryan's approach was to claim any news article that reported the 2024 Democrat loss was from a fraudulent and untrustworthy news outlet or to make the same accusations but claim they were corrections, and then simply posted more unproven claims and made the false accusations outright.

When Bryan is given a boundary, he treads on the boundary lightly and gradually and then steps over it entirely. Like Donald Trump, he is incrementally disrespectful of boundaries, creeping and encroaching; he denies he is preparing to break the boundaries when this is spotted; he then breaks the boundaries and claims he wasn't previously curtailed from doing so and that the boundaries either didn't exist or weren't ones he should have to follow.

Bryan is manipulative and controlling. He constantly claims that he is leaving Sliders.tv, bids farewell to 'everyone' (even though he's accused us all of fascism for not being sufficiently groveling to his political party of choice), attempting to trigger guilt and regret and make certain people feel a sense of loss -- and then he comes back, tactically seeking to capitalize on the hope for reconciliation and a second chance in order to continue trespassing on boundaries and ignoring all agreements.

This is precisely how he took advantage of Slider_Quinn21's goodwill and patience and forgiveness, and now Bryan flaunts that abuse of Slider_Quinn21's kind nature as Bryan declares he should never have ceased the behaviours he barely ever stopped to begin with, and then he complains that he isn't liked for "some reason" as opposed to the mountain of reasons accumulated over every broken promise and trespassed boundary and the chances upon chances that he's abused.

As Canadians, when we see you take advantage of our kind-hearted friends, we will detest you on a deeply personal level that makes it difficult to breathe.

We Canadians can spot an abusive, harassing manipulator like this from a one kilometer distance. We Canadians can tell that the only real difference between Donald John Trump and Bryan here is that Bryan claims to vote Democrat and is probably less in debt.

Canadians loathe people who have consistently proven that their word is worthless.

And let's be clear: Slider_Quinn21, like any friend, is only human too. But here's the thing: we Canadians know that when Slider_Quinn21 doesn't come through, it's because he had a screenwriting obligation or because he was tired, we forgive it, we consider asking less of him, and we save our national rage for someone who's actually out to screw us over time and time again.

We know that when Bryan turns on us and breaks our deal, it isn't because he's tired or disoriented or busy. It's because he's malicious and deceitful and most importantly: he fundamentally doesn't respect us or you or me or anyone but himself.

As Canadians, we also have a particular contempt for people who give false apologies. Who apologize for their misdeeds, give assurances that they understand the strain and pain they have caused -- and then proceed to inflict more of the same in exactly the same way and prove that any apology past or present or future is as worthless as their word.

And as Canadians, when you break your word with us, we consider you an active hostile. When your apologies are proven meaningless because you repeat the same behaviour, we find you treacherous and duplicitous. When you gradually creep upon boundaries to break them, we find you incrementally insidious and manipulative.

We will consider you to have destroyed your lifetime allotment of any leniency or goodwill.

We will no longer trust you. We will monitor your actions. We will resent the exhaustion and drain of managing the situations you constantly create.

We have been hurt so consistently and repeatedly by you that we have gone from wounded to wrathful and now, we will document your behaviour and how you suckered us and launched unprovoked attacks on our friends time and time again and then we'll comb through every loophole and clause and then we're going to get back at you just as hard as you got us by striking at a precise moment in a specific way that will be small-scale and trivial and inconsequential and not in any way physically or financially or professionally harmful and yet incredibly annoying and aggravating and exasperating from now to eternity because we Canadians are petty, we are obsessive, and we despise people who exploit the goodwill and forgiveness of others, who take no accountability, have no integrity, and demonstrate total disregard for fair dealing.

Satire inspired by https://thebeaverton.com/2025/02/editor … dians-are/

Well, America isn't Americans. I doubt you or anyone you know, even the Canada hostile neighbours you may have, personally started a trade war. Even Republicans aren't keen on 25 percent tariffs, hence their pleading for the pause; it's going to massively increase costs for Americans. Even the threat of a trade war (paused for a month) has hurt Americans and Canadians alike, so the damage is on both sides due to one person's non-existent grasp of trade.

The trade war was paused. But that bell can't be unrung. As a Canadian, I am a bitter, angry, vengeful little creep and I will hold a grudge forever until I have seen it arrive at a satisfactory resolution, and I have an extremely peculiar standard for resolution that most human beings fail to meet.

I am someone who is offended by groveling apologies because I consider them insincere. Grizzlor is one of the few people whose responses I have ever accepted as 'apology' because Grizzlor's responses are distinctly unapologetic; they always convey that while he didn't mean to insult me personally, he's not changing his personal opinion. That was sincere and that I can respect.

And because I will hold American's decision to tariff Canada over America forever (or until my country gets a Grizzlor-esque response from American leadership), I will no longer trust American businesses. Pause or no pause, I can't count on being able to trade with them equitably. I can't count on being able to do business with Gillette or Neutrogena or Amazon or Netflix... so I will be looking at alternate arrangements to replace as much American commerce in my life with Canadian, Japanese and Korean commerce instead.

Anyway. Nothing for Slider_Quinn21 to apologize for on the trade war front.

I would say this whole response from Grizzlor had a lot more nuance (explaining that your concern was more about people who were already violent criminals).

Thank you for writing it. I really appreciated it and felt great relief with reading each and every paragraph.

I'm not going to apologize for responding to a post that was shocking and required numerous responses to parse it and requiring an explanation before we resume our usual deliberations about ray guns and vampire slayers.

Your comments as originally presented did not center on violent criminals. You have clarified that your issues are with violent offenders, that you were offering observations of others' discomfort as opposed to your own, and that is to my immense relief and gratitude.

I've never seen you take attacks lightly; I don't either. Looking at TrekBBS, moderators instantly ban people for transphobia instead of having a discussion and asking the person to answer for it. Slider_Quinn21 advised just asking you to explain. And he was right.

Anyway. I appreciate you explaining what you meant. And I want to apologize to you again for all the times I didn't ask you for an explanation and a conversation. I don't feel that's what happened here, but because of all the times it did happen, I really can't take issue with your frustration about it. So I'll simply say thank you for being a friend.

Grizzlor, I have moved your post from the Reboot thread here.

On January 27, 2025, you made a set of very serious comments about the transgender community. As I am non-binary which falls under a transgender umbrella, you were making those comments about me. You declared that anyone who is transgender is a threat to women and children, implying that anyone transgender is a violent abuser and a sexual predator. You were effectively saying that I am a violent abuser and a sexual predator based on nothing more than my gender identity and without evidence of any crime.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 973#p16973

I replied to you and described why your remarks were transphobic and misinformed and a set of false accusations attacking me whether you were aware of it or not.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 976#p16976

Slider_Quinn21 suggested you might not be well-informed on transgender identity (which is not drag) and asked that you be given some consideration and understanding.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 977#p16977

I was very hurt and said it was up to you to be a friend and come forward with an explanation.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 978#p16978

After none immediately came, my view was that you were to be suspended until you provided a satisfactory explanation.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 987#p16987

Slider_Quinn21 said you should be given the chance to address the offensive remarks.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 989#p16989

I deferred to him.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 989#p16989

Your subsequent post on February 4, 2025 was a comment about BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

Given that you have accused me and anyone like me of being a violent abuser and a sexual predator based on gender identity alone, it is not appropriate to be posting about science fiction and fantasy in this community until you have addressed your remarks about me and my identity and my community.

I ask that you do so.

I also wish to apologize to you for every single instance in the past where you hurt or offended me and I made threats and insulted you and derided you. I ask for your forgiveness for my trespasses, my ego, and my hotheadedness. I see now that it was not how I should have treated a friend, and that I should have asked for a conversation and an explanation. I would like to ask for that now.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you had a rough day.

I liked Kamala. I thought she had a chance to win. I think she was probably the best choice in a bad situation.

pilight says Kamala wasn't elected but selected as the nominee, and a review of presidential primary and caucus processes indicates that pilight is correct.

Personally, I set that selection over election aside because I liked Kamala. pilight did not set it aside, and pilgiht has every right to not set that aside and to consider it indicting and disqualifying and a clear indication that Kamala should never have been the nominee. As his facts are correct, he has the right to offer an opinion of the facts, and he should not be abused and harassed for it.

pilight has every right to hold and present his personal reaction to the objective facts of Kamala being selected, not elected. pilight did not make up his own facts. pilight did not attack others for declining to accept his personal reactions and speculations. I can't say what's going on in pilight's mind because he's been guarded on that, but his conduct has been exemplary in sharing his personal opinion as a personal opinion, and he has not engaged in conversation hijacking or false accusations or abuse and harassment.

"Unless we agree, there is no point in having a discussion" is not a call for discussion. Discussion doesn't require agreement. This sentence completely encapsulates this poster's toxic behaviour. It is a tactic to shut down dissent against this person's speculations which they falsely claim are "basic facts" and to suppress people from identifying this person as an abuser and a harasser.

It is the latest in a long line of incidents. I think that going forward: people who harass others for posting facts and who falsely post unproven theory as proven fact should be suspended from posting for a 72 hour timeout (as opposed to a permanent ban). It'll give the abusive harasser some time to think. But I'll let Slider_Quinn21 make that decision as I previously put it in his hands and respect his arbitration.

This is, by my count, the third time a certain abusive harasser has declared he's never coming back (only to be back shortly) and then made a fond farewell to "everyone" implying that he'll miss you all. He's attacked nearly every person here, calling you neo-Nazis and Trumpists and racists and liars. Who is his goodbye even addressing... ?

pilight should not be harassed for posting a factual statement: that presidential primaries elect presidential nominees and not vice presidential candidates. That the vice presidential candidate, selected by the presidential nominee via a selection process, was not elected by primary voters. That the vice presidential candidate became the nominee through the DNC delegate roll call and not a presidential primary election. And that a selection is not an election.

pilight is not responsible for how the facts from his accurate summary -- selection is not election -- were used in an otherwise false statement by someone else. No one should be harassed for posting factual information just because those facts were used by others in a larger lie.

There are times when I feel pilight has made inaccurate or unfair statements. I'm sure pilight would say they were his perspective, and he may be right. Regardless: saying Kamala was selected and not elected is a factual claim. I confess that sometimes, pilight's facts make me feel insecure and unsteady. But facts aren't always happy, and people should have the right to post them.

There is a different poster whom I feel has mistreated pilight in the same way he has mistreated nearly everyone else here. I feel this poster has turned Sliders.tv from a pleasure into an exasperating chore for me because I have had to constantly reiterate to him (and for some reason, only him): people are not to be harassed for posting factual information.

It's factual information that Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election; that there was no reported evidence of voter fraud (social media theories from people who don't understand air gapped voting machines is not evidence); that presidential primaries don't elect vice presidential candidates; and that the eventual 2024 nominee was not elected to be the nominee by a presidential primary.

People should be able to discuss the Democratic defeat of 2024 and the lack of presidential primary regarding Kamala without being associated with Trumpism or accused of ignoring evidence (and speculation is not evidence). Posters should not harassed with demands that they answer for Trumpist statements they did not make. They should not be harassed with demands that they reconcile their facts with unproven conspiracy theories that at this writing have no facts.

The only reason a person would harass others for making factual statements and claim their facts indicate Trumpist loyalties: it's an intimidation tactic. It's to make posters to be afraid to post criticism of Democrats for fear that they'll be attacked and drawn into exhausting exchanges where they have to defend themselves against false attack after false attack.

I have assumed this task for pilight because I do not feel pilight -- or anyone else here -- should have to deal with it.

I have had to repeatedly tell this person: their behaviour is an unacceptable intimidation tactic and I that I see it for what it is. It has been draining and wearying. It is not something that makes me fond of the person.

If I were constantly causing you stress and grief and extra work, you wouldn't like me either. I had to stop looking at Sliders.TV on my phone and restrict my time on this board because of the sheer energy it took to keep addressing this one person over and over again. It was keeping me from my other responsibilities.

I was at this amazing autism support event today. I was afraid to come home. I knew that once I did, I would be looking down the barrel of another post harassing people for factual statements and find myself writing a lengthy response about why this is wrong.

This is merely one instance of pngoing harassment. This has been a constant and recurring pattern even before the 2024 election. This poster was asked to cease hijacking conversations with unproven claims of voter fraud; he posts more and calls them facts. This poster was warned not to harass people for posting facts he didn't like; he continues to harass. This poster was told that their perpetually false accusations of Trumpism were obviously disingenuous abuse; he continues to abuse.

I explained why this person's behaviour is abuse and harassment, and he called me a Trumpist. Who in this thread hasn't he accused of being a Trump supporter?

Slider_Quinn21 had the right to say Joe Biden's chances of re-election were in trouble without being called a Trumpist. Grizzlor had the right to dislike a speech made by a black person without being called a racist Trumpist. Everyone had the right to observe the Biden's debate was a disaster without being called an ageist Trumpist. I have the right to report that Kamala lost the election and that there's no evidence of fraud (speculation isn't evidence) and demand that abuse and harassment cease without being called an administrative Trumpist.

And pilight has the right to say Kamala was selected and not elected as the nominee without being called a lying Trumpist.

This person's response to their pattern being pointed out was, once again: they claim the most recent harassment didn't happen and avoid addressing all the others.

I do not feel harassment of others for posting factual statements should pass without response, but the burden of these responses is wearing me out and intruding on my personal life and well-being. This person has attacked nearly every person in this thread; when called out, he declares that he's leaving and expresses regret for leaving a community (composed of people he's repeatedly insulted); he then promptly comes back. This is the pattern of an abusive person.

I no longer have the hours to keep addressing it in this manner. This person has already been given multiple warnings, a permanent ban that was reduced to a temporary suspension, and they consider it license to repeat their abuse and harassment and misinformation.

I ask Slider_Quinn21 to tell me if temporary timeouts are acceptable to his conscience and sense of community, which is something I deeply respect.

I'm starting on the third season of WHAT IF and... neither of these first two What If scenarios are very interesting. What if there were more Hulk monsters and what if Agatha Harkness became an actress are all stories that could easily be told in the main timeline. One would hope that WHAT IF would be a place for stories that couldn't exist in the main timeline, like Captain Carter as the supersoldier or Spider-Man's mentor being Norman Osborn.

This is trivial hairsplitting. It's a factual statement to say there was no primary to choose a replacement for Biden; he dropped out and Kamala was the only option because she was the only one who could use his campaign funds. Kamala was appointed the presidential nominee. She was not elected as the presidential nominee via a primary.

Kamala was chosen as vice president by Biden via the vice presidential candidate selection of 2024 (and previously in 2020), not the presidential primary.

A presidential primary does not select a vice presidential candidate, only a presidential candidate. It is a statement of fact to say that Kamala was not chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee via a primary process. Someone pointing that out is not making a Trump argument or a Republican argument, but a simple observation of public record and campaign finance law.

You have posted a link to an article about Trump claiming that Biden's presidency was taken from him on the grounds that Kamala ran for president in 2024. That has no bearing on pilight's observation that Kamala was not the presidential nominee via a primary election. As a response to pilight's observation of historical record, it's a non-sequitur and utterly irrelevant.

pilight was talking about the process (or lack of one) that saw Kamala running as the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024. Whatever nonsense Trump had to say about whether or not Biden finished his term in office is irrelevant to pilight's statement, and the association you are making between Trump's inanities and pilight's observation is utterly non-existent.

pilight has no responsibility to answer for an article he did not post that has no relevance to his observation.

pilight is not responsible for what Trump says; pilight is only responsible for what pilight says.

This is intriguing. FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN is a full-fledged WHAT IF series. What if Norman Osborn were Peter's mentor instead of Tony Stark? All it's missing is a Watcher voiceover about the prism of endless possibility.

I'm not recommending MILLENNIUM as a TV show. It has its fans, but it's bleak and depressing. I'm just noting that MILLENNIUM was building to a cataclysmic conclusion with a final battle upon the millennium in the year 2000 -- only to not be on the air when 2000 came. The 2015 MILLENNIUM comic book offered the view that the TV show's all-consuming focus on the year 2000 could be viewed differently if regarded in the context of a larger span of time.

The comic posits that anything that may have happened in 2000 would have merely been one of many significant battles of good against evil over the course of a millennium, over each period of one thousand years, as opposed to the year 2000 itself.

The comic, in noting that "millennium" can refer to 10 centuries instead of a specific year, suggested that definitive victories and defeats for one side or the other are not really the nature of an ongoing and perpetual conflict, and it might be myopic to view any one success or failure as a permanent situation regardless of which battle or which side won or lost.

Well, I trust your judgement and defer to it.

I thought Kamala had a medium chance to win and Trump had a small chance to win, and it was entirely too close for me to feel confident or certain about it. I posted a lot from Simon Rosenberg, but I posted with the caveat that he could just be saying what I wanted to hear and not what was accurate, and what he said was, by his own apologetic admission, not accurate.

Honestly, you and I could well be the crazy ones who have gone off the deep end for thinking democracy ever stood a chance or that it still does.

You and I also enjoyed the Whedon cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE, so it'd be foolish to think our views are objectively rational at all times.

I have to wonder if Grizzlor's 'sources' on California wildfires are the same 'sources' that had him declare that my non-binary gender identity (under the transgender umbrella) makes me and any transgender individual and any drag performer a threat to children just for being in the same room and an issue for which he would "raise hell!!!"

I have to wonder if these same 'sources' told him drag performers and transgender individuals are synonymous. And if these sources told him that someone like me and any transgender or transgender-umbrella individual, just for existing is "putting actually WOMEN at risk" and that advocating for my human rights is an "absolutely over the top (largely out of nowhere) crusade to infuse "trans" sensitive everything, everywhere" as though Grizzlor is threatened by my personhood.

I'm going ask Slider_Quinn21, our peacemaker, what he thinks, and what he feels would be an appropriate process going forward.

A part of me wanted to say: until Grizzlor addresses his claim that I am a threat to women and children for my gender identity; until he addresses his implication anyone in my community is a violent abuser and a sexual predator, he should see every post he makes on any other subject blanked out and not restored until this is addressed. That's how hurt I was.

But because I'm so close to this, I realized: I have to let Slider_Quinn21 make the decision. Can't go wrong with following the lead of the peacemaker. And obviously, Slider_Quinn21 would want Grizzlor to have the chance to clarify or reconsider what he said.

There's also the fact that Grizzlor previously called me out on threatening to suspend or ban him when he called mask wearers "terrorists" (later clarifying that he felt the maskers he saw on TV were acting like terrorists and not mask wearers like me in general). I heard him. And I gave him my word that should something like that happen again, it would lead to a conversation, not a threat.

I don't think anyone should get to post transphobic remarks which imply that anyone who falls under the transgender umbrella -- like me -- is automatically a violent criminal and a threat to cisgender children and athletes and and then go back to posting about STAR TREK and which timer is their favourite.

I wouldn't demand that Grizzlor convert to my worldview. But I would hope that he would address his remarks and how they have deeply hurt me, and then no longer make these false accusations where he implies that I am a threat to others simply for my personal identity regarding the difference between an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.

But I'm going to defer to Slider_Quinn21 on this. There will be a $25 USD honorarium in it for him.

I've always thought that Mirror Georgiou and Section 31 seemed like two separate TREK properties that didn't necessarily have anything to do with each other. Yes, Mirror Georgiou fits right into the DS9 version of Section 31, but that's clearly not the Section 31 of DISCOVERY, and the lack of contrast between Georgiou's morality and the morality of black-ops work means there's no real conflict. Back when SECTION 31 was expected to be at least a two season series with 20 episodes planned, I thought Georgiou would have been a regular but not necessarily the lead, much like how Captain Holt is vital to BROOKLYN NINE NINE but not the star of the show.

Apparently, COVID-19 and Michelle Yeoh's post-pandemic schedule made that 20 episode series unworkable. The resulting SECTION 31 movie seems to be the result pulling various elements from the scripts and story outlines for those 20 episodes, using whatever preproduction work had been done to produce something so as not to completely write off whatever assets had been bought and paid for before the TV series was shut down, and then assembling and filming whatever could be made with the scraps and scrapings of the planned SECTION 31 series.

The fact that the movie is blandly professional but utterly devoid of anything memorable or distinctive is mildly impressive, but there's still nothing interesting about the final product. And it makes no sense. Despite Kurtzman's claim that SECTION 31 would explain the discrepancy between DISCOVERY and DS9's contradictory versions of Section 31, the movie has Starfleet lieutenant Rachel Garrett assigned to prevent the S31 agents from doing anything amoral, and Section 31 remains within Starfleet by the end of the film.

In terms of continuity... I agree with Slider_Quinn21. The opportunity to use a SECTION 31 series or film to transition from the DISCOVERY version of Section 31 (Starfleet's spy branch) to the DS9 version of Section 31 (a rogue operation unsanctioned by Starfleet) has passed. It would be best to just leave it alone for awhile.

I definitely like the idea of the Section 31 we saw in this movie being shuttered and dismantled with the general view being that Section 31 is no more, only to reveal that the Section 31 we've seen in DISCOVERY and SECTION 31 is an offshoot of the real Section 31, brought into existence specifically to be shut down, disassembled and brought to an end so that the actual Section 31 can continue their work without oversight from the Federation.

I'm not so sure any more about the idea of Q retconning Section 31, although I can see why Slider_Quinn21 likes it. I'd probably go with the Univeral Translator being reprogrammed across the Federation to replace "Section 31" with "Starfleet Intelligence" and the name Section 31 going out of use by the time we get to TNG.

No one's misgendered me; I'm still using he/him. I just reject the entire idea that gender determines who someone is supposed to be or that, outside of awareness of societal privilege, gender needs to be a driving force in what anyone chooses to do with their lives.

Musk's gesture looked like a Nazi salute to me and the far right and neo-Nazis have embraced Musk as one of their own. The Anti-Defamation League claims it was not a Nazi salute, but white supremacists have celebrated the salute as a Nazi gesture.
To defend the salute when it was embraced by neo-Nazis and white supremacists strikes me as self-affiliating with Nazism and white supremacy.

As for the rest of Grizzlor's post: I find it transphobic, bigoted, either ignorant or disingenuous, and an attack on me, and on transgender and non-binary individuals, simply for existing and reading this board. He may not intend it to be so, but let's go through each transphobic and bigoted comment.

Your comment falsely implies that increasing visibility and inclusion of transgender issues and identities is unnecessary and intrusive as opposed to a long-overdue effort towards recognizing a significant population and their inherent rights and liberties as human beings. You're implying that transgender indviduals, just for merely existing and claiming personhood in a democracy, is a hostile attack on you and that they have no right to advocacy.

This comment is transphobic and ignorant, conflating drag performers with issues surrounding transgender individuals. Engaging in drag and being transgender are not the same concepts. Someone who conflates the two is either doing so ignorantly or doing so deliberately to engage in bigotry by deriding transgender identities as performative and insincere.

Regardless of the reason, someone who speaks this way about drag performers and the transgender is does not have the knowledge to offer an informed opinion on either one.

There is no evidence that children are harmed by drag performers and transgender identities. Anyone who uses such rhetoric is using the concept of defenceless children to justify transphobic bigotry and prejudice and falsely portraying all transgender individuals and their allies as child predators.

This declares that the mere existence of transgender women is inherently dangerous to cisgender women, pointedly ignoring what transgender individuals have to deal with themselves in prison, declaring the well-being of cisgender women and only cisgender women are to be considered. Like the drag performer/transgender conflation, it is a transphobic, bigoted and prejudiced framing designed to present transgender individuals as threats and dangers and undeserving of human compassion.

This comment about "biological men" is deliberately dismissive of transgender identity. The sarcastic "very safe" again implies that transgender women are a threat simply for existing, whether in women's sports or elsewhere, simply by being transgender, and that's not true.

An electoral victory may legislate bigotry, prejudice and transphobia, but it does not make it any less transphobic or morally and ethically broken.

It's interesting that the person implying "out of nowhere" that I'm a child predator for respecting the civil rights and liberties of the transgender community is complaining about being "labeled viciously."

When someone conflates transgender identity and drag, declares transgender individuals are a threat for existing and advocating, portrays transgender people as child predators and uses electoral wins to validate transphobia, they are clearly not a gender studies scholar or qualified to offer a 'middle of the road' perspective.

Middle of the road would be arguing that transgender political campaigns aren't effective at winning voters. None of these comments are 'middle of the road'. They are prejudiced bigotry. They are transphobic and and disappointingly commonplace for transgender communities to face.

They call it being "labeled viciously" when seen as transphobic after accusing transgender people and drag performers of being child predators and threats to cisgender women for existing; I'd call it being labelled accurately and anyone who dislikes being labelled as a bigot for bigotry could try looking in the mirror for who's at fault for that.

But when coming from this person, it may not necessarily be hatred.

I've seen a similar attitude from this person towards radioplays and the TV show STAR TREK: PRODIGY. This person wasn't really into audio drama or TREK animation, and in their general life, they gravitated elsewhere and weren't burning down recording and animation studios or anything insane.

But in their online discourse: whenever someone else raised audio or animation, this person had an intriguingly uncontrollable compulsion to respond and convey their fundamental intolerance and contempt for audio drama and cartoons and anything outside their tastes and personal perception of normalcy and anything they saw as 'other'. It's not enough to be uninterested; they need to actively act out their disdain.

The fact that its is present in how this person relates (or doesn't) to audio and sci-fi TV and the transgender community and the drag community suggests a general inability to handle human differences of taste and identity in a positive or even neutral way.

You know, Greg, I was really upset when you implied I was a terrorist for wearing a mask in public retail situations, but you effectively calling me a child predator for saying transgender people are people is... I mean, wow, Greg. This is quite the escalation.

Anyway. I'm going to find some trans-advocacy group and make a donation and also rewatch the transgender episode of QUANTUM LEAP and maybe some of us should learn the difference between drag and transgender, among other things, before speaking on it.

https://transequality.org/issues/resour … nding-drag

Slider_Quinn21's attitude is a huge part of why Democrats keep losing elections.

By that, I mean: Slider_Quinn21 is not being paid to stay awake when it's not an election year, and he has earned his rest. But politicians and party strategists have treated the job of winning elections as something to only work on 6 -8 months before the polls open, and it's a serious problem. Slider_Quinn21 is right to take a break; the DNC should not be resting and Democratic politicians should not be capitulating to Trump... but so many are.

The Democratic Party has a tendency to go into hibernation unless there's an upcoming and nearing election. They've allowed conservatism and fascism to dominate social media and news while Democrats only really get started in an election year, aiming to eke out narrow wins. This sleepiness has led to a party that lacks strategic flexibility, is easily toppled by a more ostentatious and media-dominant party, and is boxed out of the mediasphere.

There's also the fact that Democrats have a tendency to embrace the working class when they're not in power but focus largely on the upper middle class and wealthy when they win elections. Kamala Harris' campaign had a lot to say to people in a position to make down payments on their first homes and start new businesses and pretty much nothing for the casual shift worker scrambling to make back rent and skipping meals to cover the water bill. That's what you get from a supposedly left of center political campaign run by Uber executives speaking to other Uber executives instead of to people who work for a living.

Anyway. Slider_Quinn21 has earned a rest; Simon Rosenberg, James Carville Jr. and others have a lot of work to do.

Simon Rosenberg, ever since the election, has issued mea culpa upon mea culpa and admitted that he has far more questions than answers. I'm hesitant to post what he has to say, but I appreciated his admission that he was wrong and he has lost a lot of certainty, and he is hesitant to give a definitive summary of how things turned out so very, very, very badly. At the same time, he has noted that there is a lot to be done and that needs to be done in the second age of Trump.

Jacobin contemplates where the Biden presidency lost its way, primarily with the Build Back Better bill being split.
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/biden-domes … res-legacy

I suspect that the reason so many TV shows are taking place in this era: it's an enclosed space that won't interfere with bigger budget movie productions.

Section 31 in DISCOVERY seems integrated into Starfleet, but it's still a top secret division. The black comm badges are presumably not used in actual covert missions. The end of Season 2 orders that all Section 31 involvement be redacted from all official records. I would say that, despite Section 31 being integrated into the chain of command, it's less like the FBI (a public facing agency) and more like the Impossible Missions Force in the M:I movies. I freely admit that this is a stretch and it would have been best if the spy agency in DISCOVERY had been called "Starfleet Intelligence" or even "Section", a distant affiliate of Section 31.

We should absolutely be working on bird flu vaccines; it could be the next pandemic.

The rest is interesting opinion.

Continuing with this supposition... what if Section 31 found the power to kill or control a Q, and the only way that Q could deal with it was to erase Section 31 from reality? Except that if Section 31 didn't exist, someone would simply create it...

Massive galactic mindwipe... ?

Sorry, my recall was wrong. I thought Akiva Goldsman was working on DISCOVERY in Season 2 when Section 31 showed up, but Goldsman stopped working on DISCOVERY day to day after Season 1, but returned to the franchise for STRANGE NEW WORLDS. He did use the Gorn name for a generic monster on STRANGE NEW WORLDS, but he isn't responsible for the generic Section 31 on DISCOVERY.

I desperately need to know what Slider_Quinn21 thinks of how NEW BLOOD has been undone.

Well, Section 31 is a rogue, black ops division that operates outside Federation law and Starfleet to eliminate anything they deem a threat to the Federation, doing so violently, savagely, ruthlessly, covertly and quietly, answering to no one and nothing. Effectively MISSION IMPOSSIBLE but without the morality. So fans were probably expecting a dark, morally questionable espionage drama, and this SECTION 31 film appears to be... I have no idea what it is, but it's not selling itself as a spy drama.

I mean, I'd mostly like to see STAR TREK: LEGACY, but from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense for a franchise as old as STAR TREK to court a younger audience even as it reaches out to older fans with STRANGE NEW WORLDS and such.