The problem with JJ Abram's Star Trek is that he destroyed the core of Roddenberry's vision. Star Trek IS the optimistic, utopian future of mankind.

The popularity of themes comes and goes with the hopes and fears of the current culture. But if zombies are in and vampires are out at the moment, you don't try to make a vampire movie where vampires act like zombies. Just make a fucking zombie movie!

So maybe Roddenberry's core theme is not popular at the moment. If audiences want to see a future of betrayal, violence and individualist motivations in their plot, then pick a franchise that represents those themes and have at it. Remake "Forbidden Planet" any way you like. Shit, do "Logan's Run" in space with a shit ton of CGI.

Or get out ahead of the curve. Old testament angels in an anachronistic setting is just WAITING for a good director to come along.

I'm thinking you probably don't understand Star Trek. The TNG movies were no work of art, but they were still decent Star Trek movies. Now none of the Star Trek movies, not even the first 6 (with the exception of the Motion Picture, and arguably The Voyage Home) truly represent what Star Trek is with relation to their respective TV shows, as they choose to focus more on space action and conflict, but all of them stuck with the core premise that Gene Roddenberry laid out: To explore the human condition and show how mankind can better itself.
The TNG movies certainly could have done better, and while First Contact was pretty darn good (especially if you consider how it relates to the Borg "trilogy") I've come to see Generations and even Insurrection in a more forgiving light. Heck, as painful as it is to admit, even Nemesis had a lot of potential, judging by the scenes that were cut. (But that's being REALLY generous.)
However, none of the new movies come anywhere near what the old movies were. Yes, Star Trek 2009 was actually a better movie than several of the previous movies, but otherwise, all of them, even what I'm seeing in this new trailer, lack the vision laid down by Roddenberry. And also, it's very hard to appreciate a Star Trek movie that doesn't have its core points laid down in a TV show, as it really is best suited for the TV medium. Without that character and setting development, you can really only get by with nostalgia and action.

Now some of the fan works, on the other hand, seem to do their source material better justice. I avoided them for quite some time, but after hearing about some of the good ones, I've started to look into them and have been pleasantly surprised. They are certainly rough around the edges, but they do seem to stick to Roddenberry's vision a lot better. Heck, that Axanar thing looks pretty compelling, if they ever get to complete it.

Looking at that it's really easy to see how shitty the four new movies are compared to the originals. All that technology at their disposal, but without the vision and creativity of top-notch talent it doesn't matter.

Gromit-Vision!

There is not a difference between Democratic Socialist and Socialist. It is just a terminology to use as a stepping stone towards the full implementation of Socialism. It just semantics to fool the sheeple.


From their web site: American democratic socialist party...
Their Constitution states:

We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit,

We are socialists because we share a vision of order based on popular control.

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production.

We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest.


So Its aim is to make all people equal-
The people run the company.
All get paid equally.
The floor sweeper and the one with the PHD all equal.


If you had talent to open a business should you and your worker make the same money?

Private profit is a bad thing. so much for the entrepreneurial spirit.


Democratic Socialism is a fools paradise.

Yes...and yes. The Mary story was story after story of faith healings and visions portrayed as if they were certainly real, with no science involved and no other explanations given. I had skipped that story because I don't care about religion, but went back just now and read most of it. Yuck.

The magazine is not the same. This months issue's articles....
1)the photo ARK
2) The crossing-is death an event or more of a progression
3)where death doesn't mean goodbye
4)urban parks, when you're there, civilization can feel very far away
5)Ghost Lands-The Out Of Eden Walk passes through nations haunted by their history: Armenia and Turkey
Page 4 is a big "Why I went looking for spiritual answers" 'article' hyping "Story of God" with Morgan Freeman, which has other full page ads in the same issue.
So every story has some religious connotation except the 'urban park' story, which may or may not, I haven't read it yet.
It does still have some good photography, but also a lot of bland and boring photography, and that ratio is moving in the wrong direction.
I think I won't be renewing. I'll get Popular Science or Scientific American again instead.

Fun story and memories from Conan, and a great vision of Shandling as a human being instead of celebrity / comedian / whatever.

Thanks for the sift!

Is that regulation hair length? You can see how wearing it down fucks with your vision. Especially in windy situations like this.

I mean, if she actually thought they were gang members, you'd think she wouldn't want a big ol' dangerous whack of hair in her eyes.

Have to disagree with Star Wars.

Without the massive appeal the series built, this movie wouldn't get many good reviews at all. The plot is an insane jumble of random events and plotholes that should have been embarrassing. To enumerate a few:

1) Randomly Melennium Falcon happens to be at the right place, right time (I can buy this, barely, because it's fun)

2) Before they can even have a full conversation (something the filmmakers seemed determined to avoid, even though, as this list shows, dialogue can make riveting cinema) HS and Chewie burst in. I could buy into this, if not for the rapid-fire pace of these events, as it is it just seems random and things are starting to get silly.

3) Before THEY can even have a full conversation not one, but two gangs HAPPEN upon the group, for no reason, except some executive was apparently worried about giving the audience a moment to reflect and MAYBE develop some connection with the characters.

4) Kylo Ren kicks ass. He's the only Force master EVER to stop a blaster bolt mid progress. He's got some serious juice!

5) Kylo Ren can't fight his way out of a paper bag (a bag named Finn) narrowly winning the fight and merely wounding the otherwise fairly useless ex-stormtrooper.

6) Kylo Ren is BEATEN by some chick with no training whatsoever! (Don't get me wrong, I like Rey, but the good guys are SUPPOSED to be weaker than the bad guys, and what's the point in Jedi training if she already kicks Evil's ass? )

7) WTF is up with this whiny Emo? He is, bar-none, the worst villain of the entire SW series thus far. It's not surprising that they defeat him, he's so useless, what's surprising is it takes them so damn long to beat his whining Emo shitty-at-lightsaber-duelling ass.

IMO the whole film was a hot mess that reeked of far too much studio interference which turns artistic vision into "more explosions!"

In summary, and this is totally true, my ten-year-old son, who loved the first 3 SWs (I won't let him watch the prequels) when asked what he thought of it replied, "Too many explosions." This is the mediocrity paradigm of big-budget Hollywood films at it's pinnacle.

While the Blue Origin vertical landing is difficult and an accomplishment in its own right comparing it to Spacex is a little unbalanced:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-spacex-rocket-landing-jeff-bezos-elon-musk

Twice the speed, twice the height, more burns, a more complex flight path and a much larger, thinner vehicle to name a few differences.

You may want to watch this video on what Spacex has planned for the remaining stages of its stack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE

To be fair that stack has the Dragon capsule on top and not a satellite delivery bus but the goal to return multi stages is part of the Spacex vision.

"If" Spacex can get the "heavy" version of their vehicle up and running with stage return they will be a force unequalled in launch across the entire industry. That is if they can turn around their stages without compromise to structural integrity.

Would be interesting to hear if he thinks that using the sling could get as natural as throwing with one's own arm, given enough practice.

I'm getting visions of "Groundhog Day" in my head -- "6 months, 4-5 hours a day, and you'd be an expert."

He must be popular with the neighbors.

Now he just needs to make a red one. Because red doesn't ruin your night vision, right?

I'd also like to see the perspective of it shining from a mile away. Could you pick it out in a distant cityscape?

I wish the people who had the creative vision to create work like this could write to save their fucking lives, but alas...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/wolin-politics-and-vision-berkeley-machiavelli-democracy/

@lucky760 @newtboy

Censorship according to the internet: "the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts."

I see public internet communication as a constantly published work of the human intellect, therefore all digitally published and public communication is media and therefore subject to censorship -- and Videosift now offers a form of individual censorship to its members, not simply the acceptable ignore feature which allows you to check the communication if you so desire.

It bothers me that people would completely block out other people's published work -- and not just their published work but their very existence -- for the same reason that it bothers me that people ban books I don't read at libraries. Mein Kampf is still a book, a poorly written book which glorifies hatred, but still an important part of human literature.

You can choose not to read it, but you can't censor it's existence from reality. Not without burning every copy and then erasing every digital copy. Though perhaps in the future an algorithm will be available which does something similar on an account wide level, visually removing all unfavorable literature and blocking people's facial features, making it so that that person and their communication might as well not exist. But I wouldn't want it to be nullified from my vision while walking through a library, anymore than I would want to nullify a person's existence who offends me; and by extension I believe the freedom to exist and to be acknowledged is an important freedom that we take for granted. You should NOT be able to remove someone from your personal existence. Yes, there are laws in place to do this, but they require criminal abuse to come into effect.

There are greater implications of this type of censorship, that perhaps do not apply directly to the Sift in it's short temporal existence and small community. But it's still an offence to my sense of justice in the realm of communication that such a thing is possible. Even the < ahref="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/14/google-algorithm-predicts-trolls-antisocial-behaviour">troll algorithm isn't intended to ban or censor trolls outright, but rather to detect problematic people and find a way to limit the harm they do to a community without removing them from a community.

I think it's one thing if you want to prevent someone from posting on your profile -- which is what should actually be an option (if it isn't already) -- but to silence their voice in video comments is a high form of censorship that I fundamentally stand against. I quite enjoyed some of what Chilngalera had to say; not always and often he offended me -- but not enough to desire to remove him from my existence. I don't think anyone except violent/sexual offenders deserve that. If he vocalizedd violence and sexual threats, why would he still be in the community at all? And if he's banned, why do you need to have an option to block out people's existence?

I was employed for many years to police several massive online roleplaying games, and an ignore feature was a widely accepted form of preventing harassment -- but when it came to erasing the person's avatar or their character's physical body from the game, we always voted against such outright blotting out of a human being. Our rational was and is to this day that if the person cannot communicate to you via explicit words, their presence is an acceptable form of nonverbal communication and a reminder that they are a human being in the community, even if verbally hobbled -- because at that point they have no means of articulating hurtful words.

But to erase that person's presence is a greater act against both the human spirit and human expression as to be a reprehensible act in an of itself. Unless they commit such atrocious behavior in the form of real life physical threats of violence, constant racial/sexual slurs (in a bucket system of soft banning leading up to a permanent ban) or other forms of insidiousness, preserving their humanity is more important to a community than erasing another human being.