I used screen printing plates which are framed in aluminium plofiles and acryllic glass roof plates. It has two sliding doors. It gets really hot in there in the summer, so lots of openings for ventilation

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/transmemes/p/1187083/do-it-now

Do It Now

From Janeway, Picard and Sisko to modern Star Trek: what happened to the ethical future we were once asked to imagine?

I have been watching Picard, and I am genuinely surprised by how much the ethical structure of Star Trek has changed.

I am not talking about nostalgia, and I am not saying that characters should remain exactly the same for thirty years.

I am talking about something much more fundamental.

TNG, DS9 and Voyager were built around an ethical premise that, for me, was one of the strongest elements of Star Trek:

THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS.

This principle appeared again and again.

Characters could make mistakes. They could become angry, afraid, traumatised or confused. They could even cross ethical lines.

But the line existed.

And when they crossed it, Star Trek stopped and examined what that meant.

That was the difference.

The characters did not simply ask:

Can we do this?

They asked:

Do we have the right to do this? What will this choice make us? What responsibility comes with the power we have?

Voyager is probably the clearest example.

They were trying to cross an impossible distance to return home. They could have justified almost anything through survival.

But they did not.

Again and again they accepted a longer journey, greater risk and personal sacrifice because reaching home could not justify destroying another civilisation, exploiting another species or abandoning the principles they represented.

That was not weakness.

That was the entire point.

Humanity had evolved technologically, but Star Trek proposed that perhaps we could also evolve ethically.

And this is where I struggle enormously with Picard.

Picard himself feels fundamentally different.

The Picard I knew could certainly be wrong, but his reasoning had extraordinary internal coherence. He questioned himself. He debated. He understood that being captain was not simply having authority — it was carrying responsibility for how that authority was used.

The new Picard often feels reactive, impulsive and strangely ineffective.

For me, that is not simply “an older and more vulnerable Picard”.

It changes the architecture of the character.

And Seven of Nine is even more difficult for me.

Seven was one of the characters I identified with most.

Her journey in Voyager was not simply about becoming emotional or “more human”.

It was about learning how to be human while maintaining discipline, logic and integrity.

She struggled with identity, belonging and emotion, but what made her extraordinary was precisely her effort not to become governed by impulse.

She could be wrong. She could be severe. She could misunderstand human behaviour.

But revenge was never the foundation of the character.

Her relationship with the Doctor was particularly important because both of them were learning what humanity meant almost from the outside. Their logic often exposed the inconsistencies of ordinary human behaviour.

Now I find Seven driven by anger, punishment and revenge.

At times she feels closer to a Klingon archetype than to Seven of Nine.

For me, this is not character development.

It is a different character.

And the change goes beyond Picard and Seven.

The entire universe feels different.

The older Star Trek made an extraordinary effort to maintain coherence.

Character coherence.

Ethical coherence.

Political coherence.

And even scientific coherence, as far as science fiction could reasonably achieve it.

Of course there were mistakes across hundreds of episodes, but you could feel that the writers cared about the rules of the universe they were creating.

A decision made years earlier could still matter.

A species had a culture and internal logic.

Technology had rules.

Characters carried the consequences of what they had experienced.

And most importantly, Star Trek was never simply fantasy in space.

It was asking something.

What could humanity become if we improved?

Not if we became perfect.

If we improved.

What would happen if curiosity became stronger than conquest?

If responsibility became stronger than ego?

If knowledge created an obligation rather than simply power?

If we learned that having the ability to do something did not automatically give us the moral right to do it?

That was what made Star Trek different from ordinary science fiction.

It was not the Enterprise.

It was not warp drive.

It was not aliens.

It was the idea that the future could contain people who had learned something that we still struggle to understand today.

I started watching Star Trek when I was around 18, and this philosophy genuinely influenced the way I grew up.

I saw many things I already believed in expressed in a more evolved society, and it made those principles feel possible rather than naïve.

Responsibility mattered.

Integrity mattered.

The method mattered as much as the result.

The end did not justify the means.

DS9 challenged this perhaps more

1. JANEWAY — Caretaker THE COST OF DOING WHAT IS RIGHT

“I’m not willing to trade the lives of the Ocampa for our convenience.”

JANEWAY — CARETAKER 70,000 light-years from home. The easier way home would cost someone else their future. She refuses.

2. PICARD — I, Borg POWER DOES NOT CREATE THE RIGHT TO USE IT

Caption:

PICARD — I, BORG He could destroy the enemy that once destroyed him. Having the power does not give him the right.

3. SISKO — In the Pale Moonlight WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE END DOES JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

Caption:

SISKO — IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT He crosses the line — and he wins. The episode is about the moral price of that victory.

JANEWAY I will sacrifice our advantage rather than sacrifice them.

PICARD I will not become my enemy in order to defeat him.

SISKO I crossed the line to save millions — now I have to live with what I became.

When did Star Trek stop making the moral cost the story — and start treating moral compromise simply as character development?

Creation Date - 1957
Description - Cereal magazine advertisement
Bran - dKellogg's
Style/Period - American, mid-twentieth century
Culture - American

From - https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/picturecollection_vintageadvertisements/141/

ishowspeed is a idiot. I hate these loser ass influencers. Fuck this guy. I am glad he got bit. "Don't tread on me" the little one says. These little dogs will get your ass. Vipers

Seven armed groups have declared what they call the “Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival” against the government of Abiy Ahmed.

In the Tigray war that raged from 2020-2022 the Tigray Defense Forces and Oromo Liberation Army were at points allied against the government, government aligned militias and Eritrea.

However, this broader coalition (in addition to various minor groups) brings in most notably the powerful Fano rebels. The Fano rebels are Amhara nationalists who fought on the government’s side in the Tigray War, helping to conquer and garrison Western Tigray and meanwhile taking advantage of the opportunity to ethnically cleanse Tigray people from the region in favor of Amhara people. They have also clashed with Oromo armed groups. And the other way there have also been ex. massacres of hundreds of Amhara villagers by the TDF. So the initial reaction is that this is quite the surprising leap for these groups which have such heavy bad blood standing in between them to form a partnership against the government.

Fano had become alienated from the government (as did some other then-allied forces like Eritrea) at the conclusion of the Tigray war when the government abruptly obtained peace in one-on-one negotiations with the TDF. This was done without involving negotiators from other allied parties that were left feeling betrayed for having bled heavily and carrying the government forces only to be excluded from shaping the peace. This suspicion heightened as the government of Ethiopia said vaguely that disputes over areas like Western Tigray would be “resolved constitutionally” rather than in that case explicitly gifting it to Amhara, and as the government began trying to disarm and reintegrate the various friendly militias which Fano viewed as making themselves defenseless when militias they had fought like OLA and TDF remained armed. Fano launched an insurgency and has vast sway in the Amhara countryside and briefly took the city of Debre Tabor before being chased away by drones. They were previously disorganized but have become increasingly unified.

Adding to the rebel issues, Ethiopia has problems with a lot of its neighbors. One of the big things that Abiy Ahmed wants is a port where landlocked Ethiopia does not have to pay as much money as it does at Djibouti, which is under Chinese protection. Abiy Ahmed has made a speech to parliament that this will be done by any means necessary. The two major candidates for this were Somalia (which has had terrible relations with Ethiopia for a long time) and Eritrea with which relations had now re-soured. Ethiopia tried to recognize Somaliland in exchange for a port deal which was received with heavy international hostility so Ethiopia backed off (leaving the first and so far only country to recognize Somaliland as Israel in 2025). The Ethiopian government has also been sabre-rattling with Eritrea and claiming Eritrea has not vacated from area occupied in the Tigray War, that Eritrea has been arming Ethiopian rebels and re-publicizing Eritrean war crimes in the Tigray War that they previously had suppresssed. In addition to those, Ethiopia has waded into Sudan’s civil war on the side of the anti-government RSF, in alignment with the wealthy UAE which is aligned with Ethiopia on wishing to dismember Somalia and which has quite a lot of money to fling around to aligned parties. Ethiopia hosted much of the UAE gear that got kicked out of Yemen and Somalia, harbored a full blown training camp for the RSF and even had allegedly launched/allowed drones to be launched from its airports that rocked the Sudanese capital.

Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea are not really considered to be in a list of states that have their act together but the recognized governments of these places have backers in more prominent countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. In particular Egypt is very wary of Ethiopia due to their concern that a powerful Ethiopia could use its status as the source of the bulk of the Nile River (which the overwhelming majority of Egypt’s huge population lives along and depends on) to twist Egypt’s hand and bend them to kneel on whatever issue they might desire, particularly if aligned with Sudan.

That’s all to say, the government of Ethiopia seems to have made quite a large number of enemies, though it’s not without friends either. Ex. relations have been steadily improving with the strategic partners of the UAE, Israel and India, and also are good with neighboring Kenya and South Sudan. But the Ethiopian military did not exactly cover itself in glory in the Tigray War and had rebels come pretty close to the capital at a point even despite the help from allies like Fano and Eritrea that now are aligned against Ethiopia. One wonders how war would go if sparked again, as seems increasingly likely.

A composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year.

My pet theory about why Anthropic and Open AI are pushing for a “pause” is because they are trying to angle for a government bailout before their bubbles pop.

I hope this may provide some mild nutriment/amusement : (.