You'll have to settle for slightly less than perfect.

Wordle 1,487 6/6

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We don't have the RV thing where I am. The people in the video are talking like this is commonplace in Portland. Is this mobile drug manufacturing? Mobile prostitution? Do they move the RVs often to avoid police? Are they stealing the RVs or is there some black market?

It just seems organized. Thanks ahead for any insight.

Connections Puzzle #763

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Wordle 1,485 4/6

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It is Marching Season in Northern Ireland, when Protestants hold parades, marches and bonfires celebrating a Protestant victory over Catholics in 1690. The season runs from Easter to September, but the peak is in July.

This effigy is definitely a product of ultra right-wing talking points and mounting tension from anti-immigrant sentiment. It's not a healthy expression of a valid concern. There are mannequins depicting human beings at the top of the pyre. Under it is a sign that tells you exactly the group they want to harm. Further, a sign that says "veterans before immigrants" sets up a false dichotomy that pits two unrelated groups against each other. It has all the tropes of this type of propaganda.

The designers and builders of the pyre should not be celebrated and should face some legal backlash.

It doesn't look like supply, so it has to be something else besides copper, right? Bad lighting? A paint job?

From the article: "There’s something about the freedom of mobility and there’s something very American about it, and so, I also think that there’s a lot of people around the world that think about American cars, and they think about American road trips, and we want to invite the rest of the world. They’re going to come for FIFA’s club games, or they’re going to come for the World Cup, or they’re going to come for the Olympics, come and see sporting events, but then you can also take a week or 10 days with my family to travel around this great country. Stop at our great restaurants. Stay in our wonderful motels or hotels. Gas up your car with great American energy."

THIS is actual car-brain thinking. I see a lot of memes in fuck cars attacking individuals and the choices they are forced to make, but this article illustrates issues that we have to fight. It's got all the delusion you expect from a government source written by car companies: tying car ownership to freedom, oddly thinking that non-americans think about our car culture as a positive experience, and that wonderfully tone-deaf tagline.

Your city likely has some form of a transportation committee. Join it. Go to the meetings. The switch to Zoom has made it even easier to do so. My experience with our local zoning committee has reinforced that you have to fight like hell, even with your own neighbors, to do simple things like decrease parking requirements. Car-brain is real and it's propped up by decades of propaganda and policy.

ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king!

DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

The Red Room hands out estrogen pills as yet another form of control. If you don't behave, you don't get your daily fix. You can tell the non-compliant girls by the lack of secondary sex characteristics. Ol Washboard Wendy over there is a rebel!

DS9 pulled off a political space drama that could rival Dallas or MASH and they got 7 seasons. I'm rewatching it again and I still can't believe that prime time viewers would sit through these episodes that are just 2 people arguing the nuances of humanity for 45 minutes. It's nothing like TV is today.

As far as a movie, I think the TNG movies weren't that Trek. They often took the characters in strange directions, favored more digestible plotlines, and wrote dialogue that you'd expect from AI. I value the television wellspring of Trek in the 90s/early 2000s. It is so cool, and that era is still bearing fruit today.

I would like to see more of the DS9 characters, and like to see what a movie budget would do, but I don't trust that a DS9 movie would've been given the reverence needed to make it right. It has been great to see Picard and the ST world in the later years, but I don't know if it makes the lore any better. I'm not sure that we are any closer to another golden decade of ST.

Thanks for posting this and helping me get some of my thoughts on DS9 coalesced. Do you have a DS9 movie plot you think would've worked? Those 'golden years' of Trek were also open to the most fan input, with concepts and entire scripts being submitted. If we had 26 episode seasons to play with, maybe they'd take our call.