This really is a great piece.

Interesting first-person perspective on Carney as a fellow graduate student at Oxford.

But it was the latter half of the piece, that reflects on how Canadians who study in the UK or US are constantly subjected to overly aggressive declarations that deny Canada as a nation, which really hit home for me.

As a Canadian who attended graduate school in the US, I experienced almost verbatim every denial and put down in this piece.

And so many more constant and dumbfoundingly bizarre nonsequitur microaggressions. (One of the American I shared office space with lashed out that Canadians didn’t have any ‘real’ Black people so we had to borrow them from Jamaica to compete as athletes in Track and Field.)

So many of these offensive remarks were self contradictory - e.g.,

• Canada doesn’t exist as a nation or culture but at the same time Canadian students are vocally criticized for being ‘so nationalistic’

• there’s no need to include Canada in a listing of macroeconomic indicators of major economies because it’s ‘just a regional economy in in North America’ but only the US indicators are included. Meanwhile, California is profiled and discussed as a separate economy because it’s ‘so large’.

• or a renowned professor who I worked for as a research assistant observing at some random point when he realized where I had done my undergraduate degree ‘Oh, you went to a real place’ - which given how difficult it was to get into that school and program, should never have been a question.

Clearly, the ability to be outside in appropriate clothing for activities isn’t being mandated. This is where a temperate climate enables ridiculous practices to persist.

All I can think about when I see this image is how in Ontario, the responsible provincial ministry requires all schools and ‘day nurseries’ (read day and after school care) to put the kids out in the yards twice a day unless the weather conditions are severe (Less than -20 or more than +30 Celsius.).

Parents are responsible to send their kids with suitable clothing for the cold. One rarely sees little girls in skirts in schools unless they are wearing tunic dresses over leggings.

In an earlier era, pre 1970s, when skirts were mandatory for girls, that meant switching to pants or snow pants from the skirts 3 times a day to go outside in winter (two breaks and leaving end of day).

. . . and so we, step by tiny step, lure yet another one in.

Going to be that person and suggest the OP try Voyager.

It seems to be the most accessible of the older shows for younger, newer viewers. It was the most watched of all the classic shows on Netflix.

It covers all the classic tropes and provides endless fodder for memes here.

It’s uneven throughout its entire run, but also has some of the very best episodes ever. New fans really attach to the characters, and there’s no refuting that it unabashedly leaned into the weird.

Some thoughts after sleeping on it…

— I found the 4 x 01 Twovix the best season premiere yet.

All the premieres seem callback and Easter egg heavy. Making this one a museum (ship) mishap episode worked that into the story in a natural way and allowed some of the weirdest and trippyest things from Voyager to pike on. Bravo.

While some reviewers have expressed regrets that the original Voyager actors voices weren’t used, I’m glad that the focus stayed on the Cerritos crew, the artifacts and how Voyager remains dangerous wherever she is, even as a literal museum.

I am unhappy that the Klingon lower decker and his ship were sacrificed for the seasonal mystery big bad. It’s clear it’s really dangerous though. (Perhaps the mystery ship is collecting humanoids to take them to another era where they are extinct….?)

It’s also likely the case that I enjoyed the ride of the premiere more for knowing I had another new episode to watch immediately.

— The second episode was mostly a straightforward Lower Decks classic, but one that did its job to move the main 4 lower deckers into their new roles.

We’ll have to see how well it works on rewatch, but the moopsie scenes seem likely to be classics. After the Voyager celebration of weird in the season premiere, it was very smart for Lower Decks to underscore its ability to give us its own very original weirdness, and remind us that humanity are the most dangerous in the menagerie.

I’m glad that they make Rutherford a bit of an odd man out in the promotions. I still feel that he’s a bit of an incomplete person/character because his ambition and drive has been submerged by the implant. I really hope that the writers will keep dribbling out more about that.

There was a reference in Discovery season one or two to SQL, as if it was cool. Sigh.

That was likely added to quell reactions to a woman as a first officer. But the Network had notes even so on how negatively test audiences reacted to Majel Barrett’s Number One.

Roddenberry tried another tack with blonde, beehived, Whitney in a miniskirt as Yeoman Janice Rand. She was supposed to be a woman main character but even that was too much for the executives and she was written out by the end of the first season.

They do have these platforms, but many people have become dependent on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to link to information.

So the territorial government is literally posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter telling people how to search for CPAC Canada and CBC Radio so they can find the sites.

Compare that to the duty of all broadcasters in a public emergency to carry the key evacuation information on radio and television and tell people where to get more detailed emergency instructions.

This exactly. Using something closer to the xenomorphs of Alien, introduces a truly frightening species that is sufficiently different that their kind of intelligence and motivations are believably difficult for Federation humanoids to understand.

I know there are other older fans struggling with this, but I think it’s saving the Gorn and Arena from absurdity.

No matter how compelling the story, TOS Arena’s ridiculous rubber suit Gorn has become one of the most recognized images from the franchise in popular culture.

Even as a child watching the episode in its first run it seemed more like silly monster movie stuff. It didn’t have the quality of truly scary monsters of that era such as the Creature of the Black Lagoon. It wasn’t in any way reaching Roddenberry’s target high value sci-fi standard of Forbidden Planet or even The Cage.

More, with so many later stories of Kirk and other captains welcoming the strange and different, coming to terms with very alien species, we need to be shown why Kirk was so hostile to the Gorn by the time of TOS.

While they could have gone for some other kind of reptilian, I like SNW’s choice to go with a the biology of parasitic R-breeder. Roddenberry’s original concept for the Ferengi was closer to the parasitic bat people of Andromeda than what TNG and DS9 gave us. The updated Gorn can be viewed as incorporating that idea and making them as terrifying.

She’s a more seasoned pilot by far than early Tom Paris.

But she’s exactly what I expect and know experienced combat pilots to be like. Some are sober and subdued like Sulu or Detmer, but the in your face types are common and tolerated.

I’ve seen a great amount of curmudgeonly criticism of this episode in other places.

Can’t understand it really. There really seems to be a contingent of fans that just don’t want to have fun.