I think DS9 works if you consider it more as a "show about star trek" rather than just as "star trek". E.g., it's a good deconstruction of what is "necessary" for a utopia, or for looking at the limits of how a utopia van operate in practice.

DS9's characters and their dynamics are my favorite amongst any star trek show, but I think it's fair to say that the show does not stick to the core world building "pillars" of star trek. However, I think it would be unfair to dismiss it as simply edgy for the sake of edginess.

(Similar to KOTOR and star wars - really cool how the game turns the idea of the Force on its head, but definitely not in line with George Lucas' vision. I would still want to see a movie about this anyways)

Ghibli might be a more interesting case study - Miyazaki repeatedly said that he did not write his stories with an audience in mind besides himself, but his movies quite clearly have universal appeal. His stories are quite clearly grounded in his own culture, but they touch on universal human experiences.

However, there are definitely stories with a specific audience in mind that do not have universal appeal (e.g., Transformers smut fanfic) though generally authors are aware of this.

I think there are also folks who write stories with an idea in mind of universal appeal, but do not understand themselves enough to actually do so - things they take for granted as "common sense" may not actually be human universals. Or, because they fail to say anything at all in their work, it ends up fading into the background. (I don't believe in sociopolitically "neutral" works, we are all shaped by our beliefs and cultures).

These works aren't necessarily bad, either- I think Andy Weir has said a few times in interviews that his works aren't meant to be "political", but the two that I've read (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) are both a sort of "sci fi optimism" about people from different nations coming together to solve a problem. That may be "common sense" to some people, but it is certainly NOT a universal (even if I do share the outlook that people of Earth should work together to help each other regardless of national boundaries).

Exactly. Star Trek takes place in utopia - and the creators' version of utopia is one with equality, freedom, and respect for all. If someone's version of utopia doesn't align with this, I think that says a lot more about them than it does about how "woke" Star Trek is

Is there a lemmydrama like subredditdrama? Maybe a fedidrama community would work. I don't know if one exists yet

I don't really think it's up to DinoCon to solve crimes. Obviously symbolic gestures aren't justice, but I don't really see what else DinoCon is supposed to do. Are you honestly asking DinoCon to spin up a crack team of legal experts to manage the epstein case? Maybe we should have GenCon start tracking down serial killers while we're at it.

Did anyone in this thread read the article?

According to the Montana Standard, after his name surfaced in the released files, Horner posted, and later deleted, a social media statement calling his decision to pursue Epstein’s support an extremely poor judgment. He said that while he knew Epstein had been convicted of soliciting prostitution, he was unaware of Epstein’s broader sex trafficking operation until years later.

Horner wrote that his visit involved only Epstein, staff, and several women introduced as college students. He said Epstein donated $10,000 toward a 2012 DinoChicken conference but otherwise declined to fund his research. “There was nothing weird, inappropriate, or out of the ordinary,” Horner said in the statement.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology released a notice to members last week, cautioning that inclusion in the Epstein files does not alone imply misconduct.

Those are sketchy circumstances, I think a ban from events is more than fair under the circumstances. Normally I would expect a ban like this to be lifted once feds completed their investigation (assuming no wrongdoing occurred), but obviously the feds aren't interested in investigating, so we may not get the chance to know whether or not there's more to this.

I think it's fair to expect the justice system to pursue "innocent before proven guilty", but private organizations ban and/or suspend members all the time due to credible accusations, even if they haven't been convicted in a court of law.

This is a fair take, and I greatly prefer an "innocent before proven guilty" justice system. I think it's also fair for you to read the article before commenting.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology released a notice to members last week, cautioning that inclusion in the Epstein files does not alone imply misconduct.

I find solace in doing things that will help others and maybe improve the world. Local food pantries and shelters need help now more than ever. Mutual aid groups can also be quite effective if nonprofits in your area are sparse or otherwise ineffectual.

Perhaps the actions of a few individuals won't change much, but I prefer it to sitting around and waiting for the world to burn to a crisp.

I'm not going to fault you for that - but do you think you should receive an award for the work you didn't do? Even if you only use the car on the "easy" parts of the race that nobody cares about?

In the case of this particular game, perhaps the bulk of the creative work was done by humans. But if the GOTY committee isn't confident with drawing a line between what work is OK to offload onto an AI and what work isn't, then I think it's fair for then to say this year that any generative AI use is a disqualifier.

You and I can say with ease that an implementation of a basic swap function (c=a, a=b, b=c) doesn't require any creative work and has been done to death, so there's no shame in copypasteing something from stackoverflow or chatgpt into your own code to save time.

But it's harder to gauge that for more complex things. Especially with art - where would you draw the line? Reference material? Concept art? Background textures or 3d models of basic props (random objects in the scene like chairs, trees, etc)?

I don't think there's a clear answer for that. You might have an answer you think is correct, and I might have one as well, but I think it will be difficult and time consuming to achieve consensus in the game development community.

So, the most efficient answer for now is to have any generative AI be a disqualifier.

I have an old car so I burn CDs all the time. After streaming music on shuffle for awhile, I find it refreshing to listen to an album all the way through.

The last CD I burned happened to be legally obtained music off of Bandcamp (a mix of some Trocadero songs).

Though of course a lot of the time, the songs I burn come from other sources.

I'm not going to fault someone for driving to work in a car, but I certainly wouldn't call them the winner of a marathon even if they only drove for a few minutes of that marathon.

There's a difference between something that runs the race for you (LLM AI) and something that simply helps you do what you are already doing (I suppose photoshop is the equivalent of drinking gatorade).

One of the factors in whether a nonviolent resistance movement can succeed or not is whether any state forces end up shifting loyalty. "Appealing to the moral sense of the people oppressing them" may be false if you're just talking about whoever's at the top, but it absolutely is a factor for the day-to-day bureaucrats and security forces. Nonviolent campaigns are more likely to cause these sorts of changes (particularly when violent crackdowns against nonviolent resistance backfires).

Consider the success of the following movements:

• Peoples Power Revolution (First one in 1986) - several military leaders defected from the Marcos regime
• Velvet Revolution (1989) - had several government officials defect
• Malagasy Political Crisis (2002) - Defense minister resigned, generals and military officers were split on who to support (source for this one, since the article is hard to find). In fairness, although this one would largely be classified as nonviolent, at the time, it was hard to say whether or not there would be any armed conflict (aside from some incidents with police attacking protesters early in the movement)

There's several other cases of this happening over the past century, but I hope you get my point - nobody's appealing to the guy on the throne, they're appealing to all the other cogs in the machine.