Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 06:54:06 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

   Today, Biden signed a federal trans healthcare ban into law. For as many attacks on trans people as we've seen in the last eight years, so far they've been mostly at the state and city level... Biden changed that today.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 06:54:46 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     I can't focus on anything else today if I think about that too hard, so as an emotional reset, I'm going to complain about something that, by comparison, is completely unimportant but that feels more tractable somehow.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 06:56:58 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     Before anything else, let me just say that Season 5 of Lower Decks is awesome. I have one major gripe with it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad show... far from it, it rocks.

     Anyway, that gripe is the way they use the word "quantum" and the name "Schrödinger." I'm not going to argue from a point of technical accuracy, because it's fucking Star Trek. The rules of physics can be summarized as "is it fun," for fuck's sake.

     But it bothers me from a worldbuilding perspective.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:01:58 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     Season 5 takes place in the early 2380s, putting it approximately 470 years after what we currently in 2024 call "quantum physics" was discovered. With 360 more years of distance, I have some trouble believing that the word "quantum" holds the same mystique that it does now.

     Even in 2024, "quantum physics" is really just "physics" in many applications. Transistors and LEDs are both inherently "quantum," for instance.

     (There's a separate question I'm burying here for now.)

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:04:39 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     I've argued before and I'll argue now that the reason that the word "quantum" is treated as being so mysterious now is because of a highly successful gatekeeping effort. Far from being explanatory, Schrödinger's Cat was intended to muddy the pedagogical waters. Far too many physicists act as though quantum stuff being difficult means that they're smarter than other people.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:06:47 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     Add to that that Schrödinger was, by his own accounts, a prolific child predator, and it feels very *very* strange to have Tendi excitedly telling everyone about the "Schrödinger field" ahead of the Cerritos. I just don't really believe that that's how someone in the late 2300s would talk about science in their own time, especially not when that gatekeeping campaign is a human thing and not necessarily a part of Orion culture.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:07:18 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     • terra

     @terraboops Oh, don't worry, I'm getting there! Because he was indeed very goddamned horrible, agreed.

   • Embed this notice
     terra (terraboops@sharkey.stellar.gay)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:07:19 JST terra

     in reply to

     @xgranade@wandering.shop well... and also do you know that schrodinger himself was... to put it lightly, horrible?

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:09:30 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     And like, I get it. The show isn't airing in the late 2300s, it's airing now, and being watched by people in 2024, so adopting cultural idioms that are familiar to real-world viewers in 2024 isn't a bad thing. It's part of how you write good and accessible dialogue.

     After all, time travel episodes that go back to the 1200s don't generally use middle English.

     But positive references to Schrödinger and treating "quantum" as exotic break immersion for me.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:12:09 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     I just don't believe that an intensely multicultural Federation society would find itself trapped by the same bad-faith pedagogy by a particular sexual predator that real-world cultures are too often stuck in. Star Trek tells the viewers over and over again that the Federation is better than that, but casually invoking "Schrödinger fields" and "quantum realities" cuts against that storytelling by imagining we'll still be fighting the same bullshit gatekeeping forever.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:13:35 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     There. Emotions reset. Thanks for reading, listening, psychically receiving, hearing about second-hand, or inferring from evaporated photons long after everything this thread has collapsed into a black hole.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 07:18:29 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     You complain about the word "quantum" in Star Trek because it's technically inaccurate.

     I complain about the word "quantum" in Star Trek because of problematic power dynamics and implied cultural hegemony.

     We are not the same.

     (But that's OK! It'd be boring if we *were* the same. Plus a little weird. Transporter accident, I guess?)

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra is only carbon now (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 11:59:04 JST Cassandra is only carbon now

     in reply to

     • kevin only toots about tv

     @kmmfoo He 1000% did. I didn't talk about it more because others have said it better than I could, and I'm just exhausted.

     https://bsky.app/profile/dryad.technology/post/3le3a4qo5a22y

   • Embed this notice
     kevin only toots about tv (kmmfoo@friendsofdesoto.social)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 11:59:05 JST kevin only toots about tv

     in reply to

     @xgranade I applaud all your #st thoughts, but ummm, is this this REALLY just an aside, while you’re commenting on a #betrayal by the outgoing dem administration? because that needs to be front and center here.

     Love me some #startreknoise, but did Biden really shit on the TG community?