Star Trek Picard Season 2

I recently binge-watched all of Season two of Picard in two sittings of many hours. It was a hoot and a wheeze, and many other things besides, however, I can see why it has generated discussion on numerous forums across the internet, and why there is some critique of its (alleged tendency to wokness or the appeasement of therein). There is some incongruity, a dash of carelessness, a sprinkle of trite tripe, a fair bit of navel-gazing, self-referencing with formulaic in-jokes and some po-facedness. 

There is also the predilection to overlay the “current thing” cultural mores where may hap’s a few edits could have made it tighter. However, from an actors `actory’ perspective and with a view to plumbing the depths and breadths of experience as some, if not all concerned with the plot cruise towards agedness, a certain infirmity, but in the light of; the accrual of wisdom and its deployment to solve problems -where once actions were always the answer- I find myself having got it and enjoyed it.

Star Trek Picard Season 2

And who is to say in the future that Picard and the entire Star Trek universe occupy, that some if not all of our prejudices are flattened off relative to the expanse of alienness encountered in the wider galaxy (from their imagined perspective). 

Prejudices do still exist in our time, we are not that far removed from, homosexuality being a crime or the Victorian attitudes to sex (outwardly at least). I know this from growing up around my own grandmother who I now know looking through the lens of hindsight made prudery an artform, just by social convention. And that a general closed-mindedness and disgust dragged on like a social anchor to a dead past, until at least the swinging Sixties, through a fair part of the Seventies, Eighties', slowly ablating away through the Nineties, to the Noughties to where we are now. 

Clearly, I could write an entire piece on the evolution of sexual freedom that has occurred in the exact fifty-five years I have walked the Earth, from the summer of love in 1967 (my birth year as an arbitrary placeholder) until now, (and recently a certain renaissance of repression via the new puritans emerging as a consequence of actual wokery. Which will be hilarious to watch evolve and eat itself as it ties itself in a Gordian knot of contradictions). 

However, let's stick to Picard, if you are a Trekky, then this is a good dose of entertainment, and after all, that's the point is it not? Leave your preconceptions at the door, it isn't your universe (either of them), or your time frame.

Memes no Theme.

A general selection, some recent and just off topical, a couple for wisdom 

There is no cure for stupid.

Ha Ha.

Mitigations or Actions  

A classic reimagined

Also applies to Coffee

Amusing Antidote to Inspirationals

Truth to Power

Truth to Power 2.0

As true today as it was two-thousand four-hundred years ago. And that's the thing about truth, it doesn't change very much.

 

I finished reading #viral today.

I rather suspect that the for a while at least the #CCP (Chinese Communist Party), are phewing and wiping the sweat from their brows while silently thanking whatever deity you pray to from a foxhole, that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and took any residual attention in the west away from the very high likelihood that the #WIV in #Wuhan had a minor Captain Trips moment with some #SARSCoV2 specimens ... possibly cleaning rags, probably just simple carelessness.

There is a saying "that if it quacks like a duck it's probably a smoking gun" ... or something.

To paraphrase Monty Python `You Lucky ... Lucky Bastards"

Everyone should read this book or chunks of it, even if it's just the timelines and then the list of citations and links (very useful for the Kindle user).

Viral, Alina Chan & Matt Ridley

Gut Micrbiome

 This article popped up in my feed courtesy of Neal Asher's Facebook page.

 

Slowing the effects of ageing by eating well and feeding the good gut bacteria.

fightaging.org calorie-restriction-slows-immune-aging-in-part-via-gut-microbiome-alterations

In response to the post, I commented as below. My last paragraph is conspiracy theorist crap, based on the premise: that one should never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be attributed to stupidity (or in this case the likelihood that there are great removes between the various parties involved in potential solutions, so the attribute is ignorance by dint of separation).

My comment.

I have been banging this particular drum for a while. From the evidence that the gut has a sympathetic nervous system akin to a brain with all the associated neurons and synapses. The relationship, this activity has regarding gut chemistry and enzyme activity, and the potential as described in a fair bit of scientific literature that; there is indeed the case to be argued that an abundance of one particular form of bacteria dominating the gut could indeed lead to parasitism of the gut microbiome, leading to the host unconsciously feeding the parasite, to the detriment of the host in time.

Scholarly articles linked below.

Is eating behaviour manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

The gut microbiome in neurological disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

Regulation of Neurotransmitters by the Gut Microbiota and Effects on Cognition in Neurological Disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 

A simplified blog post from John Hopkins Medicine. Hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection

At a tangent. An interesting thing caught my ear this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. They were talking about the lack of activity in adults and children in the wake of the post Olympics get Britain moving campaign. And of course, the bloke from the NGO blamed the government and said it was the government's job to put more money into the process and the government should be pushing people toward healthier lifestyles. I was amused (unpleasantly) at the simplicity of the solution, and the lack of depth of understanding of `lurking variables’.

We have a population that lives off processed food with one of the highest consumption rates of sugar on the planet.

www.worldatlas.com top sugar consuming nations in the world

I am not suggesting that we as a species aren’t to blame for our own health and consumption. But it would be remiss to discount the possibility that there is a feedback loop that hampers efforts to get people off sugar, off processed foods and more active.

And then all of a sudden we are into geopolitics, big food, big pharma and according to the NGO, the need for more big government. Clearly, the co-morbidities of the pandemic which accounted for most of the non-age related deaths have an almost one to one relationship with the health of the nation and the diet of the nation. 

If a no-one, with no scientific background from the arse-end of the world, can see something approaching a correlation, it begs the question. Is anyone actually interested in resolving the underlying issue? Or is the study of the field just a useful tool for developing novel pharmacological treatments to treat for a food industry that is quite happy to feed the pharmacological industry new clients?

Mixed up Memes

There is no common theme today, just a random selection.

Semi topical Dune related meme. Bless his cottons sacks he's an angry ballbag of a man. 

Pertinent to a video I will share in another post.

How did Data cope.

I almost feel sorry for the bloke in the lower panel who has had his picture purloined to poke fun at hipstrs.

We have all been there.

Some uncomfortable truth. You are a long time dead, and no one on their death bed is going to be thinking ... "I wish I spent more time at work."

This is the way...

THE ARGUMENT FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY