The government claims about 3,100 dead protesters, including hundreds of security personnel. The UN claims 14,000-20,000 dead. Reports emerged in mid-January that the sheer number of casualties in Tehran and other major cities exhausted the supply of body bags, with authorities reportedly using semi-trailer trucks to transport the dead.
The protests have quieted, largely thanks to security personnel shooting or arresting anyone who dares protest. More than 40,000 people have been arrested. How many of those poor souls will emerge from captivity is unknown.
The internet in Iran is still down, and authorities are terrified of reinitializing it. Their vast internal intelligence networks are telling them that the people are not going back to blind obedience to the regime.That’s because with the internet down, commerce in Iran has come to a screeching halt. Store shelves are empty. People aren’t working. In a nation sitting on an ocean of oil, most gas stations are closed.
This has led Iran into a “doom loop.” Commerce has slowed to a crawl, meaning the conditions that led to the economic protests in the first place have only worsened. It’s inevitable that this will lead to more protests and another crackdown.
How much longer the regime can last is an open question.
Time and time again we’re confronted with “fans” of something who continue to miss the lessons within the media they’re consuming. We’ve seen it with Star Wars, our superhero stories, and it has become an increasing problem with Star Trek “fans.”
More recently, men like The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic, known for hating anything that seems to be left leaning, have been dogging on the Paramount+ slate of Trek shows. The issue with these Right Wing figure heads talking about Trek is that they miss one important detail about Star Trek: It was never for them.
From the start of Star Trek way back when (60 years ago, to be exact), the series set out to do one thing: Change the world. And that it did. It made history for its inclusivity, including being the first interracial kiss on television in “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The kiss was between William Shatner’s James T. Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Uhura.
It really wasn’t: Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nancy Sinatra got there first, a year earlier, in 1967. Similarly, Star Trek was envisioned right from the start as a show for a mass audience, which by its nature means people from all sides of the aisle. The words “mass audience” were used explicitly in the writer’s guide of the original series, which aired on NBC from 1966-1969:
YES, THE STAR TREK FORMAT IS ACTUALLY THAT SIMPLE. IF YOU’RE A TV PROFESSIONAL, YOU ALREADY KNOW THE FOLLOWING SEVEN RULES:
I. Build your episode on an action-adventure framework. We must reach out, hold and entertain a mass audience of some 20,000,000 people or we simply don’t stay on the air.
II. Tell your story about people, not about science and gadgetry. Joe Friday doesn’t stop to explain the mechanics of his .38 before he uses it; Kildare never did a monologue about the theory of anesthetics; Matt Dillon never identifies and discusses the breed of his horse before he rides off on it.
III. Keep in mind that science fiction is not a separate field of literature with rules of its own, but, indeed, needs the same ingredients as any story — including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivation, you know the list.
IV. Then, with that firm foundation established, interweave in it any statement to be made about man, society and so on. Yes, we want you to have something to say, but say it entertainingly as you do on any other show. We don’t need essays, however brilliant.
If anything, Star Trek: The Next Generation, performed even better when compared to other syndicated TV series, as the L.A. Times reported in 1988:
It has taken no time at all for an audience apparently made up of hard-core Trekkies and more recently won devotees to embrace the new “Star Trek” family. In first-run syndication, which means it airs on different days at different times on each of its 210 stations (locally on KCOP-TV Channel 13 Sundays at 5 p.m., repeating Saturdays at 6 p.m.), the new show has earned a national 10.6 Nielsen rating, which translates into an average weekly audience of about 9.4 million households.
While that total audience is about half what Top-10 network shows, such as “Growing Pains” or “60 Minutes,” produce each week in prime time, it is about equal to such network prime-time staples as “Spencer: For Hire” and “The Disney Sunday Night Movie.”
Playing mostly out of prime time, those numbers, Harris said, exceed Paramount’s initial expectations.
And demographically, the raw data that is used to set advertising rates, the show’s numbers are even more impressive. During the February sweeps, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was the most watched show in its time period among Los Angeles-area men 18-54, according to Don Searle, KCOP’s research director, even beating the Winter Olympics.
The demographics were so good that Paramount’s share of the advertising revenue generated from the series each week is reportedly close to $1 million–greater than the approximately $800,000 license fees the networks generally pay for a one-hour prime-time program.
Those shows succeeded because the story came first, before the messaging, as the 1966-era Trek writer’s guide demanded. All of the modern-era streaming Trek are woke messaging first, story second (or third). Why, it’s as if:
If you read through the press materials it’s clear everyone involved thinks the most salient part of Star Trek was that it was a political show about the 60’s. And in that one misunderstanding you can see why everything has gone wrong https://t.co/1x4qtRYnp5
MEDIAITE: BBC Confirms Authenticity of Viral Video Appearing to Show Alex Pretti Kicking Agents’ Car 11 Days Before Shooting. “The BBC confirmed the authenticity of the video in their 10 p.m. GMT news broadcast. Reporter Ros Atkins said the man in the video ‘has the same coat, facial hair and gait as Alex Pretti and a facial recognition tool suggests a 97% match. We see him shouting abuse at the agents.’ Separately, a spokesperson for the BBC confirmed to Mediaite that they reviewed the footage and verified its team did use facial recognition technology on the video.”
UPDATE: This is CNN:
Last night on CNN.
Ana Navarro: Alex Pretti was the perfect guy. He's the guy that you want to date your daughter. He's the man you want your son to be. They can't malign him because we have the videos.
HMM: Doctors May Be Missing an Early Heart Warning Window for Men. “Past research has consistently shown that men tend to develop heart disease earlier than women. In recent decades, however, common risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and diabetes have become more similar between men and women. Because of that, researchers expected the gap to shrink. Instead, the difference has remained.”
LOOK FOR TROUBLE, AND YOU’LL USUALLY FIND MORE THAN YOU WANTED:
🚨 LEFTIST HOAX DESTROYED 🚨
New video shows Alex Pretti violently attacking federal officers and destroying federal law enforcement vehicles. His firearm is fully visible in the footage.
This video PROVES that Alex Pretti was not an ‘innocent bystander’ or ‘legal observer’
CHRISTIAN TOTO: All Jimmy Kimmel Does Is Lie (And Cry). “He’s the King of the anti-Trump Resistance. Comedy? Laughs? Merriment? That’s no longer his prime directive, and it hasn’t been for some time.”
MUST WATCH: Footage of an a man who looks like Alex Pretti with a gun in his waistband, spitting on and attacking federal law enforcement officers and kicking the tail light of their vehicle on January 13.
“If this video is verified as accurate, and more information comes forth, then it further cements the veracity of recent reporting that Alex Pretti was no peaceful protestor or innocent bystander. Pretti was an anti-ICE activist who sought confrontation and did what MN Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan encouraged: he put his body on the line.”
CHANGE, RAPID CHANGE: Ukraine And The Gamification Of Combat “The Russo-Ukrainian War continues to accelerate military innovation at a furious rate. The latest innovation isn’t a better drone or newer hardware, but introducing a fundamentally new organizing principle: the gamification of combat.”
More:
Ukraine's Defense Ministry built a performance-based system for its drone units—and the results are staggering.
The "Army of Drones Bonus" program tracks confirmed kills, destroyed vehicles, and recon missions in real time. Units that deliver get priority access to new… pic.twitter.com/4G0qHMzHYL
It’s easier to get Ukraine’s side, but Russia’s drone program probably moves just as quickly, and has been used to serious effect against Ukraine logistics.
Congrats to the @Neuralink team for helping many people who have lost use of their body with our Telepathy implant that enables computer use simply by thinking!
The next generation Neuralink cybernetic augment with 3X capability will be ready later this year.
DETERRENCE: Contract to Expand B-21 Production Coming by March. “Yet details on what exactly the deal will entail remain scarce and are likely to remain shrouded in classification, if past B-21 contracts are any indication. The Air Force has declined to reveal any metrics for how much production will be expanded, and it is unclear if the long-term goal is to buy extra B-21s beyond the current program of record of 100 aircraft, or simply reach that baseline quantity faster.”
AN IMPORTANT REMINDER: Shooting vs. Fighting: The Reality Is, Bad Guys Have Guns Too…And Always Will. “A conversation regarding the current state of affairs in the United States, particularly in states and cities run by socialist Democrats, led a person I was talking to to respond that he had a gun and knew how to use it. To be fair, my friend, who will remain anonymous, does indeed own firearms. I also believe that he knows full well how to load them and then press the trigger to make them go bang. However, I also know that this same person never has time for training, having myriad excuses whenever the subject is brought up.”
FEDERAL DEPT OF ED MAKES AN INVESTMENT IN CIVIC EDUCATION: $1.9 million to The American Civic Tradition at 250, at two Texas universities. Weird, I thought my tax money was reserved for teaching people to be ignorant of and hate America.
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