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Two sides of the same coin

2007 // 2022

at the risk of sounding like a raving lunatic, i think one of my favorite trekkie memes/posts is that one where someone comments on a screenshot of tos and asks if sulu is texting, because it PERFECTLY encapsulates star trek's strange little place at the intersection of pop culture and the tech world:

like listen... 55+ years ago a bunch of actors had to use a mix of existing habits and wild imagination to come up with what they felt would be believable movements and muscle-memory for someone using completely unbelievable tech a few hundred years in the future. like tv had less than ten channels and the screen was a foot across, and they had to go "ok how would someone who's used to a tiny wireless gadget with a screen hold it and use it? how would they talk to a computer? how would the computer sound when she talked back?"

and over half a century later our own tech has surpassed the clunky retrofuture gizmos in so many ways, no doubt inspired by it, that now someone two decades into the 21st century sees an actor in the 60s holding some tiny rectangular plastic prop in both hands and immediately recognizes it as "oh, sulu's texting!" now THAT is a called shot. hell, that's putting your money on a roulette wheel in a casino that hasn't been built yet. i LOVE it. it's so star trek. sulu is absolutely texting.

filthyprotozoan

mordecaitherunaway

I should have been a better son.

crazy-brazilian

churrotowns

who is doing it like him

politijohn

Shoutout to the all queer family heroes

witchbithebooks-deactivated2019

wow this actually makes me feel really happy cause that person is me…

rowark

It me

madgastronomer

I have to tell this story.

I thought I was the first person to come out on either side of my family, but like three years after I came out, my mom was like, “By the way, my Aunt Mildred was a lesbian.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. My mom just told me this story the other day about her. She also had really bad depression, so bad that she was hospitalized. Her father flew out to San Diego to see her there. The nurses caught him on the way in and told him the no matter what she said, he was not allowed to get upset.” (This is the Catholic side of the family. Like, serious Irish Catholic with eleven kids and multiple priests in the family. Also super-duper Southern. And this was the 1940s and it was illegal.) “And he got real scared, but he went in. And she said, ‘Daddy, I’m a lesbian.’ He threw his hands in the air and hollered, ‘OH THANK GOD! I was worried it was gonna be something bad.’”

So. Shoutout to my Great Aunt Mildred, because she got there before I did.

Further shoutout to my second cousin Jared, who thought he was the first in even the extended family until he turned up for Granny’s 90th birthday, saw me for the first time in probably fifteen years, and heard me utter the words, “My wife…”

General shoutout to anybody who even thought they were the first in their family when they came out, even if they found out differently later on.

madgastronomer

Y'know what, I love this story so fucking much that I’m going to schedule it to reblog when people will see it.

cumaeansibyl

shoutout to those nurses who were ready to throw the fuck down for their young depressed lesbian patient like… when we talk about allies that is actually the kind of ally that has helped us to survive. in the most literal sense.

madgastronomer

Absolutely shoutout to Aunt Mildred’s Nurses. That was some Good Allyship.

newtliker

twin high maintenance machines

dkpsyhog

You know how canaries were historically brought into coal mines, because if the mine was full of carbon monoxide the canary would die first and the miners would be able to escape before they died too?

I just found the greatest thing.

This is a canary resuscitator.

When the miners notice the canary getting sick with carbon monoxide poisoning, they can close that circular hatch so no more gas gets into the canary cage, and open the valve on that oxygen tank to keep the canary breathing. In other words, they made a spacesuit for birds.

By immediately giving the canary access to clean air, the miners can save it from the poison. The bird lives. To be clear, this is not for economic purposes, this was specifically created because the miners felt bad and wanted to save the bird.

Isn’t that just the perfect demonstration of what humans are like? We started sacrificing small creatures to save ourselves, and then felt bad and spent our valuable resources on saving the critters too. Because yeah the canary was the only way to test for CO, but it’s a living creature too, dammit!

possumnest

gay people everywhere

idikew

The intensity of my Gender Envy™ for Newton Geiszler is actually a little painful.

uwukas

I know this is a bit of an old meme now but I impulsively cut my hair shorter a few days ago specifically because I was completely fucking overcome with gender envy for Charlie Day