In 1978 Carl Sagan told Johnny Carson the big problem with Star Wars: “They’re all white”

I’m orbiting the earth right now!

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You said I could ride shotgun?

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OK, let’s make that “complete at least one orbit around the Earth above the Kármán line”.

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You keep moving the goal post?

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Reminds me of this story from EJO himself:

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If you read the articles they both skip over lots of important details and don’t bother to critically read/watch the source material. They read as classic twist and omit facts to fit my argument style of writing.

In addition there are some incredibly weak moral arguments (killing an entire planet because someone might be lying?) and basing a lot of conclusions off of excluding expanded material (and the 3rd movie!) is just conveniently ignoring canon.

Admittedly the 3rd movie wasn’t out yet, but there was no reason to logically assume it was going to be about the Empire being a great thing as the author assumes it might have.

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I LOVE CARL SAGAN SO MUCH!!! Sad he had to depart so soon.

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EOJ is great! I heard something about his specifically saying he wouldn’t do a show with aliens in it, but it sounds like there was more to it. There’s a social responsibility that people gloss over so easily, so readily, because it’s fiction. Like that unshackles you completely from reality. Fiction is both a part of culture as well as a reflection of it. Even if you’re not creating something with a specific message, there are still messages to take away from it. You have to get ahead of that.

Some criticize that it’s just being picky, but these little things are big things to someone else. EOJ playing such an important role made people feel seen. Even Chewbacca’s slight suggests an acceptance for slights against racial and cultural lines.

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Isn’t it the Moonies paper?

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No, that’s the Washington Times. This one is owned by Phillip Anschutz who… well… see for yourself…

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Thank you! So many Washington XXXs I lost track

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From said article:

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with.

So yeah, I can how one could argue the Empire was good. It’s by being an immoral sociopath. Pinochet murdered thousands but liked Chicago school economics, and the Empire blew up a planet’s worth of civilians but it talks about order and conducts business, so dictatorships are good. :face_vomiting:

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kaitlin olson wtf GIF by NASCAR

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WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK???

And I see I owe @anon52120741 a coke…

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If blowing up entire planets full of civilians just to impose fear throughout the galaxy isn’t wrong then what the fuck IS?

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Whoa. Red flag. With a white dot at it’s centre. And in the white dot there’s some sort of weird cross-thingy.

Raises the question of who is Henry Kissinger in this analogy, though.

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As always, he’s the actual fucking dark side.

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This is yet another reason why I like the Butt Headed Astronomer* so much. He was a stick in the mud, true, but also a great font of wonder at just how amazing things really can be. When there is such amazing diversity here on Earth, it does sadden that fantasies only draw from a tiny portion.

*My thanks to the engineers at Apple who used this product code name when Carl Sagan sued them for using “Sagan” as an internal code name, to play on his “billions and billions” line from Cosmos.

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All the “geek, nerdy” stuff fanbase is prominently racist; in gaming, comic books, role playing, fantasy, you name it… But I don’t think authors per se trasmit that concept, even though yes, probably most characters in sci fi literature are white men in their 30-year crisis.

Because the many posters in this very thread that are anti-racist fans of nerdy stuff just don’t count?
:man_shrugging:

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