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Yes Obviously the Senate Should Be Abolished

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It’s always been like this. (Image: Getty)

Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”

Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate. The state of Wyoming, with 590,000 residents, has two Senators, and the state of California, with 39 million residents, also has two Senators. Every citizen of Wyoming has, proportionally, 66 times more representation in the Senate than each citizen of California. If you believe in “one person, one vote”—this is the opposite of that. The design of the Senate is inherently (and purposely) not just undemocratic but anti-democratic. Anyone who favors small-d democracy and believes that all people are created equal and deserve equal political representation must wish for the abolition of the Senate, which serves to act in opposition to those principles.

Sometimes, people will say “Well each state deserves equal representation,” as a way of defending the Senate’s existence. This is the sort of propaganda that they teach you in elementary school so that you are never required to think deeply about the flaws of your nation if you don’t want to. Really? Each little state drawn on the map, no matter how small or large, no matter how absurd the reasons for its existence, deserves equal representation? Is that what our political system is for—to represent dirt and rocks, rather than people? We have “balance out” the “urban” priorities of large states with the “rural” priorities of small states? This is just nonsense. Look closely: Do the rocks vote? Does the dirt vote? Do the squirrels and deer vote? No, they do not. Not even in Wyoming. The people vote. It’s just that each person in a less populated state is awarded far more power than each person in a more populous state. In other words, the Senate is not some sort of wise balancing system for representing culture and environment; it is, like all political systems, a system for representing people. It just does its job in a biased, irrational, and harmful way.

Each state deserves equal power? Rhode Island, at 1,545 square miles, gets the same number of Senators as Alaska, at 665,384 square miles. This idiot argument fails even on its own idiot terms. Also, see what happens when you tell a defender of the Senate as a hallowed institution that you are going to make DC and Puerto Rico states and give Democrats four new Senate seats. Outrage! Oh? The places where we murdered all the natives and made up imaginary lines and called them “states” are absolutely sacred up until the year 2026 but must never be altered after that because of… history?

The discussion you will hear on this topic tends to be quite shallow.


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Want to know a representative political system that makes more sense? We have one! The House of Representatives. There are 435 reps there and they each represent an equal number of people. It is fair. As the population of the country grows, the number of people that each member represents grows equally. In order to improve the quality of representation, some people advocate expanding the number of representatives in the House. That would be fine. Each member would still be representing an equal number of citizens. See how that works? Equality. Democracy. Basic stuff here.

The fact that the unequal, unrepresentative, and undemocratic Senate sits in a position above the equal and democratic House of Representatives is clearly detrimental to the ability of our political system to give each citizen equal representation and political rights and power. It is anti-democratic. No big surprise, of course—the Senate was created to be anti-democratic, to give the ruling class of the late 1700s a way to disempower the masses in our fledgling democracy. The founders were very open about this. They did not believe in true democracy. Other evidence of their hostility to democracy is the Electoral College, the fact that they did not let women vote, and the fact that they did not let black people vote but did allow black people to be owned as slaves. Some of those atrocious elements of America’s design at its founding have been corrected since then, and some have not.

If you go back far enough in US history it was considered crazy to say that slavery should be abolished, and it was considered wacky to say that women deserved the vote, and it was considered ridiculous to say that voting power should not discriminate by race. Eventually the movements to change those things succeeded and now we look back on the establishment that opposed those changes as the real fools. The design of the Senate is just as obviously anti-democratic as those things, and if we ever get around to abolishing the Senate in the name of improving our democracy, future generations will look at its existence as just another flawed and prejudicial black mark on American history that it took us a long, long time to rise above.

You do not need to be some brilliant political theorist to understand all of this. You just have to genuinely believe in democracy and the equality of all citizens, and then to look at the design and function of the Senate, and then try a teeny tiny bit to free your mind from the the contents of public school social studies textbooks and 4th of July speeches that may have lodged inside there. Every honest person who has thought about it for more than two seconds either A) understands the flawed nature of the Senate and that our democracy would be strengthened if the Senate did not exist, B) understands the flawed nature of the Senate but does not actually want to have a fair democracy in America and therefore supports the anti-democratic function of the Senate, or C) is dumb and/ or lying.

That’s all of the possibilities. A lot of regular people have never spent much time thinking about this, which is fine. A lot of other people are politically and ideologically hostile to the principles of democracy, and therefore favor the existence of the Senate as a way to hobble the power of the masses. This is not fine—it’s dictatorial, elitist, and is the sort of thing that we allegedly had a revolution here to overcome—but it is, I guess, honest. What is neither fine nor honest is to stand up and argue that the Senate is good for our democracy and that anyone calling for the abolition of the Senate is wacky and ridiculous and dumb. Whenever you hear this, I advise you to just imagine fat guys with mustaches and cigars in the late 1800s arguing against the enfranchisement of women, for many of the same reasons.

This is a topic on which there is not really much new to say, on a theoretical level. The Senate is plainly an institution that makes our government worse and the sooner we can get rid of it, the better. Victor Berger, a socialist member of the House of Representatives, introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate in 1911. There has been no reason for anyone to find this position shocking for more than 100 years. Hell, this is all so rudimentary that even a Gawker blogger was calling to abolish the Senate a decade ago.


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So why am I wasting all of our time rehashing this? Because, recently, it came to the attention of professional political operatives and then to the attention of some of the shallowest political thinkers of America, all of whom are employed by major media outlets, that the Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish the Senate. Since DSA is having electoral political success right now, that means that many news outlets now preface their discussions of DSA with the factoid that they want to abolish the Senate, presented in a context that implies that it is a wacky and extremist far left position. Worse, the true professional propagandists who work at places like the Washington Post editorial board take this as an opportunity to metaphorically place their hands on their face in the manner of Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone” and shriek that Angie Nixon has won a Senate primary and yet she is a member of DSA and DSA wants to abolish the Senate and isn’t that crazy??????

As someone who has been professionally obligated to read things like this for decades now, I have developed a robust immune reaction that protects me from this sort of penny ante sophistry written by guys who like to masturbate to the idea of shaking Jeff Bezos’s hand. (The quality of right wing opinion writing on offer at house organs like the WSJ and Washington Post editorial pages today in fact gives me great optimism for socialism, because our intellectual opponents seem capable of building little more than straw houses in the face of our mighty wind.) Yet I know that, as with many structural issues, the fact that much of the general public has not given this much thought until now may allow them to be easily swayed by shallow bullshit.

So let us all be clear about this: The Senate is anti-democratic by design, it gives much greater power to citizens of small and rural states than to citizens of large and populous states for no rational reason, and our political system would be fairer and more democratic if the Senate were abolished. Does that mean it is going to happen soon? No. Does that mean that it is hypocritical for a socialist to win a Senate seat? No. The long path to reforming our system will ultimately require gaining the support of many people in the Senate. As long as the Senate exists, we need to fight for power there. All of this is pretty straightforward.

What is grating is that the group of people—politicians, political theorists, pundits, the political media—who are responsible for creating a healthy public conversation about the quality of our political system instead become either party hacks or get their jobs just by being good at having beautiful hair on television and therefore act all shocked and discombobulated at the common sense suggestion that we should reform our political system where it is flawed. Jesus, it’s so tedious. If you are paid to discuss this stuff for the public please stop being a lying asshole or smug prick about it. Thank you.

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rocketo
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There Was No Greater Champion For Working-Class People Than Dolly Parton, and the Food She Loved Was Proof

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Following the loss of the greatest songwriter in history, I'm drowning my sorrows in biscuits and gravy.

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rocketo
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Dolly Parton Made an Undeniable Mark on Black Culture

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The “Queen of Country” Dolly Parton has died in Nashville, Tennessee, her family announced on Tuesday. The music icon was 80.

“After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones,” Parton’s publicist, Marcel Pariseau, said Tuesday.

Beyoncé accepts the Innovator Award onstage during the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles in 2024. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

Parton’s death reverberated across her home state, including among Black lawmakers who celebrated her artistry and unwavering devotion to Tennessee.

“Tennessee has lost a legend,” Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson said Tuesday. “Dolly Parton was an extraordinary songwriter, singer, music icon, a Tennessee hero, and someone who never lost touch with her Tennessee roots.”

Pearson added that Parton, known for her platinum wigs and her wit, “was as generous as she was gifted, providing millions of books to children through her Imagination Library and giving to causes dear to her heart.”

Yet Parton’s reach extended far beyond Tennessee — and far beyond country music. Her impact spanned genres and generations, making an undeniable mark on Black life and culture.

Whitney Houston

Houston, beloved as The Voice, famously covered Parton’s song, “I Will Always Love You,” for The Bodyguard in 1992. Her rendition topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks. Parton later revealed in 2021 that she used some of the royalties from Houston’s version to invest in a historically Black Nashville neighborhood.

Beyoncé

Parton’s influence is all over Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning 2024 album, Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé reimagines the Parton classic “Jolene,” features the country legend on the spoken-word interlude “Dolly P,” and includes her in a cameo at the beginning of “Tyrant.”

Lil Nas X attends the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for GLAAD)

Lil Nas X

During a performance in 2021, Lil Nas X put his own spin on “Jolene,” singing Parton’s original without changing the pronouns used in the lyrics. A longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, Parton praised the rapper, saying that she was “honored and flattered” by his take on her tune.

Pras, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Mýa

Pras Michel of The Fugees performs during the 2023 The Roots Picnic in Philadelphia. (Taylor Hill/Getty Images for Live Nation Urban)

For 1998’s “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are),” Pras teamed up with Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Mýa. The worldwide smash interpolates the melody of “Islands in the Stream,” the 1983 hit by Parton and Kenny Rogers.

The post Dolly Parton Made an Undeniable Mark on Black Culture appeared first on Capital B News.

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angelchrys
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rocketo
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Is This All You Can Conjure

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Is This All You Can Conjure

Because I am nothing if not a huge idiot, this week I wasted several minutes of my one precious life on this Earth reading a company blog from Google called 'Level up: How AI is unlocking a new golden age of games'.

The shape of this blog is entirely predictable, given it's published on Google's Cloud site and was written by Jack Buser, their Global Director for Games. It's a sales pitch written by a Company Man, full of low-calorie, Linkedin-bait lines like:

We need a structural shift to revive the ecosystem where creative risks are sustainable again. Fortunately, AI has matured enough to help drive that renaissance.

But what I'd like to draw your attention towards was a section near the end, where Buser specifically highlights three "exciting" use cases for AI in game development:

This opens up exciting new creative possibilities that will forever transform player experiences, and we’re already seeing this reflected in gameplay today:

Square Enix is integrating "Chatty Slimey” into Dragon Quest X Online, creating a real-time, multimodal companion that builds a personal, evolving relationship with the player based on their shared journey.

10Six Games launched YOU vs. Zombies this summer, a time-traveling horde-survival roguelite game where players use a custom AI generation system called "The Ritual" to turn anyone or anything into a personalized, spell-slinging playable hero to fight through the zombie apocalypse.

Ubisoft’s Teammates prototype replaces traditional command menus with natural voice-directed play, allowing players to coordinate battlefield tactics with AI squadmates who react immediately to human intent.

Do you mean to tell me that we are 3-4 years into this collective descent into madness, and this is all you can come up with to support your sales pitch? These three minor, annoying and deeply unpopular gimmicks? This is your ‘Golden Age’?

The only relationship Chatty Slimey is evolving with Dragon Quest's fanbase is how much they hate the idea. This is literally the first I'm hearing about YOU vs Zombies, a game I just looked up and which looks like complete shit. And you might remember Teammates from our November 2025 blog titled 'Ubisoft, Face Covered In Bruises, Once Again Confidently Extends Foot Towards End Of Rake'.

The fact this is all Buser could point towards in such a slick company blog is just so deeply embarrassing. Developers and studios all-in on AI in their production pipelines have had years to come up with something that makes normal people care about the technology (AI was supposed to let you release games in a fraction of the time!), and all Buser has to talk about are three wet farts. I thought AI was supposed to speed up development and liberate our creativity!

Where's the pioneering RPG with AI-generated characters, whose witty and contextual responses have made gamers the world over fall in love with them? Where's the trailblazing space sim where an AI-generated universe gives players limitless worlds to explore (and ones that are worth exploring)? Where's the life sim where AI creates a friend who is interesting, and not just responsive?

They're nowhere, because it can't do any of this. AI cannot and never will be funny, or unique, or be able to create a damn thing, because it's a crude machine that eats actual creative endeavours, digests them into a casserole and shits it out on a plate. And I don't think it's significantly helping speed up or streamline the development process on the backend either, because surprise surprise, the biggest problems facing video game developers (and release schedules) are not mild limitations on the available technology, but the ineptitude and shortsightedness of everyone's managers and owners, who are usually the ones pushing AI on their workers in the first place.

It’s fitting that Buser ends his blog with an analogy, saying:

I think of AI as an exoskeleton — an Iron Man suit for developers. The armor does the heavy lifting, but it does nothing without the intent of the human pilot inside.

Because Iron Man suits are a fantasy that don’t actually exist. 

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The Fashion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Tells a Far Deeper Story Than You Think

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You know one thing about filmed media that always drives me up the wall? More often than not, the concept of personal (or even cultural) style goes ignored. Unless you’re watching a film centered on the subject (The Devil Wears Prada, I Love Boosters) or on teenage characters discovering their own style, it’s rare to find people in film or television discussing how they choose what to wear, or how much time it takes to coif their hair each day, or where their shoes came from. If the story itself isn’t about fashion or physical self-expression, you’re given the impression that everyone Just Wakes Up Like This.

It’s ignoring one of the greatest aspects of worldbuilding and character conveyance available to the audience. How much time does Tony Stark spend shaping that signature goatee every day? Is there a room on the TARDIS devoted to washing and/or replicating 12 of the same outfit for the Doctor? Does being Gandalf the White mean that dirt just kinda bounces off the couture? Why don’t Jedi carry suitcases for pajamas??

What does this have to do with Star Trek? I’m so glad you asked.

L to R Jess Bush as Chapel and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura cheersing in wedding finery in season 3 , Episode 2 of Strange New Worlds "Wedding Bell Blues"
Image: Marni GrossmanParamount+

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been enjoyable for a number of reasons, but the show tends to get extra plaudits for the ways it has updated the aesthetics of The Original Series for a new century. Namely, it took a show that was famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for putting its female officers in improbable beehives and miniskirts (with matching Starfleet-issue underwear) and its male officers in purpled eyeshadows and low-heeled boots, and recreated the feel of this environment with a slight air of added practicality. Strange New Worlds is a show replete with bright colors, winged eyeliner, the occasional bouffant hairdo (mostly on its captain), and short skirts that are now worn with Starfleet-issue trousers or leggings. The boots are not significantly heeled, but they are gorgeous.

What bothers me is that the style choices the show makes are taken for granted in a fun ‘n flirty business-as-usual sense. That’s intentional, of course—each Trek series has a different look or aesthetic vibe, and because Strange New Worlds is a show that will lead into the events of TOS, it’s the perfect place to offload that design sensibility. It’s a built-in excuse to go “retro” without much need for explanation. And that’s a tragedy because that explanation isn’t an idle thing.

What? You didn’t think that winged eyeliner just swooped into those lash lines out of nowhere, did you?

Much as I love a layer of meta-commentary, there are far more interesting in-universe reasons as to why Strange New Worlds looks that way in does. The fact it’s never so much as mentioned within the show itself is weird decision on the part of its creative team—why would you go through all this trouble in creating a fictional universe with layered and complex histories and ignore how its artistic and cultural preferences shift in response to current events? So I’m gonna get into it, starting with the central issue that this stylistic shift springboards off of: 

Strange New Worlds is a post-war narrative within its own fictional universe.

Starfleet and Klingon ships face off in the "Battle at the Binary Stars", ST: Discovery, S1E2
Image: Paramount

Though it was only meant to have lasted two years, the Federation-Klingon War that began with the Battle at the Binary Stars resulted in tens of thousands of Starfleet personnel killed in action, one third of the Federation’s fleet decimated, and one hundred million Federation citizen casualties. A horrifying conflict born from the Klingon Empire’s need to unite its people against a common threat so they might stop fighting each other, the war brought devastating losses to both sides and resulted in very little change, aside from minor shifts to territorial borders. It devastated many of the officers who had up-close experience in the fight (M’Benga and Chapel are riddled with PTSD from their time in it). Others were still likely to have lost friends and colleagues, and sport their share of survivor’s guilt—we know Pike has difficulty with the fact that the Enterprise was ordered to stay out of the conflict.

And that wasn’t the only major threat the the Federation was able to send packing in a short period—directly after this war, the U.S.S. Discovery learned that Section 31’s threat assessment system (known as Control) had gone rogue and was soon to gain enough power to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. Discovery was able to neutralize this threat by sending the necessary information Control required to evolve far into the future. So in a three year span, the Federation not only managed to survive their first major war against another galactic power, but avert a galaxy-ending disaster. (Even if it was a disaster of their own making.)

It’s no secret that wartime clothing choices tend toward austere practicality while post-war fashions embrace experimentation and vibrancy—economics and cultural sentiment affect everything at the societal level, from lipstick shades to grocery staples to cocktail preferences. After World War I, the roaring ‘20s led to the popularization of the flapper: smoking cigarettes, drinking gin, and rouging their knees. The prosperity the United States saw following World War II led to a longer period of growth, ushering in beatniks, greasers, and finally ‘60s counterculture, with mods and hippies and a sexual revolution.

Uhura pantomime clasping her hands while Chekov, Scott, and McCoy all look on in Star Trek: TOS "I, Mudd"
Image: Paramount

If you watch interviews with actresses on Star Trek: The Original Series (which premiered in 1966), a lot of them loudly defend those skirted uniforms—for the period when the show premiered, younger women typically considered the miniskirt a sign of liberation and power, regardless of who enjoyed looking at them. That was the real-life context of the skirted uniform, at least in part (some women finding them empowering certainly doesn’t mean all women did, or lessen the impact of the executives and censors who okayed these costumes with an eye toward male viewer gratification). The uniform’s heeled boots for men were ripped from a style largely popularized by the Beatles, a hybrid Chelsea boot with a Cuban heel that was named after the band.

The vibrancy of TOS can be put down to this cultural moment and the transition to color television. The changeover from black and white broadcasting revved up in the 1960s, which meant two things: showcasing color was all the rage, and makeup techniques to make actors more visible on black and white film had to be rapidly adjusted to serve a strange interim period. Ergo, the uniforms were bright because they could be, for the very first time. But the makeup was compensating for a point in time when plenty of TV sets were still black and white, meaning that it couldn’t be done away with, and men had to wear it similarly to women. Smoky eye shadow in abundance.

Spock looking fabulous in his eyeshadow and rogue in Star Trek: TOS "Mudd's Women"
Slay. (Image: Paramount)

This is where I pause and to note that it is both disappointing and unrealistic for Strange New Worlds to avoid putting its male officers in pronounced makeup looks now and then, given this history. It’s not as though the show doesn’t acknowledge male style preferences (with Pike leading by utterly charming example), and there’s no reason to be weird about men wearing makeup a couple hundred years into the future when they already have throughout many points in history. Acknowledging that men are liable to go back to wearing cosmetics as an aspect of continuing societal change would be a heartening (and smart) message to send right now.

Plus, it just looks so good.

So those are the reasons for some of the stylistic choices made around The Original Series, yet within the narrative of the show, we’re given no reasons as to why things look the way they do. It mattered less at the start because Starfleet and the Federation existed in a vacuum with no more narrative attached—this was simply the way the show looked. Sixty years later, there’s centuries-worth of plotted story, missions and wars and major changes in allegiances, and the worldbuilding is robust enough to support historical context. Which means that The Original Series really shouldn’t look the way it does just because it was filmed in the 1960s. There should be in-universe information that backs the shift up.

Tilly, Paul, and Rhys on the bridge in the blue Discovery uniform in ST: Discovery S1E15 "Take My Hand"
Image: Paramount

Making the Federation-Klingon War a precursor to this shift is a sensible move, and to that end, we find that the Starfleet uniforms prior to and during that war were a far cry from the colorful array TOS and Strange New Worlds showcase. The first seasons of Star Trek: Discovery offer us uniforms that seem like a natural evolution of the blue naval-style coveralls that we see on Enterprise. They are paneled and piped with different metallic colors to denote the officer’s division: gold for command, silver for sciences, copper for operations. Unlike the early coveralls, they’re made of a fairly stiff fabric that looks starched and not particularly comfortable (in fact, Discovery’s cast frequently noted how difficult those uniforms were to wear over long shooting days).

Not all officers are wearing those versions of the uniform, however: Appearances from Enterprise crew members in season two show us the earliest version of the colorful tunic ensembles that TOS uses, but still with a high, stiff collar and sharpened shoulders. This is clearly meant to create a tie between the version of the Starfleet uniform seen in Star Trek’s pilot “The Cage,” which had higher collars than the ones settled on for the series run. But again, the meta context is less important here than an attempt at textual solvency—the uniform still looks militant because Starfleet has been on war footing. They’re trying something new, but they haven’t landed on the final form, it seems.

Pike on the bridge with several officers, some in the blue Disco uniform, some in colorful but rigid jackets in ST: Discovery S2E15 "Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2"
Image: Paramount

Yet by the time we reach Strange New Worlds, officers on the Enterprise are sporting a uniform that hews much closer to the original uniforms, with more room to move, fewer angles in the silhouette, lower collars. Where officers on the Discovery wore comparatively little makeup and opted for simple hair styles, the Enterprise crew is now braiding, coiffing, spraying, buzzing, and twisting their hair into improbable shapes, and nearly every female officer wears thick eyeliner, including their no-nonsense security chief La’an.

That, my friends, is a visible culture shift.

Una in a high complex bun sitting next to La'an in heavy eyeliner, who is sneering in Star Trek: SNW, "Spock Amok"
Image: Paramount

The Federation is entering a post-war era—one in which they believe this little alliance of theirs might have legs, as the saying goes. They successfully defended themselves against a formidable foe, which is bound to serve as a signal to others in the quadrant that their experiment is holding a full century in. This is an ideal place to set the tone for what dealings with the Federation are going to look like. So the change is really twofold; yes, Starfleet officers are embracing more exciting fashions and vibrant physical expression now that their safety has been reasserted, but perhaps even more relevant is the fact that Starfleet is making many deliberate choices about how they want to be viewed on a wider galactic stage.

And they chose to look relaxed, colorful, and approachable.

It’s a frankly genius way to recalibrate the meaning behind the Original Series uniform: When we look at this particular era, it is the least militant and structured of any Starfleet regalia shown on screen (yes, arguably even moreso than the TNG onesie, which screams essentially another version of a navy coverall and is mostly black). Their officers are decked out in cheerful primary colors, and the captain of their flagship is literally sculpting his hair with putty every morning. Rank signifiers are snazzy banding at the wrist, and the most basic version literally reads as… a tailored long-sleeved v-neck shirt and a pair of black pants. There’s a little padding at the shoulders, if you wanna quibble over details.

And we’re learning, for the first time, that this was intentional. We are currently in a period when the Federation wanted the galaxy to know: Our ships are full of interesting nerds and we would like to be your friends. It’s worth acknowledging that this does cause them trouble on occasion—you can sense the lack of respect rolling off certain factions when the viewing screen snaps to and some guy in bright yellow is blithely explaining the United Federation of Planets like he’s sitting on a stack of brochures he just can’t wait to hand out. (And I’m not even touching on the fact that different alien cultures are bound to have different ideas around what colors represent, provided that they even see color in the same way.) But it’s a calculated risk at a point when Starfleet is intending to act as outreach as much as defense and exploratory arm.

Pike doing a terrible pirate impression while Una tries not to react in ST: SNW "Serene Squall"
Image: Paramount

This is why I’m salty about the fact that no one on Strange New Worlds ever discusses their sartorial preferences—there are so many layers to what’s happening here. I want to know who is excited about winged eyeliner getting popular again, and where folks get their hairstyling tips, and how everyone is feeling about having a nice low collar for a change. I want to see Spock try on eyeshadow for the first time, and wipe it off in a panic because it looks too different. I want to know if anyone feels silly in their new division colors and has been lobbying Starfleet Command to change the hue. And I definitely want to know that the entire crew of the Enterprise is aware of how this new era is meant to look from the outside:

Here are our cheery little tunics and fancy-haired officers. We brought photon torpedoes just in case, but we also brought cake! (Our captain baked it from scratch, and he has too many opinions about flour-sifting technique, please do not ask.) We can probably solve your world-ending problems in an afternoon. Wanna hang out?[end-mark]

The post The Fashion of <i>Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</i> Tells a Far Deeper Story Than You Think appeared first on Reactor.

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rocketo
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And we’re learning, for the first time, that this was intentional. We are currently in a period when the Federation wanted the galaxy to know: Our ships are full of interesting nerds and we would like to be your friends.
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