I'd start with Strange New Worlds. It's very classic Trek in terms of its themes and stories, but as it's still being made it has contemporary audiences in mind. If you like it, I would then go to TNG.

Exactly. I think Labour would do it, more than happily, were it not for the housing crisis. They understandably want to build a lot, quickly, but they need to be convinced that the crisis won't really be 'solved' without medium- long-term thinking, which includes eco-friendly standards.

Yeah, no room for complacency! But that's why we need to do the difficult things quickly (e.g., building all the pylons we need to link up new green energy developments) and also do things that aren't likely to be undone (which is why Labour shouldn't drop the requirement for new homes to have solar panels).

In the UK, the environmental movement has actually won the argument, but I don't think we've fully realised it, yet. Even Conservative voters (if not MPs) want climate action as a high priority.

I'm sceptical, but I think that as long as carbon capture happens alongside shutting down fossil fuels, it's at least worth a try.

Yeah, you're right about the footnotes. I read someone the other day saying they felt like Kuang was writing with an imaginary social justice scold hovering over her, and I think that's about right. I find it odd that someone feels they have to say 'racism — which is bad, by the way — exists in this society'. We know it's bad! Even racists don't like being called racist!

I started reading it yesterday, so I'll let you know.

Why did you dislike it?

I'm not going to go through this point by point. Some of it I think is probably about right and some not. What I will say is that I don't think it's consistent to say people were crying wolf over Trump, who tried to overthrow one election and would have done the same with this one had he lost, and then in the same place to suggest that a Harris win would've resulted in the end of democracy based entirely on a loosely defined notion of elitism.

Try to learn Russian really quickly.

No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone's historical existence.

You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.

People are so convinced that if we're more cruel to criminals, they'll stop committing crimes, or if we're harsher to workers, we'll work harder, or if you're tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.

So, fun fact, St Augustine, who is considered one of the Church Fathers, explicitly argued that if the 'Antipodes' (i.e., southern continents not connected to Europe, Asia or Africa) actually existed and had humans living there, that would prove the Gospel was untrue.

The reason for this is as follows: Christians of his era believed that the reason God had allowed the Romans to destroy the Second Temple and push the Jews into exile was to prepare the men of all nations (as understood at the time) for the coming of the Gospel. The idea was that the Jews had taken the Old Testament, and the prophecies of the Messiah therein, across the whole world. Augustine argues that if the Antipodes contained human beings who had never had any kind of contact with Jews, and therefore no contact with the OT, and no contact with Christians, and therefore no contact with the New Testament, either, that must mean the Gospels are false. Why? Because there's no conceivable reason that a just God would have deprived entire civilisations of the chance of redemption.

Of course, we now know that at the time Augustine was writing (4th-5th century AD), there were literally millions of people who had never had the slightest contact with the Jews or Christians and, furthermore, wouldn't do so for another millennium. So, per Augustine's argument, all those millions were condemned to Hell (the concept of Purgatory didn't exist at this point, but condemning them all to no chance of Heaven, just because they were unfortunate to be born a long way away from Jersualem, is clearly also unjust). Either God is incredibly unjust and unmerciful, which means the Gospels are untrue, OR the Good News wasn't actually spread to all men, which must also mean that they're not true.

The upshot of this is that one of the Church Fathers has, in retrospect, irrefutably argued that the Gospels are untrue. The amount of special pleading required to make out that, actually, the Maori or the Easter Islanders or [insert any other uncontacted peoples here] had an opportunity to accept Christ and somehow missed it entirely is far beyond any sane interpretation of the evidence.

Now, as you might have noticed, this hasn't stopped people from believing in the Gospels. I don't see why the discovery of life on another world would dislodge people from a belief that is transparently false when nothing else has.