raktajino-hot:

raktajino-hot:

y’know, I will yell about the reboot for feminist reasons, and plot reasons, and thematic reasons, and character development reasons.

but this—this is the reason I will cry about it.

Ok. It’s time to explain a thing.

To all the people still reblogging this post with comments like “But they had to show that Kirk was shallow and immature and had problems, so that he could grow and change and overcome those problems! He doesn’t have to be perfect!”

Look

I am not arguing that Kirk shouldn’t have been rough around the edges. Not in the slightest. I’m not saying you’re wrong about Kirk’s character arc. On the contrary, I feel that some point-missing has occurred here.

What my original post was about:

• Kirk and Uhura

What your commentary is about:

• Kirk

Do you see the problem here?

Let me lay out the issue I have with this scene. (1) Uhura is treated badly in this scene and it is played for laughs. (2) This is demeaning to Uhura. (3) The fact that Kirk treats Uhura like this is worse than him simply being “immature” or “shallow”, but it is not treated as worse by the movie. Instead, it’s just portrayed as part of Kirk’s endearing rebelliousness. (4) This line of thinking ignores Uhura’s perspective and sends the message that (a) it is not so very bad for Kirk to demean her, and (b) she is just a prop for his character arc.

I don’t like that. It makes me ill. And I don’t like comments that play into that line of logic, even if you didn’t mean it like that.

I don’t need Kirk and Uhura to have a relationship based on mutual admiration and trust right off the bat in the reboot. But I do need them to have a relationship based on common decency and respect, because I have a hard time seeing a believable path from “lol I touched ur boob” to any kind of good working relationship, much less the kind of sweetness we see between them in the movies. If it does happen on-screen, then the implication that Uhura just lives with it and/or forgives Kirk his indiscretions at a later date is pretty creepy from a writing perspective. Basically the only way around this problem is to headcanon that Kirk apologized, and while I love that headcanon, I will not accept it as a substitute for decent treatment in the actual canon.

I want better from the reboot. I want scenes about Kirk and Uhura, not about Kirk and his reaction some boobs which belong to Uhura. I want the narrative to respect them both, and—in the long term—for them both to trust and love each other. Is that so much to ask?

infinitenap:

security guards

This is what people see as they commute to work in Philly. 

Hollaback Philly is absolutely doing it right. 

christinetheastrophysicist:

NASA Launches Interactive Website to Design Interplanetary Missions

A small group of engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have launched a new web-based tool for scientists and engineers to use when designing spacecraft trajectories to interplanetary destinations.

The Trajectory Browser, as the web application is called, can provide an instantaneous assessment of the launch date, time and flight path requirements for future missions to asteroids, comets and planets for the next 25 years.

Read More.