“Let me have my tax money go for my protection and not for my prosecution. Let my tax money go for the protection of me. Protect my home, protect my streets, protect my car, protect my life, protect my property…worry about becoming a human being and not about how you can prevent others from enjoying their lives because of your own inability to adjust to life.”
TNG 5x17 'The Outcast': An androgynous race prohibits any expression of gender, as it is viewed as 'primitive'.
TOS 3x15 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefied': Two members of the same species view the other as inferior because of which color is on which side of their body.
VOY 7x13 'Repentance': Voyager rescues passengers from a prison ship whose prisoners are on their way to be executed.
TNG 2x9 'The Measure of a Man': Data's sentience is brought into question when he is forced by Starfleet to undergo an undesired procedure.
TNG 7x20 'Journey's End': The Enterprise is ordered to relocate a population of Native Americans from their planet of 20 years because of a treaty with the Cardassians.
ENT 2x14 'Stigma': T'Pol is recalled when it is discovered she has Pa'Nar syndrome, a disease transmitted through mind-melds conducted by an unaccepted sub-culture of Vulcans.
DS9 6x13 'Far Beyond the Stars': Benny Russel is fired from his writing job when his story about a black space station commander receives scrutiny from the publisher.
TNG 7x9 'Force of Nature': Two Hekarans board the Enterprise to convince them that their warp drive is damaging their home world and the space around it.
TOS 1x23 'A Taste of Armageddon': The Enterprise discovers a 500 year war on a planet that is run by computers that calculate the fatalities and force those people to die.
VOY 3x6 'Remember': B'Elanna experiences the memories of a telepathic woman's youth, where her lover and his people are relocated and murdered without repercussion.
Star Trek + Social Commentary (context in the captions)
THIS is what the original Star Trek TV series and films were about. Not just about blowing up things in space and snazzy lens flares with a side order of casual sexism -.-‘.
dude do you know how many people I have pissed off by saying the exact same thing?
Not enough people.
This what all good Sci-Fi is about.
This is why anyone who claims women, POC, LGBTQ people - anyone not defined by being straight, white, and male - don’t ‘belong’ in Star Trek are not, and have never been, a Star Trek fan.
Twitter may have helped Donald Trump get elected, but you can’t say that the microblogging service hasn’t done anything good for the world. Today, in what might be the internet hive mind’s most remarkable achievement, EW reports the Rihanna/Lupita Nyong’o team-up film that started as a meme is becoming a
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Please enjoy some of the best tweets I found clinking around in the ol twitter machine. *shipwrecked diary*Day 1: alone, doing well. Mentally sound. Met a crabDay 2: I have married the crab. Day 3: I have eaten my wife. — brent (@murrman5) August 14, 2013 "I must make this movie" — Nic Cage reading … Continued
I'm wondering where my lemon-water falls here. No that I'm worried about not getting enough fiber. I am getting enough fiber.
Juice is a delicious source of carbohydrates and vitamins, and can be part of a healthy diet, but a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics clarifies infants (under one year old) should not drink fruit juice, and children of all ages should be consuming a lot less of the sweet stuff.
Infants under 1 year old can eat fruit, but shouldn’t have juice. If a doctor recommends it for constipation or other reasons, the child should drink it from a cup and not a bottle or sippy cup.
Toddlers ages 1 to 6 can have 4 fluid ounces of juice per day at most, but should get the rest of their fruit intake from actual fruit. They should not take juice to bed or carry it around with them.
Children ages 5 to 18 can have up to 8 ounces of juice per day, but should also be eating fruit more than drinking fruit juices. (That goes for adults over 18, too.)
One problem is that the “juice” products sold at the supermarket usually contain between 10% and 99% juice, with added vitamins. Even when kids are served 100% juice, what pediatricians are concerned about is what isn’t in a glass of juice. That includes the fiber and protein that a child would get from eating a whole piece of fruit.
When toddlers (ages 1 to 4) drink too much juice from certain fruits, they aren’t able to absorb all of the carbohydrates, and that can lead to diarrhea. Caregivers may employ this fact on purpose when toddlers are constipated, and pediatricians recommend it, but it’s also something to keep in mind when serving juices like prune, pear, or apple to kids.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has made another sweeping change to the student loan system that consumer advocates claim favors student loan collectors over the American people repaying those loans.
There are currently nine student loan servicers handling these accounts for the federal government.
Late Friday afternoon, DeVos announced the upcoming changes via an amendment [PDF] to the contracting process, which will see the student loan servicing contract awarded to just one of the following: Navient (the servicer spun off from Sallie Mae), GreatNet, or the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA).
Whichever company ultimately receives the contract will be required to build a platform to collect on and service an estimated 32 million federal direct student loans.
DeVos claimed Friday that the changes were necessary in order to provide superior customer service and protections to borrowers.
“The federal student loan servicing solicitation we inherited was cumbersome and confusing — with shifting deadlines, changing requirements and defacto regulations that at times contradicted themselves,” she wrote in a statement. “Internal and external stakeholders both agreed it was destined for a massive and unsustainable budget overrun.”
While education officials tell the Washington Post that by contracting with one company it can better monitor the programs and ensure borrowers are being treated fairly, consumer advocates caution that putting of its student loan-collecting eggs in once basket could create a servicer that is “too big to fail.”
“The changes may increase profits for the industry, but may do little to tame the high levels of default in the program,” explains Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Federation of America and also the former student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Less Competition; Fewer Protections
In addition to creating a single student loan servicer program, this latest change removes several other requirements previously outlined by the Obama administration when creating the contract process.
For instance, the servicer who ultimately receives the contract would not be required to provide “high-touch” (personalized, proactive) customer service for in-trouble and delinquent borrowers. This means no requirement for preemptive outreach when a borrower is late, or when they need to re-enroll in income-driven repayment plans.
Additionally, the sole loan servicer will be able to remove online options for borrowers with multiple loans to direct their payments to certain loans over others. The amendment also appears to remove requirements that certain information be provided in Spanish.
While servicers say such rules are burdensome, supporters of these requirements say they are needed to help curb student loan delinquency. An estimated $137 billion in federal student loans are currently in default, meaning borrowers have made no payments on them in at least nine months.
Suzanne Martindale, staff attorney for our colleague Consumers Union, said the changes “drastically alter” the functions of the servicer program, noting that in practice it won’t be all that helpful to borrowers.
Changes to the future student loan servicing contract come as federal regulators have attempted to hold servicers accountable for their questionable conduct.
So far this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released two reports that found complaints of student loan servicing increase by three digits.
The Bureau noted that many of these complaints came after it took “major enforcement action” against a student loan servicer: Navient. In January, Navient, which is in the running for the new Dept. of Education contract, was sued by the the CFPB and two states claiming the company cheated borrowers out of repayment rights.
“There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumers,” Navient said in the March 24 filing, adding that courts routinely agree that servicers and lenders “do not owe borrowers any specific fiduciary duties based upon their servicer/borrower relationship.”
It’s perhaps this sentiment that borrowers have experienced in recent months. According to the CFPB’s April complaint snapshot, Navient was the most complained about student loan servicer, receiving an average of 1,400 complaints from Nov. 2016 to Jan. 2017, a 1,073% increase from the same three-month period the year before.
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Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) has formally introduced a bill into Congress that would require Trump to reimburse the government for funds spent on travel to his own properties, such as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.
Lieu’s bill, the Stop Waste and Misuse by the President (SWAMP) Act, states that Trump’s travel “results in the American taxpayer effectively subsidizing the president’s businesses.” The bill would also require that Trump reimburse the government for Secret Service costs derived from visits to his properties.
What an interesting way to "protect the children."
Two Florida dads traveling with their three children say that Southwest Airlines staff would not allow their group to pre-board a flight with other families traveling on the same plane.
One of the fathers says he flies on Southwest between Buffalo and Fort Lauderdale often, and has not had a problem using family boarding, reports WGRZ.com.
But this time, he says, when the family approached the gate at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, an airline employee prevented them from boarding and said, “this is for family boarding only.”
“And my spouse looked up and said, ‘Well, we are a family. It’s myself, my spouse, and our three children,’ he told WGRZ.com. “She said it’s family boarding only and got very sarcastic.”
He says he feels like his family was “profiled” as soon as they walked up to board.
When reached for comment by WGRZ, a spokesperson said Southwest had just heard about the incident, and referred to the airline’s family boarding policy, which reads:
“An adult traveling with a child six years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the ‘A’ group has boarded and before the ‘B’ group begins boarding.”
The spokesperson says that means that one adult can board with children under six years old, but the policy could also be read as though one adult can board per every one child under that age.
While the man acknowledges that the policy could be open to interpretation, he says the employee didn’t note that initially, and just said only families can board.
We’ve reached out to Southwest for additional information and will update this post if we hear back.
Can we make Fred a relative of Steve? No? Too bad, already head-cannoned it
Humming, Steve takes a seat on the bench in the foyer to untie his loafers. He tucks them carefully under the bench, lining them up beside his sneakers, then reaches for the shoes Sam’s just toed off and left in the middle of the floor, lining them up too.
“When are you going to quit teasing them?” Sam asks.
Steve grins up at him. “When are they going to quit calling me Mr. Rogers?”
Tom Cruise and Young Hot Blonde™ enter the crypt, Tom in the lead because he is the manly protector. Their flashlight beams eventually illuminate a sarcophagus carved in the likeness of a beautiful Princess.
Tom Cruise approaches the sarcophagus, moves to open it.
Young Hot Blonde™: Don’t do the thing.
Tom Cruise: I’m going to do the thing. *Shoves sarcophagus open*
They cough as dust fills the air. Just as it begins to clear, Brendan Frasier shoots upright, drawing his gun and immediately shooting Tom Cruise in the head.
“I thought I told Evy not to put me down for mummification,” he mutters as he looks at his surroundings. He is inexplicably not decomposed or mummified, just vaguely wrapped in Charmin. Glances at a now very dead Tom Cruise. “Oops.”
Young Hot Blonde™: How… how did this happen?
Brendan Frasier: Well, it’s a long story, I’ll have to start at the beginning.
Then they just replay the entirety of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).
After credits scene:
Young Hot Blonde™: That still doesn’t explain how you ended up alive in a sarcophagus in the year 2017.
people are tagging this as “finally we know who rey’s parents are” and i, as the person who wrote the original tweet and runs that account, would like to apologize for not using that caption in the first place.
I love this so much. Because the star of Nixon’s impeachment hearings was a black woman, Rep. Barbara Jordan, and she ended up giving one of the most iconic speeches of all time because of it. Basically a speech about what it means to be a true American as a black woman in a tyranical society.
⚫️ Not everyone who takes a drug gets addicted to it.
Also for the love of God dependence is not the same as addiction, diabetics are not addicted to insulin they’re dependent on it. It’s the same for anyone taking any medication to manage a chronic illness and YES THIS INCLUDES PAIN MEDICATION.
