I think her attitude and presentation are crucial and indispensable. The federation is trying to claw itself back from violent fascism. Before the pendulum can find its center again it must first swing in the opposite direction.

Once the federation has a complete and thriving culture of Not putting people in a torture prison for stealing bread, I agree that a captain needs to display discipline lest we slip into ineffective hedonism. That’s just not where they are right now.

I think her presentation isn’t just an example to students, and a counterbalance to the strict boot-crushers that still abound in the federation, but a litmus test of how viable a change to the previous culture is. If she got kicked out for her bare feet or queer sitting style, there was never a chance she could effect change anyway. Which was one of the reasons she didn’t want to rejoin. She didn’t believe she could change things.

I’ll take academy all day everyday, with its focus on friendship and chosen family, support and heart, and lower decks style lack of seriousness, over the Picard, eyeballs hanging by a knife closeup, too bright to be noir but really wannabe noir, only boomer tv watched “grit” can save us from the Nazis, hey remember this guy?, horseclops.

Nus, with his ridiculous XO haircut is the perfect tongue in cheek, TOS over the top, post story, meta villain I need. The focus on kids who don’t have their shit together is so much better than old men who pretend they got their shit together. And Nahla is our much needed mother-mirror of Sisko’s devout father figure.

It is exactly what was needed after the weekend at Bernie’s decade of exploding, spooky, gritty, holywood junk they animated the universe with. Lower Decks was a full pendulum swing away from that, and Academy is an attempt at reconciling them both. Star trek is silly play, friendship, and social commentary, and Academy was closer to that than anything since DS9 and Voyager.

The next series should be the academy kids in a live action lower decks, while things slowly get more nonsensical as base reality and created reality merge. They should take the theme they have been working hard on since Data, of Datal people (androids, holograms, etc) asking “am I real?” and upend it with “natural born” species blurring the line and asking “am I real?” and the phildickian hole of “is real real?”

I think scrapple is just seasoned scraps. I didn’t know what was in my scrapple exactly. I was told it was assholes and eyeballs, the ends of fruits and vegetables, and all the junk from the food no one eats.

Clearly we found the good scrapple. I think I won’t bother eating it again unless I’m in a diner in Philly

I ate “scrapple” once and it was delicious. Maybe it was cooked better?

I was visiting my ex’s relatives in Philly and one insisted that I come with them to a diner before I left. “You have to try scrapple, but I won’t tell you what’s in it till you do” grin.

I agreed without hesitation. I’m Creole. I’m from the swamp. I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts. Anything can taste good if you season it right, and if it doesn’t, it’s not worse than things I love already.

The scrapple I had was delicious. It was also the most seasoned thing I had eaten up there. It wasn’t “spicy”, but there was a wide variety of spices and it was extra peppery. It tasted like very fatty/greasy, slightly sweet, peppered breakfast sausage. She told me what was in it while i was eating it, looking all mischievous. Then I gave her the above line about my heritage, laughed, told her that just makes it more amazing, and kept eating.

She looked both slightly disappointed and filled with admiration. She loved it too, and I think I gave what was for her a shameful delight, a little more power and pride.

I’d eat someone’s favorite mud if it tasted good, and my guts would probably be stronger for it, gaining flora they have been missing for at least two generations.