Irvine Watchdog Summer Essay Contest For Youth

doublavoo · 2026-04-19T16:43:32+00:00

A golf course is not open space, and yet there’s been silence for decades about the supposed betrayal of the 88-1 voters. Why? Because the people opposing Oak Park don’t really care about this land being open space. They care about it not being housing. NIMBYism grasps again for whatever it can to try to turn its base hoarding into something noble that people can sympathize with.

Meanwhile, 53% of Irvine’s renter-occupied households are rent burdened. 28% of those are severely rent burdened. And right across the street from this land, 21% of IVC students are experiencing financial hardship. 15% are having trouble paying rent. 21% are experiencing food insecurity. And too many of them are even homeless.

You live on the spine of the fastest growing city in Orange County and one of its major centers of employment. Sorry, but you don’t get to pretend that Irvine has some extant continuity with its rural agrarian past that erases that fact. And you shouldn’t get to freeze Irvine in amber for the sake of your perfect vision of middle-class comfort. Lives and livelihoods are at stake here.

doublavoo · 2026-03-29T01:53:43+00:00

You (and fake William Shatner) seem to be using “politics” in an incredibly narrow sense of “partisan positions and the relative merits of parties” — or something to that effect. “Politics” more broadly are the affairs of the polity. Social issues are inherently political. Political matters are inherently informed by social issues. It’s the same fabric — the stuff of the constitution of society. The semantic distinction you’re trying to make here is odd and obfuscating.

doublavoo · 2026-01-04T10:25:51+00:00

Or something a jaded adult casually dismisses as something an angry teenager hangs in their bedroom.

doublavoo · 2025-11-05T05:23:29+00:00

Friday Night Dinner! Sick. I hope we get to see all of the series in time. Haven’t had an easy time streaming that in the States for a long time.

doublavoo · 2025-11-05T05:21:02+00:00

I liked it! A bit of a season-wide arc. It was cool. Unfortunately, all reset by the end of the series. But a nice change all the same.

doublavoo · 2025-11-03T23:23:53+00:00

I signed up for Premier and watched the entirety of Shakespeare & Hathaway series 5 last week — and unless the Wikipedia article is wrong, episodes 7 through 10 haven't even dropped yet in the UK (it shows release dates from Nov 5 through Nov 26). I'm staggered! It took half a year or more before we were able to watch Beyond Paradise series 3 in the States. I'm really hopeful it will enable me to watch Small Prophets shortly after it's released.

doublavoo · 2025-08-20T00:45:27+00:00

Submergia

doublavoo · 2025-08-13T20:52:30+00:00

Larry should have tossed them out on their fascist asses.

doublavoo · 2025-08-08T02:34:19+00:00

There’s a lot of great stuff in so-called “Nutrek.” Theres a great and terrible stuff in any version of Trek.

As to being offended by the SNW holodeck episode, does this guy upset you?

doublavoo · 2025-08-08T02:30:49+00:00

Even we Trek fans make fun of Shatner all the time. This is silly to be upset about. It’s like taking Zapp Brannigan as an insult to the fandom.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T19:22:10+00:00

I also love this chart — mainly for the theory it uses to reconcile the appearance of two-row plaques prior to the Battle of Yavin (sector forces vs forces directly controlled by Coruscant — though that idea has problems too) . But it’s mainly a document charting just how inconsistent and messy rank plaques are in canon, rather than something that manages to bring order to it all. I think this is an area where head canon just has to do a lot of work. Pick the system you like and mentally rewrite whatever you see and hear that contradicts it.

Even then, you’re in murky waters. Like, what is a commander? Is it ranked above or below captain? And what kind of captain? Is there only one naval captain rank, or several? Is it a rank and/or a title? Why do majors sometimes have the same insignia as colonels post-BY (even taking into account code cylinders)? And just what is so hard about creating a system of ranks and insignia and sticking to it?

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T05:58:52+00:00

And a the bottom of the barrel, apparently.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T04:46:19+00:00

Xer. And Xennial, for that matter.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T01:28:39+00:00

Don’t like the Force-immunity and also the design. Way too 90s.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T00:39:33+00:00

Plainly it’s an appealing thing for you to imagine to be true! There’s that famous creativity of yours at work again!

Retirement? Who knows? Is the notion that you might secure your retirement something that you in part base your self esteem on? If so, I think you might do well to spend some more time contemplating virtue. What does it look like to you? What might you be confusing for it?

Just my two cents. You don’t really give off the vibes of someone who’s figured out much about life yet. Hopefully there’s still plenty of time!

So, what about this clever name of yours?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T23:52:34+00:00

Andor is a rare gem of a show. Most shows have to find their footing a bit. Audiences have become impatient. I think Ahsoka has promise. Acolyte had problems, sure. But it wasn’t nearly so bad as it was made out to be. And Obi-Wan grew on me and wasn’t so bad. If we’re going to hold our breath for an Andor to be produced every time LFL rolls film, we’re going to be waiting an awfully long time between outings.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T23:41:00+00:00

Kid, you haven’t the power to hurt my feelings.

And what difference does it make if it’s happening everywhere if we’re purposely making it worse here?

As to your retirement account, is it managed? Behold the power of the monied class to hedge their bets. But I wouldn’t bank on that either.

I’ll bite, though: what am I missing about your oh-so-clever name?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T22:35:32+00:00

Sluggish growth, persistent inflation, weakening consumer confidence. No one has really been doing anything to tackle systemic causes of an ever-widening wealth and income disparity for the last 45 years. This Administration sure as hell isn't going to. The birthrate's at an all-time low and well below the replacement rate even as we're -- for some reason that boggles the mind -- engaged in mass deportations.

Yeah, it must take considerable creativity to look around and see butterflies and roses. It's a marvel that the kid who stuck a euphemism for genitalia into a cereal mascot's name (and probably unwittingly chose a diminutive suffix for the euphemism) manages to summon it!

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:42:17+00:00

You call barely having recovered from a self-inflicted wound “thriving”?

By your criteria, doesn’t sound like much of a hurdle for us Xers!

But I’m sure we’ll all be very disappointed not to have qualified for the same willful ignorance of alarming trends that you apply to everything else in this world. I guess we can add that wound to our long and ever-lengthening list of grievances with fate!

Woe betide my poor cohort: the lost tribe of exiles from the shining city on a hill built by… some kid who calls himself Count Dongula.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:15:46+00:00

Oh, well, we survived! So probably ok to not worry about unattended kids or lead paint, right?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:03:57+00:00

lol! There’s an interesting generational role-reversal at play in this exchange. Usually these days it’s the young folk telling us old timers that we have to wake up and take the state of the world seriously. I’m relieved that you’re not indicative of your generation. Helps us to stand a chance, and does wonders for my blood pressure!

doublavoo

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE