Anything that doesn't conform neatly to their views is bias. My parents were like that when I was growing up; Rush Limbaugh and Focus on the Family all day on the radio, then my dad would watch the evening news and bitch about how biased it was. Completely nuts.
Trump, of course, has no idea what that means; he was just getting positive feedback talking about replacing judges and so he started counting up to increase the cheering.
The political theater of hate continues. Abbott is a real piece of shit.
Still trying to figure out what his endgame is, if he even has one. Is he trying to bankrupt the company to get some kind of tax write off? Does he genuinely have a plan at all? Or is he just in over his head, trying to figure it out as he goes, and failing?
The Georgia indictment is a big one, though.
If I am remembering correctly it’s pretty explicitly stated in The Enemy Within that neither Kirk is whole and they will die if they are not rejoined. In the end, though, both Kirks agree to be rejoined so in that manner it’s a very different situation than Tuvix.
What’s good for making more money is not always or even often good for what we would think of as customer-friendly business. If you can wring more money out of a few whales at the expense of pissing off customers who don’t create as much revenue, then in our current system that’s what shareholders apparently want.
Reddit wants more users in their official app where they can target them for ads, sell NFTs, and whatever other bullshit they want to sell. It doesn’t matter if the experience is worse, and it probably doesn’t really matter if a couple thousand 3PA users split for good. As long as they can tell investors that the official app use is growing and that they can target a greater percentage of users with ads and data, they feel like they won.
My FIL moved in with us about ten years ago, so the visit will go on until he dies.
He and MIL separated about 15 years ago (second time they were married), and after he was laid off with no retirement plan and too old to continue working in a dying industry, we took him in.
Honestly it has been a real struggle. I used to love the guy but at a distance; living with him his right wing extremism and racism became a real issue, especially when our kids are around. There was also a lot of “man of the house” issues once he moved in; when I was at work and he was home with my wife and kids, he seemed to think that he needed to take charge and my wife had a really hard time with that.
Now he’s physically not in great shape and is in mental decline, so we have different issues but still present. He’s become a really bad hoarder which is driving me nuts, but my wife absolutely refuses to give him any boundaries at all. Fortunately it mostly stays in his room, but for instance he can’t lay in bed normally anymore because he has boxes of random crap piled up at the top of his bed. He hasn’t been able to get into his closet in years. I can only imagine what kind of shit is living in there.
I’m to the point now where I sometimes find myself thinking about how much easier it would be if he would just die, which makes me feel terrible.
Sorry OP; this didn’t really answer your question but I needed to vent apparently.
I think you mean to say that she deserved a medal.
Neelix was one of the best characters on Voyager and I will stand by that assertion forever.
I also think that Ethan Phillips was one of the best actors in the bunch too.
Episodes like “Jetrell” and “Mortal Coil” still move me every time I see them. Dude is amazing at playing a very damaged person hiding (in part) behind a mask of joviality. Neelix was truly a good hearted man who loved his crew, but those times when the mask slipped really showed what a complex individual he was.
I won’t watch series on Netflix anymore unless they’re complete for this exact reason.
I’m trying to understand what the distinction is that you’re making between my idea of an AI program and “Agents” a la The Matrix; both are computer programs operating with some level of autonomous thought and action but within defined parameters that could be considered their “nature”.
I do believe that the Q would have been programmed as part of the simulation to observe and guide the development of societies that the experimenters wanted to see; however the Q individually began to develop desires beyond that programming and thus you have miscreants like our Q and Quinn who buck against their very old programming.
The Star Trek Universe is a Simulation
BLUF: The Star Trek Universe and its parallels (e.g. the Mirror Universe) are part of a simulation, and the Q are AI programs that can interact and influence them all.
I started thinking about the nature of the Q the other day when rewatching the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey"; it seems odd that an omnipotent/omnipresent species would also be so rigid and unimaginative. Why, for instance, do the Q have such strict rules about suicide? You can argue that they fear their species eventually being gone because they all eventually opt to off themselves out of boredom with existence, but as long as they had the ability to die that is unavoidably going to be the eventual outcome of an organism that can exist for infinity (mind-boggling, isn't it?) anyway.
And why is it such a disruptive event in the Q Continuum for two Q to have an offspring? Obviously a species that can live forever doesn't need to procreate, but it's clearly possible so why is it so shocking?
Then you have the fact that the Q are not just invisible observers of the universe; they interact with species and even individuals to, seemingly, drive outcomes that are possibly part of a preferred order to things. Quinn influenced Earth's history to drive certain changes; helping Newton define gravity was certainly a big event in human scientific growth. Why, though? What is driving the Q to pursue certain outcomes in evolutionary history?
It's almost as if the Q have an inherent nature, and are just after an incalculable period of time starting to question and even push back against that nature. So where did that nature come from? Was it possible programmed into them?
Now step away from the Q and look at the characteristics of the Star Trek universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone is chock full of humanoid alien species that (for the most part and with variations/outliers) breath the same air, can live within a certain range of temperatures, have brains/emotions/standards that function similarly enough that ideas and principles can be shared and abided by, and interbreeding is even possible to a certain degree without outside support. That's huge. And though the show tried to explain this a little bit in "The Chase", I think it's fair to say that we've seen humanoid species across the galaxy to a degree that a shared ancestor isn't enough to explain it all.
Beyond biology, let's also look at the makeup of the physical universe: subspace allows interstellar communities to function without succumbing to the laws of relativity: FTL travel is possible; real-time or at least near real-time interstellar communications function; the materials needed to facilitate warp drive are ubiquitous enough that nearly any warp-capable species that wants to travel into space can get it. It is arguably miraculous that the universe in Star Trek can operate the way that it can, and these things do not conform to our current understanding of how the universe and space/time operate.
Taking all of this together, I propose that the Star Trek universe is a complex simulation, designed purposefully to simulate what the universe would be like if it operated by certain principles that would allow for interstellar communities to form and that many humanoid species existed and were capable of interacting with each other. Several instances of this simulation are running simultaneous with similar parameters but modified to generate different outcomes: the Mirror Universe, for instance, has different presets to create more aggressive humanoids less likely to work together. Furthermore, I submit that the Q are AI programs designed to interact with and shepherd these communities into developing in such a way that they would eventually develop the right levels of technology and understanding to grow into a spacefaring species.
I suggest further that the Q are only partially aware of their nature and don't necessarily understand that the universe is a simulation, or if they do they don't share that fact. Over the millennia that the simulation has been running (at least internal to the simulation) the Q individually have started to develop interests and ideas beyond their original programming, and other Q programs cannot abide that because it goes against their designed nature. Imagine a piece of an Operating System deciding it wanted to commit suicide, or two programs getting together to code their own, new piece of software. It's unheard of, and that's why it's so disruptive to the Continuum.
Maybe one of the original designers of the simulation was a fan of old science fiction stories and incorporated ideas from a writer named Benny Russell into the coding of the simulation to recreate some aspects of his work?
I know this isn't a provable hypothesis and it's really just an idea for fun, but it kind of (in my opinion) adds another dimension (no pun intended) to a species like the Q.
Honestly, the Federation itself. I always thought you could make a really interesting show that was a mix of Federation politics and Starfleet intrigue; maybe a show about the Federation government on Earth that delved into Federation society and dealt with an overarching plot. Like maybe a season where a Federation colony at the edge of Federation space gets into conflict with another race/government, and for a season you get a mix of stories from the colony, a Starfleet ship sent to the colony to support, and the Federation Council on Earth.
Federation politics could be really interesting, but the shows always paid kind of disappointing lip service to it. One key example is in the DS9 episode “Rapture” when Bajor is being accepted into the Federation; the fact that a Starfleet admiral rather than a civilian Federation representative was overseeing the proceeding was lazy to me. Plus the entire ceremony was tiny and anticlimactic (and obviously barely got started since Sisko interrupted). Great potential for some real insight into the government but instead it’s just some rando admiral.
By the skin of our teeth but yes, I’ll take the W.
I believe that genetic modification to fix defects/heal diseases is still acceptable; it's augmentation beyond what is considered to be "natural" that is the problem.
I hear what you’re trying to say but capitalism isn’t what lifted people out of poverty, it was a strengthened central government willing to tax corporations and the rich to spread the wealth being generated by labor to create a middle class. Stronger regulations and higher taxes bred an amazing increase in quality of life for the Boomer generation.
The super rich and their willing accomplices on the Right have waged a war on government protections for the middle class because it fetters capitalism and the consolidation of wealth and power. Without a government that is willing to work for the good of the people or unions that actually protect the labor class it’s clear that capitalism alone has not been a force for good for the common individual.
By the way, don’t ignore that a lot of the conveniences and leaps in innovation that we take for granted as corporate innovations came from government agencies (e.g. NASA) or government research/funding (e.g. vaccines). Corporations just take what we already paid for through taxes and sell it back to us again at a mark up. Yay capitalism…?
Having been a part of the dog rescue community for over a decade, it unfortunately attracts a lot of unbalanced people who often mean well but quickly get in over their heads and end up doing more harm than good. The people who really piss me off are the ones who are doing it for validation and take in a bunch of dogs they can’t take care of but are afraid to get help because they’ll look bad to their small community.
It’s exhausting dealing with the people more than it is the dogs.
Yeah; it’s a shame because that would be a huge draw for lemmy but I understand his concerns.