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"Why Star Trek?"
  • And also the human race is almost wiped out on a seemingly daily basis just to be saved in the nick of time by the doctor. Not exactly comforting.

    I recall en episode where they played out the events of everything had the doctor not existed/died, and it was just a horror show.

  • Want a machine, want to play with it, but not to live with it
  • I can recommend against enders. I have two friends with them, and one myself. Between the 3 of us none of them are currently working, and its been like this since i found out all 3 of us had 3d printers. Keeping them working is like pulling teeth.

  • Swalwell on Biden age: ‘I’ll take the guy who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts’
  • Simplicity tends to sell better than complexity, and RCV is the one that’s known of already.

    Agreed. And that's why I think approval is such a big improvement over ranked choice.

    "Tell us who you approve of, candidate with the most approval wins"

    Is a hell of a lot simpler than

    "Rank every candidate without ranking multiple as the same level, then we check if any candidate has a 50% majority, if not, the lowest candidate gets booted and the next wave of second choices comes in, repeat until there is 50% majority."

    And that's before the peripheral benefits.

    So far they’ve been more than happy to ignore everything except the status quo, unfortunately.

    Agreed. It's honestly sad.

    My city/state has been warming up to these kinds of talks and candidates at least, which gives me a glimmer of hope. But for now it is not enough.

  • Swalwell on Biden age: ‘I’ll take the guy who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts’
  • Arguably, RCV is just as complicated as STAR, and approval is simpler than RCV. And part of the difficulty in the heavy lift to get RCV is that it has some pretty rough flaws, flaws that don't exist within the alternatives.

    And the political environment is easing up to the idea of moving towards better voting methods. I'm not saying we should let perfection be the enemy of progress. All I am saying is that if we are going to be making changes, we should at least attempt the better options.

  • Swalwell on Biden age: ‘I’ll take the guy who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts’
  • I absolutely agree with pushing the issue at a local level, however we should probably be aiming for approval or STAR voting:

    https://dividedwefall.org/star-and-approval-voting/

    RCV is way better than our current system, but even RCV has flaws.

    We also need regulation requiring election reform within party primaries, because as of right now it is a clown show.

  • "the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one."
  • The prime directive is a great example of how even a good rule taken to the extreme can end up causing more harm than good.

    But beyond that, it's just an easy aid for the writers to add a point of conflict for their stories. The prime directive as a value within the federation seems secondary to me.

  • You wouldn't download an entire media library
  • They wouldn’t be able to finish stealing that car before a thousand hungry lawyers ate them alive. Why do we let media companies do that?

    They would probably actually have a decent shot at getting away with it, at least at first.

    And to answer your question, it's because the anger that companies generate by doing this shit ends up turning into piracy. Why would you try to punish a corp for doing this (likely wasting your time) when a cheap VPN and basic tech literacy gets you what you want?

    The effort ratios are way out of wack when it comes to digital products. It's easy to get around digital bullshitery, not so much in the real world where we are all car dependant.

  • The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
  • Yeah, the NPVIC is… I mean, let’s be honest here. It’s not great. It’s better than our current system, absolutely.

    Agreed.

    But it’s far, far inferior than rank choice.

    I'd say it goes like

    Approval >>> Ranked >>>>>>>>>>>>> FPTP (popular vote) >>> FPTP (electoral college)

  • The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
  • Agreed.

    We would need election reform for that to change, and while we are getting closer to that state by state, I don’t think we will ever get enough states to sign on for the laws to kick in.

    I assume you're talking about the NPVIC. But yeah, we are getting marginally closer to reform each year. And public sentiment towards FPTP voting is changing, which is good. The only downside is that it is slow, and people seem more keen on rank choice instead of approval (IMO the best).

    And these changes will never happen with our current system in place, so it’s a catch 22. Can’t change the system without reform, can’t reform with our current system.

    Honestly that's the case with most problems in the U.S., it's just a bunch of catch 22s the whole way down, and the whole way up.

  • The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
  • Yeah, congress needs to be stacked with representatives that actually give a shit about protecting workers and democracy. And that's never going to happen with a 2 party system and legalize bribery ("lobbying").

    And those things won't get fixed until people start giving a shit and voting accordingly, and/or we have massive protests.

  • The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
  • IIRC about 2/3rds of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That is not an economy that is working for the people.

    We need dramatic overhauls that Biden, and especially Trump will never deliver. We need employee ownership of companies for starters.

  • Time to solve the housing crisis...
  • Granted, the above is more of a general trend then a hard and fast rule. The city and area you live in will greatly effect the rates for both.

    At the end of the day I think it is quite clear that AirBnB is a net negative to society, and a huge one at that. So fuck em.

  • Time to solve the housing crisis...
  • Those should be co-ops/non market housing.

    And if the incentives for new co-ops to be made isn't enough, it's time for the government to finance/build/zone for new ones. If the government just fucking spams medium and high density housing in the form of co-ops, bans corps from owning housing, bans AirBnB, etc, it would very quickly fix the housing crisis.

  • Time to solve the housing crisis...
  • AirBnB isn't even really worth it from a cost perspective:

    https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/are-airbnbs-more-cost-effective-than-hotels

    People are suffering by the millions as a result of the housing crisis, and AirBnB is contributing. So fuck AirBnB, it isn't worth the price society pays. No such corporation or service should exist.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)OL
    Olgratin_Magmatoe @startrek.website
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