OpenStars @ OpenStars @startrek.website

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2,104

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2 yr. ago

Go now, and sin no more. :-P

We've come a long way, baby! Soon we'll get to zeans and then we can finally rest:-).

Um... do they have 8 of anything, ah, else?

When it works, yeah:-).

Unfortunately, often it does not. Plus I do legit miss the feeling of being totally legit - like even though it is not illegal to stream, still I truly want some cash to trickle its way back towards the content creators. Also, places like Netflix offer a fantastic streaming service - entirely separately from the content.

So I am not sure what I will end up doing. Maybe I will settle for getting less content, or maybe I will watch less TV entirely and read more books, but I may also investigate going deeper if I need to for a specific series, or even if I never actually use it, just to know what it is all about:-).

Plenty of money exists yes, but there is no "will" to use it in this manner - and those who would, get fired or passed over for promotion by those who move fast & break things. Stock dividends rather than programmer salaries - see e.g. all of the tech sector doing multiple rounds of layoffs rather than make documentation or do anything close to proper maintenance for the things that were just built. However, those are (always) problems for the next CEO to have to worry about.

(1) why keep apologizing? It is either true or it is not, and either way does that really help soften the blow, especially after the first time? Well, anyway, kudos for attempting to be gentle at least.

(2) this seems biased in some places - e.g. are there countries where white supremacy does NOT appear among some portion of its populace? Although I guess you mean it being institutionalized, and so widely spread. But even there, it seems not alone in that? Especially if the races involved do not have to remain fixed across the comparison.

(3) what America seems to absolutely excel at, imho, is lying to itself. Especially the Midwest - e.g. the East and West know about such stuff and try to fight it, the South knows and just doesn't allow talking about it at all, but people in the Midwest (for anyone wondering why these terms, e.g. no "North", it has to do with its history, expanding from the 13 colonies westward, and now the terms depict cultural zones rather than geographic ones) have drunk the coolaid and seem to honestly believe that e.g. racism is a thing of the past - or at least like the South they would prefer that people not talk about it. However, this too was not an "America first" issue, itself having been inherited from England when it broke away. The thing is, England - itself a monarchy at that time - grew up afterwards (somewhat, see e.g. Brexit), and the USA grew up too, but yeah still remains deeply scarred by its past, and more especially by its continued present.

One example is how America sent a man to the moon first. While a significant accomplishment, the USA was not the first in space, nor has it showed much interest in the moon since then, especially lately when all the "firsts" there are being made by China and India, and the USA has actively given up rights to moon territories in exchange for deep-sea oil drilling rights. So... a half-point then towards its credit, or more like a full one but historical rather than modern?

Another example is nuclear fission technology, which is widely known to have been developed in the USA, ofc, but by German scientists who were fleeing the fascists at the time. This one actually deserves far more than just half a point though, imho, b/c while America did not put in the investment to develop the educational infrastructure that would have led to this discovery on its own, it did capitalize (a good choice of wording?:-D) on it, and also the USA is where those scientists chose to go (okay so... the latter may have had large geographic reasons behind it as well, as in the USA was not being actively bombed by Germany like the UK was, at the time). Similarly, one school of thought is that this is how the USA originally got its start in its industrial revolution, by the theft of many architectural plans taken from England. In contrast to those kinds of starts though - and here my knowledge is shaky so take this next part with a much more heavy grain of salt - the USA seems to not be keeping up with most other other nuclear-related technology developments since then, involving fusion (except perhaps that recent discovery that might have single-handedly reversed that whole course? so I dunno).

Computers, on the other hand, represent a full, solid, and MAJOR point towards the credit of the USA, right? As well as, for better or worse, the development of the internet (officially at least, it started in Universities within the USA, though that may have just been the modern form using packets, with some signal-passing having happened elsewhere first, and yet even then the first telegraph signals were passed in the USA, so at any rate this seems a solid point rather than a stretch).

So anyway, it is not all lies and smoke and mirrors - lately it seems that way, and ngl if Trump wins the USA may legitimately join with Russia or at least stop opposing the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which would free Russia up to start building itself back up in order to continue its expansionist agenda. So the USA at the very best can be said to be "unstable", and an "unreliable ally", but with a MAJOR caveat that corporate interests are starting to become more powerful than actual nations, in recent years. So BUSINESS arrangements are likely to remain solid, even if government ones can be reversed at the drop of a hat. This too is something inherited from England/UK, and the rest of the World, but the USA definitely has drunk the coolaid on that, to the point where like if Apple or Google were to pick one political party, the other would not have much chance and may quickly die out.

But don't miss out on the flowers or the forest for the sake of examining the trees: the white supremacy angle is only one small piece of this much larger puzzle, that has tentacles EVERYWHERE, world-wide even, and it is not only racists that support the authoritarian regime - there are other parts of that too.

Btw I want to give a shout-out to a tremendously awesome resource: Crash Course US History, and also many issues are discussed at a deeper level in the Crash Course World History, e.g. an episode on Capitalism and Socialism, and 19th-century Imperialism, multiple episodes on Globalization, etc.

We do something about it: we giggle:-).

Yeah it's a managerial function involving skill and time and therefore money, but if it doesn't directly translate into profits for the corporation, then who has interest in that kind of investment these days?

And not everyone truly lives to begin with.

Uh... no? It seems the price of admission to be Putin's lapdog though - he will help you, if you help him, but he also wants dirt on you first. He even provided all the necessary materials - the hotel room, prostitutes, camera, and videographer, he's so helpful that way!:-D

Not if you type it in backwards! :-P

They are a Trump appointee... I bet the correlation there between those who, upon being investigated, end up proven dirty, will be astonishingly high.

Trump is dirty, maybe this guy is dirty too - like, has some power (blackmail?) over the board members?

True. But the time before that they lost. And on and on the cycle goes! :-P

It's... just life. e.g. it is not only trucks - it is the same with SUVs, and Jeeps. I heard (no idea if it is true) that the original Jeeps were brought home from like the Korean/Vietnam wars, and were still military style, like had like zero padding on the seats, much less windows or AC.

People also wear clothing in a similar manner too - how many people wear cargo shorts while not hiking, or active/fit-wear while just loafing around. Billionaires purchase yachts and then they literally never leave the harbor. Trump has a literal model wife, who it seems he is never allowed to touch. People purchase iPhones, and then use it as a phone but never listen to any music from it.

Given the luxuries available today, people purchase things based on "how it makes them feel", rather than whatever it was originally meant for. Trucks are a symbol of independence - like, "I could move a large furniture item - I never have and I never will, but I could, and I like how that makes me feel! Also I tower over all ya'all and I enjoy how I block the fucking road so that you can't see past me when I'm 5 feet past the line and you cannot make the turn that you legally should have been allowed to if it were not for this mobile obstruction blocking the fucking roadways... um, [cough], I mean I like it."

Naw, they just don't want to scratch their pretty truck.

... wait for it...

Oh no, I am sorry for your loss. Yeah, Bernie is the one politician that I would expect to not sell your personal phone number, but he cannot control every single person all the way through his entire campaign staff, and it looks like someone, somewhere leaked it.:(

You have been identified as someone who is "vulnerable to this form of persuasion", just b/c you gave a single damn about someone, all of once. Consent means nothing to these MFers.

And somewhere early on in Trump's reign of terror, laws were changed and re-codified and staff were swapped out and also the FCC was de-funded (along with the SEC) and to make a long story short, they can get away with this crap much more easily than they could before.

If it helps, the only thing I have found that is foolproof is to put the phone in "Do Not Disturb" mode permanently. That can allow exceptions for callers already in your Contacts list, often also allowing people to get through to you it if they call twice from the same number within the space of a few minutes (e.g. a hospital that would register as an unknown caller but has a legitimate purpose for such). The only other alternative would be to use a special app to try to recognize known spam callers, but that is a constant cat-and-mouse game, not only for the callers identities but also with the app itself that keeps getting its databases or codebases hacked by malicious actors, so I just use Do Not Disturb.

Eventually they may give up if they have seen no activity or proper response from you, but I can virtually guarantee that that process will be measured in YEARS not days, especially this year. So: Do Not Disturb may be your only salvation:-(.