Normal for a person, but not normal for him. We see him as a very passionate person before he gets his implant who treats the dulling of his emotions as a boon.

I’d be shocked if the person influencing this writing of his character had never dealt with SSRIs or a similar medication.

No Star Trek show loved Star Trek more than Lower Decks.

I hope this is not the last time we see these characters. Between losing Prodigy and Lower Decks it has been sad for Star Trek as of late.

Rutherford upgraded his implant to be little more like Alternate Rutherford who had a super implant that also blocked out his emotions entirely.

This wasn’t a story about how his implant was bad at dealing with alternate universe versions of technology. His story was about how he had always used his implant to protect him from feeling emotions. Cranking it up slightly was all it took to finally block him from loving anything. Himself as he is, the Cerritos, Tendi. As soon as he took it out all of those emotions flooded in.

In an American vacuum I could see where you are coming from. In comparison with literally the entire rest of the world, it is clearly a flawed standpoint.

The American Democratic party is the oldest standing political party in the entire world. It last changed it’s political stances in the 1960’s and not because they wanted to, but because they needed to respond to the Republicans flipping the entire south in their favor.

Other countries have real leftist parties that actually get government members elected.

Biden was incapable of clearly communicating verbally for 2 hours straight in a debate. I’d argue that Biden stayed in as long as he did to enable them to feel empowered to force another Kamala on us rather than having to deal with a Warren, Sanders or even a Buttigieg winning the Primary. Kamala was 6th in line in the Primary when she dropped out in 2020.

I vote for them, they move right. I don’t vote for them, and vote third party, they move right. I join their party and vote in their primary’s for progressive candidates, they move right.

It’s almost like a bunch of really old, well off, lifetime establishment government folks just actually want to be conservative authoritarians. At BEST they are stuck in a mindset of 1969’s ideas of what progressive politics are because that is when they became politicians.

You have a common and problematic view of things. You asked if you are doing something wrong, it looks like you probably are. I’d advise you question your worldview a bit and talk honestly with folks you feel you can respect on how they got from where you are to where they are.

Yes, that is absolutely unacceptable. But that has nothing to do with your personal situation and I would say it is unhealthy to relate the two.

Women are not a monolith and not all admiration of physical attributes is misogyny.

If you see it as work or effort to not post online about random peoples physical attributes when you see a picture of them, then yea you should look at yourself a bit. It shouldn’t feel like you deserve a reward for not being like that.

Taking actions to be an Ally has risks for folks in some places. Where I am LBGTQA+ support is the norm and doesn’t really need to be spoken and when it is I’ve never heard anyone in over 10 years say a negative thing.

I have online though seen folks who try to speak up in Allyship of someone else get taken down. Subjected to purity tests by folks in an LGBTQA+ supporting community. It felt like the same bi erasure I’ve experienced and the same transphobia I’ve seen from parts of the LG community in the 2000s. It’s like saying someone isn’t gay if they haven’t come out. All it does is lessen the crew.

LGBTQA+ shouldnt be treated as a club with a rainbow dress code. It should be the future default standpoint of all of humanity.

I think the big difference here is that to the average user they see archive.org or Wikipedia as being a onesided transaction. An Archive where folks store information for you, an encyclopedia where information is stored by folks for you. There is no expectation of engagement of the average user. It is rare for someone to wake up and think “Man I gotta put something up on Wikipedia today or people are going to think I’m not the person I act like I am”.

People go to social events to keep up appearances. People participate on social media to keep up appearances. Maintaining these types of things require you to effectively help people balance their ability to participate in society with their ability to communicate. A Wikipedia contributor is a scholar. A community moderator is a bartender and a bouncer rolled into one. It doesn’t have the stability because the work required to keep things going is high stress for the majority of the people doing the work.

Lemmy’s solution is nice because the smaller instances can just ban whole cloth the larger ones and everyone gets to move forward. It means you never are burdened by having a ton of users, but that then also defies the goal of some of the larger social media platforms.

When it converts to the profit extraction phase the cutting edge folks will move on. Then the content will slowly become dominated by corporate auto created content. And then eventually the average person will look for the next place to go.

This is just the new cool local bar hangout at scale. This is how human socialization works. It has worked like this for hundreds of years.

Admiral April and Admiral Forrest are both solid options.

I think April did a really solid job of showing what a great but imperfect leader looks like in Ad Astra per Aspera.

Forrest was supportive and helpful. Willing to bend the rules to support his people rather than vice versa.

You approved of it being okay to make up negative things about a person simply because they are a billionaire. You’re saying, why fact check this meme, dude is rich so I agree with their nonsense regardless.

It is always okay to punch up, but it is silly and foolish to punch up randomly. It is a major part of mob mentality and why we are in the position we are today. It shouldn’t be a surprise that billionaires use social media wharrgarbl to fight other billionaires. We literally just saw one use this tactic to influence a major election.

Not really his fault he is a billionaire. He was an immigrant kid who washed dishes and bused tables til he went to college. He worked his way up and started one of the most successful companies in the world.

You can hate the system but you don’t need to hate every person in it.

Syndication is also called reruns, when the show is rerun out of order on TV at a standard Timeslot. Like for me TNG was on every night at 7pm M-F. It was shown in random order as far as I know with I believe them skipping less popular episodes, I honestly never noticed if they did hits for a bit then did a rerun through it or what.

The first season of TNG is considered weak as a heads up, similar for DS9 though DS9 has some bangers in S1, TNG is mostly weak. That said if you like it, you’ll LOVE the rest.

SNW is fantastic and I really recommend it, it is certainly New Trek but it’s a MUCH better successor to the legacy than Discovery.

Start with the best episodic episodes of TNG and DS9. Most of us were introduced to Star Trek out of order, it isnt like modern TV. 90s TV and prior was focused on syndication.

My recommendations would be, TNG: Darmok, Tapestry, The Wounded, Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks (The episode that inspired the show). For DS9: In The Pale Moonlight, Duet, Trials and Tribbleations, The Visitor (Rest in peace Tony Todd)

The oldest profession traded in it so they are arguably the original currency.

The US has literally 0 third party representation at the federal level and 10 state senators all libertarian. Even Bernie isn’t technically a third party he just is no party. So to be clear, having no party is far far better in the US than representing a third party even in a local election.

Yea, if you want more leftist policies than right, vote and work with Democrats at the federal level and try to get Ranked voting in more places. Exactly like Bernie has. Continue to support your third party in local until they become able to actually get folks elected to even a Senate post. As long as the Green Party can’t even manage to get the most hippy district in the nation to get a single House Rep elected you might as well just cast your vote for Bob Ross.