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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • It is mostly serious. There is plenty of scientific evidence on how car centric infrastructure, city planning and policies have destroyed walkable cities and require an in proportion extreme amount of space and accommodations. Cars as a means of transportation are wholly inefficient, you could put several dozen daily commuters into a single bus, multiple times that in a single subway train.

    The only space where cars are not short term replaceable to great improvement of the general habitability of the area is in rural regions where distances are huge, people are spread out widely and communal infrastructure is simply too inflexible to accommodate the needs of the citizens.



  • Wouldn’t you say the second season was a take on bringing real world problems into Star Trek context? The dystopia reality is an authoritarian regime founded on racism, and the planet is dying from ignored climate change, only barely being held together by essentially giant force fields in the sky.

    If anything I found it a bit too on the nose for Trek, though that impression might be colored by this being the first real life issue of my time that is a topic in Trek. When old Trek shows aired the first time I was just a little kid and missed most of those; so I can’t relate as much.




  • Interesting background knowledge that they were supposed to be gay, puts a lot of things into new perspective.

    That being said, I don’t really like the idea, I enjoyed them as these unlikely but good platonic friends. I don’t think adding a romantic aspect to them would have improved their characters. For example Garak has many traits that could be interpreted as stereotypically gay, especially within the time period the show was produced. Him being a flamboyant and well spoken heterosexual works better to subvert cliches. Come to think of it, Bashir also isn’t the manliest of men. Which i also find more interesting for a heterosexual character.



  • As a former “text book” leftist I am inclined to agree that good will alone is not enough for humanity in its current state to operate a society on, and that many current day leftists are wearing the same rose tinted goggles for the USSR and China that the right wears for the 50s.

    We need both incentives as well as strict limits to remain within healthy behavior at large, otherwise we end up with apathetic full time unemployed people on the lower end as well as cancerous outgrowths like individuals possessing billions, living like feudal lords of medieval times.

    Incentives tied to employment in the current form are not practical any more though. With continuing industrialization, automation, and the emergence of artificial intelligence on the horizon the economies of the world simply don’t need those people as workers any more. This leads to the UBI as the next logical conclusion to provide the consumer base our economies depend on with disposable income to participate as well as a means of securing their essential needs. This then means the incentive must be different, personal ideas are to tie the UBI to the individual being at least x hours per month engaged in some kind of productive and/or creative outlet, be it education, community work, pursuing interests, or some other form of value provided to society based on the individual‘s interests and abilities.

    Basically the Star Trek federation philosophy of personal improvement (enhanced with some basic incentive to participate), mixed with the communist idea of assigning professions based on ability, except with the individual freedom to choose instead. Do something worthwhile, and if it’s just pursuing a hobby, and thats good enough.