If i were gonna write the Borg going forward, I’d have the queens be a failed experiment to elevate one drone to the role of tactician specifically to deal with the Federation. It didn’t work, so they don’t do it anymore.

huh, reminds me of Hillary’s campaign aiding Trump during the republican primaries

Yeah, Trump himself has no policy commitments. He’ll say whatever he thinks is popular biased on the last thing he’s seen on television. In office, he delivers bog-standard republican policy because that’s who his cabinet gets filled with.

I don’t see Biden changing his stance on arming Israel. Trump could, but the question is whether would it last long enough to actually affect policy.

Season 5, Episode 13 For The Uniform

He does this to a Maquis settlement after they had similarly poisoned two Cardassian planets.

I like to think by the time Kirk gets the enterprise, all those spacious crew quarters we see in Strange New Worlds have been eaten up by retrofits and upgrades.

You might as well refer to the Kardashian as a crime family. Donald Trump represents the fusion of reality television and spectator politics – of course sycophants show up, how else are they supposed to get air time?

Isn’t “the state” just cultural mechanisms extended beyond familial or interpersonal ties? There’s a threshold where the group becomes too numerous for a member to form social ties with all other members. At that stage, culture becomes a force unto itself, propagating further than the members that comprise it. That point, more than money, seems to be where exploitative behavior becomes more likely to take hold.

Like, feudal aristocracies were plenty exploitative, plenty domineering. But they didn’t necessarily need money for it; a lot of them operated on barter economies. They just needed a knife-point and a cultural belief to justify the domination. Money is just an innovation on a much older process.

You’re getting surveillance regardless of walkablity. Amazon is happy enough to hand Ring camera footage over to authorities no questions asked.

Hamas agreed to a ceasefire that would have released the remaining hostages. Israel turned it down.

Ah, I see, you just meant that other species don’t share our capacity for learning and adapting. Although, why do you continue to describe exploitative behavior as an instinct if you agree that it is a learned trait?

neuroplasticity is limited to what our genetics will allow

sorry, what do you mean by this? Surely the benefit of a learning and growing brain is that it can respond and adapt to situations faster than germ-line genetics ever could. Why would there be a genetic limiter, what purpose would that serve?

All hardware becomes legacy hardware in time. Even if we assume they’re eventually able to deliver on all those great big shiny promises, I’d rather not have to schedule an outpatient surgery just to keep up on emails. Pocket touchscreens being practically mandatory is bad enough…

now now, let’s be fair

it’s also so that evangelicals can ban recreational sex

Does it need to be instinctual, for some people’s brains to be “wired different”? Seems to me that this phenomenon is more easily explained as learned behavior. Since people’s behavior changes the environment, it creates a feedback loop; societies form a semi-artificial environment where people learn that domination is successful behavior, and are rewarded for continuing it. Thus, the behavior is propagated across generations, no instinct required.

…and neuroplasticity doesn’t really fit well with the idea that people are “hard-wired” to certain behavior. The only thing we really seem to be pre-programmed for is language and communication.

work customer service long enough and being intolerable starts to be appealing

Squidward is churlish and often over-reacts when his personal time is intruded upon. Maybe his neighbors don’t recognize when they’re being intrusive, but they do value Squidward’s company. It took drastic conditions for him to realize he values their company as well.

Big cats, wolves, eagles, and uncomfortable caricatures of people. Heaven forbid a school ever choose, like, a local frog or hedgehog or whatever for a mascot.