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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • “Conservatives” is a misnomer here. “Conservative” isn’t right and “Progressive” isn’t left.

    Conservatives are those who want as little change as possible so as to “not rock the boat” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Progressives are those who want to try out new policies.

    From what I gather, a large portion of today’s Republicans aren’t actually conservatives rather regressive. That’s almost literally what “make America great again” means. That’s also the meaning of, for example, the Roe v. Wade overruling - going back to an earlier state.

    Also, in the long run the human condition generally changes for the better (Or at least that’s what we perceive as our values and habits are usually aligned with what we have now and not what we had before). As the status quo changes, the things conservatives (and progressives) value change accordingly.

    Saying “Conservatives were the people who defended King George.” as if that has anything to do with conservative today is like someone saying “Progressives on the 18th century were for women’s suffrage, they have no business talking about equality”.




  • I think there are a few things that should be taken into account:

    1. Hamas stated time and time again that their goal is to take over all of the land that is currently Israel and, to put it extremely mildly, make nearly all the Jewish population not be there.
    2. The Oct. 7th attack has shown that Hamas is willing to commit indiscriminate murder, kidnapping and rape to achieve this goal. Some of the the kidnapped civilians are currently held in Gaza.

    Israel had no real choice but to launch an attack against Hamas in order to return the kidnapped citizens and neutralize Hamas as a threat. You could say “Yes, that’s because Because of the aforementioned illegal occupation”, but just like the citizens in Gaza have a right to be protected against bombings regardless of what their government did, Israeli citizens have the right to be protected from being murdered, raped or kidnapped.

    So, any true solution has to take both these considerations into account. Right now, the Israeli stance is that once Hamas will no longer control Gaza, the war could end (citizens on both sides will be protected). The Hamas stance is that Israel should cease hostilities so they can work on murdering, raping or kidnapping more Israeli citizens. That isn’t to say Israel is just, rather that Israel is willing to accept a solution that stops the killing of both citizen populations, while Hamas is not. The just solution is for the international community to put pressure on both parties to stop hostilities. The problem is that the parts of the world who would like to see a just solution (Eurpoe, the US etc.) are able to put pressure on Israel, while the parts who don’t hold humane values (Iran, Qatar etc.) support Hamas.

    Now, regarding the massive civilian casualties in Gaza:

    1. Hamas has spent many years integrating their military capabilities into civilian infrastructure. This was done as a strategy, specifically to make it harder for Israel to harm Hamas militants without harming civilians.

    I’m not trying to say that all civilians killing in Gaza are justified, rather that it’s extremely hard to isolate military targets. Most international law regarding warfare states that warring parties should avoid harming civilians as much as possible. Just saying “Israel is killing TWICE as many innocent civilians as Hamas, therefore they’re attacking Palestinian people as a whole” doesn’t take this into account what’s possible under in the current situation.


  • Yeah, I think not only their inept dynamic doesn’t fit anywhere in DS9, it’s actually anathema for the core values of Star Trek. Trek is all about what humanity can do when people do their best. The closest to being “inept” in ST are:

    • Characters like Rom or Berkeley, who at first have an inept aura, but ARE good at their job if put in the right situation.

    • Quark, who’s kinda bad at being a Ferengi, but that’s because he lets his (by human standards) morals get in the way. Also, the Ferengi were created as a species to be an anathema for other core values of Star Trek begin with.

    • The Pakleds, who are kinda like the Ferengi were at first, and were a one-off species then used for comedic purposes.

    I’ve put way too much thought into it, haven’t i?


  • I know that wasn’t the point, but:

    Holt as Sisko and Terry as Worf is cool (Holt might work better as Odo, but we’ll get to that in a sec).

    Rosa should be Kira (Worf looks mean but is a big softy, hence Terry. Kira is the one that will kick your ass if you piss her off), Jina as Quark (obviously), Amy as Odo, Boyle as Rom, Hitchcock and Scully as O’brian and Bashir in their “two buds going to the holosuite to pretend they’re WW1 pilots” mode.

    Jake works surprisingly well as Jadzia - both like to do silly things, kinda offbeat yet very good at their job.




  • There’s a bit of confusion between owning a company and owning the shares. A company can buy shares of itself, but that does not grant it control of itself. Let’s say Cute Puppies inc. has 200 shares (so 200 shares = 100% ownership). You and I have 50 shares each, and the rest is distributed among many other holders (we’ll call them “the public”). So, we each own 25% of the company and the public collectively owns 50%. Now Cute Puppies inc. bought all shares held by the public, so it has 100 shares and we each have 50 shares. But a company can’t control itself by definition (it still has the shares and can sell them, but it can’t use those shares to vote, appoint directors etc.), so now we each own 50% of the company.


  • Right, so, let’s talk naval ships from the age of sail. There’s no need for two sailing ships to face each other also, but that’s inevitably how ships will meet on the ocean. The HMS Enterprise spots the HMS Defiant. They plot a course towards the Defiant. Defiant will eventually spot the Enterprise, and will alter its course. Both ships will meet with their bows facing each other. Same logic applies with spaceships, with two issues:

    1. There’s actually no need for two spaceships to meet in order to talk or transfer people. I’ll hand wave that away saying that’s standard procedure, as the cost in time and energy to go from the beaming range to visual range is negligible, and even in the 24th century it’s a good idea for ships in the middle of the vastness of space be as close to one another as possible in case of emergency.
    2. While both ships will change their pitch and yaw to face each other, there’s no need to change the roll. This can also be hand waved - while there’s probably a standard, absolute “up” (say, using the spin axis of the galaxy) altering the roll will allow both ships to use the same subjective “up”.