zombiepete

Thank you for the compliment by the way!

I’m trying to understand what the distinction is that you’re making between my idea of an AI program and “Agents” a la The Matrix; both are computer programs operating with some level of autonomous thought and action but within defined parameters that could be considered their “nature”.

I do believe that the Q would have been programmed as part of the simulation to observe and guide the development of societies that the experimenters wanted to see; however the Q individually began to develop desires beyond that programming and thus you have miscreants like our Q and Quinn who buck against their very old programming.

Honestly, the Federation itself. I always thought you could make a really interesting show that was a mix of Federation politics and Starfleet intrigue; maybe a show about the Federation government on Earth that delved into Federation society and dealt with an overarching plot. Like maybe a season where a Federation colony at the edge of Federation space gets into conflict with another race/government, and for a season you get a mix of stories from the colony, a Starfleet ship sent to the colony to support, and the Federation Council on Earth.

Federation politics could be really interesting, but the shows always paid kind of disappointing lip service to it. One key example is in the DS9 episode “Rapture” when Bajor is being accepted into the Federation; the fact that a Starfleet admiral rather than a civilian Federation representative was overseeing the proceeding was lazy to me. Plus the entire ceremony was tiny and anticlimactic (and obviously barely got started since Sisko interrupted). Great potential for some real insight into the government but instead it’s just some rando admiral.

By the skin of our teeth but yes, I’ll take the W.

I believe that genetic modification to fix defects/heal diseases is still acceptable; it's augmentation beyond what is considered to be "natural" that is the problem.

I hear what you’re trying to say but capitalism isn’t what lifted people out of poverty, it was a strengthened central government willing to tax corporations and the rich to spread the wealth being generated by labor to create a middle class. Stronger regulations and higher taxes bred an amazing increase in quality of life for the Boomer generation.

The super rich and their willing accomplices on the Right have waged a war on government protections for the middle class because it fetters capitalism and the consolidation of wealth and power. Without a government that is willing to work for the good of the people or unions that actually protect the labor class it’s clear that capitalism alone has not been a force for good for the common individual.

By the way, don’t ignore that a lot of the conveniences and leaps in innovation that we take for granted as corporate innovations came from government agencies (e.g. NASA) or government research/funding (e.g. vaccines). Corporations just take what we already paid for through taxes and sell it back to us again at a mark up. Yay capitalism…?

Having been a part of the dog rescue community for over a decade, it unfortunately attracts a lot of unbalanced people who often mean well but quickly get in over their heads and end up doing more harm than good. The people who really piss me off are the ones who are doing it for validation and take in a bunch of dogs they can’t take care of but are afraid to get help because they’ll look bad to their small community.

It’s exhausting dealing with the people more than it is the dogs.

Yeah; it’s a shame because that would be a huge draw for lemmy but I understand his concerns.

If someone would make an RSS reader with its own comments/threads independent of the stories themselves I could go straight to the app comments after reading only the headline to get shitty takes on stories I won’t read.

The Reddit experience really isn’t that hard to recreate.

I did not play the demo but FF14 has been a pretty amazing experience and I can only imagine what FF16 has in store. I am not going to play it right away but I’m definitely looking forward to a big large-scale adventure.

Lemmings, obviously.

It’s amazing how inept spez has proven to be, and that’s after most people had developed a pretty negative opinion of him. The CEO of a community-driven company really cannot be an anti-social megalomaniac and have the company survive.