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.

I mean the issue with TikTok is that they give the data and videos over to the Chinese government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on the US government.

Meanwhile Twitter/X is totally different in that they give the data and videos over the US government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on US citizens.

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.

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.

He still is ahead of Kamala by about 2% or 2.5 million votes. Before he was ahead of Kamala + Claudia + Chase + Cornell + Jill + Vermin Supreme + Elmo.

It’s still a closer gap than he lost to Biden by by a lot. But it is also super clear that Harris managed to do worse in this environment than Hillary did in 2016 back when Trump was an unknown crazy person instead of the well known crazy shill for hire.

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.

Some sort of camp to help ADHD folks work on their concentration?

I crushed it and have the American Dream. My experience now is, I’m surrounded by old people, trustfund kids, and people who broke themselves to get ahead.

I have to raise my kids knowing that 80% of their classmates have no chance and hope they luck out and also fall in love with a career path that pays well. All of my friends I grew up with are in a constantly struggle, none of them will own a house. I have friends with PTSD from serving in the military and even with the VA loan option and GI bill they will be lucky to own a house by 50 if ever.

I can’t even talk about my life, my struggles are meaningless compared to those around me. I feel like an outsider in America because I actually did what everyone says is the goal and it is wild to me. I’d give it up in a heartbeat just to feel like I was in a community of equals I felt safe to raise a family around.

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)

He was elected as Dictator many times on a yearly basis and sometimes multiple times a year. He was so vastly popular the citizenry they killed the assassin’s, hunted down an heir and put him in power.

Julius Ceasar and his follow on Agustus were insanely capable leaders that did great things for their country. The empire was so great and lasted twice the time America has, it’s fall caused the Dark Ages.

Rome is a bad example here because technically the Dictatorship was good for them. Rome fell due to corruption that came in via enabling the Christian church to operate freely. Now that is a much better analog here that we enabled religious organizations to become tax free political action committees and uncapped their ability to influence government. This meant the evangelical grifters became the most powerful political entities in America.