FriendOfDeSoto

Were you dancing at the time?

I imagine it’s not as easy in terms of producing the template video to match your body type (and maybe agility) and then to set up the projection just at the right distance. Conventional wisdom might also say that you learn dance moves better by copying others and that’s why you get floor to ceiling mirrors in dance studios.

How does confidence factor into this? I’ve been confident in stuff before and it turned out that confidence was misplaced. Pride cometh before the fall shit. Confidence alone risks cockiness. Cockiness may lead to somebody testing your Golden Shield. Didn’t work. You now don’t have a country any more.

If the Golden Shield really worked it’s a question of capacity. If you had enough juice in it to repel all nuclear weapons you could throw at this country in a worst-case scenario, you’d have a powerful defense against the most powerful weapon on Earth that’s ready to deploy this minute. It may not save you from conventional attacks. It may not shield you from chemical or biological weapons so gruesome they aren’t currently shelf-ready. But development of those would suddenly become a viable prospect. I fear it just turns the spiral of development of more destructive weaponry one more rotation. Extrapolating from the last 6000 years of history, we’ve gone from sticks and stones to vaporizing people into thin mist by harnessing the power of the atom. We’re already in the narrow bit of the spiral. Paradoxically, developing a Golden Shield against nuclear attacks may lead to wiping our species out for good.

Why did she have to go and make things so … complicated?

Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Thank you for your eloquence.

I think there are a couple of reasons. STIX and STX were failures, one so bad it ended the franchise. Also, IIRC Avery Brooks wasn’t happy about the Sisko ending and he has pretty much stayed out of the limelight since DS9. While it was on the air the viewing figures weren’t extraordinary. Worf was thrown in to get more TNG fans interested in the same way Jeri Ryan was put in a catsuit on VOY. DS9’s last two seasons were binge TV before we knew that existed, it was ahead of its time, which explains why it’s a sleeper hit and fan favorite. But not a great financial success at the time.

I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.

I think this USSR quote is a good answer:

We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.

I’m not going to press you on an answer about your emotions if you don’t want to tell. You probably have it in you to change your behavior. If the bad touch response is frustrating you, there is probably a time span you can aim for in a shower that will be equally frustrating but without using the phone. Find that time.

Showers can be an incredibly wasteful way of washing. Finding ways to make them longer, especially on the reg, is something to consider avoiding.

What emotions are you having that cannot deal with 5-10 minutes of pure bodily hygiene focus?

No. At least not yet. I don’t think they will be because that would entail having any of 47’s children succeed him. And I feel like they know they are a shade duller than Hegseth.

You have unlocked the stylistic tool of the hyperbole.

Hands up if you didn’t already know that. Or intuited it. To me this seems to be something only US-Americans who argue purely ideologically for a “small government” need reminding of. They’re paradoxically often the first in line calling for government intervention when their drinking water is full of poop or something.

I think technologically this is something an engineering team should tackle. It would probably benefit people who use touch devices for work in dirty and wet environments as well.

How long do you spend in the shower that you have time to doom scroll? Maybe it’s time to switch to baths if you have a tub. If you don’t, I would boringly suggest just not taking the phone into the shower if you know that the touch sensor will be wonky. It may speed up the shower and lessen your water consumption as a side effect. That’s good for your wallet and the environment. The internet can wait 5-10.

I get the meditative effect of a hot shower after a long day. I enjoy that on occasion as well. At no point did I ever think the experience would be improved by a cell phone with a camera being present.

I think you need to be more specific with the query. If I’m the only passenger plus crew, yes. If the plane is full of people going to a place to help out, no. If this flight could be done by train without multiplying door-to-door travel time more than 2.5 times, yes. If my blood type or bone marrow was so rare I could save a life, I think I’d be okay again even if I was a lone passenger. There is plenty of gray here to consider.

You said they should still be considered Starfleet if they’re time-shifted. I’m saying protocol accounts for it and once you’re time shifted you get frozen in rank. Forever!

I’m just messing with you. I think he never got promoted as a message between the lines to the actor, who at that point was merely saved from show death by appearing in a good looking Asians list or something weird like that. They never promoted Kim as a reflection on Wang’s standing with the production team.

The fact he never got promoted suggests otherwise.

But promotions should be earned.

Did you skip high school? You’re equating normal with socially desirable. I don’t. There are plenty of people who behave normally while not being nice. E.g. bullies, mean girls. Some of them never grow out of it.

I beg to differ. If I were a c-word, this behavior would be par for the course.

This is not the behavior of a friend.