Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I think these two are almost if not entirely exclusionary. It cannot be Federation space if the inhabitants are pre-warp.

    There are prime directive eff-ups. Like the flower bed trespasser assassins of S1 TNG. The Fed is in contact with the Edo although they shouldn’t be but somehow s happened. We don’t really know where they’re located in reference to everything else in the Fed or the universe. But even if everything around them was warp hopping mad, the system of the Edo or at least their planet Rubicun III should be an exclave. In the scenario where the Fed would have to defend them from a hypothetical anti-prime-direxxer it could be a protectorate but not Fed territory.

    I can think of two other instances with the PD that come close to this scenario but are no cigar. Data’s long-fingered pen pal Salenka or something like that and Worf’s adopted brother trying to save his knocked up pre-warp Penny Johnson. In both cases I don’t think we know if the territory was Fed, Fed adjacent, or something else. And it’s a moot point anyway because they were defending against natural disasters, not other species.




  • If Apple were the only player on the block, at least in Europe they would be under a lot more pressure. But they’re not. There are other OSs (although only one really matters), there are other phone makers.

    Antitrust is more reactive. There is a market, a dominant player, said player plays unfairly, the authorities react. That reaction takes years to go through all the levels of courts available. By the time we get a final ruling, the market has long moved on. The corporations know that too. As long as the lawyers are cheaper than the money they stand to lose they will carry on.

    And in Apple’s defense: the mobile operating system market is not that old. And it’s not clearly defined. And as long as there is wiggle room they can do whatever they want. Part of the problem is that the legislation dealing with antitrust on either side of the Atlantic is like copyright law: no longer fit for purpose.





  • No healthcare is free. It is paid. Whether through taxes or mandatory insurance schemes. The money doesn’t grow on trees.

    It is a US BS narrative that ‘socialized healthcare’ is lefty silliness. And while there are conservatives in Europe who float the idea of abandoning government-organized healthcare every once in a while, every time they do they are met with a lot of frantic finger-pointing across the Atlantic. Everybody else sees a societal value in taking care of each other without any, or at least many, preconditions, like employment.

    Europe is not one homogenous political body. Much like the US on the state level isn’t. The only difference is that the US shares a party structure on both state and federal levels. But there are just two relevant parties, twice as many as in North Korea! The party spectrum has always been broader in European democracies. As a result, the European Parliament often creates strange bedfellows.

    There are marked differences between European countries and what they consider left and right. You’re looking at a lot of separate and shifting Overton windows. The suggested social cuts of the center-left Labour UK government would probably cause another revolution in France. The right-wingers of France are pro-Russia. The right-wingers of Poland absolutely aren’t. The list goes on.