I tend to agree and give a ton of leeway to stupid, offensive stuff from years past that people have evolved from. We all said and did stupid stuff that we regret. However, this isn't offensive, and that's to highlight that Vance either A. regressed in his values from being normal to being weirdly pro-hyper-traditional gender roles or B. has no true beliefs and is just saying what he says because he thinks it wins him votes.

It should be a conspiracy of like-minded individuals that exists parasitically within Starfleet, not an official (or an “unofficial official” agency).

I agree. When 31 was first introduced, and Sloan explained that Section 31 was sanctioned by Starfleet under Article 14, Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter, the implication was that they were people who misinterpreted or construed a (probably minor) part of the Starfleet Charter and used it to justify damn near anything.

Personally, I hate how Section 31 has been changed to be misunderstood, cool good guy/anti-hero types who are doing the wrong things for the right reason. DS9 had it right with portraying them as the villains within who should be snuffed out because the ends don't justify the means.

I can see the allure for places wanting to keep certain trouble-makers out as a precaution, but this gets so close to a privatized social credit score that it's beyond uncomfortable.

Depends on your skills. Documentation is always useful. If you have language skills, translation of documentation or helping create language packs/translations.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could come up with more.

YES! I study AI, and this is exactly how I feel!

Side note-One of my favorite things to do is ask people what their use case for using AI is, and watch them sputter out "uh...emails and productivity and things."

I'm in Illinois, and my entire family thought I was nuts for supporting bail reform. My cop brother said that we'd have hordes of criminals on the street causing more crime, and my parents again voiced how they "want to move out of state" (because Indiana is sooooooo much better /s). They never could answer why paying to be set free until court was so central to security because it never made sense to tie pre-trial lock up with ability to pay.

They never bring it up anymore, and for that, I'm grateful.

I work/study in AI, and it is completely over-hyped. For one thing, the C-suite can't wrap it's head around the fact that AI != LLM; they all seem to think all AI is just LLMs. On top of that, they are way too eager to throw humans out of the loop.

That said, I think LLM applications, even in their current form, are super useful in development and business practices. I myself use it to increase my productivity in coding. But, I use it as an augmentation rather than a replacement. One of my friends put it best the other day, "LLMs are like a junior dev to your senior dev. You need to be hyper-specific, and you need to check it's output." In other words, it's great for off-loading some work, but it isn't going to completely replace humans.

With that said, I'm a bit annoyed that other AI fields are being over-shadowed by LLMs. There's a ton of other interesting work being done in those fields that is super useful and important. All of them, though, are not going to replace humans but rather augment and make humans more productive. I've found that an AI-Human team is most effective.

I think that's exactly what the Republicans want.

I think what they're saying is that Americans don't pay attention and forgot how terrible the Trump presidency was because it's been a few years. Most people think that "we're better now" and any major issues have abated without understanding that nothing has fundamentally changed. Because of all that, Trump will win the election. The DnD portion of the post is just what got OP to think about this.

Sad thing is that there's merit to the argument. It's the old trope of "Americans have short memories."

Karl Urban is the best of the Kelvin-verse cast. He felt like De Kelley/McCoy without doing an imitation or parody. Even in little things like facial expressions and line delivery, he nailed it.

No lie, he seems like such a cool dude. If I were in the area, I'd totally go to see him. And while I first knew him as Chekov, I grew to love him as Al Bester on Babylon 5, truly some of his best work!

:wq Thanks Bram for a great editor! Vim is probably one of the most useful pieces of software ever written. I know that I use it literally every day.