No, it's not evolution *at work*. It's human intervention in the environment at work. Sure, evolution will *respond* to this intervention; if you want to see *that* at work, go into suspended animation for a hundred thousand years.
You could argue that *humans* are part of nature and therefore anything we do is natural. That's just quibbling. By that argument it would be just as natural for us to choose not to shit in our own beds.
Turbotax offers free service to low-to-moderate income people as part of an agreement it has made with the IRS. In return for this, the IRS doesn't provide free electronic tax preparation services like most other advanced countries do. For most consumers, the IRS could in fact automatically fill out their returns and the consumer could simply check it by answering a few simple questions rather than puzzling over instructions written for professional accountants.
If you've always wondered why filing your taxes couldn't be simpler, a bit part of this is marketing from companies like Intuit that make a lot of money out of simplifying the process for taxpayers.
The free tier service is something Intuit is contractually obligated to provide. Upselling low-income people to a paid service that wouldn't benefit them in any way is morally dubious at best.
Compare to Kira on DS9. She was a terrorist, and she hated Cardassians with every fibre of her being. She believed that the ends justified the means, and that collaborators were no better than the oppressors. Over the course of the series her outlook changed. She began to see political solutions as possible, and some Cardassians as real people, humanised as we would say. It wasn't just learning or developing the character she started with, the core of who she was evolved.
The very first episode of Star Trek I ever saw was Duet. Have you seen it? It was Season One and by the end of the episode we're pretty far removed from "Terrorist Kira." It did not take seven years for her to view the Cardassians as people or to think that a political solution was possible.
You want a pre-WW2 suburb.
I was visiting Oxford UK on business and I stayed at a colleague's house which dated from the1800s. I was shocked that the front door of her house was right at the sidewalk, you could look right into her front room. But it turned out that by giving up privacy in that front room, she got an enormous and very private back yard. The arrangement was something like this. That's just a street in the area I randomly picked off of Google Maps satellite view, but I checked it for walkability: it's less than one minute's walk from the local boozer, and on the way back you can get a takeaway curry.
I'll quote from the Wikipedia Article: "In urban planning, walkability is the accessibility of amenities by foot." It is important to contrast this with the practices it was intended to counter (again from the same article): "... urban spaces should be more than just transport corridors designed for maximum vehicle throughput."
Transit is an integral part of walkable planning simply because it gets people *into* neighborhoods so they can do things on foot. But cars are a way to get people into an area too, so cars can and should be part of *walkability* planning. For example there's a main street area near me with maybe 50-70 stores. When I visit I contribute to congestion by driving around looking for a parking spot. A carefully placed parking lot could reduce car congestion on the street while increasing foot traffic and boosting both business and town tax revenues.
So what that he encouraged or developed something, he is not the person who had actual access to this information, he never worked for any agency in USA where he would have to promise not to disclose information, to him (or anyone who doesn't work for such agencies) status of any 'secret' information is completely irrelevant, as it should be.
For example, if I egged on some general to disclose top secret information about some project and then he did disclose it, it would be on the general, not on me or anyone who encouraged him. HE IS THE ONE WHO PROMISED NOT TO DISCLOSE IT NO MATTER WHAT, not me, not anyone else.
I am not a 'right wing', I am not a 'left wing', I am a libertarian, anarcho capitalist, it puts me completely outside of what is considered to be normal politics in the USA by the way and I say that Assange has done nothing wrong at all and he is being terrorized because he embarrassed people who have power.
*this* is what "proves" it? Not the kidnappings, the torture, the murders? )
Yeah, you don't understand what will actually happen. What will actually happen is just more terrorism by the government that is already terrorist in nature. Kadyrov is a murderer, torturer, terrorist, his fame to claim was that he murdered his first russian at the age of 16. Today he routinely murders anyone who opposes his rule in any way, real or imaginary. His son kidnaps and beats a kid who posts something online that Kadyrov finds offensive. People routinely disappear, never to be seen again. People get tortured for anything that Kadyrov doesn't like.
At the same time Chechnia's economy only exists because putin provides Chechnia with billions of dollars every year from the russian budget.
You don't understand what is actually happening there. They don't care about law or whatever, if they hear something they don't like, you'll disappear and be raped and tortured and killed and that's about it. This entire thing about the music is really nothing at all, it just means that if someone *hears* music that is not Chechen they will report you and you will be gone.
but if my memory serves me correct a whole load of services like transportation were monopolized by the state
There's nothing in any canon I can recall that would imply that. I do recall household fusion reactors and replicators (TNG's The Survivors) which is pretty much the opposite definition of central control by the State, unless we assume the replicator has DRM or some such, which was never said or implied. There's also civilian ownership of weaponry in every show, again, opposite of central control. There are privately owned ships, privately owned restaurants, privately owned French estates, the only thing missing is currency, but what good is currency in an abundance economy?
Discovery season 1 gave us something new for Trek. A look at how a fascist could insert himself into Starfleet and corrupt the otherwise good people around them, with psychological abuse and manipulation dressed up as patriotism and determination to win the war.
Did you watch the same show I did? That might have made for a compelling story. The story we actually got was about a cartoon villain from a literal universe of cartoon villains. That twist ruined what was up until that point a fairly compelling character story acted brilliantly by Jason Issacs. Discovery has done this time and time again, take a concept from Classic Trek best used sparingly (Section 31) or not taken seriously (tMirror Universe) and drive it into the ground.
In other shows things happened to them, but they stayed basically the same people they always were.
That's nonsense but I'm not surprised you worship at the altar of DS9 because it feels like all DS9 worshippers have to throw this shade at the other shows. You don't see any character evolution between S1 Data, Worf, or Picard vs. S7? S1 Doctor vs. S4? S4 Seven of Nine vs. S7? There were certainly characters (Harry Kim) the writers forgot about but it's nonsense to say they stayed the same as they always were. Side note: I like DS9, a lot actually, so don't mistake this as a condemnation of that show, just the more rabid parts of its fan base.
Episodic television is not mutually exclusive with character development and serialized television is not automatically superior. I would posit that it only works when the show runners actually have the whole story sketched out in advance, e.g., Babylon 5. How many B5 episodes ended on a cliffhanger? I can recall only one. How many Game of Thrones episodes ended in cliffhangers? I can't recall any. Those shows (well, GoT until they outran the source material) are how you do serialization, a novel for television, not what Discovery and Picard pull on us. Discovery and Picard take story ideas that could be told in a two hour movie or three episode television arc and try to stretch them out for 10 hours. They do it with cheap tricks, like cliffhangers (invariably resolved in the opening act of the next episode), twists to drive engagement on social media (OMG, Lorca is from the mirror universe!), manufactured interpersonal conflict on a soap opera level (what happened to the professionalism in Starfleet?), blah, blah, blah, all there just to pad the run time and keep the rubes subscribing.
This isn't uniquely a Star Trek problem. It has happened to a lot of other productions. I blame Netflix, or rather, Hollywood's reaction to Netflix. Everyone rushed to copy that production model without asking themselves if there was still room for traditional TV (e.g., Strange New Worlds) or (crazy idea) new concepts.
I might revise my recommendation of SNW though, as there are a few episodes with blood.
Blood isn't the problem my friend. It's the gore, torture, and violence for the sake of shock value that ruined Discovery and Picard for me. Something else you said:
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the writers wanted to go further and show the horrors of war
You don't need gore porn to tell a story about the horrors of war. If you think you do you've probably never seen the horrors of war. The two Star Trek episodes that most effect my partner -- who actually served in the GWoT and came back with the TBI and PTSD to prove it -- are Chain of Command and It's Only a Paper Moon.
I've been using Linux on all of my personal devices since the late 90s. I used Ubuntu for many years but switched to Mint not because of ideological reasons around systemd or snaps or what-have-you, but because they did the one thing that companies like Microsoft do to their customers that keeps me using Linux.
They changed the desktop, radically and dramatically in ways that completely fucked how I use my device.
And sure, it's Linux, so I could switch the DE
I can't remember what the new desktop was
I don't know what is driving the growing Linux use. But I do know that what really bothers me as a tech consumer is the constant trend-chasing and forced change that impacts the user experience in very major ways. All I want is stability, predictability and boring. If some new tech comes out that has the potential to improve my work flow or my life, I want to be able to evaluate that and make the change gradually on my own terms.
I don't want to be forced to use Cloud storage. I don't want to be "forced" to buy an "AI PC" (whatever the fuck that means) because it's all you can buy. I don't want to be "forced" to use web apps for things that can be desktop applications. I have a love/hate relationship with web apps. On the one hand they have enabled to use Linux at work the last few years because I can use Zoom, Slack, GMail and other work-required tools. But as an end user, I can't stand the fact that the company can push UX changes on me that I never opted in to or wanted.
I miss the days when companies would have to spend resources doing beta tests and focus group their new versions and then people could choose whether or not they wanted to "upgrade" by reading the reviews. These days, changes get push on you during weekly release cycles. Don't get me started on the infuriating Pendo pop-ups that tell you about new features that you couldn't give a shit about.
Canonical violated my trust by doing that very business trend chasing thing that drives me to Linux in the first place. So I switched to Mint and for the last 10 years or so have no reason to switch to any other distro because it gives me that stability and predictability that I depend on.
So it could be
Communism implies the state controls the means of production, which is impossible if every citizen owns a replicator and fusion reactor. It's better described as an abundance economy. In Trek it's implied (in The Orville explicitly said) that humanity evolved first and later got the cool tech that allows you make anything you want out of thin air. That's probably how it has to happen because you just know if some tech bro actually made the replicator a thing it would be burdened with DRM and onerous licensing fees. Here's a replicator, it will feed you a gelatinous mass that tastes like garbage but meets all your nutritional requirements, if you want to replicate actual food you can purchase our Recipe Add On license at an annual fee of.....
A National Registry of data brokers will be as effective as CFPB's consumer reporting agencies, all of whom have to allow you to 'freeze' your reports and all of whom have to provide you a free copy of your report. It's all good on paper but there are hundreds of them. What's needed for data brokers (and CRAs) is some centralized registry, like the Do Not Call list, where you can one click opt yourself out, request copies, etc., otherwise it's just a phone book and you get to do an unlimited amount of legwork to exercise your rights.
You're confusing darkness (In The Pale Moonlight) with violence/gore porn (Stardust City Rag). DS9 didn't need gore to tell compelling stories and neither does New Trek.
I could not disagree with you more about Discovery S1. I'll spare you my wall of text on that and distill it down to the only thing Trek about it was the title. There was exactly one 'Trek' episode in that season, Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad. Every single trope that ultimately ruined Discovery and Picard for our household was born that season. Faux-cliffhangers, the ten hour movie that wasn't (writers even admitted after the fact they made it up as they went along), violence/gore, bait and switch plots, mystery boxes, interpersonal soap opera drama substituting for story, blah, blah, blah, oh, and yeah, they paywalled it for the first time in franchise history.
There are exactly two redeemable things about Discovery: Grudge and the Strange New Worlds spinoff.
Sidenote: My Mom won't give SNW a chance because she feels like they pulled the rug out from under her with Discovery. She's also on a very limited/fixed income and with the crackdown on password sharing....
What I SAID was 'why should the administrative state be able to make regulations that have the force of law?'
Because a law passed by Congress actually *requires* what you are calling "the administrative state" to draft those regulations. The executive branch can't regulate something just because it thinks doing that would be a good idea. There has to be a law directing the executive branch to draft such a regulation.
Now if you actually look in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), you will see that each and every regulation in the CFR cites a *statutory authority* -- that is to say a law passed by Congress which compels the executive branch to draft a regulation about such an such a thing. For example 40 CFR Part 50, a regulation written by the "administrative state", cites 42 USC 7401 a statute passed by Congress.
Note that I say the statutes "require" and "compel", not "empower" and "enable". That's bcause the executive branch has no choice in the matter. It *must* issue a regulation if so directed by statute, even if it disagrees with that statute. This is why regulations don't just disappear when an anti-regulation president gets elected. An administration can tweak regulations to be more favorable to business, but if they go too far in undermining the intent of the statute they'll get sued for non-enforcement of the law (e.g., this).
So if you think an adminsitration has overstepped its statutory authority with a regulation, and you have standing, you can sue to have the regulation amended. But if you fail in your suit, you won't be able to fix it by electing a President who agrees with you. You need a Congress which will repeal the statory authority for the regulation.
If your information on this stuff from political news channels, you can be forgiven for thinking government bureaucrats just make up regulations on their own initiative, but it just doesn't work that way.
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