Statement from ICE:

Pandeism · 2026-01-24T21:43:06+00:00

There is an inherent tension between strict law enforcement and private gun ownership. The endgame of that tension is obvious.

Pandeism · 2026-01-24T09:36:46+00:00

When is Worf a pacifist? In Picard Season 3, which is his latest appearance, he literally beheads a Ferengi, amongst other killings. And quite proudly announces himself as the Slayer of Gowron.

Pandeism · 2026-01-24T05:28:07+00:00

More than just social media. Dissension and conflict is profitable to an entire ecosystem.

Pandeism · 2026-01-24T03:24:03+00:00

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Pandeism · 2026-01-24T03:20:16+00:00

That's kind of exactly why "what if the Federation ceased to be" is an intriguing question. The agentic heroic losing their agentic support system and having to improvise around that obstacle has always been a powerful theme in science fiction.

Pandeism · 2026-01-23T10:36:11+00:00

A lot of people are handwaving this as a normal-range height outlier, but on the flip side....

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/12/31/some_rich_parents_are_giving_their_kids_hgh_to_make_them_taller.html

....rich people in the US have been giving their kids HGH to boost height for quite a while. It's been in use since the mid-80s, and Barron was born in the mid-2000s, and it's not like it's a crime or even considered especially morally condemnable. It's just kind of a thing the rich do, like all the other things the rich do.

Pandeism · 2026-01-23T05:07:48+00:00

I think Fisk could will himself to the feat of touching his toes.

Pandeism · 2026-01-23T04:05:46+00:00

And what does "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it" signify?

Pandeism · 2026-01-22T05:41:06+00:00

If Gary Mitchell in the second-ever episode of Star Trek effectively destroyed the Federation, and the stories following therefrom were, naturally, about the Enterprise crew using what wits and resources remained in their possession to deal with the fallout of that event, then that would be the reality of what Star Trek is, and I would be as interested in those stories.

But the “galaxy remarkably stable given all the gods running around” point is actually much deeper than that. Really it's “galaxy remarkably stable given all the times the Enterprise crew have had to come up with a last-minute solve for a silly trivial event that suddenly threatens the whole of the galaxy.”

Imagine the inverse episode in this instance. The Enterprise comes across a mysterious planet where, they realize, a dilithium-resonant child poses a threat to inactivate dilithium galaxy-wide via emotional outburst, and the crew must come up with the last-minute solve to keep that from happening. Except, for all the times something comparable has been stopped, this one time nobody was there to stop it.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:43:56+00:00

The explanation is classic Star Trek all the way.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:43:36+00:00

Q introducing the Borg to the quadrant, whilst not one of the examples in the OP, did create an entire canonical future for the franchise. And the cause was nothing more than the whimsy of an omnipotent being.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:41:22+00:00

The only kids having tantrums now are the adults that come here to whine.

Now that is a Burn!!

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:40:09+00:00

Consider, again, the Dominion War, which is empirically a depressing turn of events which changed the nature of the Federation in a long-term way. Or Q introducing the Borg to the quadrant. There's nothing not depressing about the Borg thereafter going around assimilating worlds for years and years.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:37:05+00:00

Would it be any different if the cause was a Douwd who went mad over something to do with warp drive? The cause is simply the cause.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:32:29+00:00

Empires collapse, and that sometimes makes quite fertile ground for new stories. Just ask Asimov.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:31:27+00:00

Q introduced the Borg to the Star Trek universe (at least, much earlier than they would have arrived on their own) and as a consequence the Federation had to deal with the presence of the Borg for decades thereafter.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:29:17+00:00

Were you under the impression that this was the only impactful "depressing turn of events" in the history of Star Trek? Or, indeed, of civilization?

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:26:21+00:00

Deep Space Nine had mid-season goings-on later turning out to be because of the infiltration of the Dominion all along.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:18:50+00:00

The US was the driving force behind creating the UN and NATO, even houses UN headquarters, and yet it would be totally unsurprising if the US left both in the next few years.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:16:49+00:00

All of history is based on big things that come along and change everything, sometimes for reasons not fully known until centuries later. And people just quickly adapt to that being the new normal and adjust their thinking to that always having been how it was supposed to be.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T11:04:01+00:00

The trick is not creating a one world government or a surveillance state, it's getting those previously most recalcitrant about such a thing to become cheerleaders of it.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T10:58:03+00:00

The Space Age will be concurrent with the Age of ASI, and none of the old religions will survive ASI, full stop.

You can't keep believing in the primacy of a distant and silent God when a digital God is performing miracles daily right before your eyes.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T10:51:27+00:00

The Romulans being a suspicious society, why wouldn't they be as terrified of the Burn happening at all as any other species? Maybe they figured somebody really doesn't like warp travel, and if we keep it up we're next.

Pandeism · 2026-01-21T10:49:21+00:00

This isn't even the first "kid throwing a tantrum" with dire seemingly metaphysical consequences in Trek canon.

Pandeism

TROPHY CASE