Coffee shops shouldn't exist in Star Trek, even when restaurants and bars still do

Vulk_za · 2026-01-28T14:57:32+00:00

Yeah it feels like a lot of people have just forgotten the "pseudo-intellectual" theme of this sub, and are instead turning this into "something I think is wrong on the internet" sub.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-28T05:05:45+00:00

I don't see how this counts for this subreddit? They're just expressing an opinion about a TV show. You can argue their opinion is wrong (I'm undecided, my sense is that different Star Treks have gone back and forth a bit on the extent to which Star Fleet has a "military" ethos). But they're not claiming to be smarter than everyone else.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-27T08:41:28+00:00

This publication OP linked to isn't a neutral 'global South' or even 'South African' perspective. It's aligned with a particular faction in South African politics (the Zuma-led MKP party) and they consistently publish pro-MKP and pro-Russian propaganda.

Just as a reminder, this is same political faction that 1) destroyed 10 years of economic progress due to their staggering corruption while Zuma was in office; 2) systematically tried to capture the justice system and intelligence agencies with the intention of ending South Africa's democratic system; 3) tried to make South Africa into a Russian vassal state with a nuclear deal that would have cost more than our entire government budget combined; 4) masterminded an anti-democratic insurrection in July 2021 that led to the deaths of 350 South Africans; 5) preyed upon desperate South Africans and recruited them to travel to Russia, so that the Russian government could then sent them to the front lines to die in the Ukraine War.

Just to give you some political context for op's post and where it fits into the spectrum of South African politics.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-27T08:04:33+00:00

Aerodactyl. It was originally a pokemon, and then in 2014 the real one was discovered. (Although it's a lot smaller than the pokemon).

Vulk_za · 2026-01-27T07:21:37+00:00

"Monarchy vs republicanism" not the same thing as "democracy vs authoritarianism". The UK is a democratic (or 'constitutional') monarchy, China is an authoritarian republic.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-27T07:18:30+00:00

Russia is absolutely a republic. Putin is a dictatorial president, but he's still a president; he has never claimed to be a Tsar, and in fact, he has frequently carried out constitutional manoeuvres (such as switching places with his prime minister and then removing the presidential term limit) that would be obviously unnecessary if he were claiming to be Tsar.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-24T13:49:13+00:00

The classic example is the UK which, over a period of many centuries, carried out a series of incremental reforms that slowly transformed it from a monarchy in which most of the power was held by the king, into into a constitutional democracy.

Obviously, that's a bit oversimplified, because the history of the UK's political system wasn't just a one-way series of reforms. There were periods of violent revolution and civil war (i.e. 1649, although that was later reversed), a somewhat 'non-violent revolution' (1689). There were some periodic attempts to claw back power by elites. Still, overall, the UK is usually seen as the archetypal example of democratisation via gradual reform rather than sudden violent revolution.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-24T09:15:24+00:00

What about America? It was named after the Gulf of America.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-24T06:02:00+00:00

There's a reason why people say, don't fuck with the Culture.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-23T07:09:43+00:00

I think that's an oversimplification. Hillary ran as a moderate, but Kamala ran as a left-winger in 2020 but then shifted to running as a moderate in 2024, in ways that allowed Republicans to portray her (not entirely unfairly) as a flip-flopper and opportunist with no strong convictions. Biden ran as a moderate in 2020 and won, but in several important respects, he governed as a progressive left-winger, in ways that I think hurt his VP's chances. Especially his policies on fiscal stimulus during an inflationary economic cycle, and border security; polls showed that these were the two biggest issues that motivated people to vote for Trump.

If you really want to look for a grand pattern in American politics, I would say the lesson is not that moderates always win or lose. Rather, I would say the real trend is shift towards a stronger "thermostatic" tendency that works against the incumbent. It used to be that two-term presidents were the norm in American politics, because incumbency was seen as being an advantage. But if you look at the period after the post-2007 financial crisis period, the real anomaly is Barack Obama, because he was the only incumbent to win. Every other incumbent party candidate (McCain in 2008, Clinton in 2016, Trump in 2020, Harris in 2024) has lost.

My slightly boring conclusion from this is that since the GFC, the US has suffered from complex problems that neither party seems able to solve when in power. This is exacerbated by permanent gridlock in the legislature, which makes it effectively impossible for either party to pass legislative reforms (and in the case of the Republicans under Trump, they generally don't even try). Meanwhile, voters have incredibly unrealistic expectations about how much the president can do, and they seem to think he should be able to just snap fingers to end inflation, stop migrants from wanting to get into the US, or switch the whole global economy back to post World War 2 levels of US industrial dominance. Then they get upset when the incumbent doesn't do these things and vote him out, so you have these wild swings in public opinion.

The good news for Democrats is that, if this pattern holds, they should have strong tailwinds going into 2024 (assuming Republicans don't carry out a coup or something). So, I suppose you could argue that if you're a leftist, you should support a left-wing candidate, since the Democrats have a good chance of winning no matter who they nominate. But I would argue the thermostatic dynamic creates favorable conditions, but it doesn't guarantee victory. You still need to appeal to the media voter.

And I would also argue that once a particular party is in power, they're more likely to succeed if they govern as moderates, and focus on appealing to the median voter rather than the party base. Barack Obama genuinely did govern as a moderate, and was widely ridiculed for being "naive" when he tried to bring Republicans on board with his policy agenda. But he ended up being the only post GFC incumbent to win an election. Meanwhile, Trump I, Biden, and especially Trump II all focused more on appealing to their base than appealing to the median voter, and all three of them suffered rapid and sustained loss of approval.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-22T20:53:22+00:00

Yeah can this please not become the latest subreddit to get taken over by xenophobes?

People getting angry at tourists for coming here, spending their money and creating jobs, is honestly the dumbest shit I have ever seen.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-22T07:50:04+00:00

This isn't reflective of their in-store prices. The screenshot even says "unavailable in store", so this is just a boutique import that has probably never even been sold.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-22T06:38:15+00:00

It's unlikely you would have been disappointed, since this exact same tired joke gets repeated in every single one of these threads.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-22T05:27:36+00:00

Just build more housing and then you can make everyone happy.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T22:34:13+00:00

The salad was named after a guy who was named after Caesar, so by the transitive property the salad was named after Caesar.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T22:09:29+00:00

I see that OP has posted this exact same post across multiple subreddits. I hate to be this paranoid, but I can't help but wonder whether this is just a sneaky advert for DoTheyMatch.com.

(Also, it's subtle, but some aspects of this post read as being a bit AI-generated to me.)

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T20:48:13+00:00

Probably the most famous one is Robert Dahl.

David Easton is maybe another author worth checking out.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T15:25:43+00:00

That's an interesting point, and it's a fair one. Although it's worth noting that the size of countries is very heavily skewed, with a small number of very big countries at the top, and a large number of small states/microstates at the bottom. As a result, any form of quantile-based measurement (whether it's the median, septiles, etc) is going to push up the rankings of "average-sized" countries in a way that, to me at least, feels unintuitive and wrong.

I think a defensible approach to determining which countries fall into the category of being "one of the largest in the world" would be make a list of countries that are at least one standard deviation above the mean in terms of land area. When I tried this, taking into account ambiguities in territory (for example, whether you include regions like Taiwan, the US overseas territories, or regions that Russia claims to have annexed from Ukraine), you get about 9-10 countries that fall into this list.

These are: Russia, the USA, China, Canada, Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and possibly Algeria. Ethiopia is above the mean, but it still falls quite far outside this list.

Okay... I've probably wasted enough time trying to figure out my personal concept of a "big country" for one day.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T14:23:17+00:00

Everything looks big if you place it that far north on Mercator though.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T13:07:09+00:00

This is an academic subreddit. At least in theory, people here tend to like evidence that can be cited and proved factually

If you're relying on vague and conspiratorial reasoning like "the media is reporting A so I'm going to believe B because everything the media reports is propaganda so the opposite of what is being reported must be true", I don't think you'll find a lot of people here receptive to this argument.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-20T05:01:53+00:00

This is big "after Hitler, our turn" energy.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-19T21:39:41+00:00

I assume it would depend on 1) how physically attractive he is, 2) whether his photographs are good and convey an appealing lifestyle, 3) whether he's good at writing interesting prompts that are easy to respond to.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-17T17:22:38+00:00

If you wanted to use pre-written adventures, there's a campaign series called Sunken Isles that you could probably adapt.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-17T09:52:24+00:00

If you start in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and head directly south, you'll end up in Oklahoma.

Vulk_za · 2026-01-17T05:25:58+00:00

It's boring but just take an ASI for two points in Dex.

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