Because they know how to and are capable of making sentient holograms, but don’t, means that they are willingly choosing to strip free will from holograms.

Creating puppets instead of people is not stripping free will from anything.

Janeway erases all of Sullivan’s memory of his wife and deletes her. She then coerces him via rewriting his programming to have a relationship with her.

Most holograms aren’t sentient. They are little more than chat bots with greater capacity, and a physical avatar.

The issue with The Doctor is that he is, in some indefinable way “special.” I like him as a character, but the trechnobabble is unacceptable.

I recall a TNG novel that had them beam up some first-contact aliens, and, upon being offered some time to refresh after their journey, one of them said “What journey? I’m not actually convinced I went anywhere.”

The weapon was active. To me that says he pulled the trigger.

And I think he worked from logic to reach the same conclusion a human might reach through emotion. Data can never be a human, but he is very human.

The Most Toys is a fascinating moment for Data.

That was what my mind supplied.

But he tries not to, so that’s worth a few points.

Loved that line so much.

But it wasn’t entirely true, was it?

You make some good points, but I don’t want discipline out of her. She was a good captain, particularly for an environment that is supposed to produce Starfleet Officers.

She just needs some decorum.

My only issue with Academy was the presence of a captain who refused to act like an officer. Stand up straight, put on your boots, sit in the chair like a normal human.

Other than that, I loved it.

I really liked the episode with him and the Cardassian lad. The two of them bonding over Keiko’s over-enthusiastic cultural dishes was wonderful.

And I’d like to think that it softened him on Cardassians, a bit.

Let me be clear. I fully support the assassination of Donald Trump, by an American citizen. I lack the skills to do it myself, and I’m not interested in losing my life to a ineffective gesture, or I’d do it myself.

My reasoning is simply that he is not going to live long enough to be tried and imprisoned for this, and if he dies of natural causes, then he will never have paid any price, suffered any consequence, or been in any meaningful way censured for all the harm he has done to the world. Only his death at the hands of an American Citizen can go any distance at all towards correcting that.

If he is allowed to go without even a slap on the wrist, then future generations can only assume that we, all of us, approved of his behavior.

I recall he ordered it from the replicator center. I imagine they had large replicators for furnature, then beamed it to his quarters.

They are focusing on issues they have universal condemnation, and are undeniably the responsibility of the current regime.

If you try to rally around big picture issues, you better be sure everyone seems the same big picture, and agrees on what should be done and how to do it and who should do it.

There are people who think the war in Iran is gong great. There are those that think it’s going poorly, but that we can and should win. There are those that recognize it’s a disaster, but believe that it was necessary, or at least desirable to take action against Iran, just not like this.

But everyone hates high gas prices.

Sir, how dare you say something so accurate.

Of course I did.

Right, but that’s not to protect them from AI. It’s to protect them from us, once we come to our senses.

Because the people with money know they don’t have to listen to the little people.

We don’t even need overblown fears about AI killing everyone. AI is ruining students, ruining artists, causing massive layoffs, being used to monitor and judge our behavior, and is attempting to influence our behavior. It seems there are attempts to give these glorified auto-complete programs increasing amounts of resources and authority.

This is bad for most people. And those of us born after 1980 or so have no illusions that anyone in power is going to care about the welfare of the little people. They only recognize money and power. We don’t have money, but there are many kinds of power. I hope someone recognizes the signs, and changes course before it gets bloody.

Seems an odd thing to do. I rather liked it.

I’m a huge fan of her work. The world needs more hot athletic women with swords.

If necessary, “hot” can be dispensed with. “Athletic” too, as required.

Chief O’Brien: Introduction to personal resiliency.