There’s absolutely no incentive to log in to YouTube now that subscriptions and bells do nothing to control your feed. End stage enshittification.

I do know about the latter. Knew some folks that taught there.

Few courses are taught by tenured faculty at the Ivies. Junior faculty have to justify final grades, PhD students and sessional have to justify any grades lower than B- on any assignment.

Coupling that with the ‘legacy admissions’ where children of alumni have a lower bar to admission, anyone with a B- average has a questionable degree.

No matter how good their programs are, for the lowers tier of students, they’re just institutions of transmitted privilege. Which is why the complaints about DEI mechanisms to balance that are so suspect.

I wasn’t aware whether UPenn was on the same system but it’s a huge thing for private universities reliant on tuition fees and big alumni donations.

It’s interesting how California is shutting down the practice of legacy admissions, and Stanford and USC are feeling the sting.

But Trump was able to graduate?

Is Wharton one of those US schools (like Harvard) where anyone lower than a tenured professor has to write justifications to file anytime they give a student less than a B-?

Both Trump and Musk have degrees from the supposedly reputable Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

If these two are evidence of their quality of graduates, it really raises questions about whether it was another US institution where ‘legacy’ and money buy admissions and it’s impossible not to graduate.

You can join communities on other instances too if you have specific interests.

There’s currently an Redexit of Canadians who are looking to get off US-controlled social media.

Lemmy.ca has had a huge spike in enrolment as it’s the one that was most prominently promoted in r/BuyCanadian. Apparently, it’s had over 9k signups in the past day.

Why would anyone assume we’d be given the right to vote?

Puerto Rican’s still can’t.

Could this have something to do with many of southern Alberta’s pioneer settlers having come from the United States after failing as settlers in Nebraska, Utah and other states in the land rush?

From the Canadian Encyclopedia

Migration

The most extensive single wave of Americans came to Canada between 1895 and 1915, after the railways were well established in the West and good, inexpensive land had diminished in the US. American farmers poured into Canada, making up nearly as many western settlers as those from the British Isles, who were less likely to farm. Some of the effects of this migration are still to be seen in the relatively high US-born presence in Alberta and Saskatchewan, in the proportion of farmers among the US-born, and more arguably, in political attitudes in these provinces quite different from the remainder of Canada.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/americans

I first heard of the sweater curse more than 30 years ago.

It’s been a thing in knitting circles for generations as far as I can tell.

Experienced it.

The curse is likely based on the item being too much pressure on a relationship that’s not ready for it.

If you’re a really experienced and fast knitter that’s regularly knocking of sweaters for yourself and perhaps have done small ones as gifts for friends kids, it wouldn’t be the same.

But if you’re looking for love to motivate you through your first big project, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. All the more so if you’re toting your project with you and knitting in public.

Short Treks season 1.

Should be available on Paramount+ but you may need to hunt for it.

Actually no. And it kind of would fly in the face of what I get out of the activity.

I don’t knit or crochet to any target, I just like the experience of the activity. It’s soothing. I have a few different projects on the go that give me different kinds of experiences.

When used to sew clothes for myself, I would parcel out the expected hours for the specific type of project if I needed to have something done for a particular event, but not with knitting, crochet or needlepoint.

You are so missing out on the wonder that is Sam Kirk.

SNW has a lot delightful surprises, but adding the insouciance of Sam Kirk, but having brothers Kirk spar when Jim shows up on occasion, is truly inspired writing.

Not to mention he really gets under Spock’s skin.

Just to say the way the role is presented kn television doesn’t highlight the sensitive roles such as being the senior NCO responsible for oversight of enlisted personnel performance evaluations or communications with command.

It would be very senior AO role on a capital ship, but she mainly comes by to get the captain to sign stuff.

It absolutely is confusing.

Roddenberry gave conflicting direction on this. By the time TNG rolled out, his position was that most of the crew were officers.

But it was a long and confusing evolution. After intervention by the network after the TOS pilot, turned Janice Rand’s yeoman role, which is one of the most senior NCO roles on a naval ship, into what seemed to be a personal secretary. NBC was no more ready for a senior NCO who was a woman than they had been to have a female first officer Number One.

Discovery makes things murkier by mixing in ‘Chiefs’ as a title for department heads but never actually saying who is chief medical officer or chief engineer.

Lower Decks seems to have ensigns being hazed with junior enlisted tasks. However, Prodigy has introduced warrant officers as another career pathway outside the Academy.

Startide Rising is the best of them all.

Sundiver is quite good too.

The later books were deeply marred by Brin’s giving into pressure from his editors to centre them on a group of adolescent males of diverse species because his publisher was of the view that the average scientific fiction reader was a 14 year old male. Brin has written about this and how difficult it was for him to write outside his natural quite adult style. His fantastic characters from Startide Rising are pushed into the background and only get to step forward and shine again at the very end.

Not positively received. Actually quite the opposite.

I bought it in hardcover, then bailed on the entire Christie Golden Voyager series on the sequel.

A horrible return with heartbreaking situations for just about every beloved character.

I don’t truly blame tie-in writer Golden, or even Peter David who got tagged with responsibility for the most egregious plot and character point in the Relaunch universe version of the Voyager follow-up.

Paramount itself clearly had but dire restrictions on positives for the returning crew that only came off when Kirsten Beyer was allowed to undo the damage in her Voyager Full Circle series when she took the helm from Golden.

Episodes 6 & 8 are where long time fans usually fall in love with the show. Many of us find it the Trekiest thing ever.

But it very deliberately takes its time to get there. It’s like the lobster in the pot of hot water trick for kids formed with SW and other 3D kids animation. By the time they get to the end of the first half of season one, they’re fully into Star Trek, but without culture shock.

Why do you think he was demoted?

This seems to be another example of something fans seem to view as ‘canon’ but isn’t actually consistent with what was onscreen. A kind of ‘Mandela-effect’ headcanon.

In TOS, M’Benga was specifically asked by McCoy to come aboard and act for him as CMO while he was away. Asking a former CMO to come back, shadow you for a short period and then act for you makes a lot of sense when there are members of the crew of other or mixed species.

It was quite clear that M’Benga was in transition towards a Chief Medical Officer post on a Station. That would suggest M’Benga already had the rank and was qualified for the job.

Meta-wise, this was actually another one of Roddenberry’s backdoor pilots, this time for a Starfleet medical show based on a station.

Clearly, the ability to be outside in appropriate clothing for activities isn’t being mandated. This is where a temperate climate enables ridiculous practices to persist.

All I can think about when I see this image is how in Ontario, the responsible provincial ministry requires all schools and ‘day nurseries’ (read day and after school care) to put the kids out in the yards twice a day unless the weather conditions are severe (Less than -20 or more than +30 Celsius.).

Parents are responsible to send their kids with suitable clothing for the cold. One rarely sees little girls in skirts in schools unless they are wearing tunic dresses over leggings.

In an earlier era, pre 1970s, when skirts were mandatory for girls, that meant switching to pants or snow pants from the skirts 3 times a day to go outside in winter (two breaks and leaving end of day).