Mabus was a Surface Warfare Officer for two years and attained the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. Granted, to make JG, all you need to do is have a pulse, but he still was in the Navy.

A more reasonable explanation is that some people cared more about president than other down ballot elections.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." There are a lot of stupid people in the United States who would vote for Trump. His campaign was directed at turning out low-propensity, low-information voters, and the type of voter who would cast a bullet ballot are low-propensity, low-information voters.

Why do you assume it’s not nefarious?

The past two elections are regarded as two of the most secure in history. Plus, if there were actual malfeasance, I very much doubt that Trump, knowing his famously insatiable ego, would not allow his popular vote to get below 50%.

In the end, investigate away, but nothing will be uncovered, just like in 2020.

The Trump campaign was heavily courting low-propensity, low-information voters. The bulk of spending was in swing states. People who are more likely to cast bullet ballots are low-propensity, low-information, and/or single-issue voters. All I'm getting from your argument is that the Trump campaign was effective in their strategy.

So, go ahead and investigate, but the result will almost certainly be that the election was secure.

The sad truth is that there are many disengaged, low-information voters who were swayed to vote for Trump.

Things can be anomalous and abnormal and not be nefarious. Abnormality isn't evidence of criminality. So, why investigate? Because the number of bullet ballots is slightly higher? A more reasonable explanation is that some people cared more about president than other down ballot elections.

I can’t talk about Picard, but Discovery has a series of really interesting ideas that were completely destroyed by the overwhelmingly bad details.

This is it. Both series had season plots that would have made for generally decent two-parters back in the '90s.

Second watching SNW! Really fantastic show.

I disagree that it recaptures the vibe and tone of TNG/'90s Trek. I'd say it's much more like TOS with weird (in a good way) plots and swashbuckling adventure. '90s Trek felt much more grounded and more taking-itself-seriously than TOS or SNW.

Arnie is actually fairly intelligent, and also surrounded himself with competent people

This is really the key factor. His acting chops probably just helped him convince people to vote for him; it wasn't all there was to him.

I think he was getting at that Geordi's decision to remain blind and accommodated with his VISOR ended up having unforeseen positive consequences. In other words, pluralism leads to unforeseen positive side effects.

The core theme is that the Federation provides individuals with agency over their bodies. Sure, Geordi's mother could have had his blindness cured before he would have known anything different, but it's his body and ultimately his choice. Interestingly, we see the opposite with Dr. Bashir. His genetic enhancements don't just offend the Federation because of historical trauma with the Eugenics Wars but because his parents didn't even give him choice in the matter (at least, that's how I've interpreted it).

Honestly, I'd say don't put any stock in it. If he did cheat, it was at the extreme margins where it doesn't make a difference. The fact of the matter is that Americans are just stupid and/or hateful. As much as I'd love it to be true if only to restore my faith in Americans, I very much doubt there was any significant cheating.

Before Trump won the popular vote, I'd say that would trigger a mass uprising or ignition of a civil war. Now, maybe a few protests and a riot here and there? Honestly, probably not much.

I've never been less sanguine about the United States as a nation than I am right now.

As much power as they have, they can't do that fortunately. So, they'll need to get creative. Something along the lines of "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" really means twice consecutively, so a third term is good to go. As flippant as I sound about it, it is actually a possibility if Trump survives that long and wants to run again.

Sure, that law isn't airtight. Really, though, what's a law but a piece of paper when there's a SCOTUS decision effectively making POTUS king and Congress unwilling to stop him. At this point, are even so-called airtight laws safe from transgression? I think it's doubtful.

This is a great analogy

If Kamala would have spent half the time she spent talking about Trump, talking about corporate price gouging instead and how she would go after corporations like a bulldog, voters would have had a place to look for blame other than the Democrats.

I agree. It was really frustrating that she wasn't hammering this home. BUT I still don't think that it would have really moved the needle that much. Same with Palestine. Same with Biden dropping out earlier. Same with being a bit fuzzy on details. So on and so forth.

In the end, the American people wanted Trump the person. He has no economic messaging besides a nebulous idea of "fixing" the economy through tariffs, which is laughable. People who use the economic anxiety argument are either trying to deflect blame from themselves for voting for him ("I don't like him as a person, but he has good policies.") or because they want to believe in the fundamental goodness of their fellow Americans so that their choices can be rationally explained. The former is deluding themselves since Trump has no cogent economic policy. As for the latter, I get why they want to believe that, but the truth is a lot uglier. The majority of Americans either affirmatively approve of or tacitly tolerate Trump's authoritarian tendencies and/or are simply too uneducated (or just plainly stupid) or (if I'm being extremely charitable) woefully misinformed or uninformed to understand the gravity of his election.

I'm tempted to blame the Democratic party and nitpick, but at the end of the day, Harris ran a good campaign. It wasn't perfect, but even if it were, we'd still more or less be here. The core problem, I think, lies in our culture and our educational system. Trump was a uniquely awful candidate, and Harris was a competent, "standard" politician. By all measures, she should have won. Even still, the American public repudiated her, which is simply irrational. In the end, it comes down Trump being the symptom not the problem. The problem lies in our culture and society.

tl;dr: Even if Harris did message better, she still would have lost. American culture and society is flawed and ultimately at fault.

This is what's getting me. If he won via electoral college or couping, I'd be angry and ready to do the work to pull the country out of this mess and end Trumpism once and for all. But instead, he won the popular vote. People in the United States saw a wannabe-autocrat who was specifically called a fascist by his own officers who admitted to being a dictator "on day one" among so many other things. After seeing that, a majority of people either affirmatively supported the fascist candidate by voting for him, or they are tolerant enough of it to sit at home and not vote or vote for a third party knowing the outcome. And that really just makes me lose faith in my country and the people, and so I'm just sad knowing that this country actively chose this outcome.

What's worse is that I really don't feel a strong desire to try to change anything since it'll just fall on deaf ears at best. More to the point, I don't even want to hear "their side" or "their reasons" for why they voted the way they did because no matter the rationale they give, it will come down to them being comfortable with oppression of minorities and autocracy. I always want to believe the best of people, but after today, I really can't anymore.

Young men may be drawn to Trump because he pushes against societal pressure that men need to be apologetic for being themselves.

"Not being apologetic for being [myself]" is why I'm voting for Harris. I swear that conservatives want everyone to fit into confining, pre-defined boxes for everything. I found that among conservatives, I've always had to "apologize" for not being hyper-masculine and interested in "softer" and "feminine" things.

If someone is very masculine, that's cool, too. No one is saying that you can't be hyper-masculine if that's what you're into. BUT if you constantly are apologizing for "being yourself," maybe you're just an asshole trying to hide behind masculinity.

Yes! "AI" defined as only LLMs and the party trick applications is a bubble. AI in general has been around for decades and will only continue to grow.

See, this is part of his long con. Clarence knows his wife is crazy, so instead of divorcing her, he's just going to make their marriage illegal. /s

This is why I believe scientists should be required to take liberal arts classes; especially related to written and spoken language.

And yes, I also think liberal arts students should be required to take some level of hard STEM classes (not watered-down “libarts-compatible” stuff, but actual physics, chemistry, biology, etc) as well.

Yes to both points! I'm eternally grateful to my high school AP English teachers for teaching me how to write and communicate.

My somewhat unpopular opinion is that we'd be better off as a society if everyone in college took "real" STEM and liberal arts classes. The STEM folks can understand the why and societal implications of what they study (as well as just communication), and the liberal arts types can learn a bit about how the world actually works in a concrete way.

Unfortunately, I've been continually struck by how incurious people are. I get that everyone has their interests, but that shouldn't be to the exclusion of all other study. So, I don't think this will happen. :/