CarbonIceDragon

because the person that tried and failed to stop the criminal due to not being very good at it is the real person to blame for a crime, rather than the criminal themself

wait, what? does it download as some proprietary format and not a normal video file then?

from the sound of it, no, the article suggests that someone probably commanded them to fire back in the 70s while the thing still worked, and its just unclear when exactly this was and who did it.

depending on if we're on a point in the timeline before they acquire hyperdrive or not (assuming the hyperdrive effectively counts as the same as a warp drive for prime directive purposes) the prime directive might not apply just because it would be a prewarp culture interacting with another prewarp culture.

honestly, you dont really come off as one to me, so I wouldnt worry, you come off more as someone who might have slightly different definitions or ideas regarding ethics, which can be mutually frustrating to argue around, but not the same as being malicious

Honestly, unsure. I dont think that you have a particular obligation to have sex with any sort of person, and I do think that you have an obligation (not necessarily a legal obligation, but a "being a decent person" one) to not be racist. It isnt exactly unusual for a person to prefer their partner belong to a specific category (for example, a gay man is likely to refuse to consider being with a woman, but I dont think they would be a misogynist for that). That being said, there isnt a particular difference between all white women and any other sort of women that would make for much of a reason to do this beyond just hating white women in particular, whereas for a woman, there is a notable difference between a man and, for those who would be attracted to them as well, a woman, as far as partners goes, because with a man, there exists a possibility of pregnancy, which could be dangerous in the current state of the country.

I dont really see it as a contradiction, tbh, as I dont really see sex as the same category of "thing" as something like money, and I think the difference between them is so fundamental as to be meaningful here. I'll admit, I dont really have personal experience with how this stuff goes down, as I said before, Im asexual myself, but it was my understanding that it wasnt that unusual for a person who was interested in sex to change their mind if something resulted in a change in their mood that killed the vibe, and disagreeable actions by the other person could easily enough be the thing to do that. I'd bring up again though, that these 4b people havent, as far as I can see, said that they would have sex with any man in particular before, just that they for sure dont want to now, so regardless of your feeling on if this is contradictory, the "I suggest that I'm going to have sex with someone" is missing anyway.

I mean, what actually stops them? Like, if they just came out and said verbatim "yeah, we dont care about the constitution anymore, republican presidents can do whatever they want" word for word as their ruling, and the president and congress are occupied by republicans with no desire to impeach them for it or refuse to enforce the ruling, what do you suppose happens?

I am saying that if what is to be given and then not is money, then it is punishment, but if it is sex, it is not, because these things are fundamentally different in a way that makes it reasonable to take one back without justification but not the other

I cant really take the people that act as apologists for Russia seriously as real leftists. Like, forget the failings of the Soviet Union at implementing communism for a moment, Russia doesnt even play lip service to it. It is literally just as much a capitalist state as a place like the US, it is just as much an example of a country benefiting from the legacy of European colonial empires as countries like the US, UK, and France (and even still retains most of its old empire), and it is certainly imperialist, because it is actively seeking to conquer the territory of other peoples by military force, right now. You would think that an actual communist should hate it, for taking one of the most prominent examples of a communist revolution, implementing the ideas so badly as to discredit them in the eyes of much of the world, and then ultimately betraying that revolution outright and slipping back into autocratic capitalism again. It is perhaps one of the least leftist countries on the planet right now. And yet, somehow it has convinced a significant chunk of those that count themselves among the left that it can do no wrong. I could sort of understand it from people living in Russia itself, criticism of one's own country can be hard sometimes, but so many of its defenders seem to be Americans who take "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" way past the point where it ceases to be reasonable.

This is a different situation though, for a few reasons: first, I actually don't agree, once you've promised the raises, people will reasonably make plans in anticipation of them, so I do think you have an obligation (maybe not a legal one, but that isn't what we're talking about) to give them once you've made those promises. I don't recall the women involved in any of this 4b stuff promising a relationship to any man or group of men, it isn't like they "were going to get it" already.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the stakes for business and personal relationships are different. We don't generally require continuing and revokable consent for giving someone money, the state can for example issue someone a monetary fine, and that's considered an acceptable consequence for many things. If you promise to buy something, and they then come to deliver it and you decide "actually I've changed my mind, keep it, I'm not buying it from you anymore", the other person can in a number of circumstances sue you for breaking your agreement.

However, if the state were to mandate that someone enter into a relationship, or have sex with someone, as a penalty for something, that would be considered a human rights abuse where the monetary fine would not, and if you were to tell someone that you found some type of flower super romantic, and then they came over with those flowers to give, but you then told them you weren't feeling a connection, no reasonable person would take their side if they tried to sue you to force you into a romantic relationship with them.

To put it a simpler way, if you promise someone a raise, the default state once that promise is made is getting the raise, as in professional matters, honoring promises and agreements is fundamental, revoking it later is therefore taking something from them, because you're changing that default state to something worse for them. Personal relations do not have the same dynamic. It is well known and understood that people sometimes change their minds on romantic and sexual relationships, or sometimes just aren't in the mood anymore. Promises don't carry the same weight, when there exists an absolute right to revoke consent at any point and have things not continue. As such, the default state is "not having a relationship/encounter with a particular person", right up until it happens. If the person in question never decides to enter into that relationship, because they have decided that they don't want to even deal with having one at all, they haven't taken anything from whoever else might have been interested in them, because they haven't changed that state. There was never a reason for a guy to expect one of these 4b women would date them in the first place, and no reason to expect that they wouldn't one day leave again if they did.

Technically, you still can determine what is behind the door and therefore win, because this is a universe where doors cant be opened and not "a universe where doors cannot be destroyed or circumvented by cutting a hole in the adjacent wall"