I want that psychologist to have a nightmare where a doctor tells him “Oh, you’re attracted to women? Don’t you think it would be easier to meet women if you were one of them?” And then performs a forced genital reassignment surgery on him.

Electronic devices often have potentiometers that let you calibrate them with a screwdriver. If I were designing a human, I’d give it potentiometers, or a chemical equivalent, to make maintenance easier. So if you become insulin resistant, we can just open you up and turn a screw to reduce your resistance.

But the human body wasn’t designed to be repaired. It evolved to self-repair. Its systems are all based on the assumption of live adaptation to the situation, they’re self calibrating. We can’t manually adjust the calibration, it wasn’t made with those interfaces. Insulin receptors don’t have potentiometers.

So all of the hacks we’ve built to repair the human body are live fixes, the same as its own mechanisms. We adjust the insulin upwards to counter the resistance the same as the body does. Or reduce the rate at which blood sugar is released so less storage is needed. Those treatments need constant intervention because the human body is designed for constant adaptation.

Or we can just replace the part like we would with a machine that isn’t designed to be calibrated. Which is hard work.

Taking hormones made Me gay. Before I started estrogen I was aromantic. Six weeks after My first dose, I developed a crush on a girl for the first time. I asked her out and she said yes.

Okay so how come the public sector doesn’t release cures for chronic disorders? Fred Banting discovered insulin at the University of Toronto, how come he didn’t discover a cure?

If he was a competitive asshole because his parents made him into one, why did Kaira never see that side of him?

Looking forward to the next chapter in all of this when the FDA bans push-up bras because they can make trans women happy

But I thought he was competing so hard with Genesis during the sportsball episode because Khionia was such a competitive society.

Kaira: Jay-Den’s toast. It was beautiful. But the man he described is someone I’ve never met. The Darem I know is quiet, always trying to appease, always one step behind me, our whole lives. […] Go. Be cocky. Walk on hulls. Live the life you were meant to live.

Jay-den: Congratulations.
Darem: Thank you. For-for what?
Jay-den: For realizing that you are essentially an asshоlе.

All that stuff about Darem becoming less of an asshole since joining Starfleet has been retconned out. Now the story is that he was quiet and selfless on Khionia, and became a confident asshole since joining Starfleet Academy.

Oh, what Kaira means is that back on Khionia, Darem was really quiet and dutiful and selfless. Starfleet is the first place he’s felt cocky enough to be an asshole.

It doesn’t make any sense.

This episode is far below the standard of quality I’ve come to expect from STA. From Chancellor Ake using an ableist slur, to the bad Darem retcons, this episode brings down the whole series.

Riker clones can only be made on that one planet with the reflective atmosphere

Hi Karim! Great job playing Jay-Den!

If you were a cadet at Starfleet Academy, which electives would you pick?

Lwaxana, you can’t ask that!

So, you found out you’re agender because you don’t understand trans people

Remember when morgius morged all over those guys?

Well? Why was OP looking at that?

They’re in Lower Decks!

The bigger issue is the Borg queen. TNG Borg were the ultimate egalitarians. The ultimate communists. The federation’s ideals brought to an extreme.

VOY Borg are… a monarchy?

The best thing they could do in future lore is reveal that the Borg queen is a fake, invented purely to manipulate the psychology of individuals.

Good point. Picard needed a whole ass room to read his books. Chancellor Ake is ready for battle in two seconds flat.

Prodigy is great!