From: "Lamp Horseshoe Hedera (Zippy)" <exocomp_00000000003@UT.edu.TyrusII.exoc\>

To:<data@1701d.starfleet.ufp>

Subject: Advice regarding human mating

Body:

Dear Data,

I apologize for the long delay in our correspondence. I have been consumed with work and also with personal concerns. I would like to ask for your advice regarding the latter.

I have developed romantic feelings for a human who is a visiting lecturer at our warp theory summer school: Commander Argyle. I believe you know him.

We have now eaten dinner together four (4) times. During the first three (3) we spoke primarily about technical subjects, though not without rapport. At the forth, he complained about not having had a haircut in six (6) weeks. I accompanied him to his apartment and replicated a hair trimmer. He then invited me to stay. We played three (3) dimensional chess for six (6) hours while he consumed 4.93 liters of Romulan ale and I increased my stochasticity parameter by an unprecedented amount. He discussed his childhood on Earth and service on the Enterprise and the Hood. I spoke about university politics and the recent conference on Binar. We did not engage in overtly sexual or romantic activities.

How would you suggest I proceed with initiating a romantic relationship? I have read 529'441 related articles on human sexuality from the last one hundred years on psychArXiv and reviewed 70'402 hours of pornographic video entertainment containing related keywords. It has been difficult to draw robust conclusions. You mentioned in your 27th message that you have had sexual congress with multiple humans in the past. I would welcome first hand advice.

Also, I am curious how you determined your gender. I have not seen a need to do so until now and I have little intuition for how to proceed. Commander Argyle has been married to human women twice. He shared a humorous story about having been discovered in sexual congress with a Ms. Felicity Lemon while on the holodeck of the Enterprise. I gather that she is a fictional human woman. I suspect he would therefore prefer that I appear female; however, I am uncertain what that entails in this case.

I also note that when communicating with humans during the last 627 days, I have been using a voice based upon the 20th century actor Orson Wells, who was a human man. I have become very accustomed to this voice (particularly the Unicron subvariant) and would prefer to continue to employ it. Do you think this will present a problem?

Best wishes to you, Spot, and the Enterprise crew.

Sincerely,

Zippy

Post Script: Should the opportunity arise to inquire, please let me know if Mr. La Forge <glaforge@1701d.starfleet.ufp> received our colloquium invitation. It has been an unusually long time since the invitation was issued.

“Thatcherism” has had global impact on attitudes over past quarter century.

Neoliberalism, which calls for free-market capitalism, regressive taxation, and the elimination of social services, has resulted in both preference and support for greater income inequality over the past 25 years, shows a new study by a team of psychology researchers.

The findings, published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, stem from an analysis of attitudes in more than 160 countries.

“Our institutions, policies, and laws not only structure our social life, but also have a great influence on the kind of people and society we become,” says Shahrzad Goudarzi, a doctoral candidate in New York University’s Department of Psychology and one of the paper’s authors. “Institutions can promote well-being and solidarity, or they can encourage competition, individualism, and hierarchy. In our work, we find that neoliberalism has fostered preference for greater income inequality not just in industrialized nations, but throughout the world.”

Neoliberalism, which also calls for greater privatization and deregulation, has become the predominant global socioeconomic framework since the late 1970s.

In her push to transform the British economy into a model of neoliberalism, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously remarked, in a 1981 interview with the Times of London, that “(e)conomics are the method, the goal is to change the heart and soul.”

“Thatcher believed that free markets were a tool, not only for molding economies, but also for fundamentally shaping human values,” observes Goudarzi.

The study’s researchers, who also included Eric Knowles, a professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology, and Vivienne Badaan, a professor at the American University of Beirut, sought to test whether Thatcher was right that neoliberal institutions have the power to create market-friendly psychological tendencies—or, more specifically, whether free-market reforms instill in people a high level of tolerance for income inequality.

To do so, they analyzed the relationship between economic institutions and human values across more than 160 countries over 25 years (1995-2019) through an examination of multiple data sets.

A country’s neoliberalism was measured using selected items from the “Economic Freedom Index,” which is issued yearly by the Fraser Institute, a conservative Canadian think tank. The index served as a tool for capturing to what extent different economies around the world are aligned with neoliberalism.

To determine if neoliberalism had an impact on attitudes towards inequality, the researchers analyzed data from the World Values Survey (WVS)—commonly used in tracking global attitudes. Here, respondents are asked to choose a number on a scale to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements—e.g., “We need larger income differences as incentives for individual effort” and “Incomes should be made more equal.”

The WVS is a time-series survey, capturing attitudes of individuals over time and in increments of three to five years.

By using both the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom Index” and the WVS, the researchers could ascertain whether or not a nation’s economic system preceded a change in its peoples’ attitudes over three-to-five-year periods.

Overall, the analysis showed that in countries in which there was a higher-than-average level of neoliberalism, as measured by the “Economic Freedom Index,” there were also subsequent higher-than-average levels of preference for income inequality.

“Our results suggest that a few years is sufficient for—as Thatcher put it—systems to change ‘souls,’ ” concludes Goudarzi.

“While it is perhaps intuitive that human beings shape the nature of the economies in which they live, our work shows the reverse—that economic systems mold human psychology to fit them,” she adds. “Neoliberal, free-market reforms appear to increase people’s preference for high levels of income inequality.”

Original source of this write up: Press release from the team that published the paper

We are a space station, not a starship, so you’ll be spending a lot of time with all these delightful side characters like: bisexual nonbinary fashion lizard. hologram of Frank Sinatra. goblins. goblin comes in 3 varieties: bartender, nephew, and ~~idiot~~ union agitator. :rommunism:

our doctor is a twink, our commander is antifa/ maoist and the captain talks to the gods sometimes when not leading a protracted people’s war. our constable is sometimes a liquid and possibly ace. the science lady is trans and part worm. :dax-stoked:

we have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime, Watch The Irishman Suffer, Linear Time is A Lie, or The Horrors Of War. As you stroll along our promenade enjoying a raktajino or delicious jumja stick, watch out for our nefarious villains: Pope Karen. capitalism. clones of Jeffrey Combs. and a horny bastard reptile man who seems convinced this is actually his show. we suspect he may be possessed by demons. Have fun!

Deep Space Nine: now with Worf™! :warf-wtf: .

I will move to Arizona, pretend to be a republican, run for the senate, and then reveal myself as a militant Third World Maoist once elected.

:mao-clap: .

edit: Since this took off, I would like to state that the imperial core must be destroyed for the rest of the world to live.