You are free to set up such a project, instituting yourself as the initial dictator, accepting merit challenges of some specified form, and see whether someone bothers to go for your jugular. Call it KingOfTheHillOS.

…in all seriousness the general issue with merit-based approaches is that you need a way to decide on what “merit” means, and to have an actual project and not a one person show you need a community that shares that definition, and you can’t dispose of the dictator if they have the power to dictate what merit is, so you are left with either a) an unchanging definition which is just as bad as unpatchable software or b) some form of stakeholder democracy.

Discovery had soooo much for Klingon nerds: Hours upon hours of dialogue in Klingon, and (without actually knowing Klingon) with proper pronunciation, tons of warrior honour culture and its existential clash with federation ideals, and people are complaining about hair. Fucking hair.

I think that was a tribute.

“issyew”

/ˈɪsjuː/ is very common in RP. You hear it all the time in parliament.

But…just…there are reasons, real reasons, with lots of horrific history behind them, for why normalizing genetic manipulation in the name of improving or “fixing” populations of people is still a real third rail for me, and I wish the episode had figured out how to engage with that specifically a bit more.

Other episodes did, and I hope we’ll see more of that. Specifically, it’s about Illyrian culture: Genetic modification is deeply ingrained, required in their ethics: “We don’t terraform planets, that’s disrespectful of nature, we transform ourselves”, as heard previous season (I’m sure someone will fill in the episode number). As such the practice doesn’t root in a desire for dominance or superiority, but gentleness towards the universe.

That is, the issue with the eugenics wars wasn’t genetic manipulation itself, but that humanity was war-like and out for dominance and superiority. The augments’ attitude of supremacy simply reflect cultural attitudes back then, they were not caused by genetic modifications, but enabled. (Alternatively: The bad idea of imbuing augments with such a sense was due to bonkers scientists influenced by cultural attitudes).

Or maybe more like entheogens: Drugs that kill one society are used responsibly and for benefit by others because they have cultural practices regulating them, rites (regulations) saying when and where and why they should be used.

If the federation ever gets around to legalising genetic manipulation having regulations written by Illyrians and Denobulans sounds like a very good idea.

You generally can’t make people incriminate themselves, and upping a charge from fraud to conspiracy would be exactly that. That is, in a court run by laws instead of TV logic she could’ve remained silent.

…unless there’s some special sauce in US law that says “once you take the stand” or something, dunno I don’t speak common law and Trek can’t help itself but assume US law but it definitely doesn’t look kosher.