Reminds me of a line I heard once, can't remember where but it was definitely in the very context you mention here, it goes: "When people realize they can't reliably work with you, they start looking for ways to work around you"

The specific episode I referenced it wasn't so much about perfectly healthy people being forced to die against their will, since the character in question intimated quite heavily that their species had made a conscious decision that this is how their elderly would "pass on".

He repeatedly made it appear as if their species treated it as an honorable affair, and that it was a celebration.

Further in the episode, his daughter comes onboard the Enterprise and expresses that she does still love her father but is ashamed of him for defying a long standing tradition. So I'm not sure if it's a matter of anyone being "forced" in this case to die before they may emotionally be ready to.

The episode kind of plays on this through the meta-narrative/"B Plot" of the character (Timicin is his name, by the way) working to revive a dying star and save his species, after the entire episode and all of the build up, his experiment ultimately fails, dooming the star to die anyway, his planet doomed to the same fate.

The episode routinely ruminates on the concept of death as a choice, only once do we see an instance of what could be called 'force' when Timicin's government demands he comes back and undergo the ritual suicide, but even they finally relent to his wishes and tell him that if he wishes to stay with the Enterprise and continue living, he may-they wont pursue him further, but he will effectively be disregarded by his society and his scientific achievements effectively destroyed.

The takeaway, I believe it was Picard who noted that sometimes death must come in whatever manifestation it comes, even if we feel it's something that can be stalled by wit, intuition or will-this happens during the scene we see the experiment fail and the cast comes to the realization that there may be nothing that can be done with current technology to save the local solar system.

Timicin ultimately makes peace with it, as does Counselor Troi's mother (who fell in love and didn't want to see him throw his life away), and realizes he can still die in peace and allow his contributions to flourish with younger generations of scientists who might be able to learn from his research and keep their local star from dying out for good.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has an absolutely brilliant episode on this topic that touches on a lot of the things brought up in the article, as well as a concern you've brought up here in your comment:

I definitely wouldn't want to put this kind of binding decision over future me

A character facing this very conceit admitted that in the past, he was-like many others of his species-in favor of a policy whereby at 60 years old their kind would sacrifice themselves in an honorary fashion so as not to impede the progress of their descendants.

Fifteen to twenty centuries ago, we had no Resolution. We had no such concern for our elders. As people aged, they... their health failed. They became invalids. And those whose families could no longer care for them were put away, into... deathwatch facilities, where they waited in loneliness for the end to come, sometimes... for years. They had meant something; and they were forced to live beyond that, into a time of meaning nothing. Of knowing that they could now only be the beneficiaries of younger people's patience. We are no longer that cruel[1]

But the character later has a change of heart over the policy he was invariably complicit in supporting, while IMDB doesn't have the quote, paraphrasing it poorly-he opined about how his present and potentially future self may rebuke his past self for such a policy--a question of hindsight.

Great episode, I encourage one who's interested in the discussion created by this article to read it. It's one of my personal favorite TNG episodes, as it creates an interesting confluence of emotional narrative and philosophical narrative that comes to a narrative conclusion, but leaves the philosophical question open in ways most episodes of the same 'template' don't.

[1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708724/quotes/qt1125551

Turns out it was.

I was incorrect in that assessment, there is no terror here. I was merely mistaken and I am pretty openly owning that mistake, not shying away from it. Not sure how this idea that I'm somehow "terrified" of the debate is relevant when I openly invited you to correct me no the matter-which you did.

Thank you for the correction, I guess?

I don't think one who holds this particular stance is particularly concerned with the merits of democracy. Call me on it, if I'm wrong, scarejunba.

The author describes Tumblr as a "haven" for white nationalists, I'm asking based on what? What makes it any less of a haven than other social sites on the internet for those groups, is their presence on tumblr more or less pronounced than it is on, say, reddit? I legitimately don't know and was curious to hear insight from others because my experience on the site is deliberately starched and sanitized.

Clearly that question offended a few people.

Is the author basing this on anything other than checking to see if white nationalists and Nazis are simply using the site as some sort of electronic forward operating base such that it's worth calling Tumblr a "haven" for these groups?

Asked a better way: if you go looking for group x on just about any website, isn't it fair to say you're probably going to find some? Is Tumblr really a haven for these people?

I ask as someone who without really trying, just managed to curate his tumblr "feed" to be full of classic cars, aviation, scifi and comic book stuff plus sometimes video game review, so I admit to being a bit ignorant as to what's going on outside my particular 'bubble' and will concede that I do lack some perspective on the matter.

And how do you know throawaysea isn't speaking from the same or similar position? minikites made an unfair assumption about their character and presumably their life status, I'd say that's probably more inflammatory and infinitely less helpful to this discussion than making direct, if dissenting statements about the validity or physical violence in response to speech, or vice versa-as topics being presently discussed in the thread, and it is CERTAINLY not helpful or kind to make speculative suggestions about someone's personal physical appearance which has no place in on this message board.

I understand and appreciate that passion can emerge in this discussion, and the sub-thread we're having between us right now, but I don't find it any more helpful to respond the way minikites did to throwawaysea if we're going to warn people about helpful, kind, or conversely provocative responses.

"Freedom of speech only applies to the government" exists as an argument that is technically true if one were to go to court over the matter, so it is often used as a philosophical escape hatch to avoid having the tougher conversation on the larger implications of what 'freedom of speech' practically means, why the framers of the Constitution bothered with it in the first place-I would wager because having that discussion would reveal some ugly truths about someone who responds to a discussion like this by saying "freedom of speech only applies to the government" and what their true goals and intentions are in the face of unpleasant or disturbing information and opinions.

The irony of such philosophical laziness isn't lost on me, but surely no one would say "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are only ideals that can be granted by the government-yet there they are, in one of America's operating manuals. Clear as day.

The argument falls apart at the surface, and if I'm being honest, sometimes I wonder if the people who like to deploy that tactic know this.

American political discussion, in observation, is full of carefully picked cherries it seems like.

Seems to me that in the US there's an incredible unwillingness to look this particular horse in the mouth because everytime I see this debate online it's always "it's not us, it's THEM, they're the ones twisting words and ruining things, I'm not the boogeyman, it's them".

Maybe not everytime but with enough frequency that it does become curious.

But maybe that's just politics applied by humans equipped with human nature.

A question for the developers if you're reading this: something we've needed for a while was the ability to audit changes and review past values in our AWS environment.

CloudTrail does a decent enough job, which is why I suppose this was created but we've found that it doesn't tell us what a value was changed from.

If a security group gets changed to bar, cloudtrail doesn't seem to record that the previous value was named "foo"

Does your console recorder do this?