I mean, it has nothing to do with being an uncle… but I do want to have the full collection….heh.

(I would love to watch Star Trek with the nieces and nephew. Unfortunately… they get scared by paw patrol. And not because they watched that one video about the previous police doggo…)

Hands down… he was the absolutely best uncle… I have a lot to live up to.

I was in middle school. I watched it with my Uncle (who was in another timezone) on speakerphone.

To clarify… my uncle is the guy that got me into star trek to begin with; and scifi more broadly. We may had been visiting him and my aunt when I was like five or six, and my brother had a soccer thing in the area. I discovered his VHS collection, including TOS and all the movies that had been made. I was caught binging them when I was on Trouble With Tribbles- he had walked into the office/temporary bedroom, was like “HEY! this is my favorite episode. Rewind it while I go make popcorn!”

And then we proceeded to binge watch the rest of star trek.

See, that sort of works, but there’d still be a chronic shortage. Once they leave, you’d now probably double the demand for staff.

My personal head cannon is that Picard (and everyone else,) is full of it. Same way people screaming about how great America is are full of it. He was saying what was necessary to keep his timeline from being borg-ified.

Or like the guy that was thawed out. That totally sounds like a party line.

But this makes sense since we also know that Picard loves to spout nonsense propaganda about the enterprise not being a warship, star fleet not being a military organization, and the federation being totally peaceful. Except all the battles with the romulans, the Klingons. The borg. The dominion. The cardassians… I’m sure I’m missing a few…

But again…. How human is the connection at Starbucks? Especially at 5am on your way to work?

Like. If a machine can spit out a Starbucks latte to order and there’s one less person? Hell yes.

In the Voyager episode (where Kim is somehow in an alternate timeline stuck on earth developing some kinda snazzy shuttle), it’s not a social thing. It’s a pop-in-get-coffee-and-go thing

As for total automation of “menial services”… I’m not sure how you get around that without the use of a semi-sentient intermediary. Plus maintaining those systems, which would fall under the purview of the most important man in all of Starfleet history.

…why? why do they need to be sentient? we already have machines capable of doing just about everything we could want them to in terms of menial tasks. The biggest issue is a) they’re usually hyper-specific in terms of what tasks they do, and b) universally expensive as fuck. It’s just currently cheaper and more “efficient” to have a few humans doing most the tasks. but that’s increasingly becoming less so. (I’m thinking of the deep sea mining robots that while awful for the environment are… pretty impressive engineering… and also the commercial floor cleaning robots my grocery store is starting to use.)

As for repairing stuff… replicator technology is way, way under utilized. (seriously.) Like. Seriously. Why starships, space stations… buildings…can’t repair themselves I will never know. I mean, think about it. there’s already hundreds, probably thousands, of replicators on the D, just an example. in every crew quarters, office, medical or engineering bay… i think the only prominent room that doesn’t have one is actually the bridge… and there’s one off in Picard’s ready room not twenty steps away. You have to assume the notion has occured to every single starfleet engeering wonk every single time some EPS conduit blows out or worf’s face gets imprinted in a wall to prove how strong a villian really is. (lets be honest, Geordi probably has a collection of wall-panels framed with Worf’s face. I would.)

There’s absolutely no reason that replicators can’t be integrated into the structure as an array that could just automatically repair it. An array isn’t even strictly necessary if you use the transporters.

Considering that the Delta Flyer and the Runabouts had a replicator on it, too, and I’m guessing other shuttles, that would suggest anything too small to have one themselves… would easily be replicated in something like a shuttle bay with an industrial replication pad. Storage, repairs. etc, all happen just by recycling it and printing another.

I was thinking just integrate them into the table. The entire surface gets cleaned.

Sorry but waiting tables (Sisko’s dad probably had waitstaff, as well as dishwashers, probably a hostess to handle the front of house…) is not a job you’d do for very long because “its fun”. they’re doing it because they’re being compensated for it.

Same goes for baristas. I might enjoy making an espresso when friends and family come over, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun to make 300 drinks a day; for no compensation, just because some star fleet engineers need their morning joe and can’t get it from a replimat.

They might have eliminated currency but they still had people working as baristas and waiting tables.

These are not jobs you do because they’re fun, and they’re totally unnecessary in a post scarcity world.

DATA SEASON!! FIRE!

(wait… no. don’t fire. Mr Tricorder was hilarious. we can’t lose that.)

Or as he’s falling out the window?

“FUUUUUuuuuuuuuuu……”