I appreciate that you recognize that so-called ‘labour productivity’* is primarily a measure of the quality and technological level of the capital that the labour is working with.

Too often, comparative measures of labour productivity and discussion focuses on hours worked, vacation days etc.

These are very much second-order.

Education levels are not second-order but Canadian workers are more literate and better educated across the board than the US manufacturing workers.

So, the real question in manufacturing (as it is in housing construction), “Why is the Canadian private sector so unwilling to invest in ongoing technological upgrading let alone innovation?”

• ‘Labour productivity’ was originally a measure of how much a given number of workers could produce with a fixed piece of land. Crop improvements and technology increased that in the agricultural revolution.

No worries, Dan Jeannotte has it covered.

It absolutely is confusing.

Roddenberry gave conflicting direction on this. By the time TNG rolled out, his position was that most of the crew were officers.

But it was a long and confusing evolution. After intervention by the network after the TOS pilot, turned Janice Rand’s yeoman role, which is one of the most senior NCO roles on a naval ship, into what seemed to be a personal secretary. NBC was no more ready for a senior NCO who was a woman than they had been to have a female first officer Number One.

Discovery makes things murkier by mixing in ‘Chiefs’ as a title for department heads but never actually saying who is chief medical officer or chief engineer.

Lower Decks seems to have ensigns being hazed with junior enlisted tasks. However, Prodigy has introduced warrant officers as another career pathway outside the Academy.

‘Wackier than TOS on its most TAS day’ …

You packed an awful lot in that comparison.

🤩

Linus is a Saurian recurring crew member on Discovery as of season two.

@stamets@startrek.website will be incenting you to catch up before the final season premieres in 2024. 😏

Take my upvote. It’s an appalling thought.

I think they are, but understand that the dynamics of the situation are different within the North American context.

I find these kind of articles that validate Rotten Tomatoes (RT) audience scores as a quotable source are a problem, objectionable. Especially for Star Trek fans who embrace IDIC values.

Why? Because the RT audience ‘stats’ give a false credibility to a very biased and unscientific sample.

Many folks here on the fediverse are very cautious and savvy about how bias in AI training data leads to bias in the AI, but still quite RT stats as though they are somehow credible or scientific.

Rotten Tomatoes base of users has been established to be even more male, white American and older than even Reddit (that itself is 2/3 male). (The critic score is biased to American sources but some major ones from other countries do make it in there.)

When we look to RT’s audience score as some kind of authority, and share that, we’re giving weight to the voices of that specific demographic group over the rest of the audience.

That’s understating the role.

Administration does not equal secretary, except in the old British usage where the Secretary to the Prime Minister is what’s now called a Chief of Staff.

A yeoman is one of the most senior NCOs, responsible for communication with command and the admiralty, also responsible for performance assessments of all the enlisted ranks and more junior NCOs.

Also not Sulu if Sam Kirk is hanging around. Sulu was some kind of xenobiologist (xenobotanist?) in the opening episodes of TOS. The move to alpha shift helmsman came later.

I loved the episode. I’m not a huge fan of American musical theatre, but this really worked for me and my partner.

The tone was just right and the songs were well matched to the skills and characters. It’s delightful.

It was also really nice to come to this community and soak up all the positivity. I really needed a place to come like this after watching episodes. As we see it a bit later on CTV Sci-fi Channel in Canada, I can often feel blasted with fan backlash when I check out people’s views after watching.

Yes, there are a few folks here for whom this isn’t there kind of thing, and they are letting us know. We’ve not however seeing brigading negativity that is cropping up on some other social media. I can appreciate that some want their Trek more dignified and serious, but the ‘worst thing ever’ hyperbole is a bit hard to take when Threshold and Code of Honor exist.