Not calling you out personally, Lauchs and I do apologize if it seems that way. Just that reading in your question the usage of “your side” and “the other side” brought to mind once again the fact that many people I know have come to view politics a team sport. Didn’t decide anything about your beliefs.

In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.

The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.

Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.

Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.

Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!

Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.

John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

Gonna go with Donkey Kong (1994). Made for a handheld (Game Boy) but also prominently features an enhanced mode enabled by running it on Nintendo’s Super Game Boy accessory for the SNES/Super Famicom (actually mine’s an SGB2–even better).

Nice pick! Was my first experience playing a Rogue-like game, though I wouldn’t know that term for at least two decades.

Also happens to be a technology specialist, a pilot, and one who must suffer (amputation).

I’m as old as my tongue, and a little older than my teeth.

toothpaste, defoliants, genital deodorants strychnine, gasoline, benzene, polythene…

Thanks for the recommendation! Happy to learn that story arc continues.

Huh, I would have figured Wesley Crusher would feature in this. He was becoming pretty Time Lord-y by “Journey’s End”.

Brave friend of mine went into Forest Conservation and Firefighting, got calf muscles big as cantaloupes!

That’s one busy substitute teacher!

I thought the poster meant S3E07 “The Enemy”, but seems it’s S5E02 “Darmok”.

Thank you for the insight. Having little understanding of the purposes of CAPTCHA beyond what is implied by the acronym, I would be concerned if what seems implied in this comment thread were actually true. Clearly there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek, but it seems reasonable to me as a layman that some implementations could produce data usable to train autonomous driving systems. I realize it’s possible there’s no simple answer to my original question, and wouldn’t be the first time I’ve overthought something.

$ echo "$((2#01010010)) $((2#01100101)) $((2#01100100)) $((2#01110010)) $((2#01110101)) $((2#01101101))"

82 101 100 114 117 109

Reads ‘Redrum’ in ASCII. A reference to The Shining, I suppose. If there’s a joke it’s lost on me, sorry. Was kinda fun spending 10min decoding that, though :)