I’m… Not really sure what your question is. What do you mean by your laptop “fitting in the community?”

? You’re saying exactly the same thing I am. I was giving a definition, not an example. Admittedly confusing since I used the (real) word in its own (slang) definition.

No, “aesthetic” is generally just a noun, historically. As in “it has a modern/minimalist/cyberpunk aesthetic.” Its usage as an adjective just means “relating to the general idea of aesthetics as a field of study,” or “someone with a strong sense of and attunement to the design and beauty of things.” Using it to just mean “beautiful,” basically, is a new usage in just the last 5 years or less.

Using it as an adjective, to mean “has a pleasing aesthetic.”

can it? Sure, most any arrangement of bits can be converted into some kind of Unicode text. Can it be converted to something meaningful or readable? No, some formats are plain text (.txt, .ini, .json, .html for some random examples) that are meant to be read by humans, and others are binary formats that are only meaningful when decoded by a computer into specific data structures inside a piece of software.

Well, yeah. That’s not really in the same category or ever really disputed

No, that’s my evidence that it wasn’t ubiquitous and typical.

Maybe not just your social circle, but social-circle-specific.

No, this was just your social circle. I know literally zero people who ever bought into any of that crap

Other than the vague “big bad gubbmint thinks you’re too stupid for their SECRETS” vibe, I almost find this old school X-Files type insanity sort of adorable. They don’t wanna hurt people, they just want a more interesting world

It’s actually the comptroller, but only if he attacks en passant

Isn’t it 15 degrees every day in San Francisco

Yes, your aunt has (probably) signed up for what’s essentially a scam. This is their whole business model, they know timeshares sound better than they end up being, so they intentionally trick people into signing contracts that are very difficult to get out of, so they can’t just dump it the moment they realize they don’t want it anymore.

That’s… An extremely bizarre take on what happened, and on whether selling would be a good idea. The stock market almost never has anything to do with electoral politics, and electoral politics almost never have anything to do with what your market position should be.

Not that you’re going to get any kind of constructive discussion here regardless, but it’s worth noting that “liberal” in the US means something very different in the rest of the world (what we’d call “neoliberal” or globalist) and I don’t really know which one you mean

You are so gullible

It’s fun to pretend.

Idk, most navigation would be along or close to the ecliptic plane of the system, wouldn’t it

Chemists learn it without being taught linear algebra ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Why would anyone stop using those standards? You seem very confused about the incentives for adopting standards. Sure, maybe US-driven standards were chosen over other possibilities partly because of political environment, but once you have a perfectly good standard adopted you’re not just going to throw it out because the original author isn’t cool anymore. You don’t need a dominant power to adopt standards.

And for being “slightly political” and “focused on the standards,” your post sure does spend the majority of its time talking about only politics and not about standards at all