late 2000’s here; I went to one of the private, strict christian schools in the area, so no house parties or Greek scene for underage drinkers. So, what did we do? We learned to drink in TJ! IIRC, I think we went down 1.5x per month for two years or so until all of our friend group turned 21 and moved off campus. Luckily, we were usually smart enough to make sure one of us was 100% stone sober while we were across the border (and we always parked on the US side, obvs), but we had friends that still had some close calls.

I had a friend who drove down with a different group that got shaken down when one dumbass got caught by cops peeing in an alley on the way back to the border, and another acquaintance that spent a few weeks in jail on the Mexican side for having two (poorly made) fake twenties in his pocket. As I recall, he didn’t even try to spend them, but got searched for something unrelated and was then held without trial until his parents could get together ten thousand dollars to buy him out.

So, from 2006-2008 or so there still weren’t card readers coming back as a US citizen, but it was definitely getting sketchy. My privileged white-bread ass managed to stay out of trouble (mostly), but I definitely got lucky and wouldn’t recommend it to others. Although, during the daytime it was pretty safe as long as you didn’t get blotto, and going for cheap, delicious tacos and margaritas was a great day trip.

7:7 All praise Yetsabu-Nech, the underworld’s nightmare, the black disk which stands before the sun! All praise Verhu, beaming with delight! All praise the fire which burns all! And the darkness shall swallow the darkness.

One of those must be some new way of spelling “Mörk Borg”…

And let’s not forget the Giants’ amazing reliever, Pablo Sandoval (0.00 ERA and 0.00 WHIP)!

For those not in the loop, he was a (seemingly) overweight 3rd baseman who made phenomenally athletic plays and hit monster home runs (especially in the postseason, leading to 3 World Series trophies and a WS MVP), earning the nickname “Kung Fu Panda.”

Then, in the twilight of his career, he also pitched 2 innings without allowing a baserunner, becoming a bit of an SF meme, including at least one “Let Pablo Pitch” bobblehead.

Bozeman, MT for me, apparently because I listen to a fair bit of Jason Isbell and other new-ish alt-country and Americana. Despite the fact that none of my top 5 artists are alt country, the rest of my listening is apparently eclectic enough that nothing else really came close.

I would have thought that having 60-70% of my listening all in a small cluster of esoteric doom-metal-related subgenres would have placed me somewhere with some sort of a metal scene, but apparently not.

Lie down on the holodeck couch.

I would have to disagree. Sure, in the modern world, one function of art is to “move money around,” but it’s far from the only function or even the most important function.

I have read it, but I forgot about that detail until you reminded me. I probably have to reread now :)

Haha, I’m just glad at least some people enjoy reading them, since I can’t help but write them (and listening to my endless digressions down Wikipedia rabbit holes is exhausting for my partner).

I agree with everything you said, except I would argue that capitalism is the Sixth Horseman of the Apocalypse, seeing as one of the original four was already replaced during a translation. The original text were interpreted as “Conquest, War, Famine, and Death,” and the story I remember from my New Testament course in college was that in the early 1900’s, it was thought that Conquest was too similar to War, so they used one of the later passages that specified that the horsemen would bring death by “sword, famine, plague, and the wild beasts of the earth” to rebrand Conquest as Pestilence. In fact, now reading up on it from Wikipedia, apparently the first two horsemen were likely both supposed to represent war, with the white rider (Conquest) representing “righteous/justified war” and the red rider (War) supposed to represent “civil war,” which is interesting.

In fact, given how vaccines and modern medicine have dramatically lowered the death by infectious disease in the 20th century, it’s likely time for another rebranding (relevant xkcd), so I’d replace “pestilence” with “capitalism” or even “profit” if I were feeling flowery.

edit: Upon further reading, apparently the third horseman (Famine) could also be interpreted as a form of capitalistic excess, since it’s accompanied by a voice that describes rising market prices for staples such as bread and is carrying market scales. Traditionally, this is thought to indicate Famine as loaves of bread would be weighed during food shortages, but the accompanying voice seems to indicate that luxuries are still available, so I could easily make the argument that the passage is about the rich tending to their own needs while ignoring the needs of the poor (which sounds an awful lot like modern US politics/capitalism).

Edit 2: So I guess I’d rebrand all three of the riders preceding Death so that I’d interpret things as “Imperialism, Extremism, Capitalism, and Death,” or put a little more poetically, “Conquest, Discord, Avarice, and Death”

O’Brien in Engineering: “Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch!”

As my old tech teacher in HS used to say, “if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’”

“Science deniers” is a better description.

The Expanse series went into a fair bit of detail on the “form follows function” aspect of spaceship aesthetics, but it was a lot more near-future than Trek.

In most cases, The Expanse postulates that the most important aspect of spaceship design is cleanliness and the ability to protect the air filters and purification systems. In this case, I would assume that carpets are likely going to cause more of a headache than comfort, but who knows. Also, they’d probably want something that would not interfere with magnetic boots when the ship is in zero-g.

Also called The Paradox of Tolerance, as explained by Karl Popper (one of my favorite philosophers).

Although, as you showed, there are several ways to illustrate that it’s not really a paradox. My favorite is to consider that tolerance is a social contract entered into by every participant; those who are intolerant are breaching that contact and are therefore not protected by it.

Excellent work; I’m gonna have to add this to my emoji meme collection (which up until now has consisted entirely of one meme)

“wait, it’s all projection?”

“Always has been”

🌎 👨‍🚀 🔫 👩‍🚀

On the other hand, “Daddy, I’ve been very naughty” works, too.

Fa real, sa sa ke?

Edit: oye kopeng, don’t forget check ya seals an filters

And the classic, “hold my beer”

This is the correct answer.

Jokes on you, OP is the dude in the left panels!

/s, obviously. OP, I’m sorry about that shit. Humanity should be better than that by now.