Agamus

In the early 2000s, I built wonderfully complicated 'business intelligence dashboards' for a company, which pulled together large sets of data into charty views that could be configured with drop-down selections. It was user-friendly, and easy to maintain. They also used it for end-of-year reports which were more-or-less automatic based a few simple drop-down settings. Nice on the eyes and everything.

They're still using it!

I once picked up a very old Loeb edition of Aeschylus, and there was a four-leaf clover stuck between almost every page.

Have they ever really existed in relevant numbers? Is fiscal conservatism more of a guiding concept than a flag?

It is a guiding principle for conservatives - humans who, like everyone, also have other guiding principle which often conflict and force compromise.

The Right thinks it is focused on the less moderate Left, which makes for a less moderate Right, which makes for a less moderate Left, while the moderate Left thinks it is focused on the less moderate Right, which makes for a less moderate Left, which makes for a less moderate Right, which makes some want to shake it all about.

Yes, and do you see how roughly the same thing can be said about the Democrat party, in that most people have a hard time identifying with either party? At the end of the day, people flip to 1 or 0.

Would it be far from the truth to say that we've just been through two election cycles in which Republicans who voted for Trump probably didn't "support" Trump, and Democrats who voted for Clinton or Biden probably didn't "support" either?

If I have it right, she feels a great deal of frustration and betrayal. But apparently not enough to give up hope that her idea is the best course to achieve progress for society.

I disagree. I have a good friend who is conservative about application of government (a 'fiscal conservative'), and very socially progressive. She is a registered Republican, and considers herself a "conservative".

While she is actively dedicated to social progress, (supports gay marriage, believes in the right to abortion, etc.), she feels we will be most successful at achieving this goal with leadership who prioritize fiscal conservativism.

I suspect that many Republicans are in this camp.

Good medicine! I hope there are scores of us who see this and feel the immediate inspiration to recreate our old freak sites.

My sampling is diverse and big, in my bad opinion.

I'm in the US, born in New England, and have lived in five states throughout the Northeast, Texas, and the Northwest. I've spent a collective three years living in Germany, Switzerland, France (wife is from France). I have slept at least one night in every state in the continental US. I once hitchhiked across the US and back again, gabbing with every person I could find along the way. I lived in cities for about a collective decade, and in very, very rural settings (log cabin even) for a collective decade and a half. Lots of other stuff in between and on the sides. I communicate with diverse groups, in person and online, from right to left, nix to ms, fantasy to sci-fi, young to old. I'm a 'perspectivist', and am fascinated with the perspectives of others, especially those outside of my frame of comfort and reference. I try to push beyond 'convictions', to uncover 'opinions'; convictions are usually firmly rooted, while opinions often change. A person's background and influences are usually baked into their convictions, while opinions generally reflect where a person is in life, like the kind of music 'you're into right now'.

I was a line cook and an artist, working horrible minimum wage jobs for a decade, was homeless for a year (under a bridge homeless), started at community college, transferred to Harvard, graduated at the top, got prestigious fellowships, and now work in software development and live in a rural area that is within an hour of a big city. I still talk to everyone like they are my partner in life, I don't care what they look like or with which demographic they 'identify', or how long I have known them. I'm gabby - I talk to everyone - I make friends with everyone I meet, from the guy on the street to the gal at the grocery store, to the company leader.

Confession: I'm a thinker and writer in my free time. But I have tried to cast as wide a net in life, and have tried to engage people as people, for what I think is a long time.

My conclusion: we're being gamed. The people underneath are intact. Amazingly, when the game is lifted, the people emerge, largely unscathed, as testament to the endurance capability of our ancestral rodentia.

My sample and data have led me to hold this opinion rather strongly, for what it is worth, which is nothing.

> I reckon that even at its height the type of people likely to be labeled conspiracy theorists and white supremacists were more common offline than online.

My ~50 years of life experience leads me to suspect the exact opposite.

New fancy soapboxes have distorted our understanding of each other, deeply. They amplify, magnify, and otherwise inflate the sense that fringe ideas are more widely represented.

I manage a small wiki, and would never just open it up to the bots.

But fast is relative, no? E.g., I still use snail mail extensively to keep in touch with my friends.

You're right, people don't care. Surely, we're at a point where more well-loved quotes are represented creatively in some way than not? That has been my recent experience.

I had a friend who corrected a celebrated Ivy League professor on a quote that appeared at the top of the syllabus of seminal class that was a requirement for all students for decades. That was almost 20 years ago, and the quote is still used. I don't think I'll ever get over that one.

Asking for a friend? Or did you mean antagonist?

This device is seducing me to learn new skills that I wish I already had so I could justify submission to the seduction - a familiar, odd loop. Do want!