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Meredith is a hacker under any definition. So that trait definitely is not descriptive of her.

• Buge 12y ago
  I meant the 4 in the list (women, bisexuals, Texans, engineers).
  • Kalium 12y ago
    The last item is "engineers who aren't hackers". I have no idea if Meredith is bisexual or Texan.
    • maradydd 12y ago
      It's probably most accurate to say that gender isn't a significant factor in my calculus of attraction. I was born in Houston, though, and lived there for 23 years. For what it's worth, I don't recall intending anything in particular with that list of adjectives, but you never really know about authorial intent.
    • Buge 12y ago
      Here's what the sentence is saying: There are people who aren't like me who are hackers. Also there are people who are like me who aren't hackers. The list of people who aren't like her is: progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary. The list of people who are like her is: women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers. Why else would she come up with 4 random traits? They obviously have something in common: they describe her. The "who aren't hackers" part doesn't apply directly to engineers. It applies to the entire list. So if you were to parenthesize it to show precedence it would be "(women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers) who aren’t hackers." Not "women, bisexuals, Texans, or (engineers who aren’t hackers)."
      • djcapelis 12y ago
        Oh, that makes more sense when it's parsed that way! English is often ambiguous. If you're familiar with Meredith's work, the fact that this thread is all basically because of a parsing error is all very funny.