They used local guides, who knew the routes, dangers and resources they might encounter.

Except that in my experience, even a supporter of said party, when talking about how a member of ours "just toes the line" is communicating a negative, not a positive. That's not a good, genuine guy we're proud of, it's someone to watch out for.

Colloquially too, the way I was raised, it's a bad thing, you did not want to be a line-toer. And I'm not referring to discussions of politics, but how it was used in day to day conversation. I've been accused of toeing lines, for instance, with the implication being that continuing may get me in trouble some day and I should be a little more careful.

Perhaps it's a regional thing.

The same dynamic I was discussing appears in that case as well. The politician may not agree with the policy, and may be willing to violate it, but still toes the party line.

If someone was doing something somewhat shady, but still keeping within the bounds of some rule, you might say they are similarly toeing that line.

The big question to me has become, can you toe a line in a positive way?

Yeah, I just made another edit to my original comment. lol

For the traditional toe the line imagery, it helps to imagine a very rebellious kid that you have firmly told to absolutely not cross some line under any circumstances.

Imagine the kid looking you dead in the eye and smirking, as they stretch out their big toe and put it all over the line while barely not crossing it.

This captures the aspect that you don't have to follow the spirit of the rules or believe in them in any way, you simply have to follow the letter of the instruction to be "toeing the line". There is an inherent malicious coloring to the term that is important, where people that only toe the line are bad people.

edit: It needs to imply that you're searching for ways to break a rule and get away with it on a technicality.

edit2: This got me curious enough to google the origin of the term, and it actually has a wikipedia article, amusingly. Apparently it has a military origin, and the article makes no mention of the negative connotations I mentioned. This makes me think my personal interpretation is actually incorrect, and I now wonder why I picked up on it. In the US, toeing the line does have a subtle negative connotation to it, and people that do it are looked down on somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

I see nothing wrong with suggesting that, so long as it is made clear he is discussing one of many theoretical possibilities.

Is he a kook? He does kinda look like one, but so do a lot of legit scientists, so that's not a good measure.

I have a feeling this has probably been studied, but I'm not a sociologist so I wouldn't know where to look.

Nice.

One small thing, you're actually not writing prose, you're writing in verse. Prose is all normal, everyday writing. Most books, newspapers, journals, letters, emails, txt msgs etc etc are written in prose. Anything with a structure, though, like poetry or a song is written in verse, which is more structured and stylized than prose.

So, you're asking us to read your verse/poetry/rap/whatever and not your prose.

Other than that, I liked it.

Yeah, that game is great. I hardly ever play it anymore, I can't remember the last time I booted it up, yet for some reason it has been allowed to take up hard drive space for many, many years now.

Sugar addiction is a thing.

How often do you handle pushback from other people well? If you normally handle pushback from others positively, and the chatbot just gives you a break now and then when you're not in the mood, that's probably fine. If you normally react poorly any time you receive pushback from someone else, and normally prefer the chatbot because it won't do that, then that is much more worrying.

"If I have to create stories so that ~~the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people~~ we win, then that's what I'm going to do."

Yea, we already knew that JD, thanks.