#Binary

[chongoblog]

HOW TO READ BINARY MESSAGES

Hey there all you gamers out there! Have you ever seen a bunch of ones and zeroes in a television show and wondered "Huh. I wonder if this binary here is some sort of Secret Code?" and instead of googling it, you wanted to try to figure it out yourself? Well I know how to do that, and people always go "WHOA" when I tell them that, and I figured I would teach you all as well!

Now just a warning ahead of time, translating binary yourself will take some time and require a little bit of math, so don't say I didn't warn you.

So let's take a binary string like this frame from the Gravity Falls episode "Soos and The Real Girl" (which, spoilers, IS a secret message)

So the first thing you're gonna want to do is divide the binary into groups of 8. If it is a secret message, then each group of 8 bits will represent as ASCII value (or, for the sake of this explanation, letters). So let's divide them up.

That gives us: 01010011, 01010000, 01000001, 01000011, 01000101, 01001010, 01000001, 01001101, 01010100, 01010111, and 01001111. Now, you might have noticed that all of these binary strings have something in common. They all start with "010"! That's gonna be your first tell that you've got a secret message on your hands. Every letter in ASCII starts with either 010 or 011 for lowercase letters. So if you see the groups don't start with either of those, then it's just random gibberish binary that someone just keysmashed 1 and 0 for. So now we know we have a message, so we can begin translating. And to show off how that works, we're going to translate the first set together!

The way binary works is that each digit from the right to the left represents a power of 2. The farthest right digit represents 1. The second to last digit represents 2. The third to last digit is 4. Then 8. Then 16. When reading more complex binary stuff, you go further than that, but for reading ASCII letters, we only use 5 digits. For each of those digits, if the digit is 1, then you add the value that the digit represents. If it's 0, then you don't. From there, you add up the numbers you've got, and then run the sum through the handy dandy a1z26 cipher (A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and so on)

So again, let's have a look at that first string: 01010011

And there you go! Now you just need to repeat this for every letter! It sounds harrowing at first, but over time you get the hang of it to the point where you can do it in your head. Feel free to give is a shot yourself and decode the rest of the message from the Gravity Falls episode

Now obviously there are a few exceptions. For example if you have a number or punctuation it will start with "001", and from there translating a number from 0 to 9 is easy since it's the same thing but without the A1Z26 cipher, but with punctuation you have to remember specific values, which is a pain in the ass, but if you're translating a decoded message, you don't really need to know the punctuation.

And that should do it! Hope you enjoyed this little explanation.

[i-collect-shiny-stuff]

26, unsorted

[thisisrealy2kok]

Corpo Rave: 2007

[unicornspwnall]

THE MARVELS (2023) dir. Nia DaCosta Lashana Lynch as Binary

[thenerdsupply-co]

“IDK” in binary— wear this and wait for someone to ask you what it means and you can say, “I don’t know, it’s in binary.” We suggest you follow this up by walking off while laughing uproariously.

[alteredarchie]

Binary in X-Men #164 by Dave Cockrum

[lunaxio]

don't binarize gender, binarize counting.

[aleksmaximoff]

Teyonah Parris trying on her suit for the first time🥺

[pet-shop-of-horror-fan]

I am not saying that the transmasculine, transfeminine, and transneutral trinary was a good thing, but at least it was something of an attempt at inclusion.

But everybody made such a fuss about it that its common use went away as quickly as it came.

And now we are at transmasculine and transfeminine. By which people always mean trans men and trans women. If they didn't, then these would not be used as synonyms. And most of them clearly mean binary trans men and binary trans women at that.

But people don't complain about this binary nearly as much as they did a trinary.

It says a lot that when faced with the issues that came from a gender trinary, people just went back to a binary!

[same-pic-rick-roll]

----- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- .---- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- .---- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- / ----- ----- .---- ----- ----- .---- .---- .---- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- ----- .---- .---- / ----- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- / ----- ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- / ----- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- ----- .---- ----- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- .---- ----- .----

Well played anon, well played.

I will not translate for y’all, but protip, get a morse to text decoder, and then a binary to text decoder.

Figure it out for yourself.

It’ll be more impactful that way.

[olahresidence]

𝕲𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖊-𝕯𝖊𝖓 - Digital art in Photoshop

"Remember, everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong." - Ernest Hemingway

[themarvelproject]

Carol Danvers as Binary by Paul Smith (1982) from the cover of the Heroes Convention Program Guide (2024)

[emmafrostcovercollection]

X-Men #1 (2024) - Koblish Connecting Wraparound Variant

[all-spare-parts]

The Magnus Archives 065: Binary

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

[smashedpages]

Carol Danvers made her debut in Marvel Super-Heroes #13, which came out on this day back in 1967. Created by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan, she would go on to become Ms. Marvel, Binary and then the new Captain Marvel!