It's annoying that these are the most commonly used images of Venus because neither one is remotely what the planet actually looks like to the human eye. The one on the left is a radar image of the terrain below the cloud cover and the one on the right is an infrared view with greatly exaggerated colours. In actual reality the planet looks like an almost featureless white disk. The photo below was made by the MESSENGER probe on its way to Mercury and it's the most accurate to visible light close-up view of Venus we have.
I think the funniest possible thing to do in a low stakes situation when someone subtly insults you is to ask them to elaborate.
In Seattle I was explaining environmental DNA and a woman said it “tickled” her to hear someone with my accent (rural Appalachia) “talk about science.”
So I said, “oh! 🙂 What an interesting perspective. Can you tell me more about what you mean?”
As you can imagine it went badly for her very quickly.
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