RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive399

Article corrections
I would like to help make corrections to the article https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project but I'm not sure where to go from here. I can suggest more corrections to the article. I can try my best to do research and answer any questions folks have. I can write another essay. I feel motivated to get this article fixed but I'm still kind of new here. It would be great to see an article that we all agree portrays The Venus Project accurately. I'm willing to help get us there. Hansen128 (talk) 16:18, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? 19:19, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * We've been having an ongoing discussion about that article. I'm willing to help with it in any way I can.
 * https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Saloon_bar/Archive398#Article_corrections
 * https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:The_Venus_Project
 * Hansen128 (talk) 20:02, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you a PR rep for them? 20:34, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No. Hansen128 (talk) 21:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The last set of edits to this page veered quickly into whitewashing and removal of other editors' contributions. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 22:13, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Your linked edits read like a PR script. That might be why you got reverted. 23:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So, a couple of thoughts.
 * When I wrote the edits I captured material from multiple sources. I figure there's no sense in re-creating the wheel where good material already exists. I'm happy to share my sources if that's what you're looking for. The end goal of my edits is accuracy. I hope that that's a value we all share.
 * As the article stands, there are problems. The authors did a decent job of capturing the overall goals of The Venus Project (TVP) but then it falls short. This seems to be an example of, if you want to argue against an opposing viewpoint, first you have to understand the opposing viewpoint. The authors don't understand the viewpoint that they're opposing. The article doesn't capture TVP's proposals nor does it attack them. It's a combination strawman and argument from ignorance. So, unfortunately, it's difficult to correct any of this without larger re-writes. Hansen128 (talk) 00:43, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And how is it wrong? You keep saying it is but you haven't really given any examples. Further, your edits, again, read like you were trying to promote the group rather than engage critically with them. 00:51, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure I'll put that together. Hansen128 (talk) 05:27, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Here are some of the problems with the article.
 * TVP is not Soviet economics. The Soviet Union has banks, prisons, and police. TVP doesn't have any of those things.
 * Software developers do not dictate what people want. City inhabitants decide what they want. Software developers, engineers, and other tradespeople work out how to provide the things that people want. They do that by analyzing resource constraints, production limitations, recycling protocols, energy requirements, and so on. They use these factors to arrive at the best way to provide the things people want. This could be done with computers, which can process trillions of bits per second, to weigh all of these competing factors to make the best decision. This isn't all that different to how supermarkets make supply decisions today. It's just expanded out to the entire city.
 * I don't recall Jacque ever saying that there would be absolutely no scarcity in TVP. It might depend on the context. Of course scarcity exists on a sliding scale. Gold and quartz are both technically scarce because they exist in limited quantities on Earth but of course gold is a lot more scarce than quartz. In our current system there are people struggling to obtain food, while store shelves are stocked full. It's technically possible to provide enough food for everyone but the profit system makes it very difficult to get the job done. TVP proposes a system that's focused on providing for human needs first. The money system is no longer a limitation because with sufficient abundance, it is no longer needed.
 * This analogy might help give another visual. Imagine the city design being compared to the design of the first iPhone. If you described it to someone living in the 1990's, they might have a good laugh at the futuristic absurdity. Of course we know now that the iPhone was possible. It was built. And as revolutionary as it was, it wasn't without it's flaws. But technical folks went on to improve the design and turn it into an extremely popular device. Writing off the iPhone because it doesn't include GPS in its design misses the whole point of the iPhone. It was a quantum leap ahead of other devices that were available at the time. It wasn't a "final state" phone, nor did anyone say it was. Of course it would be improved upon over time. But it marked a starting point for a much more useful device (compared to candy bar and flip phones of the time). TVP is basically saying, here is a much better social design than the one that we have today. Let's build it and try it out so that A) we can see how well it works (or doesn't work) and B) so that other people can see our proposals and see what's possible. Oh and by the way if you have a better design, let's collaborate. If your ideas are better than ours we'll include your proposals in our design. Hansen128 (talk) 03:02, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Kevin Samuels
Someone should start an article on this pick-up artist reactionary who is a pipeline to the Alt-right. He has a million subscribers on Youtube. 47.145.125.78 (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * From the titles of the videos of his channel, not really a PUA... he seems to mainly be promoting the concept of hypergamy over and over. Obviously, not watching the videos, I could be wrong. But personally, I chose not to use 2 hours and 25 minutes of my life on Earth to watch some spiel called "4 signs of a low value women", because I feel it would be a complete waste of time I could use for more productive tasks. Maybe red-pillers should take note. :p PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 22:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Samuels is just a misogynistic troll. He spouts off that hypergamy/high value bullshit mainly because he knows he’ll get a reaction from his (ironically) predominantly black female viewers. Many of these women are also very young (about 20-30 range) and have self-esteem issues and are gullible to engage in a conversation with him which only bolsters his bullshit further. It should be noted his rhetoric is stereotypical as he has no problem with a “submissive” asian womanSensaurC-137 (talk) 13:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I came across this when editing an article.
https://livebloodonline.com/the-training-course/

I was editing the article on New Eden School of Natural Health and was looking for sources. I found an online Live Blood Analysis training course. Now here is the blunder- for one of their menus, they spelt "enroll" as "enrol".

Really puts confidence in a school's credibility. A group that cannot be bothered to have any proofreading is 100% trusworthy. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 23:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You can spell it with one 'L' in British English. 90.247.220.170 (talk) 12:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

VA gov race neck-and-neck
538 gives McAuliffe 1.7% lead, RCP gives 1.2. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * For a state that went blue by 10 points in 2020, this is pretty worrisome for democrats. They're not dead in the water just yet, but I think it's safe to say nobody expected it to be within 1.2%, even if McAuliffe still barely has the lead. Aaronmichael5 21:26, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly, if the democrats can go from "historic win" to "barely eke out a victory" in less than a year, even in a state that has been leaning blue in statewide races for a while now...what does that say about races in states that were closer last year, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Arizona (let alone states Trump still won like North Carolina)?-Flandres (talk) 23:02, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Just FYI, since 1977, the governor elected in VA (with one exception) has always been from the opposite party of the president. That exception? Terry "Albert Einstein" McAuliffe. Buck (talk) 05:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is no one likes Biden and McAuliffe is emulating him. Youngkin, while endorsed by Trump, is carefully trying not to seem like a Trump acolyte, and has been somewhat successful.American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 14:54, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

So...I'm not crazy right?
I'd like to think I'm getting better at recognizing what is sane and insane, but I still have doubts. LIke with this guy for example: https://www.quora.com/What-if-you-dream-of-Masky-Jeff-Lulu-and-Slenderman/answer/Grigori-Rho-Gharveyn-aka-Roger-Holler https://qr.ae/pGxXbw And my chat with this person is weirder still. I'm prepared to write them off as crazy as their writing style is incoherent at best and crazy at worst. Apparently the italics are counterpoints they argue against. Anyway, I'm right though? Right? I've tried arguing with them in the comments but it's a dead end.Machina (talk) 10:23, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You seem to have caught on to the reality game, to wit: one must ask oneself, "is this narrative coherent?" That is, is it consistent with my experience of reality? If not, I must be suspicious that someone is trying to take advantage of gullible people. I may be misunderstanding the narrative, but it is more important to be cautious than to assume someone knows reality better than I do. Well done. My advice is to study ideas coherent with ones own understanding.UncleKrampus (talk) 18:37, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

The New Dune Movie
Tried to read Dune once as a kid. I thought it read like the Bible after the first few pages and gave up. Never seen any of the movies, never even played the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Probliknaut (talk) 15:55, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it's one of the best sci-fi movies of this decade. Hope we get a sequel. I'd love to see an Emperor God of Dune adaptation, but I don't think this will ever happen. It's a very slow start, but you should give it another shot, it's an amazing book. IMO this new the movie gets a lot better if you read the first book before watching it. Skip Lynch's adaptation, it sucks. Watch Jodorowsky's Dune instred. . About the games, I only played Dune 2000 some 20 years ago, but it's a great RTS. GeeJayK (talk) 16:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * But have you played Command and Conquer? The original recycled a lot of stuff from Dune II, if you play both you'll notice a lot of the icons for the units are the same.  16:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * As for the movie itself, remember, this, this book series was the book series that made Environmentalism a mainstream idea. At the time, fossil fuels weren't the issue, it'd be another decade before carbon released from fossil fuels would match that from land use change and clearcutting of forests, and even today fossil fuels are probably only half of the problem (e.g., we still clearcut the Amazon, dump plastic into the oceans, even if we were 100% carbon neutral we aren't 100% green).
 * Furthermore, this was the book series that made people begin to see the Mid-East as made up of people with their own agency instead of a bunch of angry camel-herders with rifles. 16:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC) Sure, I spent most of the early 2000s playing RTS games, and I think the demise of the genre is the main reason why I lost interest in videogames. Recycling the games was quite common back then, I think Star Wars Battlegrounds is the most extreme example., I'm fine with it. GeeJayK (talk) 16:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd say Lawrence of Arabia (a major Herbert influence) also helped helped to humanize people in the Middle East. I think Dune's influences on Environmentalism are quite ironic. Herbert was diehard Republican, I wonder if he would switch sides if he was still alive since Republicans fucked up with region in the world that he loved so much and are still denying Global Warming. GeeJayK (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Don’t intend to devolve into video game talk but hell yes I played C&C. And Red Alert. And Tiberian Sun. Rest In Peace, Westwood Studios. I am very bad at RTS’ but I loved them as a kid. Probliknaut (talk) 16:39, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not ironic in the slightest. Republicans were the environmentalist party, the EPA was created by a Republican (Nixon).  The history of the two major parties and why they have the stances they do now is so absurd that if it hadn't happened you'd think it was created by a complete hack of a coked-out writer.  Republicans made an unholy alliance with the religious right to try and attract the southern Whites who had become disillusioned with the Democrats.  At the same time, a bunch of communists felt betrayed by the USSR, and became diehard anti-communists but with the same righteous fervor, and brought that energy to the Republican party in the form of Neo-Conservatism.  The Rockefeller Republicans, the relative moderates who believed in small but efficient government and strong regulation of the financial systems and in favor of environmental conservation, were squeezed out of the party entirely by the two groups, but were never truly picked up by the Democrats.  17:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Great series of books with the exception of God Emperor of Dune which was a bit like hard work.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I generally consider one of the other cornerstones of the environmental movement, Silent Spring, as a big reason why Republicans turned around like they did. Republicans historically have long been the pro-business party, and that book (while quite correct) stirred up the FUD from chemical companies that were getting their precious DDT regulated, the same FUD you pretty much see when any big business (from tobacco to oil) tries to do when people figure out that their products are harmful in some way. Over time the voice of big business FUD drowned out the rest in the Republican Party, and now we are at the point where the present day Republicans are one of the few conservative parties in the developed world that actually deny climate change at its core. I would actually speculate that in Nixon's time and back, environmentalism really wasn't quite as partisan of an issue as it is today. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 17:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC) Yeah. I did a quick research and he seemed to be a center-right, liberal Republican, a category that is now almost defunct. He died in 1986, but I couldn't find anything about his views on Reagan. I did find some some links claiming that he hated McCarthy though. GeeJayK (talk) 17:17, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * God Emperor is a hit or miss. Either it's your second favorite (some people I know think it even better than the original) or you hate it with your guts. You can check on every online list, it's either on the top or on the bottom. I think God Emperor is fucking great. Heretics of Dune bored me to death though. GeeJayK (talk) 17:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess we are all different. I read it the moment it came out, which I see was thirty years ago.  Maybe I would have a different idea today. :-)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:43, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem with every screen adaptation of Dune is that Herbert, like Tolkien, was a lot better at/more interested in world building rather than storytelling. When you try to fit one of his stories into a movie, even a two part movie, you will end up with a whole lot of exposition and explanation, or you will leave many viewers absolutely stymied and unable to follow what's going on.  This one too seemed to rush over details like why melange is important or who the Bene Gesserit are.  The few seconds of explanation given will not answeer the viewers' questions.  You end up with films that are highly enjoyable to those who are fans of the books and have read them, while being unintelligible to outsiders. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 19:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And we managed to get the Tolkien movies, and they were some of the best made, because the director just let the world simply be there in the background while the story was condensed. The result was that the world really did feel like a real world, not everything being explained is not a bad thing.  E.g., if I see a sword that's banged up to hell, I don't need to know what the sword hit to get those chips or scratches, only that this is a sword that existed before I saw it on screen and will continue to exist long after I move on to another scene.  Star Wars popularized the "used future" setting, where every ship was banged up and caked in grime, then compare to the CGI mess of the prequels where every last vehicle looked like it was fresh off the assembly line.  The Dune series could do that as well, focus on the story and let us feel like Arrakis is a real world, that this world existed before we landed there and will continue to exist for millions of years after we've gone.  Although, as some sort of lush rainforest, which is actually Bad because the worms are allergic to water, and without the worms there's no interstellar civilization.  19:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Jodorowski’s Dune would’ve been some spectacle: Orson Welles and Salvador Dali, Hans Giger (Alien) and Moebius (brilliant comic book artist). I don’t rate any of Denis Villeneuve’s films; Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, in particular, are incredibly pretentious. Leucippus Salva veritate 21:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * if there isnt sting in his pants, it aint dune AMassiveGay (talk) 21:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * BR 2049 was ok. It lacked the punch of the original for the simple reason that you knew what to expect, whereas the very concept of the story in the original was still relatively new.  The one really good thing about 2049 is that it demonstrated that Intimacy without Nudity is far more enticing than Nudity without Intimacy.  21:16, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * BR 2049 is definitely well shot, but it’s far too much style over substance imo. The rest of the film involves loads of clichés like the CEO with a God complex trope and predictable fight scenes with contrived outcomes. Although the original BR is better, it’s superiority mainly lies in its cinematography, Vangelis’s score, and a young Sean Young (my God was she beautiful), but not its story, for its no way near as good as P.K. Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick apparently liked the atmosphere created in the film but not the story—my feelings too are exactly those. R.e. Nudity and Intimacy: I agree in the sense that nudity is often used in a heavy-handed and gratuitous way, whereas intimacy can be far more powerful, and even erotic, due to its subtlety. Leucippus Salva veritate 23:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Whether Blade Runner is the best Science Fiction film of all time is a matter of taste. But I don't know why it isn't in the top ten. Have you seen the theatrical release, with narration? Further more, Philip K. Dick never saw the finished film as he died a few months before it was released.UncleKrampus (talk) 22:04, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the pre-release bits he did see. However, if I was to rate BR, I certainly wouldn’t put it on a list of the “best sci-fi films of all time”, for various reasons, including the fact that, imo, it’s a little fuckin early to be making claims pertaining to ‘all of time’. Solaris and 2001 a Space Odyssey strike me as good contenders though. Leucippus Salva veritate 00:31, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "best of all time" does not usually include future events. Of course, as usual, there is no accounting for taste.UncleKrampus (talk) 00:54, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * blade runner is set in 2019. its not sci fi its a period piece. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:39, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Alleged Bathroom Rapist Found Guilty...
... After being moved to another school and raping another girl in a bathroom. They were found guilty on all charges. The right-wing media are having a field day, as you would expect. An Advocate (talk) 18:12, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * From what I can tell, the rapist is awaiting sentencing, and a number of students have been holding walkouts in protests of the alleged coverup. I don't think it's solely a "right-wing" issue, though I would like it if we could somehow convince the right-wing to make all rape and coverup a serious issue and not just when the rapist is non-conforming.  18:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at Breitbart, it is indeed "big news". But the story with the most amount of comments is one on the "fuck Joe Biden" chant common among the plebs and trolls. (Which means, when the MAGA folks talk about "making America great again", they presumably don't mean "bring back old school profanity norms". Where, should their mothers have heard them chant that phrase, every single one of them would wash their mouths out with Lifebuoy soap.) PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 18:33, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Russell Brand explained the spread of "Let's Go Brandon" thusly. There's an entire swath of the population who don't feel the MSM has represented them or their views, or actively opposes them.  It's not just "I believe in X but Don Lemon believes in Y" but "I believe in X and there's not a single person on this network also claiming X".  So when the media does the lamest excuse for damage control, trying to claim what is clearly "fuck Joe Biden" is actually "let's go Brandon", it strikes a strong chord with the anti-Biden folks who believe that the entire media has been doing nothing but damage control and coverups for Biden.  18:49, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, in this case, the "mainstream media" was NBCSN, and you can't say "fuck" on most American TV, even these days. (Unlike, say, Dutch sports TV...) Occam's Razor says to me that the reporter was simply trying (and failing) to cover up a F-bomb. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 19:08, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it was a right-wing issue, I said that the right has yet more ammunition to use against the T of LGBT. TBH, I was more angry a certain user who shall remain nameless who said that "Le media is probably making the Trans person look bad when it is actually the opposite!". An Advocate (talk) 19:18, 27 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I have resolved to ignore most news as not newsworthy. Every factoid presented in media is a germinated seed of some possible future conspiracy theory. Just the fact that a group of editors agreed to publish it comprises a conspiracy of sorts. Better to regard it like music. Some is interesting, some unpleasant, some beautiful, some painful to hear. But it almost never means anything about the wider world that seems to matter. UncleKrampus (talk) 21:43, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the Left allowed it to become a partisan issue when they both refused to support the victim(s) and went after the father, even calling him a domestic terrorist for, what, yelling during a school board meeting? But a city being set on fire is the result of "mostly peaceful" protests.  There are certain things that should not be partisan, that should be embraced by both the Left and Right.  Just a short list...
 * Meritocracy or Social Mobility
 * Environmentalism
 * Public health initiatives
 * Police brutality
 * Fiscal responsibility
 * Rape and other sexual violence
 * Yet somehow, these or chunks of these have become adopted by only one side or the other. 23:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Plus, the amount of equivocating on basic things like due process. Depending on who you ask, either the mythical non-violent drug offender (not actually a high percentage of the prison population, contrary to popular belief) is guilty guilty guilty!!! or the guy accused of sexual misconduct under Title IX is guilty guilty guilty!!! (the only thing I can give Betsy DeVos any credit for, that the Democrats let the snake Lhamon back in is to their shame). The same people who freak out about overincarceration and the unfairness of the system (which I generally agree with) are the same ones who lost their shit over Bill Cosby's conviction being overturned when it came out that the DA played a shell game. Especially depressing since Joe Biden would've been found guilty under the same standards he apparently upholds for people who aren't him, and indeed the standards applied to Brett Kavanagh. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 01:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that virtually everyone in prison for drugs plead down to drugs when they had done more serious things. The whole shtick is that the suspect will have an easier time convincing employers to hire a recovering addict than a car-thief.  Then you have weird cases like in Vegas where two homeless men were murdered by being hit with a blunt instrument to the head while they slept, so the police dressed up a mannequin as a homeless guy and set a video recorder and catch someone hitting the mannequin in the head.  They catch the guy and find that legally speaking, they have nothing actually tying the suspect to the murders as it's circumstantial, and can only charge him for "trying to murder a mannequin".  He was sentenced for only 8-20 years, and wouldn't have gotten that if he had just shut his mouth and never admitted he thought the mannequin was a person, but then again, police rarely catch the smart ones.  02:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There are about half a million people in prison for non-violent drug offenses, so I wouldn't call that "mythical" even if some of them have pleaded down from a more serious offense. That is still 20% of the prison population. The money spent on incarcerating them could go towards housing Americas even larger homeless population, which most US states allow to just rot in the streets. To say America unnecessarily over-imprisons its population (especially non white people), most notably for victimless crimes or relatively petty shit or when there are many better alternatives, would be a slight understatement. Shabi  DOO  08:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Were they actually trans though? That's an important question here. 02:49, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, according to Yahoo news 02:58, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yahoo News is not a source, they're only an aggregator of other sources. In that case, the article actually comes from the National Review. Regardless of whether or not they were trans though, this is something that could have happened regardless of the policies around trans people being allowed to use the bathroom, unless you seriously want to advocate for inspecting people's genitals before they are allowed to enter a public bathroom. Plutocow (talk) 03:05, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I do think they were really trans, going by Michelle (probably originally Michael). An Advocate (talk) 03:19, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Can someone present a source for this claim that isn't a GOP aligned rag? 04:12, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Does it matter if the rapist was trans or not? Rape is a crime, whenever if your trans or not. Lets all play Genshin impact instead. BeardOfZeus (talk) 04:15, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It matters to the far right because it "proves" that pre-op Transwomen shouldn't be allowed in the girls room, or something along those lines. It only actually matters if both a) the school actually did suppress a rape story, and b) the suppression was because the alleged perpetrator was Trans.  04:25, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * For Commie, here is the source confirming they are trans: https://www.snopes.com/faSnopesct-check/miguel-martinez-transgender-bathroom-controversy/
 * For Cortex, the rape story was indeed suppressed, and I have seen on both sides convincing agruments for the censorship being because the perpetrator was Trans and not. An Advocate (talk) 04:40, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

That article is four years old and seems to be of a different case. Actually do your due diligence when finding sources people. Plutocow (talk) 04:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Newsweek says "possibly", but everyone is referring the rapist as a boy, and I'm not going to give two shits if it turns out I'm misgendering a habitual rapist. Court documents confirm he was wearing a skirt, but the court doesn't mention if he was trans or genderfluid or whatever.  05:48, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "I'm not going to give two shits if it turns out I'm misgendering a habitual rapist." You should. The suspension of rights of the accused does not make them evil, merely  potentially guilty. " Court documents confirm he was wearing a skirt, but the court doesn't mention if he was trans or genderfluid or whatever" Then, the original topic creator, should probably change the title of this topic to reflect the available information.  11:36, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * whether they are trans or not is irrelevant to whether or not they are a rapist. speculation as to their trans status is inappropriate and more than a little unsettling to me. we should not be playing this game. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:01, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's only relevant insofar as someone (who shall remain nameless) plastered it on the saloon topic title and made it an issue (without due basis)... 12:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And then everyone and their mother came out to say "Oh look at what the left has done!" while neglecting basic fact checking. Shameful, the lot of you. As if any of you give a fuck about shame or honesty... 12:29, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a pretty recent repeat in the bar. Someone's giving too many shits about obvious right-wing media nutpicking clickbait. The only reason this story has any currency in my opinion, is the "trans" aspect, and not the "teen rape" aspect. There are hundreds of bathroom rape stories that never reach beyond local news level. Why are we caring about only this story here? Obviously, there's one different aspect, of course. At any rate, the way conservative shill sources are now, they'll defend forcing the victim to carry the baby to term ala the Texas abortion law. So you really think these conservative sources actually give a fuck about the victim here? Obviously not... they just want to shit on "icky" boogeymen again. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:00, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm quite sure that most rightwingers do make a "rape or incest" exception for abortion. Not all, obviously; according to Ben Shapiro (whose wife is a doctor), killing a 1 week old blastocyst that has no sense of consciousness is the moral equivalent of murdering a sleeping person because both are unconscious.  As for whether the kid was trans, I don't expect that the media would report a story as "cisgender straight man convicted of robbery", but given the high profile nature of the case and the furor over gender I actually would expect that the media would confirm or deny that the kid was indeed Trans.  Interestingly, the father didn't claim that the boy was Trans but that he was Genderfluid, but the wingnuts tend to view all this weird new scary stuff as one and the same.  13:26, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "I'm quite sure that most rightwingers do make a "rape or incest" exception for abortion." AAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA HAHAHAHAAHHHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!! Imagine thinking this is anything other than a facade... 13:37, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Gallup poll on abortion, only 19% of Americans think it should always be illegal. 37% of Americans identify as Conservative.  While 19 out of 37 is a smidge more than 50%, it's important to remember there are moderates and a few Leftwingers who also oppose abortion in all cases.  So yes, a majority of Rightwingers do in fact believe there should be rape and incest exceptions.
 * Interestingly, the public's stance on abortion has not seemed to budge much in the past 50 years, my personal hunch is that this is because the "rape and incest" exception used to mean the unspoken "rape, incest and interracial". RvW was only after Nixon nominated (or was VP) literally 2/3rd's of the court, and the tapes have him outright stating interracial babies need to be aborted, and even seem to imply this was a bigger reason than rape.  As we've made progress on both Women and Black issues, they seem to have cancelled each other out.  14:01, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Lip service at best. What they say and what they do when they have enough power are not the same. 14:09, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If anything is "lip service", it's all the allegedly anti-abortion folks who believe exceptions should be made in their case. 14:32, 28 October 2021 (UTC)


 * What conservatives actually think when pressed to soberly express an opinion poll, and the emotional shit that fuels both conservative media and Republican politicians, are two different things. Remember, the American anti-abortion movement was concocted as an alternative issue to hype by racist evangelical groups in order to pull in traditionally staunch anti-abortion religions such as Catholics into a movement that, at its core, was far more about racism "segregation". (Traditionally if I recall, the evangelical movement has been more puritan in sex norms, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the reflexive opposition to abortion is also rooted in opposition to the sexual revolution and 1960s feminism developments, though I've found less articles that explore that aspect.) Abortion is a pretty tricky moral subject, but the abortion debate really is half not about abortion itself these days. Just querying conservative sites, it seems like the fact that Texas's abortion law blocks abortion from rape and incest is heavily downplayed in your usual overemotional bait sites. Obviously so, because even some conservatives wouldn't like that very much. The commentary section at Breitbart in the mean time on the first article on the Texas law quickly devolve into hatefests over Blacks, immigrants, and "baby murderer mothers... spreading their legs open". If those racist idiots actually stopped racism-ing and started to think about having no rape or incest exemptions, maybe they wouldn't like the Texas law as much. But that's not really the point of the stance, is it? PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:38, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Cory, I will kindly ask you not to explain to me what the bulk of my neighbors think given what they've supported when given enough power. Because quite bluntly, those exceptions are the reluctant compromise they give to advance their political agenda. When they don't need to compromise politically they just ban the lot of it and hang the consequences. I know, I'm living in a fucking state where they've done this, AND IT WAS POPULAR. I know this because the approval polls for the governor went Up among Republicans. They don't give a fuck. Period. 14:48, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What politicians want != what the public wants. What your state wants != what the entire country wants.  It's also possible that 1/5th of Americans would like those exceptions but it's not a hill they are willing to die on, and would be ok without those exceptions, whereas for another 1/5th of Americans, "BABYMURDER!!!! RAAAAAGHGGHGH!!!".  16:17, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Let me put this in simple terms. Approval among Republicans went up. They approved of the ban. They either didn't care enough to make sure there was exception or just straight up didn't care period. Grow the fuck up. 17:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Jesus fuck, Commie, why are you always fighting people? You fought people to the death when I first posted, and as one example ridiculed CorruptUser's speculation as pointless, dumb and baseless when I think he pointed out some very good reasons why Hanlon's razor has difficulty explaining it. Why are you so fucking aggressive towards the other Wikians? An Advocate (talk) 19:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC)
 * First, Advocate, I like Commie. As for his fighting, he's a pedant about logic the same way some are about... umm... grammar.  It's not a bad thing, bc we as a group shouldn't rely on overgeneralizations.
 * As for the argument, let's look at it from a different angle.
 * P1 "BAN ALL GUNS!"
 * P2 "Guns should have restrictions, but I'd prefer no guns to restricted guns"
 * P3 "Guns should always be allowed in these certain cases, but otherwise we do need more restrictions"
 * Governor: "I have banned all guns"
 * P1: "WOOO WE LOVE YOU!"
 * P2: "This is better than the prior system, not perfect I suppose but good job"
 * P3: "I am mildly upset by this turn of events"
 * In this case, a majority of people want guns with restrictions, but a majority are happier with guns being banned than not being banned. Morton's Fork.  While I don't know your state, that's what it seems to be for a lot of places; a majority of the group would prefer "complete ban, no loopholes" over "any time before 3rd trimester" system, but that's not quite the same as saying that a majority wants a complete ban.  19:19, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea why I'd be combative towards Cory. It's not as if he shoots his mouth off, and then has to be dragged kicking and screaming towards reality, or how he dishonestly frames shit at the slightest opportunity. I totes have no idea what could possibly cause me to treat someone like that poorly. 19:28, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "While I don't know your state, that's what it seems to be for a lot of places;" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which state I live in. 19:31, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Texas. I have a vague understanding of Texas, but not enough to Know.  19:32, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If you'd provided half the information I gave out in this thread I easily figure out which state you're in. I literally mentioned the GOP having overwhelming power in the state government, mentioned the absolutist abortion ban, and pointed out how popular it was among the local GOP. The first and second narrow it down to the Southern US, and the second pretty much screams that it's Texas. Like I said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. 19:42, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * FFS I didn't say I didn't know which state you were in, I said I don't know your state. Off the top of my head, I'd struggle to name 3 governors of Texas.  Without looking it up, could you name 3 governors of, say, Rhode Island?  19:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, but Rhode Island didn't recently pass an abortion ban that made national headlines, nor do they routinely make headlines for similar batshitery. 21:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, they're more into lead paint and ridiculously corrupt Italian politicians, a la Buddy Cianci. And their sovereign citizens always have a fun time when they spew their bullshit here in CT, our lack of sheriffs produces some especially hilarious moments. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 22:34, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

If there was a cover-up in an attempt to downplay a rare case of someone from the trans community assaulting someone in a bathroom that is unequivocally bad. The fact that an assault took place is unequivocally awful. The coverage of this story by some media outlets is vile. I wish rape was taken as seriously in general as it is when it is perpetrated by marginalised people. Shabi DOO  15:58, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Uh... rape is usually not taken seriously when it's done by a marginalized person because the victim is usually also marginalized. There's media silence on intra-racial crime (i.e., Black on Black) in general.  Most argue it's because people pay more attention when the victim is a young, attractive, high social status female (missing White woman syndrome), though the Alt-Right will argue that it's really because the media is actively trying to undo the image of the "Black brute".  Related, this in my favorite Onion video of all time   "This is America; Nobody deserves to be treated as a Black man  . 16:52, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Sharp increase in United States road deaths for 2021
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released the Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January-June) of 2021, which shows the largest six-month increase ever recorded in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System’s history. An estimated 20,160 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first half of 2021, up 18.4% over 2020. That’s the largest number of projected fatalities in that time period since 2006. (USDOT Releases New Data Showing That Road Fatalities Spiked in First Half of 2021). Have people forgotten how to drive during the lockdowns? 1.136.110.103 (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I love how you just jump to the conclusion that the rise and motor accidents and the covid lockdowns are connected. No concern trolling here, no sirree... 20:50, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My gut reaction was that people weren't driving as much in 2020 due to the lockdowns, but according to the stats, 2020 didn't have a low number of deaths. 21:40, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Some people's driving skills experienced some atrophy during the pandemic. Alcohol consumption increased during the pandemic which would increase DUI/DWI.


 * If we're throwing out concern trolling bullshit and suspicious new accounts, might as well say that this was caused angry elderlies who, goaded by QAnon conspiracy theories, Facebook rageposts and all-caps tweets from Angry Baby, road raged their way to higher fatalities in 2020, as the red-mist anger surging in their minds at the thought of having to wear a face mask blinded them from seeing the tree they crashed into. :p This is bullshit, of course, but closer to the one article I found (Vox) that implied the root cause being (paraphrased) people were driving more like assholes in 2020 due to the lighter traffic load during the pandemic. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 22:40, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Why not one up their stupidity by blaming the Satan? It works just as well as their contrived bullshit. 22:57, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Another factor here, is that because people are ordering more stuff online, there are more commercial motor vehicles on the road. Or it could just be that a global pandemic is stressing everyone out and stress leads to bad decisions.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:48, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Compared to the same period in 2020, total fatalities increased 18.4% and total vehicle miles travelled increased 13%. Examining fatality rates per vehicle mile travelled, 2021 had a higher rate in the first quarter, but a lower rate in the second quarter.  Comparing the first halves overall, the fatality rate per 100 million VMT increased from 1.28 to 1.34, quite a bit less than 18%; the total fatalities data is exaggerated by the increased number of miles driven in 2021.  Looking at the monthly fatality rate data, there was a fairly big jump from March 2020 to April 2020, and the rate has remained elevated since. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒   talk  00:27, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Trump supporter spewing nonsense. Proceed with caution
I am a surburban mom and I am wondering what Joe Biden going to do to make sure there are Christmas presents in the stores? This supply chain problem has got to stop.

If there are no Christmas presents in the stores this year, I am going to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Mommabear (talk) 22:43, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Worried more about material items than essential items. I can bet that you are already a Trump supporter and believe everything he says. Save some face and admit it. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Clearly, somebody hasn't read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and doesn't know the true meaning of the holiday-Hastur! (talk) 22:52, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Given we don't live under a command economy, there is only so much that the president, a government official, can do to control such things. Of course Ken doesn't care about that, only "opposing team bad". 22:54, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * After some further thought I think this topic definitively proves that Ken is mentally nine years old. This would explain much of his behavior. 00:18, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Does Godel's Ontological Proof prove that god exists?
Someone used it when I was striking down their reasons for being a god and they don't seem to want to let this one go. I took a look at it but it seemed very confusing. I didn't really understand what part of it exactly proved that god exists yet they are making out like it does. So does it?Machina (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Short answer? No. 00:16, 31 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Sightly longer answer: The reason all existence proofs are a priori flawed is just this: logic deals with ideas about things and not the things themselves. One can prove a logical construction is correct, as in geometry, say, I can prove that the square root of 2 exists on the real number line. It is the idea of the square root of two that I prove exists and that it is logically consistent with rational numbers. But how can one prove that a thing exists apart from the idea of it? In physics, for example, one proves a physical thing exists by observing the thing itself, or by measuring the effects of its presence. Some will answer that God is not a physical thing. If it is not, then we have no systematic method for describing it, and therefore we can say nothing about its existence.UncleKrampus (talk) 00:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Gödel’s proof is unsound and relies on a host of unclear, poorly-defined notions, inherited from Aristotle and the scholastic tradition: ‘necessity’, ‘essence’, ‘possibility’, ‘the property of being Godlike’, ‘necessary existence’, ‘necessary exemplification’ etc. Unfortunately, Gödel’s Leibnizian theism is, I believe, largely a result of him being raised christian (as an side, Skepchick has recently uploaded a good video on the affect of upbringing on children’s religiosity or lack thereof). In sum, Gödel’s “ontological proof” marks a low point in the work of the finest logician (and easily one of the finest minds) human kind has thus far produced. As a further aside: you should check out Gödel’s paper on physics that he presented to Einstein as a birthday gift—Gödel was a mathematician with no formal training in physics; the paper is a testament to Gödel’s genius. Leucippus Salva veritate 00:50, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Israel's human rights situation has become much worse
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/palestinian-human-rights-ngo/

Palestinian civil rights groups are falsely being labeled as terrorists. Worse yet, settlement construction on illegally occupied territories is accelerating. So much for Israel being a democratic and free country. It is rapidly moving towards totalitarian dictatorship. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 19:01, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's hardly an unbiased source. The harsh reality is that you can't set up an org without Fatah or Hamas or some other groups' approval.  But this means you can't have a human rights group that isn't horribly biased if not an outright shell org.  Meanwhile, Israel just does what it does because there's no connection between international pressure and its actions, i.e., the boycotts would happen at the same rate whether Israel started giving up territory or annexed the territories piece by piece, so why not take over various bits little by little?  It's a bad situation for everyone, but too many people want the situation to remain unresolved indefinitely, e.g., Israeli government wants a convenient enemy to keep its citizens all too willing to reelect the same shits, Hamas/Fatah would cease to exist if there was actual peace, nearby Arab countries want the Palestinians as de facto low wage/slave labor and do not want them leaving for a Palestinian state but at the same time want to make sure they never ask why they are treated like shit in their host countries, Arab countries further afield want a convenient scapegoat and whatever keeps the locals looking at anything other than the corrupt overlords, Iranians want a wedge between various Arab states as well as against Israel itself to avoid a united Arab front wiping the Iranians out again (part of the Iranian national identity is how filthy, uneducated Arabs from the Western conquered glorious Persia), the US/EU is making too much money in arms deals with everyone, etc etc.  19:41, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Some Palestinian rights groups ARE fronts for terrorist organisations (though only some) and the story on the ground and the intricacies of power structures are always more complex than it seems. Also Palestine's record on human rights is extremely dire. Having said that, you won't get any argument from me over how selective "human rights" are in Israel and how those rights are very much dependant on what religion you do or do not have and what side of the wall you are on. All western nations are spotty when it comes to human rights, but Israel is in a special class when it comes to boasting about how civilised and progressive they are while endlessly doing easily avoided unspeakably cruel things. Shabi  DOO  19:48, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Israel's use of white phosphorus on civilians negates any stance they may desire on human rights. Cardinal Chang (talk) 19:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The thing with Isreal and Palestine is that it's not a battle of equals, Israel effectively calls all the shots on Palestinian territory. That's why Israel has a greater share of the blame: they could end the suffering but they choose not to. Plutocow (talk) 20:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * -Flandres (talk) 20:10, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * so people who peacefully protest deserve to be labeled as terrorists? This is merely a move to stifle free speech. Israel commonly uses extreme force against protesters and they have a police brutality problem much like the US. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 22:30, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No Zombie, if you had given me the consideration of fully reading my text, you could not remotely conclude that I believe Palestinians cannot peacefully protest. I simply said that some rights groups (and only some) are fronts for terrorist organisations. The Israeli state should not bother legitimate rights groups (though they have been known to) and should be free game to put a stop to false ones. To pretend that some rights groups are not fronts would be distorting reality. Most rights groups in Palestine are simply trying to piece together the rights that Israel say they stand for but fail to ensure Palestinians actually enjoy. And Palestinian rights groups should fight for the basic dignity they are often not given. However, when Hamas use rights groups as a front for their trouble-making, it certainly makes life more difficult both for real Palestinian rights groups, and also for the trigger happy Israeli army who are quick to blanket most Palestinians as terrorists. While I would agree that Israel is more outrageous in the human rights abuses they perpetrate (especially with their narrative as some paragon of Rights surrounded by tyrannical states while they pick away the little land Palestine has left while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rot away in refugee camps), the state of human rights in Palestine are also absolutely terrible with a staggering level of corruption and thuggery. Just because a place is oppressed and a people are marginalised doesn't mean you should pretend that avoidable injustices do not exist amongst them. Shabi  DOO  18:28, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the Palestinian leadership is for years have decided that its more important to commit terrorist acts against Israel rather than try and build a nation. To be fair, I don't consider Israel as pure as snow (no country really is) however they have a good excuse on why they don't want to make life better for Palestinian fellows. Terrorism. Stop Hamas and terrorist activity and maybe things will be different. BeardOfZeus (talk) 22:52, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * 02:33, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Total nonsense. Palestine has gone for years without terrorist activity and Israel made zero effort to change anything. Terrorism doesn't work. No terrorism doesn't work. Nothing seems to work. These are all just excuses. Both sides engage in pointless unspeakable behaviour (not white as snow is an absurd understatement). But Israel is the one who, as another user said, calls all the shots, has almost all the power, the moral high ground and causes 99% of the pain and damage. Shabi  DOO  08:37, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say the crux of the problem is on Palestinian leaders not on Israel. They could stop the suffering but they don't want to. BeardOfZeus (talk) 22:53, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe I’m mincing words but I don’t think that’s “the crux of the problem”. The issue is complicated. How do you start a nation when you’re practically an enclave, walled away from resources? Palestinians don’t even have good access to building material for infrastructure. Probliknaut (talk) 23:02, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * To elaborate, what I mean to say is that how can you convince Joe Shmoe to not be pissed at The Big Guy when you can’t even lift yourself up? Of course it’d be more desirable to kick The Big Guy in the shin, even if you’ll be slapped right back. Probliknaut (talk) 23:05, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * LOL, you do realize you are talking about a place that has no clean water and very little electricity? Both things Israel can easily fix, but they're too busy stealing houses in the West Bank? Maybe take a course in international relations and then you will sound less stupid. Plutocow (talk) 23:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If clean water and sewers were really Hamas's top priority, even without cooperation with Israel they would've built sewer lines instead of tunnels and smuggled in filtration systems instead of weapons. They bring in only enough for the Hamas members themselves, and everyone else gets fuckall.  It's by design, because the common folk being in unbearable conditions makes them dependent upon Hamas for everything.  23:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * 02:35, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Of course, Israel could fix that and reduce people's dependence on Hamas. The point is that you can't really blame people for being dependent on Hamas when they realistically have no other options. Of course, Israel probably prefers it that way as now they can use "counter-terrorism" as an excuse for illegally settling Palestinian land. Plutocow (talk) 00:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)


 * How? Israel can't send construction workers into the Gaza strip without risking them getting killed, and even if built, Hamas would intentionally tear it down the way they did the Gaza greenhouses in 2005.  00:28, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * BeardOfZeus (talk) 00:44, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Who's job is to protect and look after the people living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip? The Palestinian Authority and Hamas! Hamas is too busy being a terrorist organisation than looking after its people. BeardOfZeus (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Palestine is under Israeli occupation, dumbass. I once again recommend taking some time to study international relations before you make yourself look like even more of an idiot. Plutocow (talk) 01:08, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Israel controls most of Palestine's water supply. They can easily make significant improvements to the quality of life in Palestine. Plutocow (talk) 01:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (ec) Yeah but who runs the Gaza Strip? Hamas does. Israel has no control over Gazan affairs since 2005. Hamas has complete control on what's happening in Gaza. Have they attempted to run the area peacefully? Have they built roads, made schools and hospitals? Or have they continue their (frankly stupid) vendetta against Israel? Oh, and stop with the ad hominem attacks please. I'm from Australia and believe me we have some great insults to those who annoy us.
 * Israel has given Gazan an opportunity for self government. But Hamas has completely squandered it. BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:18, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you even understand what "occupation" is? Geez, you are stupid. Plutocow (talk) 01:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, wanker, I know what occupation is. Gaza is not occupied, Israel has no military or civilian populations in the area since 2006. Hamas controls Gaza not Israel. BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is a semi-current map of who controls who of the area BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Hamas has total control over Gaza, including its airspace, territorial seas, border crossings, water supplies, power supplies, and the movement of its citizens! You sure showed me! Plutocow (talk) 01:34, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

At ’s mention of Gaza greenhouses I find myself committed to read all of the other wiki’s discussion on Israel’s disengagement. Probliknaut (talk) 01:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah I wonder why? Oh it says here that Hamas rockets have destroyed power lines on Israeli side, leading to cuts for Gaza residents! Why won't Hamas built power and water infrastructure? Because their too busy being terrorists! And of course Gaza could really do with control with its airspace, territorial seas, border crossings! If only if Gaza wasn't controlled by a terrorist organisation... BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:42, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You are very intelligent! I didn't realize that you could build power infrastructure without having sufficient supplies to build them or a good enough supply of oil for the additional plants to be worthwhile! I didn't know that a nation can be self-sufficient with a poor natural water supply! I didn't realize that the blockade on Gaza literally doesn't exist! I don't know why Hamas has never had these brilliant ideas! PragerU should hire you! Plutocow (talk) 01:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The word "occupation" is done for propaganda purposes, and I really wish we would be able to see through this here. It's used to try and promote the idea that the very existence of Israel is occupation, that as long as Israel exists on any territory whatsoever it's illegitimate, etc. You can't "occupy" without any boots on the ground. We could argue that Gaza is under siege, and there's a strong argument to be made for that. But don't be so foolish as to fall for the rhetoric of "occupation". 01:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It is effectively occupation when Israel controls the airspace, water around Gaza, and the land routes outside of it, as well as important resources such as the water and electricity. The Faroe Islands have more self-dependency than Gaza does. Occupation doesn't need boots on the ground, any control of an area through military force (including the air force and navy) counts. Plutocow (talk) 01:53, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Have you actually bothered to read what I wrote above? Or you just repeating yourself? How do you expect Israel to negotiate something important like oil to Hamas if your negotiator is literally attempting to bomb you every couple of years? BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I wonder why? Plus, everyone knows that water is the best material for building rockets! Plutocow (talk) 02:02, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is. You make hydrogen by running electricity through water, although any water will work.  02:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure they're not talking about the Hindenburg. Plutocow (talk) 02:08, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No. I'm talking about liquid hydrogen, which NASA uses for rocket launches.  02:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, I don't think they're talking about that kind of rocket. (Niter would be more useful in that case.) Plutocow (talk) 02:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (ec) No the problem is that Hamas more cares about terrorism then they do about water. BeardOfZeus (talk) 02:16, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, the problem is you wouldn't know nuance if it hit you in the face with a niter-powered rocket. What realistic steps would you do to secure a water supply as a Palestinian? Plutocow (talk) 02:18, 26 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Get rid of the parts of the Hamas charter which specifically call for the destruction of Israel, agree to a deal that allows for the staged removal of the travel restrictions and blockades in exchange for recognizing the state of Israel in at the very least the pre-67 borders in exchange for peace, so that importation of basic goods, parts, and fuel can occur without Hamas acting as the gatekeeper of the smuggling tunnels? 02:25, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would add basic human rights for Gazan residents as well. BeardOfZeus (talk) 02:33, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That all depends on Israel cooperating though, and they have still taken a lot of territory in the West Bank and probably wouldn't want to leave. If the more peaceful PA hasn't been able to accomplish anything, could a reformed Hamas really be able to do that? Obviously, they're only hurting the situation at this point, but unless Israel is willing to budge they aren't going to be able to accomplish much. Also, water is a human right BOZ (I should start calling you BOZo). Plutocow (talk) 02:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's definitely possible if the citizens of Israel want a change. After all Israel is a liberal democracy. And if you call be BOZo I will call you PooCow. BeardOfZeus (talk) 03:30, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This is all boring. Anyone else bored?  03:35, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Ben Shapiro has better arguments about Israel/Palestine than BOZo here. Plutocow (talk) 03:44, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Public service announcement: Several years ago, there was a lengthy dispute over the slant of the Israel and Palestine pages on RW, primarily by two Sysops. The end result was one of the two sysops got banned and the other got sysop-revoked. It would be a good idea to think twice before letting things devolve into an edit war on those two pages. Bongolian (talk) 05:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Come on, PooCow I can insult people better. BeardOfZeus (talk) 05:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the Kiwifarms and the doxxing. Oh, and several other sysops gave up on the site over the vitriol.  And I think it was at least four sysops that were banned or revoked?  I just checked, I see at least four with sysoprevoke.
 * As for PC and BoZ, both of you knock it off with the insults. 05:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Eh, I'm not concerned with that. We shouldn't let past drama cloud our ability to say things. My big problem with BOZo is that what he was promoting was basically bigotry. If you can reduce an entire population to just being terrorists, then things like taking essential needs like water away from them become justified. This kind of rhetoric is harmful and needs to be called out where it exists. They also have a clearly juvenile understanding of the topic, e.g. by not understanding how Hamas isn't responsible for every single thing that happens in the Gaza Strip. ("Hamas has complete control on what's happening in Gaza" I'd argue that the only country that has complete control over everything in its borders is North Korea, and even then that's not always true (people still do manage to escape).) Maybe I went a bit too hard with the snark but those overgeneralizations were pretty indicative of someone who hasn't done any reading on the topic and only knows what they hear from Fox News (or whatever the Australian equivalent is). Anyway, people are complex, and you can never attribute behavior to people just loving to be terrorists, and doing that can easily lead to horrific places. Plutocow (talk) 05:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have never claimed that ALL Palestinians are terrorist. I have no idea what you are talking about, PooCow (or Cow Manure). Unless your claiming that every Palestinians is a Hamas supporter. I also have never said that Palestinians should be denied water. What I am saying that Hamas, as the de facto rulers of Gaza has a duty of care to help their citizens something that they have failed miserably. They should be the one who should care the most about giving their citizens the infrastructure they need to survive. But Hamas only cares about is their vendetta against Israel. Seriously all that time, effort and resources sending bombs to Israeli territory could be better spent on more better things like giving its citizens clean water. Instead of making bombs, Hamas leaders should be going to the negotiating table with Israel over these issues. BeardOfZeus (talk) 06:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "I don't consider Israel as pure as snow (no country really is) however they have a good excuse on why they don't want to make life better for Palestinian fellows. Terrorism. Stop Hamas and terrorist activity and maybe things will be different." You might not directly be saying it, but there is an insinuation that the suffering of Palestinians is justified because of the terrorist activity. You have also never said that Israel should give the Palestinians their water supply independent of other conditions. It's not as simple as just not building rockets, as Gaza has poor water resources and is dependent on outside sources for water. Imagine what would happen to the Vegas area if the Colorado River was cut off. And you are also not considering the West Bank situation, where the PA has tried negotiating with Israel for years but they are still stealing land illegally. But here, I'll give you some resources to go over so you can actually understand some of these issues. "If we stop killing each other everyone would get along!" is such a childish take. Plutocow (talk) 06:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, pretend your the prime minister of Israel for a second. There is some people in your government as well as your own citizen who want you to give to do something about the water situation in Gaza. Well you can't directly send builders into Gaza because Hamas will kill them all. You could try giving money to Hamas. But they will just use that money for other purposes. You could open the border between Israel and Gaza but you will know what will happen. There is literally nothing that Israel can do about the water situation unless Hamas stop being killers. Also, I find the line . "If we stop killing each other everyone would get along!" is such a childish take. wrong. Literally the very fact that people don't kill each other is the very first step to any solution.
 * Also, I never said that the Palestinian suffering is justified. Its the Hamas leaders who believe that Palestinian suffering is justified. That's why they spend so much building rockets to send to Israel killing civilians. Also, I notice that Egypt is closing the border to Gaza. Plutocow do you think Egypt's decision is justified? BeardOfZeus (talk) 06:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Read this for more information. Israel had controlled Palestine's water sources for far longer than Hamas was even a thing. And it's not a problem of just infrastructure, Gaza needs a noncontaminated source of water that it just doesn't have. Do you think freshwater is an unlimited resource? Of course what Egypt is doing is bad and it's largely because of Israel (and its backer the U.S.) that it does this.
 * Why don't you imagine that you were born in Gaza. For all your life, you've had very little drinking water and what you have is contaminated, but when you get sick you can't get any medicine. The effectiveness of hospitals are limited by little electricity. Job opportunites are nonexistant and you live in poverty. You can't leave to go to a better place, and you aren't even allowed to go to some places in your own country. And yet you learn that this is the result of the actions of one country, where the people there just don't have the struggles that you are expected to put up with daily. And if you're unlucky you can be killed by a missile through no fault of your own. Do you really think Hamas could fix these problems? Building water structures is out because they lack a clean source. Building power plants is pointless if they can't get enough oil to make use of them. Without basic amenities they can't really do much else. Is it really surprising that many see the only solution to be standing up to Israel in any way they can? Of course, what they're doing won't solve anything, but just sitting down and doing nothing won't solve anything either. International pressure on Israel is really the only way. Plutocow (talk) 07:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The biggest problem with Israel right now is with one of your statements, Beard: "Israel is a liberal democracy". Well, no... try telling that to the people in the occupied territories. Even in Israel itself, by all accounts it is a flawed democracy at this time with a worrying trend of sectarianism (of all ethnic groups, they should know better than to have an extremist Jewish supremacist band that shouts "death to Arabs" at rallies, but these days that sect exists). More than one observer has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa; while not that bad yet in my opinion, I think Israel does have a couple of paths. They can either chose to remain a democracy by resolving the occupied territory problem fairly... or continue in their settlement building ways and risk becoming exactly that, an apartheid ethnic state. And I think focusing on "terrorism" is a bit of a hand-wave; sure, Hamas has done *plenty* of shitty things, but it's not like Israel is above nasty behavior (just ask Iran's nuclear scientists), and it's not like sectarian terrorism is unresolvable (just ask Ireland's IRA). It's easy for humans to default to Tribal Asshole Ape mode and much harder to try and work out peace; at the moment, it seems like Israel's taking the easy approach. Their choice... PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The IRA (and the ETA) was only solvable after the Cold War ended and the Russians stopped sending money. By that logic, Israel needs to find a way to end the Arab-Israeli (and Iranian-Israeli) conflicts before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end, but so long as the A-I (and I-I) are kept going by I-P, well, everyone is stuck in a loop until some sort of Mid-Eastern Chernobyl cripples the entire economy and at least one side collapses.  And that's not necessarily an ideal situation, considering that the followup to the Soviet system was a literal decade of near constant genocides; you may have heard of Bosnia, but chances are you didn't hear about Dagestan and Georgia and all the other genocides that weren't in the EU's backyard, and those happened in societies with minor amounts of ethnic division.  Don't think the US or EU countries are any better; if France, the UK or the US collapsed tomorrow, there's a damn good chance it'd devolve into a racial conflict disturbingly quickly.  14:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Fun stuff: From what I understand, &, part of Israel’s decision to “leave” Gaza (say what you will about it being occupied or not) was for demographics; if they don’t recognize Gaza then their is less Palestinian votes to worry about. Democracy! Probliknaut (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's actually my argument regarding the settlements; annex as much land as you want, but you have to annex the people too. Anything else is ethnic cleansing.  Interestingly, Israel offers citizenship to the Arabs of East Jerusalem and Golan Heights, so in my eyes those are "legitimate" whereas the other settlements... not so much.  14:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * 'The IRA (and the ETA) was only solvable after the Cold War ended and the Russians stopped sending money.' thats false. no idea about ETA, but PIRA, the  prime movers during the troubles got their arms from america, libya too, gaddafi gave arms to fucking everyone, and a mixture  of terrorist organisations around the world. russia provided arms only briefly to the IRA as it was post civil war, being the losing side, in the 20s and 30sAMassiveGay (talk) 14:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Both sides, shut up. The middle east is awful, and it is only degrees of awful. Both are bad. Now, can we delete this stack of kindling? Schwarzwald ( 170.158.82.103 (talk) 14:39, 26 October 2021 (UTC) )
 * thats some quality political analysis right there. well done. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:59, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Can we tak about the new Dune movie instead? GeeJayK (talk) 15:35, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * start another thread if you like, like a grown up AMassiveGay (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Someone already did it for me. Israel vs Palestine discussions seem to trigger lots of people on both sides. I read some threads from 10 years ago and I was surprised at how angry people were back then while discussing this subject. Things haven't changed, I guess. GeeJayK (talk) 16:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC) The Nation is a questionable source. I did some fact checks, and they have a moderate left bias, and a slightly high amount of facts. It's kinda hard to tell. What's certain - evantually the USA and UK will have to recognize Palestine, to get certain countries to recognize Israel. They got kinda lucky with Morocco (Western Sahara bs) but they won't always. Saudi Arabia is an extremely powerful country, that they might need to do. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 18:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * recognise what exactly? palestine its shrinking as it is with settlements encroaching what there is of it. israel will formally annex those areas with whats left of palestine a rump state of a rump state. the 2 state solution is long dead. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Nation is IMHO fine factually (well, most of the time), but very biased towards the progressive left. I would kind of put them in the same category Reason (also fine, most of the time, factually, but very biased towards a libertarian-to-neo-con perspective.) Progressives typically these days are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in the United States, of course, so if you prefer other sources with less strong bias, you can see this same story on AP News or NPR. Israel claims that the outlawed groups were a front for the PFLP, but per the Times of Israel a lot of people disagree with that classification. For instance, J Street (the American liberal counterpart to the AIPAC lobbying group) doesn't like this decision very much. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 18:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Nation is considered reliable enough for Wikipedia, as a reference. There's nothing wrong with being biased against obvious human rights violations. Plutocow (talk) 21:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * According to the 2020 Democracy Index Israel has a DI index of 7.84 around the same as Estonia and just above Italy while Palestine has a DI of only 3.83. So while Israel has many problems its definitely not as evil as many people like to claim it is. BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Palestine government must do what is necessary to protect its own citizens, something that they have been failing for a long time. BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Apartheid states aren't democracies. And from the Gaza perspective the only way to protect its citizens is to fight against the blockade. That's kind of the problem with negotiating with Hamas: they really have nothing to lose at this point. Plutocow (talk) 23:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Have nothing to lose? Well they will keep on losing over and over and over and over again. Absolutely nothing will change. And at the end, it will be the citizens of Gaza who will suffer the consequences. Gazans are sick of this constant hell they have been forced to live in and now they are leaving. This is really the only thing Israel can do. Here is another source BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:25, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Of course they are trying to leave the genocidal conditions Israel is imposing on them. Why you are blaming the victim in this situation is beyond me. Plutocow (talk) 23:49, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I am sorry I am hurting the good and honest name of Hamas. /s BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not talking about Hamas, I'm talking about how you think the people of Palestine should change before Israel stops its genocidal blockade, instead of just saying that the genocidal blockade is the responsibility of Israel. Unless you think that clean water is an acceptable leveraging token. Plutocow (talk) 00:07, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Your seriously not listening to what I wrote. I completely agree that Palestinians should have water. Having the right to clean drinking water is a must for any society. However any attempt to give Palestine's people water will end in failure as Hamas will not be willing to negotiate with anybody. Do you seriously believe Hamas is going to help their own citizens? I think not. BeardOfZeus (talk) 00:20, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Think of this, a man comes to you weak and starving. He really needs water. But every time you go up to him he starts attacking you. You try to help him but he refuses help. Now do you understand the problem? BeardOfZeus (talk) 00:20, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, you're blaming Hamas when Israel put this blockade into place before Hamas had any power. Your analogy suggests that Israel tried giving them water, which never happened. It's more like a man who took your water and won't give it back, and blames you for any problems that arise from that situation. Israel could just try not blockading the water, and more people in Gaza would then have access to water. It's that simple, but Israel won't do that. Israel's goal right now isn't the protection of themselves but the displacement of Palestinians, and the land stealing in the West Bank despite the PA not being a terrorist organization shows that. (Also, what is really the difference between Hamas rockets and Israeli missiles besides that the latter kills more people? This is a useful graph showing who's really been killed the most as a result of the conflict) Plutocow (talk) 00:32, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually the blockade of Gaza started in 2007 when Hamas took over Gaza . In fact Israel left Gaza in 2005 . Also, Israel only send rockets into Gaza in self defence. If Hamas really cares about its people it shouldn't be sending rockets into Israel. Its the Golden Rule, treat others the way I want to be treated. BeardOfZeus (talk) 02:17, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * 02:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Israel never left, they still controls Gaza's airspace and waters. And when they do it, they're terrorists, but when we do it, it's totally justified self defense, yeah sure. By the standards of the golden rule, Hamas's actions are justified since Israel withholding the water kills far more Palestinians than the rockets do Israelis. Funny how you show so many double standards in that situation. And it is a genocide - according to the UN, In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, which is exactly what the blockade is doing. There were people who justified apartheid South Africa by saying that the ANC were terrorists - when will we learn? Plutocow (talk) 03:25, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Meh, Hamas would probably say that if Israel really cares about the rockets they fire, they'd accept their demands for a truce. One of them, of course, being a return to the 1967 borders, e.g. rollback that whole darn occupied territory thing in the first place and create a Palestinian state (or maybe give Gaza back to Egypt, for all I know, but it seems fashionable to say "new state please" these days). You realize that Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 (which was of course the last election due to the political shitshow between Hamas and Fatah) right? Apparently some people think they are okay, or at least the best alternative for now. This whole deal is basically a sectarian shitshow, and has been pretty much been such ever since Britain decided that was an awesome idea (it was the age of imperialism after all, we know how fashionable imposing a culture on another was at the time, and we also know how horribly it usually goes). There is indeed a lot of "both sides bad" one can say about the situation, but I'm not sure what can be done about it these days with the current leadership of both sides. In the days when  ruled there was some hope, but he was killed for his troubles of actually starting a peace process by a right-wing shithead of his own ethnicity, and the Palestinians weren't very keen on the Oslo Accords anyways. So it goes. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 03:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

The blockade was created to protect Israel from terrorism because, frankly, Hamas is a terrorist group. BeardOfZeus (talk) 07:39, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Btw, the PA already accepted a two-state solution based on 1967 borders . Now it's up to the Israelis to follow. 09:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would like everyone to know that the PNA is also guilty of police brutality and human rights violations. I suspect that the Palestinian President Abbas want to hold on to power considering that he keeps cancelling elections. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 21:23, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Not surprised by him cancelling elections, Hamas would win it by a landslide. 12:14, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

A discussion of meta-ethics
We are commonly called upon, out of a sense of duty, to make personal judgements about the just or unjust nature of events in real life, or even with respect to fictional narratives. Such a real case may call upon one to consider ones entire inventory of knowledge with respect to law, culture, tradition and human values to obtain a practicable result; while fiction, being entirely theoretical, encourages one to engage in more speculative resolutions, sometimes resulting in flights of fancy not amenable to final judgements. For the most part, the involved parties are enumerable, events are limited in time and place, have already transpired or been described. But what is one to think when whole civilizations are in conflict? The case of Palestine/Israeli conflict is one discussed at length above and serves as a typical example of large-scale conflicts. From the previous argument one might conclude that the moral judgements one makes concerning discrete events are consequences of finite games. That is to say, events playing out in a well-defined manner that permit consequences to be assigned as though winners and losers were clearly identifiable. But what about the large scale conflicts that are not in any real sense discrete? Evidently, they can not come to the result typical of a finite game.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:32, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I find it a little difficult to understand what you are saying here. Could you give us some example (even if theoretical?) Shabi  DOO  21:18, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't want to go on for too long pending interest in the problem. What I am concerned with is the idea that a question of justice can always be settled. I approach the problem by distinguishing conflicts in terms of finite and infinite. As you might imagine, infinite games are possibly never-ending. The main idea suggested by this framing is those playing infinite games cannot be easily defeated without extreme means. The Israeli/Palestine conflict is an example. I myself have always had sympathy for the Palestinians. My discussion is not meant to argue in favor of either side of that conflict.


 * The most obvious example, I would say, is the solution of the problem instigated by German invasions during the 1930s. We might assume the motive for German aggression in Europe were the recovery of German territories lost during WWI. The German invasion of Poland was too much aggression to countenance for Great Britain and France, and so, to reverse German expansion they declared war on Germany in 1939. This disrupted the infinite game of give and take between opponents acting locally, that is, a competition likely to continue indefinitely, and transformed the conflict into a finite game, one that could only end when one of the players were utterly defeated. WWII was undertaken to transform an infinite game into a finite one. The Germans were beaten: a good thing. A relatively small group of German authorities were tried at Nuremburg and finite justice was then possible. UncleKrampus (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Will there ever be justice for a harmed party? I don't know, similar question; can you ever repay the black americans for slavery? Can you ever give reparations for what happened to the natives in colonization? Can the Israelites ever make up for the fact that they stole the homes from people when they walked in and slit their throats? Then later, had this fucking repugnant cunt come out and 'justify' that with this dribble? A discussion on meta ethics over these actions is fucking pretentious at best. It's theft. Other sad facts; Israeli casualties have their own dedicated page on wikipedia, where the troops who died in the 6 Day war are remembered not as marauders and armed thieves, but soldiers who should be 'honoured' for dying for their thievery. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 21:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I have some sad news.
Tornado kills person in Mississippi. Rated EF1 as of now. 15th tornado death of the year, first since Ida (so 9/1). (Death was 10/27). American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * “Tornado Kills person in Mississippi …. Death was 10/27. American time change coming up November 7”—morbid hook, death odds, excellent pacing, punchline! You’re one sick American exceptionalist‽ Leucippus Salva veritate 01:30, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok...American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 23:59, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * “Ok…American time change coming up November 7”—Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, when will the non-sequiturs stop? It seems that I could ask you anything and still I would get the same answer: how was your ride on the bus today?—“little bumpy saw a few old ladies therefore—American time change coming up; how’s your life between the sheets you old swordsman?—“pretty good, but she said it turns her off when I inform her about the American time change coming up on November 7, and I think to myself ‘maybe I’m getting old’—girls these days, too much fifty shades and not enough of ‘50 seasonal time changes that will make any line-dancing farm girl say yee ha ma husband’s gonna be home for our allocated 10 mins of adult recreation before he has to go and milk the cows again!’”; how was that funeral yesterday?—“ohhh, THAT mess, things could’ve been worse … I guess; the bereaved didn’t take kindly to my attempt at consolation over the loss of her son “I miss Peter as much as anyone, he was a kind man and a good friend, and remember most of all (she was hanging on my every word at this point) … there’s an American time change coming up, November 7th, spread the word”. Anyhow, in little ol’ Blighty our clocks have gone back, darkness is closing in, its like that vampire film, but in Accrington and Stanley not Alaska.  Leucippus Salva veritate 02:53, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I was not aware that there was an American time change coming up November 7. I hate this time of year. Because of the American time change coming up November 7, listening to world radio is screwed up because some places change their time and some don't and doesn't fuck with people by imposing such ridiculous things as the American time change coming up November 7. Oh, Volmet avaition weather forecasts do not use universal time, or do they? Damn, missed them again. It's always 7:30 someplace but be on the alert because of the American time change coming up November 7. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 03:08, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's actually in my signature, and will be deleted when I sign off on November 7 at around 01:45 UTC. Europe actually had theirs this morning, so now they're sunrises and sunsets are an hour earlier.American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 15:45, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, I was just engaging in some frivolous banter Andrew. And yes, here I’n England we have even shorter days, much to my chagrin. Leucippus Salva veritate 16:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Cosmik, your baronial brushstrokes of non-sequitur have outstripped my measly join in-the-dots canvas. It’s been a year since you greeted me on this website—tempus fugit!—and what a sordid year it’s been … I remember us having discussions during the beginning of this mess, in this watering hole, about the toilet roll panic—how things have unfolded since then! I hope you’re doing well, and I hope you continue to enjoy you’re excursions on this website, this great project; we few, we happy few, us band of brothers and sisters. Leucippus Salva veritate 16:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well yesterday, day was 7:50-5:36. Now it's 6:52-4:34. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 16:55, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I want to expand my YouTube content that involves creepypastas: need suggestions on how to
Okay, numerous people here are aware of my YouTube content (Emergency Alert System videos). I have been wanting into doing creepypasta readings. My channel is solidified in a single form of content.

How difficult would it be to get my original fanbase into a different change of pace? I still intend on making my original content though. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 00:14, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Make what you want, your fans will follow or you will get new fans. What matters is that your heart is behind your content and it remains consistently quality.  If that requires changing it up, than don't be afraid to do it.  Zombie survival (I believe that is your shtick right?) and creepy pasta are not too far off from each other as they are still in the horror genre.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 06:11, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhGcAgh88cc&t=262s This is an example of the content I make. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 21:28, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe have 2 channels and cross-promote them. 82.46.167.158 (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Think I will make a second channel but post my first creepypasta on my main channel as an advertisement. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 15:04, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

We've had inactivity for a while, but
Wanda forms in central Atlantic, from recent NE nor'easter. This could be similar to the 1991 perfect storm in fact. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 13:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It is possible although Hurricane Sandy still beat the Perfect Storm. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 14:25, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sandy was the opposite - the renmants (destructive) vs the precursor. The nor'easter damage is unknown and deaths are zero but it did cause 600,000 power outages.American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 15:43, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

An interesting observation
You guys ever noticed that, in the land of conspiracy-theory-retardation, news websites or social media platforms never have any kind of outages or glitches. Anytime one of these goes down for even twenty seconds... '''IT'S PART OF SOME BIG MYSTERIOUS COVER-UP OF SOMETHING THAT WE DON'T REALLY EVEN KNOW WHAT BUT ITS SOMETHING THAT THEY DON'T WANT US TO KNOW ABOUT!! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!''' Aaronmichael5 18:38 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * With the firm belief that one should keep track of ones own marbles in mind, I can't say I follow what it is that you say you are observing.UncleKrampus (talk) 21:32, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Whenever conspiracy theorists start making their arguments about such things I try to remember two things, 1. Conspiracy Theories are not so much a belief but a narrative. One that allows that individual to explain in some bizarre way what is happening to them and why things are not working out for them. And 2. Alan Moore's brilliant quote taken from an essay about his time writing a conspiracy novel, At First Light (which never got published, but did have a soundtrack album released.) "The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Or, if you are a brave sort of puppet, you look at the world as directed by systemic humanism, like a '58 Caddie that steers like a boat. I never give up on the thought that I owe some gratitude towards the greater mass of humanity that is trying not to murder me. Somehow I find some consolation in that sort of understanding.UncleKrampus (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There are many, many conspiracies which boil down to 'let us make our working lives more comfortable for us, and get as much money and as little hassle from "them upstairs." Anna Livia (talk) 18:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Help, I'm A New Member
Hello, I'm a completely new member and I have no idea what to do or where to start. I am reading RationalWiki:Newcomers, and I have already read the guide, but are there any other pointers that someone can give me? ICan&#39;tThinkOfAUsername (talk) 18:48, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * depends what is you want to do. contribute to articles? go right ahead if you have something to add. stickler for grammar and spelling? correcting typos in articles is always welcome. just wanna chat about stuff that you might not really get a chance to elsewhere? go right ahead. try not to be a dick about things or just in general, and im sure you'll find your feet doing whatever you wind up doing when here. theres nothing you can fuck up that cant be undone, and nothing to say you need to do anything in particular. if something you do is a no-no, someone will tell kindly tell so, and usually you'd have to be a super dick of some kind to be a real problem. try not being a huge racist or  bigot or the like. just say please and thank you, wash behind your ears, and always wash your hands when you done, and im sure you'll be fine. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:37, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What topic is your passion? What do you know about?  You could start there.  19:41, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I am very interested in politics, I am very left wing as you can see from my user page. Are there any articles about politics that need help? ICan&#39;tThinkOfAUsername (talk) 17:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortionately, is my main focus.American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk)  20:05, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So... the impacts of climate change on local weather systems? 20:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. New user writes: "Hello, I'm a completely new member and I have no idea ..."
 * Andrew5 replies to a response, writing: "(Weather) is my main focus". So The "completely new member" is also Andrew5 who joined in June of this year?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:06, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Generally speaking, if you have expertise in any area that overlaps with RW topics, you should contribute to that. If you don't have such expertise, read a book about a topic that interests you and try to contribute based on that. Specifically for, do you have any expertise in Chemtrails or topics in Category:Climatology? Bongolian (talk) 19:03, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have experience with Snow, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy. Draft:Tropical cyclone and a few others. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 20:26, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Guess who else is pro-life now?
Mainland China is pro-life now! Last time I checked their official fertility was about 1.3, which makes be believe it's closer to 1.0. GeeJayK (talk) 19:53, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it'd be closer to 1.6. Not all the girls were aborted, many births are simply unregistered.  19:56, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, if that was the case their situation wouldn't be so severe, I think. Let's see what's going on. Apparently these new policies are receiving a considerable backlash. Maybe they'll manage to prevent the worse. GeeJayK (talk) 19:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Had to look it up. There's about 8,000,000 people known to be "black children", i.e., unregistered, and there's probably more that weren't accounted for.  The majority, but not all, are female.  They effectively "don't exist" as far as China is concerned and are denied public education, healthcare, etc.  The end result is exactly what you'd expect; an entire class of slaves, prostitutes, and criminals.  20:03, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * China being "pro-life"? What a freaking joke. Why not just call it "pro-birth"? China is engaging in genocide and violently suppress protests. Pro-life people crack me up. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Chinese youth are already cynical about the workaholic culture in China, with, , etc. being on the table. Not a good idea to burden them with parents who didn't want them on top of that. LongStylus (talk) 04:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Crippling Back Pain and Chiropracty
I suffer from occasional crippling back pain. Back in June I injured my back moving tons of stuff (I was cleaning my house and moving all my furniture around) and was unable to move without a ton of pain for around 3-4 days. I was standing around for a Halloween costume party most of the night yesterday, and it appears that was too much for me and the pain is back and has me mostly bed ridden. A person at my work recommend a chiropractor, but from what I've read online is a bullshit pseudoscience with no real evidence to support it. I don't know where to turn though. Is there anything to actually get rid of this pain? I'm taking the maximum allowed dose for ibuprofen and it barely helps. Last time I went to the hospital they just told me it was a pinched nerve and didn't give me anything for the pain, but I still can't move around my house or work when it flares up. Has anyone here dealt with this and found some kind of effective solution / coping mechanism? MirrorIrorriM (talk) 02:43, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, chiropractic is a placebo at best. You'd get the same results going to a masseuse. I leaned over awkwardly two days ago myself and I was in incredible pain, couldn't stand up straight, pain was under my ribs about where my kidney would be, on my lower back too below that. I could feel the muscles painfully squeezing around inside of me when I moved in bed, spasming, couldn't even breathe at first because it was so painful. Decided to stay in bed for a day and try not to move in a way that'd hurt.


 * Wasn't the first time this has happened either. I don't know what caused it, but looking up backpain on youtube, I was fucking shocked to find that chiropractice is very alive. Best to see a doctor to make sure it isn't something wrong with any organs and it is just your muscles, it can be hard to tell when its that bad. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 03:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Everyone is different. Some people swear by chiropractic, and it does work for them beyond placebo.  Others, it won't ever work, but the Chiro will of course insist otherwise.  What actually seems to be the case is, you know how sometimes your knuckles get stiff and you crack them, and they feel better?  Some people crack their spines (including myself), but it's a slower buildup of gasses so the relief lasts longer.  Chiros can crack the back and it relieves the pressure a bit.  Instead of going to a chiro, you could do what works for me; free weights at the gym.  When I lie down on the bench with the dumbbells for the first time, half my vertebrate seem to pop, and it feels great.  There was this one leg-lift station that was even better, being suspended by your arms and with the backrest was enough to pop everything, but it only seemed to work on one specific machine...  05:09, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Chiropractic may not a total placebo: there is some evidence that it can be effective for acute lower back pain, but for everything else there's no evidence of efficacy. Particularly problematic is that its underlying theory is pseudoscience and that it has the rare potential to cause severe damage. The best advice would be to see an MD first, who may recommend a scan and/or physical therapy. Other options to consider besides chiro might be therapeutic massage or Pilates. Bongolian (talk) 07:44, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. The whole basis is pseudoscience. You might be lucky and get something out of it. Or you might end up dead. To be fair death is a reasonably unlikely outcome, but I would certainly consider that in any cost-benefit analysis of snake oil.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * On mobile so can’t elaborate much, but look up sciatica stretches. If I’m able to I’ll find links later. They help me with lower back pain flare ups Probliknaut (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)


 * you'd be surprised at how effectively a bit of stretching, regular exercise, and paying careful attention to your posture will ease and correct existing pain and prevent it from returning entirely. stretching should be gentle, done with a little but often approach. relief wont be instant, especially if everythings really imflammed. some rotation of the spine is good for decompressing the spine, relieving tension, untrapping nerves. stuff like this. sun salutions are good. make sure your posture is correct and fix any problems you notice as you notice. look in the mirror, stand up straight, and recognise what the correct posture feels like. then go for a walk. its good light exercise and every time you feel your body slumping re establish the correct form. do this often enough and the relevant supporting muscles will get used to doing their job, you'll feel less achey from just standing up and correct posture will stop feeling weird and tiring, it can take time for before standing up straight feels natural, comfortable, something you do automatically. you can move it along with exercises targetting and strengthening specific areas where applicable. squats for example, great for lower back.

−
 * i cant stress how effectively this will fix back pain. some light stretching and just going for a daily stroll. wont be instant relief, but consistently applied, it can provide permanent relief. if its not something that can be fixed by this, see a dr because you gonna need medication or surgery. AMassiveGay (talk) 13:59, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would suggest the same thing the Massive Gay is selling. Just try streches and exercise, maybe a run every day if you feel like it, and if it doesn't work after that, go to a professional doctor.
 * My source is that this is how I got my back in shape after breaking my leg four years ago. An Advocate (talk) 15:12, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If it's just sciatica, I had personal relief from sciatica by maintaining consistent knees-together sleep posture (i.e. no prolonged periods of crossed legs during sleep). Bongolian (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, following up on 's comment, as far as I'm aware every chiro session comes with the 'happy ending': the head rotation that cracks the neck vertebrae. This is the procedure in chiro that has been documented to cause severe injury or death on rare occasions. Bongolian (talk) 17:52, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

There are chiropractors who do excellent work. The top science journal Nature indicates that chiropractors often yield positive results. Chiropractic is part of the USA Olympic medical team.

But chiropractors obviously aren't the only health care field that helps people with back problems. Orthopedic doctors are medical specialists who do excellent work when it comes to back pain. U.S. News and World Reports ranks the best orthopedic departments within hospitals.
 * That Nature article found that the control intervention reduced pain more effectively than the chiropractic intervention, and that the chiropractic intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on pain. It found that both had a statistically significant effect on "unpleasantness".  The central focus is on the difference in observed habituation to pain, for which a statistically significant difference was observed, but the paper concludes that "this needs to be further explored before concrete conclusions can be made".  The paper does not support the claim that "chiropractors often yield positive results". 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒   talk  00:55, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The Nature article says: "Chiropractic is one option that is utilized clinically to help people who suffer with musculoskeletal pain, both acute and chronic. Multiple clinical and basic science studies have shown that chiropractic care can reduce pain... Research has shown that chiropractic spinal adjustments alter the afferent input from the spine which leads to changes in central nervous system (CNS) function... As it is becoming clear that chiropractors impact brain function consistently, it is very likely that chiropractic care influences not only the biomechanical movement patterns of the spine and improves proprioceptive processing of the spine, but also directly impacts the so called ‘pain matrix’ in the brain and thus has a CPM effect on a person’s perception of pain."


 * In my local library, I found a book which was a treasure trove of information on how to heal and prevent back problems authored by the orthopedic surgeon Stephen Hochschuler. The book is Back in Shape: A Back Owner's Manual. Hochschuler really knows his stuff and co-founded one of the largest medical centers for back treatment.


 * Hochschuler says 90 percent of back injuries are to the soft tissues. In most cases, Hochschuler advocates an approach of limited use of nonsteroidal analgesics (pain medication) followed by rehabilitation via exercise.


 * Chiropractic gets many people out of pain so they are able to do the rehabilitation through exercise. Physiotherapy is a very effective treatment for low back pain. Weak core/stomach muscles and poor posture cause a lot of preventable lower back problems. Hiro (talk) 01:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC)The Nature article does indeed state such things, in the introduction. The claim that "multiple clinical and basic science studies have shown that chiropractic care can reduce pain" is sourced to three studies, one of them explicitly a preliminary study, and all of them published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, official journal of the American Chiropractic Association, and ostensibly not a Nature journal.   The results of the study you cite are not consistent with these findings.  The findings of the study you cite are consistent with the claim that chiropractic has some effect on the CNS, but again, they are not consistent with the claim that these effects result in a reduction in pain.
 * Furthermore, the study you cite is not published in Nature, it is published in Scientific Reports, which is published by the same company, but has much lower standards. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  02:01, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I feel I should clarify my remark that "both had a statistically significant effect on "unpleasantness": the effect size was the same for control and experimental, indicating that the chiropractic intervention did not perform better than placebo at reducing unpleasantness. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  02:56, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * JAMA Network Open is a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association covering all aspects of the biomedical sciences.


 * In 2018, the medical journal JAMA Network Open indicated in the journal article Effect of Usual Medical Care Plus Chiropractic Care vs Usual Medical Care Alone on Pain and Disability Among US Service Members With Low Back Pain: A Comparative Effectiveness Clinical Trial indicated: "Chiropractic care, when added to usual medical care, resulted in moderate short-term improvements in low back pain intensity and disability in active-duty military personnel. This trial provides additional support for the inclusion of chiropractic care as a component of multidisciplinary health care for low back pain, as currently recommended in existing guidelines. However, study limitations illustrate that further research is needed to understand longer-term outcomes as well as how patient heterogeneity and intervention variations affect patient responses to chiropractic care".


 * I think you misunderstood the purpose and implications of the Scientific Reports journal article. A good explanation is provided by one the authors of that journal article at: The Effect of Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation on Tonic Pain: Study Released. Hiro (talk) 13:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If you typically talk to a doctor for back pain, and it's not to the point of needing surgery, my hunch is that they will typically recommend "physical therapy". However, this costs money (particularly in the good ol' USA). There's some limited studies that show that chiropractors (generally a quack profession) can asctually help relieve back pain. The bad news is that chiropractors also charge money, also from what I can tell, they do not provide permanent fixes - just temporary pain relief. There is also the option of "stretching, regular exercise, and paying careful attention to your posture" as mentioned above. This does not cost money and often will fix the problem for good. The information is pretty available on the Internet of back pain specific targeted stretches. So if your back pain isn't terrible (and I mean *terrible*, as normal back pain feels pretty gnarly) to the point where surgery is required, eg its more or less typical muscle and ligament issues, why pay for what you can accomplish for no charge? PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:30, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

If the back pain is not acute and there is no urgency, then perhaps nonsteroidal pain medication, stretching/exercise is the best way to go. But many people who hurt their back need to recover as soon as possible due to their work (blue collar job, nurse, athlete, etc.). Long-term the practices of stretching, exercise, good posture and weight management appears to be the best way to go. I used a chiropractor friend of mine for temporary acute back pain and he provided chiropractic care and some kind of machine which provided massage. It worked. If he had not been a friend of mine, I probably would not have given chiropracty a shot. Because I was a bit of a doubting Thomas, he did show me case studies via x-ray pictures where he did reposition bones that seemed to need repositioning. So I believe there is something to chiropracty/osteopathy (moving, stretching and massaging a person's muscles and joints).

One thing I do like about some chiropractors/osteopaths is they do tend to offer more nutritional advice and provide a holistic approach to health. As a person who worked as a computer programmer, looking at problems from a systems perspective is very helpful and the body is made up of biological systems.

The problem with many medical doctors/chiropractors is they don't provide long-term fixes (stretching, exercise and maintaining overall fitness/health), but just short-term fixes. And there is a financial incentive for them to do so. All systems of healthcare have quackery/quacks, so doing due diligence is needed.

Sometimes you have to do your own research rather than rely on professionals who may not provide the best long-term care. Hochschuler's book Back in Shape: A Back Owner's Manual was excellent. Hopefully, I will never see another chiropractor again. Hiro (talk) 14:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @your last double line break paragraph: you're full of shit. listen to doctors, people, not to suspicious new accounts on saloon bar. 01:10, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Purely functional programming languages
I’ve recently been reading about Combinatory Logic partly because of my deep interest in W.V.O Quine’s work and also due to Moses Schönfinkel, whose 1924 paper preceded Turing and Church’s work by nearly 20 years (Stephen Wolfram has some interesting articles on Schönfinkel’s brief life and work). Combinatory Logic inter alia provides an alternative model of computing i.e. that’s not based on the Lamda Calculus. It seems that combinatory Logic, due to it’s elimination of free variables and it’s basic objects being mappings (viz. as opposed to the Lamda Calculus, where the basic objects are classes of values of a given domain that are being mapped to a given another class that makes up the codomain) is far more amenable to “purely functional” languages, and in particular, non-strict languages such as Miranda, Scheme and Haskell; there is also the esoteric language “Unlamda”. I have three related questions: Leucippus Salva veritate 15:30, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) What are your opinions of purely functional programming languages?,
 * 2) What are your opinions of non-strict languages i.e. that allow lazy evaluation?
 * 3) Do you have any experience working with non-strict languages such as Miranda, Scheme, or Haskell?
 * Full disclosure, most of my skill is either OOP based or "low level" like C. With that in mind, here's my answers.
 * I get where functional programming comes from. It's a cool thing in theory (javascripts daisy chaining is an easy entrypoint for functional programming), but as for me actually using it, hell no (although I might in exchange for money). Functional programming is just not how my brain is mapped; to me a lot of the logic done with functional programming feels outright backwards to how I write programs, and well... that's just unpleasant for me. OOP on the other hand maps far closer in how I've been thought to approach problems. Keep in mind however that this is not an indictment of functional programming, it's just not for me.
 * See my general answer for functional programming. I respect these languages, they're just really not for me. I appreciate them in the same way I appreciate something like Plan 9. I like what they bring to the table as an alternate perspective, I like the ideas that get brought over into other programming languages, I just don't want to write my code in them.
 * Generally, no. That said, I've 100% used parts of the functional programming paradigms in procedural languages. It's nearly unavoidable in javascript, I really like Rust's ability to declare mutables and immutables flexibly, callbacks and lambdas I absolutely adore, lazy evaluation I've worked with (albeit mostly for personal challenges).
 * So in short, I don't program functional, but I respect those who do choose to work in them because their alternate perspective furthers the tooling I use in my procedural code. -- Techpriest (talk) 12:24, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the thoughtful answers Crow. I’m a novice compared to you, so I appreciate the insight you’ve provided. However, there’s not much I can add in response to your answers atm; I’m simply content with the answers you’ve provided. Leucippus Salva veritate 17:51, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Someone once told me to do what I liked with a small commercial site, so I did it scala. Its nice, I think pure functional languages are a bit too restrictive to be practical, but (as many modern javascript frameworks force) having significant chunks of behavior be deterministic and stateless has several advantages.McUrist (talk) 08:43, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

today is the earliest solar noon
it's because of perihelion and Earth days being faster then 24 hours. Today it's exactly 24. Then it'll become later. (DST might make this not quite the case). American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 21:04, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please clarify what you mean (and do you mean 'than' or 'then'?) Anna Livia (talk) 00:02, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Chappelle Walkouts
Well, the protests are accelerating. I'm not a fan of censorship, government mandated or by the public, so I'm hoping they fail. From the outside as someone who isn't Trans, it just seems to me to be a weird parallel to the Mohammed cartoons controversy... 14:09, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have not seen the special that caused the controversy, but the reviews make it sound like he's basically become a troll who's trying to restart a career by triggering the tired woke vs. woe the repressed white man Twitter war cycle (well, in this case, woe the repressed Black millionaire comedy man who is pissed that he can't make homophobic jokes or something). Depressingly it seems to have worked. Normally with trolls, you ignore them and they eventually go away, not sure why people are giving oxygen to this has-been comic from the 00s. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:45, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * A good portion of the special was dedicated to his Trans friend who was bullied into suicide for the crime of being friends with Dave Chappelle. 15:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I honestly wouldn't really call them the "Chapelle Walkouts", as they don't want the special to be taken down. The employees are more concerned about safety and being treated fairly as employees. The special seems to just have been an impetus for the rising tensions. I haven't watched the special, but I'm planning to hold the line and not watch Netflix until the demands are met. These seem like fairly normal diversity requirements, so I don't really feel conflicted supporting them. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 15:31, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I really wonder how many people complaining about the special have even seen it. I have.  While I wouldn't call Dave Chappelle educated on gender issues or trans issues, I certainly wouldn't call him transphobic.  For most of the special he spoke out in support of trans rights.  There was a brief bit where he sympathized with JK Rowling and jokingly said "I'm team TERF."  But you're not team TERF if you're insisting on proper pronoun use, inclusion, and speaking out against discriminatory bathroom legislation.  And it was pretty tone deaf of him to support Kevin Hart and Da Baby-Hastur! (talk)  15:43, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No matter how joking it is, calling yourself "team TERF" isn't something I really want to be hearing. Identifying yourself with a group that actively campaigns for basic rights to be taken away from a minority simply because someone was called out for hurtful statements isn't very funny. I don't want to make any big sweeping statements here because I have not seen the special, and I don't plan to. I think taking it down would be a terrible idea and unwarranted, but the controversy the special started is a good jumping off point for trans employees at Netflix to get basic protections I think they deserve. What annoys me is the tepid response from Netflix while forcing the poor intern that manages their Twitter account devoted to LGBT content into damage control overdrive. Take responsibility and don't force your likely underpaid social media manager to do it for you. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 15:50, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Roomba, don't put refs in the Saloon Bar. It's really annoying.  Just link directly...  16:13, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Apologies. Didn't preview the change, I see how that would be annoying. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 16:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Anyways, what would be the term for someone who thinks Trans women should be given the female pronouns, new female names, etc, but does not believe Trans women are real women? Because that's basically Chappelle's view (and the general public).  16:23, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Of course it should succeed. It's funny how people look back a few decades and are amazed how others could support harmful biggotry but not realise that they are indifferent to it now. Religion or political ideology DOES NOT EQUAL race, gender, sexuality. Religion and ideologies are received, and you can reevaluate why you believe those things. In a free society, adults are not (at least in theory) forced to believe something, they are stuck with their skin and sexual identity. The cartoons are NOT the same thing as chapelles harmful comments. You know, it was only 100 years ago that the argument "Black skinned beings are not people" was accepted and not a comment likely to get you in trouble socially. I would imagine corrupt user this is the kind of comment you can understand media companies letting go a client if they were to say something like that. Saying that transwomen aren't women, because you say so, is no different than having said black skinned beings weren't people, because you say so. It depends on your definition of person/people and woman. Chapelle and the likes of Rowling are doing nothing different to what people did towards those of other races in the past. Yes, their intent isn't as menacing but the result = harm. Saying shit like this is just spreading mind viruses, and you need only look at the ginormous rate of violence and murder against trans people in America to see just how vulnerable trans people's lives are. Speaking out and sticking up for a group of people, many of whom suffer endless misery inside and in public...is a valiant thing to do. What made Chapelle's show so ghastly was that he lamented the suicide of his trans-friend, all the while repeating the kind of shit that leads trans people to suicide. He is from a marginalised group, and yet perpetuates harmful words that hurt an even more marginalised group without taking the time and consideration necessary to realise why it is so harmful. Dehumanising others by defining groups of people in a way that excludes...is harmful, and spreading such mind viruses hurts others. The idea that the "free market place of ideas" is a forum where rational and good ideas will win over harmful ones, especially in the age of social media, is fucking ridiculous. Shabi  DOO  16:24, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "ginormous rate of violence and murder against trans people in America"
 * I keep seeing things like 44 Trans people murdered in 2020. If Trans people had the same murder rate as the general public, how many would've been murdered in 2020?  Because if 1.4M people are Trans, that's a murder rate of about 3 per 100,000, whereas for the general public it was about 8 in 100,000.  I wouldn't expect Trans people to have a lower murder rate than the public, so some of the numbers must be off somewhere.  16:58, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's more suicide, attempted suicide, and other self-harm that is the big issue I think; various surveys from advocacy groups don't paint a pretty picture. The surveys also indicate a pretty high level of assault. Not everything that falls into the "general bullying" and "assault" categories is going to be recorded as a police crime (for similar reasons why rape and sexual assault tends to be under-reported). From my perspective, you probably get a sense of what is happening in this department less from the high-profile TERFs like Rowling and more from observing the pond scum bullies at Kiwi Farms drive another outsider to suicide again. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

It's likely that there is underreporting on some of the murders, but regardless, studies find that trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crimes such such as rape and assault. The problem is worse in countries like Brazil, where 175 trans women were killed in 2020 (four times as in the U.S.) but the homicides in Brazil were only 2.5 times as in the U.S.. There's also the claim that life expectancy of a trans woman in Brazil is around 35, which I can trace back to this study but cannot really verify as I don't speak Portuguese. The main criticism I see of Dave Chapelle's special in the trans community was that he didn't really include trans women of color in the conversaton, and here is a good video on the matter. Plutocow (talk) 20:31, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, Trans people are much more likely to be involved in sex work, which is where most of that increase in rape and assault comes from. Make things safer for sex workers, and you make things safer for Trans people overall.   As an aside, I have to wonder if there's a massive overlap between TERFs and SWERFs   As for hate crimes in general, from what I understand, the FBI showed 175 victims of anti-Trans hate crimes in 2019, and another 52 for "gender non-conforming".  Assuming that's 227 total, again, with 1.4m trans people that's a rate of 16 per 100,000.  Jews had 1032 hate crime victims, and at 6.4m Jews in the US that's also 16 per 100,000.  In other words, according to the FBI stats being Trans in the US is just as dangerous as being Jewish.  20:40, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Chapelle is a very different beast than Rowling I'd say, in that from what I saw of Chapelle, it seems a lot more like a honest mistake. Rowling is a straight up TERF who manages to somewhat hide that fact by a case of Motte and bailey; Rowling hardly if ever actually has said that trans men aren't men/trans women aren't women. Rather, Rowling seems to have a downright obsession with sexual assault from trans people, which probably is also revealing how she became a TERF in the first place (I doubt she woke up one day and decided "fuck transgender people"). She seems to instead have drunken the kool-aid arguments from TERFs about how trans women are trying to sexually assault women on toilets, which seems to have played badly into a case where she was sexually assaulted herself by a dude in the past, which made her vulnerable to said recruitment. It's easy to just go "Rowling hates trans women" and that's that, and while that is de facto 100% true, it's not very productive either to outright dismiss her as "just another TERF". Rowling has an audience, which means that right now, a lot of pretty regular guys and girls who support trans people (like Chapelle from what I can tell) are stuck in the case where because Rowling isn't an open TERF (she sticks to dogwhistles mostly), it's hard to follow the condemnations. Like, we have an explanation on our site why Rowlings support of the Forstadter case is transphobic, but your average person quits listening the moment you bring up "she supported this legal case".
 * Chapelle on the other hand seems a lot more like the "genuinely clueless guy spouting well intended stuff that he has no clue how to say well". Most of Chapelle's comments in said special that people take issue with seem to have been ran by a trans woman who he was friends with in the past. And from the clips I at least saw of it, that seems to largely be the case; well meaning jokes about gender that if a trans woman would joke about it, few people would bat an eye at it (they're mostly terrible jokes about anatomy which is... eyerolling but hey at least it's better than the fucking One Joke). The "team TERF" comment just illustrates so much; it's rather clear that Chapelle seems to by all accounts be supportive of trans people (he openly says that he supports their pronouns, their names, their ability to socially transition and all that stuff, even if he has his head in the sand about his past), but seems to have no clue what a "TERF" even is, besides "Rowling got cancelled for it" and "Rowling has never said that trans people shouldn't be called by their pronouns or names, and apparently TERFs think that".
 * I don't want to bitch about "cancel culture" mostly because it's unproductive, but I will note that the digital response to Chapelle is... not good? Not productive anyway. It's interesting to see this spiral out of control and land at the doorstep of Netflix, while Chapelle has remained from what I can tell entirely silent (and Chapelle also promised to quit the jokes so... yeah, there's that too). That in my eyes sets him apart from say, Ricky Gervais, whose punches at trans people on the surface shitting on Caitlyn Jenners vehicular manslaughter got similar backlash. Gervais from what I can tell meanwhile responded with both hostility and doubling down. That's someone who you can safely write off (also Gervais' popularity has waned a lot, he's really past his glory days of shitting on the movie industry). I wouldn't write off Chapelle yet. Most people have these sorts of "bugs" in their personality, where they will surface level be extremely supportive but then have a take that comes across as being entirely out of the left field. (My personal example; I used to be very NIMBY about gay people when I was 12. My only exposure through gay people was through TV footage of pride parades and I can't stand extreme extroverts, which cover those pride parades. I also understood that being gay was ok, but at the same time I also genuinely had no interest in ever meeting or talking to gay people. Let's just say that that waned over the years; I met a bunch of introverted nerds like me who happened to be gay as well and I got along with them very well. And whoops, fast forward a year or so and now I'm bisexual. Then fast forward another two years and I ended up questioning my gender and now I'm a bisexual trans woman. How weird the time goes I guess... in conclusion variety is spice of life, end of tangent). Doubling down on writing off people like Chapelle will only cause an adverse effect, where someone like Chapelle (Chapelle hasn't again said anything yet), ends up being made into having actual TERF views because "people couldn't take my jokes and tried to cancel me for it", which then leads to more of these personality "bugs" appearing in people.
 * To conclude this massive fucking ramble; I think Chapelle deserves some backlash. I don't think Netflix should pull his special. I also think the backlash could be put in a far more constructive way than faulting people for daring to like Chapelle (which a lot of it has taken the form of). Rowling is a TERF but the communication on why she is one is terrible and that leads to personality "bugs". -- Techpriest (talk) 21:22, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Dave does have a massive history of being misunderstood.
 * "Hey America, this is how you view us Black people!"
 * "Hahaha, look how stupid Black people are; he's saying all the things we would say about Black people if we were allowed to!"
 * "...no season 3 for you." 21:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think in Australia is much more lax when it comes to comedians' free speech since we have much thicker skins when it comes to offensive jokes. I mean there is tons of Aussie comedians out there who make offensive jokes but everyone laughs because they know its just a joke. But I don't know about other countries though... BeardOfZeus (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * , that's kind of the problem, in that he understands how that kind of humor can be harmful to marginalized communities, yet doubled down on the trans "comedy". Plutocow (talk) 22:56, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean he is a comedian, he's suppose to be joking right? BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:10, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * See this interview. Chapelle was making jokes that were making fun of black stereotypes. However, he eventually came to realize that some of the white audience members, rather than laughing at how ridiculous the stereotypes were, were instead laughing because that was how they truly saw black people, and he realized that for some of his audience he was reinforcing stereotypes rather than making fun of them. Similarly, regardless of his intentions, he should have understood that some of the audience were going to take the jokes about trans people the wrong way and use them to reinforce their own transphobia, as he understood how that kind of thing works for his jokes on black people. Plutocow (talk) 23:43, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, idiots are going to take jokes the wrong way. But idiots still crash cars, does that mean people shouldn't have cars? BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:56, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Any form of communication, including "just joking" that perpetuates the idea that a marginalised group of people are "less" because of a characteristic they were born with, makes their already difficult lives more difficult. These aren't jokes about communists, lawyers or priests...these are jokes which dehumanise a vulnerable group of people for unalterable characteristics many in society disparage. It may make some chuckle, but in the near limitless world of comedy where you can make an audience laugh about nearly anything, why make the lives of those who already face difficulties for the way they were born more difficult when there are a billion other things you can joke about? If he had made a joke about Jewish people burning in ovens or women being beaten and raped, I think some of you who don't see what the big deal is re: trans issues... more understanding of producers cutting the show. But in this case with transphobia, it is the dehumanisation of a marginalised group which is yet to achieve widespread social protection that some other marginalised groups already have...and resistance to giving up jokes about easy targets is famously stubborn. In any case, he was making more of a statement than a joke, a statement which defined a group of people as less than others because he says so. This makes it more difficult to achieve meaningful equality and removing barriers. Shabi DOO  00:08, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Did you watch the special? Can you honestly say that Dave Chappelle was dehumanizing trans people?-Hastur! (talk)  16:08, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I watched that section. Dehumanise might not be the right word. De-genderise would be more precise. It may not have been his intent, but the result is reinforcing the exclusion of people from a group because of the attributes they were born with because people say so. Basically story of human history excluding others (to varying degree of cost to the marginalised) since civilisation began. Is it the worst thing that could have been said? No. Is it harmful? Shabi  DOO  23:36, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Chappelle's special never said that Trans people are "less", rather that Trans women aren't truly women in the same way that (using his example) Impossible Burgers aren't beef, not to mention that "having a vagina" isn't a characteristic Trans women are typically born with . That seems to be why there's such hatred of him, because people want to eradicate the idea Trans women are meaningfully different from Cis women entirely.  01:22, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I am afraid I don't see a difference between excluding people from a group because you say so and people being less (or even nothing) of that class. You are less of a human because of your skin. You are less of a woman because of the genitals you were born with. You are less of a rational being because of your chromanones. No one is debating that most trans people are born with certain genitals. Just as no one is debating that some humans are born with different skin or different sexual attraction. Defining what a "person", "love" or "woman" is, pointlessly excluding others...is inherently saying they are less of something. Shabi  DOO  23:36, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * As a trans person, I don't think Dave did anything wrong. BeardOfZeus (talk) 01:24, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's always funny until your (generic you) ox is being gored, then suddenly it's horrible and evilTM. Amazing how this site can point this out in the case of Isaac Hayes, yet sees the stars without seeing the light when it's the sacred cow du jour. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 03:22, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you just wrote. BeardOfZeus (talk) 03:45, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm basically agreeing with you, sorry the indentation isn't the greatest. The page on South Park rightly calls out Isaac Hayes for being all well and good with making fun of everything except what he cares about, then the same people moan and bitch the moment it's what they care about. Self-awareness, how does it work? The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 03:53, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, because the words of a comedian should always be above criticism. Anyway, wasn't Hayes kind of forced to quit by the Church of Scientology rather than doing so of his own volition? Plutocow (talk) 04:28, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * All I know is Hayes eventually had a massive stroke, after something like that pretty much all bets are off. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Pluto, no one is saying you can't criticize Chappelle. I'm saying he shouldn't be censored or de-platformed, especially considering how he's not actually transphobic.  Or at least, less transphobic than the average 50-ish year old Black man.  Of course, as Blade mentions it's not my ox being gored (other than the Space Jews joke), I'm solidly in the Libertarian-ish "people have the right to be weird" camp rather than the Progressive-ish "don't even suggest that Trans is weird" camp.  14:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * In a public space don't think censorship or de-platforming is *ever* the best idea unless the language "crosses the line" (eg advocates violence). On the other hand, everyone also has the right to monitor their own private space. If you came to my house and started "heil Hitlering" in front of me, I'd kick you the fuck out, because no Nazi shitheads are allowed in my house. And it is my right to decide who to allow or not allow in my house. Businesses likewise should generally have the right to do what they want when it comes to what they allow. There are regulations on businesses, but they tend to focus stuff like "commons" problems (eg environment), competency (eg licensing), and exploitation issues (eg labor laws). America has very few rules dictating who can and can't be your customer (the EEOC is one of the few), and (for a publisher of works) who can and can't be published. Most (not all, of course) mainstream businesses tend to be dollar and cents focused above all. If Netflix decides that Chappelle is making them lose more money than gain, it is entirely in their right to drop him. Pissing off too many people absolutely would be a reason, there's been more than a few oped columnists that when dropped whine about being "cancelled" when in reality, from my viewpoint, they were probably out of touch with the newspaper's audience and caused too many cancelled subscriptions. My impression is that Chappelle has made Netflix more money than the protests have caused them to lose, so there is no danger of him being "cancelled". But it is the publisher (Netflix)'s decision, no one else. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:32, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd take a more consequentialist approach to public speech given that it can be demonstrated empirically that verbal abuse can be linked to lower mental health outcomes. Because at that point it's just another way of beating someone with a stick metaphorically. Hate speech itself seems to lead to systemic inequality and prejudiced views towards the oppressed, no surprise there. 1, 2, 3. Deplatforming has generally been good for reddit, and if it made those places less toxic, it'd make streets less toxic too. The problem of addressing hatespeech is as you probably know you'll always get strawmen and slippery slope fallacies coming up about it. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 15:11, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * To use something that's a bit closer to me, Black Hebrew Israelites insist they Jewish or that they are the "real" descendants of the Israelites, which I find offensive because they are claiming I'm not really Jewish. (Ethnically, anyway; more of an Apatheist than anything).  They could argue that me insisting that they aren't actually Jewish is harmful to them, or that they are being discriminated against by people who don't consider them Jewish.  Should I get de-platformed for making jokes about them or saying they aren't Jewish?  15:38, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The thing is, I feel people are misrepresenting the people critical of Chappelle. If you look at the demands of the walkout, they aren't advocating for deplatforming Chappelle or even taking down the special, they're more advocating for the inclusion of more positive trans-related content. It says something about how fucked up the discussion around cancel culture is when all the discussion on Dave Chappelle, who was not hurt by the blowback and if anything gained more attention as a result, instead of the trans employee who lost their job at Netflix. Plutocow (talk) 16:20, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * They aren't saying it publicly because it backfired in the faces of the people who demanded Chappelle's content be removed a couple weeks ago, but don't kid yourself, they'd push for Chappelle's removal if they though they had a chance of doing so. Instead they are making more reasonable-sounding demands such as pro-Trans material be recommended to anyone watching his specials, so that his (and related) material gets buried and fewer people watch it.  Netflix has a lot of content, and that algorithm can absolutely make or break a struggling show; look at Tuca & Bertie, an OK show that failed because the algorithm failed to even recommend it to the show's creators.
 * As for making more Trans content or creators, what is the scale of the problem? I.e., what's the fraction of content creators or actors that are LGBT as compared to the population as a whole?  I also don't know if the ratios should be equal; writing and comedy are best done by people on the outside, which is why so many SciFi writers were fabulous.  17:19, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This Vox article uses some nice citations, 1, 2, 3. Their take is that he was transphobic. Honestly, saying he is team TERF, he has no clue what he is advocating at best. Given his history, I'm gonna have to say nah to Chappelle. And no, I don't care if people think it is just a joke. He can go the way of Kramer. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 18:09, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No shit he has no clue. Neither does the majority of the population of the United States.  And the world.-Hastur! (talk)  18:17, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey, Kramer is still hilarious; Michael Richards went off on that tirade years after. I refuse to stop enjoying Seinfeld because of that, just like if I actually cared for JK Rowling I wouldn't much care about her non-writing comments (as I've said before I never liked her writing anyway, give me Ursula Le Guin any day; even besides her most famous works Lavinia is the only self-conscious style writing I've ever found worth reading). Since I'm a sports fan, I do the same thing there; unless you want to be a total fuckheaded assclown like Curt Schilling or commit some serious crime I actively do not care about your worldviews, I want you to play your sport well (I have no trouble applying this to the issue closest to me, autism, since at least we actively give people a reason to be sick of our shit!). Sports are sports, humor is humor, and real life is neither of those. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 03:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Being treated equally means being open to comedy. Everyone deserves the right to be made fun of. And for those of you that didn't watch the special, the protestors aren't mad that Chappelle mocked trans people, they're mad that he called out cancel culture.
 * Honestly I still think that most of Chapelle's comments (barring "team TERF", that just is due to the genuine "normal" media cluelessness surrounding JKR) are more than likely just jokes he copied from someone else; there's a rather notable difference between Chapelle's jokes and the stuff TERFs spout, both in intent and in character. Chapelle's comments come across more like he copied the homework from a few trans people - again, imagine a transgender person making the genital meat joke for example, I don't think anyone would bat a remote eye - and thought it appropriate to repeat those on-stage. Which arguably raises a more interesting media conversation if you ask me. Who can make what jokes; does a joke have to be inherently tied to the person making it to be funny? I mean, I'm trans and I was slightly amused by the genital joke. I wouldn't call it "peak comedy", but like... after the 500th attack helicopter nutcase, this one is closer to the "yknow, it's kinda different, but who gives a shit really" attitude, which I don't really mind. Again, please have the context that Chapelle from my end stands in offset to Ricky Gervais, who agressively began justifying calling Caitlyn Jenner by the wrong pronoun because he hates Jenner, by constructing an elaborate "present-past" setup, where he'd only refer to Jenner before Jenner came out as transgender, that at some point also resulted in Gervais doing a monkey impression of Jenner. Like, that's the usual tier of "comedy" that is just transphobic nonsense aimed at trans people. Chapelle making some ignorant comments about anatomy is... I dunno, I feel like I have way bigger fish to fry than someone's grandpa-level ignorance. -- Techpriest (talk) 10:17, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * i think in general there can be rather large gulf between self deprecating humour and humour directed at someone else. you get alot more leeway if the target is yourself or your own group, but gets more complicated when you directing jokes at other people or groups, more complicated still when your target is more vulnerable or oppressed in some way, even more complicated when your target is only vulnerable or oppressed from your own or own groups actions. 'equal opportunity offender' is generally an excuse to be bigoted, some targets are more than able to suck it up, due to status, wealth, etc, other groups less so, and even mild jokes against them perpetrate hateful stereotypes and abuse. in a fantasy world of complete equality of all kinds, and peace and love and rainbows, sure fill your boots, say what like you. thats not the world as it is though and 'i take aim my side too' doesnt cut it. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:25, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair point yes. I don't disagree with any of this. "Equal opportunity offenders" was a thing early internet, and most people just turned out to be not so equal opportunity when called on it (and some others dropped the act when they realized they were creating an audience full of people who wanted to see minorities get offended). I don't know Chapelle that well to say if that applies to him; I'll leave that to others to decide. Like I said, I don't think Chapelle meant harm here; his comments reek far more of clueless grandpa who doesn't know what all this new-fangled "LGBTQ" is. I feel there is room with Chapelle that makes me object to writing him off as just another transphobe. -- Techpriest (talk) 15:33, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Grandpas, right. Grandparents have always said the most outrageous shit, that's why racist old grandpa is a stereotype isn't it? Transphobic grandpa too, just because they're a backwards person who came from an older time, it doesn't mean anyone has to put up with their shit. They can fuck off right into the geriatric's home. I'm not buying this "oh there's bigger problems" "oh but they're just backwards", you want to act like you're all fucking adults who get to have muh freezed peach then you can start to accept that in the adult world you have consequences and you're liable to be called out on your bullshit. Fuck this hugbox created to help coddle horrible people. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 16:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * sigh, don't make me tap the sign about not discriminating against age. We're more lenient to older people because they have trouble adapting to new things. The older you get, the more predispositions and ideas about what's considered "acceptable" and what "goes against nature" you get. Like, that's part of getting older. I don't think you should discard old people either; they can have tons of valuable life experience. We're coddling older people because just as many nice ones get thrown under the bus because of attitudes like this. I work with older people a lot in my job, so many of them don't really have people to talk with. I have people whose problems they can admit themselves they can solve, but they just want someone to listen talk about their life for 30 minutes and make them feel like they're not ignored because all their family has migrated to the ass end of nowhere. So please, don't go "fuck off right into the geriatric's home". -- Techpriest (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh I'm sorry for bringing up age to excuse people of being bigots. As if those two things were related to begin with, let me be specific. Bigots can fuck right off. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 20:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Times do change though. Once lab-meat becomes cheaper than the kind from the butcher shop, more or less everyone will make the switch.  But there will be some old-timers who don't see a problem with the old ways of slaughtering a cow.  I personally eat meat, I'm actually excited for lab-meat (I'm a huge futurist; it's lab-meat today and cloned organs tomorrow), but I don't think we should view hunters/farmers as monsters for killing to eat simply because the next generation will grow up in a world that never needed butchers in the first place.
 * Likewise, the very concept of interracial marriage was an utterly foreign and unthinkable idea to people. I can't really be too upset someone who, when they were 20 had the progressive-for-the-time idea that interracial marriage should be discouraged but it's not something the government should interfere with, eventually came around to their daughter marrying a Black man, struggled with the idea of their interracial granddaughter marrying another woman, and simply can't comprehend that his great-granddaughter is now his great-grandson.
 * On the flip side, this 90 year old man needs to learn to keep his mouth shut on these things. My grandpa used the n-word all the time.  My mother told him if she ever heard him say it in front of me, he'd never see his grandkids ever.  I don't know if he stopped using it around his house, but I never even knew he said such things.  So sometimes, it doesn't matter if you think you are right, sometimes you have to shut the hell up.  20:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

A point of clarification may be in order. Dave Chapelle's comedy programs appear to be finite events involving Chapelle alone as a limited subsidiary of a larger entity (Netflix). To some people Chapelle is only an individual promoting offensive speech. This is an incomplete representation. Even if one agrees that Chapelle's program is not amusing, one cannot escape the reality that it is reflective of the restive point of view the general public has towards the current incarnations of gender manifesting in popular culture. UncleKrampus (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So the issues of free speech and treating everyone equally are moot points here? Are trans people not allowed to be made fun of? &mdash; Unsigned, by: 12.23.183.186 / talk
 * You can say whatever you want, just don't expect people to take it laying down. 15:37, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well when your free speech is used to perpetuate the idea that some are not equal (or convince others to treat a group differently) then clearly you are abusing one right to fuck with other rights. Kicking people while they are down is not "making fun of them", it is bullying. Seems a segment of the population think it is virtuous for the big boys to pick on the marginalised and vulnerable. Shabi  DOO  15:46, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

What Chappelle said was not bullying or hate speech or any other false label that has been applied. He was not trying to convince anyone to treat trans people differently, he was trying to convince everyone to treat everyone equally. Daphne would not have been his friend if that were not the case. As for taking it laying down, if that's the same as laughing off a joke, then yeah that actually kind of is what I would hope most people would do when they hear jokes, but "times do change though". What a shame.
 * I see, so defining a group of people as apart, because you say so, and then making jokes about how obvious that is because, genitals and stuff...is convincing people to treat one another equally. That is a really interesting way of trying to accomplish that. And then in response to people's explanation on how that is all harmful...raging against other people also "using their free speech to disagree", trivialising it all as "cancel culture" and then getting offended by the response when he himself said there is nothing wrong with offending others...is also a truly interesting way to go about achieving whatever it is he wanted to achieve. I am still confused what exactly that is...because if it was about treating everyone with dignity and true equality...achieve that...he did not. Shabi  DOO  16:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I think he did achieve that, I think that everyone's genitals are fair game in comedy (as is everyone's everything), and I think that protecting everyone's freedom of speech is far more important than protecting anyone's personal feelings. That's my opinion, and I do respect your opinion too.
 * I find it very odd that these calls of "free speech" only really seem to come up when someone is punching down, as it were. Really lets you know where people stand. 17:01, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I still remember how most of the people defending Chapplle in the present lost their fucking minds When Kathy Griffin made a skit about decapitating Trump. Really funny how they hold the exact opposite position when it's a comedian making trans people miserable... 17:08, 29 October 2021 (UTC)


 * That shouldn't have happened either, and while I didn't find the bit about Trump all that amusing (just because it's been done to death, kind of like putting masks on statues) there's no reason she shouldn't have been able to do it. I don't find the two positions incompatible. To the extent there's a difference in volume in either direction, excessively politically correct people are overrepresented in the mainstream media and tend to reach a wider audience when they broadcast how upset they are when it's one of their sacred cows being challenged; I basically expect that from right-wing blowhards, but not from people purporting to be objective. Neither one ends up looking good complaining about it. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 17:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC) Kathy Griffin was effectively glorifying/normalizing murder/violence against Trump. I'll remind you that while people did the same with Obama they often got arrested for it.  Chappelle is not glorifying violence against Trans people, at most he joked about beating up a gay woman that picked a fight with him. 17:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Uh huh... If I talk of beating up a black person in a amused way, am I not painting my interaction in a positive light? Further, so? If you believe in unrestricted free speech, both fall under the umbrella of comedy and both should be defended. Obviously, from the scorn dripping from my words I believe neither to be justified, but the hypocrisy of those who believe Chapplle to be justified but not Griffin is rather telling. 17:54, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The woman he beat up was Cis, as far as I can tell. I don't know if it's even true that he got into the fight, it could've been made up, but it adds the most beautiful extra layer to his whole routine.  We are more upset that Chappelle said that Transwomen are effectively women-substitutes, than we are over the fact that he beat up a woman and bragged about it.  That's like being more upset over a rapper insulting Gay people than a rapper shooting another man dead and bragging about it in his songs.  18:07, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (Don't take the bait to start talking about DaBaby for the fiftieth time, it's not worth it) armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:10, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you trying to tell me that there were zero jokes at the expense of trans people? I find such a claim hard to believe. Further, pardon my bluntness but I still don't see the problem with Griffin's actions if you are, as you yourself said "not a fan of censorship, government mandated or by the public". I am, personally, actually in favor of censorship when warranted, so this isn't a problem for me. Like I said, I think both were unneeded flamebaiting, but hey, I also think that about the Mohamed cartoons. And really any tricky speech area to be honest. You want to go play with fire, don't bitch about it when you get burned. 18:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Depends. I only support Kathy Griffin if I can do the same with Obama or Biden.  Last I checked, people have been arrested for hanging effigies of Obama.  18:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I wonder what's different between Obama and Trump... What could possibly be different to provoke such different reactions? 18:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I just want to be absolutely clear on this. Are you saying that we should be allowed to display Trump effigies, but should not be allowed to display Obama effigies? If your concern is that the effigies involve nooses/hanging, then would it magically be ok if the Obama effigy was instead a head on a pike? I'm fine with banning both as calls to violence. As I mentioned during the Jan 6th riots I was horrified that they had built a gallows on the lawn. I just want the rules to be consistent, and I just find your whole "they aren't being consistent!" argument to itself be inconsistent. 18:56, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Scroll up and read. The answer has been stated multiple times now. I'm not going to repeat myself because you were too busy blabbering to read. 19:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)


 * To let you know where I stand, I defend free speech in all situations. "Punching down"? You can call it whatever you want, you can take something as simple as making fun of people and slap a nefarious label on it if you want, but it only makes the argument against free speech more ridiculous.
 * This is likely absolute bullshit. I would be fairly surprised if you do not support at least one of the following: limiting free speech for libel, copyright infringement, causing a panic, inciting crime or facilitating some other crime. And I don't believe for a second you could provide a rational justification for limiting that kind of free speech while supporting people saying things that are statistically known to lead to rising levels of violence against marginalised people, raise levels of suicide among vulnerable groups and making those who are suffering...suffer more. Though if you can, I would like to hear your explanation. Though if you are actually against libel laws, copyright laws and ALL forms of control of free speech including yelling "fire" in a packed theatre, then I might be able to respect your claim that you support free speech in in all situations. Otherwise, give me a fucking break. Shabi  DOO  16:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Libel and copyright infringement are tantamount to theft. If people are committing violence, then that is a problem. An asshole's motivation and/or internalized justification for violence does not matter. Suicide is an incredibly tragic and complex problem. The best way to deal with the rise in suicide rates is to help people cope with life's struggles, not try to stop life from happening. &mdash; Unsigned, by: 12.23.183.186 / talk
 * So you support restrictions on free speech. Ah, hypocrisy... 17:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've never even heard of libel or copyright infringement being considered a free speech issue. This concept is mind boggling. If I record a famous song, or better yet simply copy a digital file of one, and sell it as my own, obviously that is theft. As for hypocrisy, GrammarCommie, aren't you the one who wants different standards for different people?
 * Sign your comments by typing ~ after your comments or I'm going to start reverting them... 17:56, 1 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I thought the backlash against Griffin was ridiculous (and not just because I voted against Trump). Was it mean? Yes, but so what?


 * First off, put your comments at the bottom, ping or do "@user" so we know who you are referring to, otherwise this becomes unreadable
 * Second, there's a huge difference between holding up a bloody prop severed head and claiming that surgically constructed vagina isn't a real vagina. Chappelle did not hold up the bloody head of a Trans person.  Kathy Griffin did not say that Trump was a Beyond Billionaire (though come to think of it, that's the perfect description of his alleged wealth).  Compare Kathy to someone doing the same with Obama without getting fired as well.  Last I checked, people got fired for sharing similar stuff about Obama, let alone making the content itself.  17:21, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, Kathy Griffin did lose a lot of work because of her Trump thing, which was ridiculous. She was one of cancel culture's first victims. &mdash; Unsigned, by: 12.23.183.186 / talk

I see...so having people pay consequences for what they say because it hurts people's business opportunities is logical...but not doing so even when it contributes to vulnerable people having a hard time getting a job more or face more violence...is not. What a convincing pile of amazeballs awesomeness. Shabi DOO  18:17, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If I'm understanding the situation correctly, and I hope I'm not putting words in anyone's mouths, I believe it looks like we have arguments against freedom of speech and in defense of theft here. What's next? Freedom is slavery? 2+2=5?12.23.183.186 (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Where is the defense of theft? 18:46, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand you wanted to assert your emotionally loaded language for cheap gotchas, but here at RationalWiki we do expect you to explain your positions. How is restricting speech equivalent to theft? And how are any of the replies defending theft? 19:06, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't using loaded language for a cheap gotcha, unlike your false claim of hypocrisy. It appears as though Shabidoo is saying that people do not need to be held accountable for copyright infringement.12.23.183.186 (talk) 19:08, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Obviously not. Shabi is very clearly arguing that you are in fact using a double standard. You have claimed to support complete freedom of speech, and yet you yourself admit to supporting restrictions, which you feel are justified. Just say you support restrictions and then argue in favor of the restrictions you support. 19:38, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I support laws that discourage the worst kind of libel or copyright infringement (intellectual theft), and I also support laws in which people pay a price for dehumanising entire communities and making the lives of vulnerble people more difficult. Basically every western country except the United States has them and they are not particularly controversial. Every country has many laws which limit "free speech", only those laws are considered so clearly necessary that they aren't even viewed as "reasonable limits to free speech" even though that is what they are. Supporting laws that protect people's business interests, general public safety, intellectual property and avoiding disturbances but drawing the line at protecting the well-being of vulnerable and marginalised groups...is dubious...to put it gently. Not even placing limits on, say, the most outrageous hateful and potentially dangerous speech to vulnerable groups, puts the rights for people to pointlessly say dangerous shit over the well being of others and their rights to live with equality and basic dignity.
 * Having said all of this, the Chapelle show is NOT a case of free speech (it doesn't even approach breaking the hate-speech laws of Europe's most protective countries). Netflix is not the government, it is a private company that can air or cancel what they like and citizens are free to protest, boycott and criticise as they please and lobby the company to rethink their programming as they please. Shabi  DOO  20:03, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Shabi, convince me of two points first.
 * 1) Being a victim of violence means that others have a moral obligation to change reality on your behalf
 * 2) Chappelle's special would increase violence against Trans people
 * Because I watched a couple of the specials, and I'd argue that people walking out of the specials would do the opposite. For instance, by making fun of the ludicrousness of the bathroom laws, I'd argue that Chappelle moved the needle slightly towards "just let people use whichever bathroom they most resemble".  Just watch his "LGBTQ car trip" skit if you think he's really all that vile.  19:13, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your first point, and no...I do not believe that Chapelle's comment in itself would necessarily lead to more violence against trans-people, though he certainly doesn't make things any easier for the trans-community as he keeps claiming he is trying to do. His speech could likely embolden those who do say things that can lead to a more dangerous environment for trans-people. Shabi  DOO  19:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In most Liberal/Libertarian philosophies, for speech to be ban-able it must be two things, three including personal information. It needs to be Harmful and False, (or private information regardless of Truth or Harm; I can't reveal your social security number for instance).  When you avoid reporting truth because it might be harmful, that's pretty much "political correctness gone mad".  I'm allowed to say false or true things that aren't harmful.  A harmful thing that is false is libel and can't be said.  But where the question seems to be is when something is both harmful and true, or at least perceived by society to be true.  The vast majority of the world believes "Transwomen are not 'really' women" is a true statement.  So my point is, should the general public collectively declare something they otherwise believe to be false, i.e., "Transwomen are to be considered 100% bona fide women" or otherwise be required to keep their mouth shut whenever someone makes a similar statement, because it might be harmful to Trans people to have that statement disputed?  22:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Most people are morons who don't know jack about jack. 22:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I only just this evening, a few comments above this sub-conversation, said that what Chapelle said wouldn't fall under hate-speech. And at no point have I even insinuated that what Chapelle said should be "banned". Yes, the most insidious vile dehumanising garbage should (for example in some European countries equating trans people with podophiles out to rape people can get you in trouble). That doesn't mean language that the stupid things Chapelle has said, like definitions that "excludes" others doesn't make it difficult for some groups to achieve realistic equality. I support those calling for Netflix to reconsider their programming and asking Chapelle to rethink the way he characterises trans-people. And I stand by the comparison of defining woman or man in a way that excludes trans-people as being equally as harmful as when only a few generations ago, a person or "human" was defined in a way that excluded African-Americans or as, even today some define "love" or "marriage" in a way that excludes gay people. I also stand by my position that asking people who are already in some of the most socially unfavourable position to just keep "taking a joke" when their very equality and dignity is on the line is a shitty response to those who are endlessly trying to explain their position and defend their right to exist as they are and enjoy the privileges and respect that most take for granted. So no,I am not saying that Chapelle must keep his mouth shut, but I wish he would recognise that his aim of "mutual respect" isn't being achieved by what he said and that yeah, it is not unreasonable that he will pay a social price for saying stupid shit.  Shabi  DOO  23:12, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Does the public have a moral obligation to say (what they believe is) a lie in order to avoid potential harm? Yes or no.  23:14, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Considering the circumstances of this conversation that is a ridiculous question to ask here Corruptuser, especially demanding a yes or no question. It totally depends on tons of shit, not least of all the moral system (in reference to moral obligation), the severity of the consequences (depending on the moral system again), which agent(s) pay the consequences and so on. It's also a ridiculous question because it insinuates that one is obligated to lie when that is not the opposite of avoiding saying something harmful. Zheesh. Nobody obligated anyone to get up on stage and talk about transpeople. Shabi  DOO  23:22, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * People can condemn and boycott someone for any reason, even as banal a reason as being a Yankees fan. However, I will condemn someone in return for condemning someone for merely being the fan of the wrong team.  When someone asks me to join them in a boycott that otherwise isn't my fight, to not watch a comedian or a movie I would otherwise enjoy, I need to know the two things I asked earlier.  First, that what the person said isn't a fact or believed to be a fact by a majority of the public or what the person did isn't something that the majority of people would find acceptable (EDIT: and the later question was basically asking if you thought this was somehow an unreasonable requirement), and second, that what they said or did actively does harm.  Otherwise, I will condemn the protestors and tell them to change the channel if they have a problem with it.  01:06, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You can use that same sad argument to dismiss statements that are now unpalatable (while similar comments about trans-people are more tolerated). African-Americans offended because a comedian makes a joke about black people are not even human? Pfff. Just change the channel. Why even protest about this? Gay people protest when a public figure says their love is less worthy? Pff, go watch something else...it is just someone's opinion. It's easy to say this kind of shit when you aren't the one with equality, dignity and respect on the line. This is not about being on the wrong team, it is cheering the bully for not letting people be on the team solely for unimportant excuses relating to the way they were born.  Shabi  DOO  09:36, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In this scenario, do I either believe that Black people are not human or do I believe that "Black people are not human" is a reasonable position to have? Because if I believed Black people weren't human I would oppose those protests .  In this scenario, you can't target the middle and alienate everyone, you have to target the extreme.
 * There are three views on Trans people;
 * 1) Transwomen are real women
 * 2) Transwomen are not really women but it's a free country, treat people respect and let them live their lives
 * 3) Transwomen are an abomination
 * But some people in group 1 are acting as if the people in group 2 are in group 3. Of course, the demarcation between 1 and 2 is blurry as is between 2 and 3.  I would say that if you are in group 1 you would argue for Transwomen in women's sports whether or not they have an advantage, if they do they are just better female athletes.  A few in group 2 might feel the same.  I would also say that virtually all of group 3 would support that stupid NC bathroom law (Chappelle opposes that law as do I and I hope a majority of people here), but again there are a few in group 2 that would do the same thing.  I'd like to think that the overwhelming majority are in group 2, but disturbingly, literally half of the country supports the stupid bathroom law, so group 3 is probably larger than some tiny vocal minority.  14:20, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Stewart Weighs in
Well, Jon Stewart made some statements. I can't find an unedited version unfortunately... 21:57, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, that does appear to be the source. -- Techpriest (talk) 10:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Empirical evidence of the harms of speech, hate speech, on LGBT, black people, minorities (proof of harm)
Because people keep on asking for the empirical evidence that keeps on being proven, there is a mental health impact of microaggressions. Free free to look at any of the sources, but note, are you really arguing from a fair position here? I assume most people reading this by looking at demographic stats of internet users are probably going to be white, straight, and culturally adhere to more of a christian bias (even if atheist, because your culture is christian, you might go easier on christians than muslims for example). When is the last time that your gender has ever been up for debate? Would you feel comfortable, or not stressed out if there was a group of people in almost all of your social spaces whether it was online or public venues who made remarks about a fundamental aspect of your identity? (Straight people are ____, whites are so _____), from a pride standpoint I assume a lot of people will also just say no, because it's better to be perceived as a Mary Sue wall who is an island separate from their social environment. You know, a big man, a sad big man at times but one nonetheless. It's harder for people who are in a minority group to fight back against a bigger group, it isn't fair, there is more power inequity, there is historical evidence that if you don't win, legally speaking, your literal rights are at stake. I like that most of you can sit there and talk absolute shit about free speech whilst throwing minorities under the bus, but realistically, you will never, ever have to be in a position where your ability to debate from a weaker socio-economic background was your lifeline between a life of equality, and one of systemic oppression. And that's scary. Do you know how hard it is to make a coherent argument that your resistance relies on when you're scared? Fear shuts down the rational centres of the brain, it's not fun. But let's move on to the empirical proof that people are harmed by people talking such shit:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (cyber-aggression itself, not even related to race or status, associated with lower mental health outcomes)., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, And 16, this one is for you, humans.

No, there is no debate whether harassment causes mental health to deteriorate. And yes, not only did Chapelle commit microaggressions, he outright pitted black people in a fight against trans people by quote referring to trans people as "punching down" on black people, and I'd argue that proves his fucking intent for them to be harmful. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 23:11, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That is not to mention the numerous studies that show a correlation between popular figures (especially leaders) saying hateful things and violence (especially towards marginalised groups following)  and the undeniable link between hate speech on social media and real life violence (hate speech which can be the result of indirect or non-hate speech comment by figures emboldening others towards much worse speech)     Shabi  DOO  23:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, Trump's failure to adamantly condemn things like "ramming a car into a crowd and injuring 3 dozen people" is worthy of scorn and one of many, many reasons he does not belong in the White House. 00:33, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Anyone who's taking serious advice from Dave Chapelle has major psychological issues, at least most of us have a bit more self concept than to take our cue on how human any of us are from a comedian. Somehow everyone gets this with music and art, of course some people will go full-on Mark David Chapman over Catcher in the Rye but that's an awful reason to ban it; no one's reaction to Valerie Solanas (outside a few really batshit crazy ultrafeminists) was to attempt to ban Andy Warhol's art. Don't see that there's really a good answer to any of this, wicked problems are a bitch. (Since it's personal to me, I welcome the idea of using autism as a foil for black humor, sometimes the things that make me cringe really are pretty amusing) The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 01:35, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Anyone who's taking serious advice from Dave Chapelle has major psychological issues"
 * That'd be almost the entire Human Species. Well, not from Chappelle specifically, but all of our ethics and worldviews come from our stories.  What we desire in life is what we have learned from entertainment as children.  We pretend to have agency as individuals, but we have less than is comfortable.  Scientists are what happens when children read Jules Verne.  Archaeologists and Paleontologists are the result of watching Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.  But it's not always what we would consider "good", warriors being the result of listening to the bards glorifying war and "influencers" being those who looked up to Paris Hilton.  It really is any set of stories, whether those stories are a collection of fables, religious screeds, music, television, anything.  19:51, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I suppose I should modify that to "literal" advice, in that case. Yes, of course we take our influence from all kinds of things, only some of it consciously. Free will is rather more limited than the tabula rasa proponents would want us to believe. That said, humor is also a human universal, and part of the distinction is that it's not supposed to be taken literally; a lot of humor is specifically about the absurdity of literal meanings and about obvious exaggerations. Key and Peele's slavery short along those lines is fucking hysterical, it takes a seriously warped mind to get from that to "slavery was good". Not the sort of thing people who don't have major issues would jump to. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 23:57, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Humor serves a very important purpose; being able to approach an idea that is otherwise "Sacred" or "Holy" and allow us to examine the absurdities without our minds going into a defensive rage. It doesn't matter if it's supposed to be literal, it often gets people thinking about why they hold up absurdities as truth.  People making fun of the absurdities a religion has is pretty much the reason for people becoming less religious, and why the Church has historically been adamantly against any sort of humor at the Church's expense.  18:13, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

This is worth a watch
I think it may provide both sides of the debate with more, or less, justification. Leucippus Salva veritate 23:02, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Need a little help
https://discord.gg/6htCj5bUCc

Okay, I started a discord server catering to LGBT+ people. How can I get it noticed? It is intended for ages 13+ (following discord's ToS). --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 18:21, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reddit and Twitter are pretty much your only options. As far as filtering people from trolls and bots, you're gonna have to figure out how to distribute invite links properly. I recommend making them time limited as well.Ryan1257 (talk) 22:04, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Alec Baldwin Shooting
So, the big story over the weekend is that while filming a low-budget Western, actor Alex Baldwin was handed a prop gun that he was told was unloaded, and as he pulled it out of the holster he accidentally fired it and a bullet struck two of the workers on set in the shoulder, killing one of them.

Some weirdness...


 * 1) The production had been troubled by a lack of budget and poor working conditions
 * 2) 7 union workers were suspended just hours before the fatal incident and replaced by 4 non-union workers just hours before the shooting
 * 3) Prop guns had misfired twice in the weeks prior during shooting by Baldwin's stunt double
 * 4) In both the incident with the stunt double and Baldwin, they were both told the gun was unloaded
 * 5) The gun wasn't just loaded with a blank, but an actual bullet
 * 6) More of a minor gripe, but the victim,, didn't even have a wiki page a couple days ago, yet now she's suddenly this larger than life rising star

This is the paranoid conspiracy nut in me, but bullets do not just appear out of thin air. Someone intentionally loaded that gun with live ammo. Someone wanted an accident to occur. The people in charge of the guns were either complete incompetents who didn't check the guns before handing them off to Baldwin, or one of them was a psychopath. Going really conspiracy theory, I think one of the people that were fired had loaded the gun before being forced off the set, as a sort of "fuck you, this is what happens when you fire me" sort of thing. We won't know yet, heck we might never know, but if I was in Hollywood my gut-reaction vitriol would be to blacklist absolutely everyone involved in that production until I knew which one of them was the fuckup. Which is why we shouldn't rely on gut-reactions for these things, but calm down and think things through... 19:26, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's razor.CommodoreDecker (talk) 19:38, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Stupidity would explain why a prop gun was loaded with a blank
 * Stupidity would explain why the person handling the loaded gun didn't check to be absolutely certain it was unloaded before handing it to the assistant director
 * Stupidity would explain why the assistant director didn't also check the gun before handing it to Baldwin before saying it was "cold"
 * Stupidity would explain why Baldwin accidentally aimed the supposedly unloaded gun in a direction he wasn't absolutely certain he wanted to be shooting at
 * But the gun was not loaded with a blank, but with a live bullet. There should have been absolutely no reason at all for a live bullet to be anywhere near the prop guns.  The absolute best, at best, was utterly criminal negligence.  The only scenario I can think of that doesn't involve this being intentional would be "a couple of complete fucknuggets were fooling around with the prop guns and shooting real bullets at tin cans, then returned the guns without realizing they left a bullet in one of them.  Then when the props department needed the gun, they didn't even bother checking to be absolutely sure it was still unloaded, because no one could possibly have been fooling around with the guns.  Then they handed the gun to the assistant director, claiming it was unloaded, who then handed it to Baldwin."  19:47, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * People are often careless. People are often careless with their health. And they are often careless when it comes to the safety of others. There are companies and people who regularly lie about taking safety precautions - even when they are sloppy. That's one of the reasons that lawyers and judges exist. CommodoreDecker (talk) 19:54, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * From what I heard on a BBC interview, normally there is a gun management team on such sets that takes care of gun safety. As a rule, they do not keep live ammunition on set, they generally use specially-marked blanks (i.e., not bought at Walmart), and there are multiple safety checks before a gun is shot. Either they had very bad protocol, or someone had malice aforethought. Bongolian (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There is an audio clip of Alec Baldwin being nasty to his daughter that is on the internet. He also assaulted a paparazzi by pinning him against car. I suppose it is possible that a person on the set has a vendetta against Baldwin because he can be a jerk at times, but if I were a betting man, I would put my money on carelessness. CommodoreDecker (talk) 20:05, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * unless some news article has gone through the specific safety protocols on set, interviewed everyone there as their movements and actions on set, possible motives and opportunity, then the idea this was murder is the most ridiculous kind of baseless speculation possible. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:08, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing it's a murder, rather someone wanted some sort of mishap to occur, not actually expecting someone would actually die from that mishap. Like I said, the only way a live bullet would be in a prop gun unintentionally is if some dumbass was goofing off with the guns before putting them back, and then the people handling the guns didn't realize someone had been messing around and just assumed it was unloaded before handing the gun off to someone else.  20:22, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * no that isnt the only way. you are inventing a scenario based on nothing. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * there are dozens of ways that could have led to a live round being in that gun, all down to carelessness, and without a thorough investigation this is all crass speculation that one would think we should know better of, considering debunking of conspiracy theories is a good portion of our bread and butter here AMassiveGay (talk) 20:29, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So indulge me. You said there were dozens of ways for a live bullet finding its way into the gun.  Give me what you believe to be a plausible one.  20:31, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * a live round mixed got mixed in with the blanks, the live round was left in the gun accident, the guy checking it was empty didnt check properly, carelessness from the set is chaotic and poorly run, the director is real arsehole, the prop guys been up all night doing coke/its early/its late/its 10th take and concentration slips. to name but a few. i wasnt on the set, i guessing you werent either so what are you basing this fantasy on?AMassiveGay (talk) 20:38, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Blanks and live rounds look very distinct from each other for exactly that reason. 20:46, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * same size and shape though. or close enough. googling 'blank rounds' doesnt tell me you couldnt easily mistake live rounds for them. i bet you wouldnt even have to look at them or the gun to load em. you are assuming everyone is doing their job properly with all due care and attention. ive given a few reasons above why they might not have. someone might have just been bored with their mind elsewhere, thinking about what they where gonna have for lunch.
 * i mean this thing has more or less only just happened. it turning out to be an intentional 'accident' would be a purely lucky guess and nothing more AMassiveGay (talk) 20:55, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * the film being made is a low budget shitter, 7 mill budget. you think corners arent going to cut? safety procedures are going to be strict? AMassiveGay (talk) 20:58, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * live rounds on set are probably easier than setting up squibs AMassiveGay (talk) 21:01, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

If Alan Baldwin had received NRA gun training, the accident might have been avoided. CommodoreDecker (talk) 21:01, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Brand new account pushing a wingnut organization like the NRA? Color me surprised.
 * EDIT: brand-new account that believes in young-earth creationism. Yeah, you don't belong here.

5.151.22.142 (talk) 00:10, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree. He didn't intentionally aim/fire, it went off when he was unholstering it.  No amount of training would prevent something like that.  21:03, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * @Massive
 * As I said, the production/director fired seven union workers and hired non-union workers to replace them. The company couldn't even be bothered to ensure that the workers had hotel rooms, and were late on the paychecks; in the movie industry, if you aren't being paid on time, just assume you aren't going to be paid at all because almost every production company is some shell company that goes bankrupt the minute the movie is finished no matter how much revenue the movie will bring in.  There were numerous complaints about safety, and there had been 3 accidental discharges already.  Of course corners were being cut.  21:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There are conspiracy theories surrounding 's death as well, but if I had to summarize the reports of what happened to Lee, it would be carelessness. I suspect the same for this incident. I understand that on-set weapons protocol in Hollywood movies is pretty tight, but cutting corners is something that obviously happens everywhere. That this accident coincides with the IATSE drama, and reports of terrible conditions have emerged, suggests that this may end up less a Brandon Lee Crow death (not being thorough) and perhaps more similar to, where some of the fault was due to the production team itself knowingly bucking the safety rules. We'll see. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 21:23, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * These things can happen, it's a surprise they aren't more frequent. At least it's not as embarrassing as Jon-Erik Hexum's unfortunate accident, (Pretending to play Russian Roulette with a prop gun in between takes because, at a guess, boredom.) Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:44, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * By assuming malice, that is, that someone intentionally left a real bullet in the gun, you would probably also have to assume that this individual wanted someone to be killed, and in order to achieve this they carried out the action of placing a bullet in a gun on the set. However, this strikes me as a very indirect, and extravagant, method of trying to get someone killed, and also pretty random considering the manner in which the gun actually went off. The idea that this hypothetical perp would, based on the desire to kill or seriously injure someone, intentionally carry out this action to achieve their desire: placing a bullet in either a random gun or the leading stars gun and hoping that they shoot the desired target (which in turn assumes that they haven’t checked the gun for real bullets); this seems to be a very indirect and inefficient way of achieving the goal of killing or seriously injuring someone, which makes me think this claim of “malice” is quite implausible. Then again, this is assuming that the individual is rational i.e. that said individual would try to make their actions cohere with their beliefs and their desired goals; we could alternatively assume that they were acting irrationally i.e. impulsively and under stress, but this would still seem to be a needlessly indirect and extravagant—not to mention, seriously unpredictable—way of having someone killed. Leucippus Sapere aude 22:55, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not assuming they put a bullet there intending to kill a specific person, rather, the bullet was there out of spite. It could've even been a prank gone horribly, horribly wrong; they might've been expecting the gun to be fired; possibly they thought someone would find the live bullet in there and then everyone would freak out.  23:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Among speculations, another possibility is that it was complete indifference, rather than spite, on the part of someone supposed to have been doing a job that lead to the situation.
 * Often, when a really bad accident happens, if just one of many key things had been different, then the accident could not have happened. Once in a rare while, everything that needs to go wrong does go wrong. Terry Pratchett may have called it a miracle, in line with his view that miracles are simply events that are unlikely, not necessarily nice. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 23:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you are all missing the obvious, that the bullet was a result of time travelling Marxist-Bhuddist-Madagascarian-Pansexual-Telepaths who came back in time to stop the worst possible thing from happening: Trump getting elected in 2024 (which will set off WW3, the invasion of the genocidal Xarg-Xarg aliens from the planet Zorf-Omicron, Earth's the First Nuclear winter and the great American-Newfoundland-Belarusian postal workers massacre. This shooting was the only way to avoid this. Open your eyes people. Unfortunately what they don't realise is that Trump not getting elected will lead to a much worse fate: The American House of Representatives and Senate consisting entirely of youtube influencers in 2044. Shabi  DOO  23:41, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC) Even if we replace as the reason/cause of the event ‘intending to kill’, with ‘spite’, the result is just as implausible. I find it highly unlikely that  someone would choose, as their means of spite, a bullet in a gun over say—something that doesn’t involve any chances of killing anyone.
 * Then again, I am not affirming the view that all human actions are rational, for dark instincts and urges underlie a lot of human behaviour: false beliefs (see Khaneman’s pioneering studies) and actions driven by instinct or caprice, are the norm, not the exception; however, these actions, caused by dark urges, often receive post hoc reinterpretation and rationalisation. If this incident was malicious, then it may have been driven by irrationality.
 * The reality though is that this is all, so to speak, whistling in the dark—and this is not the true method of science nor rationality. The reasoning employed here is probably informed by poor priors i.e. these types of events are statistically rare, and thus, I assume that one’s inferences are likely to be poorly confirmed by the evidence, and one’s judgments of the probability of malice are likely to have been informed by unreliable data and by cognitive biases. Leucippus Sapere aude 00:03, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks like Baldwin was the executive producer of the film, and he and Souza (the Director) were co-writers. It seems like this was a pet passion project of theirs.  I'd like to live in a world where the guys in charge are where the "buck stops" so to speak, so if no one else is responsible I have no problem blaming Baldwin.  05:52, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Update, the assistant director, Dave Halls, is now being accused of a history of poor safety and vaguely defined sexual misconduct. It seems to me that he's being groomed as the fall-guy if they can't figure out who else to blame.  16:58, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds to me like you've moved from barely tenable speculation to full blown conspiracy mongering. You should probably stop. 17:18, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

This entire discussion is pointless and stupid
What does it achieve? Nothing. It's just blind speculation and posturing. 23:53, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn't that true of most discussions here? American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 00:59, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed, and yet people still engage in them. 16:35, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I did once say that the Saloon is a time waster, but I think I've come around to see that it can be useful. The free-form nature allows people to speak their minds and show their character. One can observe bad-faith arguments here as well as malice that one might not observe elsewhere on the website. The latter of which can get an editor banned. This convo already hooked in one bad-faith argument dude, the NRA promoter. Bongolian (talk) 18:35, 24 October 2021 (UTC) Also, once in a while, a discussion can lead to a new article. Bongolian (talk) 18:42, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I go on the Saloon when I want to edit RW, but don't want to use too much brainpower. Occassionally interesting stuff pops up, though. LongStylus (talk) 19:52, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I go here to spam about weather. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 22:43, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Andrew - BST has already reverted to GMT. Anna Livia (talk) 18:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Read the American one. We in NY are still on UTC-4, not on -5 yet. And we won't be for a bit. It's 06 UTC for ET, 07 for CT, 08 for MT and 09 for PT (and 10 for AK). Don't worry, it will go away on 11/7. And not to come back until probably late February or early March, for when DST begins (although Europe has to wait an extra 3.5 weeks). is very weird about DST, too. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk)  17:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

We finally have an answer
Gun was used for live ammo target practice that morning Yep, a bunch of fucknuggets were shooting at cans in the desert, then returned the guns. It is unclear if these were the union or non-union scabs who had been firing the guns. Nobody on set bothered to check the guns before handing one off to Baldwin. 22:49, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, it's almost as if your prior baseless speculation was pointless, dumb, and utterly without merit. Maybe you should own up to that. 22:32, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My paranoia has failed me. Still trying to figure out how anyone could be that stupid, but I guess I had too much faith in humanity...  23:37, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Update, "Sabotage" is now claimed as possibility by armorer's attorney. 13:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * the attorney representing the person whose job was to look after the guns and ensure safety suggests it might be the one cause, of all the possible causes, the one, sole cause that doesnt have the armourer being negligent or inexperienced at their job and likely signal the end of their career and possible criminal charges no matter how much of the blame is spread around?
 * they offer no evidence for the suggestion i note. its damage limitation for their client not a line of inquiry that needs to looked at.AMassiveGay (talk) 14:02, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. Everyone is doing damage control, e.g., Baldwin is trying to spin this a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance shooting, completely ignoring the utter lack of safety precautions and the earlier accidental shootings, the poor working conditions, and the use of non-union labor.  All of which as Executive Producer, he is responsible for.  I've said it before, I'm not the most pro-union guy, but when it comes to safety, the unions and working class schlubs really do understand things better than the spoiled rich kid who bought the factory and never worked manual labor a day in his life.  If you look at all the Worker's Comp cases in NYC, almost every last one is a case of some rich a-hole whining about the union wages and hiring some non-union idiot who didn't understand how to secure a ladder.  When it comes to movies, people used to die all the time before the unions came in decades ago.  Do you know how many sandbags a 150 lb stage light needs?  Do you?  Because the spoiled rich kid knows it's just a bunch of bags and lights, how hard could it be?  And then a light falls on someone and it's just a "freak accident".  Mmhmm.  14:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * thats a truly weird classist rant that from a uk perspective seem to misunderstand the dynamic between workers and management in factories and work sites when it comes to safety. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Occam's razor; The armor went out target shooting and, due to negligence, forgot to change the ammo type. They then handed the gun with live ammo to Baldwin, who fired the gun. This scenario is plausible. Cory's conspiracy fixation is not. Cory should stop before he makes himself look dumber than he already has. 14:56, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like UK has things better than the US, though by "factory" I should probably say "business". I've seen too many businesses that were bought by idiots with more money than sense and didn't actually know how things are run, to say nothing of landlords who don't know understand how to maintain a property.  In NYC I constantly see landlords hiring people under the table rather than pay BCTC, all the friggen time, and then my friends/family (attorneys) end up dealing with these jagoffs in court.  16:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Trent or anyone from the board around?
Check your email, it's urgent - David Gerard (talk) 16:39, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * DDoS? 17:17, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The month's hosting bill is late - David Gerard (talk) 17:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey, haven't received anything. GeeJayK (talk) 17:49, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * All is well - Trent is on it - David Gerard (talk) 19:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That's great news. I was freaking out. Glad to know that we can count on both of you. GeeJayK (talk) 19:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

r/Scrambled_Eggs_irl
I stumbled upon this new terrible webshite that is /r/Scrambled_Eggs_irl that likely serves as recruitment group for the TERF cult. I added it to the list of webshites. I know TERFs are gonna hate on me and scream on r/detrans, but it's still worth adding the webshite to the proper list so that other trans people can avoid making the same mistake like I did not so long ago. Bhp99 (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * At first glance the content seemed like benign body positivity posts that you "shouldn't shave your legs to sexualize them" or "you don't have to try to be feminine to be a woman" which is for a woman pretty nice to hear. A lot of people didn't have to uh, shave as much during COVID because you know, you aren't going out, so why are you shaving to begin with? Well to look good for other people, not necessarily for yourself right? But that's not what I gather the intent is. At first the name went over my head, what is scrambled eggs referring to? Then I saw the post about "feminine males don't need to be pressured into being women" meme, and I was like, "Eggs." Then I knew, it all made sense. Scrambled eggs, detrans, it all started making sense to me. This is like the sexuality equivalent of people saying "I'm proud to be straight" or the racial "I'm proud to be white" of gender identity. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:36, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I also checked out the r/detrans rabbithole, and holy shit it has some bad takes on it, I saw this post https://www.reddit.com/r/detrans/comments/qlucrq/this_one_took_a_lot_of_research_and_i_still_dont/ and on looking into the video sources, they cite something from this sack of shit. Needless to say, he was called out on it by his faculty here. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 18:42, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * When I think TERF and scrambled eggs, I just think of Stefan Molyneux's delectable love for Taylor Swift's roe. And then I made the connection "yeah this isn't good, 'eggs' refers to the TERF's love for reducing women to their ability to those little gelly blobs, doesn't it" 04:28, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Its a reference to https://www.reddit.com/r/egg_irl/, the "in-the-closet-trans" sub, I guess egg is transitioning being the egg hatching, and scrambling eggs being de-transitioning? McUrist (talk) 10:44, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Did some digging in the r/detrans discord
I got banned there after a while but in arguing with them I got them to mention what they consider to be a useful 'study' done recently, it's this one; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2021.1919479 Looking up the author on google brings us to r/actual_detrans https://www.reddit.com/r/actual_detrans/comments/n32afm/the_results_of_elie_vandenbussches_detransition/ seems like their prime evidence appears to be referencing themselves, it suffers from selection bias. Actual detrans already has a comment thread that seems to point these flaws out with the data collection and shows it is cherry picking survey respondents and areas to even gather participants from. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 14:43, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Untangling the climate mess.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-05/climate-change-cop26-untangling-the-mess/100382998 131.242.7.115 (talk) 01:06, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Election Results
Well, the recent election results are coming in. Republicans to take the governorship in VA, NJ is close but currently slightly towards R. It's an odd year, being mid-midterm. Midterms usually go against the new President as the population is once again surprised to discover that the newly elected President is not a magical unicorn-riding leprechaun that can fart gold into everyone's ice cream. Even so, given the margins that Biden had won NJ and VA, this much of a shift is unexpected. Many of the Dems are likely to look at their own districts, and do damage control and so forth. I don't think the Dems will lose in 2022, or at least not more harshly than is typical in a midterm, but the result of the recent elections means the other politicians will likely distance themselves from the President or refuse to "fall in line" with the White House's projects. Basically, Biden's Build Back Better best be budged to back burner before becoming ballot-box burden. 05:53, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * NJ now leaning D (by .2%), absentee ballots coming in. VA house I think flipped R 51-49. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 13:30, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also surprised by the city attorney election in Seattle. Trump got less than 25$ of the votes there, but a declared Republican won. GeeJayK (talk) 15:40, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The national environment honestly does not benefit dems right now. The most consistent indicator of success or failure for a governing party in elections is the President's approval rating and Biden is not doing so well at the moment.-Flandres (talk) 15:43, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is administration has yet to have some kind of "win". Afghanistan was a disaster, it was not handled correctly at all.  If we were to pull out it should've been phased, defending region by region even if losing the war, instead of pulling back all at once.  COVID is still here, it turns out COVID is here to stay and we just have to manage it the way we do with influenza.  The budget crisis that's been coming for 20 years now is finally catching up to us and Biden's legs aren't strong enough to kick that can down the road to the next President.  The economy is sluggish and inflation is going crazy, which is exactly what happens when you rely on imports and other countries have supply chain issues.  He needs something he can claim as an unambiguous "victory", so people could actually say why they support Biden without mentioning the other guy.
 * Side note, if DR Congo were to industrialize overnight and suddenly there's 5x as much cobalt, tin, tungsten and bauxite being sold, or the raw ores being processed locally and the refined metals themselves being sold, those prices would drop drastically and the manufacturing costs for everyone else would go down as well and we might even see global deflation, but if they stop exporting all those prices go up and then you have inflation, all having nothing to do with the policies of the other countries, at least not directly. (I.e., counterintuitively, effective aid and investment in Africa causes massive strengthening of the Euro and Dollar, not weakening).  16:03, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think the senate and house will narrowly flip Republican in 2022 (-15 in house, -1 in senate) but nothing too crazy. I still think Biden would heat trimp in 2024, though. Trump could end American democracy and many people would vote for Biden out of fear. Or a significant 3rd party candidate could run or they might lose the primary. Andrew5 mobile (talk) 16:25, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * From my perspective, unfortunately the progressive wing in particular of the Dems are currently blowing things strategically. With the Senate being Democrat only by the smallest of margins, there's simply not much wiggle room for stuff Manchin doesn't like. The so-called "bipartisan infrastructure bill" really should have been zipped through quickly, a lot of the "social spending" stuff is not going to make it through given the current dynamics of the Senate. Biden does have one visible "win" (the initial COVID relief) and I also count the much calmer White House scene as a "win" (people forget about that of course) but there hasn't been a lot of "win" lately, just a lot of in-party bickering. The Democrat's only bright spot (ironically) in the current scene is that Angry Baby actually is still in the driving seat of Republican politics, and there's a non-zero chance that he fucks up some races by focusing on "stolen elections" and other bullshit like that. Part of why Youngkin did better IMHO is he kept the culture war bullshit to trivialities like "critical race theory" and kept Trump at arm's length. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Meh, if the Dems really wanted to end the "stolen elections" claims they wouldn't fight the very concept of Voter ID, something that virtually every single Democracy already does and is supported by a whopping 80% of the general public. If the cost of an ID is the problem they'd make one that's free of charge; you can't say it's a problem getting to civil service to acquire it when we already require an ID to get a job.  They do that, and then screaming "stolen election!" becomes just as dumb as the birthers after Obama released his birth certificate.  Because right now, it seems more and more likely we will have mass mail-in ballots again in 2022, and that rubs me the wrong way.  I actually support mail-in ballots; in normal years, getting your mail-in ballot showed you have your shit together, and I believe the bare minimum that should be required of eligible voters is that they have their shit together enough to register and bother to vote.  But many mail-ins last time were given without being prompted, and that just irks me, and I don't think that should be the case going forward.  17:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The issue here in the past as this article notes is that there was strong bipartisan opposition to a national ID from specific, loud groups. Such as certain liberals (the ACLU hates it!), certain libertarians (the Cato Institute hates it!), and the cooky conspirators (Bill Gates will implement 5G in your national ID!). National IDs are less popular than the concept of a photo ID for voting, of course, because a large percentage of the population is pretty dumb and attaches onto ideas more for group identity than logic. Insist on photo IDs for voting and railing against vaccine passports on your, for instance. I think a well-run national ID problem would help a lot of things, and perhaps one way to drum this into the population is to let them know that... surprise, most of you already have a national ID! And it's controlled by T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 18:39, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Having voter ID laws won't make Republicans stop bitching about voter fraud. As they say, you can't convince someone with logic who arrived at their position without using logic, and the voter fraud thing has always been a conspiracy. Same with mail-in voting - it was used in Oregon for years and nobody had a problem with it but Trump's conspiracies have deluded many people about it. Hell, many people are still saying the Virginia election was rigged but enough "patriots" voted to offset the "cheating". Anyway, it seems that the white suburban voters who showed against Trump are only fair-weather friends and many still harbor racism. Youngkin has made being anti-"Critical Race Theory" in schools, and it's worth noting that when Republicans talk about CRT, they're not talking about the academic theory since it was never taught in high schools let alone elementary ones, rather they are always talking about the teaching of things like the Civil Rights Movement and any books about brown or black people. Hell, Youngkin's first campaign ad featured a woman who wanted 's Beloved banned from schools (and somehow this is not "cancel culture") or the York school district ban in my own state of Pennsylvania where all the banned books were about people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malala Yousafzai. And then there's the situation in Texas where some schools were advised to teach "both sides" of the Holocaust! You can't burn crosses anymore (at least not openly) but don't let that distract you from the racism that is getting scarily more present in everyday life. Plutocow (talk) 21:54, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Beloved is borderline unreadable, I'll never understand why it's put on such a pedestal, but still a terrible move to ban it. If nothing else, I will say some Never Trump Republicans have been hammering on the point that these guys aren't total Trumpalos and (not coincidentally) run way ahead of Trump. Whether that translates to presidential politics I don't know, but it's something. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 22:51, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The point isn't to convince the "stop the steal" folks the election was legit, it's to convince everyone else it was legit and make the StS folks look like utter morons. Obama didn't have to reveal his birth certificate, but it was a smart move to do so as this forced the Birthers into territory that made them look insane.  It doesn't really matter if voter ID would stop a dozen cases of voter fraud each year, it's security theatre of course, but people need to feel the process is legit whether it's legit or not.  23:13, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you honestly feel that free voter ID would solve that? They're just going to claim that illegal immigrants are getting them and that dead people are voting regardless of the available evidence. Even states that require IDs still get accusations of fraud. The problem is that ideas like QAnon, Stop the Steal, and anti-vax rhetoric are all mainstream in the GOP, and if any of them were using logic they'd see that this is all untrue but a significant portion of the Republican Party runs on conspiracies rather than logic, and no amount of failed predictions seem to stop them. Plutocow (talk) 23:21, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I honestly feel that voter ID would shut a lot of people up. QAnon would've been a lot more popular if they didn't need such a far-fetched conspiracy to make Trump look good.  Of course they are insane, but the more deranged they appear to the average person, the more they push people to the other side...  23:26, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But that hasn't really been happening, and still won't as long as we still have Democrats who insist on "compromise" and "bipartisanship". It's like Innuendo Studios' metaphor comparing a conspiracy theory to a table that has no legs, where even if you can refute one of the "pillars" of the argument, since the argument was never based on anything in reality, they will just build a new "leg" up. And they have plenty of material: bussing voters from neighboring states, illegal immigrants voting, dead people voting, tampering with voting rolls, Venezuelan voting machines, Chinese made paper... that's all just stuff that has already been alleged and none of it has slowed them down. Plutocow (talk) 23:40, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not a legless conspiracy theory, voter fraud really was rampant in the 19th and well into the early 20th century. Boss Tweed really did alter elections using immigrants.  The current political situation regarding illegal immigrants and amnesty really is about votes; why do you think Democrats oppose and Republicans support Cuban immigrants?  23:49, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned, I think the narrative among those type will instantly switch to the MUH RIGHTS!!! narrative going with COVID vaccines. Conspiracy dum dum gonna conspiracy dum dum. Some of them need no help looking like idiots, as seen with the hundreds of QAnon Numerology Experts™ who converged in Dallas a couple days back to supposedly see the now-21-years-dead-JFK-Jr come back and run with Donald Trump. (Spoiler: JFK Jr. is still dead.) At any rate, the GOP goal is casually racist ratfucking, and it has a long history of working quite well in this country. "Where's the birth certificate?" had nothing to do with birth certificates, it had everything to do with "our President is a fuckin' ni-BONG!", and the actual birth certificates did not change the narrative one bit. I have half a hunch that, who's a Yale / Harvard law doctorate graduate (Ivory Towers, oooh, oogie boogie!) actually knows what the real "critical race theory" is, but he'll never let the peons in on the secret as long as it's the GOP scare story du jour. I have no problems with voter ID with a fast secure national voter ID program, but appeasing the paranoid stylers is not one of the reasons I support such, too many of them are in a different, odd world. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 23:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (ec)I mean, if you count the handful of votes that are caught each year, but there's nothing to swing an election. Tammany Hall has long dissolved and was never the basis for these claims. Also, when have Democrats opposed Cuban immigration, the main reason they lean right is because of perceived "socialism" in the Democratic Party and because the original immigrants were mostly elites from Cuba who had fled. There's no evidence that any non-citizens are voting (except in a couple of locaal Vermont elections where this is allowed), and if immigrants who gained citizenship vote, that isn't fraud. I think you are downplaying how this "voter fraud" conspiracy often comes from xenophobia (especially before 2016, when it became all about Trump, although you can say it indirectly comes from xenophobia since you know what kind of people Trump appealed to). Plutocow (talk) 00:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, Phil Murphy did win NJ, narrowly. Nothing to be impressed by, the Republican nearly had it. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 00:11, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It will be a bit more in Murphy's favor once the rest of the vote is counted but still not a good result. It's likely the same issue with suburban voters, as at least Newark and Jersey City pulled through. Plutocow (talk) 00:15, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Right now, 90% of the vote is in and Murphy has a .9% lead. I think it will be 1-6% but even 6% is pretty scary as Biden won by nearly 16% and Murphy won by nearly 14% in 2017. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You have to consider that the rest of the vote is mostly early votes from blue counties. Turnout is likely a factor, as even Massachusetts and Maryland flipped in 2014. Still, there's only so much you can do about obstructionism as Obama had learned, but this time the obstructionism is coming from the Democratic Party. Plutocow (talk) 00:21, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Weirdly, MA has a history of red governors, albeit it did flip blue back in 2006. But both are popular incumbents who survived the 2018 blue wave. MD will probably flip back in 2022 as Hogan can't run again but, if Baker runs in MA, it's likely going to stay red. Baker won with 2/3 of the vote in 2018, in fact. Also, we still have to see about the NJ legislature. Going to Ohio for a second - yeah, OH-11 and OH-15 went as projected. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 01:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "I mean, if you count the handful of votes that are caught each year, but there's nothing to swing an election."
 * Illegal immigrants do vote after they get naturalized though
 * "Tammany Hall has long dissolved and was never the basis for these claims."
 * So was MKULTRA, Tuskegee Experiment, Operation LAC, Operation Condor, etc. They did happen, which is why you can't dismiss any random conspiracy theory with "Oh, the US government would never do such a thing"
 * "Also, when have Democrats opposed Cuban immigration"
 * Right now?
 * "There's no evidence that any non-citizens are voting"
 * I actually never said they were in any significant numbers
 * "and if immigrants who gained citizenship vote, that isn't fraud"
 * No it's not fraud at all. I don't even know what the word for it is, but it's beyond reason to suggest that immigration policy has no effect whatsoever on the political landscape, or that no major politician has ever taken this into account when deciding on immigration policy.  On the flip side, Trump played huge political games over the 2020 census with regards to trying to avoid counting illegal immigrants, and that everything to do with trying to change the political landscape.  02:17, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're using New York Post, which is obviously going to push the Cuban angle of the story (and they're just not a good source in general) but they're also denying Haitian refugees, who would be more likely to vote Democrat. It's supposedly under the guise of Covid protections, but who knows what their real reason is. They are violating international law by deporting them without properly ascertaining their refugee status, but as Henry Kissinger knows the US thinks it's too cool for international law. But the point is that you said all this were the "legs" the voter fraud conspiracy was built on, so that insinuates that you think there's some evidence for voter fraud based on these issues. Republicans have always tried to disenfranchise people less likely to vote for them, which has always been an open secret, and enacting voter ID laws would just be giving them what they want. Plutocow (talk) 02:26, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As H. L. Mencken implied, sometimes you should give people what they want good and hard. Just because they think it's an advantage now doesn't mean it'll be an advantage in even a couple years, political allegiances are notoriously fickle. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 03:11, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

With 99% of the vote in, we can say Murphy won by 2.6%, far lower then the polls suggested. Also, Democrats might only have four seat majorities in both chambers depending on how the uncalled districts go. NY also passed 5 ballot measures, and the 3 with voting rights expanding (sponsored by Democrats) failed. The NJ Senate president lost to a truck driver who spent less then $10,000 on campaigning. Republicans also flipped the mayor of Anchorage, and also several county legislatures. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 12:57, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Article?
Do you think Glenn Youngkin or or Terry McAuliffe (or any of the NJ stuff) is missional for a RW article? I don't. But, what I think what's best for now is an article for 2021 governor elections, and give standalone articles for candidates if needed, but I could be wrong and I would need help setting one up. American time change coming up November 7, Andrew5 (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2021 (UTC)