User:KnightOfTL;DR

Knight of TL;DR is a RationalWiki user, a lurker since early 2011 and a contributor since March 3, 2012. She is a fairly silly resident of both the Hudson Valley, New York, and of the Greater Boston area, Massachusetts. Depending on the season.

She maintains a log of miseducation.

She also writes some essays:


 * How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Being Wrong
 * This is Why I Can't Have Nice Things
 * RPG Religions, No Faith Required
 * Burning Straw: The Smart Guy

And also does some wiki stuff too I guess. Right now, I want to write articles on:


 * Pee Woo - I am horrified that this is a thing, but it actually seems to be. I already did some cursory research on it.
 * Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) - This is an internet phenomenon otherwise known as 'braingasms' or 'brain tingles' and could very well be an actual thing, albeit something so trivial and minor no one has ever shared the experience until the internet allowed sharing of trivial experiences. It is a possible phenomenon that requires more study. However, the community is sometimes entangled in brainwave woo, meditation woo, and a few other new agey items.

Some of these might be in-progress, with others as well as myself working:
 * Forks Over Knives (documentary) - This thing is a puddle of fallacy and poop, but a fairly good blogger already did a far more detailed refutation than I could ever hope to do.
 * Fluff Bunny Wicca - They deserve their own page, for the sheer amount of green ink they have... and the fact that nearly all of their money is made off of teenagers or other people looking for self-serving affirmation.

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General Bio
The girl who would become the Knight of TL;DR has been living rationally all her life, but didn't know there were others like her until relatively recently. It sounds a little depressing, that critical thinking can isolate: much in the way that a deaf individual may not know of other deaf people, or a gay individual might not know of other gay people. Until she discovered the rational community, she was almost totally unaware that one existed at all. To her it just seemed like common sense, not a way of thinking that had to be asserted and defended. Her household had always emphasized science, reading, critical thinking, and secular morality. Holidays were always secular: her parents had already joined in a cross-religion marriage and in the end had come out discarding both Catholicism and Judaism. To this day, a whole branch of the extended family refuses to speak to them for their choice.

However, once she left her childhood home for school she began to encounter ideas that caused her to question her own. Am I too arrogant, she wondered? Could I possibly be offending others with my thoughts; refusing to respect their lifestyles? Am I bad? Should I eat some humble pie?

No, she concluded. They're friggin' wrong and I'm going to tell them why!

And she did. At length.

And the Knight of TL;DR was born.

Vocation
Knight of TL;DR is a student of journalism and thus is very aware of the media and how it works... the good and the bad. She strives to be a sensible, rational voice in any journalistic writing and investigation she does, and is acutely aware of real (Not 'librul') bias in the media. She hates errors/duplicitous effort in reporting, packaging and presentation.

Rationality feeds very well into her chosen field of study because fact checking and complete information are vital to good journalistic writing. Wading through tons of tripe, hearsay, and other junk to find the real story, the facts, is an enormous part of the job and provides many insights into how people communicate and why they believe the stupid things they do... as well as how many people can be easily persuaded to believe such stupid things with the right tactics.

It is the job of the press to check and balance government and corporate interests by keeping a close eye on them and releasing what the public really and truly needs to know to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, irrational people are the bane of the press's purpose: gleefully ignoring facts and refusing to take action when by all rights they should be aware of what's going on. Not to mention, whole avenues of media open up to please these people and as such end up crippling the media's overall ability to inform.

Pseudoscience, woo, and conspiracy theories further demolish the power of readily-available information: they overshadow real issues with unproven, unreliable statements. And when something seriously is the matter, it then gets dismissed as yet another 'crackpot theory' when it should be a serious political issue. Or worse, cause serious reporting to be spun as talking points or opinion when hard news should report (to the best of its ability) the bare facts.

Remember! It's up to YOU (if you live in the USA) to use the First Amendment responsibly!

Interests
Aside from calling people stupid-heads, Knight of TL;DR enjoys horsemanship, literature, comics, video games, art, writing fiction, plants, animals, cooking, cartoons and other aspects of the physical world.

She enjoys some non-physical things too, such as music, ideas, and words.

Especially words.

Oh gosh the words.

So many. {| class="userboxes" style="float:right" ! style="font-size:125%" | '''Too Long; Read Boxen Piety and Politics
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Ideas and Ideals

Education and Expertise

Questionable Quizzes

Diversions and Distractions