RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive401

Biden's vaccine mandate is pretty much dead.
The OSHA is suspending their implementing of the mandate. It would take an absolute miracle for the Biden administration at this point for this to ever go into effect. I have to be honest here, IMO, I don't mind this is getting shot down. Leave it up to the businesses if they want to mandate it. The government has too many other things to do besides waste their time doing what businesses should be doing instead. The intentions might be good but this plan just seemed flawed top to bottom from the start.Aaronmichael5 20:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC).
 * Leave it up to businesses to decide to do anything and it'll never get done. Unless you can convince them it'd result in profit. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 20:30, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * if they get sued by people contracting covid on their premises would have the same effect. AMassiveGay (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * For the love of god, is it going to take another 700,000 deaths before people accept mandates?--A p r i l Chat? 23:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The people who still won't accept mandates at this point will NEVER accept mandates. It's just that simple.138.207.198.74 (talk) 23:41, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The anti-vaxxers don't even accept the current vaccine requirements! What makes you think they'll even accept a vaccine has been rigorously tested to prevent cancer? 00:30, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I would argue with the OP's premise that this is dead. That circuit court is notoriously conservative, and often gets overruled.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I got vaccinated because, well, logic, but I don't support a vaccine mandate. Businesses doing it,well,it's their choice but the government should not be doing it. Andrew5 (talk) 01:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There is something seriously screwed about someone saying the vaccine is good but the government has no business mandating it as a public health measure for unspecified reasons. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 02:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Public health crises require public health measures. This means government, a public entity. So, yeah. 04:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

SCOTUS will not want to be held responsible for a vaccine mandate which will make many people angry. So SCOTUS will kick it back to the states. Without a vaccine mandate, the coronavirus will keep coming in waves in the USA which keep Biden's approval poll numbers down. New anti-Covid therapies by drug companies may be unaffordable to those without insurance. People will blame Biden for failing to tame the pandemic. JimS (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Pre-GOP dominated SCOTUS already ruled on the constitutionality of a vaccine mandate 3 times (1905, 1922, 1944). They can just decline to rule on it the appeals court rules that it's constitutional. Bongolian (talk) 02:58, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also OSHA clearly has the authority to issue rules on workplace safety, which is generally non-controversial because it doesn't trigger anti-vaxxer kooks. Bongolian (talk) 03:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm just going to leave this here. 138.207.198.74 (talk) 17:49, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If the Biden Administration loses this vaccine mandate battle it can always shoot for a more limited vaccine mandate such as one merely for hospitals and nursing homes. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * SCOTUS doesn't give a flying f*** about making people upset. See Abortion, Travel Ban and basically every single case about religious exemption. What the court tends to do is err on the side of the government before things play out in court. There are multiple court cases about this question, including several where unions representing worker who are in a workplace less than 100 people actually want OSHA to do more. If I was a betting man, and the -$1800 is my bank account will tell you I am, I would say SCOTUS allows the law to go into effect while cases work through the courts.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I am starting a micronation and I got a few citizens
The LGBT+ Republic! Citizens are known as "Plusians" much like a person would say "American", "Canadian", "Mexican" and so on. We even got a flag! The nation's Prime Minister (not me) designed it.

--Channel 48 EAS (talk) 17:51, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is, it isn't a country until other countries recognize you. There's a reason no one believes Liberland exists. Besides, you need to have a territory, and sadly, most of it doesn't exist. Maybe you'd like to invest in ? --Andrew5 (talk) 21:24, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I know that it is not a real country; it is more of a fun project. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 22:40, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You must take international recognition by force. If other nations will not recognize you, then introduce them to the force of your arms! The rulers of the Silk Road dismissed the Great Khan as a mere equestrian. Then he burned their cities and made slaves of their women and children, and the old rulers bowed before him! They had to recognize him, not as their equal, but as their suzerain! If you want something in this world, you must take it with blood and iron! 23:46, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Tell all the countries which do not recognise you that you respect their hesitancy. After all, if countries just recognised any ol' place that declared independence then the world would be in bedlam in no time. None-the-less, once your mighty nation gains nuclear weapons and the respect that comes with it...punish all those countries that refused to give you the respect you always deserved. Punishments should range from a mild nuclear bombing to a slightly more extreme implanting all their citizens with nano-bots via gentle-invasive-surgery so that their brain is rearranged in a way in which they dedicate their lives as cheerleaders for your growing empire. All hail leader of the LGBT+ republic. Shabi  DOO  23:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Never forcefully takeover countries, because then they won't recognize you unless you conquer like a country the size of Brazil. Andrew5 (talk) 00:21, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The LGBT+ ally inside me is cheering, the vexillology enthusiast inside me is dying. Goatspeed. An Advocate (talk) 00:00, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As long as we can keep out the Demis.
 * Demi; "I'm Demisexual!"
 * Else; "What's that?"
 * Demi; "That means I'm only sexually attracted to people after being in a longterm relationship"
 * Else; "Umm, that sounds exactly like the sexuality that's been promoted by the Bible for thousands of years"
 * Demi; "What, no! We've been oppressed for generations!!!"
 * Else; "No, no you have not."
 * Demi; "See, you are oppressing me now! I deserve a flag too!"  01:45, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Help! I'm being repressed!" — Dennis the peasant Bongolian (talk) 02:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What the fuck is with this ignorant mean-spirited gatekeeping, you two? Demi people are people from the ace spectrum. Why the unwarranted mockery of them? They face the same derogatory exclusionary "you're not being oppressed enough" diatribes ace people experience. These "else" people that you're making out as "reasonable" are wrong: it is NOT the sexuality promoted by the Bible. It's like the difference between celibacy and asexuality: demi people are just not sexually attracted in a way other ace people are not sexually attracted, but the caveat is that the attraction develop in the relationship. Whereas Bible assumes sexual attraction is the norm and doesn't want you acting out on them until marriage. Demisexual people don't have the general attraction the general populace has (and which the Bible is written for), they can probably go years without having much sexual activity because they don't care much about sexual activity. They'll make for good priests and are amazing at abstinence probably. Is that hard to understand? If they didn't deserve a flag before, your ignorant post mocking and denigrating them only convinces me they do need a flag. 04:40, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I never would have thought not wanting to have sex would come with so much baggage-Hastur! (talk) 06:04, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If you are unable to handle being teased once in a while you have serious psychological and self-esteem issues. My joke is that the Demi's main struggle is the struggle to be viewed as having a struggle.  I mean, what is their real struggle?  What father has ever pushed his Demi daughter to sleep around more?  What pastor has told his congregation that those who don't engage in one-night stands are destined for Hell?
 * I mean, heck, I could claim to be on the "Demisexual" spectrum. Often I don't find a woman sexually appealing at first but after getting to know her and falling in love I start becoming sexually attracted to her even if there wasn't a physical attraction to begin with.  But I get it, we are all lonely, confused raindrops in this vast ocean of life, tossed by currents that care not for our existence and desires, struggling for purpose, for identity, for acceptance.  So we denigrate "cool" trends to try and convince others we are superior to them, we attach ourselves to labels and ideas, we listen to music such as Heavy Metal that we actually don't like because we think it makes us better than others.  Then sometime in my 20s, realized that everyone else had the same internal struggles, and I wasn't truly "better" than everyone and in fact all this nonsense, instead of making me superior just made me pathetic.  When I see someone running around claiming to be "Sapiosexual", "Neurodivergent", "Demisexual", I think "man, that used to be me" and "stop reminding me of how much of an insufferable twat I used to be". 18:16, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 00:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If someone doesn't appreciate your teasing, that's not an appropriate response to go "it's just a joke, lighten up, you have serious psychological issues" especially when teasing sounds too similar to statements not made in jest. This whole "you have to pay in blood dollars before you can get a flag" is this same gatekeeping that plagued bisexual people and is probably plaguing them today. We're talking about a flag of inclusivity and this thing you bring up, I resent and I resent even more your response telling me about "serious psychological issues" now. Some great mod you'll make. 18:37, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You know, there's a sort of perversity in the idea that people ought to suffer in blood and flesh before their concerns are taken seriously. Those that ignore the lessons of history etc etc etc... 20:52, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If in doubt...don't razz people. Especially when one is figuring out things about themselves. Regardless of any circumstances, whatsoever, if someone doesn't like being razzed...the only reasonable response should be: my bad...I won't do it again. Any response along the line of "ugh...come on it was just..." or "lighten up..." or "ugh I can't have fun with you" or "derp de derp" is, under the best conditions insensitive and under the worst conditions...hurts people. Shabi  DOO  21:03, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, fine. Sorry folks.  22:36, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I think you were in the right. 00:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I as well. An Advocate (talk) 01:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I find I have to pick my battles. The universe has a way of maintaining the karmic balance...
 * Corrupt user was in the right until he insinuated people who express their specific and even peculiar sexuality, even in imperfect categories, are insufferable twats. And I am saddened he has a small group of cheerleaders here. So what if someone cares more about personality or intellect or needs a long time to develop feelings? It doesn't make you captain awesome because you were once like that and no longer are and find their behaviour juvenile or silly? Seriously, this is only one step away from demeaning someone for being "a prude" or slut shaming. Let people be with and be attracted to whoever they want. Your sexual evolution is not other people's. And if it really bothers you to hear other people's sexual comfort zone, it might be that the problem is with you and not them...and that you are the insufferable twat. Even the lightest form of ridiculing people for not pushing beyond what they are comfortable with in romance and sex leads to people doing things that can have long term repercussions both sexually and how they deal with others, their body, trust etc. You know the whole: its a good thing people aren't pressured into or ridiculed into or whatever into doing things sexually they don't want to. Laughing at people for their sexual preferences also just shuts people up and creates other problems. But whatever. Some people on a site with progressive leaning think you are in the right, so it only shows how far we have to go when it comes to sexual health. Shabi  DOO  09:32, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I have not condoned mocking people for their sexuality. Ok, I have for Pedophiles and maybe a few of the more bizarre kinks, but certainly not for something like various forms of Asexuality.
 * They are only insufferable if they use far too many labels, and it depends on the context too. Labels are like bumper stickers; a few stickers show you've truly made the car your own, but if there's more sticker than bumper, the car's a junker.  Especially the dumb labels like "sapiosexual", and you'll see on bad dating profiles.  Nobody ever says "I'm a Dumbosexual; if that word is too long for you TEXT ME".
 * As for "Demisexual", that can be a perfectly fine description. If you are telling someone on a date you a Demi, it's obviously appropriate.  Or if you are discussing sexuality and it comes up, or, yes, you are figuring out who you are.  The problem I have is when "awareness" amounts to what appears to be self-aggrandizing, such as Cuomo's daughter whom the media treated as some sort of hero for "coming out".  Sure, Asexuality isn't really covered in Sex Ed well enough, but let's not pretend that "Demisexuals" ever had to hide their sexuality.
 * "Neurodivergent" is a weird one for me. I have Aspergers, technically, so I should be someone this is aimed at.  However, I truly believe that a mature attitude towards life is coming to terms with and accepting who you are, faults and all.  I have many abilities, and a partial disability.  It is what it is.  Trying to reframe difficulty with social skills to just be "different" instead of "deficient" is avoiding the problems.
 * Furthermore, if you don't look at yourself 5-10 years ago and find that person to be insufferable, chances are you've done very little improvement in that time. What did younger me know?  Younger me was such an idiot!  Life is about growth.  Once you stop growing, it's only downhill.  15:27, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 'coming to terms with and accepting who you are'. more so for some than for others, this is a long and too often painful process. i envy youths barely more than kids able to discuss 'coming to terms with and accepting who you are' freely and fearlessly AMassiveGay (talk) 15:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If I had a cent for every LGBTQ+ flag I've seen from people who got very excited about realizing who they were, I'd be a billionaire. Kinda funny to contemplate about how many people want their own flags. IMO the best course is to just stick with some variation of stripes. The ones with complex patterns or symbols (the "progressive pride flag" is a particular eyesore) don't tend to go over well. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Rainbow is the best I think. All encompassing. Pretty. Gets the point across. 00:35, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The rainbow flag is a bloody eyesore. Nobody voted for that flag and I would rather have just about anything else represent the LGTBQ+ community. Zombie, do whatever the hell you want with that flag. If various sub-communities and individuals create 10,000 variations, good for them. If it were up to me it would just be a pink triangle from the nazi era to symbolise the relentless terror inflicted on LGTBQ+ people throughout history and now, and at the same time a case of taking an abusive symbol and turning it into your own symbol of empowerment and fuck you to the world. Shabi  DOO  00:54, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It may be an eyesore, but its still the best flag. Andrew5 (talk) 00:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the Rainbow is one of the only flags that pushes 3 colors and does it well (its the rainbow after all), and all the sequels ruin the careful balance the pride flag achieved. An Advocate (talk) 01:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, not a fan of the one with the brown, black, and trans colors additions in some other revision. I really like the trans flag due to the gentle colors. We need more people embracing the pretty. 02:27, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The Trans flag is also pretty obvious in what the symbolism is. Boy/Girl switch to Girl/Boy.  03:16, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hard disagree. I like the rainbow. It's chill, it's nice. We can use more nice things in the world. I don't see much value in coding stuff heavily after spite. The pink triangle has it's place but like, in terms of what I'd personally prefer to be associated with, I'd rather be associated with nice things than with angry things. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:23, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm with TechPriest. Dave Wise 2 (talk) 00:30, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand your difference of opinion and I see where you are coming from in your general argument but I take great exception to you characterising the use of the pink triangle as "coding after spite". That is an aboslute gross mischaracterisation of what I said. I take even more exception to characterising the memory of past mistreatment, knowledge of current mistreatment and empowerment reduced down to anger. That's the kind of stuff people say to downplay those activism and spreading awareness as just "anger". memory, awareness and empowerment is not synonymous with anger. Shabi  DOO  17:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm characterizing it as such because it's to me at least, inherently a symbol painted by how the Nazis branded people like me back in their worst days. To me, there's a permanent association with the pink triangle to that genocide. When I want to think of who I am, who I want to be, I'd rather be defined by something I chose for myself rather than using something that those who hate me chose for me. I call it "anger" because to me, that would be the only motivation to use that sort of iconography (and in my experience, those who I've seen themselves define excessively by such symbols tend to be the most spiteful ones); to show to the world that even the stuff that they would use to denigrate you is not usable in that way. I know that is what the definition of reclaiming is but... it just doesn't feel good or right to me. Like, I'm me. I like women, making me a lesbian; I am trans;. Those are descriptors that yes, de facto, do apply to me. Anyone who disagrees with that can get out of my sight immediately. That is all true. But in the end, I'd rather be codified by who I am and who I want to be rather than what others think I am or were. To me the pink triangle is that last one. I'm more than just a label someone can slap on me and parade around as an example for or against their cause and I'd rather have as a result any iconography I associate myself with attached to stuff that I chose for myself. The rainbow flag is something that was chosen by the LGBTQ+ community as something they attach themselves to. The trans flag similarly was chosen by the trans community. None of these symbols and icons carry the same hateful past that the pink triangle does. Just because I exist doesn't mean I should be permanently linked as a victim to the genocides of 75 years ago. I'm not a victim, I'm me. I realize I went off on you here, but I am not downplaying that past either. I know it happened, I think it should be thought in schools so that we don't forget our pasts (for those who don't remember their mistakes are doomed to repeat them). But I will have no part in codifying myself by hatred if I have a choice. -- Techpriest (talk) 15:47, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The rainbow flag wasn't chosen by any community. Someone made one up and some groups went along with it until it was imposed on everyone else. There was no vote or public input. To me it is a hideous flag that simply filled a vacuume of symbols. Every exaggerated claim you made about the pink triangle COULD be made about the rainbow flag. That it glosses over reality, paints a happy colourful veneer over a group of people chronically harassed and mistreated as though the LGTBQ+ community is just one endless pride parade. I think there is a tiny bit of truth to that, but I wouldn't morph that into the kind of hyperbole you have over the pink triangle. You can argue away your own victimhood all you like, but the LGTBQ+ community has been and still is endlessly victimised. Resist that label if you want and any symbols associated with it...but downplay this reality to your detriment. Shabi  DOO  12:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Prior to that event, the Pink triangle had been used as a symbol for the LGBT community, despite representing a dark chapter in the history of homosexuality. The Nazi regime had used the pink triangle to identify and stigmatize men interned as homosexuals in the concentration camps. Rather than relying on a Nazi tool of oppression, the community sought a new inspiring symbol. (see this wikipedia article). Seems WP agrees with me. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There's only so much you can convey with colors and symbols but I think the rainbow is delightful and conveys positivity. It shouldn't gloss over the difficulties being faces, but I don't want LGBTQIA+ groups be characterized by misery but love and care for each other, looking at a rainbow after a storm. 19:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There's only so much you can convey with colors and symbols but I think the rainbow is delightful and conveys positivity. It shouldn't gloss over the difficulties being faces, but I don't want LGBTQIA+ groups be characterized by misery but love and care for each other, looking at a rainbow after a storm. 19:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Redacted topic
With all due respect, but if we had a page on everyone who ever criticized or disliked the site, we'd quickly baloon in a way that would not be very productive. We are not FSTDT. I've collapsed this section because we don't really cover every single weird fundie on the internet and I find it rather creepy to extensively document a person like this. -- Techpriest (talk) 21:06, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

The Dodleston Papers?
This was shared on a site I'm on: This Mysterious Computer Could Prove Time Travel Exists

Naturally I'm rather skeptical, but I can't seem to find anything here or elsewhere on it. Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into it. Towards-the Unknown (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That video is around three quarters of an hour. Can you summarize the claims in your own words?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:01, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Give me a few days and I'll have a summary. Towards-the Unknown (talk) 23:32, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * all the summary needed from the blurb beneath the video.


 * 'In 1984 something strange happened in the village of Dodleston. A BBC Micro was sitting on a counter, when it suddenly started receiving mysterious messages, which appeared to come from the 16th century. This might have gone unnoticed had local teachers, Ken Webster and Peter Trinder, not investigated to find that information was so accurate, it would be almost impossible to fake. This whole event was documented in the book "The Vertical Plane", published in 1989. But here, tonight, we investigate deep to find out exactly what this is all about.'


 * i can tell you now, without even watching the video that a bbc micro did not receive messages from the 16th century.


 * i thought this story from a few days ago was being referred to until i clicked the link and is what a 'proof' is going to look like - sciencey stuff too far above my head for me say if its plausible or not, but wholly hypothetical. not messages from the past sent to a computer in a 80s school. AMassiveGay (talk) 05:20, 21 November 2021 (UTC)


 * ok watched most of the video (thank you insomnia). skimmed a lot of it because it was painful to watch. basically, messages were left on a bbc micro from supposedly someone from the 16th century as part of a conversation with owners of the micro. replies from 16th centurychap appeared hours or days after messages typed onto the micro by 1980s chaps. occasionally some messages were received from 22nd century chap giving the time travel spin on what would otherwise be a tale of a 'haunted computer'. 1980s chap wrote a book about it all. 1980s chaps said the language of 16th century chap was authentic to time period. experts said bollocks was it, and 22nd century chaps language was too inconsistent in their spelling and grammar to be anything but a poor hoax. the earlier messages had lots of anachronistic errors that had corrected by later messages.


 * frustratingly the video relates all this as if this were a real mystery and 1980s chaps were genuine and receiving messages some how from someone, until the end when the narrator says he doesnt believe a word of it and its a probably a hoax. could have saved me 45 minutes  if they were honest about their incredulity at the outset. AMassiveGay (talk) 06:06, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It reminds me of Markovian Parallax Denigrate, a bunch of nonsensical text posted on Usenet way back. There's a Daily Dot article on it where at the end, the creator says he believes it was probably either the work of a troll or someone's Markov bot experiment, like in the video mentioned. In BarelySociable's video on the topic, he vents his frustration at all the people who fail to read the Daily Dot article all the way through and don't realize the "mysterious" messages might in fact be fairly mundane. DietMondrian (talk) 09:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * i would have said say this instance was aided by the fact the bbc micro was probably the first computer that most people had ever seen let alone used, but from the video, but i get the the impression no one was actually fooled by this hoax at time. theres a pretty fucking huge leap from 'whats this new fangled giant calculator thing and how can i make use of it?' to 'whats this new fangled giant calculator and HOLY SHIT its a FUCKING TIME MACHINE.' the fact that we are only hearing about it now from some no mark youtuber nearly 40 years later tells you how much traction this got at the time. time travel is up there with there with a flat earth as arse water no one actually really believes. redneck meth heads in a remote cabin in the appalachians with mothers who are also their sisters telling tales of anal probing and flying saucers are more credible. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Through redistricting alone GOP has enough votes to win midterms
GOP already has enough safe seats — through redistricting alone — to win back House in '22

The Republicans control more state legislatures and they are squeezing more safe seats out of those states. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * can you sign your entry please. Cardinal Chang (talk) 20:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 20:49, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * :D Cardinal Chang (talk)
 * The aggressive partisan gerymandering by the GOP will cause congressional maps that will last for a decade. This would give Republicans control of Congress for a decade. The U.S. Supreme Court tilts to the right with a 6-3 majority. So for all intents and purposes, the battlefronts where Democrats will have to focus on are presidential elections, local races and campaigning for a variety of issues. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 21:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It depends tho. Will there be a 2006, 2008, 2018, or maybe even 1948 or 1958 level blue wave in the next decade? Andrew5 (talk) 23:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * At this rate, probably not. Like, people don't seem to realize that this is like playing poker with a marked deck. The only way to win is to cheat. 23:33, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That has nothing to do with it. A massive blue wave can override gerrymandering. However, voter suppression can cause this blue waves to be less severe. Andrew5 (talk) 23:50, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And where are the Dems going to get those voters? Narnia? They can't or won't up their game and bring home the bacon, so they get less voters, so they lose more, so the GOP can get away with rigging the system more. You can't win a rigged game by playing honest. 23:58, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And that goes double for people who act like the game isn't rigged. 23:59, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reapportionment is helping Republicans too. People are moving out of blue states and blue counties and moving to red states and red counties. California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois are bleeding residents and Republican-led states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona are gaining residents. The people who are moving out of the blue states are not making red states bluer either because the people moving lean red in their politics. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In 1958, the US came out of a big recession, and Eisenhower was unpopular, so they united against him to flip 48 house seats and a record 13 senate seats, as well as win the new state of Alaska. In 1974, after Watergate, Republicans were seen as untrustworthy and hence lost 49 seats. In 2006, Democrats gained 31 seats as Bush became unpopular, and a further 21 in 2008 as we entered a recession. Between the two, 14 senate seats flipped. 2018, while Republicans did make gains in the Senate, they lost 41 house seats as they united against Trump.
 * If Biden gets ousted in 2024, or it flips in '28, then 2026 or 2030 could be a disastrous blue wave. Andrew5 (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok firstly, let's just fucking admit that if they thought they could the GOP would organize complete sham elections. Firstly. Secondly, how much Gerrymandering did conservatives engage in back then? Do you know? How much of a fight will the Blue Dogs put up when the chips are down? Based on what I've seen, not much. So, from where I sit you're expecting this blue wave to magically appear because... Why exactly? Because people care about politics? Bullshit. The average person views politics the same way they view WWE, as entertainment. For those that are engaged, why wouldn't they switch to the GOP? The GOP wins, the Dems barely hold out. Political groups know this and hedge their bets accordingly. 00:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, in 2018, they did do gerrymandering, yet Dems still won. Andrew5 (talk) 00:53, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Conditions were also way more favorable to the dems then.-Flandres (talk) 01:07, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 2018 vs 2022, yes. But we have to see if 2024, 2026, 2028 or 2030 could produce a poton blue wave. If Biden is elected in a near 500 electoral vote landslide (idk, maybe he becomes popular for an economy boom), he'll probably flip close to 60 seats if not more in th House, meaning if Republicans couldn't have gerrymandered enough to get 278 seats, it will flip blue. As we saw in 2010, you could have a very solid majority and lose it all with this amount of a flip. Andrew5 (talk) 01:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As GC pointed out Andrew, we are at the point where "sham elections" are within America's overton window. Arguably, the GOP only needs to 'win" 2022 and 2024. At that point talk of blue waves would come down to "who do the people with weapons like better."-Flandres (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * First of all, the GOP winning 2024 is not a guarantee. And it depends on how much damage to democracy with voter suppression and gerrymandering that the Republicans can pull off, before a blue wave comes. A lot of people thought the Republicans were dead in the 1930s, due to the fact that they were reduced down to 16 Senate seats and 88 house seats, but Dems then lost a lot of seats in '38 that allowed the Republicans to come back by '46. In 1964, a lot of people thought they died but, in 1966, a red wave came. It is very hard for a party to die, and indeed, Democrats can probably make a comeback at some point. Or the political parties will completely reshape, like back in the 1820s. Andrew5 (talk) 01:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Democrats need to focus more on working-class issues to gain back some of the Trump voters back. There has been too much of a focus on getting progressive upper-class votes. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 01:33, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But it seems they are unwilling to do so. Andrew5 (talk) 01:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, as we all know, the working class is made exclusively of brawny white men... Oh wait, the progressive caucus is the only one actually addressing this matter? The majority of the working class in this country are black and Latino? The Dems keep moving right in order to chase phantoms rather than relying on sound policy? Oh well then... By all means, keep doing the same thing over again and expect different results... 02:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The Democrats have been catering to the faculty lounge and the rich urban voters too much. Bread and butter issues have taken a backseat. Your average blue-collar voter couldn't tell you what intersectionality is if their life depended on it.


 * A lot of future American politics is a foregone conclusion for the coming years. Republicans will get their big defense money to counter increased Chinese military spending because the military-industrial complex gets its way in America. And Democrats will get more health care spending because the aging boomers want it. There will not be a lot of money left over. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 02:13, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay. 02:14, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And who is the working class in America? Hint, most blue collar jobs are done by blacks and latinos. Who benefits from intersectionality, an issue that's only recently become a focus for two caucus of the Democratic party? 02:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Latino voters are leaving the Democratic Party. Democrats Continue to Struggle With Men of Color. The long-time Democratic strategist James Carville is right when he says that Democrats need to get rid of "stupid wokeness". Moony235Wolfy (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * An op-ed? Really? Maybe it's the high unemployment rate among blacks and latinos, which is due to the Dems pursuing the white male demographic. A demographic which overwhelmingly hates the Dems when it comes time to vote. 04:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd also like to point out that Carville is a windbag and a hack. Has he secured and wins lately or is he too busy shooting his mouth off on MSNBC? 04:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

The Biden Administration's policy of reducing domestic oil and gas production to increase the price of gas/oil during a time of supply shortages is an example of Democrats being tone-deaf to the working class. Yes, higher oil and gas prices mean people use less fossil fuels which keeps the faculty lounge and rich urban whites happy, but it also pinches working-class pockets when they drive to work. Emmanuel Macron was tone-deaf to the working class when he imposed gas taxes, but he had to walk it back during the yellow vest protests. Brexit partly happened because the British working class felt ignored. Left of center politicians need to get back to bread and butter issues. The leftist upper class are often contemptuous of the working class in the UK/USA. When they lose more elections, they will sober up. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 04:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Macron isn't a leftist you idiot, he's lib. Also please show me examples of this "leftist upper class" you keep blathering on about, this is the first time I've ever heard such tosh. 04:39, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Liberals/leftists are both embracing "stupid wokeness" too much. Liberals/leftists both need to pay more attention to the lower class. Macron's net worth is $31.5 million. Macron is an upper-class, left of center, out of touch politician (I do realize he is a liberal). He's tone deaf to the lower class in some ways. Macron should remember the French principle of noblesse oblige. Macron has moved politically to the right. By moving right, he might be reelected.


 * The Biden adminstration and the Democrats are going to find out the hard way that the James Carville principle of "It's the economy stupid' is true. High gas prices will be a thorn in the side of Democrats during the midterm elections. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 04:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Examples of the "leftist upper class". Now. 05:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "New data from the 2020 election shows a big swing in one voting group away from the Democratic Party. Latinos made a significant rightward turn, and partisans of both parties are looking hard at why. One of them is David Shor. He is the head of data science at OpenLabs R&D, a progressive nonprofit."


 * The "leftists upper class" who go to Ivy League schools where they are drenched in wokeness. But faculty lounge wokeness in the social sciences is found in non-Ivy League universities too. College-educated Democrats are increasingly becoming out of touch with non-college educated working-class Democrats and independents as far as their concerns. The Democrats are starting to lose suburbia too.


 * Losing elections will sober up the Democrats. It might take some time, but it will happen. I hope it happens sooner rather than later. When political parties are competitive it keeps the other party on its toes as far as voter concerns. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 05:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Addressing previous posts of GrammarCommie: The Democrats will not cheat their way to political power. The GOP is passing a lot of voter integrity laws and post 2020 election Trump's base is pouring into election official/worker positions. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 05:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * This guy is a troll comrade. UncleKrampus (talk) 05:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My sources are Salon, NPR, The Atlantic, the New York Times, The Hill, Pro Publica and the longtime Democratic strategist James Carville. These are hardly clickbait, troll sources. I am supporting my positions too. Moony235Wolfy (talk) 05:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like another new account concern troll on Saloon Bar we'll waste bytes on. Whatever happened to Reefyc? 🤔 07:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * With Trump controlling the GOP and a lot of people fearing another presidency, and with people also hating Dems, the country will transform in ten years. Just watch. Parties will change. Andrew5 (talk) 12:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is likely the same person, I'm kicking both accounts. 13:30, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, things will get worse. 13:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It might not be worse, just completely different. And things will get weird, but not necessarily worse. Andrew5 (talk) 14:51, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Democrats are facing a midterm disaster as the GOP takes a 10-point generic ballot lead. The public has tremendously soured on Joe Biden's agenda, his priorities and Biden himself. The economy under Biden is also hurting Democrats.

Republicans are also sitting at a huge 23-point advantage in Senate battleground states. So unless a Supreme Court justice resigns or dies before the midterms, the court could get even more right-wing if Biden gets to nominate a judge on the court.

The Democrats need to take a hard look at their message and messaging. The Democrats are going to have to move more to the center. It's better if they do it before the damage is done. Without winning elections, it will be hard for Democrats to cause positive societal change. Rossow29 (talk) 15:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, as long as the GOP either backs away from Trump or Trump has less influence, they’re fine. Andrew5 mobile (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Lol, they've tried to do that and they're failing. Trump brings out voters. Trump aligned canidates bring out voters. They're not going to back off this crap. To the troll, yeah, the Dems are dumbfucks who refuse to treat politics seriously. They refuse to push through spending, they refuse to get tough on their own members, and they refuse to treat the GOP as a rival party. Moving right isn't going to help them. They've been trying that since the 1990s, it hasn't worked out. 15:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd normally concede a few points or here but given how extremely suspicious this new account has been basically continuing a discussion after a test block, it's not worth wasting much bytes reiterating what I feel most people here already agree on. 16:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * - Yes, Trump is very good at getting voters out but he is also causing a lot of people to violently turn away from the Republicans. For instance, while VA is a swing state, it is very anti-Trump. Same might be true in CO and NM. There's a reason TX became a swing state and maybe so for AZ and GA - anti-Trump states. If the Republicans abandon him, they might make IA and OH more competitive (but OH will probably aggressively gerrymander into a 13-2 map), and maybe find more of a perfect mix. Andrew5 (talk) 17:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Trump is toxic, but his brand isn't. The GOP wants "Trumpism" without Trump, mainly so they can increase their power. The Dems are dumbfucks who underperform on civil rights. Also they treat politics like feel good sports, rather than cutthroat business. 01:12, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Idk. People like MTG and Boebert are going to enduce negative cottails, but Colorado preformed a dummymander and solidified her formally competitve district. A dummymander is also what Arkansas did in 2012 and what Georgia did in 1992, and Nevada might have done it this time (have to see how midterms go). Andrew5 (talk) 01:25, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You are acting as if the Democrats don't have a vested interest in pushing rightwards, . The Republicans will continue to implement their shit policies while the Democrats shrug and say that they have tried everything. Really, what have the Democrats done since Biden was elected that makes the Democrats electable, besides not being Republicans? Revenant Raven (talk) 03:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

[moved from the The Dodleston Papers? thread]
 * Time travel is possible. I built a time machine and went into the future. Spoiler alert: The GOP achieves a an enormous win in the 2022 midterm elections. A big red wave of biblical proportions happens in the 2022 midterm elections.


 * "Republican Glenn Youngkin pulled off the unthinkable in his victory in the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday: He won the Latino vote by roughly a dozen percentage points." By the way, the username Nikgnouy is Youngkin spelled backwards. Olé! Olé! Olé! Nikgnouy (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * you built a time machine with the whole of human history and beyond to explore and the best you can do with it is gloat over something that hasnt happened yet to bunch of anonymous people on the internet? i salute such technical genius but i pity the crippling mediocrity of your vision. so tragic. and im guessing you didnt have the machine prior to trump getting trounced at the polls AMassiveGay (talk) 11:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I heard of this wonder piece of dangerous anti-science propaganda on Planet Dolan (Directed at children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie%27s_Marvelous_Measles

Melanie's Marvelous Measles. It tells kids to not get the MMR shot as it supposedly causes Autism and instead- get Measles virus infection instead.

If we are going to write books promoting dangerous anti-science propaganda that could kill or disable someone, why not have similar books? Peter's Perfect Polio, Randy's Ravenous Rabies, Derek's Delightful Dysentery, Eveline's Epic Ebola. Andrew's Awesome AIDS. Go out and get potentially deadly diseases! --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In fairness, Polio is actually safer than COVID. Yes, really!  Almost 75% of Polio cases result in no symptoms at all, only .5% of all cases result in serious complications or longterm issues, whereas .5% of all COVID cases result in death, plus another 5% with various longterm issues. 22:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually 2% of COVID cases result in death. Andrew5 (talk) 01:21, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That's case-fatality, which excludes many asymptomatic cases. You want to compare infection fatality rates, which about a year ago were .27%.
 * basically, if 250 million people got COVID and 5 million died, it’s 2%. Yes, people might be asymptotic, but there are a lot of people who had COVID, we’re asymptotic and suddenly died, so the five million number is definitely an undercount. It’s probably between 1 and 2%. Andrew5 mobile (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The real concern is that if the virus doesn't go away, and we have constant COVID seasons the way we do with the flu, getting COVID after COVID every single year will cause damage to build up, and the repeat infections will get progressively deadlier... 01:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If you we going to compare the two diseases then we would really need to factor in the effects of Long Covid which affects a significant number of symptomatic individuals. Unfortunately we still don't know enough about Long Covid to put firm numbers on it.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:25, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * While we don't know the longterm effects of COVID19, we do know the effects of what I'll call "COVID02"; SARS-CoV-1. The longterm effects all seem to either be complications from necrotic lung tissue, or PTSD from the quarantines.  I imagine COVID19 will have similar effects.  16:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Autism

 * Gotta ask a question, although the people I'd love to ask this are certainly not frequenters of this site. And putting aside the supposed "terrible risks" the MMR vaccine supposedly has. What is so terrible and bad about autism that the risk of death or disability from measles, pertussis, mumps and or rubella is a preferable option? I'd love to know. Cardinal Chang (talk) 11:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't think we should hate people for putting a lot of effort into their projects, sure some of them might be a bit arrogant but they often do get good results. Wait, Autism isn't the irrational hatred of Auteurs?  16:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I will describe Autism in a nutshell as I have Autism and so do my brothers. It is largely characterized by impaired social skills, inability to pick up on social ques, repetitive behaviors, sensory issues and sometimes learning disability. Depending how far someone is on the Autism spectrum, they may be non-verbal. A common misconception about Non-Verbal people is that they cannot communicate; they can communicate but with certain noises or movements they make. Plenty of people with Autism are prone to mental illness development. Another interesting thing is that people with Autism are more likely to be LGBT+. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 16:32, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also being so afflicted, I can honestly say I get why people would find me hard to deal with. I can't stand myself a lot of times, goodness knows how anyone else could. Very easy to get really locked in on a subject, I know most people aren't interested but that's what I want to read/watch so I do, and then get frustrated as no one wants to talk with me about it. Makes perfect sense, huh? Also like to have things a certain way, but very arbitrary what I do and don't care about. And I'm a relative success story, took a while to get there but I live on my own and support myself with a decent job. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 18:14, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your condor, and trusting an unknown person online to talk about your condition. But I think you are both missing what I was asking. The anti-vax brigade have, particularly since Andrew Wakefield's dodgy study, been adamant that the mmr vaccine causes autism, and therefore want no one to be vaccinated. But what I'd like to know is what do they think is so bad about autism that the risk of death or life changing disabilities from measles, pertussis, mumps and or rubella is a preferable option for their darling, precious children than being autistic. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't have autism, but I do have ADHD, which is also another mental health condition tied to vaccines in some circles. I'm going to guess autism, like ADHD, isn't "terrible and bad". It's more like a struggle, and achievement is going to take more work, but there are perks you have, such as being accustomed to all the criticism you get about things you know are out of your control. Autism is likely workable, but it's not "crippling" in most cases. People with autism need to work hard to deal with their condition, and I just wish for others to have awareness and tact for others. I'd rather get autism than a historical child killer disease that actually cripples and has life-lasting effects way worse than autism while also being able to spread to others. I think the anti-vax type thinks measles is something that doesn't afflict your personality and brain, doesn't damage you for eternity like the apparent permanence ADHD has. They think you can recover from measles and you'll be set for life (that's not true) while autism from vaccines is like a permanent cripple. 21:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I should have clarified, having to put up with people like the guy in Rain Man is what primarily concerns people (fun fact, almost certainly wasn't autistic, he probably had FG syndrome). That's no way to exist, and people who see it up close might find some bright spots in it but conclude it's horrible. I've worked with that population a lot, and though I'm at the opposite end of that spectrum and have a hard enough time enjoying life, living in the straightjacket of more severe kinds of autism strikes me as a living hell; and that's with being able to see some of it in me. And even the less severe cases of autism, if you will, generally result in extraordinarily annoying people who won't shut the fuck up about whatever the idée fixe du jour happens to be, and that's your best case. If autism was actually a result of vaccines, I'd at least be concerned about severely affecting 1 in [whatever the 2 digit number it is these days] lives in that way. Not that it's a good argument about vaccination, since it it actually was that zero-sum I'd take my issues in exchange for herd immunity against all manner of deadly diseases, but that's the thought process. Thankfully, there isn't any actual connection, so I only have to raise this as a hypothetical. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 02:46, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Some thoughts on RationalWiki
First off, let me say that I really like most of the articles here. I find them a lot more to-the-point than Wikipedia articles, less fluff, and a more thorough treatment/debunking of pseudoscience. All of this makes RW articles more useful and much more enjoyable to read.

For a while I've been thinking about creating an account and contributing more here. Now I highly doubt I will ever do that (but never say never). This discussion is just absurd and discouraging, especially with regards to points 2, 3, and 4 of RationalWiki's purpose. I took a look at a draft for an article and made a suggestion to add something, a small point. I was almost immediately called a troll. I was also called a dumbass, and it was suggested that I need reading lessons. I can assure you that I am not trolling with this or anything else I've said here at RW. I don't know how exactly I'm supposed to prove it (that stupid troll message keeps getting put back there). If you look at my contributions here, I think you'll find that I'm simply discussing various subjects and sincerely giving my opinion. Many people here disagreed with me. That's fine. As a proud Libertarian living in California, I'm quite used to people disagreeing with me. I don't mind discussing things with people who disagree with me. It's actually enjoyable, and I usually learn something. Simply calling someone who disagrees with you a troll (especially when they're clearly not trolling) does not make you look smart or help you "win" your argument. It makes you look foolish. Some of you have some growing up to do. This atmosphere is not conducive to collaboration. This is not the break from the bullshit at Wikipedia I was hoping for.

While I'll unlikely create an account, I will almost definitely continue reading articles here, so please keep up the good work.12.23.183.186 (talk) 17:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I was not involved in that conversation, but I think that the thing that set people off to thinking that you were a concern troll was the second paragraph in your opening, "It might be prudent to mention that some (not all) schools in America are beginning to teach students that all white people are racist." You're making a generalization here, and unless you can cite a policy of a single public school or public school district that instructs teachers to teach "all white people are racist", then you're very likely wrong. I would grant you that it's conceivable that there are be a few individual teachers who do this — hell there are documented cases of individual public school teachers still teaching creationism. Public school districts know better than to put stupid things in policy because they can get parental complaints and/or get sued. Bongolian (talk) 17:58, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also not involved - but to be fair he did say "some". And he did give a link which arguably supports his contention.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:04, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But the link doesn't support that claim. It describes a situation where a curriculum was expanded to include coverage of systemic racism and how it's perpetuated, but it doesn't speak to the character of people, at least not insofar as the article covers the subject. 18:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * RationalWiki leaning to the left politically does make it less objective in terms of its core missions. One example of this: China/Vietnam/North Korea demonstrate that the right does not have a monopoly on authoritarianism. Reefyc (talk) 19:29, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The two problems were that BoN said "some schools" (implausible) not "some teachers" (plausible), and that he did not give a citation as evidence. Bongolian (talk) 19:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If one zooms out towards a world perspective, one could reasonably make the following claim: "the ethnic group / social division in power tend to perpetuate systemic racism against the minority group not in power". In America, white European-descended are the dominant ethnic group / social division in power (though not completely, of course, which actually is a better situation than many countries to be honest). So there are no problems with the statements in the article. I don't think it really said "all white people are racist", rather it said the above, which is very different.
 * Now, I do feel that discussions on tribalism could be so much better if they zoomed out, in part so people might get a perspective that this is just part of what humans are, and not transform it into yet another Stupid Culture War. In Asia, for instance, you will get both intra-national tribalism (eg India, with Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalism, and the caste system, are good places to start) and international tribalism (South Korean vs. Japanese vs. Chinese etc.) Africa has a ton of tribal factions that don't exactly like each other, and to top it you get systemic racism from "colonial interests" (it used to be colonial Europe, but these days its likely to be the Chinese). Narendra Modi is also an excellent example of an elite leader using tribalism as a wedge issue to make sure that the elite stay elite and tribal rage of the common man is not directed at the elite, but at the other. (In other words... quite like what Republicans do here. You have to laugh at all those Ivy League educated Republicans pretending they are the common clay...) The Newsweek article made the topic seem horribly simplistic and America focused, though I'm not sure if the problem is the curriculum or the article or both (as Newsweek tends to be both horribly simplistic and America focused)... PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 20:08, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to derail the topic but conflating "centrist" and "neutral" with "objective" is a pretty flawed lens. To be objective is to take biases, influences, and variables into account, to study evidence and arguments in a logical and informed manner, and to come to a sound conclusion irrespective of where that might lead. It is the dogged pursuit of truth wherever that truth might be, regardless of how "radical" that truth might sound at the time. I really shouldn't have to point out the fact that ideas like heliocentrism and natural selection were considered "radical" in their time, as were ideas like the abolition of slavery, anti-monarchism, women's rights, etc etc. 20:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Presenting a snobbish attitude and claiming not to want to sign up because of 'the oiks' (or whatever term you the original poster prefer) does tend to be taken as a red flag.
 * Claiming that 'some schools teach that all whites (who are an extremely diverse population) are racists' is racist in itself.
 * Bear in mind, OP/BoN - a proportion of us are active in the general wikiverse/other contributory sites, and come to RW to enjoy a bit of rough-and-tumble. Anna Livia (talk) 20:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (Ec) I'm going to assume the user picked up on the whole white guilt sort of thing that some people do pick up when critical race theory is discussed which is understandable. I appreciate they had some patience they wrote further explaining their opinions in a situation where others might feel cornered and become defensive. Anyhow, Bongolian is correct: the "some" qualifier is problematic just for reasons Wikipedia doesn't like weasel wording: it's vague. It doesn't mean dishonesty but it's just not useful information to glean off. "Some" could be four, ten, twenty, three thousand, a million and a third. Anyhow, critical race theory is not blaming white people. It might feel that way, but it's not, it's a lot more abstract and all of this is out of your control for generations.
 * Btw I was told to refrain from the "tribal" characterizations of this due to the negative warfare-like connotations it carries regarding Native Americans and such. Using it, of course, doesn't make you a bad person, but just be mindful. 20:27, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't believe the kind of "white people are racists without even knowing it" POV is prevalent in American schools. However, some publishers are currently trying to persuade educators to let it in. UncleKrampus (talk) 20:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh gods... That idiot huckster DiAngelo is going to be the death of us all... 21:00, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * She presents the material as a sermon to which the only acceptable answer is Amen. That offends me already. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 15:34, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Derailment

 * Wikis that have preponderance of users from one bandwidth of the political spectrum are less collaborative because their userbase is smaller. RationalWiki's left-leaning userbase means it's less collaborative and less objective. Dissenting voices from the moderate/right-wing camps are regularly censored at this wiki. Reefyc (talk) 01:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You aren't making sense. A smaller userbase that shares more similarities is less collaborative? Dissenting voices on what issue(s)? What's the nature of their dissent? What do you mean by censored? Please be more precise and clear with your language. 02:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives: "Both liberals and conservatives accuse their political opponents of partisan bias, but is there empirical evidence that one side of the political aisle is indeed more biased than the other? To address this question, we meta-analyzed the results of 51 experimental studies, involving over 18,000 participants, that examined one form of partisan bias—the tendency to evaluate otherwise identical information more favorably when it supports one’s political beliefs or allegiances than when it challenges those beliefs or allegiances. Two hypotheses based on previous literature were tested: an asymmetry hypothesis (predicting greater partisan bias in conservatives than in liberals) and a symmetry hypothesis (predicting equal levels of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives). Mean overall partisan bias was robust (r = .245), and there was strong support for the symmetry hypothesis: Liberals (r = .235) and conservatives (r = .255) showed no difference in mean levels of bias across studies. Moderator analyses reveal this pattern to be consistent across a number of different methodological variations and political topics. Implications of the current findings for the ongoing ideological symmetry debate and the role of partisan bias in scientific discourse and political conflict are discussed."


 * Arthur C. Brooks wrote in his article Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being: "A 2012 survey conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University asked a sample of Americans about their news-consumption habits, and quizzed them about U.S. and international political and economic events. They found that those watching the most partisan television news sources—on both the left and the right—were often less knowledgeable about world events than those who consumed no news at all."


 * Because RationalWiki leans to the left politically, it regularly screens out right-wing perspectives. And in the real world, left-wingers are not always right 100% of the time and right-wingers are not always right 100% of the time. Reefyc (talk) 02:42, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't think this is a left/right problem. This sort of thing, for instance, why collapse it? I don't know if the tankie user is right, I've never heard of the author being discussed, but I don't see any signs of bad-faith from the tankie user (ok, maybe the CP reference is a sign of bad-faith). See, I'm not saying that the user is here in good faith, but there's no evidence so far of that and being a moron is not against the rules. Some users are are just too paranoid with concern trolls to a point that I honestly doubt their commitment with CD since they clearly seem to favor groupthink. GeeJayK (talk) 03:21, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I notice you dodged my questions and just repeated your claims. I also notice you imply that I think the left or the right has to be right 100%, a claim I did not make at all, and actually spoke against. Maybe you could lay off the links and actually answer my questions like a human being eh?  03:23, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean I'd agree. Sometimes people will just take shit I say at a glance and not engage critically with it, for another example. But, again, the idea that radicals are de facto wrong because they are radicals and that "moderates"/centrists are de facto right smuggles in so much a priori assumptions that its hard to take seriously. As I said before in this and other threads, we do not arrive at truth by looking at whether someone is left, right, or center, nor do we measure whether they are moderate or radical. We determine what is true using vigorous methodology, baring in mind that many positions we now consider moderate and common sense were in fact viewed as radical in their day. 03:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I strongly object to your "dissent is censored here" claim. Show me strong examples. What "right wing perspectives" are screened out? Be specific. 03:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think being right 100% of the time is a great argument, for example you can argue that Vox is a left leaning website. But you're almost always better off looking at Vox and just ignoring a site like fucking Breitbart for example, I pick Vox because I know that it does lean left moreso than others, and is decent enough on report actual facts. It beats the competition there (Breitbart is a low bar). Real competition would be something like FT.com. Being biased is alright, as long as you are in fact correct on the important things. People are biased to listen to their doctor (hopefully) when getting medical advice, than orange man implying they should inject bleach. I would discard the advice from the other crank 100% of the time when it came to my medical situation, and that's because I'm actually sane. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 03:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

An ideologically homogenous userbase at a wiki is going to have less back and forth debating the pros/cons of a position. Groupthink is going to prevail. So there is less collaboration. Topics are going to differ on the nature of dissent as there are going to be different types of arguments and kinds of evidence. It is not necessary to define the word "censored" as it is a simple concept to understand.

Wikipedia doesn't live up to its NPOV standard, but a more consistent discovery of the truth of matters does require honest attempts at objectivity. Reefyc (talk) 03:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please answer the questions.


 * Otherwise you'll be accused of being a moron and then shut up for good. And the Webster-Dictionary says, "Informal. a person who is notably stupid or lacking in good judgment."


 * And that's censorship. As the American Liberty Union states: "Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.". So that's what's going to happen to you if you keep this charade up.


 * Pansies. 03:55, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * "Topics are going to differ on the nature of dissent", what topic? If you're leaning right and your opinions on a topic are being displaced here the more reasonable answer is that you're just wrong. Example, give. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 04:07, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The ratio of edits to blocks at RationalWiki seems higher than at Wikipedia which has a broader ideological/geographical spectrum. At Wikipedia, there is a better balance of users from right-leaning countries versus users from left-leaning countries. Reefyc (talk) 04:08, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You have one more chance to answer any of the questions. If this continues to be derailed, I'm gonna collapse the discussion starting with your comment, Reefycp. 04:10, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't care about your beef with Wikipedia. That's not in my power to control, ergo it is not something you should be complaining to me about. As to your claim that "An ideologically homogenous userbase at a wiki is going to have less back and forth debating the pros/cons of a position. Groupthink is going to prevail. So there is less collaboration.", this would be incorrect. Collaborative efforts would  continue, but in a manner that is more homogeneous and less charitable towards disagreement. This is not to say that such a homogeneous userbase would be good per se, only that it would in fact be collaborative. As to censorship, yes I do expect you to explain this. It's a term that gets thrown around in very vague and imprecise ways these days. Do yu mean "censorship" in the way anti-vaxxers mean it, wherein they receive social backlash for their views? Do you mean "censorship" in the way people who get kicked off of social media for violating TOS agreements do? Do you mean "censorship" in the narrow literally sense of being unable to speak opinions or positions? Be precise with your terms here. You want open debate and free inquiry? I'm giving it to you.  04:16, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Can you please lay off the threats? 04:16, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay. You can invite Reefyc here, but I have gutter bottom expectations for them. 04:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I have been to South Dakota many times. It is a right-wing leaning state. When I look at Wikipedia's article on South Dakota (SD) it is more objective. Wikipedia's article on SD doesn't have tumbling tumbleweeds for "Other main attractions". RationalWiki's leftist slant shows in its main South Dakota article.

That is a good faith example of readers getting a less objective perspective on a topic at RationalWiki. Reefyc (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not a fair comparison, since the article is in funspace. Notice the language is similar for the California article ("Whereas Florida is the wang of the United States, California represents the ass of the continent. But it's America's ass!"). The South Dakota article is also in Fun space, so the information there, while biased against conservatives, is also not to be taken as a legitimate criticism of South Dakota. The article itself isn't even that cruel to South Dakotans. We have a lot to say about their governors, sure, but you cannot take a statement like "South Dakota has more prairie dogs than people", compare it to any statement in Wikipedia's corresponding article, and then use this as an example of RationalWiki's bad approach at perspective? 04:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're saying our funspace article isn't... serious? Do you know what humor is? Further, this is a complete non sequitor and digression from the original topic. 04:36, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The quickness to issue a threat toward me tells me that no matter how many examples I give of RationalWiki being less objective than Wikipedia, it is never going to be enough.


 * But to show my good faith, I will provide another piece of evidence. Wikipedia's article on RationalWiki: "Both Yan et. al 2019[11] and Knoche et al.,[12] two articles about classifying a writer's biases via text analysis, asserted that Conservapedia was "conservative" and RationalWiki was "liberal"."


 * Mainstream sources provide evidence that RationalWiki is biased. Bias is not something that is desirable. Greater objectivity is something that is far more desirable. Reefyc (talk) 05:01, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't believe you understand what "objectivity" is either. 05:09, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I found another example. Wikipedia's article on the Babylon Bee has a link to the main page of the Babylon Bee website so its readers can judge for themself if Wikipedia's article is fair. RationalWiki doesn't have a link to the main page of the Babylon Bee website in its article on the Babylon Bee. By it's gatekeeping in its Babylon Bee article (No link to the Babylon Bee main page), RationalWiki is showing it is more biased than Wikipedia. Reefyc (talk) 05:16, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The argument about whether WP is more objective is rather pointless. WP strives for Neutral point of view, RW explicitly does not (SPOV). It implies that RW accepts some bias, which is not to say there is no bias in WP, only that it strives towards neutrality. Does one want an unbiased article Hitler (He made the trains run on time.), Pol Pot (He enjoyed good relations with China.), Göring (He was a caring family man.), or Putin (He kept the oligarchs from killing each other… reserving that right for himself.)? I think not. Bongolian (talk) 05:38, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You know bias has nothing to do with objectivity right? As long as you accept facts everyone can agree on, that's all that matters. Being wrong and unbiased here is less acceptable than being biased and correct (as far as I can tell). BumblingBuffoon (talk) 06:03, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Holy hell there are links to Babylon Bee for each headline. That's a hell of a stretch to conclude that RationalWiki is bad for lacking an external links section. RationalWiki IS more biased than Wikipedia, no one is arguing otherwise. 06:05, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oxford Languages defines bias as: "inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair." Having a more accepting attitude towards bias than Wikipedia is not desirable.


 * I will provide another example of RationalWiki lacking objectivity. RationalWiki's Asian values article says Asia has an issue with parents who are too strict. That is very subjective and Wikipedia's article says no such thing about Asian values. Asia's rice farming is far more labor-intensive compared to Europe's wheat farming. So Asians have had to be more self-disciplined and their parents have known this and have been more strict. So strictness in their culture for thousands of years has been a matter of necessity. Asians typically live in higher population density areas than Europeans/Americans on the whole so politeness is valued more because it is more necessary. Children with stricter parents are more polite as a general rule. RationalWiki's article on Asian values smacks of cultural bias. Reefyc (talk) 06:16, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You didn't provide any other objectivity point, this was the first one that we can really address as objective. First you prove that there is a strictness issue with parents in Asian culture, then you have to prove there is a level of strictness which is detrimental to the child's wellbeing. I don't disagree with removing this statement until it can provide a valid source, especially as the only part of the article that even mentions the word strict is this part, which calls for credentials but gives none where appropriate. "Critics point out that the region still has issues surrounding gender discrimination, homophobia, and strict attitudes toward children." Furthermore, the fact the article needs more sources is literally the reason that the banner for having too many unsourced claims is on the article, that immediately would inform the user to take the information with a grain of salt. Not that you seem to even disagree with the strictness part, you seem to have an issue with whether that is a problem? BumblingBuffoon (talk) 06:29, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't like the Asian values article, but it's not the "bias", it's that the article is very poorly defined and unsourced. Asia is a huge region, and one country has probably highly differing attitudes in its regions. I think the claim "Asian values are not usually thought to be compatible with Western liberal democracy or individualism." is unsupported and assumes a binary (it's more of a spectrum), and I do not believe whatever Asian values is (let's say collectivism as in "collectivist/individualist" spectrum in sociology) is mutually exclusive with liberal democracy. I do see critique on its vague loaded application similar to "American values" or "Family values" useful, but it's not adequate in the article. 06:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I did not say strictness is "an issue" in Asian societies. I said it's more valued because it is more necessary and provided decent rationales. RationalWiki said in it's Asian values article there is an "issue" with Asian parents being too strict. Reefyc (talk) 06:37, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * How strict are we talking though? What is the source for your knowledge on Asian strictness? This would help me look at it and compare it with what is generally accepted by family counsellors / psychiatric sources (I assume psychiatry would be the field to deal with this issue). WebMD at least offers some advice on that and I assume they know what they're talking about, I'd prefer guidelines from something like the APA but I can't find that if it exists (yet). BumblingBuffoon (talk) 06:42, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Western psychologists are not going to value strictness as much as Asians and I showed some of my rationales on why Asians value strictness as a matter of necessity.


 * Even in Western countries, things like population density, religious traditions/beliefs, agricultural practices and other factors have a bearing on the cultural importance of politeness. Three in four British adults (75%) say they grew up in a strict household. The Brits are correspondingly ranked high for politeness too.  So are British parents too strict with their children and American's raise their children better in terms of strictness if an American psychologist association says so? The British science journal Nature points out that 50% of psychology journal articles fail the reproducibility test.


 * In my experience, the best teachers I had, were the one's that were the strictest and pushed their students the hardest. Asians and people of Asian descent are excelling in Western universities and their parent's strictness plays a part in that. As a whole, Asian-Americans have a higher income than their non-Asian American counterparts too.


 * The reason why RationalWiki has a big bias problem is due to its frequent intolerance to editors who are not left-wingers. It's not a coincidence that RationalWiki's Asian values article is more biased than Wikipedia's article on the same subject. I've never seen a wiki with a higher block/edit ratio than RationalWiki. Maybe a wiki exists with a higher block/edit ratio, but I have not seen it. RationalWiki blocks/reverts more on talk pages too. Reefyc (talk) 07:17, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to hear about your distrust of psychiatry but I went ahead and looked for some sources for the Asian values article if you'd like to review it. I don't know about you, but I'd consider psychological child abuse of threats of physical violence and name calling, and then actual physical child abuse to be a problem. Unless I am somehow mistaken and we can ignore most evidence that child abuse has negative consequences on children, on the presumption that it will fail reproducibility tests? Also your criticism of western values is something I mentioned in my edit as well because these problems don't strike me as a problem only in Asian but rather to be found around the world (sadly), though to say that transgender rights in one place is regressive compared to somewhere else is an easy claim to defend. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 07:56, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

If you weigh the academic achievement levels of Asian-Americans and their higher income levels on one side of the scale and put social scientists whose discipline has a 50% reproducibility problem in its journals on the other side of the scale, I know which side of the scale is weightier. So there is no need to feel sorry for me.

And you have to consider that societies culture even in highly developed countries can have a deleterious or beneficial effect on the ethics of its scientists. I will give an example from the field of medical science. Why did so many German doctors join the Nazi Party early?: "During the Weimar Republic in the mid-twentieth century, more than half of all German physicians became early joiners of the Nazi Party, surpassing the party enrollments of all other professions. From early on, the German Medical Society played the most instrumental role in the Nazi medical program...". And the degree of strictness that a parent should exercise with their children is partly a moral judgment. You are weighing the cost/benefit ratio to the individual vs. the cost/benefit ratio to society. You also have to weigh the short-term costs/benefits vs. long-term costs/benefits which is a question of morality. Reefyc (talk) 08:22, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay so to cut to the chase and wade through the bullshit and non-sequitors, are you a child abuse apologist? Because you have not bothered to address the fact that the Tiger parenting style and generally the authoritarian parenting style in other areas of the world has been consistently associated with terrible mental health outcomes, depression, rates of suicide, and there is reason to believe that the academic success of children under these types of parents is also not as good as they say it is. Even assuming that the parenting style did give higher academic results, are you suggesting that, even according to the wikipedia's views on Tiger parenting being negative, that child abuse is worth it? If so, I don't think I have to argue further, because I can't morally agree with you, and I think that moral disagreement here is actually meaningful too. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 08:58, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Suicide rates by country. The suicide rate for Filipinos is very low compared to the rest of the world and the Filipinos I know had strict teachers and parents and they are very well adjusted and friendly. Smooth interpersonal relationships are a core value for Filipino families and communities. 75% of the British say they had strict parents. A majority of my work this week was with British citizens and they were unfailingly polite and came across as well adjusted. The British have about 57% of the suicide rate of the permissive Swedes. The Asian country of Singapore is one of the very strictest countries on earth and it has high levels of academic achievement, a prosperous society and its suicide rate is about 55% of the permissive Swedes.


 * Strictness combined with love has been practiced by countless parents and teachers for thousands of years with excellent results. Although I did not appreciate my strictest university professor at the time, in retrospect he was the very best teacher I ever had. The most permissive college professor I ever had was a train wreck.


 * When you have to resort to ad hominem arguments like "are you a child abuse apologist" instead of facts, you lost the argument. Reefyc (talk) 09:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I haven't lost shit. You dodged the question again, do you support corporeal punishment, yes or no? It's a well established fact that authoritarian parenting is associated with a slew of awful outcomes for the child. Time for some sources. They are socially incompetent compared to others, conduct problems, hyperactivity, low self-esteem and other such miseries, higher rates of suicidal ideation (second link), on top of the issues that arise from child abuse, because that's what corporeal punishment is.


 * As and added bonus, your statistics on suicide have no explanatory power at all for this discussion. Because although suicide rates vary, the variables responsible for these shifts include other things, whilst authoritarian parenting style is associated with higher rates of suicide, it may well be that there are other things that make people less suicidal that have nothing to do with it. For example, just because not all people who smoke die of cancer, it'd be an error to say that they aren't at an increased risk and that it doesn't matter for their health.


 * If you meant to say you support "authoritative" parenting style, which is associated much more with overall quality of outcome, that's fine, but the kind of parenting style we're talking about explicitly mentions as part of discipline, corporeal punishments. That's not love, that's abuse. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 10:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Last week it was reported that almost half of NHS psychologists should be on the couch themselves - an astonishing 46 percent suffer from symptoms of depression, according to a survey by the British Psychological Society. Here, a psychologist with substantial experience offers a candid account of their own ordeal some years." - Confessions of a depressed psychologist: I'm in a darker place than my patients, The Telegraph, FEBRUARY 8, 2016. The adage of physician heal thyself comes to mind.


 * When you take combine this report with the huge failure of the psychological journal articles as far as reproducibility (50% failure rate), we are not talking established facts in psychology by any stretch of the imagination. The social science of psychology does not have the scientific rigor of physics and chemistry.


 * Your so-called "established fact" has zero explanatory power to explain why permissive Sweden (which is rich country with generous welfare benefits) has a much higher suicide rate than strict Singapore/Britain/Philippines (you can't move the goal posts).


 * As far as corporal punishment necessarily causing conduct problems, hyperactivity, higher suicide rates (you can't move the goal posts), etc. then we should find high rates of those problems historically and in Singapore. Since it is a safe assumption that students with conduct problems/hyperactivity/suicide rates would often have lower academic achievement and psychological problems later in life, I find it puzzling that Singapore has very high educational attainment and has a very prosperous society while widely employing corporal punishment. The old people I have talked to had strict teachers/parents who used corporal punishment. But these same elders appear to be very well-adjusted and they told me that their homes and schools had less conduct problems. My cousin had a policeman father that used a belt on him when he misbehaved. He is a very well-adjusted executive at a big company and he has a happy wife and kids. I had a shop teacher that threw an eraser at high school students when they misbehaved. None of the students had mental breakdowns.


 * Let's go further back in history. I am guessing that parents/teachers were more strict during the Middle Ages (strict nuns who used corporal punishment and strict parents). But the British website Reviews in History says about suicide in the Middle Ages: "A rate of 25 per 100,000, or one in four thousand, counts as high in the late twentieth century."


 * Your main debating tactic is argument by outrage and personal attack which I find unpersuasive. Reefyc (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I just found this January 8, 2000 article in The Guardian:


 * "A majority of parents want corporal punishment to be reintroduced in schools to tackle what they perceive is an increasing problem of classroom disorder, according to a poll published yesterday.


 * It showed that two-thirds of parents think discipline has declined over the past 10 years, while only one in 10 believe it has improved. Almost a quarter think disruptive and badly behaved children are the biggest problem facing schools - a higher proportion than those blaming poor teaching, overcrowding or lack of parental support.


 * The opinion poll showed 51% of parents think reintroduction of corporal punishment is the answer to the problem. Among working class parents 60% are in favour, but the proportion falls to 40% among middle class parents.


 * Corporal punishment was abolished 14 years ago throughout all state schools and in the private sector last year...


 * Sir Rhodes Boyson, a former Conservative MP for Brent North and former headteacher:


 * "I was caned two or three times when I was at school for minor offences - I took my punishment and it seemed fair."


 * "As far as I am concerned, it is a good form of punishment for boys which instils a sense of discipline. Generally discipline in schools has deteriorated since it was taken away.


 * "If a boy gets away with violence at school he will continue to get away with it throughout his life unless he is punished.


 * "I think caning should be brought back to schools that want it so that parents can make up their own minds.""


 * So a majority of British parents in 2000 thought that conduct problems were higher in British schools without corporal punishment. Reefyc (talk) 14:17, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That a majority of people think something is true is utterly meaningless to the truth value of that statement, the entire would could be convinced that a man turned his blood into wine and it'd never be a verifiable scientific fact, because it isn't one. So I can dismiss your appeals to populus. Next we'll talk about how your criticism of psychology is utterly meaningless because it only poisons the well, and does nothing to discredit the value of psychiatry or specific studies, remember that 50% of things being reproducible kind of implies at least half of the theories claimed have in fact being reproduced, you have done nothing to shed light on the issue of these specific studies and have engaged in character assassination of the profession instead because rhetoric means more to you than objectivity.


 * Finally, you have revealed yourself as a child abuser advocate, and I sure as shit hope you aren't Ken who wishes to put himself in a position of actual supervision over anyone's kids. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 15:05, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As is well known - polls do not necessarily reflect what people actually wish to be legalised (and parents are likely to object to their own little dears being given corporal punishment. Besides the poll was two decades ago, and it was a majority of those polled and who chose to respond (and all the other arguments used in such discussions). Anna Livia (talk) 16:08, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I was asked to provide an example of RationalWiki censoring. One needn't look far. I provided evidence to support my position (which I did above) and that evidence was promptly obscured above. Reefyc (talk) 14:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reefyc, if you are one of the gang that I suspect you are, your bias spew is completely hilarious. Shall we go and correct the huge amount of bullshit on the Wiki you probably hang out at, which comparatively speaking really is way less tolerant of dissenting viewpoints? PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:39, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * How though? When reading anyone can click the "show" icon and all of the text is shown whenever someone edits the section. How is it censorship? 14:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * PanGalacticGargleBlaster, I am going to throw down the gauntlet. Show me a wiki with a higher block/obscure/revert to edit ratio than RationalWiki. I don't think you can do it.


 * RationalWikians are incapable of tolerating dissent even when material from the left-leaning The Guardian is cited to support a position. The Brits/Asians, which have a long history of corporal punishment, are more well-behaved and exhibit more self-control than RationalWikians. Reefyc (talk) 14:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please answer my question. 14:56, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * GrammarCommie, if you are truly sincere, then why don't you practice the golden rule and obscure a good portion of your content at this wiki.


 * My challenge to PanGalacticGargleBlaster is valid and my above criticisms of RationalWiki are valid. Reefyc (talk) 15:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please answer the question. How is the collapse template censoring you? 15:20, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You know why you employed the collapse template. It was to make my content more difficult to see than not having the collapse template. And your unwillingness to practice the golden rule and use it on a large percentage of your own posts speaks volumes.


 * I work in the media where I interact with filmmakers, academics/intellectuals and authors from multiple countries. We have a broad and big audience and cover a wide range of topics. If I followed the disastrous policy of intolerance/censorship that RationalWiki practices, our audience would shrivel to a small fraction of what it is now. I commonly deal with liberals/leftists/moderates/right-wingers and have a welcoming attitude towards them. While I don't choose to give Neo-Nazis, Chinese Communist Party members or right-wing terrorists a voice, I am far more broadminded than the people at RationalWiki. I am not afraid of views that differ from my own and find I grow as a person when exposed to people of different viewpoints or cultures than my own.


 * You should try being more tolerant. Then you wouldn't have to obscure material from your own ideological camp like The Guardian. Reefyc (talk) 15:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You have been doing nothing but being constantly evasive, addressing very little points, and accusing censorship when people call your posts evasive and derailing discussion. You remind me a lot about that one guy who kept insisting I was being authoritarian despite being extremely incompetent at reading diffs regarding alkaline diet, and your prose also sounds a lot like him. 15:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Why are you terminally unable to explain to me, in straightforward mechanical terms, how putting the template over you digression is censoring you? Again, literally anyone can read your posts and even reply if they were so inclined. 15:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * GrammarCommie, show me how reasonable and fair you are by obscuring a large percentage of your own posts through a template. While I do agree that I was overly broad in using the word censoring, you are still acting in an intolerant and authoritarian way by using that template that obscures.


 * But there is a price to intolerance. While the media company I do work for is tolerant and expanding its reach and influence, RationalWiki is failing to do the same. That's how the world works. When you are open to others, they frequently reciprocate. I think that is fair and so does our audience. RationalWiki can confine itself inside a small ideological box like The Nation/OAN/Newsmax does or RationalWiki can be much more broadminded. We choose to be more ideologically/culturally tolerant and are being rewarded for our efforts. Reefyc (talk) 16:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There is nothing to stop any reader uncollapsing the relevant section. I do not see RW as 'left wing' (from a UK point of view) - and 'RW has its particular areas of interest (and would 'censor' discussions on knitting or kittens') and other wikis likewise. 'A broad and big audience and a wide range of topics' is extremely woolly (would you cover 'Dead Dove topics'?)- and you are veering towards the invocation of Godwin's law and 'but I thought this was Rationalwiki.' Anna Livia (talk) 16:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I noticed you've backpeddled on your claim of censorship. Does this mean you're formally retracting that claim? 16:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Asia has a majority of the world's population. RationalWiki chose to have an offensive and poorly supported Asian values article that limited its audience reach. If RationalWiki users think they can thrive and grow inside their cramped ideological/cultural box, you are fooling yourselves. RationalWiki has a well-earned reputation for being closed-minded. And it didn't take me long to demonstrate this. Reefyc (talk) 16:38, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The article mentioned was noted as being bad, but the thing is that change takes manpower. And I can't just take down the article, nor would that necessarily even be a good idea to do since Asian values is at the least a relevant cultural stereotypical view of East Asia. All I could do was open dialogue on it, and review it. That said, I can demonstrate to you some articles that you're frankly going to dislike greatly that are made by wikipedia, consider their article on Tiger parenting, Kyōiku mama, and parenting styles. It seems like after reviewing those, wikipedia whom you view as a superior source has snubbed authoratarian parenting in favour of its better alternative authoritative parenting.


 * Also if being narrow minded means categorically rejecting child abuse, I guess I at least am. On audience reach; I think there was a cost benefit analysis to make about reach when rationalwiki crossed the point at which it stood up to Chinese censorship and got promptly censored by it. Ironic really. Seems like mindlessly following the leader because they said so doesn't seem to be on the agenda.


 * One thing worth noting though is that open mindedness often does get a positive press, and is associated at least by pop culture as at least vaguely related to giftedness. But naivety is not a trait of the gifted. It is a trait of a fool. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 16:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you formally retracting your claim that the collapse template is censorship? 16:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * GrammarCommie, I have ancestors who come from a "permissive", Northern European country and you are acting like a childish bully. Don't be surprised when people ignore you when you are behaving immaturely. NordicWays (talk) 16:56, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * How am I behaving immaturely? All I did was point out a few errors and ask questions. 16:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reefyc did't feel the need to put your posts behind a template. You acted like an immature bully incapable of civil dialogue. If you refuse to acknowledge this, it reflects poorly on you. Maybe someday you will grow up and learn some manners. NordicWays (talk) 17:08, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't put the entire section behind a collapse template though. You can check the edit history if you want. As for being incapable of civil dialog, I honestly find such an accusation laughable. I've repeatedly asked for clarification and elaboration, as well as calmly explaining my positions. 17:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not going to argue with an immature bully. You would put what I said behind a template after a short while anyway. NordicWays (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? I only collapsed part of the above section because it was a complete digression. Someone else expanded it to encompass the entire section. And how am I being a bully? 17:38, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

BumblingBuffoon, I said above: "Wikipedia doesn't live up to its NPOV standard, but a more consistent discovery of the truth of matters does require honest attempts at objectivity." So in no way did I say that Wikipedia was some kind of broadminded nirvana.

At the end of the day, I provided evidence for my positions. Grammarcommie provided an obscuring template. Reefyc (talk) 17:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You poisoned the well, engaged in ad hom attacks whilst accusing others of the same, made spurious connections between one datapoint and another, advocated for child abuse, claimed victomhood and joined the ranks of many with a victim complex, and used argument to popularity all in the span of one derailment from the original topic being about a user who was engaging in strawmen about CRT. Congratulations you have truly made a compelling, fact based, objective argument, and no this is sarcasm in case you actually do say something like 'thanks'.


 * Oh and the more you dodge the question and try to attempt a second derailment by claiming bullying to save face, the worse it looks. Do you retract your argument of being censored? BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:57, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I want to clarify a point. The science journal Nature points out that 50% of psychology journal studies can't be replicated. While that is abysmal (A coin toss is 50/50), it does mean that 50% of the research can be replicated.


 * My Psychology 101 professor was a cognitive psychologist who designed things like aircraft cockpits, instrument panels, etc. He pointed out the poor stats the clinical/counseling/relationship type psychologists achieve in terms of the results they get with their patients (Laymen typically getting equal results to trained counseling psychologists. Laymen typically outperforming practitioners of Freudian psychoanalysis therapy).  So while I do have respect for psychiatrists who help patients with schizophrenia via medication/counseling, cognitive psychologists who help people learn/perform better, I know better than to blindly accept the pronouncements of counseling/relationship/parenting psychologists.


 * Psychology does not have the scientific rigor of physics and chemistry. I wish it did, but it doesn't. So when I see strong evidence that psychologists' pronouncements don't line up with reality, I am going to be skeptical. Reefyc (talk) 18:22, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If you're so certain that psychology is useless, how on Earth do you trust your own claims that authoritarian parenting is a good thing? That's a psychiatric topic, completely inconsistent. You must infer something using psychology to come to the conclusion that this parenting style is worth any consideration. You freely use concepts like bias, heavily dependent on psychology to smear your opponents and then debunk yourself later on? BumblingBuffoon (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You changed your claim from censorship to obscurment. Do you formally retract your claim of being censored, yes or no? 18:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In the same a subsequent edit, he wrote, "while I do agree that I was overly broad in using the word censoring, you are still acting in an intolerant and authoritarian way by using that template that obscures." I think that qualifies as a formal retraction. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒   talk  21:37, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I see. Sadly that was originally buried under a sea of text. 23:40, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

My main point when starting this topic was not about whether or not my suggestion should be included in the article (I thought documenting the full range of crank ideas was important, but whatever). My main point was that some of you need to learn how to have a discussion without resorting to ad hominem attacks when someone says something you disagree with.12.23.183.186 (talk) 17:42, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Same Area, Different Tragedy
Another suburb of Milwaukee, Waukesha, saw two dozen people seriously injured and a few killed as a red SUV plowed into a Christmas Parade. It's not clear why, the story is still developing, but given the area and time, it may very well be in connection to the Rittenhouse case. 03:52, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you competing with the local tabloid? Stop. Now. The last time you jumped the shark you looked like an idiot and I had to get you to eat crow. Which by the way is a pain in the ass for me, since it means I have to babysit your posts. 13:44, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * He's the one constantly defending Shittenhouse as a good boy who didn't do anything wrong, does it surprise you he'd immediately start spouting that the left is committing reprisal terror attacks? 5.151.22.147 (talk) 14:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What? I have been fairly consistent in that I don't think Rittenhouse should've been there that night or with a rifle.  15:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what a strawman, anon. 16:09, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * CNN says it's unrelated. So far, it's looking more and more like it's an unrelated event, just a tragedy that coincidentally happened in the same area and time, so changing the title of this one.  But hey, improbable things happen all the time.  Interestingly, The suspect has a documented history of vehicular assault, although it appears that he was fleeing the scene of a knife fight when he drove into a parade.
 * I can't imagine what the families are going through. Couldn't enjoy the holidays the year prior, finally able to this year, the whole town is watching and you are having fun, and then just death.  Christmas movies are going to be extremely hard to watch for them, especially considering that "something horrific happened to this family during the holiday season" is a fairly common movie trope.  16:48, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Addendum, the suspect in the massacre was apparently out on bail. Rightwingers are now using this as a reason bail reform should not occur...  18:46, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What the actual fuck are you talking about? Cory is being dumb, but there's nothing in his post or a quick glance at the article to imply that he thinks the left is behind the "reprisal attack". My gripe was that he's engaging in tenuous, if not outright paranoid speculation, i.e. making connections where there aren't any. HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK DID ANYONE READ ANYTHING FURTHER INTO MY COMMENT?!?!?! 21:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that the dude was fleeing a knife fight. To me this suggests the possibility that blood loss may have something to do with his driving, and that none of the deaths were intentional.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 14:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If he lost enough blood that quickly to be that terrible a driver, I'd be more surprised he was conscious at all when the police found him. 14:42, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Bloodloss, Panic, shock, Surprise (Judging from what I read, he had no idea this parade was happening). Yeah, I can see that. Never mind any sort of possible intoxication Revolverman (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

CA wildfires coming back
Near hurricane force gusts from the right direction, also floods over. Andrew5 (talk) 16:45, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You should at least represent what you cite ("escalate fire danger"), rather than overstate your case ("wildfires coming back"). Bongolian (talk) 21:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

The prosecutor is tanking the Rittenhouse trial.
This has to be intentional, because no DA is this incompetent. The little Nazi is going to get off and far-right militants across the U.S. are going to consider this validation. 5.151.22.147 (talk) 01:05, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There needs to be a new trial with an unbiased judge. Basically allowing a killer to get away with that crime is wrong on so many levels. As you pretty much said, far right terrorists (I call it like it is) will continue to carry out attacks under the pretense of getting away with it. Rittenhouse is a cold blooded murderer who should be locked up until the heat death of the universe. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 02:16, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ana Kasparian is walking back her reporting.  Dutchbag (talk) 02:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The Rittenhouse case is actually the perfect retort to the "good guy with a gun", because Huber and Grosskreutz had absolutely no idea who was the "good guy" and "bad guy", only that there was a kid with a gun who shot someone. And for fuck's sake, do not fire "warning shots" to try and scare someone with a gun.  It's a weird case too, being a series of chain events.  In law, what is normally allowed becomes illegal if done in the commission of a felony.  E.g., I can argue self defense in killing someone attacking me, unless that attack is the result of me committing a felony.  Grosskreutz had a gun pointed at Rittenhouse because Rittenhouse had just killed Huber.  If Huber's death was a felony, then injuring Grosskreutz is also a felony.  But if Huber's killing was defensible, then so was Grosskreutz's injury.  Likewise, Huber was clearly assaulting Rittenhouse, no doubt about it, and Rittenhouse was justified in self defense, unless the attack on Rosenbaum was not self defense and thus a felony.  However, it's a very easy case to make that Rosenbaum was attempting to assault Rittenhouse, and the other idiot firing warning shots in the air made a bad situation worse, and thus it was self defense.  However if Huber had murdered Rittenhouse, he too could argue that it was justified killing, because well, it's also reasonable to assume that Rittenhouse had just murdered someone and was still running around with a gun and all.  This is why you need a dedicated police force that everyone recognizes as the authority and not just a bunch of volunteer nutjobs.  05:40, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless there's been new developments the prosecution and the judge for the Rittenhouse trial are fine. 13:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Are we watching the same trial? The judge is obviously biased towards the defense. 5.151.22.141 (talk) 11:21, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * How though? You shouldn't just assert that and expect people to jump onboard. How? In what way, and by what mechanisms? 12:23, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I see you're commenting. Perhaps you would be so kind as to answer my inquiry? 12:32, 11 November 2021 (UTC)


 *  a dedicated police force that everyone recognizes as the authority and not just a bunch of volunteer nutjobs
 * The police had abandoned the riot zone under curfew since the night before, and everyone within the riot zone knew there was no law enforcement and only private security. Dutchbag (talk) 15:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The observation that if Huber had murdered Rittenhouse is spot on, and a jury would have to decide that, as well. Dutchbag (talk) 15:38, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Justice finds a way, one way or another? If you don't believe so, or live by such a rule, the world becomes a very dark place. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 06:09, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Not in this life. No bankers went to prison after the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Jack the Ripper was never caught. Nazis war criminals have escaped prosecution. Marloni (talk) 12:05, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Technically, one banker went to prison. As for who was responsible, Bush had a full year to go after the jagoffs to say nothing of clamping down on it 5 years before the shit hit the fan, but Obama had 8 years and the combined wrath of an entire nation 300 million strong to bring the bastards to justice, and did just as much nothing.  Is it any wonder that so many people hate both parties?  16:14, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Uh, here's the cross examination of Grosskreutz. You could view earlier portions, but fair warning, there's some horrific gore in the earlier portions.  Really folks, don't ever get involved in a shooting on either end of the barrel.  The cross examination proves...
 * At no point in his multiple encounters with Rittenhouse did Grosskreutz witness Rittenhouse do anything threatening prior to the fatal altercation with Rosenbaum
 * Grosskreutz lied to police about having "lost" his gun
 * Grosskreutz is currently suing Kenosha and the outcome of that case in part depends upon the outcome of this trial, implying (but not stating) a massive conflict of interest
 * Grosskreutz alleges he didn't "chase" Rittenhouse but ran in his general direction while holding a gun in his hand
 * Rittenhouse did not fire at Grosskreutz until after Grosskreutz pointed his gun at Rittenhouse
 * The shooting of Grosskreutz is clearly an open-shut case of self defense... so long as Rittenhouse wasn't in the process of committing another felony. As I said before, Huber is on video hitting Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard, which is again open-shut self defense unless Rittenhouse was in the process of committing another felony.  Rosenbaum was on camera threatening to kill Rittenhouse to his face, and clearly chased after Rittenhouse.  If the defense can prove Rosenbaum's shooting was self defense (which is likely), all the other shootings become justified or at the very least, have reasonable doubt.  The only thing that Rittenhouse is clearly guilty of is a misdemeanor possession of a firearm under the age of 18, which I do hope he gets the max sentence on because, well, fuck that little shit for bringing a gun to a riot.  16:42, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok and? Why does the prosecution needed to be replaced? Why does the judge need to be replaced? This premise is stupid as it only amounts to "the trial is not going the way I want it to". 16:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok some confusion here. You seem to be saying that the Prosecution is "fine" as in "doing their job properly".  I would agree with that.  The way it was written, I interpreted it as "the Prosecution still has a strong case", which I don't believe.  Is that about right?  16:46, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That is correct. Due process is being observed, information is coming to light, the defense is zealously defending the defendant, etc etc etc. As near as I can tell people are mad because the trial isn't a sham followed by a lynching. 16:50, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, best part of the trial? Just look at that prosecutor's facepalm.  Rewind 45 seconds (warning, gore), Grosskreutz admitted Rittenhouse had not fired the gun until after Grosskreutz pointed the gun at Rittenhouse.  17:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the argument is that prosecution should never have occurred in the first place, and the prosecution was politically motivated. And that is why they are losing. Dutchbag (talk) 17:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That argument is stupid. 18:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Two are dead and one partially crippled. Unless it's obvious he's innocent (it's not), he deserves his day in court. 18:11, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Untrue, the deed is not disputed, merely whether deed is/was justified. 18:25, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If the deeds were justified then he's innocent (or "not guilty") of the felony charges, is he not? So, in what way is "if it's not obvious the shootings were justified, then he deserves to be on trial" not a correct statement?  18:33, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The earlier phrasing implies that the act is the point of contention, not the justification. 18:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

"The only thing that Rittenhouse is clearly guilty of is a misdemeanor possession of a firearm under the age of 18" That statute does not apply to possession of long-barreled rifles (section 3c). Not applicable to this situation. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 19:40, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * According to the rules, he can wield a long-barrel rifle but not nunchucks. What the fuck?  20:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Nunchucks can do as much damage to a person as a gun, but hunting squirrels with nunchucks is probably cruelty to animals. Dutchbag (talk) 22:44, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hunting is a popular family activity in Wisconsin. In contrast, not only are nunchucks not used in any activities popular in Wisconsin, they're about as dangerous to the user as to the target in an actual fight, so they're not useful for self defense. Also probably has something to do with the Chuck Norris lobby still being salty at Bruce Lee. Gopher chucks are legal though. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 13:51, 10 November 2021 (UTC)


 * You can tell the trial is going horribly for the prosecution when they object to the defense every 3rd question but keep getting overruled. Grosskreutz's friend posted online saying that Grosskreutz's only regret was not killing Rittenhouse, but is in court saying he lied to stick up for his friend.  I'd hate to have friends that would lie about me saying that I wish I had killed someone...  15:48, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, at this moment, the judge is yelling at the prosecutor, and the prosecutor is risking a mistrial. 17:31, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently people are now calling the judge biased for yelling at the prosecutor. From what I can tell, the yelling started because the prosecutor tried to abuse the fact that Rittenhouse used the right to remain silent as an attempt to indicate guilt. That's a big no no to use in a courtroom and very explicitly illegal. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I read in a non-American paper (the Guardian) about a seemingly lopsided treatment of prosecution and defence. The judge will not allow information about the murderer that he had talked in other groups about "a desire to shoot people that he thought were looters" and photos of him posing with members of the far-right organization the Proud Boys. On the other hand he did not allow the prosecutions request to refer to those who died as victims. In any case, the newspaper article makes a pretty good point that an environment was set up to pretty much allow this to happen with the some police fully encouraging militia activity, politicians praising a boy bringing weapons to a protest and, not mentioned in the article but still true, a weapon fetish and lunatic subculture of "armed defenders". Shabi  DOO  23:20, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Innocent until proven guilty" means the court is supposed to be biased in the defendant's favor. But in all honesty, I'd rather have Rittenhouse as my neighbor than Rosenbaum or Grosskreutz.  Don't know about Huber though, I'd probably choose Huber over Rittenhouse.  23:43, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You'd rather have a guy who hung out with the proud boys and talked about a desire to kill rioters as a neighbour than a guy who volunteered his services to help treat the injured people during protests/riots? Shabi  DOO  00:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That says a lot about you, and none of it is positive.5.151.22.144 (talk) 12:23, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Why though, does everything have to be televised in the US?—You televise police chases and show it on the news, you televise courtrooms. Why does everything have to be like some fly-on-the-wall reality show? It makes otherwise serious matters seem like the Truman Show. Leucippus Salva veritate 00:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In the case of law, it is actually important to have transparency in legal proceedings to some degree, because you as a citizen are very invested in knowing how your legal system is, or in the worst case, isn't functioning. I thought about this for a few minutes before remembering this, but an opaque system would not allow people to find problems and address them. Think about it this way, in the case someone was convicted and later exonerated, wouldn't you like to investigate how that happened? Well with full disclosure of events you can do that. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:08, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The United States seems to have a peculiar affinity for "rage watching" mob mentality type material. Although "rage watching" is pretty common everywhere, American "rage watching" seems uniquely affectionate for a type consisting of nothing but people yelling outrage at the camera. At least, it seems that way judging by the huge amount of space on news, sports channels, and other medium which consists of nothing but people yelling outrage at the camera. (I don't know who watches this stuff, but someone must.) Combine this with hundreds of cable channel space fighting for cheap crumbs and ratings pops. High profile / controversial court cases make for perfect "rage watching" material, and I'm sure coverage is relatively cheap compared to an actual scripted show (good for budget minded junk cable TV stations). Take a case like . It propelled an obscure CNN spin-off called to (relatively) high ratings, even beating the premier-yelling-outrage-at-camera "news" channel Fox News for a while. It's pretty much the equivalent of clickbait on Facebook or Twitter in TV form. During the Casey Anthony trial I remember one person, for instance, who randomly spoke to me (forget where I was, but it was out of the blue) and asked if I followed the trial. Then proceeded to spiel about just how guilty she was. Not too much different from the various threads you see on this subject on social media, in other words, where people already know that Rittenhouse is guilty or innocent, depending on their political tilt. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 01:13, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't trust either of the two shits and think they both should be behind bars for weapons violations. As crazy as it sounds, I just trust Grosskreutz a little bit less, and that's not a form of praise for the other shit. 01:16, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You can't say you'd rather live next to the authoritarian, white supremacist psychopath than the paramedic who was protesting against police brutality and expect people to not view you negatively. 5.151.22.144 (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've lived near or worked with both types before. Guess which one was the better neighbor/coworker and easier to discuss problems with?  Also going to need a citation for "white supremacist" and "psychopath".  "Authoritarian", maybe.  16:13, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'm going to refer to Rittenhouse as Rh, Rosenbaum as Rb, and Grosskreutz as Gk.
 * Again, what it seems to me was that given the situation, Rh acted reasonably (or there's enough doubt that he may have acted reasonably or whatever). His real crime was being there, and being there with a gun, which did not help the situation, e.g., his life was in danger because Rb was trying to grab the gun, which wouldn't have happened if there was no gun in the first place.  This was surprisingly similar to Gk, who also should not have been there, nor been there with a gun.  But given that he was there, Gk also acted reasonably (or enough doubt or whatever), and had Gk fired his gun at Rh, given the circumstances I would argue there's a chance that hypothetical shooting would have been justified too.  17:20, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know American law enough. I know that in some other jurisdictions if you illegally bring a weapon somewhere and a death occurs which would not have (or likely wouldn't have) if you hadn't had it with you, you are still charged with something akin to manslaughter. If this happened where I lived I wouldn't shed a tear for his extremely likely imprisonment for his monumental stupidity of bringing a weapon to a riot and the likely avoidable deaths if he had not shown up as "captain hero". Shabi  DOO  17:44, 11 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Varies by state of course. From what I understand, he didn't technically violate the law by bringing the gun there.  The gun had never crossed state lines either.  Gk was technically in violation as he did not have a valid CCW permit (and he had made baldfaced lies to the police about having "lost" the gun until photos came out with him having it) yet admitted he routinely carried his handgun with him to these sort of events.  17:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In other words, a total dipshit for whom, this avoidable tragic shooting, is not a shocking outcome. Shabi  DOO  18:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't use "total", but I would agree with everything else in that sentence. 18:37, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Grosskreuz was illegally in possession of a firearm, Rittenhouse was not. Grosskreuz was illegally in possession of a firearm because of a prior conviction on a firearm offense. Grosskreuz conveniently had the illegal firearm possession charges dropped just days earlier by the same prosecutor who called him as a witness. Dutchbag (talk) 04:19, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Citation? 04:30, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Possession of a loaded firearm while intoxicated. He admitted on the stand he was illegally carrying the firearm. The judge tossed the firearm charge against Rittenhouse on Friday because the age restriction in the statute specifically does not apply to Rittenhouse. As to the argument, "The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun," none of the evidence or testimony presented to the jury could apply to Grosskreuz. Dutchbag (talk) 04:56, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Admittedly, there is some confusion about Gaige Grosskreuz's identity and criminal record; this online database says a Gaige P. Grosskreutz of La Crosse, Wisconsin is 43 years old while saying he born both in 1969 and 1993.  He admitted on the stand that he had one criminal conviction, which according to Wisconsin Circuit Court Access records is for the weapons charge. Dutchbag (talk) 05:15, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Repealing the Second Amendment is not a big issue in Wisconsin cause state law bars you from carrying a loaded firearm while intoxicated. So that precludes well more than half the population from carrying loaded firearms already. Dutchbag (talk) 05:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure how valid those sources are, but given how thoroughly everyone has been going through every last picture and video, I almost wish that absolutely everyone that could be charged with something during the riots was indeed charged. The problem being, of course, if we did that then no one would turn over their phones/cameras in the future.  Maybe have some sort of unspoken rule never to charge anyone based on the photos taken from their own phones, or lesser charges if they hand over the phones or something.  Point is, just as had Rh not brought a gun, no one would've died, so too if everyone had remained calm that night and no arson had taken place, again no one would've died.  06:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If no one had brought a gun, no one would have been shot. Both Grosskreuz and Zaminsky were illegally in possession of firearms.  Zaminsky's partner, Rosenbaum, threatened murder twice.  Rittenhouse only shot when ambushed by Zaminsky and Roswenbaum seconds after Zaminsky fired twice. And Grosskreuz was only shot after pointing his gun at Rittenhouse.  You can't put it all on Rittenhouse, who was the only one of those three in possession of a firearm legally, in an open carry state.
 * As to the sources, the Kenoshacountyeye link appears to be possibly a private investigator and may have doctored somewhat the record, however, the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access record is a valid source. Now, connecting the dots between Grosskreutz admitted criminal conviction and a firearm violation directly has not been admitted into evidence, however he did admit he possessed the firearm illegally at the same time he was threatening Rittenhouse's life with it.
 * We'll know more after closing arguments and jury instructions are given. As to the two murder charges, apparently the prosecution failed to make either case.  The only outstanding issue is "provocation", which was never part of the original charges and only made it into the jury instructions on Friday.  Dutchbag (talk) 07:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In possibly unrelated news, in the Alec Baldwin shooting, people on the set claim the scene wherein Baldwin killed the cinematographer did not call for Baldwin to pull the trigger and fire the weapon. Dutchbag (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Firearm charge dropped, about to go to the jury. Given the evidence, there's a good chance Rh will be found not guilty on the other charges.  Of course, there's a difference between watching YouTube of trial and actually being in the courtroom.  16:32, 15 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm tempted to do a poll on which of the people involved would make the least awful neighbor. Any objections?  17:55, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Meh, too dark. Just asking opinion on trial.  21:19, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Courtroom Antics
The prosecutor brought the gun into the courtroom and aimed it at the jury. The general consensus seems to be it was supposed to be some sort of trap for the defense, i.e., "objection, he's threatening the jury!" "aha! So you agree your client was threatening people!". However, the prosecutor committed a Class A misdemeanor at least, probably a fuckton moreso because it was in the middle of a fucking courtroom with the express purpose of trying to alter the outcome of a trial. IANAL, but I'd imagine that's grounds for a mistrial as well as disbarment. 17:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The latest is the drone video was faked. The judge knows it, but the jury doesn't. And jump kick man is sitting in the jail right now, after the prosecution said they don't know who he is. Dutchbag (talk) 08:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's Jumpkick Man. Apparently numerous felonies (there's no 3 strikes law in Wisconsin, I guess), and he offered to testify in exchange for having some of his own charges dropped. 15:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Result: Not guilty on all charges
Not guilty on all charges 18:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The legally correct result. The state's witnesses ultimately undermined the case.  State law is what it is, despite being very weird.  Intuitively, trouble seekers shouldn't get let off when they find what they were looking for, but under state law this was not a consideration.  And nobody, not even Rittenhouse, dserves the sentence he would have faced if convicted, in the barbaric US prison system.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 03:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no personal sympathy for Rittenhouse (or anyone for that matter, The Big A is what it is), but no matter what happens now he has to carry that stigma. Unless he becomes associated with or similar that's likely to stick with him forever. Some stories have no good ending, in the whole wide world there's no magical place so you might as well rise and put on your bravest face. And to anyone complaining, I sure saw crickets around here as a judge explicitly wished repeated prison rape on  (I considered that grounds for disbarment of the judge who thought that was remotely appropriate, Rosemarie Aquilina). The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:11, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is expected. I also don't think he should be convicted for murder. 06:39, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Our (my?) poll suggests most people here feel otherwise. For the record, I selected 'shouldn't have been there, but reasonable doubt', because, well, I think there's a significant chance that in all instances he really did feel and was justified in feeling that his life/limb was in imminent danger.  That doesn't mean he definitely wasn't hoping for a conflict, of course, or that he should have been running around playing hero, only that there is a chance he did not intend for anyone to die when he to the protest.  Show me this case 100 times, I'm sure you'll find a few of them are psychos, but if at least 1 in 100 is innocent, well, that's what we are claiming when we say "I'd rather 100 murderers go free than jail 1 innocent".  Now, if we could actually adhere to that same standard for all skin types...
 * More of a minor aside, I think one of the life lessons for all of us that I feel may get lost is those utter shitstains of the car dealership owners. They basically lied under oath (can't sue for perjury in the US though), and insisted they never asked Rittenhouse for help, in the hope of avoiding any liability issues or retaliation over this whole matter.  The lesson?  Never never NEVER help someone who isn't helping themself, because they aren't going to return the favor.  07:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, exactly nobody came out of this looking any good. Probably the right verdict, but they all looked awful and they frankly deserve it. Doubtless Rittenhouse will get some sort of wingnut welfare job, regardless of his legal innocence he never should've been there at all. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 14:13, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently Tucker already booked him for an interview and Matt Gaetz is offering him an internship. Kid's basically set for the next 30 or 40 years (depending on when the Republican party finally gives up the ghost) and after that probably has the money to retire for life. -- Techpriest (talk) 15:37, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What a great reward for killing people. 08:36, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * He was walking around saying the n-word and saying he would kill people who got out of control while holding a weapon a quarter of his size playing cops and robbers. That he hasn't been charged and convicted of at least manslaughter is dismaying. Most people in other Western countries who have uncontrollable warrior urges who cannot be bothered to enlist...go join a paintball or laser tag team. It is very difficult to imagine such a deranged fuck-up being lovingly invited to a talkshow after doing so, especially when their recklessness resulted in pointless deaths. I swear sometimes, while admiring so much about America...occasionally I am looking into a fictitious absurd satirical pantomime from the outside. Egad. Shabi  DOO  12:28, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wisconsin doesn't have a "manslaughter" crime with which to charge or convict someone. You're welcome to read through the relevant statutes to identify what you think applies. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 12:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * it does have a manslaughter crime, its just called reckless homicide over there, if we are going to pissy about it. whether that applies here or why it wasnt an option for the jury i couldnt tell you. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:17, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

In most US jurisdictions, lesser included offense instructions are not given unless both the prosecution and defense agree. In other words, if the prosecutor wants to charge murder, the defense can say, OK, prove murder or he walks. In some states the judge can intervene and decide they should be given. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 03:09, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "He was walking around saying the n-word and saying he would kill people who got out of control"
 * First I'm hearing of this. Do you have a citation?  07:31, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Entirely my fault. I had misread the article and it was actually Rosenbaum who said that. Sorry Shabi  DOO  09:52, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "its just called reckless homicide over there" Meaning that there isn't a "manslaughter" crime in Wisconsin with which to charge or convict someone, as I said. Specific terms matter in law. And reckless homicide doesn't apply here because Rittenhouse obviously intended to shoot those people. As such, any homicide charge would be intentional. And the jury doesn't decide what crimes to charge someone with. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 11:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 'specific terms matter in law' on talk pages of a wiki, general terms are a fine. unless you are being pissy about it. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:50, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Shabi, manslaughter needs to involve doing something reckless or illegal. Showing up to crowd with a rifle is not out of the ordinary in Wisconsin.  Does this need to change?  There's probably a few families in Wisconsin that would argue it does.  Manslaughter would be if in the process of shooting one of the assailants, a stray bullet hit a bystander.  Intentionally shooting someone is always intentional homicide, and Self Defense is arguing that it was a legally justifiable intentional homicide.  That's what the not guilty verdicts mean, that there is at least a reasonable chance that for all 8 gunshots, the use of deadly force was in fact legally justifiable.  15:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * i feel like the guy deserves some kind of reckless endangerment charge of somekind, bringing a rifle to what was essentially a powder keg where confrontations are inevitable, no matter if 'open carry' is legal not, is 'reckless' imho. i am not inclined to call for a lenghy sentence, as rittenhouse was not the only one armed. fronting when packing heat makes everyone involved hypervigilant. you could be shoot dead in a fraction of second. unarmed, the stakes are a little lower. if it kicks of, punches thrown wont usually mean instant death and can be walked back from. a shot to the head less so. the presence of guns ups the tension, ups the stakes. bringing a gun to such a fractious situation is reckless and it endangered everyone there. firearms being legally allowed at the protest is what proved lethal. if rittenhouse was unarmed he couldnt have shot anyone. if the people he shot were unarmed, he wouldnt have been so twitchy and would not have shot anyone. the presence of firearms on one side ensured their presence on the other. something like this was bound to happen. split second decisions shoot or dont shoot, life or death. everyone armed that night killed those people, everyone. rittenhouse was unfortunate that it all fell on him. he didnt even fire first. the people he killed were as responsible as him. fucking idiotic gun laws is where the real blame lies. guns make every encounter life or death, make the most unthreatening, most inconsequential actions, say clear ones throat, raising an eyebrow, anything at all, in that moment might indicate you are about to be shot. less than a second to squeeze a trigger. less than a second to decide, kill or be killed, live or die. protests and angry scenes will always occur. arseholes and hotheads will always be present, on both sides. the addition of guns changes 'bad tempered' to 'lethal'  AMassiveGay (talk) 13:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * i feel like the guy deserves some kind of reckless endangerment charge of somekind, bringing a rifle to what was essentially a powder keg where confrontations are inevitable, no matter if 'open carry' is legal not, is 'reckless' imho. i am not inclined to call for a lenghy sentence, as rittenhouse was not the only one armed. fronting when packing heat makes everyone involved hypervigilant. you could be shoot dead in a fraction of second. unarmed, the stakes are a little lower. if it kicks of, punches thrown wont usually mean instant death and can be walked back from. a shot to the head less so. the presence of guns ups the tension, ups the stakes. bringing a gun to such a fractious situation is reckless and it endangered everyone there. firearms being legally allowed at the protest is what proved lethal. if rittenhouse was unarmed he couldnt have shot anyone. if the people he shot were unarmed, he wouldnt have been so twitchy and would not have shot anyone. the presence of firearms on one side ensured their presence on the other. something like this was bound to happen. split second decisions shoot or dont shoot, life or death. everyone armed that night killed those people, everyone. rittenhouse was unfortunate that it all fell on him. he didnt even fire first. the people he killed were as responsible as him. fucking idiotic gun laws is where the real blame lies. guns make every encounter life or death, make the most unthreatening, most inconsequential actions, say clear ones throat, raising an eyebrow, anything at all, in that moment might indicate you are about to be shot. less than a second to squeeze a trigger. less than a second to decide, kill or be killed, live or die. protests and angry scenes will always occur. arseholes and hotheads will always be present, on both sides. the addition of guns changes 'bad tempered' to 'lethal'  AMassiveGay (talk) 13:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Personal announcements from Rockford
Heyo, I wanted to make a few announcements here about some personal things that might be of interest to the community.


 * On December 3rd to the 5th, I will most likely not be editing or moderating because I am attending Midwest Furfest 2021. If anyone else is, you can feel free to say hi.


 * Later today I'll be Livestreaming me playing thru Radiohead's Kid A Mnesia Exhibition as I have said I would do on many places. You can find it here.


 * And Finally, my Thanksgiving break has just started, so I'm also not sure if I'll be active in this period, but who knows.

Thank you everyone for reading. 19:33, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Question. What fraction of female fur characters are female?  Similar, what fraction of male fur characters are male?
 * I also have so many other questions. If you've ever played Fallout 4's Automatron, is Isabel Cruz's story similar to that of many Furfans?  If you haven't, *spoilers*, Isabel is a girl whose intelligence is only dwarfed by her shyness.  However, when she puts on the suit of The Mechanist, no longer is she some timid mechanic, but The Mechanist!  The Mechanist is a hero, and with the outfit, Isabel can be the person she always wanted to be.  So I'm wondering if that's a common story or not.  20:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * LIVE NOW 21:40, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't use Twitch, only YouTube for livestreaming. Signed, Andrew5 (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Can the 'fur and gender' question be clarified - is what is meant 'persons playing fur characters are of the same gender as their character'? Anna Livia (talk) 10:19, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. How often are the fur characters played by someone of a different gender, and is it more common to see males playing females or females playing males?  15:25, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I have no idea. From what I experienced, Males that have female fursuits kinda do it in a drag-queen-like/animegao style to them. Female fursuiters don't have obviously gendered specifics to their fursuits usually, so it's harder to identify what gender their character is. Enby suiters are much harder to describe. 00:51, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Feels like violence is the only way to get Civil Rights and Justice for Minorities
In one of John Oliver's videos he discuss how the Black Community snapped after MLK's death and started burning entire city blocks. President LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act after that to quell the violence. Had the Black Community not resorted to violence I doubt the 1960s Civil Rights Act would have been signed. Had they not burned the Police Department to the ground I doubt Derreck Chauvin would have been sent to Prison

Same thing with Kyle Ritterson. Only reason he's free is that a Police Department wasn't razed to the ground. At this rate Malcolm X has been proven right. Feels like the Holocaust in which protests are useless and violence is required. Another American Civil War is neccessary because Right-wing humans have the memory of Goldfishes

PS: Don't know how to add comments to the Main Bar page which is why its here


 * You're doing just fine. Your post here is done exactly as you would do on the main bar page. However, we ask that you sign your posts: —cosmikdebris talk stalk 20:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Violence is an effective short term solution. But long term?  It creates problems that are often worse than the problems it was meant to solve.  Last I checked, for the most part Gay people have gotten more acceptance and in a much shorter time frame than Black people have, because they made sure that the public perception was that if a group of gay people broke into your home, you were about to get a makeover!!!.  Though come to think of it, I would love to see a parody "Black Eye for the White Guy", where a group of Black people keep trying to give people genuinely helpful advice but keep getting mistaken for criminals.  SNL, get on that!  21:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The main problem with advocating violence to eventuate civil rights is that it is likely to give a pretext even greater counter-violence or suppressive to give the appearance of order. Consider the Bongolian Bongolian (talk) 21:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there seems to be some weird collective amnesia about how the gay community. People act as if Stonewall was some major turning point, but that's an unbelievable retcon; it took decades of patience after that to get any meaningful progress, and they had some self-inflicted missteps along the way (e.g. there were a small but vocal group who openly supported NAMBLA, which people understandably found off-putting). Whether or not that's right is unimportant, it's about what's true. And I can't honestly say that I've wanted to listen to anyone more after said person has screamed things into a bullhorn at me and/or destroyed something of mine. Again, I have to cite Daryl Davis; he's gotten dozens of people to leave the KKK just by talking, he's obviously doing something right that these rioters aren't; that something is doing his research and coming prepared, which is a lot less cathartic than making a showy demonstration of ZOMG I'M MAD!!!!. And about the state of civil rights in Minneapolis, you might want to ask the residents there if they really find the spike in violent crime that's been happening there since if that's "progress"; it's certainly not police brutality, but that doesn't make it better. What did a random Target employee do that makes it OK for you to steal things from her place of work and put her out of a job? The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 21:27, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I also wish we'd set a value on each type of atrocity. After Freddie Gray died in police custody and the mass protests occurred, the police stopped being proactive... and homicides jumping by a whopping 100 per year in Baltimore.  I don't know if fewer people are killed by police each year in that city, but if there are, it's far, far less than 100.  Even if it's 4 per year, while I will say that 1 person killed by the police is far, far more horrific than 1 person killed randomly, I don't think it's 25 times as horrific.  21:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that actual deconversion work, the actual attempts to sit down and reason with these people to get them to change their mind just isn't a very flashy thing to do. People want their progress to come cool flashy and awesome. The realiy of it is that it's extremely hard to deconvert people and for the most part a thankless job. I like to imagine that we on RW do at least our best a little bit to prevent people from falling further down the rabbit hole and hopefully help deconvert people from it (we've had a few deconverts from the extremes of far righties over the three years I've been here now). I'll reinforce Blade's recommendation to look up a Ted Talk about Daryl Davis, as well as looking up the Ted Talk of Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church to see what actual deconversion from these groups looks like. It's a very unflattering and unengaging process that takes a lot more effort than just beating up the evil people until they stop being evil. -- Techpriest (talk) 23:49, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I saw that Ted Talk; I think the weirdest part was when he pulled out a Baltimore police uniform. Like, what the actual fuck?  Apparently, the Deconversion process was mostly befriending the people and hanging out for a decade, making these people realize "alright, there's at least one good Black guy, he's pretty cool, hey this Black guy is my friend what do you mean you hate him, you haven't even met my friend, and, oh shit is that what I've been doing all these years?!"  23:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You engage in overt violence you get crushed. This isn't an "ifs ands or buts" situation, you get crushed. The history of leftwing paramilitary groups, and hell, quite a few rightwing paramilitary groups, for the last fifty years has been them getting violent and then getting shut down. 01:15, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, FALN and the Posse Comitatus movements are pretty much proof positive of that. And I can't say it was wrong to shut down either one, they were both batshit insane. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 01:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I was think more along the lines of the Weathermen and the Black Panther Party, but yeah let's talk about FARC. FARC, while still active, is functionally a group of mercs for the cartels at this point. Yeah they're still active, but their numbers are severely less than what they used to be. They got bought out, and they never made significant headway, so they're pretty much a writeoff example. Also before anyone brings up the fucking Vietcong, the Vietcong was backed by and worked in conjunction with the North Vietnamese military. Ok? No one fucking use the fucking Vietcong as an example, I'm fucking sick of idiots doing that. 01:50, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not all violent groups lose though. They usually don't win, obviously, but most countries are the result of a fringe group that did...  03:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I did say FARC originally, so my bad. I meant FALN, sometimes I get my acronyms mixed up; I'm most at home with Chinese and Japanese history from that period, so guilty as charged. To give you my bias, I generally think Chiang Ching-kuo's version of the KMT is a good blueprint for any society coming out of totalitarianism. But to use another example, the Sandinistas were basically the dictionary definition of the word "oafish", what did they ever do besides attract Bernie Sanders (for goodness knows what reason) to the cause and murder thousands of individuals in between? The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

When you have a march for equal rights and the state apparatus reacts in a not so peaceful way, it can certainly feel to some that violence is the only recourse. Particularly when it's revealed those responsible committed similar actions a year before Although, around the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, it can be wondered at what exactly was being sought during the Crisis. Cardinal Chang (talk) 12:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)


 * No, violence is not the best option for minorities or anyone else. 1 Violence is hard to explain in the moment for people who have lived their entire lives thinking everything is fine, and responses to violence have to be immediate, you can't give your seminar on why someone is molotoving a building to get people to respect their positions. It's more likely to radicalize people against them. From my personal experiences, reacting violently to oppression tends to just get you locked up. The world coddles little bastards that want to be assholes to you, it reacts terribly to standing up to bullies, always. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And what is achieved by turning to violence and paramilitary action? Point to a group within the last hundred years, in the US, that has succeeded in using violence to achieve its ends. After that, tell me where your supposed heroes are going to get funding, weapons, training, education on intel/counterintel, education on tactics and strategy, education on logistics and accounting, education on military theory and military history. Where are the recruits going to come from? How are they going to ensure that those recruits aren't enemy operatives? If someone is an enemy operative, how are is the organization supposed to react? How do they prevent mass desertion when the military ends up in dire straights? How do they maintain their ideals if approached with funding from a foreign power? 15:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, and for the record, if anyone thinks I'm nitpicking here, I'm not. You need at least a basic understanding of these things and more if you want to run a military/paramilitary force. You don't fucking halfass war unless you want to die. 15:29, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did I say I was in favour of violence or war? I posted two examples from around the same time on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and both examples sought similar goals and were against the same type of job inequality, one fizzled out the other was prolonged. Both were trained, armed and funded as per your question. FLQ even had a head of state publicly offer support Let's not forget, Nelson Mandela tried the peaceful approach and failed, so he formed uMkhonto we Sizwe. There are many examples, I'm sure you can offer where violence has failed, but likewise examples can be given were it has succeeded. There is no all encompassing rule that peaceful discourse is the only way to negotiate. Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:54, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Point to a group within the last hundred years, in the US, that has succeeded in using violence to achieve its ends." What works in South Africa is not guaranteed to work in India, and what works in India is not guaranteed to work in the US. These types of things are heavily influenced by social, historical, and geographical context. Give me examples from the US, with the last hundred years. 18:19, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Point to a group within the last hundred years, in the US, that has succeeded in using violence to achieve its ends." Unfortunately the US example applies in reverse, violence was successful in the enforcement of Jim Crow laws in Southern US. So that would be the terrorist group, the KKK using violence to achieve their ways. Cardinal Chang (talk) 20:42, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You almost had it. The second iteration of the KKK used violence to maintain their goals. Also, I never said the group had to be a civil rights group, only that they had to succeed in their goals by using violence, and to have been active in the US within the last hundred years. 21:25, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yay, I won something. Probably empty platitudes, but nowt new there. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:37, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Really? You're accusing a guy who will straight up say the quiet part out loud and has zero patience for posturing or false civility of giving you empty platitudes. Seriously? 21:41, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Self deprecation. I must be having one of those days, snark and jest are being misread and or missed entirely. Think I'll retire early to me book, Vine Street. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:51, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure if someone mentioned it. but this book by Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth and USIP researcher Maria Stephan is great. Their argue that nonviolent protests work better than the violent ones. GeeJayK (talk) 18:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that's the first mention of it.  18:32, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Good to know then. I believe I've mentioned it here before at least once. I fucking love this book. GeeJayK (talk) 18:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "I fucking love this book"
 * I think that's how you get papercuts in uncomfortable places... 18:40, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanksgiving is almost here
On Thanksgiving people give thanks for what they have; then in under 12 hours they go out and beat the shit out of each other to get a few bucks off low quality items.

Those of you outside the United States, we give thanks for what we have one day and then forget all of it in the name of saving a little money. Merica and Capitalism bitches! --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 23:54, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Nothing makes you less sympathetic to a turkey than actually having to deal with the bastards in real life. Thank goodness Benjamin Franklin never actually put forward a proposal to make them the national bird, they're incredibly stupid (seriously, the males have been known to pick fights with truck hitches, and I have pictures of one that attacked the side of a car), walk right in front of you while you're driving at them, and can't even fly properly. Plus, the noise they make is far more obnoxious than common depictions, if you ever have to listen to it for any meaningful time you'll be lucky to escape with your sanity; bald eagle calls are just as misleadingly portrayed (I live in both a bald eagle wintering hotspot and prime red-tailed hawk territory), but at least their real calls don't make you want to rip your ears off your head. Far from pardoning turkeys, I'd appreciate a president who'd just swing the hatchet himself. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:17, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that's birds in general. All birds are jerks.  Interestingly though, parrots have good reason to hate humans.  When humans pet animals, it's a form of bonding.  When parrots pet each other, it's part of their mating ritual.  So parrots think you are about to fuck them like they've never been fucked, and then you don't, you damned cockatease!  04:25, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, consider the source. And by source, I'm not talking so much birds as where birds came from, which is fucking dinosaurs. I don't care what Jurassic Park implies, dinosaurs weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, why would Dino 2.0, aka Birds, be much different? Kencolt (talk) 05:21, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Let's also not forget to mention causing fires attempting to deep fry turkeys. DietMondrian (talk) 05:06, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Because mammals were once the special needs children of the animal kingdom too. Nothing would prevent a dinosaur from becoming clever, such as corvids.  05:26, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanksgiving remains one of the strangest holidays to observe as a non-American. Can't wait for good deals on black friday though. -- Techpriest (talk) 13:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that the US has managed to export both Black Friday and Halloween (American version) - but Thanksgiving is relentlessly American. (As far as I am aware.)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:09, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It is supposed to celebrate the end of harvest season and be thankful for what you have. I am aware that some are not happy with Thanksgiving due to the promotion of Pilgrims who obviously committed mass murder against indigenous tribes. --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 17:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The genocides happened after Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving itself has nothing to do with celebrating genocides. St Patrick's Day, however, is a yearly celebration of the extermination of the Druids of Ireland.  Guy Fawkes Day is allegedly about how the British saved parliament, but for centuries it was celebrated by burning effigies of the Pope and making sure Catholics stayed inside for a few days.  Both holidays were first celebrated by the masses around the same time of the story of Thanksgiving, i.e., they are part of the whole "religious persecution" think early colonists were trying to flee.  19:04, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not the turkey's fault they were bred that way. They can't recognize truck hitches, sure, but this is like birds mocking humans for not seeing UV light. Also, reducing parrot behavior to just "rituals"???? They're more complex than that since parrots are generally perceived smarter than dogs. Parrots bond, too, and well if you think all birds are jerks, just remember they're tiny and every single thing seems to way more than them. Geese have an unfair bad rep for temperament, and I'm gonna guess turkeys do too. I think birds aren't stupid. 20:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * let the turkeys live. their meat tastes like shit. kill something tasty. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Like chicken. Andrew5 (talk) 21:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think turkey is delicious. It's also extremely low in fat, making it great for dieters and weightlifters.  The problem of course being that a diet almost entirely composed of turkey is deadly for humans, as we can only digest 300 grams of protein a day, but this would only provide half of the necessary calories. 21:24, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did someone call me? A Rooster.jpg 20:06, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Something funny about the far right
On Jan 6, the far right commits treason yet has the nerve to call people who disagree with them traitors and unpatriotic. The same goes for the conspiracy that the democrats rape children and kill them yet plenty in their own group do what they accuse democrats of.

I swear that they all engage in psychological projection at the same time. --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 01:26, 25 November 2021 (UTC)


 * One of the basic things noted in The Authoritarians is that authoritarian followers have a greater willingness than others to make excuses for their chosen authorities, making for strong double standards as they also go further than others in being negative and aggressive towards their opponents.


 * However, I've been thinking about psychological projection and other (or a wider range of) alternative movements in a different way. For example, consider alternative medicine. I think a great deal of alt med movements' mentality is based around psychological projection; the mainstream establishment is widely known to have its flaws, i.e. it has a visible shadow, and it's big, and this makes it an easy target for projecting all faults onto – while all good things are instead projected in reverse and claimed on the part of the movement and especially its acclaimed stars.


 * I'm thinking of cultic distorted thinking, not merely differing views. And that kind of dynamic is also something common in cults, where all goodness is projected onto the leaders, human-sized flaws are projected onto followers in good standing (who also tend to "introject" the flaws of the leaders as their own), and all kinds of bad stuff is projected on outsiders and the world outside. And cults – well, you know, in relation to the alt-right.


 * Then there's the psychology of paranoid personalities (as in a small portion of eccentric people) where psychiatrists have noted since the late 19th century or so that paranoid personalities can have an extreme double standard of suspicion towards everything except their alternative explanations (which are accepted with extreme gullibility). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 03:02, 25 November 2021 (UTC)


 * @ApooftGnegiol Thank you for mentioning The Authoritarians, I think that many people could save themselves some time and headache if they just read this book. I'm not saying the book is perfect or answers everything but it explains a lot. If you really ask yourself often "why do they do this?" or "how could anyone...", do yourself a favor and read the book, it's worth it and it's available for free.
 * As for posts like this, I think pointing out obvious hypocrisy of some "far right followers" and expecting positive reinforcement is something we should avoid so as not to fall into a mental box. Funnily enough, a point the book makes is that high-RWAs (people who score high on the Right-Wing-Authoritarians follower scale), seek out positive reinforcement from peer groups more than the average person and are much less likely to seek out information that contradicts them. (This is not an attack on you, sometimes we also just need to vent) NastyNugget (talk) 10:53, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Do we have a template like this here on RatWiki?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Skip_to_top_and_bottom 13:34, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Physics Sidebar needs a new color
Seriously. Every time I go onto a page with that sidebar I have to squint because the color of it is so bright it hurts my eyes. Making it darker would be appreciated. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. 10:11, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I concur. Does anyone have a shade of yellow they'd like to suggest? DietMondrian (talk) 06:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Based on the Wikipedia article for the color, I would suggest or Imperial yellow of the . LongStylus (talk) 21:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I just realized that the article for yellow has a nice table at the very bottom that has samples of different shades of yellow. It's complicated. On the one hand, we need the color to be dark, but on the other hand, it can't be too dark or else it won't be considered yellow, but rather orange or brown. LongStylus (talk) 22:06, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

The physics sidebar has black text, where other sidebars have white. I think the icon can be tweaked to have a darker and comfortable-looking yellow, and then the sidebar can be changed (including flipping the text color) to match. But 's permission is (technically) required for changing the image, per the licensing on its page. (Sidebar icon image licensing seems like a mess in general.) --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:59, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and changed both icon and sidebar. I think it's certainly dark enough now, but I may or may not have picked the right color. It ended up yellow-brown instead of yellow-orange. I could put in something else, e.g. the indian yellow, quite easily if preferred. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:28, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The template is now an ugly barf color, it needs to be changed again Plutocow (talk) 22:30, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Changed again, using the "Indian yellow" as a quick alternative. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the blue links on yellow still looks weird, but nevertheless, I think the palette choice is a real improvement. Much less of a eyesore, for certain. DietMondrian (talk) 04:11, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Made a draft for the Wisconsin Christmas parade killer.
Draft:Darrell Brooks Jr. User:J3wzus 19:31 25 November 2021 (UCT)
 * Why? He's not really notable or important from what I've seen. 19:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * More importantly I don't know what he has to do with pseudoscience, skepticism or the other things we are interested in. He's just some (alleged) criminal as far as I am aware.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In addition to being a(n alleged) murderer, he's a nutjob conspiracy theorist and so forth, but it's not like he has a devoted following like Alex Jones or finds himself the center of other conspiracy theories such as the JFK assassin. I don't think we need an article on him just yet.  19:58, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Some new trolls come here and announce themselves with their name. Bongolian (talk) 21:42, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I honestly see no point in that type of article. --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am also skeptical of making a draft on a more general basis. It's pretty early into the investigation surrounding the event, and we don't have the full details yet. Starting to document them right now seems premature, even if the draft is meant to be a WIP and updated as time goes on, lest we repeat some of mistakes by commentators on the 2016 Munich shooting. In short, let's wait and see first before covering the guy. DietMondrian (talk) 04:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

New York city hall removes Thomas Jefferson statue because Jefferson enslaved people
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/23/thomas-jefferson-statuue-new-york-city-hall
 * Yeah, they're boneheads. All of us who live in this area and ever have to deal with anything in New York City know they're boneheads. And? The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The unstated implications is obvious. "Since the left got away with taking down confederate statues, they won't stop until they destroy all of our precious moments!" "Those crazy leftists/BLM/antfia have gone too far!!" 04:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't they realize this will be compared to the Taliban blowing up Budda? Dutchbag (talk) 09:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * They probably don't realise anybody can be that stupid, since there's no real comparison. Dendlai (talk) 10:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thomas Jefferson and other members of the founding generation were deeply influenced by the enlightenment. The enlightenment was flawed and the people it produced were flawed. Most revolutions do not achieve the aims they strive for. The American Revolution turned out better than most revolutions, but it wasn't perfect. If people are looking for perfection in their countries history or leaders, they are going to be disappointed. W235M (talk) 13:06, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 'Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it' and also 'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' are applicable here (as in other contexts).
 * Some variant on 'Statue Park' (Communist period statues etc) might well be appropriate: feel free to suggest wherever. Anna Livia (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's a thought guys and gals. What if we don't idolize people and put them on (literal) pedestals. I know, the idea of treating historical figures as humans instead of demigods is radical, but maybe we should do it. 14:15, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The purpose of making public statues of historical figures is generally to commemorate a notable person and their actions, so that they may be kept in public awareness. What are your thoughts on the statue of George Floyd recently put up in New York? [[Special:Contributions/96.60.168.60|96.60.168.60] (talk) 15:41, 24 November 2021 (UTC)]
 * Probably not getting lionized to any remotely similar extent compared to the guy in our money. Jefferson isn't going to be forgotten, and I feel the situation you bring up is comparable to comfort women statues or statues of Martin Luther King Jr (who's also subject to martyrdom mythologizing to an extent) rather than statues of powerful household heroic figures that frequently show up in mythology. Neoclassical art DID do a lot of celebrating and ventures close to worship. I don't think statues are universally bad but we probably don't need be constantly reminded about founding fathers especially when people don't bother viewing them as flawed, even vicious, human beings. No one is seeing Floyd in the same light as those historical figures, and Floyd remains controversial today. 16:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * folk like jefferson are not merely flawed people from a bygone age where we can hand wave it all away as a different time, their flaws are very much central to the racial strife of today. statues like those of jefferson present ideals of freedom, tolerance, democracy, justice for all, while the george floyd statue present the injustice and on going struggles of peoples deliberately denied freedom, tolerance, democracy, and justice for all by jefferson and friends and so many people since. the statues of floyd and co highlight the hypocrisy of the statues like jefferson. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:49, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The people of any given locality have a collective responsibility to decide what monuments should be present in their own locations. George Floyd might be considered as a social martyr. It would be best to view him that way and agree to resolve that no human being should be treated the way he was treated. Jefferson represents more than a common slave owner. As author or coauthor of the US' founding documents, he can never be ignored without promoting a distortion of history. I suppose Americans could create their own academy, as the French have done, which body could decide who should be honored among historical persons. But then, America would be a different place, with a different Bill of Rights. Ariel31459 (talk) 21:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I just have a simple metric. Do we believe that the world is "better" that the person existed?  If so, they can have a monument.  Otherwise it's inappropriate.
 * Is the world better off because of Washington and Jefferson? For those of us in the States, yes, yes it is.  Did they bad things?  Yes, horrible things even.  They were products of their times, but they improved the country.  If simply owning slaves in a time and place where that was the norm means you should never be commended for what you accomplished, well, Mohammed owned 50 slaves, and I can say that Mohammed did indeed do a lot to bring the Arab world from the 4th century into the equivalent of the early enlightenment era, so to speak.  I do realize there aren't too many statues of the guy, but I dare anyone to publicly condemn Mo for the slavery.  21:56, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Why do we need moments though? I mean fuck it, I'll say that not having public moments to Floyd and others is fine too. 22:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * For the same reason we have Nobel Prizes and any other rewards. To remind the people alive of why they have what they have, and hopefully inspire others to do important things with their lives.  23:04, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And to create idols to shape how people aspire... Remind me again why any of those things are good? 23:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Because rewards and recognition motivate people to be better, producing a better society. Or accomplish goals or anything else.  00:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But only within encouraged parameters... Is it really so hard for you to admit that there's less altruism in this shit than you'd like to believe? 01:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The whole business seems to be like some playground game. When the issue is helping African-Americans shake off the legacy of slavery, removing a statue of Jefferson seems a minimal contribution to that project at best.  It's actual purpose seems to be self-promotion by going for the immediate gut reaction.  Altruism's got nothing to do with it. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 04:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think statues have their place. Are you supportive removing statues of Anne Frank, Sadako Sasaki (victim of fallout from Hiroshima bombing), Etty Hillesum, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth?
 * "This will be compared to terrorist organization". I don't actually really care if Jefferson stays or not, maybe lean toward removal (his removal is merely symbolic and it's not much meaningful change), but I'm not really persuaded by the argument that disingenuous comparisons will be made. They're already being made even with more clear-cut cases like Robert E. Lee's statues (which were blatantly made to intimidate compared to Jefferson's statue) being removed. 04:33, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm going to take the opposite stance of GC and say we should have monuments of all people. Walking through a city street should look like Medusa went on a sightseeing tour in the Pope-Mobile.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 14:58, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * or maybe change em up on the regular and as the world changes. and make em biodegradable so they melt on their own after a while AMassiveGay (talk) 16:02, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Bronze is eminently recyclable. That said, grownup politics is about getting people to agree to common plans of action that will improve their lives. Statue controversies are a form of territorial pissing that does not help. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 16:23, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Wrote a blogpost about the Shinigami Eyes browser extension a week ago...
Here. Given I'm sure some of our userbase makes use of this extension, I highly encourage people to read it. -- Techpriest (talk) 21:50, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I used the extension, but not anymore. Thanks for writing the tech stuff out in a way that a not tech-savvy person like me could understand. And the other stuff... No comment really. Good piece, very helpful. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 22:04, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

wow
An AFD on Wikipedia is somehow 436,000 bytes. What has Wikipedia come to? Andrew5 (talk) 22:54, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Kyle Rittenhouse is not guilty on all charges
! 07:52, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand that there is a chance we're all a little wrong about what he did, and that there was some miscommunication and misrepresentation by media, but I will stand by this: there is no reason he should have gotten off scot-free. End of story. There has to be some kind of repercussions here. I suppose not...
 * Speaking of, do we have a page for him? Someone should get on that. Jake Holmes''yell at me 13:52, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A new trial should be done. A court of law is supposed to be unbiased hence the term "Justice is blind". The judge in this case was extremely biased. There is not supposed to be bias in court. --Channel 48 EAS (talk) 14:21, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not going to happen. The double jeopardy part of the Fifth Amendment says so. Kencolt (talk) 14:56, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * He might be re-triable on Federal civil rights charges.  The law on double jeopardy is rather unsettled right now because the US Supreme Court has been making noises suggesting that they may reconsider the 'dual sovereignty' doctrine, which holds that an offense against both state and federal law may be prosecuted by the other after an acquittal.  And this might be a good case to test that, given the attractiveness of this bozo to Republicans, and the dual sovereignty doctrine was never anything other than bullshit. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 15:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The House Judiciary Committee (aka Nadler) did ask the DOJ to look into it. My understanding is that Rittenhouse was charged on higher crimes (murder versus different kinds of manslaughter charges) and so, the prosecution tanked it. I have no opinion about this beyond this is not a well-regulated militia. Kntai (talk) 15:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In what way was the judge unfairly biased in favor of the defendant? 15:48, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The bias argument as I understand it is as follows; cursive is argument, normal is rebuttal:
 * The Judge forbade the use of the word victim, but allowed the defense to call those who died rioters and looters: This is legal pedantry with a degree of precedent. Not every judge does this, but the rough motivation is that because Rittenhouse's lawyers went for self-defense, the language used to describe Rittenhouse's victims has to be presented as neutral. Victim is what is used when a crime is committed, and the argument at question is if a crime was committed. The question isn't if Rittenhouse's victims were rioters and looters so that question wasn't relevant.
 * The Judge yelled at the prosecution in front of the jury: Partially true. First I'd like to get it out of the way that this is according to every US lawyer I've spoken with and listened to a pretty common occurence. Judges are basically teachers in that regard; they have the power, they decide what happens and if you misbehave they can kick you out of class (/hold you in contempt of court), so you better listen. Besides that, not everything the judge yelled at the prosecutor for was in front of the jury. In addition, the judge had every right to yell at the prosecution - they tried to indicate guilt by using Rittenhouse's right to remain silent against him, which is a big no no. (This one did happen in front of the jury) Furthermore, they tried to reintroduce evidence the judge had previously ruled as irrelevant to the case to the jury, when they thought it relevant again, but without checking with the judge. This provoked the judge as well. (The jury was not prsent for this one; they were formally recused while the judge yelled at the prosecution for this).
 * The Judge permitted diversions based on a blatantly incompetent display of technology: This one is easy to refute; Judges are old people, old people are bad with technology. Specifically, this pertains to an argument from the defense that a certain image couldn't be used as evidence because of potential tampering from the zoom function. The judge tossed the question to the prosecution, which at a glance seems unfair, but when you get down to it, you can clearly see the judge wasn't expecting it. The reality of this is that there is pretty straightforward case law that covers this argument, which the prosecution from my understanding just cited the next day and that ended the argument. The other thing were two requests for mistrials based on other technical incompetences, which the judge just refused to rule on.
 * The Judge is a TRUMPER!: This is a character argument that should be irrelevant to the rest of the trial but sigh. Firstly, nothing in the judges conduct suggests that his political stances influenced the way he presided over the trial. The only evidence we have for this is that his ringtone was the song "God Bless the USA" (which uh existed before Trump), which Trump used on rallies a lot, and that he's an old white guy, who is statistically more likely to support Trump.
 * In short; no, the judge was not biased. -- Techpriest (talk) 16:02, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am certain Kyle deserves to have been convicted for carrying around a weapon while under age and for endangering the protests with his rifle. I knew ahead of time that those homicide charges would not pass due to the indisputable self-defense shown in video, but damn am I disappointed there. Senioritas (talk) 18:31, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, those laws do need to change. "Anyone who carries a firearm during a riot/mob/protest is guilty of a class B misdemeanor" or something along those lines.  The question remains if carrying the weapon should itself be enough to void your ability to use Self Defense as an affirmative defense in court.  If I break into a home and the homeowner points a shotgun at me, if I shoot the homeowner I can't argue Self Defense to avoid a murder charge.  If I walk on someone's grass and the homeowner points a gun at me, my crime is nowhere near sufficient for me to lose my right to defend myself.  However, the jury needs to deliberate based on what the law is, not what the law should be.  I don't believe he should have been allowed to bring the gun there, but Kyle was allowed to bring the gun there.  Ergo, simply being there did not cause him to lose the right to defend himself.  18:51, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * America has a longstanding gun culture and a culture that promotes violence. Sociologists will tell you that the violence associated with war contaminates a culture and generates violence within a culture (Glorification of war, war coverage by the media). America's entertainment often has gratuituous violence that desensitizes people and must generate violence within some people. America needs more peace activists and more people condemning gratuitous violence in entertainment.


 * If the federal government is foolish enough to bring charges against Kyle Rittenhouse, it will make him a martyr and even a bigger hero to many people. And ultimately, the feds will lose in court. If there are more legal matters related to Kyle Rittenhouse, it might be civil suits against him by the families. Or Kyle Rittenhouse filing defamations suits (Accusations of him being a white supremacist, etc.).


 * While America is more violent than Europe, Canada and Australia, it could be worse as can be seen by this Murder Rate By Country 2021 map which also gives tabular data. Central America, much of the northern part of South America, Russia and parts of Africa are more violent than the USA.
 * Agree with CorruptUser that laws do need to change (particularly, buying a rifle for "self-defense" should be an invalid reason to own it; even owning a pistol I think should be difficult). I just think Rittenhouse should be convicted of reckless endangerment and manslaughter, but he'll probably get cleared of that because people focus way too much on self-defense rather than how he brought a rifle to a mass gathering. Regardless of how he acted, what happened was that he was seen as an active shooter and he killed people. Prosecution went too far to saying he murdered people. Rittenhouse is going to walk away as someone who killed another person, but Republicans are trying to turn him into a well-known speaker and pundit, like we need another one of those spouting off garbage about how guns are good for liberty and whatnot. 20:29, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC)Related (though only somewhat) to that, my biggest concern about the Kenosha affair is not so much the trial but what it inspires.-Flandres (talk)
 * Reminds me, the riots that happened that Rittenhouse attended should not have happened either. They happened over the shooting of an armed man with a knife, but that's not really convenient for the ACAB folk on Twitter dot com that uncritically spread whatever police shooting that happened is it? 20:36, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * True...but on the other hand ACAB twitter people pose a minor threat/represent a tiny amount of people compared to the "rightist wannabe vigilante man" subculture.-Flandres (talk) 20:41, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, sure, but they still spread misinformation regarding policing and they're still vocal enough that you will get some resistance and accusations by them if you suggest cops are less than absolute monsters. But yes, they're nowhere near as numerous or organized as the vigilante culture promoted by gun nuts. Sovcits, a category of that vigilante group, after all, are one of the most dangerous groups in America. That vigilante subculture led to this trial after all, and right wing media and pundits are promoting this Rittenhouse guy as an example to be followed. 20:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's that last bit that worries me (thank you for bringing that up). ACAB is a fringe position which even the vast bulk of progressive dem politicians wouldn't seriously endorse, with centrists even rejecting the (relativley) less radical "defund the police" talking point, while powerful conservatives basically try to canonize Rittenhouse thus giving cover to people adjacent to him.-Flandres (talk) 20:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)


 * (EC) Not to mention that the armed man the police shot was a(n alleged) rapist who was in the process of kidnapping a kid. I'd like to think the police would've just yanked him out of the car, but with him holding the knife that's a good way to acquire a few new scars.  The other option would've been to let him drive off with the kid in the backseat, which is unacceptable.
 * As for the Rittenhouse shooting, given that of the people involved, Ziminski, Rosenbaum, Huber, Grosskreutz and Freeland ("Jumpkick Man"), all five are convicted felons (it turns out Grosskreutz's conviction was expunged), it's remarkably easy to spin this as a tale of a "single good kid vs a band of dangerous criminals", and that the media reporting on this is how the "evil Liberal MSM would rather support the criminals than the victims" or something. 21:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, did anyone else think the prosecutor looked like Mark Jefferson from Life is Strange? 21:13, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There's probably not much police can do whether Jacob Blake is a rapist or not (he apparently pleaded not guilty), but what they do know was that he resisted a taser and he was acting threatening toward a cop while holding a knife, which is enough reason for them to shoot him. What can transpire with a knife-holder happens extremely rapidly. I'm still relieved Blake turned out alive and he did say he didn't know what he was doing with that knife, which also sounds plausible to me. 21:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The people who Kyle shot were acting very aggressively towards him during a riot while he had a rifle. That was very foolish and malevolent behavior on their part. And they had a history of bad behavior. Sooner or later that type of behavior catches up to people. SUM (talk) 01:16, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The rifle was even more foolish and malevolent behavior, new account. What do you think about the upcoming midterms, eh? 08:02, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ongoing riots engaged in the destruction of property is precisely the time and place for law-abiding citizens to openly carry rifles. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That's just recipe for disaster and vigilantism, which was just demonstrated. While riots shouldn't have happened, open-carry rifle escalated and led to the mess here. 09:45, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just gonna put that there https://www.reddit.com/r/Vent/comments/qyq4ow/sick_of_seeing_my_brothers_rapist_being_praised/ 11:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Disaster" happened the night before when various things were torched. Vigilantism is the appropriate response when police fail to maintain order. How do you propose that the open-carry rifle escalated things? Do you mean that people attacked the person with the rifle? That's escalation by the people attacking the person with the rifle, who is legally entitled to defend against attacks. As for "the mess", what do you think happens to communities whose businesses are destroyed by rioters? Did you read the link above? What do you think of the Koreans of Los Angeles forming militias to defend their livelihoods? 96.60.168.60 (talk) 11:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The rifle did not stop conflict. It ended up killing people. Rittenhouse brought a rifle to a mass gathering, acted aggressive around it, and when fires are shot, people assumed he was an active shooter. Are they not also trying to defend themselves? If it was Rittenhouse dead and two others standing do they get to claim self defense? As for the LA riots, I don't think that's an example to follow and it is not a reason you yourself should buy and stockpile guns since such a scenario where you'll need it isn't going to happen. What's going to happen is that you have things that can get stolen, brandished at the most mundane of conflicts, and so on. Having the populace own more guns isn't a solution, it only worsens the issue that led up to people dying and this trial. 18:33, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * LGM, when did he "act aggressive around it"? Some guy claimed Kyle pointed a gun at him, Kyle sarcastically replied 'yes' to avoid a conflict.  The video evidence of Kyle allegedly pointing a gun just before being attacked by Rosenbaum is too blurry to make out anything let alone Kyle pointing the gun at anyone, Kyle apparantly had the gun in his hands after Ziminski started waving around his gun.  Even if you believe that Kyle did provoke the attack, that does not completely void the use of self defense.  In that case, the bar gets a bit higher; you must exhaust all other options and only use self defense if absolutely no other options remain.  Once in the situation where Rosenbaum was chasing him, and he is running away but getting stuck, I don't see what other options he had beyond taking a beating and hoping for the best. 19:07, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I do think Kyle acted in self-defense, but I think he was provoking people, and Rittenhouse was under mistaken impression held by many Americans like him that open-carry is a defensive gesture rather than an overall hostile gesture that other people will interpret. The issue still remains that firearms were involved in this situation, where Kyle and others were hostile, someone fired a gun, and people immediately thought Kyle was an active shooter. The solution to a skeleton crew police being unable to carry out their duties is to reform police, as we need police to do this job, not armed people from rooftops. Having random people be armed might be a quick response to their stores getting looted, but they're not general examples to follow and they're not a reason you should personally own a gun. 20:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Now that Kyle is free, can we focus on another person from Kenosha, Chrystul Kizer? Chrystul is a Black woman who was trafficked for sex by a pimp at the age of 16, and at 17 she shot him in the head, and escaped from his home.  Same age and city as Kyle, but different sex and ethnicity.  16:43, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is not the best analogy, more of another situation all together. She shouldn't be charged for murder, even though she did kill someone, probably to escape, but I don't think the trafficker was perceiving a life-threatening situation that the rioters with Rittenhouse did. I also don't think the rioting is near the same level of crime trafficking is either. 20:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not going to split the responses
 * 1) I don't think Kyle did anything specific to provoke the people. Him being their with a long gun is definitely a scary thing in NYC, but this did not occur in NYC but in Wisconsin, where the gun culture is much different and seeing idjits running around with long guns is not unusual.  Ergo it was not itself enough of a provocation to void most of his self defense claims, and even in the event it was a provocation I still don't see what option he had beyond "accept a beating and hope for the best".  If he had pointed the gun at someone before either the shooting or someone else brandishing their own gun, which I didn't see any strong evidence of, I'd say he should at minimum be found guilty of reckless endangerment and threatening.  I actually looked it up during the end of the trial; pointing a gun at someone, even unloaded, is a class A misdemeanor, and the prosecutor should face some punishment for that stunt.
 * 2) Yes it's another situation entirely. The girl did not go to the authorities immediately, she tampered with the evidence by burning, and given that the rapist was in the chair it might not be a true self-defense case.  It's not clear she couldn't have gotten away without killing the man.  However, given the year of sexual abuse plus the fact she was under 18, I don't want to meet the person who could be in the right state of mind after experiencing that, and she should never have been charged as an adult.  Furthermore, if there was ever a time for jury nullification, "the man had raped by dozens if not hundreds of times and forced me into sex slavery", that'd be the time to use it, and a Just society would recommend probation, counseling, monitoring, etc, instead of prison in this particular instance.  20:56, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think so too. Hence why I think Rittenhouse shouldn't be convicted for murder. I don't think the case with the young woman would be as controversial given the huge power imbalance and the taboo nature of trafficking. I'm not entirely sure if people in Wisconsin are entirely comfortable with the idea of open carry, I still think the presence of a gun always increases tension with people to an extent, which has been borne out in studies (I'm not very good at study evaluation without some assistance and knowing context surrounding them), and open carry increases violence from a study by Donahue et al called "Right‐to‐Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State‐Level Synthetic Control Analysis." 21:04, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Going to create a new poll re: Rittenhouse and gun culture. 21:20, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "The rifle did not stop conflict. It ended up killing people." And thereby stopping the conflicts caused by three people engaging in aggravated assault. Do you think any more cars have been burned there since then?
 * "Are they not also trying to defend themselves?" No, legally speaking. A claim of self defense requires an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm, that the actions taken were appropriate to end the threat, and that a reasonable person would agree with those assessments. In particular, chasing after someone who is fleeing typically rules out any claims of self defense.
 * "since such a scenario where you'll need it isn't going to happen" It happened in 1992, which prompted the example I gave. Riots that destroy privately-owned businesses are not rare historically. When do you think the last month without such a riot was? Why do you think Rittenhouse was in Kenosha and armed that night?
 * "Having the populace own more guns isn't a solution" But having more armed citizens guard against criminal violence when the police fail to do so is. That is, after all, how things were managed before police took over that job. Allowing criminals to burn cities with impunity doesn't make things better, and many people value a functional society over the lives of the people trying to burn it down. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 12:16, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless you can provide reliable evidence for such inflamatory language, I'd lay off the claims of "Allowing criminals to burn cities with impunity". 13:41, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Killing people stopped immediate conflict but there was a contentious court case that followed. Is the price of these people also going to stop the riots? Maybe that particular super localized incident but people got killed here due to the guns here. Not saying rioting can't kill, but is this not a consequence of rioting killing? The guy was perceived as an active shooter and fleeing with a rifle, how are people supposed to know that he was fleeing and not causing more trouble? Also statistically, open carry increases violence, has people perceiving you to be a threat, you have increased overreactions to perceived threats, and owning a gun increases likelihood of dying from a gun, and what you're advocating, to arm the populace, others can construe it as promoting vigilantism. Riots are not restricted to the U.S. in the developed world either, and rifles sure as hell didn't make them more noticeably manageable. 16:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It was unclear and chaotic, and people acted as a mob rather than as individuals. Rittenhouse was heading towards the police and not shooting anyone else at the time in spite of being in a target rich environment, which I don't think are the signs of an active shooter.  But, well, you see a guy with a gun running from a place where gunshots were fired, everyone else is saying that guy shot someone, I can't really blame anyone for assuming he was a murderer.
 * I have always maintained this is a textbook case of why you need police and not vigilantes, along with George Zimmerman and now I guess the Ahmed Arbery case that's still going on. "The only thing stopping a bad gun with a gun is a good guy with a gun" presumes you have any way of knowing who the Good Guy and Bad Guy are.  When you have "concerned citizens" doing police work, everyone else has absolutely no way of knowing whether the crazy white guy chasing you is a wannabe-cop or a serial rapist.  Heck, in his last phone call before he died, Trayvon Martin described Zimmerman as a "creepy-ass cracker".  16:48, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "such inflamatory language" Do you not remember 2020? Did you miss the criticisms of Rittenhouse being there to help prevent more arson? Such criticism implies that people shouldn't prevent rioters from burning cities. That is, the rioters should be left to burn cities with impunity if the police don't get involved, as they often didn't.
 * "but there was a contentious court case that followed" And? A case being contentious is a statement about politics, not the merits of the situation itself. It's not unusual for self-defense killings to result in a court case.
 * "how are people supposed to know that he was fleeing and not causing more trouble?" Fleeing would be an indication. Especially towards police. And he wasn't the only person there with a gun. He wasn't even the one who shot first.
 * "why you need police and not vigilantes" Police maintaining order is nice, but they don't always do that, as has been shown in various riots. And so people faced with a riot have the option of letting rioters destroy things with impunity, or of taking measures to stop them.
 * "presumes you have any way of knowing who the Good Guy and Bad Guy are." Being actively engaged in felonious activity would be an indication. That's often how police identify "bad guys" to stop (perhaps wiith their guns) after all. 96.60.168.60 (talk) 19:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Rittenhouse was playing Rambo and the consequences were predictable. Of course the riots were terrible. And not enough was done to contain them (both in a preventative way and through effective enforcement). A 17 year old with a weapon a quarter his size engaging in warrior role-play is a stupid=ass thing to do during a riot. Shabi  DOO  19:56, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * So what you are saying is, what everyone should've done is just talk with Rittenhouse and give him a hug?. Yeah, that's about right.  20:27, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, guns and violence sure did improve that situation... 20:35, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I remember a lot of violence and similar getting played up by the right, to the point where any protest was deemed a riot de facto. So yeah, inflammatory language unless you can back it up with solid sourcing. 20:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did you not understand my Rambo reference? Man, you need to watch some more movies.  "I can't even hold a job PAHKING CAAAAAAAAHHHHSSSSS!!" 21:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "They drew first blood - not me." - Rambo, Movie: First Blood (1982). W235M (talk) 00:14, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

So apparently, the first lawyers Rittenhouse had were responsible for associating Rittenhouse with the Proud Boys. That lawyer also sat on the pile of money raised for Rittenhouse, and refused to post bail, saying he was safer in jail than with his family. Those lawyers are currently representing the Jan 6 rioters and are involved in QAnon, so it doesn't seem like it's a far fetched "blame someone else" claim. 21:29, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "So yeah, inflammatory language" Again, do you not remember 2020? That link from before is to an image search that should show you an assortment of burning cars and buildings. Literally criminals literally burning cities.
 * "solid sourcing" Let's consider the specific riot that led to this incident. Here's a news article from 12 hours before the shootings. This one is specifically about the car dealership where Rittenhouse was the following night. So what precisely is your issue here? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Voting is live for the mod election
Hail ye hail ye and cast your votes! -- Techpriest (talk) 17:17, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I voted bitches! Now RationalWikians! Rock the vote or Super Mecha Death Goat will consume you for a Thanksgiving dinner. --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 17:34, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Vote or die, Muthafuqa, Muthafuqa, Vote or die! 18:14, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Fairly important technical issue - is just listed as “Rockford”, the other candidates are all listed correctly. Christopher (talk) 18:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Fairly tiny in the end. The names just show up on the results - Cosmik (or whomever else does the ballots) sets the actual results manually. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:36, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Voted. Surprisingly, I thought GrammarCommie was a candidate. Ah well, voted for the green Italian instead. Oh, it's a secret vote? Online? Really? You can do that? In this digital age of leaks and bugger all secrets? No, really? Ah well, not going back now and changing it. Cardinal Chang (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You know you vote for all candidates by choice, right? I hope you chose more than 1 person.  22:47, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I chose to vote for one person as is my right. Cardinal Chang (talk) 12:29, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok. I actually voted all 9 in order. Also, if the "green Italian" is LGM, I, uh, put them somewhere in the middle. Andrew5 (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure "green Italian" refers to CorruptUser. Who will for for themselves, because I will! 01:23, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I put CorruptUser as 2nd or 3rd, I believe. It was them and Rockford, can't keep them straight. Andrew5 (talk) 02:53, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, though I feel like I should've created the username "Aaardigan" or something so that I get all those types of votes... 04:12, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Nope, you're still the green Italian. I don't know anyone else that is. 04:16, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Personally I voted for those I think would be the best candidates. To be clear, casting one vote is just as valid as casting nine preference votes. The only difference is that your vote is slightly more likely to be dismissed when counting the results if the candidate you voted for has already been elected with enough default preference votes. -- Techpriest (talk) 11:41, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Transgenderism: Is It A Cult?
When I was digging deeper in the TERF side of YouTube, I have found this propaganda series full of conspiracy theories, untrue stuff and bullshit about the "trans cult" supposedly "analyzed" under the BITE model. Here are her videos along with brainwashed populace in comment sections: Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional control. Exactly the behavior she uses herself but attempts to shift the baggage onto the trans community without any evidence. Bhp99 (talk) 00:26, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * TERF objectives often overlap with far right ideology. Not shocked. --Ja milch. Nein brot (talk) 01:21, 25 November 2021 (UTC)


 * First of all, there is no need to link definitions for common ideas such as propaganda, conspiracy theory, etc. Secondly, you are quite right to point out that the person who made the videos is no expert, but maybe not for the reasons you have in mind: "transgenderism," is a category of ideas and not an organization of individuals as a cult must be. Thirdly, that person, Waffling Willow, who made the videos in your link, is ostensively a damaged person. She allegedly thought she was a transman, according to her bio, and then realized she wasn't one. Resentment arising from this kind of misdiagnosis, which could have been a self-diagnosis or a projection onto therapy in general, may be the source of dissociative behavior. I feel sorry that this kind of thing happens at all, of course, but remember that "trans community" is but a term of art within our contemporary rhetoric. UncleKrampus (talk) 04:32, 25 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Nothing more than ideology and delusions. Not that there is much else that comprises a TERFs worldview. Revenant Raven (talk) 04:06, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * its the internet. the other side is always a delusional cult with mindless adherents immune to reason and relentless attacking their foes with any means necessary. 'cult' is usually just a slur rather than some clearly defined academic term that some folk you dont like meet the necessary criteria for its application. i suspect a more realistic term that could be applied to most groups, at least the internet based manifestations, would perhaps be tribalism. or some description of it. one shouldnt cling to rigid and narrow definitons for these kinds of terms when outside of academic papers. they are often loosely applied and just meant to give a general idea or impression of a thing. its normally fine on social media and the like, with zeroing in on some term used for not meeting some specific criteria often misses the broader points being made or purposely intended to derail the conversation. i see that everwhere from all sides of whatever conflict is currently in front of me. or there will be someone insisting some relatively innocuous phrase or wording should taken in one specific and insanely literal way, and only this one incredibly specific way and is proof of some great intolerance. twitters great for that one, but i've seen it plenty on this site. true believers of all strips amplify the acrimony of everything they are a part of.


 * that said, i know it can be difficult to step back from things or let things slide when it personally effects you and is part of greater issues deeply personal to you. things concerning identity (especially so when still young) can be felt keenly and deeply. but we dont need to debunk every bit of bullshit made in every screed of every internet no mark. with some youtube video thats clearly bullshit, its enough to dismiss it as just that - bullshit. we give them to much credit to go through every claim made and why its nonsense. it will be either filled with PRATTs or just flinging shit to see on what sticks. you'll go mental responding to everything, actively searching for more shit that you already know is shit. its a response, getting under your skin, they want and theirs a danger it will warp your own sense of perspective. pick your fights. dont give them the oxygen of your attention. let them asphyxiate in obscurity AMassiveGay (talk) 13:28, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh boy another cultural marxist boogeyman rehash. Calling "trans ideology (bullshit in itself)" a cult is nothing new at all, it's also the same beating stick as aforementioned 'leftist cults' that the right regurgitates every now and then, without realizing their own schizoid delusional propensities. There is no mirrors in the right's house. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 08:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Is Right WIng Watch allowed to be criticized
It is a noticeable trend that for specific groups any criticism is inherently removed without any double checks to see if what is said is accurate or not. Right Wing Watch is one such example. When one puts in sources that are not youtube videos that provide criticism for said website they are deleted with the following statement "This source was also used by a youtuber we do not like, thus it is invalid" Could you explain why this is rational. Jared Holt sent those inappropriate messages so it does not actually matter whether or not youtubers that the moderators have an irrational hatred for also cite said sources, the sources themselves should be evaluated on their own merits, correct?2600:1702:2A00:B3F0:6112:CB4D:A9A5:3A47 (talk) 18:42, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Think you've been trying to smear Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch since May of this year, and you've been constantly adding some rather heavy allegations that require way better sourcing than a YouTube video and some heavy.com opinion piece. 18:53, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * yes, everything should be whether you agree with it or not; case closed. 19:33 25 November 2021 (UCT)
 * Have no idea if it's directed at me, but the IP has accused Jared Holt of sexual assault, which is an extremely serious allegation and requires pretty solid sourcing. What the IP gave us was an Facebook post from the depths of Facebook by an idiotic high school student regarding some other idiotic high school students by a guy called Jared L. Holt as well as a link to a Styxenhammer666 video called: "Andy Warski Jared Holt Audio ft. High School Sexist/homophobic Archive" characterizing Styxhexenhammer666 as "nonbiased", which is ludicrous as the guy made statements skeeting close to Holocaust denial. Other sources include tweets with little care for context that don't in any way support serious allegations. Finally, there's a allegation that he's strongly associated with the Dayton shooter, with a source being a heavy.com article that's digging up dirt on the Dayton mass shooter and not much solid sourcing that supports another serious claim. I know the term "hitpiece" is thrown around really loosely by random drive-bys, but this is exactly an attempt to make a hitpiece against Jared Holt. These are extremely serious statements that would be extremely problematic to remain in our article and would make our wiki, especially characterizing a 2009 Facebook post possibly by him, possibly not, as sexual assault, go into potential legal trouble we'd rather avoid.
 * Additionally, if you look at the history of Right Wing Watch as well as in the talk page, there's a repeated BoN address that's been trying to add the same information since May, edit warring even. The BoN's behavior also strongly suggests of a recurring user User:TheDarkMaster2 who had been banned in this coop (with ban upholded) (gee these votes went fast back then) who also repeatedly tried to defend Styxenhammer666 especially in the talk page multiple times, shared videos by him even despite being told to stop sharing Styx videos, and has repeatedly accused RationalWiki of similar allegations, and he also has reregged or tried to pose as multiple IPs agreeing with him, even before his ban, and he was caught lying several times.
 * If you want legit criticism, get better sources. While it can be difficult, it's not impossible to corroborate controversies of organizations or people that are guilty of severe misconduct. Southern Poverty Law Center, I've made significant contributions regarding allegations of an abusive work environment as well as abusive behavior from their co-founder Morris Dees with sourcing from LA Times, New York Times, The Montgomery Observer, and The New Yorker, which are far more credible than some conspiracy theorist YouTuber and extremely thin gruel of scattered amalgamation of Facebook and Twitter posts with zero corroboration. 22:15, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Which IP? 10:41 28 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi TDM2! I saw you on one of Chudlogic's streams! Congrats! 19:32, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Squid games has been taken to the next level
 In this video by MrBeast, 456 people compete for $456,000 in a real life Squid Games! (But the people don't die if they lose.) The video by MrBeast was released on November 24 at 21:00 UTC and since has achieved over 48 million views, so definitely watch. Andrew5 (talk) 02:36, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Squid Game: *talks about how capitalism is bad and rich people make poor people dance like monkeys for entertainment while dangling money in front of them*
 * MrBeast: “That sign can’t stop me because my 5-year old audience can’t read!” 03:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Shit like this is why aliens won't talk to us. 05:05, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Squid Game isn't even subtle about it. 05:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What's more frustrating than the tone-deafness of the video is the host's awful grammar. "tons of steps is gonna get intense" at 19:02 instead of "tons of steps are gonna get intense" and "If I was you" at 4:38 and 9:25 instead of "If I were you". Maybe the host should spend some money on decent education so that he can conjugate verbs correctly instead of wasting it on his cringy channel. LongStylus (talk) 06:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * He's clearly a candidate for Private Eye's Commentator Balls Cardinal Chang (talk) 13:16, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A: "Capitalism is bad and rich people make poor people dance." B: "OK, let's make a TV series about that with lots of eye candy and a predictable plot then market the shit out of it!" Bongolian (talk) 19:10, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, anything that famous can always be a cash grab for big personality Youtuber. Layman only care about the "game" portion of it rather than what the message behind really was, clap clap humanity. Neil Cooper (talk) 01:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

have none of you seen tv before? its been making the poor dance for money since it began. big brother ring no bells? anything with described as 'reality tv'? touch the truck? or those japanese endurance game shows clive james used to show clips of that were exercises in cruelty? anything with simon cowell? squid game without the murder is 90 percent of tv. hell, the dance marathons depicted in they shoot horses dont they were before tv. there have been tv shows with the actual games from squid games already.

squid games, a tv show with an anti capitalist message, is available on netflix, earning them over £650 million. its not a youtuber trying to cash in thats missed the point.AMassiveGay (talk) 17:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

BoN pages question
As something cheerful - how soon will RW reach 7777 articles? (Just over 300 to go currently.) Anna Livia (talk) 12:53, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe if you created one, we would get closer? Bongolian (talk) 18:32, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Title it, Article 7777. Fill it with strange sentences and vague meanings open to interpretation but ultimately mean nothing. Wait for the Q nutters find it and think it means something. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:39, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Bongolian commits the unacceptable sin of asking someone to do work on the wiki. 02:17, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Probably best activated when much nearer to the figure in question (and everybody will be trying to create the 7777th page). It would include a reference to Daniel 12:4, and a concordance between Finnegan's Wake and the Voynich Manuscript, along with some doomsday prediction. Anna Livia (talk) 11:57, 28 November 2021 (UTC)