RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive299

Sex and astrology
...no, I'm not talking about sexual compatibility between zodiac signs!

I'm talking about the statistics (see below) that show that on average women believe in astrology more than men. What do you think are the reasons for that?

"In US, 20% of men believe in astrology, compared to 37% of women. Pew Research Center."

Thinker(unlicensed) 15:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Jesus, it's horrifying that it's that high among anybody.
 * That said, I'm thinking it may be a combination of crank magnetism and the heavy marketing of certain woo towards women. 15:35, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it's because Women are more likely to see a horoscope, they tend to be in Magazines and things women are more likely to read than men. 15:36, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This isn't that surprising really, as modern western culture (I can't speak on eastern cultures, given my limited knowledge of them, but I suspect they are similar) markets romance style concepts almost exclusively toward young heterosexual women. The romance section of bookstores is literally rife with the stuff, as are the romantic self-help sections. It's no surprise then, that romantic woo is also targeted towards that particular demographic, quite successfully it would appear. 15:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I thought too about the horoscopes in magazines targeted to women, but that's not really an explanation. I guess that horoscopes are more prevalent in magazines targeted to women compared to men because women are more interested in horoscopes than men, not the other way around. Thinker(unlicensed) 16:10, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * compare the 'you will meet a tall dark stranger' style content of horoscopes to the 'these simple tricks to bed any woman' content style of lads mags.
 * and how much of this belief in astrology is cast iron certainty of its effectiveness and how much is 'well it cant hurt' variety while idling on your tea break? i am yet to meet anyone whose belief in horoscopes extended beyond a bit of wish fulfilment while working their shift of a crappy job. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the situation is 'more complex than the statistics' - with 'If I don't like my horoscope, so read the others and choose the one I like best/I wish to justify my decision' at one end to 'serious astrological involvement' at the end. And perhaps women are more willing to admit they look at the horoscopes etc. Anna Livia (talk) 17:49, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I read the Pew Research survey more in details and, actually, it says that women are more prone than men to believe also to other supernatural things, not just astrology: "Believe that spiritual energy can be located in physical things (men 37% / women 46%); Believe in psychics (men 34% / women 47%); Believe in reincarnation (men 27% / women 39%)" This could be related to this other Pew Research statistic that found women more religious than men. Thinker(unlicensed) 18:39, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * im not sure we can draw any conclusions from such broad strokes, but considering the passive nature of such things, i suspect they would be more more popular the less agency you have in life. perhaps this reflects the respective agency men and women have in society at present. i note that black and hispanic responders both have higher levels of new age belief than white, as did those with less education. as i said, i'm not sure we can draw many conclusions from this without a deeper understanding of the nature of particular beliefs held or the traditions of particular communities making up the very broad demographics. or ladies brains just smaller than mens and thus prone to nonsense. whatever floats your boat AMassiveGay (talk) 19:26, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "i suspect they would be more more popular the less agency you have in life. perhaps this reflects the respective agency men and women have in society at present. i note that black and hispanic responders both have higher levels of new age belief than white, as did those with less education." ...and the same about Democrats vs Republicans. In fact, the figures for Democrats/Republicans are very close to those of Women/Men. Thinker(unlicensed) 09:13, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * and what are the demographics of people voting democrat or republican? google suggests black, hispanic and women are more likely to be dems. but as i said, there is little point in drawing any conclusions on what little there is here. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:35, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Do we have a page for the fallacy of "A correlates with B and B correlates with C therefor A correlates with C"? There's got to be a term for that, it's a very common incorrect deduction.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:50, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * i couldnt tell you. the names of particular fallacies were never a feature of my education, though admittedly i didnt get particularly far into it. does formal logic play a particular part in american schools, or is that that this site just attracts folk whos learning and subject choice is aided by it? AMassiveGay (talk) 16:49, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I personally took two formal logic classes, one from the math department at my university, one from the computer science department. Both were optional in my degree path.  None were in primary school.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:25, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "I personally took two formal logic classes" That's cool. But where in this thread it has been claimed that "A correlates with B and B correlates with C therefore A correlates with C" ? (By the way, formal logic does not deal with "correlation", which is a concept of probability and statistics.) Thinker(unlicensed) 17:56, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Explicitly? Nowhere. But it's a contextual implication from "and what are the demographics of people voting democrat or republican? google suggests black, hispanic and women are more likely to be dems." as a reply to "note that black and hispanic responders both have higher levels of new age belief than white". And I get the understood the methodological limits of that, but I also want to know if we have an article about that particular thought process, because it's a thing we should absolutely have an article on. It's an intuitive deduction that's wrong. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:01, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Sideboard, correlation chain rule fallacy
Seriously, what's it called when you do a deduction of this form: What's it called? I really want to know. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:01, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Working as a nuclear engineer correlates with higher lifetime radiation exposure
 * Lifetime radiation exposure correlates with lower lifespan
 * Therefor working as a nuclear engineer correlates with lower lifespan
 * It sounds like you're describing Correlation does not imply causation. 19:42, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not. It's like the SAT question "all X are Y, all Y are Z, thus all X are Z" deduction, but instead of the form "X are more likely to be Y, Y are more likely to be Z, thus X are more likely to be Z" which is wrong because of the way subsets work.  No causality involved in that thought process.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:04, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Maybe I'm missing something, but that sounds like a valid, logical syllogism (through the transitive property). There are a number of syllogistic fallacies though, like Undistributed Middle. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 20:15, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can easily build you a dataset that shows this to be wrong.


 * Now, the majority of things that are cats are black and white. And the majority of things that are black and white are cows.  But none of the cats are cows.  It's not at all a valid syllogism.  And the fact that you could so easily believe it was is exactly what makes it a fallacy to me. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:26, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ahh, right on. Looking into it more, I don't think it has a formal name (at least, I can't find anything) -- just that Correlation is Non-Transitive. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 20:29, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a start, at least. Maybe a source, but I haven't even finished my last draft.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:41, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The problem is that you're saying "are more likely to be", which means you can't build any sort of formal logical argument. There's no fallacy for this that I know of, it's just that you aren't able to use any formal logic (and because it isn't formal there's no formal fallacy). Let me go back to your original syllogism:
 * P1: Working as a nuclear engineer correlates with higher lifetime radiation exposure
 * P2: Lifetime radiation exposure correlates with lower lifespan
 * C: Therefore, working as a nuclear engineer correlates with lower lifespan
 * This isn't a formal argument and so we can't draw conclusions from it. That's the main problem I see. All your terms are the same (so no four-term fallacy) and your middle term is distributed (if I assume you're using all A-type statements) but your propositions aren't logically formal. That's the problem. You can't draw conclusions from "A correlates with B and B with C so A necessarily correlates with C." Here's the most glaring problem I see with this syllogism when I translate it formally:
 * P1: All people working as nuclear engineers are people with higher lifetime radiation exposure
 * P2: Some people with higher lifetime radiation exposure are people with lower life spans
 * C: Some people working as nuclear engineers are people with lower life spans
 * I took "correlates with" in the second premise to be an I-type statement as I think an A-type statement is too strong a claim and certainly can't be substantiated. Now on to the glaring problem: an undistributed middle. The middle term is undistributed in the first premise and in the second so you can't come to the conclusion. You could make a formally valid argument if you did some heavy lifting with the premises but it wouldn't be worth it and I'm 99.999% sure it wouldn't be sound. Undistributed middle holds for your cat/cow data table too. Nowhere did you distribute the group "black and white things." Had you done so, it would have been valid but unsound. 00:22, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I have little to add to this. I would agree that horoscopes are more often marketed to women.  I mean, the history of the idea of "how to choose a man" as nuance runs deeper than "how to choose a woman."  It's not correct, and maybe we're getting ahead of that line of thinking.  Guys don't have a lot of "how to choose a woman" advice, and it's not comparable to the superstitious "you must have a husband" outlook of a couple generations ago.  I mean, how long ago were the 1950's in America, when men and women were supposed to marry by the age of twenty-five?  Having suitors/suitoring doesn't carry the weight/necessity/gender binary as it used to, but Astrology became a cultural movement that applied more heavily to one gender role.  And caring about the superstitions of elders you respect will never go out of fashion. I mean, this to me is like saying "Pink is the favorite color of more adult women than adult men." It's not exactly a meaningful claim, whether statistically it shakes out or not. Favorite colors are a pet peeve of mine either way.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "The problem is that you're saying 'are more likely to be', which means you can't build any sort of formal logical argument." As I have already pointed out, the fallacy posed by is not about Logic, it is about Probability.
 * The concept of "more likely" makes sense in the language of Probability: we say that "an event A is more likely to occur when the event B occurs" whenever P(A|B) > P(A) (see ). Then, the fallacy posed by ikanreed is the following: "P(Y|X) > P(Y) and P(Z|Y) > P(Z), implies P(Z|X) > P(Z)" Thinker(unlicensed) 08:20, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also "more likely to be" was kind of a simplification to make the concept clear. I really wanted to focus on numeric correlation.  My cat/cow example was reduced to a binary measure to make the wrongness of the effect clear.  My nuclear engineer example was closer to the kind of fallacious thinking I meant.  One where y appears in naive analysis to be a function f(x) with some error, and z appears, in naive analysis, to be a function g(y) with some error, that you can then expand that to suggest that a naive analysis of z with respect to x will find a naive z=f(g(x)) where you just multiply error bars or something to bridge the gap.
 * God, that probably makes no sense the way I'm writing it. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't seen that you had already answered the question. MB. This kind of math that ikanreed is asking about isn't really my forte. 20:45, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

My picks for worst American Presidents
No specific order.


 * Donald Trump
 * Woodrow Wilson
 * Andrew Jackson
 * Herbert Hoover

Just my personal picks. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 18:43, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The omission of ol doughface is an interesting choice. I'd swap him in for Hoover in a heartbeat, laisez faire depression causer or no.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I admittedly know little of Presidents before FDR, but I always thought Wilson was considered to be decent. --RWRW (talk) 18:54, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If there was a 3-way electoral poll - Donald Trump, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, who would win? And what would happen here? Anna Livia (talk) 19:03, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Mostly good choices, although Hoover gets a lot of goodwill from me for his humanitarian activities after WWII. I would add Andrew Johnson for his ineptitude and his scuttling of Reconstruction, and I'd add Franklin Pierce for the Ostend Manifesto and Bleeding Kansas. Oh, and how can we forget James Buchanan, who was a drunkard whose deadbeat lack of leadership during the secession crisis allowed the Civil War to start? 19:36, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * They say ol doughface had "lack of leadership", but honestly, it was being a fucking scumfuck who treated slavery as not a problem, and arresting and executing John Brown, Nat Turner and the like in the name of "law and order", and a heavy hand against slave states was the only kind of okay leadership to consider. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there's loads that's shitty about Buchanan's presidency. He's a classic choice for #1 worst president ever. 19:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Props to RZ94 for putting Wilson on his list, though. I fucking hate Wilson, and I fucking hate how that man is lionized in American history textbooks. That's why I expanded his article recently. 19:47, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

One reason I hate Woodrow Wilson is that he helped suppress free speech. Speaking against the efforts in WW1 was somehow bad. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 20:39, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * For those interested in context, the famous line about "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comes from a supreme court ruling where they arrested anti-war protesters on charges of sedition, the SC ruled that was just fine, under Wilson. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:55, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You know, I've actually grown somewhat more sympathetic to Hoover over time. He at least tried to help with limited public works projects, and had to fight his own Treasury Secretary's advice to “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” He's by no means a good President, but putting him below Buchanan and Nixon seems pretty damn harsh.
 * With regards to Wilson, he strikes me more as one of the "Worst People to Have Been President" than a bad President. If we want to consider Debs as an indictment of his legacy, then we should also examine John Adams of Alien and Sedition Acts fame.
 * Buchanan watched the country burn and didn't lift a damn finger. He deserves to be considered the worst President, moreso than even Trump. Though perhaps when we're fleeing from the Second American Civil War in eight years, I'll reevaluate my views.
 * Kind of agree with your assessment with Jackson, in that I'm not that much of a fan of wannabe autocrats and racists.
 * If I may be so bold as to suggest a new candidate for "worst President," Richard Nixon. He did pretty severe damage to American democracy with his abuse of executive privilege, and sowed the seeds for the modern conservative movement as defined by Trump. While he did institute OSHA and the EPA, the brand of conservatism he planted the seeds of is directly opposed to those and other agencies. In essence, his negative contributions to American politics (such as the Southern Strategy) are actively working to dismantle his positive contributions. RoninMacbeth (talk) 04:35, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Top ten worst leaders of all time
Serious question: Pick from any country, and any time period, your top ten "worst" leaders. Does Trump feature in the list? And if so, how high up? 20:20, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Any honest list like this would not have Trump on it, no. 20:23, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Only if your criteria for "worst" is something sensible like "crimes against humanity" and not "fucking stupid as hell with substantive evidence to prove it", and even then there's some inbred royalty who'd give him a run for his money. Like that emperor of china who died in a powerlifting dare.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * i have literally just had a conversation with my flat mate about best/worst lists and in particular ones with 'all time' attached. they make me want to kill. but playing the game, considering trumps competition include perpetrators of many appalling genocides, if hes on anyones list they are fucking imbeciles. as for genocidal contenders - how do you weight such crimes? without playing a dreadful numbers game, is there not a point where these people are so egregious with crimes so horrendous that there is simply no way and no to point to say one murdering cunt is qualitatively worse than another? AMassiveGay (talk) 20:43, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Mens rea? ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:52, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * you are still left with a lot of people deliberately and knowingly murdering a significant number people that it makes no sense to say one is worse than other, and pretty offensive too, as it implies the crimes against one set of peoples is inherently worse than crimes against another. can we say the interahamwe active during the rwanadan genocide are qualitatively better or worse than the khmer rouge that isnt arbitrary or fatuous considering their actions? if you were being hacked to death with machetes in kigali, would anyone have thought 'at least we dont have to deal with polpot - he was a real cunt'. i am reminded while writing that of end of 'life of brian'. worst things happen at sea. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:20, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a very... deontological... perspective. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:34, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * im not really sure what to make of that response. i can deal with broad concepts but i am a dipshit. you might need to spell it out. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, you know, it's pretty easy for a consequentialist to quantify amounts of murder, but deontology or virtue ethics would tell you any amount of murder is barbaric and stop there. It's not meant to be dismissive, deontological moral perspectives are valid(as long as their ontologies aren't supernatural). ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 22:17, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * theres probably a page on wikipedia already if we want just quantity but it just doesnt do justice to the horrors unleashed. i mean, pol pot caused the death of 3 million people - a third of cambodia's population over a 4 year period. the rwandan genocide claimed 1 million (ignoring the continuing horrors of war in the region.) thats 70% of its tutsi population in space of a few months. does the prize go to cambodia for its sheer scale or to rwanda for its intensity? i feel dirty to even consider it. i dont care which is 'worse'. its at a level of awfulness that it is irrelevant. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * wikipedia:List of genocides by death toll
 * wikipedia:List of wars by death toll
 * wikipedia:List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll
 * wikipedia:List of battles and other violent events by death toll
 * wikipedia:List of natural disasters by death toll
 * wikipedia:List of serial killers by number of victims
 * wikipedia:List of events named massacres
 * wikipedia:List of accidents and disasters by death toll
 * Etc... Eventually you find wikipedia:Category:Lists of massacres by country and then wikipedia:Category:Lists by death toll with gems such as:
 * wikipedia:List of deaths from accidental tree failures in Australia
 * wikipedia:List of aircraft accidents and incidents by number of ground fatalities
 * wikipedia:List of estimated death tolls from nuclear attacks on cities
 * And many more! 23:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That first list is garbage.   It doesn't even include the US genocide of native americans.  Or the spanish genocide of native americans.  Or British genocide of native americans.  Or portugese genocide of native americans.   What the fuck wikipedia?  Even RationalZombie had the sense to include Jackson in his list(also Washington, grant, and most other 19th century presidents).  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 23:37, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * its curious because i can see why there might be opposition for their inclusion but there isnt really any discussion of it on the talk page - it crops up a few times but no one really disagrees on its inclusion. probably difficultly in unpicking the details? there doesnt appear to much in the way of articles covering these events as genocide specifically. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:10, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Genocides in history (Americas), Genocide of indigenous peoples (Americas), Trail of Tears, Encomienda, Indian removal, American Indian Wars, and California Genocide seem to be the main ones. 01:13, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess the first 4 are gimmmes - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Idi Amin should be on there. Probably King Leopold II. Hendrik Verwoerd. Andrew Jackson. Most of the Popes. Queen Mary. LongLostLegend (talk) 11:31, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * LLL - which Mary: and probably only some of the popes (even if one includes the Coptic and other Popes, and most of the modern self-declared such).
 * A distinction should be made between the 'dangerous/destructive', the criminal, the 'round the twist' and the 'variously incompetent' among others (though some politicians may fall into more than one category); and some will have to be seen in the context of their times/be necessarily 'bigger bastards than those they have to deal with and neutralise.' Anna Livia (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Bizarre Cochrane report on artificial sweeteners
Report finds no benefit from sweeteners, recommends people eat less and drink water. This is incredibly poor science, and reminds me of the classical economic theory that assumes everybody makes all their decisions based on total knowledge of the utility of everything, and no other criteria whatsoever. If you have a choice between soft drinks and water, maybe you think soft drinks taste nicer, but based purely on medical evidence your choice is illogical and you have failed in life. In the real world, people pay money for diet drinks which have similar nutritional value to water, but they have now been informed that is not a valid lifestyle option and they shouldn't make selections of food or beverage based on taste. --Annanoon (talk) 00:43, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The problem is that your weight is actually linked to the amount of food you eat, not really the amount of sugar you eat. All that has actually happened is that this real world study has not taken into account modern food design. Yes the amount of sugar has been decreased, but the amount of complex carbohydrates and highly processed flour hasn't, and these will both act like sugar when digested. In general the more processed the foodstuff, the faster your blood sugar goes up an the more weight you gain. 01:25, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * the real problem is we all know what we should be eating and what we should be doing to keep weight off or lose it. eat less, move more. we all know this. its been known for years. popping diet coke instead of the full fat version not going to help if you still stuffing your face and not exercise. it might help, but its not a magic bullet. it might not help though if you use it fool yourself into thinking you are being healthy and thus can have more cake. i can appreciate healthy eating habits are difficult to form. i can appreciate exercise can be a pain the arse. and i understand that its harder to lose the weight than is to keep it off. reports like this one about sweetners should not effect us at all. all you really need to know is are you exercising enough and is your diet (everyday not weight loss) up to scratch? and if the exercise part is sufficient you can get away with eating all sorts of crap. everything else is an after thought. we've known this stuff for years AMassiveGay (talk) 16:33, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "It might help". No, it explicitly doesn't.  That's the problem.  Apparently artificial sweeteners are some kind of appetite stimulant and having them is literally no benefit against sugar as a control.  Those 150 calories(3% of DV, not nothing) from sugar end up coming from elsewhere.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:42, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * the article reads like the research was less than certain. thats a little too sciencey for me. my point was it shouldnt really matter too much if ya trying to lose weight. it should be an after thought. if the artificial sweetner thing is really whats holding you back, it sont be so much the sweeteners specifically, but the foods that require them are usually trash in the first place. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:15, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Apparently artificial sweeteners are some kind of appetite stimulant" <- I don't think so. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/new-review-of-artificial-sweeteners/

20:10, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Volunteers
Who wants to volunteer for getting slaughtered today? Anyone? —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  17:29, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Only the best deserves to survive; the rest shall perish as they must. Enjoy! Nerd (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm volunteering Nobs: it's put up or shut up time! Bongolian (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Nah. Fiddleit (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'll ready my chainsaw in one two three... Oh god fucking damn it! I lopped off my arm by mistake! NOOOO!!!! —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  19:50, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In contrast to the rather frivolous commentary above, I shall respond with the only logical choice.


 *  NOT ME. Kencolt (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for volunteering to be slaughtered today. I'll be sure to send some masked guys armed with bone saws and other various instruments of torture to your house ASAP. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  22:05, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Since when did you start working for the Saudis? 13:53, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I`m a freelancer, I work for whoever has the most green available at any given time. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  14:21, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, Putin will be hiring again in a few months for the 2020 buildup. 14:58, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Up until then, I have to find someway of keeping myself occupied. Do you want to be mutilated? It only costs a standard fee of fifty dollars, depending on the wealth and status of the client, of course. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  15:08, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

US government shutdown
For those of us who are not local to the US - what will happen if it persists? Anna Livia (talk) 19:40, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * A government shutdown is only partial in scope, those services not considered "vital" to the survival of the state are shut off, while those that are (such as the military) are permitted to continue functioning, this is more ambiguous than one might expect. The Coast Guard for instance is considered one of those "non-essential" agencies while under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, while if we were undergoing a war the DHS would transfer control of the CG to the Department of Defense, thereby making it an "essential" agency. And no, the lights won't go out in the White House. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  19:53, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Will the lights go out in the White House?" I thought they already went out... 20:00, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The end game for a shutdown would take months to impact the median person in a noticeable way. "What do you mean I can't have my passport",  "Wait, who's dealing with this years' pandemic?  No one?"  "Sorry there's no research grants being approved right now, we're going to have to fire all our postdocs" would be eventual consequences if the "I'll shutdown the government until I get what I want" statement is serious.  Right now it's just "There's locked gates on all the national parks" and small shit like this happening.  Much as it's promoted on the media, this has become a default, normal dysfunction now, and I predict it's only a matter of time until the republican side of one of these disputes says "Let's just shut down forever, we like the military and hate parks anyways"  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:13, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I imagine that some of the affected government employees are starting to get nervous about having to live without a paycheck for an extended period of time. All of the Smithsonian sites, including the National Zoo, are closed, so the tourists are inconvenienced. On the other hand, here in the Washington DC metro area, the rush hour traffic is noticeably lighter than normal despite the shutdown's limited scope. Cosmikdebris (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you're in DC it's instantly impactful. Can't get a drivers' license, can't get married, can't do a number of normal, routine functions that by legal oddity are run by the feds there.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:28, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Working in DC area here; I think that would be the case in a bigger shutdown. Bowser had announced that the DC city government would not be closing, and protective measures would go into place to keep things rolling in the short term, such as trash collection and street plowing. As such, the DC DMV is still open. You're right about marriage licenses though, and Bowser is trying to push emergency legislation to allow issuances in the meantime. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 20:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So it won't get to the equivalent of The Winter of Discontent's binbags and bodybags for a long time yet? Anna Livia (talk) 00:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's so fucking weird you Yanks actually have these shut-downs. I'm not sure they ever happen here in NZ or Aus or most other functioning democracies. Possibly because the US is fucking dysfunctional. Acei9 00:18, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Isn't a parliamentary vote of no confidence roughly analogous with our "government shutdowns"? And once upon a time, the US was a functioning democracy, all civilizations rise, shine for a while, before steadily burning out. Globally, we're steadily burning out. This is apparent all over the place, with the advent of climate change and the rise of authoritarian governments and movements all over the world, a decrease in stability, etc etc etc. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  00:26, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * No. In Australia the rough equivalent is the blocking of the supply bills. -- MtD Bogan   00:45, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not coming from a country with a parliamentary system of government, one can excuse me for my ignorance on such matters, but I don't go insulting other countries when it is not called for, I`m not a projecting hypocrite. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  01:32, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * wait, what? Are you calling me a projecting hypocrite? Acei9 03:33, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I have autism, so you may find it prudent to excuse me for not realizing you were joking at first. I apologize for the discretion. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  14:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between a shutdown and a vote of no confidence - the latter normally leads to a general election/other major rearrangement. Anna Livia (talk) 16:23, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * what happens in the uk is the budget is p;resented. they debate then then vote on it. if the government loses the vote, there would then be a vote of no confidence. if they lose that, it means a general election. the government doesnt shutdown due to someone having a strop. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

One thing I can agree on is that the system for government shutdowns is stupid and I am an American citizen. The icing on the cake is that the reason behind the shutdown is Trump wanting his fucking wall. He needs to give it up. It is not like every county in every state would give the building permits. What other things can Trump do to make a mockery of the United States? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 02:16, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So will US government 'go to the wall'?
 * How long before the 'anti-taxers' decide that they have a valid reason for fighting back on how much tax they pay? Anna Livia (talk) 10:38, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That happened around two days ago, the anti-tax cranks are currently proliferating on social media. 13:55, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And when the anti-taxers find that untaxation results in (among other things) potholes in roads and sewage backing up, and their complaints are met by 'not in my (not currently paid) pay grade' responses what would they do?
 * Perhaps the next version of the federal shutdown legislation should include the equivalent of 'reduction to the bread and water and no roof Papal Conclave (and possible move to the US equivalent of Bramble Bank) of the the Federal administration.' Anna Livia (talk) 16:23, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

"Small" update
Trump has said he's willing to let the shutdown go for years unless baby gets his baba. That's a little more unprecedented than previous week-long worst-case-shutdowns that ended up costing a few hundred million in back-pack resolution and fixing the small issues that cropped up from them. It's kinda actually nation-destroying. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:56, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Are the 'small issues' "glitches and bottlenecks arising" (and some minor bugs resolved)?
 * Could something like this be developed? Anna Livia (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @ikanreed I wonder if Trump let the military be funded so that the whole fiasco couldn't be considered a threat to national security? Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 21:35, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know if that's "too much credit". What you're describing doesn't even make sense as a cause and effect chain to me. Fully funded military causes national security threat how?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:42, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * God damn it, fuck Trump. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  21:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @ikanreed I meant the opposite.  My line of thinking was that if Trump didn't fund the military and let the government shutdown extend multiple months, the military would be facing enough problems that we would have to bring our ships back to port and whatnot, and our bases overseas would have manpower problems.  This would cause enough of a security breakdown to be a threat to national security, and Trump would be the one responsible for it.  Trump causing a national emergency could backfire severely.
 * Update: looks like he might just do it anyways.  Nevermind its just him being dumb again. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 23:10, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is it a case of 'I have a cunning plan'? (But who would be Blackadder in this scenario?) Anna Livia (talk) 00:28, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Give Trump enough money to build his wall out of Lego blocks
Not that the Lego company would endorse it. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Print off enough of Trumpery Trumpets tweets to turn into 'newspaper firelighter bricks' and then make a Potemkin-wall; or get him to lay enough breeze blocks/cinder blocks in a circle to enclose himself. Anna Livia (talk) 00:06, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Crazy youtube guy
I found this guy after starting to watch Myles Powers videos on youtube. I might be the last horse to cross the finish line here, but this was incredible to me. There is a dude with 70k subscribers who advocates consuming turpentine, MMS, and has amazing urine enemas. His body "craves one every day!" I'm not saying we should platform him into his own page, I'm not willing to do the amount of research that would require, nor am I capable at wiki editing at that level, but he should probably show up on a search, no?

Please advise.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:36, 4 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Is this related? |Margate: Danny Glass sentenced over death of girlfriend Sophie Emma Rose Anderson in Thailand Thinker(unlicensed) 12:21, 4 January 2019 (UTC)


 * It seems to be extremely related. "All I've got to do is leave Thailand"/"Now I don't have to do that which is a real inconvenience for my life".  The dude has some kind of dissociative disorder, I'm not gonna pin it down. "You can't take my life away" in regards to prison, which would be bad for him, and then he gleefully recounts what it meant to get out of the charges, and notes his mom is relieved.  I'm glad his mom keeps up with him.  No page, sorry,  no reference, bad suggestion.  I edited the title to "crazy youtube guy."  Don't need somebody googling themselves at harm to themselves.   [edit]I edited your post too, this is too insane for me to feel comfortable anymore. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:07, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Feel free to start a RW page about this guy, I would support that. But do not edit my posts. Thinker(unlicensed) 17:57, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair in that, I had a moment of such disgust and panic. I dislike the idea that the guy could Google his name and come here and perceive it as an unfair attack, especially after what I've seen from your post.  I scrubbed his name, I won't re-scrub his name, but I am concerned that any platform might bolster this man's most dangerous tendencies.  I'm sorry you had to revert your post, but I hope you understand why I scrubbed his name and let everyone know that I did.  It was a moment of panic and disgust on my part having seen how deep this man's disassociation goes, I feel very responsible for this minor platforming because I didn't research very well, I am of the opinion his name should be scrubbed, I'm not mandating it.  If there is a reason, outside of entertainment which is what I intended going into this, to keep this name on the site, I think that's a discussion.  I mean, all these pseudoscience extreme health practitioners are trying to catch niche markets.  This guy is directly involved in the death of a pregnant woman but it wasn't via turpentine so he's talking like he won the lottery.  To a crowd that wants to know his next health secret.  I'm not qualified to approach this.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:33, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Women’s March canceled over concerns that it would be overwhelmingly white
Organizers of the 2019 Eureka Women’s March, originally scheduled for Jan. 19, said in a statement Friday that the decision came after numerous conversations with leading local activists and supporters of the march.

"Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community," the Facebook statement read. "Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2018/12/30/california-womens-march-rally-canceled-over-concerns-that-it-would-be-overwhelmingly-white/

Thinker(unlicensed) 10:52, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This sounds more like a delay than a cancellation. 15:33, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ahh... it's a delay, then it makes perfectly sense. Thinker(unlicensed) 17:41, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I mean, yeah? It sounds like you're being sarcastic, but having a problem with your organization you want to fix is just center-liberalism operating in its most nominal possible way?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "It sounds like you're being sarcastic" Yes, because I was.
 * "having a problem with your organization you want to fix is just center-liberalism operating in its most nominal possible way" I don't know how to interpret that (wanting to fix problems is something common to the whole political spectrum, the disagreements are about what are the problems and how to fix them).
 * Anyway, being afraid that an event would be "overwhelmingly white" is the mentality of who wants non-white people around him only to display how much he is inclusive, instead of who wants people around him because he enjoys their company, no matter the skin color. Thinker(unlicensed) 20:11, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem with trying to reach out to other races because it's a given that difference races have different experiences so they like to have perspective. They also don't want to make the minority races already in the Women's March feel marginalized and in an ocean of white people either. 20:15, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You could have read the article, instead of reading the headline then ranting about a fictionalized version of it? The organization had a very clear internal dispute over the leadership, some of their associations, and that's normal for a healthy group to go "okay let's talk about it".  You're very dumb, and very good at purposefully not understanding things in order to make yourself actively dumber. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And, people don't go to these things to socialize, or maybe they do, but they have grander visions of what they're going to accomplish in their own heads. They want to Make a Statement, and this means wanting to check all the right boxes. I doubt that they've given any thought to including rural people, or people who never went to college; they haven't made the lists and as such are invisible to 'intersectionality'. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱs. 21:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "They also don't want to make the minority races already in the Women's March feel marginalized and in an ocean of white people either."
 * What's bad about being in an ocean of white people? Anyone who has problems joining an event because there are too many people of a certain race is a racist and it's better if he stays home.
 * "You're very dumb, and very good at purposefully not understanding things in order to make yourself actively dumber."
 * What's the purpose of this kind of comments? They don't offend me, and they make you look like you have no arguments.
 * "They want to Make a Statement, and this means wanting to check all the right boxes."
 * The problem is that apparently their statement begin with "Look a us! We have the X% of this minority, the Y% of this other minority..." Thinker(unlicensed) 08:43, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * you are aware of diversity, i assume? the idea that different groups and individuals have differing needs, differing issue? women are a diverse group. white women and women of various minorities have differing issues. white women just do not have some of the problems that those in a minority have.
 * if you a woman of colour, keen to stand up and show some sisterly love, looking around you see the next local march is 'overwhelming white'. would you think the organisers are looking out for you? that they care about some things that effect you but wont effect them? would they even know? maybe you'd thats not a womans organisation, but a white womans organisation. amybe you'd stay home.
 * the 'overwhelmingly white' thing is a problem. it means it is not representative of many it would like to help. that it is not reaching those parts of the community. its not a new problemn and there are historical issues of removing black faces the womens movement. we know race is a such a divisive issue and we know racist sentiment is flaring up all over the place. you cannot even begin to a an inclusive organisation if you are not dealing with the issues faced by the most vulnerable or dont even look like you are. even if they have this awareness, how empowering is it for women of colour if its just white women marching for you, while you are at the back of the bus, so to speak.
 * people need to see themselves represented or else become marginalised, ignored, and you wont be prepared to engage with things if it looks like you arnt required, needed, wanted. its a good thing the organisers of this march are taking heed. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:23, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Those darn racist feminists! Next thing you know they’ll be hating on men! —RWRW (talk) 13:17, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "if you a woman of colour, keen to stand up and show some sisterly love, looking around you see the next local march is 'overwhelming white'. would you think the organisers are looking out for you? that they care about some things that effect you but wont effect them? would they even know? maybe you'd thats not a womans organisation, but a white womans organisation. amybe you'd stay home."
 * If I was a black woman in the US, I would be aware that black people are a minority and that in most events there would be a majority of white people. Thus, I would not interpret being one of the few black people in an event as "this event is just for white people, I gotta get home". Thinker(unlicensed) 17:54, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is the women's march about feminism? It seems to me that started as a march for women and anti-Trump (which is already problematic since 41% of women voted for Trump) and then it went crazy including a lot of questionable personalities. Thinker(unlicensed) 17:54, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * with racism seeming rife in all walks of life, in womens movements as well, with the current climate and accusations of the wider movement being silent on issues of race and of hostility, would you really have any sense of togetherness?
 * the 'minorities will usually be in a minority' thing - yeh its true in a broad sense, but its a great way of ignoring issues not directly experienced. any hint of ghettoisation in the area and they may as well be invisible. its not good if you are invisible in an event meant to shine light on your cause. you're not informing those unaware of a problem, nor rallying together those effected.
 * i dont see your point with trump supporters. womens march doesnt appear to specifically against trump but for civil liberties and social justice and aim to be non partisan. but so what if it were? inclusiveness and diversity doesnt extend to irrelevant groups or those flat out opposed to your goals - why would it? AMassiveGay (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict) Demographic problem isn't merely majority white, it's overwhelmingly white. That rationale, to marginalize minorities because they're minorities, is counterproductive to the inclusiveness of Women's March and feminism in general. It's the same problem when I attend a gamer event and the participants, and I mean actual participants, not the girlfriends, are overwhelmingly male. And then when these events start outreaching to women and I get a response of "they need to accept they're a minority and not whine about having not enough women", that's hostile and dismissive. 18:57, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And historically, one of the problems with at least some of the several feminisms was that they left themselves open to criticism that the issues they addressed were mostly the concern of upper-middle class professional white women. They're doing what they can to fix that, the poor dears.  A bigger problem is that there are so many different ways to end up a member of a 'marginalized minority' that they'll never be able to catch 'em all.  Class blindness remains a problem, especially for those who have the leisure for movements and to attend a March for Women. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱs. 19:56, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Budget redistribution fallacy
Premise: what I'm asking is not strictly related to the moral problem of fair redistribution of wealth 

I found a recurring pattern of misinterpretation when resource allocation is commented on media. This phenomenon happens especially for the annual country balance, but also in general when other types of resources are assigned, and the assignment is compared to previous years. Same pattern happens when commenting votes redistribution among parties from one election to another, especially when there are more than two parties, like in my country.

The pattern is as follows. Say you have balance entries x_1, ..., x_n = B as of year 2018, where B is total budget. The x_i's can be say, defence expenses, education, and so on. In 2019 balance entries are subject to re-allocation, so you have y_1, ..., y_n = B (for simplicity, assume to have same B from year to year), where, say y_education can get a cut from x_education of the previous year. So some entries can be significantly smaller, there will be other y_i's which are increased with respect from the homologous x_i's of the previous year.

Clearly, media can say (and actually say), "oh, all the x_2 cut has been shifted to y_1. What a bad left wing/bad right wing. ". Feel free to decline this in your own setting, say "space research budget cut has been shifted to defense budget".

Point is that there are infinitely many interpretations of budget redistributions, all of which make perfect mathematical sense, all of which can be exploited by media. For instance I could say that cuts on space research totally shifted on another budget entry which increased in the new year, like "We cut space research for having funding for small farmers. Actually the defence budget raise comes from drug dealers huge confiscations" etc. This can create an arbitrarily large number of False dilemmas, putting education against defense, etc.

I'm looking for opinions and pointers about that. Has this manipulation technique a name, already?

AgelinBee (talk) 11:01, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * im not sure i agree with your thinking here. budgets dont happen in a vacuum. its usually clear what any administration hopes to achieve. all politicians ever do is tell you how they think things should be run via official statements, manifestos, press conference etc. we going to know long before thst the defence budget will get a boost if they've been makimg the right noise, or education will be cut if they've been vilifying teachers. when the budget reflects that, it will sold as that by the current administration, reported as that. the only spin is on whether its a good idea, or if their numbers add up.
 * also pitting education against defence isnt a false dilemma, but in reality its education against everyone else - departments of state are in a constant battle of justifying their budget and trying to get more cash AMassiveGay (talk) 15:43, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure it's a fallacy. It's just muddy talking about allocation and deviation from what's "expected", with all the political assumptions that go into those assumptions.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:59, 4 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'll try to be more precise by using a more neutral scenario. Say, in year 2018, universities A,B,C,D take money for funding 5 researchers each from federal budget. A and B are northern universities, C and D are southern. Also, B and D are STEM oriented universities, and A and C are stronger in art and humanities. In 2019, A gets 8 researchers, B gets 4, C gets 6 and D gets 2. Now there can be many, mathematically consistent ways of interpreting the shift of budget, each of which can be used for argumenting in favor or against the new budget distribution. Blog 1 titles "Government privileges northern universities with no reason (A+B=12)". Blog 2 titles "No regional bias. Government downfunds STEM universities (B+D=6)". Baddest above all, Blog 3 break the news with "University C steals one researcher from neighbor university D. No loyalty for the regional neighbor". Another blog might well announce that "A stole 3 researcher from the good university D". All of these arguments/interpretations of the budget shifts have mathematical sense, but they play over an unproven causality over shifts of resources. Press can manipulate opinions and, at will, put emphasis over "North vs South" or "STEM vs Art&Humanities". Or, fallaciously, put emphasis on local shifts ("D transferred resources to C") which have no sense in the global scale. All that we know is that A+C have 4 researchers more, and B+D have 4 researchers less. The example is oversimplified, but think at the number of false polarizations that can be observed with, say 60+ universities. Same happens if one, willingly and with no statistical analysis, wants to give his desired explanation of votes shift from one election to another. Say A,B,C,D are political parties, then the number of "shift" explanations from one election to another are many. In this case there is one true vote shift mapping that usually can be reconstructed almost accurately with polls, etc. Nonetheless, liars on the web exist and can manipulate interpretations at will. AgelinBee (talk) 21:21, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is positing that a strange lock system is actively in place. The Panama Canal has a lock system, for reference.  They can let water in and keep water out at their discretion to get a boat across what should be a land-mass.  I learned that in the second grade.  There is an amount of money that the federal budget gives to public education.  The "no child left behind" act tried to settle an amount of money and treated its schools as locks, in my opinion.  But this is closer to a "second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution" kind of position.  And it's important that you've put it in the university sense, and not the elementary school, because you're not talking about public schooling.  The same thing doesn't apply, because money can flow into and out of universities based on alumni and sports teams and yes, government funding, as the government may misguidedly apply itself, but it is not a lock system for destined money that can be applied to any university to lift or sink it.  And it definitely sucks when a smart person can't get publicly funded.  It's a hard world.  I'd rather talk about fixing public schooling.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Government Shutdown: Our soldiers don't get a paycheck yet incompetent government officials do.
I support the military and veterans. It also angers me that people who have a very dangerous job get cheated out of a paycheck. If the troops don't get a paycheck during the shutdown, neither should congress. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 17:01, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The Department of Defense was funded by prior legislation and is unaffected by the current shutdown. Cosmikdebris (talk) 17:04, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Besides which, why are you so upset about the military potentially being left unpaid, and not say, doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers, firefighters, etc? 17:08, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I honestly think that Congresspeople and the President shouldn't be paid more than the average federal worker. If you enter public service for the pay grade, you're in it for the wrong reason. RoninMacbeth (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd go a bit further and say that all officials involved in the legislative process should have their wages tied to the minimum wage. Don't like your pay grade? Gotta give everyone else some bread. Transbeeism (talk) 00:11, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * (EC)What teachers are on federal furlough? Are there federal schools?  Maybe there's a federal juvenile detention program?  There's also only a small national fire-fighting force attached to the dept of interior, and it's not substantial.  Doctors, nurses, and scientists there's plenty of.  It seems like postal service workers and record-keeping clerks are the biggest chunk of furloughs.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:00, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

it is just one example. I also agree that other federal professionals getting cheated out of a paycheck is wrong. If workers vital to the system don't get a paycheck during the shutdown, neither should congress or other incompetent jackals. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 21:06, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Especially the Jackal-In-Chief. It's not like he's hurting for pocket change... Kencolt (talk) 01:32, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I see, my apologies for my anger. 14:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It is cool. No harm, no foul. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 15:57, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

So, I found this... thing...
https://youtu.be/gkp8iGz_ZgM

Feel to facepalm yourself. I know I did.

Does make me wonder whether these people ever went to school... Tinribmancer (talk) 19:49, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Howzabout a quick synopsis? Nowhere Man (talk) 21:04, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Power Plants Are Fake They Collect Electricity From The Air" Scream!! (talk) 23:24, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I couldn't stop laughing. This is reason to change the definition of Retarded. This nut foots the description. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 21:13, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well. Hunh.  Fascinating.  That's four minutes and fifty-seven seconds of my life I shall never get back.  It staggers me to think that someone can be this scientifically wrong-- in ways Wolfgang Pauli probably never dreamed possible-- and somehow still have the ability to figure out basic video editing. Kencolt (talk) 01:43, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * To what end, is what I always ask. Ok, you solved it, and why is it better to fool me about this?  To deny my place at the top of the hierarchy.  To what end?  So Jews and blacks and women can take over the hierarchy.  To what end?  To discredit the bible.  It's evangelicism 2.0, from what I gather.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:15, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I suspect that the guy smokes a pound of weed everyday
He would have to. This is one of the most whacked out conspiracies ever. At least with alien conspiracies they could be proven. That is not saying much though. Bring me a Taco --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * LSD seems a more likely candidate, IMHO. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  14:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

General Relativity
So gravity is the result of objects bending space time, right?

What is this space time compose of, if anything? Does it have any "physical" properties?

I used to think that space was essentially nothing, a name given to the absence of something, the vacuum seperating two particles from each other. Now I know that apparently this "nothing" does incomprehensible things, and I'm left wondering whether or not it is something...or nothing. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 04:37, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is actually a very tough question. But here is my best shot. Think of spacetime as a stage in which events unfold, but a rather unusual one because it is affected by the actors. This is analogous to a keystone species such as the beaver. A beaver and its environment affect each other.
 * A word of warning. While the trampoline analogy is certainly useful in understanding general relativity, do not take it too seriously. Nerd (talk) 02:05, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Do virtual particles have something to say on it?. And especially, is there any evidence to think on space(-time) being not continuous but being formed by tiny components?. Panzerfaust (talk) 10:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You guys are all asking research-level questions here. Good job!
 * At present, we lack a complete quantum theory of gravity. So what physicists do is trying to work on an approximate version thereof, namely, quantum field theory in curved spacetime. In this framework, one treats elementary particle interactions in the backdrop of curved spacetime. In order to this to work, the scale must be sufficiently large and the strength of gravity must be sufficiently weak.
 * The possibility of spacetime being quantized is being actively pursued by many theoretical physicists. However, the statistical mechanics of granular spacetime does not yet have any substance. Nerd (talk) 15:12, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You need to distinguish space-time as a mathematical abstraction from the physical world whose idealised behavior is described (in part) by the abstraction. The history of physics is about building more and more powerful abstractions. Newton thought of space-time as being a 3D Euclidean/Cartesian space through which objects move. It's easy to visualise Newtonian space as being like a room with nothing in it. But that's not really an accurate model, as you can see in the way physicicists spent hundreds of years thinking about how to detect and measure the substance behind this vacuum, which was variously viewed as something through which waves propagate (that must be like air or water or other things through which soundwaves propagate), or something that must be dragged along with moving objects, or as a fixed frame of reference we can measure objects against. The moral being, you may think you can understand something intuitively, but your intuition only goes so far.
 * Physics is ultimately equations which tells us how things behave, it doesn't tell us what their essence is, or what they are like beyond the behaviours we can model and predict. This is really unintuitive because we're used to the idea that objects are made of a substance (wood, stone, water, flesh and blood, etc) and we can find out what they're made of (by poking, kicking, inspecting, taking samples), as well as understanding how they behave. This applies to billiard balls, boiling water, and even to animals. But we can't do that in fundamental physics - all we can know is behavior. Physics can tell us how particles and energy interact and change, but it can't give us the nature of the mathematical abstraction of space-time, any more than it can tell us what the number line is made of or what kind of thing the square root of -1 is. --Annanoon (talk) 17:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hold on. I detect quite a few misconceptions here. First, if by "substance behind this vacuum" of space you mean the luminiferous ether, attempts to detect it and measure its properties originated from otherwise sound understanding of physics that is now known to be mistaken. This is perfectly normal in science, which is inherently progressive. The vacuum of outer space on average contains no matter. This means it can only support fundamental interactions, namely, gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear.
 * Physics can tell us not just how something behave, but also why it behaves that way and what it is made off. Witness the success of the periodic table of the elements and the Standard Model of particle physics.
 * I can tell you what the square root of -1 is. But I think you already know the answer, since you mentioned it. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. As you mentioned, conventional geometric intuition can only go so far. Take a course on complex analysis and you will learn a lot more. You will, for example, learn an elegant proof (by contradiction) of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra. But before that, you may want to take a course on real analysis, which will teach you quite a bit about the real number line. Depending on where or who is teaching, you may even learn how to construct it. Nerd (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Transgenderism and Legal Disclosure before sex
(male centric) I'm reading that in 19 states a person with HIV/AIDS is legally required to disclose that fact or they are culpable to legal action if they spread HIV to somebody. I was asked in the downtime at work if I thought a transgender person also ought to disclose their sex-change in this fashion. I said, no, it's not a legal thing, but I was also caught unaware by the legality of HIV disclosure. But now that I know, the answer is definitely no. If you do not get an STI from it, and if a trans woman does not get you so drunk you cannot consent, then no, you have gone to bed with a person you perceived was a woman. If that upsets you, first think about the scenario where you decide to have homosexual relations, just for the experience of it. You spend all night hitting on a man, go home with a man, find out it's a trans man, he never had the genitals you wanted to play with. Is it an "aw, shucks," scenario, or a "this is a crime" situation? This, of course, is based on a discussion I had with other men who have a particular attitude about sex. It makes it all the more perplexing to me that they don't understand if they go to a bar trying to have sex with a woman, and they have sex with a woman who was born a man, the issue is with the woman. I mean, I tell these guy's they'd stick it in mud if they thought it would wiggle, and they laugh. Their problem is needing to have sex with something, not needing to have sex with a woman as they define it. Just utterly frustrated, probably shouldn't even share this grossness. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:26, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * If I fell for a trans and had sex with him (only finding out later that he was trans), I wouldn't make it into a legal issue. Rather, I'd act as if it never occured. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 07:44, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I think that a comparison between disclosure of HIV and disclosure of trangenderism doesn't make any sense, since they are completely different things.
 * Said so, I think a trans person should be sincere about it with their partners, without deceiving them into sexual situations they might dislike. Thinker(unlicensed) 08:23, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * should be sincere as its probably better in the long run or legally required? this is just another permutation of the gay panic defense and just as abhorrent. people have been murdered over such things. people do not require legal protection from their own insecurities. we are not talking about people being forced, or coerced, or even tricked. whats the crime here? the idea of a legal requirement to disclose ones status, as if being trans were something needing to be warned of, is not about protecting some delicate flower its about shaming and stigmatizing people and enshrining that in law - possibly the only thing this has in common the equally fatuous hiv disclosure law.AMassiveGay (talk) 15:16, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * All I would care about is knowing if a sexual partner had a STD or not. An STD would be an issue, not if someone was transgender. That goes for anybody though. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 15:37, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * again, its not so much what we would 'like' to be made aware of before starting a relationship - we'd all have differing lists of varying import, but should there be a legal obligation - something that has very unpleasant effects and achieves little else for no reason whatsoeverAMassiveGay (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "should be sincere as its probably better in the long run or legally required?"
 * Should be sincere as "its better to be sincere with the person you have sex", which is a rule that applies to everybody. Legally required to tell that he/she is trans before having sex? I don't think so. Thinker(unlicensed) 17:30, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Never underestimate the stupidity of the legislator. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  17:34, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * sorry, i wasnt being pedantic, its just one response is about social niceties, and the other involves enshrining prejudice into law. statements for either can easily be mistaken for the other - i thought best to confirm before i start accusing folk of hate crimes. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:48, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Being transgender is no issue for me. STD's would be my concern. That goes for anybody. Transgender or not transgender. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't want to create a slippery slope, but I'm curious to what extent someone should reveal something of their sexuality before disrobing. If you say you are a virgin but you are not, it is quite the deception. Once understood it can really upset the other partner. Ruin the experience of having shared in someone's first experience. And yet, while it's not praiseworthy to full out lie about it, the person is pretending to be someone with x sexual experience shouldn't be obliged to admit their status as a virgin before sex, or at least it sounds a little absurd to expect that by law. You can say that consent is contingent upon certain knowledge, but its pretty hard to argue that your consent is revoked once you realize that person wasn't a virgin. Why would it be the other case if we are taking about changed genitals? Especially if the person has never claimed to have always been a woman or man (as that kind of question rarely comes up anyways). The same would go for a man or a woman who is so promiscuous the number of their sex partners is in the triple digits (or imagine 4 digits). For the majority of people this would constitute a person who. sexually. is pretty experienced, in colloquial terms amongst binary genders using the nasty pejoratives of whore or a man-slut. If someone acts as though they choose their partners sparingly, project an image of innocence etc and enter a long term relationship with them, if the other partner finds out the truth it can be devastating, relationship ending and until recently, in some jurisdictions, justification for divorce and getting child custody. Again though, I'm not sure that changing the law to be honest about your sex history would ever achieve broad support. even if the person were a long time prostitute I'm not sure that lying about that should be criminal. What about pretending to be straight or gay? You are a gay man who has sex with a woman (can be for a multitude of reasons, some devious, some not) should admitting your sexual orientation be obligatory, legally, before true consent is given? These kind of "legal grey" zone don't come up so much with sexual history and sexual orientation, status as a virgin, divorced or single, promiscuity, sincere attraction: but they do with trans-issues. In many cases I think it comes down to blatant or indirect (subtle) trans-phobia.  Shabi  DOO  02:57, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is all really good, and it is painful that I didn't have this just ready to go when I was asked about it. The worst that can happen is a man has anal sex with a trans-woman that he believed was a woman.  I mean, that's THE WORST scenario here.  It's fucking childish to want a legal protection for that, the legal protection against an STD/STI makes more sense.  You shouldn't know you have herpes and not care.  But you should be able to go to a bar, as a man or woman, and take somebody home for sex.  At the same time, if you are going to a bar with that intention, you have so much responsibility to protect yourself, unfortunately more for a woman than a man.  I think that's where the honesty about anything comes into play.
 * I mean, it's illegal to have sex without a condom in Sweden unless there is explicit consent to sex with no condom. One gender is affected more heavily than the other by this law, and it's women, a woman's responsibility is more defined by this law. If you didn't see that coming, take a lap.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:07, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * laws concerning std specifically, and hiv in particular are huge piles of unnecessary shit that help no one. AMassiveGay (talk) 09:13, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * this is the weirdest proposed double standard I've heard of in my life. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 06:09, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

@shabidoo - while we are talking about disclosures in general, there is such a thing as rape by deception. it generally requires a concerted effort to deceive. that said, what people choose to reveal about themselves and at what stage is entirely up to the individuals involved. the reasons why folk would choose to disclose or not disclose are entirely their own. if something is of concern to you, its really on you to ask rather than hope information will be volunteered. much of the stuff mentioned about sexual history and the like would not seem appropriate to ask outside of a long term relationship. its more about trust and honesty in the relationship rather than legal requirements. for issues of consent, you need to ask if its an issue, but refusing to answer such a question or knowingly lying - depends on whats being asked and why as if its legally suspect. some things are going to be fundemental to consent others more trivial. the legal 'grey area' is the individuals involved and the context is different each tine. is it reasonable to have long check lists of things for consent in all situations? hooking up with a stranger in a club the list is very short indeed, while you might expect more formal matchmaking to be more stringent. i dunno, this all makes it seem very complicated when in reality its really simple. lies and dishonesty are usually over things that have minimal bearing on consent - they result in shitty sex rather than a sense of violation. i can think of few things that would. i mean, if i were a straight male, i would assume i would prefer to be with a woman. who in their right mind would ask 'are you sure you are not a man?'. you wouldnt ask. you'd make the assumption. its not an issue of consent. if anyone is outraged or sickened on discovery of such a situation, thats on them. i think what im saying is, if you dont explicitly make something an issue of consent, that you dont ask or check, then its not an issue of consent. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:32, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

it occurs to me that, while i have no idea if anyone is actually proposing such a law (the one case i am aware of fell foul of the rape by deception), if one were to appear, how would it work in districts that have no or make difficult to get legal recognition of trans status? can you be legally expected to disclose something that is not legally recognised? AMassiveGay (talk) 01:21, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "can you be legally expected to disclose something that is not legally recognised?"
 * I guess it would be about legally disclosing your sex. Thinker(unlicensed) 09:34, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It would only work in a defense of an offense, I think, i.e. "I beat her up because she wasn't a girl!" While I disagree with the idea that STI/HIV disclosure laws are useless, that if somebody did not disclose herpes or HIV, and transmitted it during consensual unprotected sex, it could be argued that the damages caused by said transmission of the STI or HIV are harmful enough that one partner in the act behaved irresponsibly and should be subject to some sort of reparational social responsibility.  Whether it actively helps or not, it's harder for me to say "knowingly having unprotected sex while you have genital herpes does not carry a physical risk to your sexual partner."  Disclosure of your condition does benefit, not disclosing can potentially do irreversible harm, and I don't think it's weighted much by gender.  So, is it reasonable to say "If you know you have herpes, and you don't disclose that fact, somebody you transmit herpes to unwittingly could take you to court for, say, medical treatment of herpes," versus "If you were born a gender, and you now identify as a different gender, and somebody you have sex with is upset about your birth gender could take you to court over psychological damages?"  I mean, you can argue that the former doesn't benefit anyone because people make bad choices on their own, but I'd poo-poo that, because unprotected sex isn't always a bad or dangerous choice.  There are pills and IUDs and vasectomies and hysterectomies that make unprotected sex a perfectly viable choice in plenty of circumstances that CAN occur, even if a person makes all the best choices up until unprotected sex.  I'd agree that rarely is anyone benefitted by the STI/HIV laws, but I wouldn't call them huge piles of shit or a double standard.  Trans disclosure, though, yeah, huge pile of shit.  Probably not on any docket due to that, again, this question is based on a work discussion among certain men.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:39, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've thought further about this, boo me, I know. I think there is a difference in what we're talking about.  I'm thinking about "protected" "responsible" and, what I can best describe as "non-impregnatory" sex as different things.  To me, Midwest bible belt born and raised, secularist throughout, I've always thought as "protected" sex as something that keeps you safe from anything sexually transmitted, including what is socially considered a precious little baby life in my culture.  But there is a convolution between protected and, again, what I can best describe as non-impregnatory sex in this culture.   The fact is I casually made no distinction between the two without ever deconstructing the difference, and now I don't even like my own definitions.  Either I'm on a tangent, or I'm noticing a cultural bias.  But it could matter in my city's high chlamydia/gonorrhea rates.  I mean, the education I got in high school was mostly based on what the absolute horrors of STIs entail, and what an absolutely thankless job it was for your parents to carry you around as a worthless 2-liter bottle with a foam head.  It's scare tactics and shame applied to curriculum.  So responsible sex is that kind of middle ground, where you recognize the dangers and responsibilities of sex, which you hopefully learn as you age, but is it any wonder the sex education system doesn't work?  I'm sounding like Jordan Peterson over here, boooo. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:59, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * not really sure what you are talking about there but laws concerning stds really are huge piles of shit. and when we say stds, we mean HIV - there are no laws specifically for other stds. they arnt needed. existing laws are more than adequate to cover neglegant or malicious transmission. existing laws are enough for most place to cover the same things with HIV. Laws that target HIV specifically not only do not protect people from infection but actively increases your risk. it is known that the vast majority of infections are from people who do not know their status. you can not disclose something that you dont know you have. such laws give a false sense of security and shift the burden of protection from yourself to someone else - a idiotic thing. the only purpose of these laws is to shame and stigmatise - something else we know that does not decrease infection rates. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Laws that target HIV specifically not only do not protect people from infection but actively increases your risk. it is known that the vast majority of infections are from people who do not know their status. you can not disclose something that you dont know you have."
 * You have to specify which laws, because different countries have different laws about HIV exposure, and even in US the laws are different in different States.
 * It seems to me that general idea is something like: "If you have HIV and you know it, then you have to tell your HIV-positiveness to each of you sexual partners. If you don't and if you transmit HIV to some of them, then you are legal responsible." It sounds good, but in real life there are a lot of complications: Proving that one knows he was HIV-positive is difficult because of privacy; Proving that one tells he was HIV-positive to his sexual partners is often a "one person's word against another's" situation; What if they, aware of the risk of contagion, used a condom but it broke?; What if one purposely does not get tested to avoid being legally obliged to tell he is HIV-positive? Thinker(unlicensed) 10:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

He/Him, She/Her & They/Them
Can someone tell me why this is a thing on Twitter? I really don't get it... Tinribmancer (talk) 16:42, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * you might need a little more context there AMassiveGay (talk) 17:49, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * It's their proffered pronouns. For example when talking to a They/Them person, you must not use the other pronouns. Failure to observe pronoun convention can result in ban from twitter and loss of ones job. I am a He/Him, They/Them. 19:03, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is it worth battering them down? I mean, people from my generation took to unique spellings to their name.  There's a whole generation of kids name brackish and rosentia and such.  Shaniqua was the favorite troll name.  What, exactly, are you mad about Josh? Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:29, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah but misgendering is serious. 11:18, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * it is a little incongruous of me to demand that your gender is identified correctly. I mean, when there are real legal ramifications, maybe there needs to be a space cut out for trans women.  And not a safe strawman argument against an ideal we should all strive towards, because a meaningful space requires intention and responsibility to that intention to occupy any space, as far as I'm concerned. But also that's it, that's all, as far as I'm concerned.  So I say, let the assholes prove themselves to be assholes.  I understand that it's hard and the whole world is against the trans-identification.  And that's a minority understanding.  I'm doing the best I can, so are probably nameable bigots.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 12:58, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

is this what the op was refering to or was there something more specific? AMassiveGay (talk) 13:51, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've seen several people on Twitter since last year using this on their profiles. Yesterday, I bumped against this one that had "he/him (ok with they/them)". So, I thought this was another online hype or something and decided to ask it over here. Tinribmancer (talk) 17:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There's really 2 issues. People accept the government asking their gender on forms such as a passport application or having to specify your sex on a dating site, but are taken aback by people specifying a pronoun on their Twitter profile? The other issue is non-binary people, people using "them/they", which is covered on RW, and many other places. --Annanoon (talk) 17:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Jesus Christ
You guys need to learn to have a sense of humor. What that one guy did was trolling, what I wrote wasn't trolling. There's a difference between humor, even if in bad taste, and trolling. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  20:52, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like the post was removed by mistake. --RWRW (talk) 22:45, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm only here to curse figs. Do you have a fig worth cursing?  Jesus taught me to obey the Old Testament and curse figs, must I flip you table?  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:23, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

What is the value in personal experience?
I know most spiritual people, Buddhists especially, tend to devalue logic and reason and place a premium on personal experience and insights as proof of something. It's like they don't know how faulty our senses are and our minds. Like one guy Adayashanti, claims to have had a moment in which one insight lead to another and then an final experience of being awake. But reading his stuff just sounds like I am taking it on his say so. That when he sees someone it's the same as an empty space, that death is a myth, that the body is an illusion. But there is no explanation, it's just a say so. I try to wrack my brain to figure what he means, but it's like the people who follow assume vagueness implies wisdom, since when?Machina (talk) 21:59, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Vagueness could suggest ignorance, consider forsaking this Adayashanti… སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 00:08, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * BUt it's like being cryptic is an indication of wisdom.Machina (talk) 02:59, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't be the only person here who knows about the term "Wackadoodle." If you have a better spelling, I'm down.  I've been hurt deeply by people on this site, but I've never once been like "There was no reason."  And I'm a ding-dang nihilist, specificity is all too important.  You've arrived at a place where specificity matters.  I hate to pin down the rest of the users, but the general attitude is deconstruction as a necessity.  Strong enough for a man, but I like it too.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As a metrologist, I can tell you that your senses don't mean squat. Any external input your brain can 'experience' a machine can quantify objectively.  When it comes down to it, the only data your senses can be trusted to determine is how you 'feel'.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 14:49, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Doublethink in modern fiction
Orwell's 1984 had a profound effect on popular culture, we all know that. I have an example of Doublethink in modern fiction- the television version of The Strain; specifically season 4 when vampires take over the world and install a Nazi like government.

During season 4 in the vampire occupied world, there are "Freedom Centers" where you get health care and rations. Although you have a high risk of getting shipped to the vampire equivalent of a concentration camp. The propaganda aired on television promotes the Nazi Vampire government as an equal society for humans and vampires. Plus the system makes everyone happy and helps humans thrive.

The Doublethink concept is heavy in both the show and the original books. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * North Korea was essentially a country sized laboratory to experiment on whether or not Orwell's ideas would work in real life. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  00:37, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Slight nick-pickiness, Orwell merely recorded, labeled, and documented those ideas and concepts. They, being human behaviors, likely existed before Orwell was even born. 01:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Nothing slight about it, and nothing to be ashamed of either, Orwell is simply the better known, unfortunately. And the buzz words from his novel get bandied about all to easy and frequently. Shame people never read the book he 'borrowed', ahem, liberally from, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, as did Huxley (Brave New World), Ayn "paranoid speed freak" Rand (basically all her fear mongering but we'll stick with Anthem), and the wonderful Ursula K. le Guin (The Dispossessed - highly recommended as is all of her work.) Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:34, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * While I understand where your coming from, i.e. that one should read the predecessors and contemporaries to Orwell's work, I disagree with the implications of plagiarism. Else one could argue that entire genres of literature are merely monuments to plagiarism due to said genres sharing ideas, themes, etc. 18:40, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There's no implication of plagiarism, Orwell repeatedly said while writing 1984 that he was using the French translation of We (which he also reviewed) as a blueprint. My point wasn't a case of "all works of art are derivative", even though they are. My point was it's just unfortunate that Orwell's book is the one that has stuck in the collective mind while it's contemporaries which may or may not be superior have been forgotten and or ignored. (The repeated use of the phrases "Big Brother","Newspeak" and/or Orwellian has become a type of commentary shorthand to lazily describe anything with a passing similarity to what the phrases originally meant. Similar to the constant branding in some quarters of Trump being a Nazi or Fascist even though he comes across more like Antonio Salazar with his "Make Portugal Great Again" Estado Novo. I somehow doubt Trump wouldn't view Aginter Press as a great idea.) Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * My apologies then. 18:15, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Besides, with everything but the book burning taken out, we're very obviously in Fahrenheit 451. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:21, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's doublespeak where you say one thing but it means the opposite. Doublethink is where you hold two contradictory interpretations of a concept in your head at the same time, and in a given context, only mean the "good" one, even if in another context, the other interpretation is "right".  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:32, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Interestingly the term of doublespeak was invented after Orwell's 1984 came out, even though it's still part of the standard Newspeak lexicon, showcasing that contrary to the Party's wishes, languages do indeed evolve regardless of what the authorities in power want. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  00:37, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You do know The Party isn't real, and these evolutions happened outside a authoritarian hellscape of total social control, right? Newspeak is double plus unreal.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:21, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

A nursery rhyme
O! You cannot escape from me! (duh, duh) I will hunt you down and murder your family! (duh duh) O! You cannot escape from me! (duh duh) O! You ought to know it, and I will really show it! I will hunt you down and murder your family! (duh duh) —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  22:52, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Before anyone goes all revert happy and mistakenly deletes this, the above is NOT trolling, it's the real deal. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  22:53, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure I mistook it for vandalism earlier. :> 23:05, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is this what we've become? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * My god, what kind of monster have I become?! —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  01:52, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * OmG. 10:50, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh my Goat, look at her butt. Oh my Goat, look at his butt. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  17:25, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

What?
''For example, the moon looks like it's moving in a circle around the earth, but in spacetime it's actually moving in a straight line. These straight lines are called geodesics.'' [1 ]

Somebody explain this. How is this possible? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 00:34, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Let's begin with the basic definition. A geodesic is simply a curve of shortest length that connects two points on a surface. On a plane, a geodesic is a straight line. On a cylinder, a geodesic is either vertical straight line, a circular arc or a helical path with the same radius as the cylinder. On a sphere, a geodesic is an arc of a great circle, or one with the same radius as the sphere.


 * In general relativity, the presence of mass, energy, momentum, and/or pressure curves spacetime. Therefore, the shortest path between two points is necessarily no longer a straight line. Since general relativity does not envision gravity as a force, unlike Newton's theory of gravity, objects under the influence of gravity must move as if there is no force acting on them. That is, they must move along a geodesic.


 * This also explains, for example, why gravity bends light. Light travels in a straight line, but only through a homogeneous medium in flat spacetime. The effect of gravity bending light is similar to light passing through a lens, such as a magnifying glass, hence the name gravitational lensing. What is always true is that light travels between points A and B along a path of least time (Fermat's principle). Nerd (talk) 02:15, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, and now for another question. Which of these is true.
 * 1: Everything is made out of something else without exception, thus there are no fundamentals. Quarks are made out of Quark2's ad infinitum.
 * 2: There are fundamentals.
 * 3: There are fundamentals which take up zero space and are zero dimensional, thus everything is made out of essentially nothing. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 02:50, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * 2: There are fundamentals.
 * 3: There are fundamentals which take up zero space and are zero dimensional, thus everything is made out of essentially nothing. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 02:50, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * 3: There are fundamentals which take up zero space and are zero dimensional, thus everything is made out of essentially nothing. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 02:50, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

The best answer one can give to your question is based on experimental evidence. At present, as far as we can "see" with the detectors in our particle accelerators, quarks are fundamental particles, just like photons, and electrons. The question of whether or not fundamental particles are point particles is another tough research question. Again, experimental evidence suggests it is permissible to treat them as points, as long as we keep wave-particle duality in mind. Physicists have tried to mathematically model certain fundamental particles as extended objects, but without much success. For example, an attempt to (semiclassically) model the electron as a spinning sphere of charge failed because it predicted that that the surface of the electron is spinning faster than the speed of light in vacuum, which cannot happen. Nerd (talk) 03:24, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Why would being an extended object make it faster than light? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 03:53, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * In this semiclassical model, an electron is treated classically in that it has a definite position and momentum. Its spin, however, is quantized; the only allowed values are $$+\tfrac{\hbar}{2}$$ and $$- \tfrac{\hbar}{2}$$ (or up and down). These values come from experiment. Quantum-mechanical spin is a measure of intrinsic angular momentum, and angular momentum is always related to rotation in classical mechanics. Using upper-undergraduate-level electrodynamics, one can calculate the so-called classical electron radius, or the Lorentz radius, after Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, who first performed the calculation. Knowing the radius, and given the angular momentum, one can then compute the rotational speed. Plugging in the numbers, one finds that such an electron would have its surfacing spinning faster than light, which is absurd.


 * The moral of this story is that quantum-mechanical objects should not be thought of in classical terms. Quantum-mechanical spin is anything but classical. Thus, an electron is, as far as we can tell, a point particle with an intrinsic angular momentum. Classically, this of course makes no sense. A point is zero-dimensional and as such cannot support rotation. Nerd (talk) 04:05, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * So in a way, everything is made of nothing. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 04:16, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Actually, no. Fundamental particles all have inherent properties, such as mass, and electric charge. They are definitely something. Nerd (talk) 04:19, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * A very odd something, it's hard for me to wrap my brain around an object which does not extend, a mere point. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 06:12, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

It is. Visualizing things may be fun and helpful in classical physics, but in quantum physics, such attempts at intuitive understanding run straight into a brick wall. We are thus even more heavily reliant on mathematics to tell us what is going on or what theory predicts. If you compare a textbook in higher physics with introductory physics, especially high school or freshman physics vs. graduate physics, you will find that the former contain a lot more illustrations and diagrams than the latter. Nerd (talk) 01:39, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

RobSmith
Does anyone agree with RobSmith about Soros and the legal precedent of under duress here? Tabula Rasa (talk) 05:55, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * yes. Wait, what? Gol Sarnitt (talk) 12:35, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Citation please, this sounds tiiiight Gol Sarnitt (talk) 13:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)13:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This issue of duress is a fundamental principle of common-law contractual law. Rob has at least picked a suitably solid base for his argument. 18:37, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

This week in stupid apologetics!
From this edit to Christianity is not a religion, featuring my response.

"''The authors arguments are fatally flawed due to the assumption that denominationalism is in itself Christianity by definition. However this is not the case. Denominations such as the snake handling Baptists you show on the right are micro religions within the realm of Christian based religions such as Catholicism or Mormonism. Religion is a man made set kf rituals, gatherings, traditions, and beliefs that if adhered to get the practitioner closer to God. Christianity in pure form is simply following Christ. The writer shoukd also not that Christ is unrelated to Old Testament tradition. He was from the lineage of Melchizedek who was a high priest not of the named and required lineage of high priests making him a rogue priest. His death ended the Mosaic old testament covenant between God and man (the vengeful, retalitory agreement God had with Hebrews/ what atheists throw up in your face when you say Jesus is love) With his shed blood on a cross he sealed a new covenant between God and man. This new covenant gives a path to salvation, and an indwelling of Christ within the believer aka that ghost you hear about. Its also important to note that Christ only has one commandment vs the 300 some odd commandments of the old covenant (this includes the 10 foundational commamdments)

''People do become disilusioned with religion, I was. But a learned who Jesus is, how he sees me and how he views me as a sinner in a fallen world. Christ requires no church buildings (that a religious thing, church is a gathering of Christ followers) No freqent repentance after sinning aka religious follow the 10 origional laws but Christians arent bound by them instead they are spirit driven (which means though they are no longer under the law the spirit is their moral compas and c conviction. No required baptism or Lords supper, no tithe or required dress, i can drink beer, i can have sex with my wife however I want. You may ask well what about Sin, Sin degrades and rots humanity it destroys you but by the iindweling of Christ we are new creatures not driven by the flesh but by his spirit. I simply follow Christ and try to learn mote through his spirit and through his word.

''The author should actually research the Bible, covenants, Christianity vs denominationalism... its laughable that no biblical sources are pulled.

Those who have not had an encounter with Christ don't know and those who have cant explajn the awesomeness of it."

So many fallacies in this "disclaimer"... To start off, no true Scotsman, followed by But that was the Old Testament (not a fallacy per se, but definitely stupid. i.e. if the old testament isn't applicable why include it? Seriously, it's over 60% of the book.)

Next up we have "The writer shoukd also not that Christ is unrelated to Old Testament tradition. He was from the lineage of Melchizedek who was a high priest not of the named and required lineage of high priests making him a rogue priest" Which is both an argument by assertion and heretical according to most strains of Christian doctrine. It's also just plain bullshit from a plain reading of the text. Skipping over most of the testimonial, though it does seem to have an implicit I used to be an atheist in there.

"No freqent repentance after sinning aka religious follow the 10 origional laws but Christians arent bound by them instead they are spirit driven" So, basically a "once saved always saved" version of salvation doctrine. Also, apparently this person has been living under a rock, because according to Evangelicals (who I suppose aren't Real Christians™.) legal law as a whole is derived from the Ten Commandments. "No required baptism or Lords supper, no tithe or required dress, i can drink beer, i can have sex with my wife however I want." Good for you buddy, you found a relatively moderate denomination and/or church.

"You may ask well what about Sin, Sin degrades and rots humanity it destroys you but by the iindweling of Christ we are new creatures not driven by the flesh but by his spirit." Not really, given that "sin" has no real value as concept and basically amounts to "things I think my god doesn't like this week, except if I want to do them badly enough."

"The author should actually research the Bible, covenants, Christianity vs denominationalism" Most of us have. Some of the most prominent members of the Atheist community have studied this book in depth, some of them being ex-preachers, ex-fundamentalists, ex-literalists, and/or ex-seminary students. As for the second half of that, no. You have to prove that claim first, not expect others to do the research for your ill-fleshed idea.

"its laughable that no biblical sources are pulled" Unless you're asking that the article reference the sections it's criticizing, that's circular reasoning and ain't going to happen kiddo.

"Those who have not had an encounter with Christ don't know and those who have cant explajn the awesomeness of it." This right here is what set this whole saloon post off. This is special pleading and an attempt at an escape hatch. It's also what I will henceforth refer to as an "appeal to the koolaid" since it asserts that only those who have drunk deep of the koolaid are allowed to speak on the matter.

TL;DR: "Only my special version of Christianity matters, the rest aren't Real Christians™. Also, you aren't allowed to criticize me or my ideas because you don't know anything, because I say so. Now let me Gaslight any experiences you may have had as a Theist and egotistically implore you to convert to my narrow version of Christianity!" 14:46, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow... what you just described is so true! You're absolutely right about the "Christianity is not a religion" thing and the "appeal to Kool-Aid" (and btw we should make an article on that!). Next time an apologist makes either of those two arguments, simply apply Rohan's Razor to it. For more information on Rohan's Razor, please refer to my user page. -- Goatspeed. 17:14, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Serious self-inflicted block reasons (for use in LANCBing)

 * LANCB
 * Personal reasons
 * I quit
 * I resign
 * Goodbye
 * So long, farewell, Auf weinderschen, goodbye

Less-than-serious self-inflicted block reasons
-- Goatspeed. 16:58, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Goatspeed!
 * ALLAHU AKBAAAR!!!1!
 * Off to the mother's basement!
 * I left the cabal (there isn't one)
 * So long, suckas!
 * So long, IrrationalWiki!
 * Allergic to goats
 * This rather liberal and atheist website will likely be doing quite bad in regards to Alexa search rankings on a certain search engine starting with G in the near or distant future. I'm off to skewer the sacred cows of evolution! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL!
 * Looks good to me. — python coder   (talk &#124; contribs) 17:02, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * No to the lattermost example. Also,what prompted this proposal? 17:07, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It just came to mind. I was thinking that we could add a way for tired sysops to retire in style, and yet more silly and unusual block reasons. -- Goatspeed. 17:17, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The "ALLAHU AKBAAAR!!!1!" example seems to be in poor taste. 17:15, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with my Comrade here. I suggest "God is a delusion" or "God is not great." Nerd (talk) 17:16, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to agree. -- Goatspeed. 17:18, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I added a bunch, the ones I didn't add seemed pointless or redundant. 17:34, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Allah mu akbar" or "Allah mish akbar" are the translations I've found for "god is not great" that are written in the English alphabet. If we're going to use a parody saying, we should do it right. 17:37, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But unless we had a Arab we would never use it, and more to the point, no-one would understand it. 17:43, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Change "so long Irrational Wiki" to long-eh Irrational Wiki" 19:49, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

(Reset) More possibilities: etc. Anna Livia (talk) 00:05, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * 'The world is going so mad in so many ways RW cannot keep up.'
 * Trump-activities induced brainwarp.
 * Brexit-induced brainwarp.
 * Planning visit to (Kuiper belt object/comet/'Oumuamua body of choice/changing dimension to escape Trump and Brexit.


 * Let's not drag politics into everything, please! Nerd (talk) 01:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Sometimes politics drags itself into the discussion (or comes up the plughole). The last statement is a nod at various 'weird theories covered by RW.' Anna Livia (talk) 10:10, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Self inflicted block reasons" sounds like a set of things that people like me would use to harass and intimidate certain other annoying users. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there should be a freeform field with the exhortation 'Be inventive (but no invective)' Anna Livia (talk) 19:19, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Tim Pool
What's the opening bid to get a page up, dedicated to properly and thoroughly dismantling Tim Pool's prattle? I need a neutral third party or team of same to brave the irritating whine of his voice and the open spigot of "fertilizer" flooding out of his YouTube channel. My housemate seems to have surrendered all rational objection to conservative talking points to Mr. Pool, along with all critical analysis of Pool's own critique of the Left. I salute anyone willing to brave this sacrifice and thank you for your time. &mdash; Unsigned, by: CuriousBlueThing / talk / contribs
 * Who is tim pool? ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:50, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * . 19:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Melting ice caps and the partial cooling of the Pacific ocean- what does this mean for climate change?
This article talks of the bottom of the Pacific ocean cooling- https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/amp25781337/ocean-colder-climate-change-little-ice-age/

This article talks of rapid melting of Antarctic ice- https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/01/antarctic-sea-ice-is-astonishingly-low-this-melt-season/

What might be the outcome if both are true? We do know that melting ice caps are completely fact. I am saying if both are happening at once.

I am not jumping to conclusions on the subject. I am curious as to what the outcome will be. I'm in your house. You cannot escape --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 03:22, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't know since this is somewhat beyond my understanding of Climatology. More to the point how did you and get in my house?  03:27, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In short, the main concern is global average temperatures, which have been steadily trending upward since the Industrial Revolution. Local areas of cooling are to be expected. Bongolian (talk) 03:42, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think I remember pretty basic introduction to a physical system is actually pointed out somewhere here. There it is.  The earth isn't a completely closed system, but it is darn near it.  The sun is the major external force, and the atmosphere is the catalyst, and the distance and composition of the planet are all major players in how the energy from the sun is absorbed/used in, what can be best described as entropy.  Being said, putting an ice cube into a hot cup of coffee is a lot smaller of a system.  The ice cube was formed under different circumstances than the water for the coffee was boiled, but I mean, if you were really all about getting that coffee without burning your mouth, you could take a straw and sip at whatever's right next to the cube before it fully melted and settled on a different temperature.  But you're mostly getting watered down coffee, bad data about the overall temperature of your coffee.  So ice, which we know is a structure salt inhibits, forms with a lower concentration of salt than the water around it that doesn't freeze.  Melting ice that formed from salt water around it (during a real ice age, not a little one) is inherently less salty, so when it melts it desalinates the water around it, which makes a larger surface area more prone to freezing, at least at its closest point to the freezing threshold.  But it's kind of a death-throe, it doesn't mean there is something within the system that will cool everything out to normal and then STILL EXIST, which is why the ice cube in coffee analogy was so stupid, I'm so stupid, damn it.  As the pure-water ice dissipates, it acts more like pure-water.  Ice is not colder than salt-water, it just has less salt in it, so it can form the structure of ice.  The fact that it is melting in places where it really shouldn't is alarming, even if this has a dissipating cooling effect in places in a relatively short term.  Hand of God dropping a new ice cube in the ocean is the only thing that can quickly/effectively cool the entire planet at this point. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:15, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's not true, there's also megaprojects, like clogging our atmosphere with micro-particulates, or launching mega satellites into orbit. Sure, sure, that will result in crop failures, but it's a small price to pay to prove to those damned liberals that we don't have to cut CO2 emissions.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:34, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hahahaha, hand of God, baby! Wrest control, that's what we are built to do, block out the sun if it won't burn itself out! We have fun here, don't let it be said we don't have fun.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:20, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Electromagnetic Field
I got the following words from Quora, ''The magnetic field from our heart has been measured up to around three feet away and our brain waves which produce much smaller measurable fields are measurable up to 1/10 of an inch from the skull." [1 ]

So do our brain waves produce electromagnetic fields? What exactly does "brain waves" refer to anyway, a conglomeration of nerve cells? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 18:28, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's complicated. First off, since this is RW, let's get a few things out immediately, brain waves are useless for much of anything besides measuring if someone is alive and/or conscious.  There's a lot of woo, and most of it is bullshit.
 * Gross simplificaiton incoming: The term "brain wave" refers to the measurable magnetic fields coming out our skulls. The reason there's a measurable electromagnetic field that comes in "waves" from the brain is because of how neurotransmission works.  Brain cells use the chemical energy they have in ATP(gotten the same way every other cell gets it, breaking sugar apart with oxygen, both coming from blood) to pump sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium ions across the cell membrane.  When they receive an electrical message from one or more neighboring neurons, they, based on certain individual cell attributes(and moderated by neurotransmitter chemicals such as serotonin) that are way more complex than I understand, decide to either fire or stay silent.  If they "fire", they dump all their collected ions, creating a large(for a cell) electrical charge on their surface, which is conducted by the cell's axions to neighboring cells.  Which then repeat the process based on their own firing conditions.
 * Certain parts of the brain are "programmed" to regularly discharge in an organized fashion. Those discharges often produce specific "chains" of cell activation across the entire brain.  A large quantity of charge moving simultaneously creates an ElectroMagnetic field.  That EM field can be detected as appearing and dissipating with normal electrical equipment, and it looks a lot like a wave. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:30, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Your brain generates and processes information in the form of electrochemical signals. Neurons communicate with each other via molecules called neurotransmitters, but the signals travel inside each neuron is an electrical pulse. Electrical charges have their own electric fields, but a mobile charge also generates a magnetic field. Whether or not such an electromagnetic field can be detected at that kind of a distance, I do not know.
 * And while we are at it, here is the answer to the original Quora question. Yes. All the time. Light is a class of electromagnetic waves that your eyes can detect. Infrared radiation, also known as heat, is given off as well and can be detected by touching. In general, any object whose absolute temperature is above zero emits electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths. The distribution of intensity as a function of wavelength depends on the temperature and looks like a bell curve but is tilted leftward. (See ). The wavelength of peak intensity can be calculated as well (by using ). Nerd (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You can get headsets which measure your brain waves in real time, and give you very basic control drones and computer things by concentrating. 11:03, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Gaia Inc.
Gaia Inc (separate from Gaia Health I think) may need a page on RationalWiki, given that it's on Wikipedia. I don't know how big it is, but has been doing some quite heavy advertising pushes recently. 131.172.249.222 (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Advertising, yeah, but... it's a subscription channel, meaning you have to ask for it and pay for it before you can watch it. This, to my mind, suggests that the kind of person who might be influenced by it probably has already bought into it's pitch long before they ever heard of it.  If you're going to pay 12 bucks for two months of nonsense TV, then you're already the sort of person who will pay 12 bucks for nonsense TV.  For now, at least, it's not really that notable... Kencolt (talk) 11:30, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It never hurts to refute their crap anyways, there's always the potential honest person that can have their brains flushed of nonsense, even if in a cult they tend to be rare. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  11:46, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, that's a point. Also a point that you can't properly refute anything without evidence.  For that, you'd have to watch the channel?  I'm not planning to shell out the 12-plus bucks to put myself through it... sorry, not that invested in the local mission. ('Cause I'm cheap.) Kencolt (talk) 12:28, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I`m only 17 so I can't cough up the money anyhow. Next! —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  12:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Dear Donald Trump, my loyalties are to the country and the American people; not you
Okay, you all know I am a patriotic American and stand up for my country. Knowing that Trump acts like a baby who uses racist scare tactics, he is a disgrace to the United States. All he is doing is holding the country hostage with a government shutdown and wanting to declare national emergency. That crap goes against my patriotic views. To Hell with Trump and the entire Republican party. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 17:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "racist" scare tactics? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 18:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Last night's dumb speech included several diatribes about the imminent danger to life and limb posed by immigrants crossing the southern border, which you know, is a fabrication, inciting, and obviously prejudicial in nature. Now I acknowledge if you're the craziest kind of crazy white person, you might say "that's not the same as racist, because there's 10 leaps of incongruous logic you could jump through to construct such false, prejudicial, and inciting statements without racial discrimination being a motivating factor".  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:51, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I thought you were referring to the Government Shutdown and his threats related to it. I had no idea this was about immigration. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 18:55, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But the shutdown is attached implicitly to the racism since the whole temper tantrum is giving baby his wall. And his wall is pointless garbage for appeasing the dumbest, most racist people.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:40, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Watched his speech, and it was all basically "Immigrants are coming to kill you". There is still a small hard core of his base that buys into the fearmongering, but it's shrinking. Millennium Scallion (talk) 20:15, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

#SchumerShutdown
I watched Trump's address, along with the Democrat's response (and I suspect a lot of users also watched both). Until recently (like, the past few weeks) I considered the Trump Wall to be unnecessary. However, my mind has since changed. There are several points that the Democrats would rather sweep under the carpet. In all, I have concluded that this is a 'SchumerShutdown'. The principle reason the Democrats oppose this wall is because Trump wants it. --RWRW (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * A vast majority of heroin (90%) flows in from the Southern border. (Even I was surprised by this statistic)
 * Law enforcement professionals requested the wall, and they know more about this issue than any of us
 * Tens of billions are spent on dealing with illegal immigration each year, the $5 billion is nothing in comparison
 * Trump outlined several problems with the current Southern border (including drugs and crime by illegal immigrants, e.g the murder of a police officer by an illegal immigrant who crossed the Arizona border). In the Schumer/Pelosi response, Chuck Schumer disgracefully described this a "manufactured crisis"
 * The Democrats have supported border security in past, including good ol’ Chuck and then-Senator Obama in 2006.
 * A lot of heroin does come up throuh Mexico, but just about all of it gets through at the regular points of entry. Very little is brought through the desolate wastelands that are the only areas that don't already have border walls.  And most people who are in the country illegally are here because they overstayed their visas, not because they took a dangerous trek through the desert.  The fellow who allegedly killed the cop was one of them, and entered by a legit entry point.  Trump's wall is an empty gesture meant to rile the white trash rather than to solve any immigration problem. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱs. 19:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So the wall is actually meant to prevent illegal immigrants from dragging themselves + their children through deserts. Isn't Trump great, he got all the racists to support a humanitarian wall. ;) 141.134.75.236 (talk) 19:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * What a stupid piece of human garbage you are. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:40, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * What a completely reasonable, thoughtful response. *upside down smiling emoji* 141.134.75.236 (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, okay, tell me more about how wanting all gay people to die of AIDS is a foundationally reasonable, intellectual perspective, again. Fuck off, go to conservapedia if you want to spend your whole life rationalizing every dumbass far-right idea and its disasterous consequences.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:43, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure whether this 'argument by bad faith assumption' shtick even meets the definitional criteria for something being an argument, to be honest. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 21:05, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you want to take this away from RWRW's shitty concern trolling(we made the dumbfuck concern troll a mod) section, we can talk on your userpage, about how exactly you've shown bad faith directly to me. I'll go do that now.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:23, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * RWRW admitted that he was persuaded by stats Trump cited in his speech and instead of saying "Sorry bud, Trump deceived you"(see Smerdis&Pythoncoder) you're going with "Wow what a garbage person you are". It's just a very odd way of dealing with fellow human beings, you know. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 21:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * How about instead of stooping to Trump's level with this name-calling, we have a point-by-point rebuttal?
 * Much of the 90% of heroin from the southern border is either smuggled thru legal points of entry or thru tunnels. Neither would be stopped by The Wall. We should spend money on dealing with these problems.
 * Of course there are going to be some law enforcement professionals that support this. There will also be some who oppose it. Selection bias at work.
 * The Wall is not a very efficient way of preventing illegal immigration. Stuff like more border patrol agents is more effective and costs less. The only reason Trump wants a wall is because that was his signature campaign promise, back when he didn't actually have to govern.
 * Native-born citizens commit twice as many crimes as illegal immigrants:
 * Fences are not walls. Schumer & co supported fences in 2006. There are some areas where fences could potentially be effective; they have already been built in these locations. Much of the remaining area is either difficult-to-cross terrain like mountains or rivers or is on private land which the government would have to seize (something which as a self-identified libertarian you would probably oppose). Both of these things result in increased cost, which results in less wall getting built.
 * Look, if Mexico pays for the wall, then why not have one. But the odds of that happening are zero. Why should taxpayers have to foot the bill for this nonsensical campaign promise? In fact, a spending bill the House passed that funded every agency except Homeland Security (the agency in charge of border security), which would end most of the shutdown was blocked by Senate Republicans. Why? Because then Trump wouldn't be able to hold millions of government employees hostage over this wall. The real "crisis" is Trump's causing this shutdown entirely by himself, causing environmental damage at national parks and putting many government employees at risk of losing their homes, all because of this stupid wall. —  python coder    (talk &#124; contribs) 21:31, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair points. I'd just like to point out that 4) won't convince anyone to change their opinion on crimes committed by illegal immigrants (also the stats come from a limited study by the Cato Institute, so make of that what you will). 141.134.75.236 (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Given that I actually live in one of the boarder states, and given that I actually looked this shit up back in 2016... Yeah, the wall is one massive WOMBAT. 22:09, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Just checking, but do people misspell it as "boarder" because Trump had a typo like that once? 141.134.75.236 (talk) 22:21, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm typing this on my phone. 22:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Watching the Schumer/Pelosi address, it seems that the Democrats opposition is based on 2 factors: the claim that Mexico would pay for it and the desire not to 'waste' taxpayers money. The first point is valid, but no real reason to oppose. Of course on Trump's part it is a broken promise, but did anyone actually expect him to get Mexico to pay? Trump has discovered what every elected official discovers sooner or later: the realities of power very different than elaborate campaign promises. The second point was not wanting taxpayer money to be wasted. I couldn't help but laugh - when has the left ever cared about wasting taxpayer money?
 * The real question now is what happens next. As the Joker once said, Congress seems to be an "unstoppable force meeting an immovable object". There's an idea that the budget should be pushed through without border funding, allowing for negotiations to continue. This makes perfect sense, IF the Dems would actually be willing to compromise (like the GOP would be doing). But since Pelosi has ruled this out completely, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump declares a national emergency within days. --RWRW (talk) 12:25, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, moving the goalposts, classic. Can we move the goalposts again and say that really, it's "border security" that is what Trump wants? That's one of the few compromise paths I see, it involves redefining "wall" away from being explicitly a physical thing, and away from something that is symbolic of Trump into something a little more generic. That's not something I see Trump doing though...
 * At any rate, rationally, a physical wall is certainly a stupid idea in many places on the border (think Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend or think trying to take land from Texas landowners :) ). But we are talking politics, which is never rational. Under more normal political times, more border security probably would have been an option (as it has been before). What I think makes things different this time is Donald Trump's openly racist attitude has hardened feelings on the Democrats. The Democrats also has momentum, coming fresh off of a "blue wave" election. Politically this was probably not the best time for Trump to play hardball on this issue. But here we are. Soundwave106 (talk) 14:05, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Law enforcement professionals requested the wall"...Is there a memo? A letter? A research study? I can't find any published data whatsoever to support this claim. Millennium Scallion (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There's Google:      141.134.75.236 (talk) 20:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. For a $5B expenditure I had hoped there would be an authoritative study. What Trump has is not a request, but a collection of group and individual endorsements, the kind that politicians on both sides of issues routinely assemble ("Nurses Say NO on Proposition #!", "Nurses Say YES on 1", etc), including a group of sheriffs that say they believe the New York Times is a fake news outlet. Millennium Scallion (talk) 13:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Rules of procedure of the House of Representatives and the Origination Clause of the Constitution give the Speaker of the House of Representatives priority in deciding how monies may be spent by the Federal government. What Trump is attempting may soon be seen as impeachable, even by Republican senators.Ariel31459 (talk) 02:43, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Donald Trump question
In the two years since Trump took office, what has he achieved?


 * Annoyed a lot of people.
 * Significant numbers of his cabinet have departed, variously under the categories of 'Flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict.'
 * Failed to achieve his wall
 * Withdrawn the US from various international organisations
 * Not read anything
 * Given the impression of being linked to outside forces

It is Richard Nixon's birthday - and from what I have read he achieved more, including writing several books. (Not praising him, but a statement of fact.) Anna Livia (talk) 18:59, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Trump has achieved several notable things in his 2 years in office.
 * Great economic gains: 4% growth. Obama tried taking credit for this despite previously saying that 4% growth wasn’t possible
 * Major tax cuts and record low unemployment (including black and Hispanic unemployment)
 * More diplomatic progress with North Korea than any President in 70 years. The Trump-Kim conference last year was a breakthrough, and another one will likely happen later this year.
 * Massive crackdown on human trafficking and violent crime.
 * --RWRW (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * +Opportunity zones, FirstStepAct, withdrawing from wars etc. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 21:11, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Plus some questionable Supreme Court picks. —  python coder    (talk &#124; contribs) 21:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And don't forget the greatest writing by any president ever.

Trump gave his friends a big tax cut and it cannot be expressed as anything other than a bonanza for people with money. Meanwhile everyone else has seen their real salary stagnate or even decrease. That is a tremendous success if you ask me. Absolutely fabulous deal. He's engaged in trade disruption with all of America's allies effectively isolating the USA as an aggressive trading partner encouraging other economies to trade with one another without pointless economic barriers. He shook Kim Yung Un's hand in Singapore. He then changed the subject and ignored North Korea's continuation with parts of the nuclear program and his threats. A tremendous success that has clearly brought fabulous peace to the world. He's been really really good at dressing down world leaders with some of the funniest insults and hissy-fits. The state of US diplomacy and global influence is just great, great stuff. He managed to get two really amazing people in the supreme court, just terrific good guys, guys anyone would trust their daughter to be alone with. Just fabulous judges. He was a winner at converting political narrative, new ideas, knee jerk reactions, insults, temper-tanrtums... to sporadic incomprehensible messages of 160 characters (280 now I believe). Has any other president been more successful at toning down facts and injecting outrage? He was a star at losing the House of Representatives. He is number one at letting victims of natural disasters learn the skills of fending for themselves and becoming more self-sufficient. No previous president has achieved such close gushing man-crushes amongst other populist like the democratic and fair and close lovers of America like Putin, Kim Yung Un, Mohammad al Saud. He brought heart and soul into the oval office. His most notable achievement is winning the absolute prize for the president who is laughed at and flabberghasts (if not disturbs) 80% of the citizens of the EU, Canada (western world). More than even Bush or Nixon. But I think really the best achievement of all, was taking credit for economic growth which is mostly due to the last three president's policies, change in market trends and specific state's policies. Whats incredible is that the economy has managed to grow despite him limiting it with trade disruption and an enormous loss of stimulus policies due to his tax slaughtering. Who on earth can take better credit for something positive (which they've actually done their best to sabotage) than President T. So many spectacular successes, I wish I could go on and on Shabi  DOO  22:52, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So,, were you born into the ruling class or are you a useful idiot? I'm so glad to hear that Ivanka thinks that Daddykins is actually effective in doing something other than grand theft (one of your two links). Your evidence-free bullshit (the North Korea "agreement" that says and does nothing) is borderline trolling: shame on you, fellow moderator! I know, I know, you support rich people saving a shilling even if a few poor people get killed collaterally. Bongolian (talk) 02:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ha! No, but I think I'd make a great addition to the bourgeoisie. Nope, I support the government not prodding its nose into people's lives unless necessary. --RWRW (talk) 12:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * you'd maybe have more credibility if you didnt just spout whatever the party line is the whole time. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:20, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, noted that you didn't dispute that you're spouting evidence-free bullshit,. Bongolian (talk) 20:24, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

"In the two years since Trump took office, what has he achieved?" You could start from here. Thinker(unlicensed) 19:38, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That appears to be a pretty mixed track-record depending on one's political orientation of course, the few genuine good things there (like increasing funds to combat the opioid epidemic here in the States) are far outweighed by the bad. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  16:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * My opinion concerning the Trump administration is more nuanced than most leftists I believe, I acknowledge he's done a few good things, but my opinion is that the good he's done is far outweighed by the meh and the bad. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  16:02, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Appeal to nature
Perhaps we could make the appeal to nature page a cover story? Does anyone think it's ready or does anyone want to add anything? I've done two complete passes through it myself. The WP article on this topic is rather limited. Bongolian (talk) 07:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's passed neither silver nor gold review. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:57, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It passes all the criteria to be silver as far as I can tell, so I've updated the talk page rating to reflect that. Anyone disagree with that? Bongolian (talk) 20:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, seems okay as silver, only cover criteria not met is a reasonable discussion on the talk page, which I guess we're starting now? ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, I've started the discussion on the talk page. Bongolian (talk) 05:23, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

BURN! BURN!! BUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRNNN!!!!!!!!!!1!!!111!
I WANT ALL OF YOU TO BURN!!! I WANT TO SMELL YOUR SCORCHED FLESH!!! OH YES!! OHHH YEEEAHHH!! THE SCREAMS OF AGONY! O, IT IS MUSIC TO MY EARS!!! SMELLS LIKE A FUCKING BARBECUE IN HERE! OHHH YEEESSS... BUUUURRRNN! 10:27, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I am sure there is a Hellfire and Brimstone 'fandom equivalent' for you to get involved in. And there are better fetishes than barbecues. Anna Livia (talk) 11:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

After-School Special President
I was just reading the news, and there's a butterfly sanctuary that will have to be bulldozed if the wall is built. Jesus. This sounds like the plot to some crappy after-school special, and the wall will be stopped by some plucky misfits. I should be working on my Screenplay (talk) 15:22, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I have two responses. They contradict.
 * The first was that the long migrations of monarch butterflies cannot be sustained without large areas with wildflowers along their traditional migration routes, especially the northerly route where they have to stop and reproduce for 3 generations to complete it. This would doom the entire US (and the Americas more broadly) to losing one of its most elegant and beautiful insects.  It's utterly unacceptable.
 * The second is that the guy who wrote that article voted for trump, and there was never any excuse for voting for trump, and he deserves to lose everything he's ever cared about given the caprice he showed for basically everyone he deemed unworthy. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:56, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It will end with the protagonist changing from a conservative immigrant hating rich kid falling for the plain looking but kind girl at the Saturday dance at the rec-centre to raise money towards butterfly sanctuary awareness and at the last minute convinces his daddy to use his connections to put it to an end. Then at the end the plain looking girl goes to powder her nose and comes out super foxy gorgeous after shifting her dress and making a couple small changes to her hair and make up. The protagonist has clearly changed and has become a better person and now there is awareness of the dangers of wall talk. Roll credits with bad 80s music.  Shabi  DOO  20:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * it will air on a mid week afternoon on channel 5 AMassiveGay (talk) 20:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the old indian who tells him about how nature is precious and throws in a "every part of the buffalo," despite being in Texas. They also probably die at the end. 4gnomesinatrenchcoat (talk) 13:31, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I thought I knew annoying loading screens
Lots of video games have loading screens where you'd prefer them not to be, like in smash, going to and from the character select screen from other menus takes a loading screen.

But video games ain't got nothing on online corporate training with loading screens for changing your answer on a multiple choice question. Not just a standard html request-response for clicking a link or anything so tame, a genuine, 10-20 second loading screen. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * This appears to be a common practice and I've noticed this a lot. This is another example of content developers and software engineers failing to give a shit about their end users. Lots of the online corporate training I'm subjected to still uses shockwave flash, as well, which is extremely annoying. Cosmikdebris (talk) 17:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * pffft you folk dont know you are born. i remember when all this was fields and it took 15 mins to laod a game on my spectrum, with no gaurantee it wouldnt crash at the end. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:03, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know how young you think I am, but I'm not so young I don't know what a ZX spectrum is. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * ive no idea, ijust sounding off. i also remember when multiplayer went being in same room as everyone, and some someone would be stuck with having to use keyboard controls. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:13, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Online multiplayer has made us all more isolated and sad. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:23, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The loading screen in Smash is there for a reason, though,I think they preload quite a bit of things including characters and their alts as well as the stages..iirc preloading stuff was a reason Smash Ultimate decided to have players pick the stage first before the characters, an unconventional order of selecting stuff in fighting video games. 06:19, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

So THIS pathetic piece of shit is supposed to keep immigrants out?!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna956856

Steel that can be sawed through will be the base of this racist monstrosity. I officially take back everything I said about illegal immigration. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 18:29, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Having any sort of utility was never a goal. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:11, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Looking at the bar, it seems to me that recently many of RW users are going mad about this wall thing. Pull yourself together guys! At least, pull your logic together:
 * "I officially take back everything I said about illegal immigration." It doesn't make sense to take back everything your said about illegal immigration because some steel can be sawed through. Well, unless everything your said about illegal immigration was that steel can't sawed through (which wouldn't make sense either). Thinker(unlicensed) 19:34, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I know that 5 billion dollars this day sounds like pocket change but its really really really a lot of money. And America has an enormous population of homeless, destitute disabled, marginalized veterans, uninsured sick people, bad infrastructure, inadequate public transportation, underfunded education...all at a level that is sky high compared with other developed countries. 5 billion dollars could help seriously address even just one of these problems. If the wall served any reasonable constructive purpose, okay. But it doesn't, its political opportunism. Which is obscene. The outrage is very understandable. 5 billion dollars here, right? Shabi  DOO  20:44, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

What good would a wall do if it can easily broken? We would waste $5 billion. We could use the money to repair useful infrastructure. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 23:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Would it not be more effective to spend the money on developing Latin America enough for the migrants to wish to stay there (apart from gap year students and 'follow the harvest' type groups)? Anna Livia (talk) 23:48, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Anything would be better than the crap wall. Why not use tax dollars to better the country. Helping the homeless would be nice. Distribute vaccines to low income people would be better. Fixing roads would be better. How about doing things like that. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 00:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Great point, ! Here is something I have not seen discussed enough. The U.S. government should criminalize the hiring of illegal immigrants. Employers on U.S. soil must verify (electronically) that their recruits are either U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or other legal alien residents authorized to work. Employers hiring undocumented migrants should face heavy jail time. This would eliminate the incentive for people to illegally immigrate to the U.S. and would cut down illegal immigration more effectively than any border wall.
 * No. Foreigners aren't entitled to American tax money. Demanding that another country invest in yours so that your people stop coming over there illegally sounds a lot like extortion. As Zombie and Shabidoo suggested, that money is much better spent on things that would advance the general welfare of the American people.
 * I did not mention tax money - and if companies set up local factories etc, and eg microfunding is provided local jobs will be created (and some of the teaching, medical and other professionals/technical persons will find opportunities as a result). Anna Livia (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But you did suggest a way to better spend that money. Since, we are talking about U.S. government spending, that was a natural assumption. Nerd (talk) 16:29, 11 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Interesting point in American infrastructure there. How 'bad' is bad? Compared to whom? While the American Association of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of D+, according to a statistical analysis by the World Economic Forum, U.S. infrastructure is within the top 15 or so, and improving. Nerd (talk) 03:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Infrastructure compared with GDP and population. The US should never ever have to be in 14th place (depending on the year of pub). It should be 1st and lightyears ahead of number 2 with its enormous economy, huge wealth, western freedom and institutions, fast changing society. its a total embarassment that Canada, with a fraction of the US population, economy and budget...would be doing better than the U.S.. Potholes, dangerous bridges, barely existing high speed rail, public buildings, low environmental regulation on transportation etc. In any case, infrastructure is actually the least important of the problems I mentioned. It is in homelessness that American politics is a disgrace. It is horrendous that families live in the street when that can easily be avoided. That and many extremely dangerous inner cities, millions of uninsured people, dismal support for the disabled and dangerous underfunded education in many states. The disparity between these services in Vermont or Mass. where things aren't too too bad with that of say, Oklahoma or Mississsippi where many of the badly off are on their own...is shocking. 5 billion won't go very far in infrastructure, but it would bring big changes on homelessness or on the uninsured or on homeless families. People dying who could easily have been insured is a much bigger national emergency than an ineffective pointless wall. Shabi  DOO  09:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually,, having looked at the global competitiveness indices for a few years, Canada has never ranked that high. With regards to infrastructure, she is 16th in the 2017-2018 period, while her southern neighbor is now in 9th place, displacing Germany and the United Kingdom. This is why I said U.S. infrastructure is improving relative to other countries.
 * As for high-speed rail, one should always keep in mind that it is appropriate only for highly populated cities located not too far apart (about 4 hours). Two key factors needed for high-speed rail to be feasible are (1) population density and (2) wealth. The U.S. certainly has wealth, a lot of it, but not always the density. This is why high-speed rail exists in relative few places in the U.S. at present, namely, in the Northeast Corridor, and in Florida, with more under construction in California and Texas. Nerd (talk) 16:29, 11 January 2019 (UTC)


 * im often surprised at how much divergence there is between states in the us. not so much economy wise but with laws. i realise the us is a vast place but it seem bizarre to me when some fundamental rights could be in effect in some parts of the country but not in others. its comparable to the eu, but there no one is pretending that the independent countries it comprises of are all part of the same country the way us states are. i can understand that some things are best left for a locality to decide, but there seems to be much left to state to decide (lgbt rights, drug and gun laws, healthcare from the top of my head) where some uniformity should be expected. when people say they are patriotic, what takes precedent - state or country patriotism? AMassiveGay (talk) 13:03, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Good points! Nerd (talk) 16:29, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ehh, the last report put Canada a few spots ahead of the USA. First, I don't think "improving relative to other countries" is as relevant to "how good it could and ought to be considering the US's wealth, budget and world dominance/leadership/standing in so many areas. There are countries which are pretty comparable to the US in either size, population or opportunity, with much less money and resources and have better infrastructure.
 * As for high-speed rail, the North East corridor of the US is very dense and desparately need of real high speed rail (it is slow and pathetic with most of the path not having dedicated lanes which are needed for real high speed). The Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona-Girona corridor serves two metros (Madrid/Barcelona) with 9 million between them and three cities (with about 3 million) serving about 12 million and the trains reach 300 km per hour and averages 280kph). In some places you just see streak lines out the window especially through short mountain passages. The average speed on the accela is less than half that of Spains at 135kpm. That is slow. You might as well fly from Boston to Washington. An Spain's economy has been behind that of the US for a long time. The Washington-NY-Boston serves one megopolis (NY is about 20 mil), 3 metropoli (13 mil) and several cities (5 mil). Thats about 38 million. More than three times the population than the Spanish corridor serving some of the richest cities in the world and connecting the biggest financial centre on Earth with the most powerful national capital on Earth and tons in between. Add to that a power house economy. There are engineering challenges in both Spain and the US corridors. Spain had to blast through tons of mountains and appropriate a fair bit of land. The US will have to build more dedicated tracks which is difficult and will include long tunnels and appropriate a lot of land. I could say the same for comparable high speed rails in France and even Germany. No more excuses, get it done, do it. Shabi  DOO  20:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by the last report, . I don't remember ever seeing Canada in the top 10.
 * When speaking about high-speed rail, average speed is way more important than record speed or maximum operational speed, because that's the number you need to calculate how much time it takes to get from point A to point B. Concerning the Northeast Corridor, there are plans for infrastructure upgrades and new trains, the Avelia Liberty from Alstom, expected to enter service in the 2020s. Check out Amtrak for more details. I have been spending time updating it.
 * "No more excuses, get it done, do it." That's the spirit! Nerd (talk) 21:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Anyone wishing to try - get naming rights for 'several obscure species needing protection' (especially 'very cute' ones) in the localities of the wall and name them (at least temporarily) X y (the)donaldus/trumpus etc. Anna Livia (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * considering how keen trump is to remove protections of the environment for other causes, you'd need nothing short than a colony of bald eagles to prevent bulldozers rolling over anything endangered. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Golden goose donaldtrumpus?
 * One of these?
 * Or an offer to build 'most bigly, most beautiful (etc etc) version of the Eden Project? Anna Livia (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Negative Effects of Meditation
I wonder why people don't hear about the negatives of meditation. I read that some people suffer psychosis, disconnection from reality and others, anxiety, depression, and in some cases impaired mental ability. I know meditation didn't help me out in any way, in fact I can say that my life was better off without it.Machina (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * [1 ] [2 ] [3 ] སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 23:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Detachment sounds like a bad thing to be honest. I never truly recovered from that aspect of meditation.

Joshua Tree National Park getting vandalized during shutdown
This is the most depressing thing I have the misfortune to know about. All of this damage sustained over, what, a fucking wall!? These vandals need to get launched face first into a cactus. 07:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So Trump needs to build a wall of cactuses to protect our National Parks? ;) 141.134.75.236 (talk) 08:03, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Just in case there was any confusion: a is a yucca, not a cactus. Bongolian (talk) 20:55, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

2019 US government shutdown
Given the several posts in the Saloon Bar on the topic - should this have its own article? Anna Livia (talk) 16:48, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Eh, it could, but this may be something that gets lost in the moment, depending on if it goes for another 2 weeks or not, and whether they patch up the mess left behind with back-pay and the like. It's sure a story of the moment because of the uncertainty it creates, but whether anyone will care more than a standard fact-check(wikipedia's job, not ours) in 2 years is up in the air.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:52, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "should this have its own article?" It's an interesting topic but I don't think is suited for RW. What's to debunk about a government shutdown? Thinker(unlicensed) 17:55, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * We could debunk everything Trump said about why it happened. 19:36, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps 'US government shutdowns in general' - the other place has coverage at, and . And then there is  and https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/category/geopolitics/us/us-government-shutdown-sept-trump/].
 * There are also 'immigration kneejerk reaction crisis', 'one more brick in the wall' and suchlike, and 'possible long term implications of the shutdown' etc.
 * Mainly to stop cluttering the Saloon Bar and its archives. Anna Livia (talk) 19:52, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Mention it in the Great Wall of America article. Avida Dollarsher again 20:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Overlapping but distinct - and all the actual and theoretical consequences (what will become of the workers who decide to go for enlightened self interest and seek work elsewhere etc, much mocking of the systems... and 'absent H&S persons and engineers' result in the lights being switched off).
 * How soon before the conspiracy theories begin - 'hordes of them furriners invading the country'/'them there computers (who do not need to be paid) will take over/turn you into number-controlled zombies (see dystopian fiction for what happens next). Anna Livia (talk) 00:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Even odds that some stupid chan shit head will invent a right wing fantasy called "Wallgate" that says that the democrats are working to foil the wall because they want to keep the flow of "pizzas" for their clinton-esque cannibalistic rituals open. Cosmikdebris (talk) 01:46, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well...yah. You've captured the low hanging fruit. nobspiss in my ear 02:03, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Seen some crazy threads about that on Twitter. Search for "adrenochrome" and you'll find plenty. Pretty sure Torchwood: Children of Earth was based on this sorta stuff. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 02:05, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's like everything with the name no one mentions: everybody knows it, but none dare speak it. nobspiss in my ear 02:49, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Conservapedia: Atheists and physical attractiveness
So there are atheist members on this site who are not overweight right? སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 03:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Atheists are inherently ugly because otherwise they would outbreed theists. 😜 Bongolian (talk) 04:06, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I wasn't looking for a counter to their arguements. I was just wondering if the statement that the majority of atheists being overweight had any truth to it. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 07:02, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Obviously not, it's a smear job, and not a very effective one at that. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  07:23, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think 100 lbs on a 5 foot one inch frame is overweight now, right? 21:38, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The overwhelming majority of atheists are from China/Japan/S.Korea/Vietnam. An enormous majority of the them. And no, in general they don't have weight issues. Not remotely at the scale of the United States, most especially Southern States where obesity has become an unrecognized national emergency. Of all the atheists I've known in all the countries I've lived in, I've never noticed a notable difference in weight per religious vs. non-religious. Nor in intelligence nor social skills nor sense of humor nor languages spoken nor anything else except sometimes atheists have a better relationship with critical-thinking skills and empirical knowledge. Shabi  DOO  01:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It is good to see that we have dispelled these bastard notions my comrades. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ (talk) 06:19, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Heh, in the US at least, I think there's good evidence that it's actually the *reverse* and actually it's the religiously devout (particularly of certain religions like Baptists) that are more likely to be obese! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358928/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28766892 for a start. The postulate of the first link is that many religions, particularly culturally conservative ones, overplay certain sins (such as alcohol or sexual promiscuity) but often barely touch on gluttony as a sin, if at all, Proverbs 23:20 etc. notwithstanding. Some church denominations are also fond of using food as their celebratory good -- often sugary or high-fat items that aren't very good for you. Note that the studies need work and acknowledge this themselves, but the above is way better evidence than the Conservapedia cherry-pick / wishful thinking on this subject. Soundwave106 (talk) 20:45, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Nope, it has no truth what-so-fucking-ever. I'm an atheist (a pretty outspoken and "militant" one at that), and I'm quite thin. -- Goatspeed. 03:05, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes there are, myself included. Additionally, there's been some demonstrated link between religion and obesity.Zipperback (talk) 19:05, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * How ironic, . I have no idea where the whole "atheism and obesity" thing came about. Must have been a figment of 🇰🇪's ever-so-twisted mind. In fact, he seems to be so overly keen to make fun of the weight of PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta so many times, that I'm starting to think he's a closet-fat person who tries to project his physical appearance on atheists and lesbians. I wouldn't be surprised if that's true, given that we already know he's a closet homosexual, which explains his never-ending obsession with the sexual orientation. -- Goatspeed. 01:10, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It may just be part of a greater trend of statistically unsupportable notions of superiority that seem common to conservative Christians, such as the notion that they have stable God-supported marriages (statistically their divorce rates are somewhat worse) and are sexually responsible (statistically conservative religious beliefs are linked to teen pregnancies. I think it's a "if it feels good, believe it's true" philosophy. Zipperback (talk) 18:05, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, the "argument from Koolaid". -- Goatspeed. 22:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "argument from Koolad" is a new staple. I started drinking beers again, .  At 6 foot I went from ~160 to ~170 recently, and I'm over 30 so I keep putting the excess on the belly.  I was an atheist the whole time though, so my body dysmorphic battle towards ideal thinness is a battle that never included God, it's always been a personal fight with physics and biology. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Trump government shut down
Whatever Trump says the shutdown will have a maximum timespan (until 'a large number of Republican politicians' start considering the elections and/or Trump's successor is elected).

What are the likely consequences of an extended shutdown if it were to happen? Anna Livia (talk) 19:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * On Tuesday evening TV in the US, Trump will try to scare the population into paying for his wall. Preview. Millennium Scallion (talk) 20:25, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That actual duration would be disastrous with unfix-able consequences. Economy crashing hard, especially in the DC metro area, programs managing essential things like, I don't know, fucking water for crops, would go unmanaged,  prisons will eventually go unguarded, leading to prisoners being unfed, unprotected, unmedicated.  A good third-to-half of scientific research in the US would go unfunded.  Many universities would have to fire staff.  Thankfully the border patrol and ICE is on leave and months of no pay would force most of them to stop being evil bastards and get a real job.  Not now, but within a year, no more passports.  Soon: commercial flying might not be possible(or at least reserved to the small amount managable by redirected airforce and army ATCs.  It's gonna be a real dumb next week or so, until the dems decide giving into a big loser baby is the lesser of two evils.  Then it'll be real dumb forever, because overton window will be even dumber.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:42, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And what about the states' "internal" government and their fiscal capabilities? Could they move towards 'devo-max' and variants on the West Lothian Question? Anna Livia (talk) 00:01, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * States are sovereign entities in their own right, they share power with the US government and are relatively autonomous in many aspects, so in theory they shouldn't be harmed that much. In practice, on the other hand, the states get as much as a third of their funding from the federal government, so they will be affected too, it's just a matter of degree, rather than kind, since the rest of the funding states get comes from their own ability to tax their citizens independently of the federal government. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  00:31, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

My initial figure #is# the theoretical maximum: and I am 'speaking from unfamiliarity.'

As a longer term implication - would a longer term confrontational shutdown at government central result in states' governments developing more robust measures (so fiscal autonomy devolves). Anna Livia (talk) 13:05, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * States are already becoming more autonomous due to the rise of the Donald-in-Chief. One could ascertain that such a scenario could come about, but only time will tell what the consequences will be long term. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  17:03, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's a real resiliency against problems built into the design of our constitution, if a state, like Kansas, completely fails, only part of the social structure government provides fails, in their case schools and roads. And if the federal government completely fails(minus military because we're jingoistic idiots who will fund any war any time), you only lose parks, international travel, document processing, and big high-level regulation.  I almost wish it wasn't so resilient and we all had to eat the full consequences of dumb choices we make immediately.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:01, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm with ikanreed. I voted Clinton, but I really wanted to vote silly Jilly.  I have beef that hits me at a very personal level, as HRC acted illegally as head of state in the interest of an oil company, and my state was the one to shut it down.  She gave TransCanada the verbal go-ahead, which changed the entire process.  I didn't want Clinton or Trump, and there's a vindictive part of my personality that flat out doesn't know whether I'd rather see people pay for their bad ideas/panic/indifference or stew in them.  Either way, my vote didn't work out, and I don't get to say "I voted my conscience."  Part of me worries that the minor American cities are the frog in the pot, not realizing they are going to be boiled because the heat is being turned up incrementally.  But part of me can't blame them, because the economy-first policy asks them to do such hard work for less and less pay (or, rather, the same investment of capital in a market that is trying to suss out the absolute peak amount of capital it can pull without sinking).  I kind of want it all to tank today so we can get on making it work tomorrow, otherwise you're just trying to change the hearts of men.  But thankfully for the people in the middle, that's not how it works.  I'd supervillain the situation in a second, though.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Pointless poll
We haven’t had a new one in months. I miss it :( 86.191.46.202 (talk) 13:39, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * What sort of curved shape do you prefer then? Anna Livia (talk) 16:31, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I prefer ass. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  02:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As if all ass is contained by the same curve, come on. Big booty Judy and little boop John?  You really prefer them both?  Flat-ass Cindy and love-seat Larry?  Fill-them-jeans like Steve McQueen and hidin'-the-truth Ruth?  Actually, I've just riffed myself out of this one, I prefer ass as a reference to a curved shape now...  You're a monster. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Only you are responsible for the mental associations you make, not me. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  10:12, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, I say. 11:08, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

We can make a new pointless poll asking people if they prefer ass or chest. Just a thought. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  11:48, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * We could make a pointless poll on whether swords are more pointy than spears. But seriously, I don't know how to make the poll, I can't find the instructions. 13:09, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Are pricks more pointy than swords? —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  14:06, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Wait, you were actually in favor of poll? "Ass" is no longer a viable poll option because of Don Juan?  This changes everything, my corkboard does not appreciate this.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:08, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, Bosch is taken out of context here. But I would like to say, the nuance is in the position, not the model, so this picture, while featuring asses, and, thankfully, flowers in asses, does not address anything regarding my argument that there are varying curvatures of ass.  I like Bosch.  I wish his work was taken as literally as Dante Alighieri Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:11, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Climate Change and suicide.
I’ve seen some people contemplate suicide because of climate change.

Thoughts?

Spacehillbilly (talk) 00:30, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Bad idea. Climate change is always bad, but it wouldn't make Earth unliveable and I think the worst of the worst effects are yet to happen or even be successfully predicted. 07:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that you'd be handing over the planet to the polluters & exploiters on a silver plate. Don't give them that satisfaction, folks! 141.134.75.236 (talk) 07:31, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If everybody commits suicide there will be no climate change. At least, no anthropogenic climate change. --Annanoon (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Climate change is now inevitable. So, don't bother. Take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Stop believing everything is going to hell in a hand basket. It's bad for your blood pressure. You can still buy green bananas. Ariel31459 (talk) 16:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Thoughts?" It's idiotic. Thinker(unlicensed) 17:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call something people despair over "idiotic", that's not going to help them with their anxieties. —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  14:56, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

US public views on immigration
i'm staying pretty quiet on this wall business. as a britisher, i do not feel know enough about the pervading culture surrounding immigration to be able to have anything to add short of regurgitating stuff ive seen in the news. i feel like ive got a pretty good handle on reasons folk dislike immigration in the uk, but none on reasons in the us and i'm not convinced there are too many similarities - even our racism seems different in nature. all i can really see is people associate immigrants with crime. is this it or is there more too it? competition for jobs and services? feeling like a foreigner in their own country? is it all immigrants or just illegal ones? what about refugees? how important is the country of origin? what kind of people have a negative view and what kind have a more positive? i'm not so interest in talking points from media or politicians stirring things up, more about what you hear people say are their issues. A more nuanced picture than flat out racism basically. Can anyone help? if thats asking too much maybe someone can direct me to a website. thanks AMassiveGay (talk) 12:38, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Here's how I understand it: In the case of the whole wall thing It's basically a bunch of white people hating on a group that is culturally similar, except, well... They aren't white. Meanwhile, the former group WILL NOT SHUT THE EVERLOVING FUCK UP about how great they think the U.S. is, blissfully unaware that such praise might just be the reason other people (such as the the aforementioned Mexicans and Latinos) keep trying to move here. Or, in short, Xenophobia + a complete lack of self awareness + reinforcement via media and pundits = morons who want a stupidass wall that will do absolutely nothing if it's built. 13:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * thanks for the info. i think however, even as removed from things as i am, that i get that impression of the wall. i think what i am asking though is the rationale for the xenophobia - how does does an ardent supporter of the wall justify it to themselves or others? or those proud of tghe greatness of the us - what do they fear immigration will do to that or is just said like a mantra without any thought? i dont mean any that these will be real fears, just their fears, real or imagined.


 * in the uk, fear/hatred of immigration - at least in the current climate - stems from policies of austerity and beyond, services, housing, healthcare, schools being deliberately underfunded. though not the cause, immigration becomes more visible when you feel you might be in competition for those services, where it becomes easy to stoke fears and underlying racism of those unable to find housing in an area they lived their whole life while that family don the street with accents got a house. its difficult to say that its government policy to why there are no school places when some voices are shrieking about johnny foreigner jumping the queue. its easy to stoke fear in an old granny whos family moved to different area, and the small influx of immigrants to her village seems like an invading horde and the only people talking to her are screaming about pakistani rape gangs. i dont believe these are necessarily issues in the us. i dont know enough detail to say.


 * i ask because laying it all on racism - even if its a big factor - doesnt really cut it for me. calling people racist doesnt win people over to your side, it just entrenches them. its what we did during brexit and still doing now - we label folk who voted brexit as racist, and the only people who are saying they are not are actual racists. in fact we could do nothing else during brexit but declare them racists. the remain camp headed by architects of austerity could hardly counteract years of eurosceptism in the press and an upsurge in anti immigrant hysteria when it would involve reminding people of the causes of discontent is tory own policies, the remain camps own fault, while all in the brexit camp, similarly involved in austerity, just have to point at foreigners and tell lies about how great it will be without the eu.


 * so with the us and its wall - what issues are immigrants scapegoated with? what can you use to convince them of your cause that isnt accusations of racism or questioning their intelligence? that cant be all there is to it, can it? AMassiveGay (talk) 14:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Howdy folks! Check out these poll results. Nerd (talk) 16:33, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * made some good points here, . It is too simplistic to label people who oppose (illegal) immigration as racists and xenophobes. Remember the law of supply. Higher supply of labor means lower wages. This explains why people think that illegal immigrants take jobs most Americans don't want. See my suggestion above for how to reduce illegal immigration. Nerd (talk) 16:37, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * thanks for that. now just got to factor in a poor grasp of stats and i'm fully clued up :s im probably reading this wrong, but on the whole peoples views of immigration has slightly improved?
 * is there a difference between illegal and undocumented? would the stats change in anyway you swapped out one for the other? i can imagine people assume alot about immigration if they are not directly effected,and if its framed as 'illegal' then folk are likely to be against anything termed 'illegal' - its never a good thing. but when pressed on why its bad they fall back on crime and jobs. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, the terms 'illegal' and 'undocumented' are equivalent in the context of immigration, though the latter is less negative. It is important to note that how the question is phrased can affect the answer. That's just a fact one learns from statistics.
 * What I learned is that Americans generally support legal immigration and oppose illegal immigration. Most support a pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants already in the country and want non-US citizens to prove their legal status before getting hired. A majority thinks it is important or essential for migrants to be fluent in English. About equal numbers of people support prioritizing high-skilled immigrants vs. family reunion immigrants. An overwhelming majority agree that illegal immigration is a serious problem. Nerd (talk) 18:37, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * with reducing illegal immigration (im answering here rather than above - no clear point to interject) - as i understand it some industries cannot function without illegal/undocumented immigrants and that most illegals are as a result of expired visas. is the problem less 'illegal' immigration and more that there are problems with the visa process removing the legality of workers that are necessary to the economy? (i know nothing of the processes involved, just thinking out loud) if companies are fined for employing people that are necessary to a particular industry, who does these jobs if legit immigrants and citizens are not doing them? and whats the incentives for the status quo? if some system is in place for those whose visas have expired to stay in country legitimately, would they just find better paid work else where? seems like we've been discussing these kinds of workers for years but cheap fruit seems to trump decent pay and conditions for a solution to appear. at least with a wall, its ineffectiveness would be desirable while claiming you solved a problem that everyone wants to exist. if only it the message it sent wasnt so fucking awful.
 * you could just do what we brits do with unemployment figures - redefine the terms until the numbers look acceptable AMassiveGay (talk) 18:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Careful! Playing around with numbers just to make them "look acceptable" doesn't sound to honest.
 * From what I understand, that is essentially why some business interests do not want a long-term solution to this national problem, even though, as I mentioned above, most Americans acknowledge that it is a serious problem and agreed on the most obvious solution. As for prices, yes, they will rise, but unemployment will fall and, in any case, the march of automation continues. Nerd (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * playing around with numbers - dishonest? yes. its standard practice of pretty much all governments everywhere though AMassiveGay (talk) 17:11, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Just because it is commonly done does not mean it should be done. Appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy. If we are to do that, why bother trusting the numbers? Undermining public trust in public institutions is a bad idea. Nerd (talk) 17:18, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * it wasnt actually a suggestion but merely a joke. it was obvious in my head, but probably not in reality - it was hardly a belly laugh.
 * with trusting the numbers - i dont not trust them, its just not being especially great with stats in the first place and i am very aware that polls can be misleading - the prime example. with the brexit example, i might have imagined this as i cant find a source, but a lot of people who voted leave just werent polled. polls online didnt reach them because leavers werent online (lots of elderly types) or not in places were they would encounter it it. they might have spotted the flaw if cameron and co had stepped out of their bubble for 5 second (can you tell im still bitter about brexit and the catastrophe it will be) i try to view them as a piece of the puzzle rather than gospel truth. that said i'll most likely take such things on face value if its not something i'm particularly interested in AMassiveGay (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

And the shutdown has gone too far...
Seriously, it's threatening beer. Kencolt (talk) 13:27, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Which crisis will overcome us first if the government doesn't get reopened:
 * We'll get overrun by criminal gangs and dope dealers;
 * Immigration control will release gangbangers cause the immigration judges are laid off;
 * The planet will implode from fracking;
 * Global warming will cause our blood to boil;
 * We'll die in a nuclear holocaust at the hands of North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran. nobspiss in my ear 23:34, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And all of that 'is' horrible, but what will we drink while the world's collapsing round us? Seriously, we're all going to need one. Kencolt (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Better get some Mike's Hard Lemonade while I can. Never got around to trying it. I will probably want a drink while shit hits the fan.This message is approved by Undead EAS Productions --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 02:24, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Inconsistent tagging of Mormonism as a cult
The article on Joseph Smith contains the cult navbox as well as Category:Cults and Category:Cult leaders, but Mormonism just contains the Christianity navbox and no cult-related categories. So I don't start an edit war: how should this be fixed? —  python coder    (talk &#124; contribs) 23:30, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses can be classified as cults due to behavior their hierarchical structures exhibit. I can add the tags right now if you want. 00:01, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Since the term "cult" can sometimes used as loaded language, it would be good to make sure that there is evidence in the article in question before adding such a category. Types of evidence that can be used can be found here. Bongolian (talk) 02:41, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The interesting thing is that on most of those cult evaluation lists, Mormonism comes up a distant second to Roman Catholicism. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱs. 15:05, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna make the hot take(for an atheist) that early mormonism was way more cult-like than modern mormonism. The centrality of a leader/messiah, the weird sexual practices that gave sexual power to leadership, and the literal militancy.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:48, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * ^ What he said. One of the key elements of a cult is the existence of a charismatic leader (like L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon, or David Miscavige) and I couldn't name the current leader of the LDS Church. —  python coder    (talk &#124; contribs) 01:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Why aren't there any sightings?
You would think as it's more common for us to have cameras there would be more photos of UFOs and ghosts. But somehow UFO/ghost claims seems to be less common than ever.

I'm curious if anyone here believes in ghosts or alien visitation, and if they can differentiate the two for me. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 08:51, 13 January 2019 (UTC) 08:50, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * People are too busy chasing political ghosts and aliens these days. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 08:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Very cutting observation, but I would like you to state whether you believe in aliens or ghosts or neither or both neither. Ghosts or visiting aliens or yes or nah  Maybe in some kind of anonymous poll fashion?Gol Sarnitt (talk) 09:09, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is maybe too biased. Too mean.  If there was a scale for how much people believed in life in the universe, a scale for how much people believed in that life interacting with us, a scale for ghosts, and a scale for ghosts interacting with us, maybe I could get a grip on exactly what question I'm even asking here.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 09:24, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Flawed premise. You can't link the two. Ghosts are superstition, whereas UFOs are, as is common knowledge, a CIA plot to hide covert activity. nobspiss in my ear 16:43, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Gee whiz, How come nobody ever sited a UFO prior to the invention of radar during WWII? Gee whiz, Why did the 1947 UFO crash over the Trinity Nuclear Test site in Roswell New Mexico, consisting of a weather balloon with a Geiger Counter to measure nuclear particles in the atmosphere, which created the whole UFO phenomenon, lead to the above ground Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1962? nobspiss in my ear 17:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * they did. they just didnt call such things as UFOs. probs not aliens though, but people did see things in the sky - comets, lights of varying description etc all the time. attributed to angels or omens of some kind. probably dont hear so much now about such things as folk are generally more used to seeing stuff in the sky - even super secret tests of advanced aircraft arent going to phase most people if they happen to catch a glimpse late at night. its not like your seeing jet engines when all your used to is propeller driven craft. plus conspiracy theories have come along since www2. little green men are positively quaint when everythings the fault of psuedo jewish reptilians and hilary clinton. its been crowded out of the market. if aliens from another world landed tomorrow and enslaved us all, some folk will still be talking about an unsecured server. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Good rewrite of history, but I recall vividly standing in my backyard at the age of 2 with my dad's WWII sniper telescope looking for Sputnik during cause the Rooskies were getting ready to drop a nuke on us from space. (This was ten years after the Roswell crash and 2 years before the 'Miliary-Industrial complex' speech). I've spent a lifetime studying it. I can tell you UFOs are CIA disinformation. nobspiss in my ear 20:35, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I haven't heard the case for UFOs being deliberate disinformation to be honest (Google shows nothing), but I'm sure the various military forces at minimum thought that the UFO stories provided fantastic cover. :) I actually would postulate that the end of the Cold War was probably one of the bigger blows for the UFO conspiracy theorist, as the subsequent reduction of completely "top secret" aircraft projects considerably reduced the UFO conspiracy theorists' source material. The other phenomenon here is the growth in both the proliferation of high-quality photography devices like cell phones, and easy publishing methods eg Youtube. I think this has made it much harder to pass off, say, a fuzzy image of a lamppost or hubcap or misidentified ordinary planes and space phenomenon as a UFO. Not that people don't try on Youtube still, of course :) But things like ancient astronauts and political conspiracies aren't quite so easy to debunk, and these days at any rate it's probably more fun to *play* with your own UFOish-looking "drone" quadcopter than it is to conspire about it. :) Soundwave106 (talk) 21:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * i'm not sure where ive re written history nor am i doubting the role disinformation from governments or cia specifically has played. it doesnt account for all or even most things people have attributed to UFOs, just the term became popular. hoaxes and people readily jumping to conclusions, wanting it to be something more. its the go to term for things in the sky you cant sus out. if i see something now, it'll be down as a UFO, regardless of what it actually is. if i were unaware of the term, say i was a period before manned flight and i see the same thing? just because i dont know the term, its still the same phenomena. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * i dont thinking polling rw is going to be particularly enlightening. i would expect that as a group it would be heavily skewed to 'this is all bollocks' AMassiveGay (talk) 19:45, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Nope, no ghosts or spirits or underwear gnomes or vampires or real life smurfs or actual fortune-tellers. The default position on any of these incredible outlandish claims, is skepticism until we have acceptable evidence, which never ever ever appears (what we do get is easily discredited). The reason we don't see as many sightings with all our devices is...first of all...there are no ghosts or alien visits and secondly, its very easy now to identify a doctored image these days, making what once easy to pull a fast one on stupid people with fake images, pretty difficult task now (though disturbingly at the same time image-fakers are getting better and may soon be able to fake-images with image manipulation techniques very difficult to spot). But yeah, no ghosts. It's silly. No alien visitors. It's preposterous. Shabi DOO  22:26, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Some of the ghosts disappeared with public lighting and better fitting doors and windows, and others with 'scientific explanations' (eg ultrasound, 'toxic plant chemicals and ergot etc' no longer making their way into the food chain); and others may be in part 'attenuated collective memory' - stories told down the generations.
 * And, apart from the points made above, what is the correlation between 'alien invasion SF' (paper and screen) and UFOs - and also 'blimps, hot air balloons and other such devices'? Anna Livia (talk) 17:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ghosts and UFOs continue to be hawked in the tabloids. Millennium Scallion (talk) 17:56, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Also there are "sightings" with phone cameras
"Oh, look at this slightly unusual lens flare in this dark room, it's a ghost" is a refrain most skeptics should be familiar with. Or the "flashing lights in the fog, I took a picture, it alien." This claims happen on paranormal and UFO forums literally daily. Not to mention purposeful photoshops, untrue stories attached to real photos. If you don't see them, it's because you're not engaging with the believers. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:18, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure YouTube is still a hotbed of fake ufo/ghost videos. Millennium Scallion (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but my baseline for youtube is "if that's your source, you're wrong". Remember when drive-bys would come to the saloon bar and post a wall of youtube links to "prove" something to us?  And they're all like someone sad and in their 30s and very very uncriitically talking over fuzzy photos of triangles saying things like "Did you notice it?  No one can deny the Illuminati now.  It's clear as day."  But for like 5 hours.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:40, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * nobs included, you guys are a riot. And no, I wasn't there for that, but the idea of it cracks me up.  I'm just glad we agree.  Ghosts, nah.  Alien visitations, nah.

Where a racist brainlet 4chan troll is being a degenerate
It seems to me that a lot of rationalwikians like to deny race and its effect on intelligence. I would like to debate on this.
 * Why don't we just ridicule you for believing stupid shit instead? 23:29, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * https://youtu.be/70HCmiv7BAE I think this video describes my views quite well.
 * One might argue that someone who believes race in any way determines intelligence is so blinded by hate as to make it impossible to differentiate poor reasoning from stupidity. 00:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I smell a pile of bullshit through my tablet computer screen. The Race and it's affect on intelligence makes no sense. There are smart people and dumb people in all races. I see a brain dead post here. All the debunking in the world wouldn't change your mind. Present double blind scientifically proven studies from real scientists and then we will talk. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 00:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I am aware there are outliers but the majority of blacks in the united states and beyond are low IQ individuals.
 * https://i.4cdn.org/pol/1547426778705.png
 * none of you have not argued with me on a sufficient level.
 * Present scientific evidence from a well respected research lab and or university. YouTube videos don't count. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, learn to fucking format your posts. And 4chan doesn't count as a source either. 01:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ahz gunna say, u think diet has sumpthin' ta do wiffit? nobspiss in my ear 01:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608000305 This one shows IQ is a better predictor for socioeconomic status
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608000305 This one shows that most experts don't see IQ tests as racially biased
 * And this one shows https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/roth%20et%20al%20ethnic%20grp%20diff%20in%20cog%20abil%20ppsych%202001.pdf That blacks in the united states score 15 points lower than whites on IQ points.
 * Or stop pissing on the floor posting on the forum. 02:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

hmmm, mus b sumpin wrong with da science. ah giss. nobspiss in my ear 03:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see why a so called "rational" site doesn't support race realism.
 * I don't see how any "rational" person can have an easy instruction manual given to them but not use it, but here we are. Sign and format or die get blocked fucker. 03:31, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @Rationaldriver I just watched half the video and I couldn't finish it because of how disgustingly racist it is. Would anyone with a non functioning gag reflex like to try. (Don't read the comments) Commie Lib (talk) 03:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @Rationaldriver Survey of opinions on the primacy of g and social consequences of ability testing: A comparison of expert and non-expert views. Also Essay:I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki. Commie Lib (talk) 03:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * sheeet...an ah' wuz gittin' riddy to haff an intelligent discussing... nobspiss in my ear 03:47, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The most effective argument for the reality of human bio diversity came with the supplemental analogy to dog breeds. Dogs are closely related. In fact, we consider them all the same species despite a wide array of morphological forms. It is not controversial to recognize that different breeds maintain different degrees of intelligence. The border collie is universally recognized as one of the most intelligent breeds capable of learning many tasks whereas the beagle is borderline retarded. Dont @ me cuck dog fags. Different dog breeds have been bred for different traits, some being intelligence, others, for instance, smell and hunting. All traits are advantageous to conform to the biological pressures and restraints laid upon them. As for the animal kingdom, we observe a hierarchy of intelligence. Some animals habe little to no recognized intelligence. Sponges and jellyfish do not have brains! But we all can name off the most intelligent non-human animals: Chimps, other apes, pigs, dolphins. Totally uncontroversial. We dont worry about offending the feelings of sponges. In the animal kingdom, intelligence evolved as a consequence of genetics. However, a higher intelligence isn't NECESSARY for success let alone survival. Most animals are not as intelligent as the aforementioned few but are nonetheless just as capable of thriving as well if not better than the intellectually gifted.


 * Economic circumstances do not retard the intelligence of animals. And if we advantage animals with economic luxury, they do not then become the equals of man. Such an assertion would be ridiculous. Genetics, therefore, establishes a cieling for intelligence within individuals, but environment can lower the IQ floor.


 * Now that we have established that IQ is largely genetic, we must also recognize that all individuals are unique genetically. If all individuals are unique, then populations of individuals must be unique amongst one another.
 * Blah blah blah, bullshit on breeding, no links, etc. The effects of the environmental factors and other things on IQ measurement are pretty huge:
 * A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
 * B) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641149/ (socioeconomic status and IQ test)
 * To further prove the point, the black-white IQ test gap has narrowed over the last couple decades, anyways -- the "16 point difference" paper linked above is out of date. It's more like 9 points now.
 * This Brookings paper largely eschews conservative gene crap on this in favor of environment type issues (mostly social construct): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/9780815746096_chapter1.pdf
 * Not that racists trolls care about any of this shit, they want to believe what they want to believe.Soundwave106 (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Blah blah, gish gallop, Alt-right buzzwords (cuck anyone?), blah blah blah. You can just use the template  instead of linking the URL.  04:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ahz gunna say, ah hope you haven't shot your wad there, trying to sound intelligent. nobspiss in my ear 04:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I did learn something, tho. Democrats are not alone. Jellyfish have no brains, either. nobspiss in my ear 04:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * First of all,@GrammarCommie can you even fucking read?  Second of all,@Tabularasa the fact that you get easily triggered because of that video questioned your narrative is pretty pathetic. Watch the video all the way through than we talk.
 * First, it didn't question my narrative it is an example of denialism and goes against everything modern science says. Most of the things that video quotes is outdated eugenics research which has been revealed as unscientific. Second, I am not triggered just disgusted, I am not angered by this video. It is just fractally wrong and crigey beyond belief, like listening to your racist uncle talk about race. Commie Lib (talk) 04:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is old news. We already got a page on Jared Taylor (he doesn't look Japanese, however). nobspiss in my ear 04:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Dont @ me cuck dog fags" Shut up and go back to 4chan, you amateur ass troll. It's very blatant that you crawled out from one of the chan boards, and it would be nice if you would shut the fuck up and go back there. Fucking wanabes... 04:56, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @Tabula Rasa> the guardian > Wikipedia>trash jpg. It gets so tiresome.look i am gonna go sleep okay. Debating with you idiots has been exhausting. Race is real. Fuck you all. Heil Hitler. good night
 * 06:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Idiots, got to love them! Instead of deporting illegal immigrants, let's deport this retard. Illegal immigrants can wait. Neo Nazis should be deported quicker. Burn in Hell where you belong Rationaldriver. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 20:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Physical sources
After going through some of the older articles I've noticed that when referencing a physical source they fail to cite either the publication serial number or a pdf version of the document in question. This means someone double-checking the sources is hindered by hours of tedious research when easier alternatives exist. I bring this up to ask users to use serials numbers and/or pdf copies when citing physical copies now and in the future. Thank you. 15:31, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not always possible. I'd be happy to try and resolve these when I find them.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:57, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I use the MLA citation format, which, in addition to the author(s) and title, gives the publisher, the edition (if not the first), and the year of publication. I think that should be sufficient. I don't give page numbers because that could change with the presentation. Nerd (talk) 17:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The crazy thing is an ISBN or DOI is so much more powerful, than the standards that were created to make it easy to find things 50 years ago. It's definitely sufficient as you say, but not necessarily best.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point! Nerd (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * All of that being said, if we can make sources easier to access we should in my opinion. 17:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Can we improve the Help:References or Help:Manual of style pages? Bongolian (talk) 19:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Can we improve them? Yes. Should we improve them? I would say yes to that as well. 19:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * OMG we should because it's not useful at all in its current state. It's so annoying that I tell people to format the sources they input, but I have no reliable RationalWiki page to fall to for easy reference. 23:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

and, I have added the ISBNs of the books I have been using as sources. (Please see my edits.) The newer ones work as they do on Wikipedia; the whole thing automatically becomes a link that you can use to search for those precise books yourself. I will take the time to update our guidelines for references soon. Nerd (talk) 19:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, that's great, and awesome. I've also updated all of my zero book sources, similarly.  Can't promise I've added dois to the journal articles, though.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:16, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually,   and, they all work! For some strange reasons, I made a systematic error of leaving out the last hyphen and digit. Now that the error is rectified, you can now find the book yourself on Google Books or Amazon; you will even be able to see the cover of the books, in addition to the information provided in the citation. Amazing! Nerd (talk) 02:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Perfect! And thank you! 02:29, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Do non-white countries have diversity/immigration and do non-humans mix with each other?
I was wondering if theres any counter-examples to the claim that immigration of other races (I know its not a greatly scientific concept, but I mean those who are views by society as different races) are only coming to white countries? For example, can you guys give me some examples of non-white countries (non-European descent majority) that are having a lot of immigration from "non-whites" since the 20th century?

And also, are there any good arguments countering the claim that all other subspecies want to stay with their own kind, but humans are the only ones to significantly mix people who evolved from such diverse backgrounds into a collective?

Do any other species do this especially other primates?

Also is there a good argument that addresses the claim white people deserve a homeland like all people do?

I am theamazingskeptic, but this is not a troll this is a legitimate post. I know some mods may act up and want to remove this like my other post, but I am posting this here because you guys are fellow skeptics and will probably have some pretty good answers to racialism. Please excuse my past bait you absolute fuzzcucks and just treat this legitimately and give me good counters thanks. 66.65.75.21 (talk) 00:01, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * To the second point: I think you've confused the terms subspecies and demes. I'm not a biologist, but homo sapiens doesn't have any subspecies. A population would have to be geographically isolated for a very long time and then present morphological differences from the rest of the species. A deme, however, does not need to show morphological differences, but it can exist as an semi- or fully-isolated population. Demes account for all diversity we see in homo sapiens. To make a subspecies distinction you'd have to provide evidence of homo sapiens with different bone structure or organ structure or something like that.


 * With that out of the way, to the actual question we go. Beyond the fact that humans mixing with humans isn't covered by your question (humans mixed demes, not subspecies), there even exists cross-species breeding. The mule is a great example. When a donkey and a horse love each other very much, though they are different species and the Donkulets and the Equitagues are at war and their love is illicit, they can make a mule by breeding. The Liger and the Tigon are also good examples. So yeah, mules. Their existence is a good argument against the claim that subspecies want to stay with their own kind. 00:57, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This argument relies on the already-shaky concept of races, but yes, non-white countries tend to have diverse populations and contain many people with different nationalities and ethnic groups. China alone has more than 50 recognized ethnic groups. They key fact is just large populations and countries in general tend to be more diverse than smaller ones. 01:05, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Possibly relevant lists: net migration rate, immigrant population, ethnic and cultural diversity level. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 01:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I need to make this point clear here: "races" =/= sub-species. There are currently no sub-species for Homo Sapiens. 01:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what I said. Why do we need to make it clear? Did you not read the first paragraph I wrote? 03:20, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Because I'm tired and mistook you for the original poster... I blame crazy people from YouTube, and my lack of success trying to find the ultimate singularity of Woo. 03:25, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, no worries. 04:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, there is a subspecies of Homo sapiens. It's ! That would be us. Our race is a subspecies! Just being technical. Or that's what I thought I read in Wikipedia, but it seems like I have misread something somewhere. 05:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Err, no. To make a subspecies distinction you'd need at least two subspecies. For instance, homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens fill-in-the-blank. And besides, this was largely a 19th century practice that stemmed with Linnaeus that had declined by the 20th century. There are currently no recognised subspecies of homo sapiens. 18:53, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well what about the now-extinct H. s. idaltu? —  Ɖøn Ĵuan  Harass  15:53, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I had no idea H. s. idaltu existed! Thanks for the cool deep dive! Yes, H. s. idaltu would make H. s. sapiens a subspecies. 19:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * On the subject of immigration: I know South Africa has seen xenophobic violence over refugees from Zimbabwe. Same thing in Colombia over refugees from Venezuela. And in the Dominican Republic over immigrants from Haiti, to the point where they've coined a term for it: "antihaitianismo". And in Myanmar/Burma, the government claims (on dubious grounds) that the Rohingya people are actually furr'ners from Bangladesh. And for all we hear about refugees from Syria heading to Europe, the majority of them wound up staying in Turkey. Bottom line, it's not just white countries that immigrants and refugees go to (let alone being sent to by shadowy NGOs in the name of "white genocide", as in the fevered imaginations of the far-right); they go to wherever's closest. And they face xenophobia everywhere they go. It's just that the immigrants and refugees who go to the West are the only ones we hear about, because most of us live in the West and consume Western media. KevinR1990 (talk) 02:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not a Rationalwiki member, but here are some answers:
 * A) This point have been covered by the other commenters, but here's another example: the Football war between Honduras and Salvador in 1969 has been cause by Salvadorian immigration in Honduras.
 * B) Human do not have subspecies, as has been covered. And animals mix *a lot* with other subspecies, as long as they have the opportunity. Wolves with dogs, wild cats with cats...
 * C) There's no "white people". There's no "black people" either. There are cultures. Sometimes (but not always) those cultures can superimpose on some physical characteristics that are in fact, not exclusively present in said group, by maybe more often. There's no homeland for "white people", however there's a homeland for french people.
 * Racializing stuff is silly, and lead to absurdities, like the Balkans mess (hey, let's ethincally cleanse a people from our homeland, even if it's their homeland too!), or in the US: if the US should be a "white" homeland, where's the homeland for amerindians? Are they legitimate to try to take back "their" lands, by force if necessary, if the US are an "indian" homeland? And where do the blacks go? No african country would want them, because they have a totally different culture. They only good answer is to stop considering people as race first, but as citizens first.109.205.5.33 (talk) 12:45, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Different species of corvid hang out with each other. Ditto many other kinds of birds - gulls, tits, et al. Multiple species of fish are found in many ecosystems (Not all preying on each other). There are biological reasons why multiple species or subspecies don't do exactly the same thing in the same place - the most fit will outcompete the other - but that pressure doesn't apply to humans. --Annanoon (talk) 10:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * With regard to the second question, there is extensive anecdotal video evidence that many species are capable of ostensibly amicable interaction with other species. Here for example.Ariel31459 (talk) 02:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Aww! 141.134.75.236 (talk) 04:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Fucking yes, you racist weirdo. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

A thought experiment
Much is made of the fact that all human beings belong to the same species. It is our moral philosophy however that determines how we treat one another, exemplified by such claims as, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by [their nature] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” Suppose another species of hominidae did in fact exist. Suppose further that in most aspects its members evinced the common characteristics of people: that they possess similar personality, intelligence and culture one might associate with a civilized people belonging to our own species. Would we not decide to accept them into our society as equals? How could we do otherwise?Ariel31459 (talk) 15:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The moment you start to look at functional capability as a metric of the worth of life, you have already proven to have flawed ethics. It begins a rabbit hole that ends up killing anyone over the age of 50, who has disabilities, is on welfare, or has a chronic illness.  If lifeforms are only valuable to someone because they are 'useful', that person should be banned from any position of power.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 12:29, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Migrants only come to white countries! And races don't mix!

 * Over 80% of the population of the very white country of the United Arab Emirates are migrants. Many of these migrants come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. See Demographics of the United Arab Emirates.
 * Over 80% of the population of the very white country of Qatar are migrants. Many of these migrants come from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Egypt. See Demographics of Qatar.
 * Around 70% of the population of the very white country of Kuwait are migrants. Many of these migrants come from South Asia and from other Arab countries. See Demographics of Kuwait.
 * More than 50% of the population of the very white country of Bahrain are migrants, mostly from South Asia. See Demographics of Bahrain.
 * Over 40% of the population of the very white country of Singapore are migrants. Many of these migrants come from Malaysia, China, India, and Bangladesh. See Demographics of Singapore and the country's 2010 census.
 * About a quarter to a third of the population of the very white country of Jordan are migrants. Many of these migrants are refugees who come from Palestine, Iraq, and Syria. See Demographics of Jordan.
 * About a quarter to half the population of the very white country of Brunei are migrants. See this and this UN report.
 * According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, as of 2015, about a quarter of the population of the very white country of the Maldives and about a third of the very white country of Saudi Arabia are migrants. See this chart.
 * About a quarter to a third of the population of the very white country of Antigua and Barbuda are born overseas, notably in Guyana, Dominica, and Jamaica. See Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda.
 * About a quarter of the population of Israel... Wait, are Jews white? Are they? Yes or no? Which is more convenient now? Should we say that they're white so that we can condemn their "colonial project" (while whitewashing 19th and 20th century European colonialism)? Or should we conspire to agree that they're not, because, well, we're totally not racist, but we just, uh... hate them?

Welp! Clearly, diversity is a globalist codeword for anti-white!

But, do races mix? Nope! It is an empirical fact that the following races do not exist, just to name a few:
 * The fictional Mestizo people
 * The fictional Mulatto people
 * The fictional Zambo people
 * The fictional Mixed-race Brazilians, including Afro-Brazilian and Asian Brazilian people
 * The fictional Afro-Arab people who mainly inhabit the Swahili coast
 * The fictional Malagasy people, who are descendants of the Bantu people from Africa and the Austronesian people from Southeast Asia
 * The fictional Eurasian people
 * The fictional Chindian people
 * The fictional Peranakan people, who have Chinese and Southeast Asian ancestry
 * The fictional Filipino mestizo people
 * The fictional Coloured people of South Africa. (Can you hear Die Stem van Suid-Afrika playing in the background?)
 * The majority of people in the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Mexico (See Race and ethnicity in Latin America). Good thing most Mexicans don't exist, if not, teh woll has to be ten feet higher!

Clearly, these fictional ethnicities, many of which have non-existent populations in the millions, have been entirely fabricated by postmodernist liberal SJW cucks, so that they can use their invented politically-correct jargon to baffle others during their virtue signaling! REEE!

The OP mentioned that "all other subspecies want to stay with their own kind, but humans are the only ones to significantly mix people who evolved from such diverse backgrounds into a collective." Precisely. We should always follow the example of other animals. Humans simply don't - and thus, shouldn't - mix. The only reason that race-mixing occurs is entirely due to the deliberate race-mixing conspiracy concocted by modern degenerate communoliberal globalist miscegenation-lovin' regimes. It never happens naturally. Never mind that the racial groups in the list above have proud histories that span centuries, which are likely much longer than any of the regimes of the modern countries they currently live in. These ethnicities are all made up, remember? 77.111.246.76 (talk) 05:03, 12 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Does anyone think this is a blocking level action? Also BoN is a very good Poe. Commie Lib (talk) 09:36, 12 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Go ahead and block him/her/he/she/they/them/it if you wanna prove what an intolerant fascist you are. nobspiss in my ear 09:49, 12 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the compliment, Tabula Rasa. Although I do think that RobSmith is a much better Poe. 77.111.246.76 (talk) 10:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * @RobSmith yeah no one I was talk about you, not the BoN. Two I was asking if anyone else thought that saying alt-right talking points was a blockable action because such action has been taken before. Three you are calling me intolerant, after what you just said? Commie Lib (talk) 00:13, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is bullshit and the assertion that migrants only move to "white countries" is false on it's face. Every country in the world has an estimated resident foreign population of at least .1% as of 2015 UN report I would collapse this troll's comments.Ariel31459 (talk) 17:28, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * . Sigh, that's precisely my point. And this is why your country's education system needs to improve, especially when providing info about other countries. Even italicizing very white multiple times in the first list (of countries with a relatively large foreign population) wasn't enough for you to detect any sarcasm. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are obviously not very white, but Arab countries. Among their citizens, the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore and Brunei have a 70% Han Chinese majority and a 60% Malay majority respectively. The largest ethnic group of the Maldives are the Dhivehi people, who are related to other South Asians. Around 85% of the population of Antigua and Barbuda have African or Black ancestry. And you would have known all these if you clicked on the sources listed. And which "troll" actually bothers to find and cite (somewhat good) sources?
 * Then there was the claim that mixed-race people don't exist. I actually bothered to cite a dozen or so (counter)examples of mixed-race groups, whose histories predate any current "globalist/communoliberal etc. regimes" that supposedly conspire to encourage miscegenation. Then I also deliberately committed the appeal to nature fallacy and the naturalistic fallacy - and even linked to them - when addressing the OP's claims. But all that wasn't enough to activate your irony meter.
 * Block me if you want. Collapse my comment if you fancy. I have mixed ancestry myself and hence "don't exist". Your actions will be futile. ;) 77.111.246.93 (talk) 00:37, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * How did you all miss the satire here? It was on point too. 00:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, shoot. You got me there pardnerAriel31459 (talk) 02:02, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Here's where I'm confounded. The past had it right, and all them slave owners were just helping the less than people do human things. Not bad stuff, but!  How come they all had beautiful little mulatto babies, AND I CAN'T HAVE NO BABIES WITH MY DONKEY!?!  Cheeeeyackmate, sceince!!!  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Or as the rest of the internet says, r/wooosh. 86.44.3.148 (talk) 16:48, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Cinemasins losing subs
So, I've been seeing more people complaining about Jeremy & co and I decided to check their account on socialblade and:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/cinemasins

Wtf happened on the 5th? Does anyone know? Because whatever it was, was enough for people to start unsubbing him since that date... Tinribmancer (talk) 02:26, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't have an answer for the question but I would guess it's because people are finally realising just how un-funny CinemaSins actually is. 18:56, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've been seeing people complaining about CinemaSins for quite a while now, particularly film journalists and movie geeks, and to be honest, I agree with a lot of the criticisms; I don't think I've watched their videos regularly since around mid-2017. Their main argument is that CinemaSins mistakes nitpicking for actual analysis, and hides behind the "satire" label in order to get away with it, like a non-political version of any number of edgelords ("we're not really obnoxious nerds who obsess over everything that so much as resembles a plot hole even if it's actually not when you look at the bigger picture, we're parodying those sorts of assholes!"). Their concern is that, for many people whose first exposure to movie analysis comes through CinemaSins, they will think that that's what being a critic is supposed to be, causing them to either embrace those attitudes or write off all film criticism and analysis in general. More broadly, I've also seen some describe CinemaSins as reflective of bigger problems with internet film criticism in general, feeling that it just marks the next evolution of the "angry critic" shows (The Nostalgia Critic, The Angry Video Game Nerd, Zero Punctuation, and their many ripoffs) that first started proliferating in the 2000s; CinemaSins took that style and made it palatable for the mainstream by cutting back on the F-bombs and the vulgar humor. Dunno what caused the recent drop in particular, though, as I haven't seen any drama connected to CinemaSins or its creators. KevinR1990 (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Good, CinemaSins low quality garbage that seems to exist solely to nitpick about every trivial detail. I've actually tried to use them for info a few times and found their reviews to be worse than the product they were trying to criticize. 01:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The nitpicking in of itself is fine. The real problem is that they take scenes out of context and then comment on them, and they make common careless errors like misspelling and miscounting. They are trend surfers, and their history has always been trying to capitalize on trends.  05:31, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't get why some people get so angry about CinemaSins. If it makes you laugh, good for you. If it doesn't, then don't watch it. He's a jackass (his own words) making comments about movies, don't take it as a deep intellectual analysis. Thinker(unlicensed) 18:14, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't like thought terminating cliché of criticism of a YouTube channel. People are entitled to criticize things that deserve criticism, and telling them "if you don't like it, don't watch it" adds nothing to the conversation, and I mean nothing because it's so needlessly dismissive. People can get mad at Cinema Sins because it floods recommend videos like other clickbait. And it actively misleads people in its nitpicking, which is really bad. There are scenes in movies they try tearing apart but they are taken out of context, and you can tell the cherry picking sometimes in the next scenes they show. Cinema Sins once "pointed out" that there is no gravity in space. It one time derided a guy who didn't move the wheelchair closer when he actually did move it closer seconds later. Cinema Sins derided apparently inconsistent car speeds on the speedometer while failing to take note of the kilometer/mile differences labeling. They derided Jungle Book for talking passage of time in "rains" when the setting, being India, refers to monsoon season. It derided someone getting killed by an arrow despite wearing a bulletproof jacket when bulletproof wear is designed to mitigate bullets, but not larger objects like arrows. It's wrong about a lot of other things like spelling mistakes and keeping track of its own counter, and it invites a habit of pointing out problems that aren't so (equivalent would be "waking up after sleep cliche). If you want to play the nitpicking jackass, you have to do the nitpicking correctly, not take scenes out of context or demonstrate poor understanding of basic concepts. 23:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * One of the few things far left commentators on the internet convinced me of was to never watch anything they publish ever again. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I like Cinemeasins. It was an introduction to shitting on movies on youtube for me.  I grew up watching MST3K, and when it didn't play on the Sci-Fi Channel anymore the VHS versions were occasionally rentable at Blockbuster.  It's not always brilliant or intelligent, but it's a riff, that's their livelihood.  Cinemasins should be fine.  Kids in the Hall wasn't funny 100% of the time, Key and Peele have misses, SNL is awkward, like 3/4s of the time, trying to boil sketches and riffs down, well, bless them for trying.  There are balls, strikes, and homeruns, do a better job of recognizing balls.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In this case it's not about funny or not, it's about rote, formulaic comedy that pushes the most base and unuseful film criticism, often at the expense of serious critical thought.  Especially jokes like "Why didn't they X" in a movie with underlying themes about how people don't do X when they should.  No one expects factual perfection, but some things about cinemasins are just ham-handed hackery.  I'm not saying you have to agree; you're allowed to enjoy what you enjoy, but the breakdowns of how they can completely miss the point of a movie then snipe about it really reverberated with me.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I find Cinema Sins to be hilarious. They made fun of many of my favorite movies. No one told anyone complaining to watch it. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * When I want a better critical breakdown of the film itself, I go through Jenny Nichols for story and Lindsay Ellis for staging, or for a less hot take about the problem of a film in general, Wisecrack. I know Cinemasins is not promoting critical thinking about film, because I really wanted to get into film when I was in high school.  My name is in the credits of this thing I did in early high school when I thought film was what I was going to do, if you'd like to talk to me about critical thinking about film, I will tell you why I don't like any Quentin Tarantino movies.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:55, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

I could say that it has something to do with MST3K being remade and people gaining regaining their taste- except that the new MST3K isn't half as good as the originals. Guffer (talk) 22:04, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The new MST3K is more pressured to hit every time, and lacks a bit of the fun "they're just throwing it together" handicap of nostalgia, but they are doing the same thing, the jokes are still good, the skits have higher production value.  Otherwise, the riffing is at worst on par.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:55, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

No death but just the passing of form
A line I often hear when it comes to spirituality. My attempt to make sense of it is that they think of everything as "one" or made of the same thing. I picture it like the universe is made of clay and that what looks like anything made of this "clay" as dying is really just the form that is passing away. On some level I guess it's true since energy can't be destroyed and the molecules and bonds of the body break down, dissipate and interact with others. But I can't shake the feeling like there is some gaping hole in ppithat, but I can't put my finger on it.

My thoughts are that it's just another way to make death seem less scary.Machina (talk) 23:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Seems like an accurate-ish description of death. Your being still dissipates though, so leaves plenty of room to be afraid of death in my opinion. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 00:28, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That which is flesh is flesh. That which is spirit is spirit. Seems pretty straightforward and rational. nobspiss in my ear 01:42, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Either there is an afterlife, or else there is none. If there is, I assume that there is also a God and that he runs the place, and that my feeble attempts to worship him have not been entirely in vain.  If there is none, there is only oblivion, of the sort where you soundly slept through world wars and great plagues.  Merely ceasing to be is deliverance enough for me; the rest is a lagniappe.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱs. 03:58, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It is something like that. Let's leave discussion of the negative side of the leger out for now.
 * To have "eternal life," starts now, not at the moment of passing from the carcus ("that which is flesh is flesh. That which is spirit is spirit." Don't confuse the two - they live by different rules and standards. "The flesh wars against the spirit," and "to be carnally minded is death." To understand, you have to put off the carnal mind).nobspiss in my ear 05:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So the next question becomes, "How do I put off the carnal mind?" Simple. You must be spiritually born. There's a simple logic to this process. nobspiss in my ear 08:00, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Any number of theoretical models could apply, given that places are not dependent on individuals, nor necessarily vice versa. That is to say, theoretically, there could be a deity or deities, but no afterlife, or an afterlife but no deities. Likewise, the "soul" could theoretically exist but still be unable to persist past death, or unable to leave the body post mortem, or even merely reincarnate rather than travel to an afterlife of any kind. The truth is we have nothing beyond theoretical speculation for anything involving the supernatural, and until someone comes forward with extraordinary evidence we should remain skeptical of such assertions. 20:31, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Assuming there is a spirit, but that doesn’t get at the question.
 * "My thoughts are that it's just another way to make death seem less scary." I agree and I add that it is a kinda delusional way. The fact that something is "just a passing of form" doesn't make it something not to care about. If you put your hand in a hydraulic press then the result would be "just a passing of form" of your hand... wanna try? Thinker(unlicensed) 10:21, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Think of it this way. Death is like an SUV filled with masked persons screeching to a halt in front of you as you walk down the street, grabbing you and absconding with your person, careening down the highway and vanishing, never to be seen again. You could say it's more like a change of address. Or you could say it's like an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters. More on that later.Ariel31459 (talk) 20:13, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * maybe from a certain perspective but the OP seems to consider it from an Eastern Mystical perspective. The clay analogy would make sense if reality and it’s building blocks were like clay, but it ain’t that simple.
 * Actually BoN-who-can't-format-or-sign-their-posts, It's ridiculously simple, either the claim is true, or the claim is false. 21:45, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've found some solace on this, even if it has a good dose of nightmare fuel if one thinks deeper on its implications. Panzerfaust (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * A lot of people don't subscribe to doctrine but still keep spirituality very alive. When these people are also greenies (like me) they like to compare humanity to parasites.  My favorite thing to say when I am run into these people is "humans aren't parasites or viruses, we are just shitty agents of entropy.  Energy we can use in, energy we can't use out.  We know how to do it better than we do it now, but, you know, information we can use in, information we can't use out, that's a hard cycle to break."  It's not likely I'll ever be able to say "that thing you said about spirits living in tools and instruments, that's information you can't use,"  but it's a better outlook for me to go over their heads and say what I want to say than just being dour about a planet you have to share with a bunch of people who want to waste energy on nothing special.  I also listened to an interview with a transplant doctor where he talked about a recipient waking up and craving a hamburger, when that was usually not part of her diet.  The donor family was shocked and took great comfort in that because the donor loved hamburgers.  Ok.  Alright, I mean...  Ok, I'm glad about that...  I think I have to leave it there, because not donating your healthy organs when you die is a pet peeve of mine. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:08, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Arranged Marriages: You would think they would have died out in the Middle Ages
My brother brought it up while watching an episode of the Simpson's. It is not like the old days where it was needed for financial stability and alliances. Why do some still have these type of marriages? I harvested your dog's soul --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 19:33, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * For the same reason that Arranged marriages occur in India, and for the same reason Christians misread the story of "Lucifer" as being about the devil. (As I understand it, it's actually a metaphorical comedy about astrologers in another part of the region.) Cultural Traditions. Mid-eastern culture is extremely traditional, even to the point that several behaviors are exhibited without anyone thinking twice about them. 19:58, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As has been said in other contexts - there is a difference between arranged marriages and forced marriages; and arranged introductions (blind dates, dating agencies, debutants' balls etc) are slightly different again. Anna Livia (talk) 20:42, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * While true, the concept of Arranged Marriage in Eastern and Mid-Eastern culture has generally had strong overlap with the concept of forced marriage. That being said modern culture has toned down and/or adapted such practices in certain regions, though some problems still remain (see India's dowry problem.) 21:00, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * More pertinently: child brides and rape victims forced to marry their rapists . (Yes this happens in the US too.) 141.134.75.236 (talk) 21:19, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In homophobic societies, arranged marriages are practical and convenient to give cover.
 * Likewise, arranged marriages can be more stable with lower divorce rates because there's more than two individuals self-interest involved. It's an alliance between tribes and communities. nobspiss in my ear 23:14, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In a discussion of arranged marriages, everything gets flipped: the enlightened rational view suddenly is about individual rights, and the conservative view is about collective and communal interests. nobspiss in my ear 23:20, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note how Rob leaves out the... Shall we say unsavory aspects of arranged marriages, as well as putting words in our mouths. For example, "Likewise, arranged marriages can be more stable with lower divorce rates because there's more than two individuals self-interest involved. It's an alliance between tribes and communities." Leaves out the part where women are essentially nothing more than fruit baskets or fine wines, to be sold as part of business deals. Or, if you want the short version, the women are slaves, property to be used, abused, and replaced. Communal benefit my ass, this is about the few using their own family as nothing more than commodities. 23:55, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I actually met a Saudi guy who was in an arranged marriage in one of my classes. He didn't seem too thrilled about it. Let people marry whom they want (provided it's mutual), thanks. 23:57, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Another bad aspect of arranged marriages is that they have been used as a method of marrying off people with serious psychological issues. I know of two instances of this. The idea is that children need to be married off in birth order, and if they're not it ruins the reputation of the family (i.e., the thinking goes "someone's unmarriagable in the family, so they must all be bad"). So the family of the problem child searches and cajoles until they can find another family for a spouse for the insane child. The found spouse obviously has no say in the matter, and the results can be rather bad. Bongolian (talk) 02:37, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's bullshit. Would you go back to a used car lot that sold you a lemon? Your own logic contradicts you; Do they trade off the defective merchndise and place no value on someone without psychological defects? nobspiss in my ear 02:48, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Getting rid of someone with psychological defects is not the reason for arranged marriages - they just have a lower value in the subprime market. nobspiss in my ear 02:52, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I didn't say that, Nobs. I said that it has been used for marrying off the otherwise unmarryable and that I knew of 2 cases! I didn't say that was the only purpose. Do you have a readig comprehension problem? Bongolian (talk) 04:05, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I apologise, you're right. But you do seem to imply denying the mentally handicapped an opportunity to marry, which they wouldn't have otherwise, is preferable. nobspiss in my ear 04:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I said "serious psychological issues", which you also did not comprehend, Nobs. Try to contain your trolling behavior so that it's not so obvious. It's more entertaining and less annoying for everyone that way. Bongolian (talk) 05:11, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Your disclaimers are weak. Romantic marriages (the alternative of arranged marriages) have probably a higher instance of fraud by people trying to hide "psychological issues," whereas arranged marriages are based on finding suitable matches. You fundamently have no clue about the topic you think you're criticizing. nobspiss in my ear 16:22, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And you clearly used the word "insane" to refer to people with "psychological issues." Do you have trouble comprehending the language you use? nobspiss in my ear 17:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As to claims it belongs in the middle ages, arranged marriage was common in some Christian communities into the 20th century, such as in Ireland. And child marriage is still a serious problem in Latin America and eastern Europe as well as in Asia and Africa. --Annanoon (talk) 14:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * A problem, huh? Sounds like a racist attack on other people's culture. What? You think your culture, with its broken families and high divorce rates is superior? nobspiss in my ear 16:33, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * are you suggesting child marriage isnt problematic? i'm going to assume, generously, that you are not even reading posts, just looking for the next opportunity to get your inane digs in AMassiveGay (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I never said any such thing. I simply pointed out the inherent racism in criticizing a cultural practice as old as the human species. What makes anyone think their culture is superior to conclude another's is problematic? nobspiss in my ear 20:07, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * and yet it followed in direct response to a post where it was child marriage specifically labelled as a problem. there is nothing inherently racist in criticising a cultural practise if you view it as abhorrent. because its been around for a long time isnt a defense or protection from criticism. nor does recognition of an issue in a culture not your own imply any sort of superiority or that there are no problems within our own culture. must we all be paragons of virtue to even discuss something? it does not, particularly when the problems within our are not germane to the argument. you could perhaps click on those links provided to better acquaint yourself with relevant information. maybe make a reasoned and principled argument rather than petty contrarianism and point scoring. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:34, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * its not as if child marriage isnt a crime or seen as a problem in the jurisdictions that they occur in - they often are. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Ok. Let me see if I have the facts of the direction of this whole thread complete: (1) "insane" persons and/or persons with "psychological issues" should not have the same opportunity to marry as gays do; (2) person's of another culture, Eastern European for example, should not be criticized if they find anal sex morally repugnant and objectionable. Did I miss anything or make too broad a leap in logic anywhere? nobspiss in my ear 20:55, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * i thought i was pretty clear that people are entirely free to criticise. but if your criticism is bogus its not going to go well. no one has suggested anyone should not be allowed an opportunity to marry. the key a question here is not if its arranged or you are just pissed and in vegas, but whether you have any say in the matter. thats clearly not the case for many (especially women) in many cases of arranged marriages for a whole variety of cultural, religious, economic reasons.
 * if you want to defend arranged marriages for reasons not solely related to being a dick, go for it. but you'll need to actually make an argument thats relevant to whats been said and not make such twisted contortions of logic - you just look a prick when you do. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:24, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

why trap people in a love-less where the hostages couple would divorce anyways? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 21:27, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I dunno; it jus' seems to me ya'll come to this subject with a rather Western colonialists approach. nobspiss in my ear 00:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I've lived in Iran and spent a lot of time in India. Both places where arranged marriage in one form or another is common. It is always a business/family/class/caste/honor arrangement. True, in most rich families and some middle/lower class families, parents might consider comparability and the happiness of their children. However you have to be lucky to be rich or parents with that mind-set. There is very little endearing about arranged marriages. Most women have no idea what is about to happen to them and in all too many cases if they resist they are maritally raped. In India many men are as uncomfortable around their wives the first years as their wives are partly afraid of their husbands. In the transaction, women in India become a part of the man's family/household. That means in many cases free-slave-labor for the husband and mother-in-law. Violence is well known in a lot of arranged marriages, the wife is often isolated, lonely and unable to stand up to the problems she faces. A few friends of mine in the milk case have things a little different. The wife stays with her family (happily) and she visits her husband once a month or so. My friend had heart burn every time he met her as he doesn't know her, just has sex with a woman who doesn't want to and then gives her a disingenuous present and asks her to call him when she gets pregnant. He hates every part of it and reserves his sexual energy for prostitutes. What you see mostly via media, cinema, fiction is the arranged marriage of the rich. Things can be very different that way. For the lowest class things are pretty grim and I really don't think you're well informed about the realities of arranged marriages cause a few claims you've made are bloody crazy. A mentally disabled woman getting a chance at marriage where she might not have outside arranged marriage? Mentally ill woman become spinsters? Mentally ill women prefer to become a property of her husbands family, likely experience marital rape (with even less idea what is going on in the bedroom) experience isolation and removal from her family ... rather than possible happiness with a non-arranged marriage, or barring that, no marriage at all? A lot of arranged-marriage-wives (and husbands) would be quite jealous. The last thing a mentally disabled person needs is that kind of sexual-shock, isolation and loneliness. Except for the rich/upper-class, I didn't know a single Indian or Iranian guy in an arranged marriage who was happy. Those from love-marriages? Usually pretty happy. Wives treated better, less isolation, more caring sex, more equality in the marriage, loving environment for children etc. It's the obvious choice. It's like comparing caramel with rancid meat. Shabi DOO  22:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but this terrible idea that hurts everyone involved is a tradition. You can't just ignore tradition, because of the systemic harm it inflicts!  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 22:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Okay, so now we found the cure for domestic violence - "love marriages." And being a retarded spinster is certainly preferable to having parents who care enough to find a family for you before they pass. Or being retarded in a "love marriage" certainly wouldn't expose you to rape, abuse, or a partner with "psychological issues." And true, the 50% in "love marriages" (or most of the 50% who don't divorce) are happy. How that stacks up against arranged marriages statistically we'll probably have to take some Western educated scientist's word for it, along with their cultural bias.. And if we don't like some Non-Westerner's statistical results, we can say it's tainted by cultural bias, so we can feel secure in our own cultural bias. nobspiss in my ear 07:46, 15 January 2019 (UTC)


 * @RobSmith Have you considered that the reason we don't have a lot of arranged marriage divorces are because the participants have no choice? Commie Lib (talk) 17:52, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * or that these things occur in the west too or that refusing an arranged marriage or seeking a divorce can result with a honour killing
 * its all beside the point when rob continues to rail against arguments no body made, with leaps of logic that i doubt even he is convinced by.
 * whats your goal here, rob? you know you not going to convince anyone with such shoddy logic, so what do you gain from being such a disingenuous prick? AMassiveGay (talk) 18:59, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Rob that is such a first class bullshit response. Did you even read my numerous comments and arguments? You are really good at dismissing a list of arguments by distracting the audience with some absurd garbage deflection on western-scientists and cultural bias. Please, grow up Rob. You aren't going to succeed with red-herrings here. You've totally failed making a case for arranged marriage with ridiculous arguments like "yeah but love-marriages end in divorce 50% of the time". Perhaps in your shallow analysis of the complexities of marriage in non-western cultures did you think that some might prefer a shorter marriage with equality and then divorce than A LIFE TIME OF MISERY WITH NO ESCAPE? Your argument about mentally disabled people bound for a life of spinsterhood getting a chance to marry some guy her parents negotiate for is nothing short of grotesque. And your dose of cultural relativism calling criticism of customs of other cultures as racist. I don't remember ever saying "arranged marriage is bad". They can get married however they like. What most of us have done is point out problems people suffer in arranged marriage. Pointing out marital rape is not racist. Pointing out alienation and loneliness is not racist. Repeating what my friends told me, their unhappiness in their marriages, is not racist. What post-modern cultural-relativist counter-science anti-knowledge trash book are you currently reading? Shabi  DOO  22:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, it's worth noting that today's divorce rates are way lower, because much fewer millenials are getting married to people they're not compatible with just because "it's what you do". ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 22:32, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not "making a case for arranged marriage." I'm pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies in your approach.

First off, divorce in arranged marriages requires legal grounds - no one is "trapped." Unlike Western "no-fault" which requires no basis whatsoever.

Secondly, as hinted at above, it's a question of societal and community interests taking precedence over individual choice, and individual freedom, which is the basis of Western abortion and gay marriage laws. Yet some of you tried to force me into an arranged marriage with health insurors just yesterday based on some notion of community responsibility. You give me the choice to get butt fucked, have an abortion, or marry whoever I love, yet on something as personal as having health insurance or not, you tell me I have a responsibility to the community that overrides my personal decisions, in essence saying "Fuck you." Well fuck you too I say, and your hypocracy. nobspiss in my ear 01:34, 16 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Rob I am honestly quite concerned for you. You must be going through a real rough patch. Everything you accuse of us is something that you subsequently and even previously have done. The logic and reason in your posts are breaking down and some of the things you say are just frightening. take 10 deep breaths and try to read this discussion from a dispassionate neutral point of view and ask yourself through the medium of critical thinking, how reasonable some of your comments are. Shabi  DOO  10:05, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You must really love the idea of love-less and miserable marriage. Arranged Marriages are not good for the wife or husband. Would you enjoy be forced to marry a woman you don't love. nobs, are you fucking serious? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 03:03, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

you are the universe?
Not sure what they mean by that. I mean sure your body is made of the same stuff as other things in the universe. But it's a stretch to say that you are the universe, you are the body and a bit of a vast collection. Or to bull from buddhist analogies you are the wave not the ocean (a reverse of that). Not sure what makes people believe such things. I was also fed a line about how you are not alive, from which I guess is based on the "you are the universe" bit. But that seems like nonsense and based on what you define alive. By some metrics you could argue the universe is "alive'.
 * More fundamental questions are "who is 'they'?" and "where did you hear 'them' say that?". Carl Sagan meant a very different thing with his "you are the universe trying to understand itself" from a new age guru saying "we are all one universe, one mind"  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've heard the idea of life being the universe's way to experience itself, that may be what it means. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 21:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That sounds like nonsense considering it requires the universe to have intent.131.91.7.132 (talk) 15:15, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You have intent, and are part of the universe. Unless you're one of those dirty dualists, who I've recently been reminded I destest.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:21, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But you are not the universe's way of experiencing itself. You have awareness and that's about it. This implies the universe is some "body".Machina (talk) 02:20, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's Satanic; it means you got no one to answer to.other than yourself. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." nobspiss in my ear 03:47, 18 January 2019 (UTC)