RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive383

Is this creationist page a drug trip?
https://creation.com/lifting-the-veil-ufo-phenomenon

This was the most confusing stew of creationism and UFology I ever read. --Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It certainly is...bizarre. Man falls into UFO cult, finds Jesus, takes a two week Bible study course, becomes annoying evangelist assisting mentally disturbed UFO "victims" to switch one cult for another. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 17:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nothing about this page and what it promotes makes sense. It would be more realistic if the dude stopped taking acid. That's the only explanation for this page to exist. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  18:06, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's basically a woo war. A person CMI promotes, concerned that the UFO community will lead you astray from the Young Earth Christianity they believe (heaven forbid a guy would believe the new age UFO woo he used to believe in, for instance), promotes "Biblical" explanations for UFO woo. There's so much woo involved, it's out-wooing . Woo! PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A race of UFO-using deities perhaps? (Not 'aliens with advanced technology (being indistinguishable, as AC Clarke said, from magic) being perceived by the benighted locals as deities.) Anna Livia (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Adam Curtis
Been watching the latest Adam Curtis documentary series, Can't Get You Out of My Head. I've always enjoyed these, at least when they don't drag. Strange old video juxtaposed with odd music (Marlene Dietrich performing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?") is quite frequently entertaining. But at this point I cannot tell if Curtis's shtick leads to insight, or whether it's just standard conspiracy mongering, trying to get you to see the secret pattern that isn't there. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 06:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I quite enjoy Curtis’ work too, though he has a tendency to pass on entertaining myths and anecdotes, rather than more rigorous scrutiny of those that dovetail with the overall narrative of his series. Still, he does provide good food for thought on the relations between scholarship, power, manipulation and pop culture. Just remember that he is mainly focused on telling a good/entertaining story, rather than a “warts and all” documentary.


 * Personally, I still think that The Century of the Self remains his best work (even with its flaws, such as those already mentioned). ScepticWombat (talk) 18:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Funny conservapedia shit
Moved to TWIGO:CP

Remember to include a timestamp when moving a discussion for the archive bot. Christopher (talk) 22:46, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, forgot about that. Avida Dollarsher again 13:57, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well to be fair you are the leftwing version of Conservapedia, so of course you'd comment.2600:1702:2A00:B3F0:380E:80E0:FDE2:E18B (talk) 01:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Greek nationalists throwing a fit
https://greekreporter.com/2021/02/08/the-greek-language-is-not-dying-its-merely-changing/https://greekreporter.com/2021/02/08/the-greek-language-is-not-dying-its-merely-changing/

So nationalists are claiming that young people are ruining the ancient Greek language. Are nationalists this fucking stupid? Okay nationalists are this stupid.--Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 20:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * not nationaists but everyone over a certain age that doesnt understand the kids of today with their crazy slang that they cant decide is inane or threatening and they ever call that noise they listen music. old folks who don seem to have ever been young. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that this is Greece. If we want to preserve the heritage of a city such as Athens, it needs to be covered in graffiti and garbage, people need to be running around almost nude and having sex in the streets, half the people need to be beggars or petty thieves, and, huh, yeah they got that right.  Could use a bit more nudity though.  Good on them for keeping up that tradition.  21:48, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If Greece wants to preserve its traditions, they could go back to old Pagan Polytheism instead of Christianity. They want to bitch and complain about "tradition" being lost. --Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 00:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Why can't everyone just speak Those damn young-uns keep changing the language! Bongolian (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * You could say the same about how English is being ruined by us Americans, who use "burned", "flavor", and "practice" instead of the British, aka "correct", spellings ("burnt", "flavour", and "practise", respectively) -- Goatspeed. 06:44, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Even if it is dying, what should be done about it? Anything short of barbarism and genocide will only delay the end, and those two will just as likely hasten it as with the Prussian dialect of German. Tsakonian, Pontic Greek, Italiot Greek (like two cities) and modern standard Greek are all that remains of their branch of the Indo-European tree. And I’m speaking as a Byzantophile, it’ll be a dark day indeed when theirs becomes a liturgical language as happened to Egyptian and the Copts (and Avestan and the Persians). Maybe if we're lucky they'll be among the second wave of colonists in the Inner Sphere and culturally dominate a successor state. Artificius (talk) 01:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Zach fails again (+other random shit)
Hahaha, my my favorite conspiracy theorist fails yet again. For anyone who doesn't want to waste 2 hours of their life watching that entire video, he was saying Denny Hamlin was rigged to win the race today: spoiler he finished 9th place.

On a more somber note: around 1:57:33, he mentions that someone, using his gematria bullshit, placed a $10,000 bet on Kyle Larson (Hubbard's 2nd favorite, it seems) to win the race today: spoiler, he lost. Yes folks, Hubbard's bullshit just cost someone $10,000 today... RIP.

And now on an unrelated note, the ending to that race was freakin' crazy. Big crash on the final lap. Also what is it with races at Daytona ALWAYS having a year long rain delay coupled with a big crash on the final lap?! That's pretty much a given now in any race at Daytona. That said, I have no idea why I'm even bringing any of this up seeing as how most people on Rationalfuckingwiki probably don't give a flying monkey's poo fling about NASCAR. Oof. Aaronmichael5 05:34, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Gematria clearly works whenever it wants to. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:05, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually lightly keep up with NASCAR news. The primary racing I follow is Indycar (and before the split shitshow / merge, CART); showing my age, I stopped majorly following NASCAR when they slapped restrictor plates on the superspeedway tracks. The way auto racing is, though, if you follow one you often are aware of the others. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:41, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't follow NASCAR at all, but I did see the big crash that happened. Here's the video for anyone who wants to see. (Don't worry, it seems that everyone was okay). 15:07, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can totally see the gematria/NASCAR fandoms intersecting. I will have to bring up gematria next time I'm talking to a NASCAR fan.  My name is boring in gematria since there aren't a lot of letters in it.  I know that's supposed to encourage me to check every other word or name that's ever existed in my history, but that's too much information to put into a literal algorithm just to draw my own feels-based conclusions. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:37, 16 February 2021 (UTC)


 * OMG I was left completely speechless when I watched that last-minute crash... goes to show how utterly unpredictable racing can be... -- Goatspeed. 22:43, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Years ago I saw a truck with a NASCAR decal and a vanity plate that said HITNFLIP, and I asked a guy I knew what that was about. His jaw dropped, he said something along the lines of "Holy shit.  I mean, bump and spin is one thing, but hit and flip?  It said that?"  He seemed pretty appalled. I didn't know what I was even asking about. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:00, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "I'm just sorry we couldn't crash more cars today... That's what the fans want, they want to see that excitement." -- NASCAR driver, , 2012, in full-on snark mode. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 02:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

massive snowstorms
there's all kinds of massive snowstorms happening across north america. there's snow in oklahoma where i live rn, it's crazy

and just think, some people are probably like "and this is why climate change isn't real!" Autumncheney (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Eh, weather has always been a thing. A massive storm doesn't "prove" or "disprove" climate change, rather, seeing trees grow further up north than they previously would is more subtle but stronger proof.  19:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Fucking cold as shit here in Kansas. 20:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * When I lived in Canada there was a week of regular -40 (about the same in both American temperature scale and what the other 180 countries of the world use) which was even lower with what they call the windchill ("feels like") which reached -50. This coincided with a local transportation strike which was nasty and should have been temporarily prohibited. So I had to walk 7 km every day in what felt like -50º. I didn't leave the house a few days. To this day I still ask myself why the fuck anyone built a city there and why my friends (and the entire city's residents still live there). Anyhoo...this was horrid and some people froze to death, cars didn't start and the city even shut down for a couple days. But what was even more destructive was what happened a few months later when an ice storm came. Here the temperature bobs sort of up and down between -5C and 5ºC (0 is the melting point) while it was raining creating a huge coating of ice over everything and then a little dust of snow which hid the ice from view creating all sorts of car crashes and people slipping and breaking bones. The trees were covered with ice which was, I admit, one of the most insanely beautiful things I've ever seen (imagine a forest of crystal trees). But the weight of the ice knocked trees over taking out power lines, crushing people, crushing houses and destroying tons of stuff. There were many fatalities PLUS some people freezing to death as the temperature suddenly dropped and some people had no electricity. We had to run extension cords out to several neighbours (we duct-taped dozens of 5 or 10 meter extension cords all together and ran them to people's houses so they had at least one outlet). The city shut down again for a few days. And while it's a free country and anyone could move to British Columbia's pacific coast where it doesn't snow (Vancouver, Victoria, the Islands) people still live in a place with 5 months of arctic snow and cold and even death. I am always amazed by how stubborn people are. Shabi  DOO  20:50, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The "crystal trees" thing happens every year where I am. In fact, there are some outside my window right now...  20:56, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And since New England is such a bizarre place, it was a strangely warm day here. Since we had a ton of snow on the ground it's turned things into a gross mud pit, I'll take iced trees and roads any day. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 22:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ice storm this weekend knocked out power. 55 degrees today, trees are just strewn everywhere.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is how global warming works. "Climate change" should have never caught on, it was meant to broaden and discredit global warming as a conclusion. I don't think record temps on both ends of the recorded history of temperature are NOT indicative of global warming.  It's like the people who said massive amounts of sea ice around the Antarctic disproved global warming.  No, that means it got so warm that the melting ice desalinated the water enough to freeze.  This is overly simplistic, but it's cold in new areas in the winter because the heat is dragging and pushing the cold to new places.  Fill a glass mug with hot tea and put an ice cube in it and watch the colors move.  Most of it is happening in the atmosphere, just so way above what any of us are experiencing on the ground.  But that's how heat works.  If wildfires in California can get blown around the Rockies and make midwestern skies hazy, is it really such a leap that warming the atmosphere is going to push wind around?  It might be crazy cold here, but it's because it's unusually warm somewhere else.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:44, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * But these aren't record low temperatures, just the lowest in nearly a century. "Global Warming" will make very few places colder, but it's called "Climate Change" because the local climate isn't "current climate plus 2 degrees", but an entirely different climate everywhere. Your tundras become boreal forests, your marshlands become arid scrublands, etc.  It's a problem for many, many reasons, not least of which being that what was once ideal farmland is no longer ideal, and famines happen...  05:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ....Correct? It's still because of global warming, are you mad at me or something? Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

My understanding is that the coldest air of the Arctic is in normal circumstances kept up there where it belongs by a strong jet stream. The general trend towards warmer climates makes this jet stream weak and wobbly, which in turn allows irruptions of arctic air south into places where it used not to penetrate. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 06:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm going to need some good citation in order to agree with that one. I don't think this particular case is the result of climate change, it's just weather oddities.  Weather existed long before we started pumping suicidally large quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, and will continue to occur long after we end up accidentally causing our own extinction.  06:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dude, you are pretending to disagree. Why?  You are bad at it.  Double dog dare you to come up with a good citation for why this case is just a weather oddity, you fuckin weirdo.  You can't even global warming denial right.  Do you need me to actually solve your problem, or are you going to keep pretending to disagree with stuff you agree with?  This shit is actually exhausting, do you think that's a good idea?  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 08:47, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * My understanding is the same. The poles warm relatively more than the rest of the planet. This, in some way I must admit I don't understand, weakens the jet stream (AKA circumpolar vortex) which wobbles in its path. These wobbles allow frigid out of the arctic down these wobbles which create extreme cold  weather.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:50, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * For citations, here are some links, including, that say the same thing. It seems like there is a theory that the strength of the polar vortex depends on the temperature differential between the Arctic and temperate areas; as the Arctic warms, the theory goes that these "wobbles" are more likely. Because of the nature of climate change (cold snaps have happened before, confirmation requires large time periods of observations, and climate change is causing relatively speedy changes in Earth climate) I imagine it's hard to say whether this theory is correct or not at this point. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 12:26, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

its quite balmy where i am AMassiveGay (talk) 13:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Me too. I've got 18 C at the moment (Northern Spain). (64.5 °Fahrenheit). But The United States looks like it's suffering.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's nice and warm where I am, at least until I step outside. They told us Hell was warm...  15:54, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's definitely not everywhere in the US either. Currently, the main areas currently lacking power are Virginia / West Virginia around the Appalachian Mountains (root cause: bad ice storm), Oregon around the Cascade Mountains (root cause: bad ice storm), and much of Texas (root cause: unusual cold weather event + "energy independence"). PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hmm... how much of the globe would need to be snowed-over to counteract the effects of all the extra carbon? The extra CO2 in the atmo is apparently the equivalent of 2w per sq meter.  An average of 240w per sq meter of sunlight hits the earth.  Snow reflects 80% of the sunlight hitting it, compared to around 30% for the average surface (which includes snow, but w/e), so we could say that snow reflects about 120w of extra energy per sq meter.  If on any given day an extra 1/60th of the Earth were snowed over due to the climate shifting, that'd counteract the carbon... until it melts and then boom, we are in a hothouse nearly instantly.  17:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We had pretty big snow storm in mid January and another one at the beginning of February. The January one was about 40cm of snow over two days and the February one 15 cm over one. We don't often get that much snow here in southern coast of Finland, but I walked the 3.5 kilometers to work through both and then back home again.
 * Currently it's -15°C out. That used to be fairly common in February when I was a kid (90s), but in recent years this hasn't happened often either. 17:07, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I heard that one of the main issues for the Texas windmills being ineffective in this cold snap was condensation inside of the transformers. I have had my concerns for sloppy rollout of sulfur hexaflouride in countries that really don't regulate well which would make sense.  If you install the infrastructure poorly with cost cutting in mind, anything runs the risk of being ineffective.  I found something but it's not exactly what I heard.  Maybe I heard something wrong.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:46, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So... any chance of new regulations being put in place? As my family joked, "everyone is an anti-regulation Republican until their car spontaneously combusts"  07:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Coronoa been running wild in the NHL
I'm a hockey fan, I like the Washington Capitals, there is a 46 year old man on the ice who is allowed to not have a face shield because when he signed on the NHL it wasn't required, so apparently no face shield needed. He got hit in the face with a puck, thankfully just the cheek. Already had a guy out from getting hit under his shield, I like watching hockey but jiminy, fucking protect yourselves, you maniacs. I like hockey more than I think you are personally a rugged individual. You're more important to the team on the ice healthy than you are if you're concussed. Early in the season, 4 players on the Capitals got tagged by COVID protocols. I almost thought it was dumb, but I was more mad at the players for signing the contracts and not just staying out of each others' hotel rooms. Since then, COVID has been running rampant in the NHL because these guys are in a strange culture where they might shrug off a fight or chat one out casually just so they can have it. The things they do with skates and sticks on ice are undeniably nuts, but the game is changing. People want to watch hockey for the fights, fights don't score goals and are an infinitely worse strategy than deflecting outside shots. The fights happen, but that's not https://www.nhl.com/capitals/video/oshies-slick-deflection-ppg/t-277437440/c-7322961 exactly what's going on in hockey right now. Dissimilar to baseball, which has moved to allow strikeouts in favor of home runs over base hits as the most effective scoring game, this constant shot on goal strategy has made hockey a much more exciting sport than it was 5 years ago. I would be pretty pissed if I was a goalie. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:46, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, COVID seems to be an issue with the players much more than any sport this season. The NHL said they didn't believe on-ice transmission was possible, then they quarantined teams and referees and cancelled games because, whoops, yep, it happened.  Kinda got off my own topic there, my bad.  I mean, is it cool to let these guys play if they say they're ready to play? Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Two things I think hurt hockey more than other sports (though in fairness I follow the NBA closely an they currently are experiencing an outbreak);The amount of equipment and that it's played on ice. Hockey players wear a ton of equipment. I remember watching Pros vs Joes on Spike, and Clyde Drexler had to do a hockey challenge. Took him an hour to get fitted, and he laughed because for the NBA it took him 10 minutes. More equipment means more surfaces for Covid to hang out on. Also means more staff are required to maintain that equipment, so the travel group for NHL teams is larger than the NBA. The cold temp is a little bit more of a stretch, but let me present my logic. Viruses is general are easier to transmit in cold temps because the droplets linger in the air longer. The temp at rink level is below 30 degrees, and those players are bunched together, breathing all over the ice. If someone was asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic, them just breathing on the bench could probably infect everyone around them.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm a Dallas Stars fan. Ironically, my team is in a delay, but not cause of COVID, because of the freezing-ass weather down here in the Dallas area. COVID issues aside though I don't blame the NHL for attempting to get a season done. NHL is the most gate driven league in the United States (though nowhere near as gate driven as the CFL, which would literally never make a profit off of empty stadium games), which is also why some teams like the Stars are allowing fans in attendance. Aaronmichael5 17:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That irony could absolutely be skated on, it's so slick. Sorry, can't risk it, too icy to get to the hockey rink.  And I definitely think people should stay home, but the memes about Texas drivers not being able to drive in winter conditions are kinda cute. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Slate Star Codex Guy doesn't like us
Badmouths Rationalwiki, and is being racist. --Gulik (talk) 20:00, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The page doesn't exist. Seems Twitter mods got to whoever you were linking to rather quickly. Kencolt (talk) 22:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So I'm not doing this to take part in drama (cause drama makes me sneeze violently) but because I want more people to know about this handy place called the Wayback Machine.


 * Anyway, here ya go: Archives for the win! Should you ever encounter a dead URL on your adventures on the internet, copy the URL into the search bar. It's super handy. (Also, if you suspect a source might be zapped later, you can save it from eternal damnation by archiving it, which is also handy!) Regards. - Rairyu75  ( Talk ) 23:26, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Atlantic City Trump Tower collapses
https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1362042038007566337 Amarty (talk) 17:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "Demolished" isn't the same as "Collapsed", but either way, a fitting end to a casino that lost money. It's possible to lose money of course; the real money in the casino is manufacturing the slot machines.  Seriously, each one of those bastards costs $20,000, basically a car, and it's not like "show random pattern, make lots of noise" requires some super-special hardware or programming skill.  The shuffle machines are also something like $5k/each, but without them, the carnival games wouldn't be possible, and those things have pretty fat house edges, much more when the players don't know how to play.  Then the chipper-champs are $20k/each as well, because they allow the players to make crazy bets without requiring a second dealer on the table to muck all the chips or slow the game down too much.  The shuffle-machines for blackjack only barely speed up the game, but prevent the dealers from getting carpal-tunnel from shuffling the cards every 20 minutes when a shoe is done.  Oh well, you know what they say about gold rushes and selling shovels...
 * If you ever want to piss off a roulette dealer...
 * find a full table, almost none of the rest will apply if the table is empty
 * sit at the corner where it's the most difficult to pass you chips when the table is full
 * play value chips on the inside, which can't go into the chipper-champs because the cameras don't see the chips and they can go "missing"
 * also play non-values as well because you are that douche
 * don't tell us you want a different amounts until after we already have the stacks set up and pushed the chips to you
 * ask us to place bets for you, which we do as a courtesy, telling us to give you the 5 and 6, we put both chips on the 5-6 split, and then you demand that the chips go on one number each because it "pays more" when it doesn't; getting $34 and keeping $2 is the same as getting $35 and keeping $1.
 * wait until the ball spins before placing the majority of your bets, and fight with us when we close the bets
 * place your bets in a manner that makes it unclear where a chip lays, and then fight with us over where the chip was when one of the boxes hits
 * always demand the $100 chips as overs so we have to pause the game and wait for the floor to approve it
 * during all this, don't tip of course. It's expected that most players won't tip so we don't get too upset because you being there doesn't hurt us... unless someone else is tipping and you are slowing the game down, in which case you are costing us money.  18:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So I guess you are a roulette dealer? In which case I have a question for you.  I used to have a friend who had the same job.  Obviously he would spend a lot of time spinning a wheel and throwing in a ball to see where it would stop.  But, after doing the job for years, he claimed to be able to "aim" the ball with a certain degree of accuracy so that he could land it on or near certain numbers. Not with a 100 percent certainty obviously but better than chance. I was pretty skeptical and we never carried out a live test in a casino as he was concerned about the possible repercussions for both of us.  But could there have been any truth to his idea? Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:50, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There's 3 things that determine where the ball will drop; the delay until spin, the speed of the spin, and the speed of the wheel. Once a dealer has been dealing long enough, the delay and speed of the spin can become essentially identical, and only the wheel speed varies, and that can be controlled by the dealer as well.  So the dealer could determine where the ball will drop.  But what happens when the ball spins 20 times around the wheel, there's enough slight variation from just things like where the dealer's heart was in its beating cycle that the ball won't always drop in the same area of the wheel.  It's the difference from being able to hit a bullseye with a dart from 10 feet away and 100 feet away, so if the dealer can aim, chances are she (it's usually She) has a relatively slow spin to begin with.  And there's metal studs around the top of the wheel, often she will end up hitting the same vertical stud.  But even if it does drop in the same spot, if the wheel is going at anything faster than a snail crawl, that ball is going to bounce to wherever it wants to land.  14:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks.  though my friend was a "he". :-) Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Rush Limbaugh dead at 70
Fuck him.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:17, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * No thanks, not into necrophilia. 17:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not into coprophilia either. 17:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Good riddance. --Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 17:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Another one bites the dust... Bigwiggler (talk) 17:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I take no pleasure in saying this, but I'm pretty sure that one's been sent to eternal perdition...IveBeenFrank (talk) 18:07, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * He no longer exists, and therefore doesn't know that there's no maker to meet. -- Goatspeed. 19:29, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that if there is The Afterlife, your reward and punishment is the same; you spend eternity with everyone who ever did or ever will exist seeing everything you've done and completely understanding why you did what you did, but at the same time you see everything everyone else did and understanding why they did what they did. There is no carnal pleasure and fluffy clouds or fire and pitchforks, only infinite pride and shame without any of the mental bullshit that we do to shield our egos from the reality of our actions.
 * The other situation is to be reincarnated as the other person you harmed or helped. Everything you have done to others, has or will have been done to you.  Is there a real difference between these scenarios?  Not really.  But the real scary thing?  Each of us will be reincarnated as Rush Limbaugh, or has been him in the past.  So...  19:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Weren't you the guy who wanted evidence for the global warming/circumpolar vortex thing? You seem to be a bit evidence-free on your afterlife beliefs!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:21, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's too bad that he's not the only one doing his awful shtick anymore. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, in 100 years they'll all be dead too. 20:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It was Rush's blather that convinced me modern Republicanism was just a spewy noise machine whose purpose is to distract you. Early '94 I waited breathlessly for the announcement that Vince Foster had been moved from an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton. After all, Rush had said just the day before it was going to happen the next day! Then, of course, it didn't happen. Then it kept not happening. Then it kept not being addressed by Rush or anyone else, ever again. Because by that time, of course, there was some new thing to misinterpret and present in bad faith to America. Once I noticed it, I couldn't help but see it everywhere else it had taken root in the movement (i.e. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverywhere) and saw the whole of the right-wing media system for the cheap little hate-engine it's been for the last 6-7 decades. Semipenultimate (talk) 21:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll take this opportunity, after calling Rush Limbaugh feces, to state that I have a very strict policy of not celebrating anyone's death. The only exception I have is mass murderers/people who committed genocides. In my adult life I can remember celebrating the deaths of Slobodan Milošević, Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il. I probably should have celebrated the death of Idi Amin too, but it just kind of passed by me. As did probably plenty of other worthy candidates for a party. I don't celebrate the death of Limbaugh though. He's not worthy of celebration. 21:37, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So... how would we determine how many people-equivalents Limbaugh has killed? Him being on the radio does nothing directly if you don't listen, but him encouraging his followers to be dicks does result in harm and death even if it is not his hand on the knife.  21:52, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * All I can say, personally, is that the evil he spread will live long after him. Not sure how or if it is even possible to quantify the damage he has done individually. Amarty (talk) 21:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * More people than Lipwig probably.  22:09, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Politics aside, he destroyed AM radio. I remember when AM after dark used to be a magical place, filled with interesting music from distant cities rather than syndicated yiff-yaff.  More than anyone else, Limbaugh was to blame. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 22:08, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just sorry that Limbaugh was ever alive. 23:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I feel for his family. Having to lift that fuck aswell as the box they put him in will be difficult. Evilatheistheathen (talk) 00:07, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not really, to paraphrase Hitchens, they could just give him an enema first and then they could bury him in a matchbox... 00:27, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo Seems appropriate Aloysius the Gaul 03:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Like, I generally don’t celebrate ppl dying, but I’m not sad or sympathetic in the slightest for Rush at all. I feel absolutely nothing about his death. The way I see it, he made the world worse while he was alive, but his death is a neutral thing overall. 05:46, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've zero sympathies for him either. He was a piece of shit in life with no redeeming qualities. Hope they bury him whole instead of cremating him. At least the maggots will have a decent lunch for it. 07:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suppose at the end of the day, even the worst person will eventually give back to the world they helped to worsen. Unless they’re vaporised in a nuclear explosion or w/e ig but still. I know the whole “circle of life” thing is a bit of a cliche, but it is genuinely cool, I think, that some day? The stuff that was once part of someone like Rush Limbaugh, could be part of countless other organisms. That’s just real cool to me idk. 08:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

i generally dont celebrate the deaths of anyone, but my friend just showed me this so yeh, good riddance to the fat prick AMassiveGay (talk) 10:01, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just don't let yourself turn the way that Bill Maher turned. I agreed with him here. I don't agree with him much nowadays.
 * 10:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well I didn't agree with all of what he said even then. 10:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Rush Limbaugh was a bully who thrived on conflict, so who cares? Piss on his grave if you want, it's what he would have wanted anyways. That way he could moan about Evil Grave Pissing Libtards or something in the radio show he'll set up in the If he didn't want people to piss on his grave, he shouldn't have been a bully. At any rate, the devolution of the Republican Party into the cult of QAnon, COVID-19 conspiracy bullshittery, Donald Trump, and the recent lolmeme insurrection shitshow squarely starts with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. (Sure, the type of personality these two courted, the asshole racist jingoist type, has been an American feature for a long time. But "Republicans" used to stand for ideas other than white nationalist grievance. Post Trump, that is no longer the case). PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * https://youtu.be/1qym1lqCP-s.

What Hitchens said about Falwell certainly applies to Limbaugh. DocYankemPrevent Truth Decay!17:31, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft help
Hey everyone. So idk if this is the proper place, but I’ve started writing a draft about pharmaceutical opioids. I think this is an interesting and important topic, as it overlaps with things like drug criminalisation, the opioid epidemic, debates over the efficacy in different medical applications, etc. I would really appreciate if ppl could help with this one! Especially those who know their medicine/chemistry/pharmacology. Thanks so much! 05:36, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * OxyContin cuddly toys! The marketing of OxyContin definitely deserves extensive coverage. You could probably do a big list of all the opiates falsely claimed to be non-addictive. --Annanoon (talk) 15:07, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah for sure! As of rn my planned structure is basically, a brief description of the pharmacology, the history of opioids in medical settings, descriptions of the most frequently prescribed opioids, the dynamics of the recreational market, an analysis of the causes/history/severity of the opioid epidemic + the various responses to it, and of course, harm reduction advice. Obviously the bulk of the article will be about the epidemic. I’m excited to learn more about this stuff but I’m definitely not capable of doing it myself lmao. 17:46, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Drug testing also has an overlap specifically with opioids. Many people use these products while operating commercial motor vehicles, which is extremely dangerous.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 19:38, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So this would heavily involve the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma, I presume? I feel like there should be some background on how the doctors were convinced to over-prescribe everything...  20:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

You know you are lonely when...
You have the uncontrollable urge to give fallacio to a carrot. :( MirrorIrorriM (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Try Bumble or POF. Match if you have money to spend.  Found my current GF on Bumble...  21:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Vlogging also works well for finding partner Neiltyson1fan (talk) 22:07, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * you might get more out of root vegetables with the orifice at the other end. AMassiveGay (talk) 22:25, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would not recommend doing that with food. It turns out that due to the shape, the anus can close around the end of something such as a cucumber and you might not be able to get it back  out.  Anal beads are on a string for this reason, and plugs have that huge flat piece to prevent them from going in all the way.  Stick to toys specially manufactures for the purpose...  22:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Pandemic and sex do not mix well. I started a relationship right before it broke out, so luckily I have had that satiated. Bumble is a great app, it's the way I met most of my sexual partners in the past 3 years, Hinge recently has been good. Just imagine all that pent up sexual energy exploding in August when vaccinations should be nearing 80%.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:39, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I finally found a GF recently. We've been... working on fixing a dysfunction of mine (delayed ejac), but I'm getting there.  22:53, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There's probably a good pun at the intersection of fallacy and fellatio but I'm not clever enough to come up with it-Hastur! (talk) 21:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Fallacio? Oh wait, mirror already got it...  22:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

You're seriously joining an orthodox church and keep going after your doubt kicks in, because you don't want to be alone when you're old and because they're tangentially interested in the same shit you are. Artificius (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Good luck, cosmonaut. My brother had a Catholic wedding, he didn't melt.  You don't have to talk about yourself that way just because you're doing normie shit.  And you don't have to do what you're prepared to do.  Whenever I have a hard choice, I flip a coin.  If it lands on the wrong side, say tails, I argue "but I'd like to fellate the carrot" so obviously that was the wrong flip and I flip it again.  If it lands on heads, I'm like "But isn't that a sad version of me?" and I flip it again and again and again until I at least know why I don't know what to do.  I tend to make very few hard choices based on an actual coin flip, but the unpredictable personal process honestly helps me. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:33, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I used to be in an Orthodox church. I went to 3 actually.  I was kicked out of all 3 churches I went to.  One for being depressed despite "Jebus'Love", the next for being too clingy with my friends, the last for "not fitting in with the congregation".  So fuck em.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

By far the funniest of those "Florida Man" article things I've found
lol only in Florida will you find people who commit such strange crimes as this. Imagine reporting them to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services...-- Goatspeed. 08:17, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "I got locked with a coupla jerks in a Rock 'n' roll toilet. In came Jah to perform his works in the Rock 'n' roll toilet." Bongolian (talk) 20:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Rolling Blackouts in Texas
Oof, we've had rolling blackouts for about 24 hours now across the entire state, and given the current forecast, they could last until at least Friday. This is mostly due to the frozen wind turbines out in west Texas (if you ever get the chance to drive through, it's a spectacular site seeing all those turbines spinning out in the green fields, but do it when they're not frozen and they spin). Two Stars games have already been postponed and a fuckton of businesses have shut down. This is unprecedented. Aaronmichael5 17:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware wind turbines could freeze over like that. Is the local news saying when power should be stabilized?  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It depends on the turbine. Wind turbines can be designed to work in the cold, in harsher weather, or in saltier or more corrosive air, but are a bit costlier or less efficient, so they aren't used everywhere.  Temperatures of -20 don't happen every year in Texas, so it made sense not to spend the extra money.  The real issue is the lack of high or ultra-high voltage lines; with those in place, Texas could've easily imported electricity from the rest of the US even if they couldn't generate it themselves.  18:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are three major "interconnections" (linked synchronized power grids) in the United States: the in the east coast, the  in the west coast... and  Basically, the independence was done to (typical for this state) avoid that gosh darn interfering federal oversight. Such an attitude makes things worse though when a state wide natural disaster happens. It's not just the wind turbines, natural gas pipes have frozen as well. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 18:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Seems clear as well, although the blackouts are effecting everyone in Texas, the most severe blackouts are reserved for low-income areas.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:53, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Got to witness that in DC. There was a power outage for a week in some areas, but the richer neighborhoods were back online after 24 hours.  In fairness, the richer neighborhoods were the ones paying the taxes that got everything repaired, but still, kinda dickish.  19:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Gross, dude. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, welcome to DC, where "E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "Fuck You for Being Poor", apparently. The better option, that's done in most places, would've been to have rolling blackouts instead of just 1 neighborhood at a time.  This might not have been available due to the sheer number of downed lines, but even if that was the case they could've restored power to the most number of people by going for the most densely populated neighborhoods first; heck, if it was about money and there was enough power in the grid, the companies would still target the densely packed neighborhoods first.  The reason for rolling blackouts after a major outage is that with all the buildings being warm, turning on everyone at once will result in every AC unit going full blast and the system failing again, so instead they would give a few hours of electricity at a time to different neighborhoods until enough AC units turn off and everyone can be on the grid without a blackout again.  Otherwise you end up with a bunch of people in crowded apartments with no AC for a week at a time.  I don't know exactly how heat stroke works, but I'd imagine a week straight of no AC in a heatwave would kill a lot more old folks than having a couple hours a day of the AC and then blistering heat the remaining 20 hours for the old folks.  14:51, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * CorruptUser I don't think you understand. It takes a lot of energy to keep our champagne and caviar fridges working and to heat our 4 vehicle garages. What do you expect us to get into freezing cars in the morning and for all our luxury food to go to waste? The poor have lots of extra sweaters and are used to freezing. We aren't! Aren't you liberals supposed to show empathy for those who suffer? Well having warm caviar and a freezing garage IS suffering! Zheesh. Shabi  DOO  17:48, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If the poor need heat, they could just go to prison. But I don't see why I should have to pay for the prisons; it's not as if I, with my political connections and fancy lawyer friends, would ever use those services.  And Champagne?  What am I, some plebe?  My refined palate requires realpain, which is made of the fermented blood, sweat and tears of the middle class.  I could make a few sacrifices and only drink the fermented fermented blood, sweat and tears of the working classes, but not if my sacrifice will go unappreciated!  18:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Be careful with that satire, man. I agree with you, I think it's really stupid that capital equates to priority, and I think it's really something scary when people with capital forget that prioritizing the systems that collect capital actually involves humans.  I get that I was taken by poe, but my dude, doesn't something matter?  Surely "the internet" isn't the best line to arbitrarily draw, it's 2021.  I hope you charged your phone and your pipes aren't frozen and that you bottled some water. I'm not trying to be complicated. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:31, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Who's watched Tim Hawkins
If you've never watched any of Tim Hawkins' stand-ups, you desperately need to. Even though he's a "Christian" comedian, it really doesn't matter what religion (or lack there-of) you hold, the dude is freakin' hilarious. There's plenty of clips of him out on YouTube for anyone who hasn't seen him before: This one right here is one of my favorites, this is absolutely hilarious. Aaronmichael5 02:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I like to watch Dry Bar Comedy sometimes. It's based in a Utah club and the comics are discouraged from swearing or making jokes about anything especially explicit.  It gets a little boring with the "Men are this way, women are this way, husbands you gotta do this and wives you gotta do this, having kids is crazy" routines, but there are some really good sets.  It's fun to hear comedians deliver jokes that don't rely on shock value as a punchline.  Being said, the "This is not Happening" and "Tales from the Trip" series from Comedy Central are also usually pretty good.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:57, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A lot of Tim Hawkins videos are absolutely hilarious. --Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 23:10, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

lockdown is FUCKING AWESOME
Macdonalds deliver so Smarties Mcflurries delivered straight to my door. fuck yeah woooooooo AMassiveGay (talk) 12:31, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Lockdowns not only increased suicide rates and put people to the brim of being expulsed from their homes, but it is also a contributing factor to extremism in America. Lockdowns could even kill more people than covid. &mdash; Unsigned, by: TAOB / talk / contribs
 * fortunately i live in the uk where lockdown has done not that bullshit but has reduced infection rates drastically.
 * its not lockdowns that a contributing factor to extremism in the us either, its how how the previous pres decided to play things and politicised the whole thing thats the contributing factor.
 * and i got smarties mcflurries ad i never even had to change out me jimmy jamsAMassiveGay (talk) 15:26, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * and suicide rates would have to see a massive increase to reach covid numbers of dead. sooo, fuck off? AMassiveGay (talk) 15:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The United Kingdoms ain't so different from the United States. You can put it however you want, but facts don't care about your feelings either way -  https://www.aier.org/article/lockdown-suicide-data-reveal-predictable-tragedy/ and that was 3 years ago, nowadays lockdowns last from weeks to months, the suicide cases probably quadrupled, oh wait -  . As a suggestion, take your chill pills Oxyaena since you are having a conniption fit against Mario and the other cow dude lol.TAOB (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just spitballing here, but maybe it's not just the lockdowns. Maybe it's the downright appalling state of the world? Just a thought. 16:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That argument falls flat when you consider that the world has always been in an appalling state, and yet it just so happens the lockdowns are the ones to increase suicide drastically. Hell, liberals got so mad at Trump in 2016 and yet the suicide rates didn't move by much, lockdowns hurt your psyche that's a fact whether you agree with that or not. There are riots just to stop those lockdowns when none of that happened when masks or the vaccines were made mandatory, lockdowns are a mistake. 2A0B:F4C2:2:0:0:0:0:1 (talk) 16:12, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Can you cite a single credible source about that because I recall that no such thing happened. Worse than that there were protests against the mandatory masks and the covid vaccine, so it is not like they were very keen on any suggestion proposed by medical professionals. I do not think you can cite any, because none of what you said is actually correct. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 16:21, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Firstly I'm not a Liberal, so fuck you. Secondly, when the whole plague thing happened and the leadership at the time played it down (that was in 2020, not 2016), let it run rampant while undercutting lockdown orders multiple times, thusly making the whole fucking affair last longer, wouldn't fucking listen to scientists who fucking study this shit, fucking tanked the economy which was kept propped up through prayers and duplicity, and did everything in their power to avoid actually leading this gods forsaken country and instead focused on spitting out lies and conspiracy theories. MAYBE ALL OF THAT FUCKING SHIT MIGHT CONTRIBUTE TO PEOPLE WANTING TO FUCK DIE RATHER THAN LIVE IN THIS FUCKING WORLD WHICH APPEARS TO BE ACTIVELY TRYING TO FUCKING KILL AND/OR TORTURE THEM!?!!?!? JUST FUCKING MAYBE??!?!?! 16:23, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am surprised TAOB and his millions of IPs are not banned yet. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 16:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

[EC]Loneliness is a major cause of suicide, and there have been rises in depression/suicidal thoughts during both lockdowns. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54616688 There haven’t been many studies into suicide rates, the few that do exist constantly talk about how hard it is to get the data, but I don’t think an increase in suicide as a result of lockdown is so absurd. GrammarCommie, I think I should mention what I said a few days ago in some debate thread, you do get too worked up over these things. Christopher (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

TAOB hasn’t done anything particularly banworthy lately, the Goat Sees thing went nowhere and most of his other edits have been legitimate, thinking lockdowns are bad isn’t a crime. The millions of IPs is a reason we haven’t banned him, he already ignores the vandal bin by editing logged out so if we banned him he’d just do the same thing. It’d only be worth banning him if he started abusing the fact his account is autoconfirmed. Christopher (talk) 16:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm more inclined to think it's "all of the above" with loneliness caused by lockdowns being just one factor. 16:34, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Let's not accuse people of being socks of banned users, that usually doesn't go well. Second, can you at least try to have a good faith argument? With "facts don't care about your feelings" and accusing people of being socks, it seems like this thread's going to become a flamewar. IveBeenFrank (talk) 16:03, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, did you just cite a think tank's opinion section as a source for a psychological and sociological matter? A think tank that called for going herd, something biologists warned was a shit idea that would see the death toll skyrocket? A think tank that cited the "Great Barrington Declaration", a petition of dubious scientific merit? Come on, at least cite fucking data from people who study mental health for a living...  16:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd definitely like to see the source that demonstrates that there have been more "higher than normal" suicides due to COVID lock down than actual COVID deaths. Could you please link that source? In any case, that is a useless statistic. A useful one would be comparing higher than normal suicides vs. the amount of prevented deaths due to the lock down. Such a source would be a lot more useful. Considering just your Northern neighbour which had a lot more severe lockdowns (for longer) and have a gigantically lower level of COVID deaths (per capita) I would argue that the increase in suicides would have to be on the scale of tens of thousands to equal the amount of prevented deaths if there had been no lock down at all (and even higher if the US had strict comprehensive lockdowns). Perhaps the solution isn't to just do a lock down or not but do what several European countries are doing such as creating programs to combat lonliness and stress that result from the lock-down such as the government calling people, having online buddies from your own city to talk with you (a program in Belgium and Germany), free mental health services (part of free health services in many EU countries) and reasonable government support to cover people in financial need (which is a HELL of a lot more generous in these countries than in the US). So...perhaps a shift in American political thinking of mostly leaving people to their own misery and ramping up social programs would help soften the higher levels of suicide due to the US's fairly tame shutdown regulations. Shabi DOO  17:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Evilatheistheathen (talk) 19:21, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A quick Google search shows: no change in Massachusetts (JAMA Network Open), an initial decline followed by an increase in Japan (Nature Human Behavior), an increase among Texas Youth) (source was Pediatrics), and above all a meta paper from the BMJ suggesting a muddy picture (but, often, no change). The data is pretty preliminary, but from my perspective suggesting any sort of correlation at this point seems off; I can pretty much definitively say that "lockdowns could even kill more people than covid" due to suicide is very likely an incorrect assertion. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 19:12, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I feel sorry for AMG who just wanted to be excited about having a treat. X Stickman (talk) 18:30, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And there's no question about lockdown suicide being, I don't know, because of a really bad relationship between capital and human worth? Like, if you can't work to pay your bills, why would suicide increase? Why wouldn't a social safety net take a bigger hit?  Unless you don't actually care about the suicide numbers, and you just want to use them.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 08:57, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess when your country is basically run along the lines of "Look after yourself and fuck everyone else" then I can see how suicide rates might increase in lockdown. Glad it is not like that here - New Zealand pretty much rejected bogus links to lockdown while still trying to do better. Aloysius the Gaul 20:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Magic
OK, so I'm still licking my wounds from my ban, so I'm going to refrain from facetious comments. I was reading about physics and it got me thinking; "If that sci-fi author said that magic is just science we don't understand yet, then is the God particle in fact magic? Is dark matter and dark energy magic?" What do you think? Iron Man (hai) PS: The above is sarcastic, not serious. Also, how would one make antimatter?
 * On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes ( ~ ) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you.
 * You seem to be signing manually. You can change your signature in Special:Preferences. Christopher (talk) 17:43, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Magical_thinking This would be a good starting point. I would guess you're talking about Degrass Tyson, because he does a lot of embassador speak. I can't remember which launch it was, but I had a friend tell me that Bill Nye had no place talking about a rocket launch, he was just a celebrity. It was pretty fresh from his show that flopped after they did a sexuality thing with ice cream, I'm not saying that was very good, but still, it was Bill Nye commenting on the launch, Bill Nye who worked as a mechanical engineer for Boeing.  I don't need Bill Nye to tell me how sexuality works, but, like, it's hard to explain science to people who literally believe magic is a better explanation.  Those are really difficult terms to meet.  Science communicators have an impossible bridge to build, and they get a lot of bad reputation for trying. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 09:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the OP is referring to Arthur C. Clarke's third law, perhaps? Which is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". It more or less correlates with the performance art of magic: there is nothing "otherworldly" about magic tricks, but if you don't know the details one might be fooled into thinking that it was such. (In fact, I think it's not a coincidence that actual performance magicians are some of strongest pushers against charlatans and oogey-boogey exploitation artists -- think The Amazing Randi or Penn and Teller as an example.) I think Clarke was thinking what previous generations would think of some of the modern wonders of today if presented without context; one may see it as magical and otherworldly in nature. A key difference, though, is that (unlike magic, though even this is changing) most modern science is well documented; even though particle physics like the so-called "God particle" (a sensationalized term for the ) is counter-intuitive and baffling in nature, the docs are there. I'm not necessarily going to be able to tell you exactly what happened at, say, a show, and Copperfield ain't going to tell me what happened, either. Whereas a heck of a lot of concepts of, say, an e-Reader can probably be found merely by searching Wikipedia. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 02:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's worth remembering that the reason the is called the "God Particle" is because the people researching it were discouraged from publishing the name they were actually using... the Goddam Particle (so called because goddammit, it was hard to detect). Kencolt (talk) 03:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Texas electricity prices in storm
Just saw a news report where some people showed their electrical bills which had units prices over $3.30 per KwH, and bills for $5000+ dollars. Welcome to capitalism folks! However it seems that some people in Texas aren't up with the cold (sic) hearted "we'd rather freeze than become socialists" approach after all. I know it's probably a bit harsh to condemn the whole state for the we'd rather freeze than accept help attitude of Perry (who's in no danger himself of freezing!) but it's kind of unavoidable!! Aloysius the Gaul 00:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "Rugged individualism" is a such a terrible concept, and it's so pervasive in the US. 00:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The mayor of Colorado, Texas decided he wasn't strong enough to be mayor of a dinky town and resigned after spouting the quiet part out loud regarding Social Darwinism policies in Texas ("only the strong will survive and the weak will perish"). Bongolian (talk) 02:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * $3 a kwh is 20x the normal price. I'm actually surprised it's not more...  04:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that was for certain power companies with more... creative pricing structures, I don't believe that this is the standard in Texas-Hastur! (talk) 04:40, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Texas is a bit unregulated, and somewhat disconnected from the rest of the US. As a result, for the Energy Suppliers/Producers, the prices can be extremely variable, ranging from several thousand dollars to negative thousands of dollars for a MWh depending upon the minute of the day even without the latest storms.  Basically, a plant is producing 900 MW, but people are using what should be 925 MW, so to try and prevent a brownout the price will jump up a bit and the plants will push themselves to work a bit harder.  The plants now produce 950 MW and the consumers now only need 850 MW, this can result in basically the grid being overwhelmed, so the price plummets until the plants shut down.  If the plants refuse (shutting down means they can't be turned back on for a few hours), the price goes to $0.  If the plants still refuse, the price will go negative until someone is forced to shut down.  Electric prices are actually proof of why certain pricing models in commodities are inherently wrong; a lognormal distribution, for instance, will never go to $0, to say nothing of going negative, yet electricity is a commodity which clearly has value but is not strictly positive.
 * Wind power is interesting in that it will produce what it wants to when it wants to, so you need something else to come on line or go offline as need be. Solar is the reverse, in that you know more or less exactly how much will be produced in a day, so you can plan around it better.  Perfectly complementing wind and solar (and everything else, really) is Hydro, which has the best response times of any power source, and the reservoir effectively acts as a huge battery.  Depending on the location, Hydro can even go in reverse, consuming excess power to pump water back up to be turned into electricity later.  Texas has a few hydro plants, so, yay.  Next is natural gas.  Gas has decent response times, so can work well with wind, and is typically the power source that goes on or off depending upon the electric prices.  But then there's coal, oil and nuclear.  These plants are used for baseload, as they can produce a crapton of power, but have terrible response times.  They take many hours to turn on or off, and can't respond to sudden changes to electric use.  Generally, power use will be predicted in advance, and the plants will try to match to what is going to be needed throughout the day, but what's projected and what actually occurs are rarely the same thing.  Even if the prices rise or dip too much, the plants won't change their plans too much, and will just keep on producing what they think they will need, and someone else has to go on or off.  Thus the gas plants and hydro-dams.  05:43, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Nazi KZ guard deported to Germany from Tennessee
Comparing Tennessee to Germany and throwing COVID into the mix, I actually think this guy's life expectancy will be much higher in a German prison. Story here. 00:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree, American health care system is a mess, but maybe under Biden, it might become better. Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 10:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Had a little history lesson today
https://www.creepypasta.com/the-russian-sleep-experiment/

Russian Sleep Experiment. Had two guys swearing it was real and trading off giving facts about it, I had never heard of it before. They showed everyone pictures of the victims of this sleep experiment, I said "Well, it looks like sleep deprivation wouldn't be the only factor here, were they given something to keep them awake?" And the answer was "Yes, they were gassed to keep them up" and I said "Did they consent, or is this like, Russia being bad?" "they were war prisoners." "As soon as they fell asleep they died" Another guy and I joked that 15 days sounded like pussy shit, and one guy said "Haven't you seen the youtubers who count to a million?  They get to a million and then immediately pass out." I didn't watch it myself, I was on the other side of the floor, but my other jokester said "Don't you think they are probably acting?" and the response was "no, look. 400 hours, they did this for 400 hours to count to a million"  So I did a little sneaky calculator division and shouted "400 hours is over 16 days." Then I just looked it all up and said "It's creepypasta, the fuck are you guys doing? It's creepypasta."

I also claimed that Bob Barker was dead later today, I was told I was wrong and I was like "I dunno, man." Then I looked it up, Bob Barker is alive. When somebody asked if I was thinking of "um, that guy, you know... that guy" I said "no, I was not thinking of Alex Trebek, I was just wrong about Bob Barker.  I could have sworn I watched Bob Barker die." So I don't know where I got that from, apparently and factually Bob Barker is NOT dead, and you know what? Good on him. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:41, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know that it's a real thing, but it fits in with my pre-conceived ideas about what "Russia" is so it must be true. Snark aside, Russia did a lot of experiments like this (as did the US), and, well, forcing people to stay up for two weeks to see what happens is something that does provide some interesting data on what goes wrong in the brain when that happens.  If someone dies, well, then you get to dissect their brain to see what exactly killed them.  It's possible that information would let you alter the human brain in some way, via drugs or surgery or something else, that could let someone get by with just 4 hours of sleep a night instead of the recommended 8.  05:57, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * But that's the point, it's not outside of the realm of fear or reality. We know that sleep deprivation is a torture tactic.  We know that giving vulnerable people syphilis to study is a thing.  This sleep experiment is not a thing that actually happened. It's important that this is patently false, because it is not read that way.  The Russian Sleep Experiment is a work of fiction that was, ironically, extremely well fabricated to prey on fears and distrust.  It is designed to make you feel uncomfortable. It's not anyone's fault if, at face value, it feels plausible.  That's why it is a popular pasta, because it's actually pretty good fiction in a world of really poor attempts at fiction. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:12, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have shared feelings on this subject. I remember a creepypasta from a decade ago that was called "Hatebook", the whole creepypasta summed up was: A guy finds a website called Hatebook on the dark net and it shows profiles of Facebook users, he decided to try out the website for himself, he looked through the Facebook profile of his girlfriend from the website. Now, that's where my memory is foggy, I think he then selected an option to geolocate his girlfriend and then a dot appears on a map showing where she's at and a second dot appears right after and it slowly closes in his girlfriend's location. When the pair of dots finally collide, the guy receives a mail with a picture of his girlfriend dead and is asked to pay the guy who murdered her, but he refuses, so now his location is pinpointed on the website and the creepypasta ends with the man saying that he locked himself up somewhere just to finish writing about his experience and how so dangerous the dark net is. If this is still too long for some people, I abbreviated it further: Some guy accidentally hires a hitman to kill his girlfriend, then when that hitman didn't get his pay the guy was now his target. I do not know why, but I feel as though this creepypasta could be half-real because there are websites dedicated to purchasing weapons, explosives and hydrochloric acid on the dark net. Or, if you prefer, you have websites that teach you how to commit arson or murder and not get caught. All the nasty shit is on the dark net, so why wouldn't there be a website where you can hire brutes to kill whoever you want in exchange of bitcoins too. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 18:33, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you are referring to Tuskegee, that's not how it went down. No one was deliberately infected with syphilis, rather, they had it and the doctors refused to inform the patients about it so the patients infected their loved ones, and then when penicillin was found it was withheld.  It's interesting to look at why the experiment was started, and why it didn't end immediately after the discovery of antibiotics.
 * To give some background, syphilis was curable at the time, but the "cure" involved infecting the patient with malaria to cook them from the inside out, then curing the malaria. A quirk about malaria is that a lot of Black people are immune, so that cure was unavailable. So a treatment that'd work for Black people would be extremely useful, and there's that whole adage about omelettes and eggs.  Of course, it's preferably Someone Else's eggs, and don't ask where the omelette is.  The study starts, the patients receive free medical care (except for a cure, obviously), and everything is being recorded.  In the meantime, the whole "withholding info" thing, and spouses and others are infected.  But, that omelette will taste so great, eventually!
 * Then antibiotics become a thing.
 * So now there's several problems. There is no omelette and obviously never will be one.  The experiment would need to shut down, but revealing the experiment would lead to some really pissed off people.  Additionally, ending the experiment would result in the budget being eliminated and a number of jobs with the budget, and something as nasty as this thing would make it hard for anyone involved to get a new job.  Have you ever done something bad, and rather than own up to it, you keep avoiding it and the problem just gets worse and worse?  This was the government version of that.  Everyone involved just kept the experiment going, resulting in more and more people infected, and the more people that suffered the more important it was for those involved to keep anyone else from finding out.  And, well, you know the rest.  06:52, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * interestingly, horrific, but interestingly, the american led (even one of the drs involved with the tuskegee experiment was in charge) Guatemala syphilis experiments did involve deliberately infecting people without their consent. AMassiveGay (talk) 02:14, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

It's just a horror story at least according to Snopes.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:57, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You're right, "giving vulnerable people syphilis to study" was the wrong way to start a conversation about the Tuskegee experiments. The doctors that knew full well what their subjects would transmit and watched them do it were probably comfortable eugenicists.  I didn't pull facts when I said it, that's my fault.  I wasn't talking about that, but that's ok, I was talking about the vulnerability to buy into this specific fictional horror story and how it can sound real. Thanks for the info on the Tuskeegee, I obviously didn't know why I was using it as an exampl., People being justifiably scared by pure fiction presented as truth does have roots, and let's go, let's describe the real stuff, thank you.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:52, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh my Goat I read that story and it was so gruesome! -- Goatspeed. 07:22, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Palestinian elections: Undoing of Palestine?
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/elections-palestine-prelude-or-ploy-178552

Yes I support a Two State solution to the conflict but due to both the authoritarian policies of PA President Abbas and the fragmentation of the Palestinian state, these elections don't seem to be a very viable option to peace. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 23:55, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * That's the whole problem - the PA leadership's motto is basically "keep power, fool the people and send them to die in jihad". And with that wingnut Netanyahu elected on the other side, the possibility for peace is slim. But Netanyahu might be kicked out in the next election, so who knows? If the Israeli leadership returns to its usual willingness to talk (i.e. Netanyahu out), and Arab nations slowly continue recognizing Israel, then the PA might be forced to come around to reality and offer peace. Meow Purr 02:13, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The only way to get rid of Netanyahu is when he get convincted of corruption. He‘s still leading in polls. Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 11:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The Arabs had a chance to kick Bibi out of power in 2015 by joining a coalition with his opponents, but instead chose to abstain. I don't have much hope they'll do the right thing. 2604:6000:FFC0:54:29A7:D02D:339:5EF0 (talk) 20:50, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

He died the way he lived
Bloated and full of opiates. Evilatheistheathen (talk) 00:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey so this isn’t really addressed at u specifically, but like. I would like to politely ask that ppl not shit on Rush for his opioid use/abuse/addiction. Not bc I think it’s bad to mock or disrespect him, but bc I’m personally an addict with some real bad opiate experiences, and it kinda feels like these sorts of comments can imply on some level that addiction is morally wrong and/or worthy of mockery. And I get that’s usually not how it’s intended, but it still makes me kinda uncomfortable. Like, Rush was a reprehensible person who did reprehensible things, but struggling with addiction isn’t one of those things imo. But I don’t know, that’s just my personal vibe. Others may feel differently and that’s fine, like I’m not gonna get mad about it or w/e. Just thought I should say my personal feelings. 08:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I sympathize with people with any sort of substance abuse problems either currently or back in history. I don't particularly sympathize with Limbaugh on that though, since he was a massive hypocrite who advocated harsh anti-drug policies and imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders for life. At least when those drug users were black. Maybe we shouldn't mock him for the drug use itself, but he deserves to be forever mocked for the rank hypocrisy. 09:18, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that, especially because of his hypocrisy irt other addicts, he’s not worthy of any particular sympathy for his drug shit. However, I think that, when mocking his hypocrisy, it’s probably better to focus on the terrible things he said about other addicts, rather than the fact he was an addict, if that makes sense? Sorta like. Instead of going “lmao u fuckin opiate addict”, being like, “funny how this fucked up thing he said apparently doesn’t apply to him”. Idk if that makes sense, but yea. Basically I just think it’s better to emphasise the shitty things he said about drug users rather than his drug use. 09:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree Asela. Mocking Limbaugh on his hypocrisy would be punching up. Mocking him on his drug abuse per se would be punching down on people with substance abuse problems. 10:47, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * My (unsolicited) opinion: I can understand drug use on the part of people who face injustice and oppression on the daily. I don't think it's necessarily helpful on the long term, but I can certainly understand and empathise. I have a less sympathetic view on those who are not thus oppressed, AND call for the criminalisation of drug use. As someone who's not even from an anglophone country but somehow decided to subject herself to his ramblings from time to time, I think he's fair game. I don't think we need to empathise too much. I hope I haven't offended anyone here, but please understand you're nothing like that t*rdblossom. UninspiringNickname (talk) 11:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I need to be oppressed to to have my alcohol use understood?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure you're addressing me because I'm just a newbie that totally lacks wiki-fu, so feel free to chastise me if that's not the case ; but, in case you are, I'd just like to expand on my position. I meant no offense, and I hope you didn't feel offended. "White cishet men" (yep, I just assumed a ton there) can be oppressed too, and I say this without any sarcasm. It's neither impossible nor improbable. Yes, you can use alcohol, and I'm not passing judgement on that. And I never will, unless you pass judgement/try to restrict others who use alcohol. At most, I will be concerned for your liver, a feeling that is NOT born out of paternalist pretentions. Of course, you can also tell me my usage of... veggie oxo cubes... is irrational and damaging to my health, even if I have a suprarrenal condition that makes me very predisposed to abuse salt. In any case, screw Limbaugh :-) UninspiringNickname (talk) 19:45, 23 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The kind of oppression we're talking about here is an inside thing. It can't be ruled out by the criteria of race, sex, or social status.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 16:21, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Side note, is the next generation only capable of seeing things through the lens of "oppression"? That just seems... odd, especially considering that 1) men are more likely to abuse drugs than women, and 2) white kids seem to be more likely to abuse drugs than black kids.  Which, oddly enough, goes with Limbaugh's assertion that white males are the most oppressed Demo in society...
 * As for "punching up" and "punching down";
 * Fuck that shit
 * Punch whoever deserves to be punched, regardless of whether they are above or below you. It's only more satisfying to punch up because when they deserve to be punched, they really deserve to be punched.  19:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Generally, I agree with the sentiment of not specifically targeting his drug abuse. However, it is all part of the larger thing that made him such a reprehensible person. While mocking others struggles, he himself openly abused a system that benefited him. I disagree vehemently with your statement that white kids abuse drugs more than others. They abuse them because they have more access to them. Black and brown communities have less access to drugs because doctors still believe Black and brown experience pain differently than black people and under prescribe drugs, especially pain killers. I experienced this with my own mother when she had cancer. She complained about pain, doctors didn't believe her, and her pancreatic cancer went un-treated. Then, she couldn't get access pain killers until she was literally bed ridden with pain and died days after. There are hundreds of horror stories about situations just like this. Limbaugh also openly mocked gay people who died of AIDS, another disease where pain often goes untreated in Black and brown communities. He was a privileged asshole, and I hope the opiods he was taking didn't help him at all.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 19:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The reasons are always the most interesting thing, but my point is that "oppression", which I'm assuming the prior poster means "racial and/or sexual bigotry", is not what's causing drug use. More importantly, in spite of the stereotypes, black people are the least likely to be on illicit drugs.
 * The study I looked at was of college-aged kids, which don't strike me as being the group most likely to have cancer and other illnesses that would require opioids, though obviously, it does happen.
 * Here's another link
 * And another! 19:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Generally, the "oppression" that comes with pharmacological drugs comes not with usage patterns (which contrary to stereotype affect wide ranges of income, age, and race), but with punitive patterns (which, to be frank, has been over the past several decades). Limbaugh is a perfect example for "white guy gets lax punishment for illegal drug misdeeds" -- getting a slap on the wrist for purchasing over 2,000 painkillers in six months, *and* getting caught with Viagra not prescribed in his name to boot. So the "oppression" angle actually works, but not in the way the OP thought. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 20:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Just watched Perseverance land on Mars
-- Goatspeed. 20:52, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Now you just to add in this soundtrack...
 * Also I vote that all accidents be referred to as "non-scheduled lithobreaking". 21:15, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Rather crazy how we have a chunk of metal landing on some foreign planet--mind boggling. Moria .   01:22, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We've done that multiple times before though. A few of those times, we had people in those metal chunks, but for some reason, we don't put people in them anymore, and that makes me sad.  03:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I really hope I live to see the day Mars gets terraformed. Unlikely but who knows. Aaronmichael5 03:25, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You won't. To terraform Mars, first you'd need to create a magnetosphere so that the atmo doesn't get sandblasted away by solar radiation.  In effect, you'd need to basically create a space station in stationary orbit between Mars and the Sun that'd be creating a massive magnetic field, which would devour 40 tons of uranium per year.  So, doable, if you have the budget.  From there, however, you'd need to add gas and water, and that's the tough part.  Using asteroids would require adding immense amount of energy to shift their orbit to collide with Mars requires enormous amounts of energy, a delta-v of something like 1-2 KM/s.  Or in other words, the amount of energy needed to effectively fire all of the mass we needed out of really powerful guns.  Imagine the energy needed to shoot enough bullets to fill a small lake with lead.  That's the energy needed for just ONE lake with the same mass of those bullets on Mars using asteroids from the belt.  If we were to try to strip any planet for gases and liquids, even just the moons of gas giants, well, now we have gravity wells to deal with, and our energy requirements go up immensely.  04:35, 23 February 2021 (UTC)Heat.
 * @Cory You forgot that Mars consistently outgasses significant amounts of CO2 and water vapor from its soil, and will continue to do so for millenia. The outgassing rate is fast enough that if it did have earth's magnetic field, it would have roughly half of earth's atmospheric pressure in a mere century.  You still wouldn't live to see it but it makes it far more doable.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 13:13, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I... don't think that's the case. Earth's atmosphere is 5,500,000,000,000,000 tons, or 1 millionth the total mass, and I don't get the impression that Mars loses the equivalent of its own mass to solar wind every 300 million years or however long the math says that it'd be.  I read somewhere else that if we were to convert all the carbonate and other materials on Mars and its surrounding moons into an atmosphere, Mars would have an atmosphere about 6% as dense as Earth's.  For reference, the Death Zone for climbers is around 35% of Earth's surface pressure.  I don't know if the Death Zone would change all that much if the atmosphere was pure oxygen, but I get the impression that it would still be deadly.  14:00, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

2022 US Senate Elections are coming
Be sure to vote out the politicians who acquitted Trump. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 20:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You mean the ones who represent states that either overwhelmingly voted trump or at best narrowly voted Biden? Those are the states you expect to hate trump so much that failure to convict him is a priority to them?  Anything else aside, talking about trump in 2022 will be treated by dimwitted swing voters as "failing to take responsibility" for all the bad things coming in the next year and a half.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I hear the GOP has a "Plan B" for if Joe Biden manages to use the fact that his administration probably would have successfully distributed 'Rona vaccines to protect the Democratic seats in Georgia and Arizona and flip Pennsylvania's- that involves targeting states like Illinois and Colorado where the Dems have like, a 100 percent chance of victory as counterweight. -- Goatspeed. 20:43, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we are ignoring the house, which is equally important and far more ominous. Republicans actually gained house seats last year. Given how midterm elections usually go against the governing party, a GOP-controlled house is actually fairly likely.-Flandres (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are grounds for concern about the house. However, the one hundred forty-seven ronin who voted to overturn the POTUS election may find their own shit too slippery to skate through. Hard to tell, because D's can be politically inept enough to run progressives in conservative districts. UncleKrampus (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Not to mention that the Dems will probably run endless attack ads against the GOP congresspeople who voted against certification and/or who voted to not remove Marjorie Taylor-Greene (Q-GA) from her committee chair and censure her. -- Goatspeed. 21:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Before you get all triumphalist, remember 2008-2010. Conservative voters don't magically stop being conservative, and they will refocus on other issues over the course of 2 years. This tendency to write off the GOP is...complacent. Foolishly complacent.-Flandres (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Well yes, obviously; those ads rarely do change anyone's mind about either candidate. -- Goatspeed. 21:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Since WWII the out-party has gained an average of 27 seats during midterm elections. Looks good for the Rs in 2022 (tell your friends). 538 loves to point that out. What they omit pointing out is there are exceptional elections, like the midterm in 1978, after Nixon's aborted second term. The Rs picked up two seats in that general election. If Trump were running against Nixon (or, since he's dead, someone like Nixon) I'd vote for Nixon with a smile on my face.UncleKrampus (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The Democrats lost house seats when they got historically high turn out, Trump was in office and dominating headlines everyday presiding over something arguably as catastrophic as the great depression. Assuming we are on the cusp of some New deal coalition-esque era of Democratic dominance because Trump was really bad is just not borne out by the facts.-Flandres (talk) 23:01, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * True. But they are unadjusted, pre-January 6th facts. Six of those flips were in blue states, CA, NM and NY. Let's see if they can keep them.UncleKrampus (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Blue state does not mean blue district. Do you not know about the whole "urban/rural divide" thing? Many districts within deep blue states are deep red...but the population of a few large cities can weigh them out in other elections (governor, senator, president...not house).-Flandres (talk) 23:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I did not make a prediction, only pointed out the odds are not entirely unfavorable. We won't place our bets till next year. UncleKrampus (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Considering that seats in Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio will be up in 2024, it's important that Dems can expand their majority in 2022, so they don't lose it in 2024. Plutocow (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Because 436 seats are up for election every two years, there is way more statistical data. 2002 was the last time the party in WH gained seats in the House. And although they lost the super-majority in 2010, Democrats maintained control of the senate until 2014. In terms of turnout, Democrats generally benefit from high turnout, but had serious losses down ballot. I think you'll find there were a lot of ticket splitter, Republicans that voted for Biden, but the GOP down ballot. The events of 1/6 I think hurt the GOP down ballot more. The one election we had post-Trump, the GA run-off, was defined by GOP not showing up because Trump wasn't on the ballot. But it's way too early to honestly dive into this, only hardened politicos are this interested, most Americans won't start paying attention until August 2022.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:44, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

elections are coming in nov 2022. that like the best part of two years and pres fuck face has only been gone 5 minutes. i know the pres elections is an insane two years of campaigning, but is it two years of the same for senate elections too? is there no respite for electioneering in us politics or is the op just a little too eager, even for us? jesus christ, if they not, and you cant let the dust settle, no break from yah boo poltics its no wonder its all so polarised over there (on top of everything else). every years is an election year of some kind it seems. do politicians over do actually do any work beyond campaigning or is that not lucrative enough? AMassiveGay (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey this year but neither will likely be too competitive. It's important people pay attention to these things, otherwise we end up with massive GOP sweeps like in 2010 and 2014. Plutocow (talk) 00:58, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * No American politicians never stop campaigning as they heavily reply on corporate donations. The supreme court wouldn't allow limits on corporate donations per an extremely overly broad interpretation of the 1st amendment. This has basically doomed America to lobby driven politics until a new amendment is passed (which is insanely unlikely any time this half of the century). How could they not be forever campaigning/fundraising? Shabi  DOO  01:38, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thing that I think would really help American democracy:
 * Limits on the amount of money can be raised privately, force all candidates to use campaign accounts that are funded by tax-payers and tied to the specific area they are running for elections.
 * Two-decade term limits. (10 terms in the House, 3 in the Senate)
 * Two-decade ban on family members running for Federal office. (End family political dynasties)
 * Snap elections.
 * -RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:53, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, maybe we should move away from first past the post as a voting system.-Flandres (talk) 03:30, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Can we get some Fs for Daft Punk?
I never would've thought that 2 robots would make an album so human in my lifetime. "Get Lucky" was a decent track, but the other tracks within Random Access Memories had torn my heart and stitched it back together. So long and thanks for all the fish you magnificent bastards. Rockford the Roe (talk) 14:13, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Be sure to say which is your favorite version...  14:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * get lucky is pop gold but random access memories can fucking do one.
 * giorgio by moroder specifically can do one. tis great chilled out sounds to enhance the mood for some intimate liasons, at least until giorgio pops in a for jarring mood killing chat. goddamn fucking boner killer. its like a violating invasion privacy. fuck off giorgio, was a little busy getting it on, do not really wanna chat right now and you didnt even knock.
 * ok only happened the once but just fucking do one. its a hate crime is what it is. never forget AMassiveGay (talk) 15:22, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like my complaint about rap in pop songs. They make a tolerable pop song, then insert a rapper when no one asked for one.  It becomes more jarring when it's a female pop singer with a smooth voice and the rapper sounds like freshly crushed gravel.  For example, the song on the radio Monsters (with or without Demi Levato) has a rap portion, but the rapper is interrupting a group of guys and the rapper doesn't sound too harsh and arguably fits in with the song so it's actually an ok portion of it.  Then there's the Duo Lipa song Levitating, which is "good enough" as far as pop songs go, but I just internally scream whenever it goes from Lipa to the most godawful rapping I've heard.  Even without the shittastic voice, it's just the guy bragging.  Why?  Just, why do you have to ruin a song?
 * I feel like there's a more sinister financial reason than the obvious. When a song does a crossover with a second artist, on the surface it's so the record label can get more exposure for the second artist and hopefully sell more albums.  But who the fuck listens to a Katy Perry song and hardcore rap?  No one.  No one does.  No sales are generated by having a gangsta-rapper on a Katy Perry song.  Instead, I think it comes to royalties.  Katy Perry likely has some sort of deal where she gets 50% of the royalties from all the songs.  But if the song is with the rapper Schitt-Stain, she has to split those royalties, even if the other person is shit or even if their portion of the song is cut for the radio.  So now Ms Perry and Mr Stain both get 25% of the royalties.  Except Mr Stain has some awful deal with the record company where 99% of his royalties... go back to the record company.  So in effect, the record company forces Katy Perry to give up half of her money and the rest of us have to deal with worse songs.  Ugh.  16:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * nah its not jarring like some attempts to put rap into songs where it dont fit (all pop these days some element in the tune or beat thats a little hip hoppy - if it dont fit they just phoned it in) - that has at least some rhythm to it, still recognisably music. not just some guy just chatting away. im sure daft punk are big fans of giorgio moroder, but im pretty sure its not it his witty banter they are fans of. sorry but im not gonna just listen to an album and just sit quietly appreciating its little quirks. gonna be doing other things. with other people. in this case naked things. daft punk knew what they were doing. shake things up. make sure you paying attention and only to them. something to make you look up from what you doing. so fucking needy. fuck you daft punk, i can multi task. get lucky is all about getting lucky and i was till giorgio had to tell us he slept in his car for bit. they knew what they were doing. put his stride they thought. bastards. i paid cash money for them cockblocking me. worse. than. hitler. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:49, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Giorgio is my f*cking sh*t. I can literally never skip it. Don't mind him coming in as much, it's like a reminder I listening to a song and not tripping my balls off.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:55, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Daft Punk have been around for a long time. They emerged during the "golden age of techno" in the mid 1990s. Early onward, Daft Punk back then was one of the pioneers (but not the only one) doing a style called, where the meat of the track is provided by a filtered loop of some 1970s song, usually funk, rare groove, or disco. (See "Daft Punk - Musique", one of their first big hits, which sampled Dan Hartman's 1978 disco song "Instant Replay".) Random Access Memories seemed to allow them to indulge a bit in their 1970s music fascination in a more organic way than sampling (a bit closer to the house/disco hybrid style that also emerged in the mid 1990s, but with more varied 1970s influences than just dance). I found it most excellent. Pity they only had one album in them in that style. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 01:07, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I hardly got started with daft punk. I only got into their music a year ago and I eventually switched back to deadmau5, but all I can really say is that the news was shocking at first. But then I remembered they haven't made an album themselves in ages, and it made more sense. If you are lurking here and have no idea what we're talking about here's a courtesy update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc
 * Man... hate the fact seeing an alive 20XX ever is now just impossible. 104.225.183.70 (talk) 20:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Still the most ridiculously forced rap break I've ever heard in a song was I Want Your Hands On Me (not my usual style of music, but I can appreciate Sinead O'Connor), which mercifully has a version without it. MC Lyte's voice (and, in the music video, look) is completely different from O'Connor's, and with the style of music it makes absolutely no sense. Honestly, it's like something out of Monty Python; two minutes in, "and now for something completely different". The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 00:11, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

BREAKING NEWS
New evidence suggests that Trump has most definitely colluded...

...with the United States government. Unclescrooge (talk) 01:19, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Extremists are mentally challenged
As mentioned in the WIGO, extremists often are less capable of mentally complex tasks. I kind of get it, trying to understand the whole situation can be taxing, and extremist views are simple views. So I guess my question becomes, what are the implications for policy-makers? 15:14, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Weren't the majority of Taliban suicide bombers in the early naughts engineers? Seems like extremism is much more connected to financial situation and perceived loss of status than mental acuity.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:40, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Without reading the study, I doubt they accounted for education level, I imagine it would help with the tasks. It’s correlated with status/financial situation as you say, plus you have the “right” ideas drilled into you for longer the more educated you are. Christopher (talk) 16:47, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Being "smart" doesn't mean you are "smart" in everything. It's possible to be a genius when it comes to mechanical stuff but find social interactions too difficult to handle, or not understand that the world doesn't work in a neat system with strict rules the way physics does.  Extremism does allow people to view the world in very simplified, strict rules and procedures.  "People are strictly Good or Bad, people who follow our system of belief are Good, ergo everyone else must be Bad."  "People can only obtain wealth through exploitation of labor, other ways of obtaining wealth are impossible, ergo all Rich people are Bad and it's no loss to society to get rid of them."  "Hard work and talent always result in success, therefore Poor people must be lazy idiots and we should prevent them from breeding."  "My ethnic group produces more than your ethnic group, anything suggesting otherwise would contradict me therefore it's wrong, and my racism isn't a bad thing because it's actually Race Realism."  16:53, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you have a maths degree, you’d do better at most “complex tasks” these sort of tests would give you, they’re not asking you to navigate a complex social situation. How much of that is innate and how much is training is another matter, but not really relevant here.


 * Most people have some simple ideas that form the basis of what we believe in, you notice it more with extremists because their simple ideas are different to yours. Do you believe people should be kind to each other? Do you believe in law and order? Most non-extremists do, or claim to. Although many more liberal ones might say be uncomfortable with “law and order” because cops are racist, they’d be the first to oppose the Capitol Hill protests.


 * I wouldn’t call a conspiracy theory like Qanon simple. Christopher (talk) 17:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It uses several rolls of Occam's Duct Tape, but at its core it's simple; there's a group of evil pedophiles that control the world, and the only one who can stop them is a guy who used to "grab them by the pussy". 17:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Like I said, everything is simple at its core. Christopher (talk) 17:45, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've viewed 'people that adhere to a specific ideology as gospel' as being simple-minded for a while now, so it's nice that this study meshes with my already-established biases :P. 18:10, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding QAnon, complexity does not imply coherency. A random pile of muck might be complex in some sense (GIGO) but one does not tend to marvel at its complexity but rather at what a godawful mess it is. For QAnon, just taking the first arbitrary example from the map that I just now looked at, we have a bidirectional arrow between Aleister Crowley and Barbara Bush. The claim was that Bush was the daughter of Crowley, which is both preposterous and irrelevant to anything even if true. Bongolian (talk) 18:35, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Headline about paper: "extremists" worse at cognitive tasks. Data in paper: Religosity, social conservatism, economic conservatism, nationalism, patriotism, dogmatism associated with worse performance, especially at the extremes.  Again and again, we're seeing language about the danger of "extremists" and "political division" in the news, and it's always in these totally inaccurate non-partisan form.  I'm actually very troubled at that trend given the pitch since the capital invasion to turn anti-terror tactics on extremists.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah the Guardian's headline authors need to be slapped with a reminder that headlines shouldn't be clickbait. The study is pretty interesting however. As for as to how this would guide policy... frankly I don't see what it should affect? IQ as a measure is more designed to determine if someone is under or overpreforming in a Western school system, doing stuff with it to guide policy is about as braindead as thinking it is a measure of intelligence (yes that is a dunk on high IQ societies like Mensa).
 * Beyond that obvious one, we don't have solid determinations of intelligence. If I would suggest anything, it would be to invest more in the education system teaching people about society (pay teachers better in the US!) so that even those who take a bit longer to see past black and white mindsets are able to form a coherent opinion on how society could be formed. 22:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm obligated by a grudging sense of duty and a knowledge of human behavior to once again remind everyone that extremism and radicalism are not de facto bad. 22:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll bite, but before we do, can we define "extremism" somehow? For instance, is it defined in terms of how many people would find such a position acceptable in polite company?  23:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not really starting a debate, I'm just dropping by with a reminder. 23:18, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It all depends on your definitions of things. I'm with you on the radicalism front (as in I don't have a problem with radical feminism. But extremism, at least within an open society, at least as defined as a fanatical political or religious view...well...I cannot think of any extremist movements (in an open society) at the moment which are praiseworthy. If you have a broader definition or blur the difference between radicalism and extremism...then yeah...then they would not be by default wrong. Depends on the definition. Shabi  DOO  00:11, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, extremist and radical are terms essentially defined by whatever the speaker deems "normal" or "reasonable." Coming to a truly uniform definition would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.-Flandres (talk) 00:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Subjective, but not impossible. "Radical" could mean "advocating an ideology that'd bring a fundamentally large change in the way society is organized".  "Extreme" could mean "in support of your ideology, advocating actively harming, killing or excluding members of society who are not themselves actively harming others".  There's a bit of overlap, and the lines are blurry, but there are lines.  Advocating that we replace all pronouns with "They/Them/Theirs" to "abolish gender" is Radical as it's a major change in our language structure (and as shown in the documentary 1984, controlling how we speak affects how we think), but not Extremist as it's not causing serious harm or excluding others.  Advocating that we beat up people who use pronouns other than "They/Them/Thiers" is Extreme and Radical as it's both harming people and changing society.  Advocating that we beat up anyone who goes by non-traditional pronouns is Extremist as it's harming others, but not radical as it's not causing a fundamental shift in society.  Advocating that we let people call themselves by whatever pronouns they want but not forcing others to adhere to memorize an entire new set of pronouns nor remember who gets what pronoun is neither radical nor extreme, as you aren't advocating we harm anyone nor are you proposing a huge change to how society functions.  So you can be an Extremist but not particularly Radical, or Radical but not particularly Extreme.
 * Under such definitions, "Radicals" could possibly be a good thing depending on what they advocate, though of course if most people agreed with them, "Radicals" wouldn't actually be Radical. "Extremists", however, would be universally bad.  I don't think I can even come up with a scenario where harming those who aren't themselves harming others would ever be justified.  03:37, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * For this one, I went with the definition of extremism the article provides, which I personally would see as a bad thing. Specifically, it defines extremism as adhering to beliefs in a way that helps simplify the understanding of the world in easy black and white. QAnon was mentioned in this thread, which provides a pretty good example. QAnon people believe that Trump and other QAnon followers are "good" and people who don't follow QAnon are "bad". The same can of course be reasoned for various strains of mainstream religion (Catholics: Good is adherents to the teachings of the bible, Bad is anyone who doesn't). The reality of the matter is of course that the question of "is this person good" or "is this person bad" rarely if ever has a straight answer. I certainly know people who I would see as bad, but... nobody is the villain of their own story (barring the exception of someone whose mental health problems are causing them to have a warped view of themselves). Even in their own deluded ways, even the worst people see themselves as the good guys. It doesn't suprise me as a result in the slightest that people who find it easier to understand the world in general in simple black and white terms would track this through in their political beliefs, which would make them extremist beliefs. Any held belief can be extremist as well. You can be an extremist about socialism, capitalism, liberalism, anarchism, social democracy (GR was a good example on that last one) but also of course christianity, muslims, jewishness and paganism and many more political ideologies and religions. 09:10, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * However the article defines it, the underlying paper shows it's entirely right wing authoritarianism in various forms. While there's nominally such a thing as a dogmatic left, but it's not got the same fever pitch as right wing dogmatism, as the number of "far left" people who subscribe to ideas like "There are just good and evil people" is pretty damn low.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:11, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * there seems to be condoning or advocating violence against 'outgroups' as salient factor for 'extremism'in both the guardian article and the paper for what thats worth. its research was conducted in the us though. right wing authorianism is going to be the where the extremists lurk in the us. BLM arnt exactly advocating maoist insurgencies. you'd maybe have to conduct similar research where left wing violent extremism is a little more widespread if you wanna see how it compares to far right aresholes. anarchists seem not so militant these days, but there are parts of the world still were leftist groups of various stripes still plant bombs at least AMassiveGay (talk) 15:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The only examples I can bring to mind in recent history of a left-wing group committing regional organized violence was a bunch of slightly leftish Kurdish militias shooting at invading ISIS groups, and maybe FARC, which is a size 10 can of worms what with the constant martial law and the death squads and whatnot. What else is there?  Where can I find the dogmatic left?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There's the ongoing guerrilla war in the Philippines between Maoist rebels and the national government, and it's one of the longest insurgencies on record, lasting since 1968. IveBeenFrank (talk) 16:48, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * How recent are we talking? Because there's the Patty Hearst thing and all the Black Liberation nonsense in the 70s.  17:27, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't think you can compare the Black Panther Party or any other Black liberation movement to Right-wing extremism.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:48, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * At least you can't assume the BP members were mentally challenged. This is all bullshit anyway. One should have sympathy for the mentally challenged, and not so much for extremists. UncleKrampus (talk) 02:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd argue that right wing ideology creates the challenge rather than the other way around. These aren't people with a natural or inborn disability.  If you're trained all your life to think in a closed-minded, simplistic way, that has to bleed into other areas of cognition.  Critical thinking is a habit.  Rejecting critical thinking in favor of strict rules is also a habit.  And having that habit will render you terrible at the kinds of even slightly tasks that fall outside the rules you follow.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:25, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh there's plenty of that stuff on everyone's least favorite internet cesspool known as Twitter when it comes to the left. Can easily find anarchists, socialists and many other types of people who respond extremely poorly when you try to point out weaknesses in their particular favorite branch of beliefs. Results in words like "bootlicker" being thrown at you for merely asking how something would actually work in practice. I was limiting myself to that. Black Panter Party and other such groups I would consider to be extremist by the conventional definition of "beliefs on the extreme end of the political spectrum", but those weren't exactly the groups my definition was going for when stating that. I was going for the article's definition, not the one in the paper. 12:53, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nah, socialists are nowhere near as bad as anarchists at explaining what they want. Anarchists generally can't even answer the basic question "who is going to enforce the rules that the Anarchist society agrees upon?" without going insane when you question the nonsense.
 * "They're wrong about things" is not the same as being obsessively siloed into a natively limited worldview. Not even remotely comparable.  The data in this very study shows that it's an incredibly right wing phenomenon, and none of the left-leaning dimensions they examine show the same property.  If you try to "both sides" it because you don't get along with some twitter weirdos, that just makes you wrong.  You know goddamn well you can find "Sensible" centrists and liberals who are just as wrong and unself critical(heck I don't think you'll find any self-aware centrists the way you do leftists), but still you're basing your sweeping generalizations on dumb anecdotes.
 * I want to stress you are measurably wrong and you should read the goddamn study. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That is a. not what I said (I noted that the response to basic questions like "how does thing X work in your vision" being met with either simplistic answers that don't really say much of anything or outright hostility when that is pointed out/asking for further concretion as indication of adherence to dogma/black and white world views). b. I do agree that adherence to dogma in this way is a very right wing phenomenon, I just think it's silly to assume that it's right wing exclusive (which I would say betrays your own ignorance if you think that, but you don't seem to so y'know). c. I know really goddamn well that centrists aren't immune to it (for fucks sake, we literally had to deal with an unself-aware dogmatic centrist a few months ago and he managed to frustrate every editor here before getting banned, me included). And finally, d. I want to point out that I consider myself self-aware-ish to contradict what you're saying wrt unselfaware centrists (with the addition that I would locally at least count as centrist), but even I know I have blind spots. Don't conflate what I'm saying with Cory please, I'm fairly sure me and him have different opinions on this matter. I was responding to your initial reply to me, not against the rest of the thread. 16:16, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Twitter Anarchists haven't a fucking clue what they stand for. They can safely be lumped into the "Anti-Government" camp without understanding how local government works.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:10, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

On today's episode of "Absolute Batshit Wingnuttery"
Marvel comics are zionist propaganda!! I fucking give up.... Aaronmichael5 03:22, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's outdated. Yeah it's still batshit wingnuttery, but they've said worse things by now. For example, how vaccines revive the deads or something along those lines. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn't there an internet law that goes "anything with 'truth' in the title is utter horseshit"? Or something like that. Avida Dollarsher again 13:39, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, Badger's Law would seem to sort-of apply here. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 14:29, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Rationalwiki already has an article on this guy, he's moved beyond Blogspot and now runs a webshite called gematriaeffect.news, and unsurprisingly, he's pissed at us!
 * (Because we're a wiki. In ASCII Code, Wiki is 87+105+107+105 = 404, which is also code on the web for NOT FOUND! Surely this is a secret connection from the Illuminati to let you know that Wikipedia pushes propaganda and lies! 4 is BAD LUCK in feng shui and with a 0, 零, the beginning of all things in Chinese numerology lore, between two 4s, it is a sure sign that the creation of Wiki software is, in fact, a sign of the dawn of the apocalypse. Say, maybe I could write a gematria bookshite on Amazon too and market it to the gullible...) PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:47, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 四四四四. There I've scared the guy away from reading this conversation. Four fours.  What could be more deadly.  Surely you cannot read that and survive.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:46, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Or worse: ६६६। (Three sixes in Hindi) -- Goatspeed. 00:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Shit, this dude is fucking insane. Luckily, I | found a video explaining why people believe in conspiracy theories. In the era of COVID-19 and QAnon, conspiracies are even more prevalent as people want to find a scapegoat for all the problems in today's world. Even if we go centuries into the future, people will still believe these because they cognitively couldn't grasp reality and want to pretend the world really has their view. TL;DR, they're dumb. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  18:00, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Marvel Comics are Zionist propaganda... so that's why I have such a sudden proclivity for Zionism Gamers Against Weed (Over 9000 Members Worldwide!) 23:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This is what I think Mr. Poot looks like:


Rockford the Roe (talk) 05:21, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I was actually thinking the same thing lmao -- Goatspeed. 00:20, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes I wish that Hell exists
All the uncaring pseudoscience spewing conspiracy theorists would being heading to Hell.

Yes I am venting. I learned of yet another conspiracy in which the COVID vaccine raises the dead. This is why the United States needs a better education system and better teachers. --Zombie Broadcasting Dude (talk) 22:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Better Ed wouldn't do shit to stop conspiracy theories. CT's exist because people want to have all the respect and knowledge of a PhD but don't want to put in the effort of getting one, so they latch on to some "hidden" knowledge that they know and you don't.  They are the worst sort of people, because even if they did have the specialized knowledge of a PhD, they'd do nothing but lord it over everyone else.  Nobody likes that asshole who begins every sentence with "As a doctor, I have to say..." or "I'm a doctor, and I say..."
 * Nobody. 22:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can agree that conspiratorial thinking is attractive because of the 'forbidden knowledge' feeling, but in many cases it is just pure paranoia. Nebuchadnezzar7658 (talk) 23:27, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A well cited paper suggests three primary motives for conspiracy theories: A) epistemic (the desire for certainty and/or confirmation bias of existing beliefs); B) existential (explanations that provide simple explanations, safety and control in a chaotic world); C) social (explanations that defend the social tribe that one is in, an explanation particularly amplified with narcissistic personalities). Education might help a little, the paper does mention a correlation with conspiracy theory belief with lower levels of analytic thinking and lower levels of education. It probably won't get rid of all of them, though. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 04:13, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:42, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Plus, you know, there actually being conspiracies in real life that do things. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 06:17, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between a "conspiracy" and a "conspiracy theory".Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:44, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A theory is an explanation of some phenomenon. Attributing something in the world to the actions of a conspiracy is literally a conspiracy theory, and if you want to redefine your way into being able to dismiss “conspiracy theories” out of hand, that entails the obligation of actually checking whether allegations of conspiracies being behind certain things are correct or not before applying the label. And given how outlandish obviously-real conspiracies and their shenanigans can be, that means suspending your disbelief enough to actually work through implications and check what’s going on.
 * Rigorous epistemology can be hard work, but it needs doing if you want to claim to be better than “conspiracy theorists”. Does the COVID vaccine raise the dead? Probably not, that would be silly. It runs against enough of what we know about the world that it’s probably not worth investigating without some actual evidence. But if you want to weigh in on the issue and claim that it’s wrong, it behooves you to look into what the proponents are actually saying, and to consider how a world in which what they say is correct is observably different from a world in which it is not. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 14:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that you read our complete article on conspiracy theory which I linked to before. I don't want to reprint the whole thing here. If you think it's wrong then take it up on the talk page of that article.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:33, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Let me break it down for you, then. RationalZombie vented about encountering a particularly stupid conspiracy theory, and claimed that better education would help. CorruptUser and PanGalacticGargleBlaster countered that a lack of education is not why conspiracy theories are formulated, and gave some reasons. A notable lack in their lists is that conspiracies actually exist and do things, so attributing things to conspiracies is sometimes correct. So I pointed that out (which has the obvious implication that the issue is whether or not the explanation is correct, not whether it involves a conspiracy, and that conspiracy theories not only won’t go away with education, they shouldn’t so long as people continue to engage in conspiracies). Then you invoked RW’s restrictive use of the term to claim that “conspiracy theory” only applies to conspiracy theories that are false, thereby sidestepping the issue of investigation by defining the problem out of existence. I’m well aware of that article and its contents. It’s not that it’s wrong, but that people like to play motte-and-bailey with the definition of “conspiracy theory” to avoid having to actually defend their positions. If you want to use that definition, you can, but the criticism in the second sentence of my post above applies. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 16:08, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There are "conspiracies", "theories about conspiracies" and "conspiracy theories". Our article about conspiracy theories explains what "conspiracy theories" are. I'm sorry if your interpretation is different. If you disagree with the interpretation on that page then the "conspiracy theory talk page is there for a reason.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:25, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * At this point, I feel that we are kind of playing with semantics here. We know, for instance, that there have been some horrible conspiracies relating to African-American health care, most infamously the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. The legacy of this has led to hesitancy in the Black community regarding COVID-19 vaccines. There is such a thing as a "logically plausible and/or understandable conspiracy theory" by the dictionary definition, and Black community hesitancy of the COVID-19 vaccine for historical reasons would fall under that category. In practice, though, it is much less common to hear mere logical wariness or even plausible and actual conspiracies described as conspiracies. The for instance was always described as a "scandal", even though "Libor conspiracy" would fit. Common language (which goes by mob rule and isn't always sensible) seems in practice to give the "conspiracy theory" name only to the more outlandish, improbable theories, from what I see. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 18:53, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * “"theories about conspiracies" and "conspiracy theories".” The literal meanings of these phrases are the same. Since you’re so fixated on that article, I’ll quote the relevant part for you: “A conspiracy theory originally meant an idea that an event or phenomenon was the result of conspiracy. However, since the mid-1960s, it has often been used to denote ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish, or irrational theories.” As I said, this is not wrong. “Conspiracy theory” has indeed been used to refer to silly things. But that doesn’t somehow negate its older, more general, and literal meaning.
 * But leaving that aside for now, what do you imagine the utility is of restricting the use of “conspiracy theory” to things that are not true? As I mentioned above, that restricts the use of the term to cases that have already been investigated, rendering it useless in arguments about whether or not a particular theory about a conspiracy is correct or not. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 12:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * They played too much Left 4 Dead 2, inconceivable. The best part about this, however, is that the more "down-to-earth" part of the conspiracy corner will mock them as much as they already mock flat-earthers. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 10:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I should have put Conspiracy Hypothesis Theory. I still cannot wrap my mind around how some actually believe that the COVID vaccine raises. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 21:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Raising speed limits leads to increased fatalities
To me this result is obvious, although I'm sure there are plenty of dipshit libertarians unable to acknowledge that the faster a multi-ton vehicle goes the more dangerous it is. Thoughts? (I set my adaptive cruise control to 65 mph and scarcely go any higher)-Hastur! (talk) 04:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's simple Newtonian physics + the limits to human reaction time. Bongolian (talk) 08:06, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There's a road outside my neighborhood where the speed limit is 30mph. It's rather annoying, it should be 35mph. In contrast, the speed limit on I-35 where I live is 65mph, which is perfectly fine where it is. Actually, down the Interstate it increases to 70mph which is too fast IMO. Thing is, raising speed limits is a subjective argument, depends on the roads. I'd say in general, no, speed limits don't need to be raised, but there's a road or two here or there that could be. Aaronmichael5 17:12, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's always going to seem arbitrary because some people are - or simply imagine they're - capable of a higher speed. They're probably not doing much thinking about it at all: in the moment, it feels good just to zip through traffic, like an action star. They're probably not thinking: "What if that guy was sitting a little higher and was blinded by the sun? What if that eighteen-wheeler's driver spilled his drink and didn't realize I was there at the exit?" To suggest they might not have time to react to somebody else's mistake if they're going that fast might be a productive way to argue for a lower speed limit. Artificius (talk) 18:46, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * On the palisades (road to NYC), there's not too many police, so that 55 MPH limit is just ignored. You could be going 75, and some jackass will go 95 and weave around traffic in spite of it being packed.  If I was a cop, I wouldn't wait in a trap somewhere, I'd just use one of the cars where the lights are hidden, and just drive down.  I see someone going above 95 and weaving in traffic, well, above 40 MPH entitles me to arrest them on top of literally $1000 dollars in fines, so I can basically make any quota with just a couple of those arrests and make absolutely sure to show up to court, then spend the other 4 days watching porn on my phone.  19:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Given that the cops don't respect the speed limit themselves...-Hastur! (talk) 03:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * NO YOU ORWELLIAN SOCIALIST IDIOT, REDUCING THE SPEED LIMIT OR KEEPING IT LOW IS PART OF A GOVERNMENT PLOT BY THE TWO BIG PARTIES TO TAKE AWAY YOUR FREEWDUM BECAUSE FUCK SEATBELTS!!!1! /s -- Goatspeed. 20:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In these parts, in many cases strict adherence to the speed limit will make you the stone in the stream. People will constantly be passing you and switching lanes to get around you, making you the hazard.  I generally think it better to be only slightly slower than the other traffic and to stick with local customs.  The posted limits are fine for icy or slick conditions. They are an interesting example of how human societies self-organize without regard for formal law. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 14:00, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, on Connecticut highways (except for the first couple exits on I-395, where the state cops hang out) you'll get run off the road if you aren't going at least 5-10 miles over the speed limit. My personal theory about criminal justice reform is you could get just about anything through just as long as you include a provision to crack down on the assholes who drive the speed limit in the fast lane, Gary Larson summed that theme up well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 00:02, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

everyones a great driver till they are wrapped around a lamp post. increasing the maximum speed limit probably wont be a big deal in some places. in others, people will die. the autobahns in germany famously have no speed limit. free flowing traffic, well maintained, maximum speed not a issue. potholes in the road, urban areas, twisty roads, congested, probably wise to have limits. i remember reading somewhere lowering speed limits to 35 from 40 mp (something like that i only vaguely remember) in urban areas massively reduced fatalities of pedestrians. just 5mph between life and death. not phoning/texting/anything at all thats not driving while driving helps too. so does brakes working and your lights working. you are operating a 4 tonne missle. try not getting too distracted or racing the lights to shave a couple of mins on your commute. in the uk, the limit is 70mph on motorways. this isnt where most speed related fatalities occur though, that happens on the 60 mph more rural single carriageway roads. reckless driving and being male and under 30 the leading cause. the telly tells me us roads are looooong empty highways or gridlock with nothing in between. i understand there are no roundabouts either. how good are stop signs at intersections when you got your foot down and ya attentions drifting? hows the other guys reflexes? the real problem is that as a group, drivers are all cunts and some of the most entitled people on the planet. get the train AMassiveGay (talk) 13:46, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The discussion here so far is framing the issue poorly. It’s like discussions about taxes where people focus on taxes being higher or lower rather than what they need to be to meet some policy goal. Here, the specific numbers on the signs are the last step. What are the goals to be achieved and their relative priorities? What is the relevant data and analysis? Once that is nailed down, the numbers that go on the signs can be determined. This may result in the numbers being higher or lower than at present. Minimizing fatalities is only one consideration. Auto fatalities would presumably be lower at a speed limit of 5mph, but that would remove much of the benefit of cars as a form of travel. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 12:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Got a YouTube video in the works
https://youtu.be/2sE__XVJXdE

Tell me what you think of my video trailer. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 01:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I kind of like it, good job. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:03, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech support purgatory: A rant
I recently got a new laptop for my birthday. It was working great for a few months until December, when it slid off my bed onto the floor. It didn't seem serious at all, it just fell like two feet from by bed to a carpet floor. Somehow, it was enough to damage the motherboard enough that the whole system just bricked up. After chatting with Dell tech support online, they said they'd send a repairman in a week and get the motherboard replaced. The repairman inexplicably didn't show up, and I had to go back to tech support and reschedule the repair. Another week went by, and this time the repairman did come and fixed it. Problem solved, right? Nope! Literally half an hour after the repairman left, the system bricked up again, this time with a RAM error. Another trip back to tech support found that due to the RAM being hardwired to the motherboard to save space, a RAM error bricks the system and means you have to replace the motherboard. Also, this was December 23 or so, so the earliest they'd be able to get it fixed was January 2. This repair was also pushed back a week, but the system was eventually fixed and was working A-OK for a month or so. At this point, you'd think the problem was over.

Actually, no! Two weeks ago, my laptop randomly stopped charging and the battery quickly died, so I had to go back to tech support. This time, they said that the charging port had somehow gotten damaged, and because it's soldered to the motherboard, they'd have to replace the motherboard again. The repair was scheduled for two days later. Unfortunately, this was around the time Texas froze over, and they said that the repair was indefinitely delayed. The repairman arrived today and replaced the motherboard for the third time. This time, the system didn't boot up at all and still didn't charge. The repairman called what I guess was tech support's tech support, and they said they'd mail me a box tomorrow, and I should mail the laptop to some support center, and it'll be back/working next Wednesday.

I have repeatedly requested a replacement machine, but Dell has refused every time, and just sent another repairman out to fix it. I have currently had to make do with my phone (I find it borderline-impossible to type on touchscreens), and my school Chromebook (slow as hell and almost everything is blocked)

Thank you for reading my rant. TheEndlessVoid (talk) 03:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't ask a multinational tech company to fix your laptop, go to a specialized shop to get it fixed, you will avoid the hassle of dealing with a computer that works only half of the time. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 11:15, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * My rant is more trivial, but still - something (my friend's advice?) got into me and I decided to try an ASUS laptop. Bingo, speaker failed in two weeks, and I didn't know what to say when the 11th gen processors came out in a couple of weeks more (I'd bought the laptop in September). Meow Purr 16:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * And do NOT take the advice of tech support scammers who appear to have an Indian accent. If you call such people, at least troll them to waste their time until they start swearing in Hindi and having various fantasies involving the fucking of all the female members of your family. -- Goatspeed. 19:10, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Ik it's a stupid question
but how can I create a new page? Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 12:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * do a search for the page you wish to create. if its not there it will ask you if you want to create such a page. click the red link and i assume thats it. ive not actually clicked to create so i cant say if there are further hoops to jump through AMassiveGay (talk) 12:25, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There is a To-do list on the left-hand side of the website. Click on it, then you can get some ideas of what page you wanna make. The search bars could help you make a draft. Let me know when you think you finished the draft, and I'll check it out. If it is 1) following our mission, 2) there are no grammar mistakes, and 3) you cited the page properly, then I will use my magical sysop powers to turn it into a legitimate article. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  13:02, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Start it as a draft, please. 19:07, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don‘t worry, it‘s only a template:(Feel free to replace „terms“)

Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 20:07, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Provisional Reality
Just wondering how to deal. I mean it is true that all we have are the senses to navigate reality. Whatever else we might develop it ultimately boils down to flawed tools.Machina (talk) 06:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It isn't entirely clear what is being said in the above excerpt. The claim that human reasoning cannot arrive at absolutes is false.  We can arrive at absolutes with regards to some abstract things (i.e. we know with absolute certainty that a triangle has three sides).  And just because our senses are flawed doesn't mean they can't give us information with certainty arbitrarily close to perfect.  A single observation might not be very reliable, but a series of observations that all confirm the same result yields an increasing degree of confidence.  It is irrational to claim that, because the senses aren't perfectly reliable, that the information they give us has no value at all.  Rather, it is rational to lend confidence to sensory data according to statistical rules.  At a certain point, we can have such confidence in the senses that there is no real psychological distinction between our degree of confidence and certainty.  When we set down absolutes with regard to reality, we do so on the basis that nothing we have observed contradicts these absolutes.  And until such time as we do have good evidence against these absolutes, we can consider them as really being absolute.  In a sense, this is provisional.  But to call reality "essentially and ultimately unknowable" is a bit of a sophism: there is a great deal of difference between having no idea how something is and not having mathematical certainty as to how it is.  Again, confidence comes in degrees, and it is equivocal to treat total uncertainty as not being meaningfully different from near perfect certainty. 68.56.144.8 (talk) 16:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I like the excerpt as it presents scientific empiricism as first philosophy: our understanding of the world is of our own making through experience. If one is growing, ones model of the world will grow faster than the actual world will. It creates a kind of whiplash for the youngsters. It is not perfect. Doesn't everyone already know that? If one requires moral absolutism, there are religions for that. Ariel31459 (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That is something like what I was trying to get at. The scientific process can itself be framed as a means of gathering observational evidence in a way that allows us to raise our level of confidence in various absolute statements (i.e. nothing can travel faster than light).  I would argue that science is itself an absolutist enterprise, as it tries to discover universal objective principles.  What I cannot fully determine is what the excerpt is advocating.  I cannot tell if it advocates the adoption of an absolutist program employing provisional methods (and drawing provisional conclusions) like science, or if it is advocating a more radical empirical relativism.  To me at least, something about the language seems to suggest the notion that because the senses are imperfect, we can't learn anything meaningful anyway, which could be taken as attacking the foundations of empirical study.  As a footnote, religion isn't required to find moral absolutism; utilitarianism is morally absolutist, in that it prescribes a universal moral principle as a basis for ethical action (thou shalt not take actions that result in a net reduction in happiness). 68.56.144.8 (talk) 19:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That sounds right. However it is important to remember that philosophy is often unscientific, especially when dealing with value laden terms. Literary postmodernism would suggest that an unscientific argument such as the one we discuss should have many interpretations, even if the author had a definite one in mind. From the standpoint of transcendentalism, there is pure and practical reason. Pure reason dictates the moral imperative you suggest. Thus from a Utilitarian standpoint, pure reason would dictate horrible things, e.g., plague victims should be burned or buried immediately, even before they are actually dead, and for reasons that are undeniably consistent with the principle demand of that point of view. However, practical reason mediates the gap between human needs and the necessities of absolute idealism. Honestly, it is difficult to imagine a pure Utilitarian in practice. Many people have, at some point in their lives, determined the world would be better off without them in it and consider suicide. Yet, I suppose, most of us would regard a person, who would advise such a course of action, to be anything but moral.Ariel31459 (talk) 21:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You raise an interesting point with regard to Utilitarianism and the unscientific evaluation of value-laden terms. I certainly agree that most people would not take kindly to a pure utilitarian.  Even just variations on the classic trolley problem can produce completely different majority sympathies (comparing the case of flipping a switch to that of pushing somebody into the trolley's path, for instance).  In a lot of cases, though, there is substantial disagreement as to what the ethical course of action is (granted that it is difficult to separate people's immediate intuitions from answers based on adopted ideologies).  This raises the difficulty that, assuming that there is a correct moral system, some people have bad moral intuition, and by extension there could be cases where virtually everybody has bad moral intuition.  The onus is still on the pure utilitarian to prove that they're right, but in principle the fact that virtually everybody disagrees on some points isn't enough to prove that the pure utilitarian is morally wrong.  To be more concrete, the fact that most people would agree that it is wrong to bury plague victims alive doesn't necessarily mean that it really is wrong to do so (personally, I do think it is wrong).  Contemporary formulations of utilitarianism complicate the issue further (a character utilitarian, for instance, might conclude that you shouldn't bury people alive because the type of person who does that kind of thing is also the kind of person who tends to reduce total happiness, and you should try not to act like such people).  I've already been rambling a bit at this point, but I'll note that this highlights the difficulty of applying scientific methodology to ethics: empirical data can tell us what real people think is the right thing to do, but it can't tell us whether or not they're actually correct.  And given the overall response to the current pandemic, I don't know how much I would trust ethical conclusions drawn from empirical studies performed during a second Black Death... 68.56.144.8 (talk) 23:02, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I was leaning to that point of view. Sure our senses aren't perfect but they are literally our starting point and you can't go anywhere without them. Everything eventually comes back down to them and trying to get outside of them seems a bit silly. You are right though, if multiple observations yield the same result it's likely the truth (well unless you count the masses who thought the sun revolved around the earth). So far I haven't had a reason to believe the crazier stuff people say about god or the mind, much like this saying the mind creates reality: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/2268080/fpart/9/vc/1#2268080

Which to me sounds iffy because if the mind makes it then where did the stuff that makes it come from. How could we make something from nothing? I mean he's just wrong here. If I have to ask people what something is that I have never heard of before why would I believe my mind creates reality? The only explanation would be that we receive sensory data and "construct" reality based on that.Machina (talk) 00:58, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So, questioning what makes the mind is kind of a dead end if you believe in magic. The next question is, if there is a reality that we cannot perceive, is it bound by mathematical law, can we perceive it through algorithms that we could potentially lose control of?  I think that's the question of AI and algorithms.  Is it dangerous to have a button that says "algorithm GO!" and just click that?  It's equally provisional, we have never been imbued with divine magic.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how you are fitting AI into the discussion Gol. The German, proto-scientific view is: the world in itself might as well not exist because we can't know it. The problem is, some folks just can't give up on it. Here again, practical reason must intervene. What can one say about things one can't really know? from Voltaire to Wittgenstein et al, the answer has been: the individual should cultivate their own garden, that is, the projects of humanity. Nevertheless, from time to time, armies of faith will congregate, and anti-rationalism flourish, for a time. Is there a moral system that is obvious, and acceptable to the residents of the 195 countries of the world.? Presently it seems neglectful to suppose so. Concerning the application of the scientific method to ethics, again I would resort to practical reason as the mediating mechanism. I propose that any ethical system will produce mixed results; that is, consequences which are on reflection regarded as unsatisfactory or incommensurate with human psychological necessity. Ariel31459 (talk) 18:26, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, it's about the functional reality of electricity and that all human senses are basically just electrical reactions anyway. So I'm sorry if it was deconstructive, but making something from nothing as referenced earlier might be a natural version of entropy, which is just how energy moves around.  Which, I would say, if it were the case, we are lucky to be creating AI.  We can create things that just calculate algorithms, the same way now as as a tool like a telescope was groundbreaking.  I guess I get your point, that if we create an AI to also read the algorithms specifically for human benefit, that's all it would do.  I'm also not against creating the AI, I'm not a luddite.  But in the context of what electricity already does and the human experience and the question of limited senses, I think AI is relevant.  I wear glasses, that's a pretty cool personal enhancement of my own flawed sensory organs.  But to your point, no, I don't think there's an objective moral system and I don't think this was a conversation about moral systems, but one about the nature of reality as we can perceive it and interpret it with our, if not flawed, then at least wildly different electrical systems (read brains). Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:51, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. There are two different discussions that can be had. One is the first philosophy, or the mode in which we understand reality, and then there is the scientific narrative of how all that works. Electricity is certainly required for the second conversation.Ariel31459 (talk) 20:29, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You already covered what the "first philosophy," was, I'm sorry I didn't engage in that. I kinda consider Machina a buddy (even if it's parasocial), and he's maybe left me in the dust on his exploration of ideas, which I think is really cool and worthwhile.  But that's not the right way for me to have this conversation here.  I do respect/appreciate your, honestly, much stronger philosophical take on the subject, and I'm glad the discussion is right in my face. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:58, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Fucking Mars rover landed without a hitch...
...goddamn fucking incredible. AceSimple Maze 01:38, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Awesome! Time to crack open the Bailys Irish Cream. 01:39, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Now to find evidence of life, and then argue about whether or not the evidence is proof of actual life or just some weird chemical property of Mars.
 * Plus, the mini-copter thing!
 * In just 3 months there's going to be another mars rover landing. I'm excited for that one too.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:31, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, I am adding a Mars Lander thingy to the pointless polls. 04:11, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I had a guy at work watch the lander footage, and he said "that looks like a video game." Like, literally what we were able to watch was simulations being dealt back with communications in real Mars-to-Earth time. The reason it was stressful was because it's not exactly live.  The landing team deserves a big celebration.  The people who mapped and coded the landing, what a fucking impossible job, Fire something out of the atmosphere of earth and then land safely on Mars.  That is not a simple task.  The people who mapped the lander so the landing crew could get an idea of what was happening, also great job.  The graphics team, I dunno, I guess that was the lynchpin, that's what proves this is faker than a moon landing.  NASA wins again...  for some... insidious reason?  The question everything culture has just hit mainstream, and that's not great. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:04, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I wonder how many of the instruments on the probe feed into that simulation. Also I once again want functional sky cranes in kerbal space program.  Having thrusters rigidly attached just makes it too easy to drop onto your rover.  Oh well, maybe KSP 2 will have them.   ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:12, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Rumor is that KSP 2's release date was pushed back until after Perseverance's mission is expected to be finished to make sure all the scientists and engineers were still there. 18:57, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That was a joke.  From a comic.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:32, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Written by a former NASA roboticist. 16:35, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't be fooled by the retcon. Reality is a lie, It's PS2s all the way down. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:07, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, what's up?
I am the legendary Mr Poot, nice to meet you. Mr Poot (talk) 10:17, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I can smell a Chicken Coop coming
lol wtf happened to rw these last few days.
 * What do you mean? Everything seems normal to me? IveBeenFrank (talk) 17:01, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * TAOB, You know that we can tell it's you shitposting right? Also calling me your "archenemy" is rich, given you're a two bit troll with zero actual skill. 17:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Doesn't he use exclusively the other range that he named himself after? Since the other pooter of Mikey was there earlier today, it could be him instead. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 18:29, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * He hasn’t done much actual trolling, just easily reverted vandalism. Should’ve committed more to the “I’m sorry” shtick in my opinion. Christopher (talk) 18:55, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

How do I get a custom sig?
And please revert back to my original name, thanks. Liquid Poot (talk) 19:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Help:Wikisig. Christopher (talk) 19:38, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Novel writing update
Things are slow going but still going nonetheless.

I have three main human antagonists: a school bully, a corrupt cop and a fundie Christian church/school. The school bully is affiliated with the fundie Christian church/school.

As for Conlang I mentioned in a previous Saloon Bar post- I have gotten nowhere in creating a language for my story (supposed to be an amalgamation of Dutch, Macedonian and Palestinian Arabic)

I got two main characters: Terrance Lykaios and Amelia Habib. I intend on adding an extra main character.

The Terrance Lykaios character is a 16 year old wayward at the start but ends up being larger than life.

The Amelia Habib is a 18 year old transgender girl. She has rage issues due to being abused as a child. Amelia's character is the love interest of Terrance's character.

As for the zombies are created by a virus that laid dormant in over 2 million people. This dormat virus infected people years before the story as it is related to Chickenpox and other Herpes viruses. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So you've got villains that you can easily describe in terms of their flaws, but what's good about them? What do they care about even though they're shitty bigots, violent assholes, or sleazebags?  It's an easy to fall into a trap where your villains show up, do their bad things, and leave or lose, with your audience left wondering "why?"  You're very excited for world building(and when I write, so am I; it's a favorite of a certain kind of mind), but don't neglect character-driven plotting.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:46, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As for the church that is evil, they already have a purpose for being an antagonist. As for my corrupt cop character by the name of Sean Kipper, I might give a back story on how he transitioned from being a caring person to completely corrupt. As for the bully antagonist his character is going to be the toughest character for me to develop

--Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 19:25, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I see what you're going for, but even people who gradually slide into total corruption because every compromise makes the next easier have their rationalization they rest their corruption on. They'll think they're doing it to protect their family who needs (or "needs") the money, or they'll think from seeing other cops get away with smaller things that concerning oneself with justice is a waste of time, or they'll think that the people they're conspiring with are "better than those street scum".  Even the worst person, the most intolerably selfish person, has some kind of mental framework where they're still a good person.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is the initial description of my corrupt cop,

Officer Sean Kipper worked for the New Mercy Police Department for 18 years. He craved for the thrill of hardcore field action. Every second of everyday he would pray for criminal activity to happen.

The feeling of killing a criminal gave Sean Kipper a near orgasmic rush each time. Not a single milisecond in his life did he feel any remorse for his actions. News outlets viewed him in a negative light. Sean was very controversial even among other officers.

Eleven days ago he was recorded clubbing an unarmed Autistic woman. Sean gave a reason that was debunked: the Autistic woman charged at him. Video footage showed the woman merely taking a walk.

Last Christmas an unarmed Palestinian man was shot and killed by Sean. A simple traffic stop turned deadly when the unarmed simply went to grab his wallet from the glove box; Sean shot him without warning.

As Sean sat in his cruiser parked at a library he wished for a call to come in. Boredom set in fast. Like an unholy miracle a call came in for a missing 16 year old boy who ran away from Baptist Christian Academy.

In his head Sean told himself,

"Fresh prey for me. This will be fun".

,, what do you all think of this story section? It is an initial description of a low level antagonist. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 23:48, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * A lot of these character traits should be demonstrated in scenes and character interactions rather than all laid out in an exposition dump. The old saying is “show, don’t tell”. 00:02, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Two books I've read lately approached this in a very different way than suggests, but they utilized metaphor and simile to accomplish the introduction. And also used multiple paragraphs to describe simple things utilizing all five senses. I'm a big fan of that sort of approach.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

It's a very good start. It's fantastic that you are actually writing things. I reworded the narrative a little to show you what Moose was talking about: As officer Sean Kipper performed his mundane police duties his thoughts were never far from calamity. During his rookie years he had shot an unarmed civilian and to his surprise even the higher-ups offered only support and understanding. It happened again several times and only once was he reprimanded with a one week paid suspension. The rush of a pointless kill would last a few weeks and then he found himself doing reckless activities on his own time to keep the feeling alive. As the high wore off, boredom settled in and when it reached excruciating levels he quietly hoped another opportunity would present itself. Here I do a tiny bit what moose was talking about which is demonstrating something instead of outright saying it. Of course I cannot do much in one tiny paragraph but even here I'm more hinting at the problems than just straight out saying it. I don't have to say he gets orgasms from it because it's obvious that's the case if he keeps doing it and lives off the feeling. In basically the same number of words I've "explicitly stated" a LOT less and in fact I've added a lot more information. I know you are going for a "hard boiled" writing, and that's fine but even then you can always soften it up (though it's entirely up to you and you should stay true to your own style. If you want to go into more detailed critique we can do it via a wiki or come collaborative platform. Shabi  DOO  00:55, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's not bad, I don't want to discourage you. It reads a bit extreme, like this guy is the scum of the earth and happy about it.  You give us his crimes.  So many crimes.  I don't know what he thinks he's doing.  He's just sadistic.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Terrance Lykaios was sitting at his desk quietly while the

teacher spoke. Most of what the teacher said went in one ear and out the other. Biology class should have brought joy but it did not.

Mister Watson was the teacher of the Biology class. Terrance loathed him, hated him; the desk in which he sat was at a devoutly Christian school. Due to the school being religious the concept of biological evolution was taught in a negative light.

In his mind Terrance was aware of how much he hated every teacher in the school. However he hated Mister Watson the most. The man who taught him was the one he hated most of all; his happy distortion of Terrance's favorite subject.

Worst of all was the fact that Mister Watson had credentials from top notch universities: Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Yale and Brown. Knowing that fact boggled Terrance's 16 year old mind. That fact literally made him vomit at one point.

Time slowed down as Mister Watson said,

"You see how the evolutionist view on God's creation is almost all wrong. The cellular structure of the human heart shows that life is irreducibly complex. Even if one piece of a heart cell is removed then the cell stops functioning. Life is clearly designed".

Each day Terrance spent at this school caused him to lose faith in God. His parents were unaware that he hated most religion. They were unaware that Terrance hated the school he went to.

Terrance mused to himself,

"Of course my parents are unaware that I don't believe in God; they are never around".

Day dreaming helped him escape the boredom of class. The best part was when Mister Watson asked questions all Terrance had to do was talk about the Bible. Easy enough.

Then Mister Watson turned to Terrance and asked,

"Okay Terrance, can you explain why evolution is wrong"?

A smirk appeared on Terrance's face when he answered,

"Because life is irreducibly complex and it goes against God's word".

Mister Watson gave a bright smile,

"Correct Terrance".

The idiotic teacher saying the answer was correct brought disgust to Terrance. At the same time it was just so damn amusing. Who knew that a highly intelligent man could be so damn stupid?

This is supposed to be the introduction for my main character. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 01:37, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to be supportive. I really am.  But while the villain introduction was a little blunt and could be improved, I kinda feel like this segment is actually dipping into a bit of actual bad writing.
 * It's painful to read the authorial voice flatly tell us a character is idiotic. To just straight up tell us we're not supposed to like them?  And that your main character is a smug little shit who is condescending to people in his head while being an outwardly compliant coward?  It kinda makes me hate him and root for him to lose.  I don't want to see this person succeed, I want to see them get a comeuppance.  The writing in this short segment makes me want him to suffer some consequence for either not standing up for himself, or for being harshly judgemental of people around him(am I projecting??)
 * And the teacher feels like a cardboard cutout. There to be a menacing strawman of something the author doesn't like.  The fact that they're a creationist isn't a "flaw" in the literary sense.  It's not some trait that will lead them to make choices in the story that cause conflict and rising action and possibly lead to their own bad outcome.
 * It's pretty instinctive to use markers for people are awful in real life as awful in our writing. But in stories, it just doesn't work.  People need characters to earn readers' hatred.  This scene needs to work much harder to establish Watson as an asshole who makes people unhappy.  Have him bully a student into giving the "right" answer.  Have him condescend about the subject the way our protag does in his head.

"I had a student last year who believed in evolution" Watson's voice dripped with venom, but quickly became entirely smug, "I asked him 'were you there?'" Terrance quietly noted that that Watson didn't mention the student's answer. Now watson was reaching for his bookshelf, and there was only ever one book on the shelves in school, "I'll tell you who was there." Watson slammed the oversized bible heavily on the desk of the young girl he liked to frighten for effect, who obediently shrieked. "God was! You there, Terrance, can you explain why evolution [...]"
 * Something like that gets the reader on your character's side more effectively. It shows the teacher to be a smug, cruel, and condescending jackass.  It excuses any amount of conflict between Terrance and Watson from here on out, even if Terrance is the provocateur.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 05:59, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The constructive criticism you all are giving is extremely helpful. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 16:45, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah Ikanreed's advice was very good and his edited example really shows the difference between showing as opposed to telling and creating clear characters. Shabi  DOO  19:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

These guys have read the Bible, right?
"Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”"

Even by CPAC standards, this is weird.

(Also, where did people who'd been working as slaves get enough gold earrings from to build a statue?) - RoundeTheeHorne (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I can say that it is a cult with certainty. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:24, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "(Also, where did people who'd been working as slaves get enough gold earrings from to build a statue?)" congratulations, you've found a plot hole in the Bible. There are many more yet to find! 14:24, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The gold earrings thing is a good question. I haven't heard that one before! You might want to add it to Biblical contradictions somewhere.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:20, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) During the process of leaving Egypt, the people robbed the place blind and probably were wearing stolen jewelry
 * 2) "Slave" was a caste level, not a measure of wealth, though the two were correlated obviously. A "wealthy slave" was an oddity, not a contradiction. 15:30, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That statue I'm convinced was made as a gift in North Korea. It's so absurd.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've always figured the five hundred years between the bronze age collapse (particularly the battle of the delta) and the first written examples of Exodus was plenty of time to scramble up the events (such that they might not have been slaves emerging from Egypt so much as prisoners of war and refugees being resettled in Palestine). Artificius (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The whole Exodus story is  myth from start to finish.  There is no historical evidence for any of it.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:01, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Right, but many scholars think there was a grain of truth in it, in this case my headcannon is just that the grain was "some of the people who became Israelites came out of Egypt and were in a contentious relationship with the locals." One of the outcomes of that was Exodus during the Babylonian exile when the Jewish people definitely were slaves and needed a sort of propagandized account of that earlier time, and the other was Rameses III's contemporaneous account of repelling the Sea Peoples - among them the Peleset - at the battle of the delta during the Bronze Age collapse (in which case those of the Jewish people's ancestors who were present would have been invaders or just people who didn't want to starve, as hinted with Jacob and Joseph descending into Egypt because "there was a famine in the land." Artificius (talk) 18:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, so many myths may have had some seed somewhere (or not). There just might have been something like the Trojan War, but the accounts in the Iliad and the Odyssey are evidently fantasy. More recently King Arthur or Robin Hood might have some basis, but the remains are hardly history.  It's the same with the stories in Exodus.  Conceivably something might have been the seed, but the details are pure imagination.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't disagree in the slightest, five hundred years as an oral tradition before being written does not make for a historical account of anything, divine inspiration notwithstanding. Bronze age collapse stuff just catches my imagination. Artificius (talk) 23:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Speak for yourself. On the topic of the Trojan War, the Tawagalawa letter looks pretty convincing to me. I put no stock in the idea that Wilusa is any place other than Troy. Assertions to the contrary are brazen contrarianism as far as I'm concerned. Circumstantial evidence is not the same same thing as no evidence. And that Cuneiform letter is pretty strong circumstantial evidence. Did everything happen like the Iliad says? No of course not, nobody nowadays would ever argue that. But that's different from outright fantasy. The Exodus is a different matter, it's not actually true that there is "no historical evidence for any of it", rather, there is no archaeological evidence for any of it. More then one classical author mentions the Exodus story; Strabo, Tacitus, Manetho, none of them disputed the historicity of the migration, only the manner and circumstances in which it occurred. Of all those accounts I always found Manetho the most convincing. Sure it comes from quotes in Josephus, but Josephus only quotes him in the context of "refuting" him. As for the Odyssey, I got nothing, it seems like a typical "hubris is bad" fable that the Greeks were so fond of (albeit with some unusual plot twists). 74.103.249.13 (talk) 02:20, 27 February 2021 (UTC) A
 * So - we are in agreement then that there might be some (possibly lost) historical seed to Exodus, the Trojan Wars, Camelot or whatever - but that the magical stuff is clearly an invention?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In short, yes. 74.103.249.13 (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2021 (UTC) A

Welp, I've been banned from Cracked
So basically, a week or so ago I pointed out that JK Rowling's views on Trans issues were actually mainstream/centrist, in the sense that the majority of the US/EU is much more anti-Trans than her. I got banned for that, and Cracked has no appeals system or forums to complain, just a ban and done. This was sad enough, I had been a member there for about 12 years, back when the comments section actually worked. But what does piss me off is that the removed all my old comments from back in the day, and basically un-personed me. Not really sure what to make of all this. Technically Cracked isn't doing anything illegal, but it does make me sad that Gen Z doesn't hold free speech to be anywhere to being as important as Millenials and Gen Xer's do. 20:50, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Did you get informed by email of that ban? This seems strange that they silently remove your account without any prior infraction. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 20:54, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Cracked hasn't had an article by SeanBaby for like a year. Actually they lost a lot of their good contributors.  I rarely find content worth consuming there anymore.  But yeah overzealous moderation is irritating-Hastur! (talk)  20:56, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nope, just stop being logged in automatically, and when I tried to comment it told me I was banned. I went into my account, banned.  Re-entered an old sock from way back when (in the days when you'd make a joke account for only a single joke), asked on one of the comments section about how to get unbanned or any appeals, got a bit of abuse from the other commenters before it got banned as well.  21:07, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Cracked has been shit for years. I don't think it's much of a loss. 21:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It was like an old hangout that went to shit, and maybe once in a blue moon there'd be an article that was almost like a classic Cracked one. Nothing as good as the actual journalistic articles where they actually interviewed Kurds fighting in Syria or anything like that, but, eh.  The writers they had now, well, a few of them would post 3 articles a day, where each article was just 2 paragraphs, and that was bullshit.  Or summarize things from Twitter, which was also bullshit.  However, the next generation is more focused on Memes than our generations are, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with consuming media in a different manner, it wasn't about the lengthy articles interspersed with dong jokes that we all knew and loved.
 * But what really ruined Cracked was the destruction of the comments section. Now only the top 3 comments will ever be displayed, comments disappear for no reason, they completely eliminated the "you" search in the comments section, it was just awful and they actively hate their commenters in spite of the comments being better than the articles these days.  In fact, probably because the comments are better than the articles.  21:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Cracked.com's downfall was arguably in 2017 when they laid off a bunch of their staff. Then they canned John Cheese for being a creep, too.  And it doesn't appear that Seanbaby is writing for the site anymore and he was by far their funniest columnist.  Now we're just stuck with a bunch of mediocre "plasties"-Hastur! (talk)  21:37, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is based on nothing but seeing it a lot, but I'm assuming you said something much worse than you're implying because you described your own arguments as "pointed out". And FWIW maybe you can't take your stupid shitty walk-the-center position on other people's rights, maybe those rights are inalienable, and one "side" doesn't care?  You wanted me to help with an example of when you "say something that sounds innocuous but casually dismisses the lives of others" on a chicken coop a while back, here you fucking go.  It's not the first time, but it should be a real clear case.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, you just made that unpleasant really fast. Also, why was this reverted?-Hastur! (talk)  22:04, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Probably because it was posted by a ban evader. Plutocow (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Wasn't worth removing. We don't just willy nilly remove stuff from talk pages-Hastur! (talk)  22:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with removing ban evader comments. Allowing them to be posted goes against the fact that they're supposed to be banned. Plutocow (talk) 22:33, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What I "pointed out" was that Rowling's stance on LGBT was actually more to the Left than the Cracked article would imply, not that it was my view. Consider that literally half of the country actually supports the fuqtarded NC bathroom laws and that 8/9 people would consider a date being Trans to be a deal-breaker.
 * Personally, I believe that you should just use whichever bathroom you most resemble. How would such a fuqtarded law be enforced; police officers grabbing the crotches of every woman who wants to use the ladies' room?  And what about trans men, do people actually want big beefy bodybuilding men to be in the ladies' room because they were born with a vagina?  If anything, what would happen is I could go into the ladies' room and if caught claim I'm supposed to be there because of the law.
 * As for pronouns and deadnames and whatnot, I'll use whichever pronouns you resemble. I don't give a damn about your genitals.  I see you on the street, you look male, you get "he/him/his", you look female, it's "she/her/hers".  I'm using "they" if you either don't consistently present as one gender or the other or it's about someone I don't know in person.  If you are genderfluid, I'm either using "they" or one of "he" or "she", but absolutely not using "he" one week and "she" the next.  If you insist on using "zhe" or some other unusual pronoun?  No, I'm using "she" or "he" or "they", I am NOT memorizing an entire new set of pronouns nor am I memorizing who gets what set.  English is too complicated as it is.
 * Who can date whom? I don't know what orientation trans people have exactly, but whatever the case, if a cisguy is dating a trans woman, the cisguy is still straight.  22:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Ok, so you bother to censor the "Fuck", but not the "-tard" suffix, please explain. And no, there is absolutely no excuse for that, that remains ableist. Do not use words like that or the R-word without making a point in an argument or placing it inside quotation marks. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Could you suggest a better single-word pejorative to use for someone doing something incredibly stupid? As for the "fuq", I've used that quite a bit since the early days of the internet to get around the censors, plus for stuff like "Dafuq?".  Yeah, I should probably not use the "-tard" suffix when it isn't necessary.  22:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "Dumbass" is the perfect word for someone doing something incredibly stupid. How the hell are you missing that in your vocabulary? Anyway, you should have thought about using the suffix before making the comment. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:46, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Neither strong enough nor can it be used as an adjective, only a noun. 22:59, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "Dumb" is an adjective and yes it is the strongest word you will ever find for that intent. You can try "Dumbfuck" too, but its usage is questionable at best. If you go any further than that, it's likely very offensive or a slur. But you do you, now it seems self-evident why Cracked banned you. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 23:03, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Not really, considering that they use "fucktarded" all the time.
 * Here they call Trump's wall idea that word
 * Here's another use from classic cracked
 * Here's one referring to Apocalyptic Christianity as such
 * Here's one referring to Somali genocidal maniacs with this
 * Oh, and another to describe just how pathetic we are becoming
 * Look, I get that some words probably should be retired, and anything with "-tard" in it is likely in that list, and I apologize. But right now, you are coming across as That Guy who is looking to be offended, and, well, don't be That Guy, no one likes That Guy.  Because someone else can easily be That Guy too, and start hounding you for using such ableist terms as "dumb".  23:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As I’ve said before, retard is just a stronger “idiot”. It’s hardly a slur, and referring to it as one cheapens actual slurs. 23:37, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Opposing the use of “retard” does nothing to “fight ableism” or whatever, it’s something you do because you know it’s one of the bad words and you must signal that you are a good person who does not say the bad words. Plenty of mentally disabled people casually use “retard” in a way you don’t see with actual slurs (not reclaiming it or anything, just using it as an insult). Christopher (talk) 23:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Think of not using the r-word as a way to expand your writing tool box. It's a crude word and shouldn't be used any more than the n-word with a hard R.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:22, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I personally think the use of the r-word is really ableist. https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/why-the-r-word-is-the-r-slur Amarty (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Look. And I say this with the utmost ignorance of your own personality and intelligence, and I'm not a member on any other forum.  Maybe you're just vehemently wrong about some things, do you get how I think you're faking your disagreements?  Like, maybe just be wrong sometimes, less vehemently?  Maybe you were being an "asshole" or a "dickhead" or a just, real "jerk" about using a term without "respect?"  Just believing in the idea that PC culture is overreaching its own goals doesn't give you carte blanche to say something offensive.  Like, you should work to understand when it's appropriate, not to justify how it's inherently appropriate. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:35, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ugh. The "looking to be offended" trope. Such tired shit. You know it's possible to simply go...okay...I see that term pointlessly hurts some people and honestly I think I can survive and adapt by using another term...you know...my very identity isn't wrapped up in using the R word. Instead this becomes about the inconvenience of a person being challenged...of having to give up using a word they don't even have to use and in doing so make the tiniest contribution to having people be slightly less marginalised all the time. But meh...it's really just about the "outrage agenda" who have nothing better to do than be outraged. None of this is quite a big deal enough to be always trying to make life slightly easier for those who don't have it easy. If anything I am the victim by being challenged in such a hostile way just for using a word...zheesh. Shabi  DOO  06:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The n word isn’t just “crude”, it’s a racial slur. Retard is just a more offensive version of idiot, moron, stupid, etc, and I refuse to accept that they’re all ableist. Christopher (talk) 10:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey Cory, there is so much wrong in your comment that you should consider reading twice before posting. First of all, it is not because someone said it that it automatically means it is okay for you to use it. Are you gonna scream the N-word or the F-word because your best friend does it? Secondly, you committed an appeal to motives by claiming that I am just looking to be offended rather than debate why it upsets me in the first place. Thirdly, any swear can offend, that includes "fuck", "bitch" and "stupid", so your comment about how someone using "dumb" will get them labeled an ableist is disingenuous. Hell, all those swears you use daily have a history: https://www.liquisearch.com/mental_retardation/history_of_the_terminology, but the difference is that the R-word is still used to belittle people who are mentally deficient, this includes people with Dyslexia, as opposed to "idiot" which is uniquely used for people who can't take a hint or can't think critically. This is why the R-word should never be used. The R-word is a slur and it is universally agreed to be the case, it is not just a stronger "idiot". Maybe don't listen to folks who yell it at each other on Call of Duty. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 10:38, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If we’re going to start throwing fallacies at people, you’re committing an argumentum ad populum. “Retard” is often used for people who can’t take a hint or think critically (both of which can actually be symptoms of mental disabilities) and people often use words like idiot or stupid to belittle people with mental disabilities. There’s no functional difference between the two, “retard” is just more offensive. Christopher (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * How much should I bet that you can't give me any example of "idiot" or "stupid" being used to belittle mental disabilities? When I think of the R-word, I think of this: 123, this is what people use the R-word for, to mock people who are disabled. Additionally, it is frequently used on 4chan. I tried to look up "stupid" and "idiot" on Google and I got none of what I found by looking up the R-word. This is by far the most "offensive" page I found with "stupid" and "idiot": https://www.geckoandfly.com/12473/15-interesting-geeky-catch-phase-and-30-life-quotes/ &mdash; Unsigned, by: MarioSuperstar77 / talk / contribs
 * I don’t have a formal academic paper proving that people who can’t read or do basic maths get called stupid, I would’ve thought it was obvious, I’ve personally been called an idiot a few times for “not getting a hint” or otherwise missing social cues. Lots of words are used on 4chan, if anything you’re just proving a point about people with mental issues using retard in a way you don’t get with other slurs, the “weaponised autism” meme has a basis in reality and I’d bet there’s a higher than average percentage of people with schizophrenia. Christopher (talk) 11:21, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that example speaks by much since I doubt they knew you had autism in the first place. Personally, I didn't know that you have autism. The weaponized autism thing from 4chan as they call it is more so to state that when they want to they can be extremely obstinate and I do not see how that relates to our argument here. I have seen people on 4chan and 4chan-adjacent websites (Kiwi Farms/ED) using autism as an insult or belittle autistic people, so it comes down to my point that the R-word is especially used by ableists to mock people with mental disabilities. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 11:36, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Seeing has this has escalated, let me give my perspective on this. In elementary school, I had some learning difficulties from a disorder; I've overcame them, but I spent once a week with the special education class and teacher. I remember that a lot of the kids (those who had higher-level functioning) used the r-word to describe themselves, in a joking, self-deprecating manner. They weren't trying to insult or belittle themselves or each other, but rather to mess around or joke when they had, say, forgotten their books. None of them were offended by this. Now of course, if one of them or another person had used that word when they were legitimately struggling (i.e. somebody has an outburst or meltdown, and someone else calls him or her the r-word), then yes, that would be completely ableist. Now I'm not giving anyone who uses the r-word a free pass, but I just think that it's not inherently ableist. IveBeenFrank (talk) 11:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Basically, they reclaimed the slur. I mean, it is no different from gay people using the F-word or POC using the N-word. If you aren't part of a marginalized minority, then yeah it's always a slur. Some people here need to learn how slurs work MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:11, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, the word can definitely be used in an ableist way, but you could say the same about a lot of words. Christopher (talk) 11:53, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * [EC]You didn’t know because you haven’t met me in real life, they had. People on 4chan are much more likely to have some form of mental condition. Do you really believe no one has ever called someone with a mental disability an idiot? Or that nobody has ever called someone without a mental disability a retard? The only difference between the two is that retard is a “worse” word, it’s not a slur. The only other position I respect on this topic is the idea that words like idiot are also slurs, at least it’s consistent. Christopher (talk)
 * I said once and will say it again, I have never seen anyone use "Idiot" in a way to disparage people with mental disabilities and, therefore, that is why it is not problematic. The R-word, on the other hand, has always been and will continue to be used as a slur against people with mental disabilities. I encourage you to check the definition of slur because the R-word is as much of a slur as the N-word and the F-word. Most of the words you see every day could be considered a slur in some way or another, including "bitch", "simp", "whore", "coward", "bastard", "motherfucker", etc, but they are used indiscriminately by people who insult each other, while the N-word, F-word and R-word are often said to target minorities and you are actively advocating for the R-word to be used against them. RW has an article on that issue, it is called internalized discrimination. Update: I just read the article just now since I plastered it on this comment section, but I noticed it states under "Disability": "This can also apply to disabled people who say it's okay to use the r-word (retard), even though this language is hurtful to many people with disabilities and can make them feel unwelcome and unwanted.". I hope you can see that what you are doing is hurting people. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:11, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

If “coward” is a slur, then slurs aren’t necessarily bad, it’s pretty obvious that I meant retard isn’t comparable to the “bad” slurs (n word etc). I’ve seen plenty of people use words like idiot or stupid to attack disabled people, you do speak English as a second language so maybe that’s affected your perception. I’m not advocating anyone calls someone a retard because of their mental disability anymore than I’m advocating people call them an idiot, and I’m not going to accept that I’m “hurting people” because a RationalWiki says so.

This discussion has drifted quite a way away from the original topic of someone getting banned from cracked.com, and I don’t see it going anywhere productive. You can respond to my comment if you want and have the last word, but this is the last thing I’ll say on the subject. Christopher (talk) 12:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Either way, it seems clear to me that I won the discourse since you had resorted to whataboutism. You can be better than that and I hope you do change for the better. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Once again, the Word Police Internet Left proves that the only thing they give a shit about regarding certain words is scoring Internet Brownie Points and "win" or something, so that they can show how much more "Woke" they fucking are or something. Nothing about the "r-word" debate actually helps anyone who is legitimately intellectually disabled. It's a "retarded" debate to be honest, and if one is offended by this phrase, honestly fuck off, at this time I'm convinced most of the "r-word" debate is just fucking concern trolling from the left. You need to convince me that your purpose of being "concerned" about the word "retard" is a genuine concern, and not just an excuse to fling shit at another human being due to fucking tribalism. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't expect to be respected for my beliefs, I don't care about that, however, I do care that people are not calling other people slurs to psychologically harm them. I am not doing this for brownie points, I am simply aware of the societal issues going on and letting ableism go unchecked is one of them. I declared victory to this debate only because Christopher forfeited and resorted to whataboutism a while ("the r-word is like "idiot", "moron", etc." That kind of nonsense). MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, if someone has a problem with "the left", they can instead go make an account on Conservapedia, they would probably agree with your opinions. Your response is nothing more than a cope-out, an ad hominem by proxy and an appeal to motives. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 14:05, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Danth's Law 13:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the use of the r slur is incredibly offensive, moreso because it promotes harmful stereotypes about disabled people, and I say that as someone who is autistic. I know what it's like to be treated less seriously due to a disability, to have people mock my disability in front of me, etc., and the use of "retard" in this sense contributes to the misunderstanding that causes this, especially since its usage is considered inextricably linked to the mentally disabled in a way that "dumb", "idiot", etc. just aren't any more. Plutocow (talk) 14:01, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Pangalactic and Christopher: if you don't want to make the most trivial sacrifice and easily avoid the r word and use another term intead and in the process better yourself on the way and help make lives slightly easier for others...it's a shame but so be it. But getting hostile or even outraged when people point out how easy it is to be a slightly better person and the advantages of doing so...is super ridiculous. When most people's default position is to get defensive or even outraged over someone pointing out the harm of using a word...it shows how seemingly insurmountable the goal is to make life a little better for marginalised people. Shabi  DOO  16:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Mario already proved my point by lobbing some stupid shit about "go to Conservapedia" at me (which as an atheist I'd get blocked instantly), he was giving far more of a shit about attacking me than any concern about the intellectually disabled. I have no problems with being polite. But there's nothing polite about Twitter-style outrage wars, where it's all about ego and virtue seeking. If you ask me politely to not use a word due to offense, I probably will stop out of common courtesy. If you get all huffy and puffy and start throwing terms like "ABLELIST!", well, I don't take advice from moralistic assholes, so I probably will ignore you. I will also say that we do have someone developmentally disabled in my extended family, and I have never heard anyone show concern about the word "retard" in my extended family. So "your mileage may vary", just note that one's concern might not be universal at this time. (As the disabled person is on the fundie side of our family, that side would be much more concerned with terms like, say, "deviled eggs". :p ) PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 00:41, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would like to note that you are using a few fallacies, notably Poisoning the well and the Friend argument. Anyway, I've already said my piece on why the word is harmful. Plutocow (talk) 00:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To be quite honest, defense of such an obviously ableist slur is quite disgusting, and makes disabled folk like me feel unwelcome here. We're supposed to be better than this. — Oxyaena Harass  15:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

You poor little mortal, our lord and savior god Christopher is always right in every situation ever. In fact, we should all support freedom of speech and allow everyone on the whole wide world to say whatever the fuck they want even if it offends your sensibilities, retard. Ahahah TAOB (talk) 16:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

So, what am I missing now?
I lost the keys to my house (and subsequent other accounts) thanks to a broken baseband on my phone, so I'm checking in. No, I did not LANCB, I'm currently locked out of my house.

-BM &mdash; Unsigned, by: Contributions/ / talk

&mdash; Unsigned, by: 174.215.145.96 / talk


 * Who is this? Christopher (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well we just have to figure out what BM stands for. Hmmm... what could BM possibly mean?  Some kind of movement perhaps?-Hastur! (talk)  21:34, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Bob M? 23:01, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nothing to do with me! And I have my keys on my desk next to me!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea who this is then. 21:43, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Was Philip K Dick somewhat... Unhinged?
I rewatched blade runner recently (bloody great film by the way) and I decided to look into the source material and the author, I’ve come across some... oddities about PKD, from the looks of it, he did a lot of drugs, held some really weird, conspiratorial views (like the Roman Empire still being around and MLK and JFK being assassinated by Nixon), seemed to believe in new age spirituality, religious experience and seemed to have been paranoid a lot. Also read that he was abusive to his wife. Just seems like he was really into woo and was not entirely there.—WMS (talk) 02:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure he was anti-drugs. Hence writing A Scanner Darkly. AceSimple Maze 02:51, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * After taking a lot of drugs himself however. AceSimple Maze 02:56, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The book that Blade Runner was based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is way better than the film imo. The film's focus is mainly on questions pertaining to androids, whereas the book deals with a much broader theme of Reality, one that's characteristic of all - of Dick's works. Dick was somewhat schizophrenic, but I think that this aspect of his personality, combined with his intelligence, allowed him to produce highly original works. I haven't read "Ubik" but apparently, that is his opus. Leucippus  12:28, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * there is this. VALIS and radio free albemuth kinda touch on his mental state/beliefs.
 * tbh though, for me, a scanner darkly is his best work. particularly if you have a amphetamine habit. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:12, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * i recommend the film adaptation too AMassiveGay (talk) 20:13, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * its odd we dont have an article on him when we do for his comtempary robert heinlein AMassiveGay (talk) 20:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

ffs the link you posted is hidden behind a paywall-thing, I have to sin up to read it...and it looks interesting. He reminds me of William James' work William James(check out the philosophy of religion summary and mysticism summary) on the Varieties of Religious Experience and his work on mysticism....from what I've read on wikipedia anyway. Although my kneejerk reaction is to brand him as insane, I recognise that this is way too simplistic. I don't, in principle, agree with religion or mysticism, but what appeals to me about William James' work is his pragmatic approach toward religiosity, which I think is more realistic, since there will probably always be people like Dick who have extra-ordinary experiences, a more pragmatic response is required than outright rejection. Leucippus Talk 20:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I find it funny that only through using Nitrous Oxide was James able to understand Hegel. I for one, find Hitchens antitheistic pronouncements about religion being inherently harmful - to be too extreme, unecessarily tough-minded. Leucippus Talk 20:58, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Obviously PKD was greatly influential and has wrote some pretty damn good books/stories but it does seems like he was a deeply flawed man who subscribed to some cranky ideas. Do you think it was purely mental factors or did drugs also cause damage to his psyche?--WMS (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

the religious experience of philip k dick unpaywalled AMassiveGay (talk) 13:26, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Who drew that? It looks like a somewhat more under control Robert Crumb. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 19:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * you are correct. it was crumb. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Dude, I defy you to present an author who *wasn't* unhinged. You may rise to the challenge, but in finding that one or two guys or gals who didn't take drugs, didn't suffer from some disorder, and didn't have inordinate passions you'll have to pass by rows upon rows of degenerates. Artificius (talk) 13:49, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * True. If creators were conventionial, their stuff would be terribly dull. Avida Dollarsher again 15:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Which is why they need to catch a break from aggressive moralities. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 19:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * pkd's tenuous grasp on reality no doubt impacted his work - a major theme in his works concerns the nature of reality and how can we tell what is real and what isnt, for example. he was, on occasion, a little more unhinged, than for his contemporary heinlein.


 * however, im a little suspicious of the whole creativity and mental health trope. i suspect there is a lot of confirmation bias going on, with only those creatives who are bonafide nut jobs registering in peoples minds, when all the others who overal are well adjusted healthy individuals just ignored. sticking with the sci fi theme, pkd - mental health issues. heinlein - nothing i am aware of. arthur c clarke - again seems mentally stable. isaac asimov - nowt im aware of. thats off the top of my head. there arnt many lists on line of 'not mental' creatives.


 * drugs and mental illness are not superpowers. i have more than a passing acquaintence with both, i found i lean more towards shambling wreck, but a little i'm less than prolific within the arts. not always knowing what day it is, not super productive turns out.


 * its also true, despite the normally reliable source of hollywood movies, many people with autism have all the problems you could expect from the thing, but dont have photographic memories nor prodigiously gifted at maths. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It isn't about mental health somehow causing creativity. A few mentally healthy people are creative, and a few people with mental illnesses are creative; most people in either category aren't.  Instead, creative people are rare and valuable enough that they need to catch a break from punishment for their deviations from social norms,  regardless of whether those offenses are the result of mental illness or from some more comprehensible motive.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 05:57, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Well this is awkward
This website is run by a current mid-level diplomat in the State Department. Fritz Berggren, PhD beliefs include: Politico breaks a lot of this shit down, but there doesn't seem to be anything the Biden administration can do about the person in charge of special immigrant visas for Afghanistan.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:09, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The creation of a Christian Nation
 * Judaism is a Satanic blood religion
 * The importance of blood lines
 * Hates Antifa and Black Lives Matter
 * Believes in White genocide
 * Fuck him. I don't like anyone who discriminates against people with dark skin because they might be a terrorist. This dude is in the fucking federal government. Why is he here to begin with? — Jeh2ow Damn son!  20:22, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * May I remind you of the dear old Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene who proposed that the California wildfires were caused by a Jewish space laser? I am far from shocked that a right wing nut came up with it. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 00:07, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem isn't that they exist. The problem is that they are in our cabinet. They have the option to do whatever they want to do, and peddling bullshit conspiracy theories is just one of many. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  01:49, 27 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Who appointed him? And I knew Biden picked some cabinet members for positions outside their areas of expertise that don't entirely suit them, but I didn't know about this. Did he appoint him, or was it Trump, Obama or Bush? -- Goatspeed. 21:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Like Pete "I always loved transportation as a kid" Buttigieg, right? — Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  15:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * He seems to have been employed since at least 2009.-Flandres (talk) 16:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The guy seems to be about 59 years of age, so he could have been there for 30 or more years. Also, his blog started in 2017, where all this crap came from. It's the quiet ones I guess.Ariel31459 (talk) 03:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Civil service laws will make it awkward if anyone in the State Department tries to get him fired for posting this gibberish. All this was put in place to make most people's jobs immune from shifts in the political winds.  This was a vital, progressive reform from 100 years ago that comes back to bite the present. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 17:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Happy Birthday to me
But really, I'd like to use this opportunity to tell y'all how much the site means to me. And you have to let me do it, because it's my birthday.

I first found the site after I read a pretty exciting article citing the work of Eugene_M._McCarthy, I'm not a biologist, apparently he's barely one either, but I was taken in by his idea that a rabbit would fuck a cat and create a hybrid... Cattit...  Raccat...  Spoiler, it is just a cat with a genetic variance in its hind legs. So I was real curious about his idea that a monkey would fuck a pig and create a sapien hybrid. I was even embarrassingly loud enough about reading whatever article and then looking at the guy's site to have to put up with "maybe a monkey fucked a pig and that's how YOU were born" jokes. But when I found this site, the first thing I scoured was the woo stuff.

Thanks to this site, I can tell you a lot about urine therapy and how being possessed by misgendered ghosts is what makes you gay, and I have learned a lot of practical things from applying the idea of Occam's duct tape to things like 20 step repair instructions, or, and I had a friend show me this yesterday, but it's incredible, the fever dream version of cooking, you have the best and worst ingredients and tools at the same exact time, the most useful tools and also no tools, so you'd better grab a paperclip to make hot dog waffles with a beer cheese sauce? If Occam's duct tape wasn't applied to these recipes, I don't know how to explain it. But watching it happen? Worth watching it happen. Preeeeetty sure any way you slice it, you're making hot dog waffles. Not against the dish, great, just, I mean, this is supposed to be instructional? Are we supposed to be making hot dogs into waffles, or are we supposed to have paperclips? And that's the second recipe, before that recipe, are we supposed to make a mean béchamel, or are we supposed to have hot dogs, like, there are too many factors and/or ingredients for any of this to make sense. Incredible to watch, though.

So I also get to have a lot of really fun reference points to those things because of this site. The second thing I checked in on was the Logical_fallacy. And after I read it, I immediately started hearing people using them. Like I have opposed the death penalty for a long time. Shortly after I found this site, I had a guy talking about how probably 90 percent of people on death row were guilty. And I said even if we execute one person who is innocent, that is an unacceptable failure rate for a state system (and this was a big don't tread on me guy, so that shouldn't have been hard for him to get). And he said "Pssh, that's a strawman argument." I was able to look him in the eye and say "No, it's not a straw man, I'm talking literally about the same thing you are. I'm not claiming some statistic I don't know about.  I am saying that messing it up even one time makes the entire institution state sanctioned murder.  It's a moral argument. "  I didn't change any hearts or minds that day, but I did at least have enough of an understanding of the phrase "strawman" to start seeing people using it to just poo-poo arguments.

And I really appreciate the members. Even the ones I don't quite get along with. Y'all seem to be pretty patient with me, I really appreciate it. This site (read you people) has really been an important part in my life. My takes on authority are different, my sense of humor has changed, my perspective is, I think broader, and I haven't felt so irredeemable for talking nonsense, and I get that a huge part of that is getting older and wiser and meeting/working with people and understanding myself better, but I know it's also in part because I've been some style of guest at this site.

I want to toast y'all puttin up with me at the saloon bar. It's your site, I'm just postin on it. Big love vibes to anyone who reads this. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 10:25, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Happy Birthday! MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 10:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Happy birthday! Christopher (talk) 10:57, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Happy birthday! I am pleased that you appreciated my contributions to McCarthy and to urine therapy. Bongolian (talk) 00:02, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I truly believe that RationalWiki has changed me for the better too. If it's still February 27 where you are, Happy birthday, gosh darn it! Spud (talk) 04:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I feel the same. Though I got a lot more out of it in the earlier years. (And a late Happy Birthday)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:56, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Novel Writing Update 2: World Building
The constructive criticism given earlier was extremely helpful.

I know how I will have a major population shift: Climate change. Here is how it would build the (fictional) ethnicity; flooding would force Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Dutch people from their homes. As for the ethnic Macedonians they are forced from their homes by the Greeks. Flooding would force many Greeks farther north and instigate an ethnic conflict.

Zombies will be caused by a virus similar to Chickenpox/Varicella Zoster Virus. This part will be fun though. For my virus it originally began as an outbreak of a severe Chickenpox. The outbreak started at an old bioweapons research facility in the former Soviet Union years before the events in the story. People infected by the original outbreak carried the virus even after recovering from sickness. Years later when these people had kids, their children were innately infected during conception. Much like the disease Shingles. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 23:23, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So are people who carry the virus from birth immune, or inevitably going to turn? Artificius (talk) 19:22, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Eventually turn into zombies. That is how the plague reaches all corners of the globe within hours. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 20:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If people are carrying the virus for so long, what causes them to turn all of a sudden? 23:12, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have not worked out all the details yet. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 00:31, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess you could handwave it as the virus having been engineered that way. Of course, then I think you’d need a more nefarious/omnicidal originator than the Soviets.  00:56, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting, so do people sometimes recover from being zombies in this setting, or is the goal to outbreed the virus (have lots of kids because you don't know which ones will turn in the chicken pox phase, and those who survive will likely get a rash and try to eat everyone at Christmas dinner as grandparents one day)? Artificius (talk) 13:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I think that I could add a small group that recovers from the infection. --Eggs Over EASyPlus (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

nobs/RobSmith left Conservapedia
! Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 08:24, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Looks like someone came back to their senses. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't post Conservapedia shit here. It goes at Conservapedia talk:What is going on at CP?. And that's old news to Conservapedia watchers. Spud (talk) 13:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

FYI, is an actual sub-specialty of archaeology, so it is an appropriate term for recent castoffs at a certain certain Wiki. Bongolian (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not welcome apparently
Some people think Imma sockpuppet, but at the very least someone defended me when one of the mods tried to ban me. I also forgot to say my thanks to Christopher, I love my new sig dawg you're cool. Hi! 14:47, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't listen to Kevlarstar. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 15:01, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * We're assuming good faith on this stuff. Kevlarstar needs to read the CS more. Unless you're actively ending up exposing yourself as a banned troll, on it's own I would not consider you to be an alt just yet. 15:43, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, when you copy the nickname that we've given to a neo-Nazi white supremacist and infamous internet troll, what do you expect? If i were you, I'd request a user name change. Spud (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn’t it a nickname people use for anyone we don’t like? I’ve seen people use it for Raven and TAOB. Christopher (talk) 17:12, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It was originally used for Mikey's sock accounts. Spud (talk) 17:16, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Specifically it was originally an attempt to disrupt an attempt of him spelling out the n-word in our user creation log. That being said, I am not too keen on renaming users like that constantly to variations on it. It kinda lacks creativity in my eyes. 17:30, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I just rename users to something silly that's the opposite of what they wrote, preferably not too long.
 * For instance, "Gawd hates fags" becomes "Jesus loves everyone". 17:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * But anyway, why did you choose the name you chose? 18:17, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Spud. But I admit, I acted too fast. Sorry . Kevlarstar and his dog (Woof!) 18:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Why there are no green or purple stars
MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 17:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they exist - but we haven't found them yet.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

A Great Reset
I have a mate and he's yapping on about this Great Reset by the World Economic Forum... anyone know anything about it? He reckons it is horrible and will sooner destroy the economy rather than repair it. I've seen a bunch of far-right politicians (Pauline!) and hosts on news (like Sky News, here, here, and here... here it is again... they mention it a lot... wonderful, some more... final one, I promise!) mention it in a very critical and mocking sense.

I was hoping to be enlightened here, and hear people's take on it. Moria .  05:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's a conspiracy theorist talking about it. JP Sears is funny... if you remember he doesn't always know what he's talking about especially when it comes to math.  But, w/e.  06:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Odd, what's the deal with the whole rugged act and clothing? Pretty sure the most funny aspect of the video was how it was not funny at all. He seems to be on the pro-Trump anti-Biden wagon dragging along some anti-lockdown and anti-global warming sentiment as well. 'Now, why didn't they have president Biden speak to their audience? Oh, I already said Xi Jingping.' Hilariously unfunny. I noticed he has quite the following, why do people like him so much? Moria .   07:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's basically QAnon 2.0 from what I've heard of it. 14:34, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently not, a quick Google search and the first result is a wikipedia article that states "The Great Reset is the name of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, held in June 2020. It brought together high-profile business and political leaders, convened by the Prince of Wales and the WEF, with the theme of rebuilding society and the economy in a more sustainable way following the COVID-19 pandemic.". Speaking of the conspiracy theorists, they are afraid of the great reset because they believe it is an Illuminati ploy to restrict their rights. After all, they are already scared of RFID chips, so anything that promotes any form of technological advancement will scare them. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 15:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems as if they have some reasonable gripes with it, but all I seem to hear about is the nutty far-right commentators mentioning it as 'Marxist' takeovers. Why would the WEF want to have such a radical idea of 'resetting' the world? I would be of the opinion gradual implementation of these progressive policies would be much more useful, rather than this sloppy sharp mess. Moria danger, incredibly uneventful   00:15, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Some of his other stuff was funny, especially pre-COVID, so long as you accepted that he was always an oddball. For example, If meat eaters acted like Vegans, how to be intolerant to gluten, or Man Scripts; what to say in every situation with your girlfriend.  He has some important, nonfunny stuff such as his video on police brutality, which YouTube demonitized for some stupid reason.  Even some of his COVID-era stuff is still funny, and it's always healthy to look at things in a different lens even if it's from a perspective you wouldn't normally agree with.  But he was always a bit of a kook and conspiracy nut, so during COVID his view became something along the lines of "the lockdown was handled so terribly that it must've been a conspiracy run by Bill Gates" or something stupid like that.  In terms of politics, you know how a lot of Conservatives were Never-Trumpers?  He's a rabid Never-Bidener, and is a Bernie-Bro.  In spite of this, he's actually surprisingly non-partisan, though definitely anti-Trump as well as anti-Biden.
 * He's also obsessed with personal health and fitness, and is unlikely to suffer from COVID. As a result, he doesn't think it's fair that he and other health-obsessed people should be forced to endure economic hardship and social isolation in order to protect those that for years have not taken care of themselves, ignoring the millions of elderly and/or cancer patients who have done nothing to "deserve" to be at higher risk of death from COVID. 17:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

COVID-19 pandemic page rating
I think we should get the COVID-19 pandemic page up to a silver rating. Any suggestions on how to improve the page to warrant a silver by chance? Aaronmichael5 01:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This page here has some basic outlines for what classifies as a silver-level article.
 * Article topic is directly relevant to and worthy of RW's mission (i.e., potential upgrading to cover story would be uncontroversial).
 * Article should not contain repetitive content.
 * Article is almost fully referenced with appropriate internal and external links, and categories. References should not be bare 'http' citations but should have textual information about what each reference is (see Help:References). References that are more likely to be transient (Twitter, Reddit, crank websites, minor blogs, etc.) should be linked instead to an archival copy of the website (archive.org or archive.is).
 * Article is illustrated appropriately.
 * Article is free of blatant spelling and grammar errors.
 * Hope this helps. Moria  (talk)  02:48, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Is the mantle, outer core and core (or simply, our understanding of the inside of the earth) just a hypothesis
I watched some video, can't remember where I found it but it was basically one of those God awful top 5/10/15/20 channels and in it it said that our understanding of the inner earth is nothing more but a hypothesis. I looked at the sources for the video, which for that fact there were only 2. One of them was this BBC article and (I shit you not) a tiktok of a geology major (I'm assuming that's at university level) talking about how what we know of the inside of the earth is only a hypothesis (this was part of some STEM major's "tell us a fact that people don't know" challenge, I don't know, I don't use tiktok).

Just was curious about, I don't know how accurate that statement is and, if taken out of context, it could unfortunately lend some room to more crackpot ideas out there.--WMS (talk) 23:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Excuse my elementary level knowledge of the topic, but I'm almost certain it is not just a hypothesis. National Geographic talks of it as definitive and proven. Take this excerpt from here:
 * Seismologists noticed that records from an earthquake made around the world changed radically once the event was more than a certain distance away, about 105 degrees in terms of the angle between the earthquake and the seismograph as measured at the center of the earth. After 105 degrees the direct P- and S- waves disappeared almost completely, but slow surface waves and waves taking other paths would arrive from over the horizon. The area beyond 105 degrees distance forms a shadow zone. At larger distances, some P waves that travel through the liquid core (path K on the figure above) would arrive, but still no S waves. The Earth has to have a molten, fluid core to explain the lack of S waves in the shadow zone, and the bending of P waves to form their shadow zone.
 * So yeah, I would say it has been backed up by evidence and should be considered as truth. Moria  (talk)  00:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In scientific language I guess it would depend on when you upgrade a hypothesis to a full blown scientific theory. I would have thought we were there.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:12, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Tectonic plates and continental drift are definitely considered a theory (they are more than a hypothesis), and they float on top of our ideas about the inner earth. Specific details about the inner earth will be hypotheses (e.g. estimates of the exact temperature or composition of the core), but the general idea is well-attested. --Annanoon (talk) 13:48, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. Continental drift is about as well-established as a scientific theory can be. It has vast explanatory and predictive power and fits well with observations from other sciences. How exactly the core works is a bit more of an open question. For example (as far as I am aware) we have no good explanations about why the magnetic poles weaken and sometimes reverse. So it's clear that our understanding of the interior is less complete.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * the atlanteans probably got a good handle on the nature of earths core and the like. thats where they moved atlantis to after all. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:28, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You know that Atlantis was just a hypothetical thought exercise, not an actual historical place, right? Lemuria, on the other hand...  15:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought that all autism causing vaccines and all chem trails led to Atlantis! Shabi  DOO  15:41, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * got me covid vac last week so any inaccuracies you can blame on the autism it gave me and bill gates making me do bad things via the microchip implanted. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You got lucky. Bill Gates' microchips keep crashing on contact with my blood, and so I need to install the latest updates to be compatible with the blood microchips, but my body gets poor wifi reception.  Can someone send me a package of blood with the updates?  21:48, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You may have stumbled on the whole point of the conspiracy theory! The usual problem with conspiracy theories is the "why" bit.  Why fake a Moon landing? Why pretend the Earth is a spherical?  Why hide evidence of alien contacts? And, why inject a microchip?
 * But it's suddenly all clear. Bill Gates, in typical Microsoft fashion, wants to make money selling the updates!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:50, 4 March 2021 (UTC)