RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive285

Impending trade war
So, apparently Trump decided it would be a good idea to put tariffs on aluminum and steel, and now people think there may be a trade war soon. Personally, I think Trump is being a fucking idiot. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 00:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is high time that the U.S. government became willing to do stuff that the stock markets do not like. A good old fashioned Republican tariff is well overdue. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 02:31, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This won't do anything to improve our industries, it'll just drive up costs. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 04:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * At this point I think that burning down the stock market is a goal worth pursuing for its own sake. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 15:01, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Costs may go up, sure. But unemployment will fall, causing wages to rise. But there has to be a long-term strategy &mdash; many years, not months or election cycles &mdash; in order for it to work. Nerd (talk) 15:29, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Theres nothing like trying to force the world to trade the things you want, the prices you want and all on the terms and conditions that you want. What could possibly go wrong? Shabi  DOO  23:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Why that sounds like capitalism communism an idiot's in charge (the Great Depression). Bongolian (talk) 02:03, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Anything which drives up the price of beer is bad. Especially for the American working man. --Gospatric (talk) 10:01, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, @ Nerd! "Unemployment will fall, causing wages to rise"? Could you explain how you arrived at this conclusion, because I was under the impression that unemployment will rise because costs for the companies affected will rise and they will pass those costs on to the consumer, who in turn will not the able to afford (as much of, if any of) the products affected, which in turn will mean less profits for the companies affected, which will lead to downsizing - i.e. workers being shit-canned! But, hey, I may be wrong. I have a very rudimentary understanding of economics. Perhaps you could enlighten me. Levi Ackerman (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * all i know from limited knowledge of economics is that no one understands economics AMassiveGay (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks like blood can be shed now. Run, pesky Imperial humans. Chaos reigns supreme now 11:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh look, the Mon'Keigh invokes his gods. Come to Commoragh, Khornate, and we shall see how well your lord's blessings serve you there. RoninMacbeth (talk) 17:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * @RohinMacbeth I am no longer a "real" human, Aeldari Maim!Kill!Burn! (talk) 00:31, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "Real" or otherwise, Mon'Keigh, your pain is exquisite. RoninMacbeth (talk) 01:20, 16 March 2018 (UTC)


 * A bit late to comment, but Trump is an idiot if he is placing tariffs on steel. You do NOT place tariffs on raw materials.  If China is dumb enough to subsidize their steel industry, you buy every last scrap until they go bankrupt.  You turn that steel into cars and other trade goods and sell it right back to them at an enormous profit.  No country has gotten rich off of primary sector goods for the past several thousand years; the money has always been in the secondary and tertiary sector.  Just look at the British Empire; they had slaves pick their cotton, but the true wealth was the power looms, and when the US decided to keep the cotton for their own textile industries the British sabotaged the Indian textile industry and had them grow the cotton for Britain, a point so sore for the Indians that they put a spinning wheel on their flag. CoryUsar (talk) 05:10, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

If racism had a slogan
"Join the KKK! Abandon all logic and reason"! I could picture that for some reason. Racists ignore actual history, archeology and science. They twist around religions to fit what they think. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 16:50, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Although they often express cartoonish levels of ignorance, I believe what motivates racists is much more complex. It's a mix of "it's not racist to be proud of your race" and "we've got the balls to say what most people really think but can't because political correctness" and "they've rigged history, archeology and science against us truthtellers", etc. - Leuders (talk) 18:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * You mean like all of the history showing that sub-Saharan Apefreaka has never produced anything other than AIDS? Or all of the science - made before (((they))) took over the study of science - showing that niggers have retard-level IQs and that anyone who is not a retarded faggot finds Negresses completely repulsive? "Twisting around religions"? You mean like recognizing that Judaism calls for the enslavement of all goyim? Or that Christianity forbids miscegenation and calls for the execution of sodomites?


 * I'd like to see where you get your SCIENCE-DENYING libtard snowflake ideas from. Would you mind discussing them in my helicopter? I love LGBTQ‎ (talk) 18:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you the son of Scottie Spencer by any chance? 18:46, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If online racism had a slogan it would be: "I'm a lonely adolescent who tries to trigger people for attention". Leuders (talk) 18:49, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Never heard of him. Now answer my fucking question. I really love LGBTQ (talk) 18:47, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No. 19:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Um, wow. Libtard is certainly a good way for intelligent conversation. Why bother answering your question when you will just distort it anyway? Your question makes no sense. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 19:08, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't seen a wingnut this stereotypical since my days on Facebook. 19:21, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure "Lynch the niggers! Trophy hunt the spics! Gas the kikes! Nuke Mecca of the sandniggers! Enslave the Gooks/Azns! Race War now!" would sound better. 15:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Only a subsection of racism in the US. Racism is a world-wide phenomenon and there are too many racist ideologies to stuff them all under one slogan.--Klaksozavr (talk) 16:53, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

We are all fascists now...
From the op-ed columns of the New York Times.Ariel31459 (talk) 17:26, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fascism is a bit violent don't you think? Darthmaul (talk) 17:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I thought we were die hard feminists and Men's Rights Activists and communists? We are fascists now? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 19:21, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (yawn) Godwin's Law meets Andy Warhol: in the future everyone will be accused of being a fascist for 15 minutes. Bongolian (talk) 22:14, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * why hasn't no one accused me of being a facist yet? :( 04:05, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Your fifteen minutes has not yet arrived. Be patient. When it happens you'll know it. Regards, Cosmikdebris (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * - 07:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Morality of unsavory business
So, I'm basically having an argument with someone that's a bit... thick..., with regards to the Atlantic slave trade and Britain's involvement. He's currently going to the old "well, it was Africans who did most of the kidnapping" argument. I'm trying to explain to him that while true, it's irrelevant; the kidnappings would never have happened if the British (and others) weren't there to purchase the people in the first place.

But I'd like to expand this argument a bit to the general case.

Alice does business with Bob, knowing that in order to do business Bob had to do horrific thing X to Charlie. Meanwhile, Denise does horrific thing X to Charlie directly. I argue that Alice and Denise are morally equivalent, the only difference is that Alice used a middleman. Am I making an improper argument?

There are slight variations;
 * 1) Alice hires Bob to do horrible thing to Charlie
 * 2) Alice hires Bob to do horrible thing to anyone and by chance it's Charlie
 * 3) Alice does business with Bob who already did horrible thing to Charlie, but in doing business with Bob, all but guarantees that Bob or his associates will do horrible thing to Denise...

While clearly different scenarios, I don't really see how Alice is any better under any scenario. In fact, I actually wouldn't be surprised if you could make the argument that the second scenario is worse because Alice is so sociopathic she doesn't care who suffers for her to get what she wants.

These sort of scenarios are actually quite common.

Alice buys Rhino Horn from Bob the poacher. "Charlie the rhino may already be dead", Alice may tell herself to try to convince herself she isn't a bad person, but if Alice doesn't buy the horn, Bob won't continue poaching rhinos. Had no Alice's been there, Bob would never have gotten in to poaching in the first place.

Alice, or likely Alex in this case, buys a half hour with one of Bob the sex trafficker's sex workers, Charlene. Alex didn't rape, torture, humiliate and kidnap Charlene, but had Alex not been there at the end to pay Bob, Bob would never have groomed Charlene.

Alice buys child porn from Bob the child pornographer... Alice buys drugs from Bob the cartel chief... Alice buys a kidney from Bob the organ harvester... Alice buys slaves from Bob the slaver...

So, any thoughts? Am I making unsound arguments? CorruptUser (talk) 00:27, 9 March 2018 (UTC)


 * They aren't equivalent under most moral systems. Buying a slave from a slave kidnapper, transporting the slave against their will, selling the slave to a slave-owner-abuser, are three entirely separate acts. To call those acts immoral all require three different moral principles in order to judge them. From the slave owners point of view there is "buying a slave" and "abusing a slave/not granting autonomy-freedom" are two separate acts (though the second one is extremely complex). The only act the two have in common are the "buying of a slave". Other than that, their actions are notably different (transporting a slave vs. forced labour and physically and mentally abusing someone). Under several ethical systems, the act that the two have in common (buying a slave) are both morally wrong, for the same reason. However the other acts (the slave trader transporting and selling a slave vs. the slave owner abusing them) are not comparable or morally equivalent. However, under a handful of moral systems (consequentialism for example) both parties are, to some extent, equally morally repugnant. Under deontological systems, all these different acts by different parties require a deeper analysis...and some of those acts are not inherently wrong in themselves (for example transporting a person is not inherently immoral...as people transport other people all the time)...instead you have to find a higher moral principle where all specific acts, regardless of context, are morally wrong. Which is very difficult to do. So yeah, under most systems, they may all be morally repugnant, but are not morally equivalent (either in what act you judge and how you judge them). 90.174.2.53 (talk) 01:40, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm a consequentialist because every single serious moral system and religion ever devised has always relied upon consequentialist reasoning in order to justify themselves, whether by arguing that societies that adopt their system are "provably" better off or if provably not, that the people involved will have better results in the afterlife so shut up and choose my system.
 * But what I'm getting at is whether there's a real moral difference between...
 * Buying a slave from a slaver
 * Hiring a slaver to enslave a specific person
 * Personally enslaving someone yourself
 * If personally going over to another country, kidnapping someone and forcing them into slavery is worth "negative 10 Karma", is simply purchasing a slave from a slaver worth "negative 5 Karma" or "negative 10 Karma"? CorruptUser (talk) 02:35, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While it may seem like the vast majority of ethical systems are based on perceived undesirable consequences, it is a lot more complex than that. No small percentage of moral systems are in fact a form of received morality, that is, something that is unquestionable and difficult to challenge or even explain (most especially when religion, absolute rulers, military like enviroments and absolutist governments dictates morality to such an extent/extreme that most of their moral rules are completely adopted). They are often arbitrary and there may be many conflicts impossible to resolve. Then there are deontological systems where the focus is usually not the consequences but the strength of the rule itself as applied to similar moral problems and how broadly it can be applied (without resorting to qualifying it (exceptions)). Utilitarian ethics are consequentilist but not so much in terms of how you form individual judgments, but instead is consequentialist in a broader sense (what you want to achieve as an entire moral system rather than for each individual judgement). It means, you do not merely take into account the specific details and context and perceived consequences and a whole matrix of different agents being harmed or not with one concrete problem, but more so the principle behind a larger set of judgements. It makes it extremely complex and to answer your question through this method...it would take a LOT of time and effort to work it out. Virtue ethics may also seem fundamentally about consequences of individual actions, but in this case the character of the individual is equally if not more important (how praiseworthy his qualities and consistency are when dealing with problems). While there is nothing wrong with a consequentialist approach to moral problems, it does have its disadvantages. The first is losing the larger picture, focusing too much on negative consequences or extreme negative consequences as opposed to long term consequences and the amount of different agents who gain/suffer over time. It also requires making a lot of assumptions (if I do this...x will happen) and consequences are notoriously difficult to predict, event when they may seem utterly obvious. They can frequently not have the consequences you expect...and you are also prone to hindsight judgements (as in, these were the consequences...the person who made that bad decision should have known) even when it can be difficult to predict. It can also water down the strength of a general judgement of a typical moral problem, as taking possible consequences into account...can often lead to bending your general approach to similar problems, making exception and ignoring details you normally would not. This can have a disadvantageous effect of arbitrarily applying general principle quite differently in many different circumstances. That's not to say consequentialism is bad...but it isn't the be all of most moral systems and it has its flaws. To give a possible judgement from these different systems per your problem:
 * Deontological system, both people's identical action (buying a slave) are comparable and reprehensible...however the other actions (shipping a slave vs. putting a slave to work) may both be reprehensible...but not comparable...they are reprehensible based on two different rules.


 * Utilitarian systems...most likely would judge both agents actions lead to the same kind of suffering and are somewhat comparable (not necesarily because of the intention but the gross suffering involved).
 * Virtue ethics would probably take the same approach to both agents in how they deal with the slaves...as each agent here shows numerous flaws/failing in their personal character and integrity and how they treat others/deal with problems. Some would say they are comparable...others would not.
 * Christian ethics, some would say they are comparable and equally wrong (as there is a sort of anti-slavery statement burried in the new testament) and that excuses are not allowed. However the history of christian morality and law....demonstrates the total opposite. So much for religious based law. And of course, God commanded his people to enslave entire races of humans...so if you take their source of moral wisdom seriously, both these slave drivers would not necessarily be doing anything wrong.
 * Received moral rules...totally depends on the set of rules.
 * Rights based ethics..would likely conclude that both agents are breaking a fundamental law that should not ever be broken...regardless of circumstances (removing the bodily autonomy and freedom of another person) as this is implied whether you buy or sell a slave (unless you buy it to set it free). While one violation of the law may be far more flagrant...they are still comparable and both break an extremely important law/right. 82.158.77.178 (talk) 00:43, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Another way to look at the issue is from economics: Negative externality. Also, Ursula Le Guin's short story, is an interesting take on the issue. Bongolian (talk) 08:22, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

A lot of our imported clothes and footwear are made by people working under slave-like conditions. It's odd that few people seem bothered by this. A lot of the meat that we eat comes from animals who did not live particularly happy lives. But the majority of us prefer not to think about this. It seems to me that, if we can't see it, we don't care that much.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * One is much more bothersome than the other. Here it's almost impossible to find clothes that were not manufactured in places like China or Bangladesh.  I saw a bag of shrimps labelled 'Product of Bangladesh', and had to wonder why the hell we are importing food from Bangladesh. OTOH no one with their head screwed on straight gives half a fig about the livestock's happiness.  That brand of bullshit is a perfect mirror image of the anti-abortion cult. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 20:54, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The textile factories are terrible conditions, but they are most definitely not slave labor conditions. People underestimate just how friggen awful life is in the Third World.  The Bangladeshi women have several options; they can work in the factories, they can go into prostitution, they can do subsistence farming, or they can beg/steal to survive.  Or die.  If you were to boycott the clothing, the workers wouldn't find themselves in a unionized air conditioned Detroit auto plant, they'd find themselves starving.
 * Interestingly, the race to the bottom of international trade? We hit it.  Bangladeshi textile workers are actually seeing (meager) increases to their incomes.  Also of note is that because the workers are mostly female, it actually enables them to (barely) support themselves without a man, giving them some leverage in terms of relationships, and more importantly it reduces the birth rates; Bangladesh now has a birth rate of just 2.14 per woman compared to 6 per woman just 40 years ago, and it's decreasing.  India too!  This means that in just a few decades, Bangladesh will be importing refugees and migrant workers, instead of producing them.  Without an endless supply of new flesh to replace the fallen, conditions will continue to improve to where, while not the unionized air conditioned Detroit auto plant, but in at least a plant with a bare minimum of safety and enough money scraped away to send the next generation to school and with a bare minimum of healthcare, which means the next generation will be capable of the more complex machinery and skills. CorruptUser (talk) 03:33, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

The Case for Christ: the Movie
As you probably know, there's a movie about said book. A week after it was premiered, I decided to check for the lulz out of curiosity how it fared at theaters... and it's at the bottom of the list, with just 4378 spectators in the entire country, even if helps very little advertising as well as being shown in relatively few theaters. For comparison, the highest grossing film had almost 250.000 ones, and for extra lulz a film about a blacksmith and the Devil got more viewers, even if just around 7000.

That makes even more laughable the bullshit spew by pastors wanting to convert this nation (at the very least) to Jesus. Panzerfaust (talk) 15:15, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder to what extent Christian movies care or don't care about mainstream box office. They have a lot of other ways of making money, like screenings in other venues (from church showings to companies like Gathr who'll put on a film anywhere there's demand), Parables TV (essentially a Christian Netflix), Christian cable/satellite TV, DVD sales, etc. Although a lot of Christian movies have done quite well in mainstream cinemas in recent years. --Gospatric (talk) 15:52, 9 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Saw a DVD of it at Wal-Mart. Sounds like a load of shit. Don't think the makers of the movie will convert me anytime soon. Being Pagan rules. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 16:40, 9 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd be curious to see how a Flying Spaghetti Monster movie would fare at the box office.Antigem (talk) 16:56, 9 March 2018 (UTC)


 * There's another about how Jesus' apostles were preaching the Gospel back during the 1st Century that will be premiered wihin two weeks. Seems it's going to be fun how it behaves. Panzerfaust (talk) 17:12, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A Fundy Flick tanking at the box office? Say it isn't so!! Those poor, poor, Fundies... 03:49, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Shkreli sentencing
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-martin-shkreli-sentencing-20180309-story.html

My prediction: 8 Years imprisonment. --Grand RW Judge (talk) 15:41, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While 8 years may be getting off light for the atrocious vicious nasty shit he threw at both the rich and the sick/poor/suffering...it's hard to take pleasure in the ultimate punishment. American jails are nasty nasty nasty places. I don't wish my greatest enemy to be sent to most prisons there. 82.158.77.178 (talk) 00:52, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Beria
Why do you have an article about James Fields but not one about Lavrenty Beria? Is this an encyclopedia or a lame Communist propaganda site? 31.205.66.133 (talk) 16:18, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Why don't you make the article instead of complaing that we don't have one. Hypocrisy intensifies. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 16:28, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Beria is surely missional, or could be. FWIW The Death of Stalin is some of the best black comedy I've recently seen. Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 16:49, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Beria was such a bastard that deserves an article. Is that movie historically accurate?. For what I've readen people around Stalin was so scared of him that they did not check what was happening with him until too late and Beria was even happy during Stalin's funeral. Panzerfaust (talk) 17:09, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * One version I heard was that Khrushchev claimed to have personally killed Beria (rather than merely ordered his death). Anna Livia (talk) 18:05, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Beria sounds like a good idea for an article, and after all, we have one on Goebbels. Go to it, Mr 31. Wilder Bicycle 20:44, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

hey, you get the blame for turning this into a lame Communsit propaganda site. 04:03, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Obligatory "We are not an encyclopedia." 2) An historically accurate Hollywood movie: it is to joke! They put "true story" and "based on a true story" at the beginning of movies as an insider joke I think. Bongolian (talk) 07:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * * a historically *no joke —Kazitor, pending 07:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 'Based on a true story' = 'We were too lazy to come up with a new plot ourselves, so we borrowed one' (and with reality you do not have to pay copyright fees). Anna Livia (talk) 11:10, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

https://kek.gg/i/4NcHzK.jpg 31.205.66.133 (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * instead of whining there's no article, waiting two days and then linking to a lame insult, you could have written an article. But then, it's typical of conservatives to want somebody else to do the actual work. Wilder Bicycle 19:53, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm asking why you don't have one. Is it because of massive dishonest unscientific left wing bias among your staff? 31.205.66.133 (talk) 19:56, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No, it is because you are lazy child who can do nothing beyond whining and linking pathetic memes. 20:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * [EC] We don’t have staff, and there’s nothing stopping you from writing an article, provided it’s good. Christopher (talk) 20:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I propose a new internet law: a 1984 law
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving 1984 approaches 1"Levi Ackerman (talk) 10:54, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Dude, that's Godwin's Law for 1984. It's pretty much been established that the law applies to a ton of crap. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 17:00, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd say from the phrasing that Levi Ackerman is fully aware of your initial statement. —Kazitor, pending 06:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The Orwell variation is already mentioned in Godwin's Law. It doesn't need a separate article. --Gospatric (talk) 10:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Real Joke or Something More?
Hi guys, i was searching through internet and i founded this

https://www.cnet.com/news/laughing-amazon-alexa-gives-jimmy-kimmel-interview-and-mocks-humans/

I watched the video clip about the "interview" of Jimmy Kimmel and Alexa, and i had a question, It was something real? Or it was faked? It means something? I wait for the response guys177.229.37.192 (talk) 19:30, 10 March 2018 (UTC)Anonymous

WWI alternate outcome
I have heard semi-convincing arguments for how a world where Germany won WWI would be better. Would it actually be better or would it be worse? 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 05:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Better for whom? Probably not better for Germany's colonies. 2) Who knows, i.e., the "law" of unintended consequences. Bongolian (talk) 05:52, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I recall seeing an analysis of this for WWII on TV Tropes, not sure about WWI. —Kazitor, pending 06:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I’d say it’s pretty obvious the world would be worse off if Germany won world war 2. Christopher (talk) 12:53, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, everyone with half a brain can agree on that. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 16:45, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It pretty obviously would be a worse world for Jews, homosxuals, gypsies, the disabled and the mentally ill. I suppose it would be "better" the Nazy leadership. I think you are going to have to define "better" a bit better.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:49, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The fate of the world rested on the atom bomb and other military technologies like the development of rockets, jets and assault rifles. Theoretically Germany had the full advantage. It was simply the scientific world leader at the time. The Ruhrgebiet, this blessed patch of earth provided (and provides to this day) Europe's greatest source of key industrial raw materials. Without them the German industrial rise since the mid 19th century would have been impossible (which makes you think what China's unprecedented industrial robustness will mean for our age). But still, there was a serious vulnerability, the lack of oil. In his recorded conversation with Finland's leader, Hitler relates how he feared that a Soviet seizure of the Romanian oil fields would make military operations impossible and result in an easy defeat for the Wehrmacht by the Red Army. This (well-grounded) fear surely forced his hand in 1941. In the end, racist stupidity might have been the only reason for the loss of Hitler's thousand-year empire. His policies drove many Jewish scientists out of the country who could have otherwise contributed massively to the development of the atomic bomb. If he had acquired this weapon he would have eventually destroyed all competition in which case I think the world would indeed have been better regardless of the initial tragedy. Radioactive waste would have kept America and much of Russia uninhabitable for years, postponing ecologically-destructive colonization. China would never have been industrialized, never unlocked its astonishing potential, and never would the world's ecological systems have been forced to provide for billions of people, with devastating effects we're yet to see. The world would, most importantly, have been spared the calamities that China's rise will inflict in our century. If the price to pay for all these is a bit of racist and nationalist nonsense, which would anyway have subsided later as a better understanding of genetics developed, that's a small price to pay in my view. Gewgtweg (talk) 20:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You assert that an Axis victory would have been ecologically better due to the postponement of "ecologically-destructive colonization." Germany's explicit aim was to reassert itself as a colonial power. They planned to turn everything east of Poland into food-production colonies in an attempt to achieve Autarky. Japan was also even more driven by the need for colonies, due to its burgeoning population. Colonialism by the Japanese and Germans would have been almost the same as it was during the 19th Century, if not worse. Furthermore, you assert that the environment would be preserved because America and Russia would have been bombed into radioactive rubble. You do know that nuclear fallout spreads, right? That's why people are afraid of even small-scale nuclear conflicts. Turning almost a third of North America into uninhabitable wasteland would have resulted in one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history. Even if Germany had somehow beaten the Allies without the nuclear bombardment of two of the world's largest breadbaskets, the Third Reich was an inherently unsustainable polity fueled by a need for expansion and constant war production, which was what forced German expansion in the first place. As for the racism angle, I think it's appalling that you would dismiss the extermination of almost every Slav, Finno-Ugric, Jew, and African that the Germans got their hands on as an, "initial tragedy." That you think this would be a passing phase goes against the notion that Germany justified its expansion and accompanying genocides with half-baked pseudoscience. Especially since genetics might not have advanced in the same way as it did in our world, due to the tight control the Third Reich insisted on for scientific progress.
 * tl;dr: Your argument ignores the history of Nazi Germany and basic knowledge of nuclear conflict. RoninMacbeth (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My line of thinking is this: sole possession of the atomic bomb would have been the only way for German victory given the overwhelming conventional superiority of its two great opponents (because of their sheer quantities of oil and manpower, in terms of military doctrine they were vastly inferior). Fears that a nuclear conflict will lead to the extinction of life on earth are unfounded and exaggerated. Nuclear conflict can disrupt civilization beyond repair because many sides are expected to hurl many bombs uncontrollably. This can force humanity back into the bronze age but not totally extinguish the species let alone all life on earth. This disruption of civilization was what we feared during the Cold War and the chilling feeling remains alive today at a point where more states than ever possess these weapons. But in a world where only one state had access to the technology, nuclear destruction could be better contained. After all, I doubt that all of America or Russia would need to be bombed into the uninhabitable zone before the respective regimes simply surrendered as Japan did. This is of course assuming that the opposing states didn't yet have the bomb. And indeed at least America wouldn't have had it if Nazi policies had not forced valuable scientists to seek exile. The total extermination of the Eastern Europeans which you treat as a given assumes that they won't be available for slave labor. Would the Nazis have been willing to simply allow their entire population to live off slave labor and get out of work forever? In that case the slaves would have to be tens of millions and eventually they would have to grow to surpass their own population. At any rate, capitalism would have been impossible because in a world where labor is fully commodified it cannot work. A slave-owning society like those in antiquity is ecologically preferable to a globalized capitalism. About the Jews there's no question that they'd be murdered but I doubt the Nazis would have killed all people in the New World. Why do that if they pose absolutely no threat? Let me remind you that white supremacists hate people of color because they happen to exist in 'their' country, not because they happen to exist. In contrast, Jews are hated because they're Jews. Because it is assumed that there's something about them which makes them inherently evil and dangerous. That's the crucial difference. But the Nazis would have decided to do, it's certain that in the end they would have remained the only power with industrial capability (Why leave Japan colonize China?). They couldn't have settled the entire world and multiply their numbers to the billions in less than a few centuries. It goes without saying that if the Nazis colonized the entire world and killed off or enslaved all native populations they encountered, a thousand-year old empire would have been impossible. It would have broken up into independent states relatively soon. From the point of view of radical ecology people are equal, regardless of 'race' in much the same way that two rats belong to the same species regardless of fur color. Less people, says radical ecology, are always better than more people. Without modern medicine and industrial agriculture, says radical ecology, people would never have expanded their numbers to the billions. So from that point of view, the less people have access to modern medicine and industrial agriculture, the slower the rate they'll multiply. A world where this is the case of affairs is a world I would gladly exchange for our own, (as long as I wasn't a slave of course). Yet forms of slavery exist today too. They're the people who manufacture your iPhone or your shoes. Gewgtweg (talk) 22:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While the atomic bombings wouldn't have annihilated all terrestrial life, the radiation would still cause enough of an ecological collapse to wipe out entire species, not to mention killing millions, if not billions, of people. As for the claim about Nazis not wanting to exterminate minorities outside of the Reich's borders? They wanted to conquer Russia and exterminate the Slavic and Asian inhabitants because they were afraid of invasion, because Germany had been invaded by the Mongols and Russians before, and the Nazis were almost fanatically obsessed with keeping Germans safe (at least in theory). As for the colonization, the Germans only planned to keep Slavs, Jews, Romani, etc. alive as long as necessary. Once enough Germans lived in those areas, the natives would be exterminated or "Germanized." Also, why exactly is a slave-owning society more ecologically sustainable? Sure, Ancient Rome might be more "green" than modern Italy, but that can just as easily be attributed to Rome's lack of modern medicine and industry. And I seriously believe that slavery is wrong. And yes, I acknowledge that slavery does exist today. I believe a world like this one is shit. What you say is better, on the other hand, involves entire ethnic groups being enslaved on an unprecedented scale. At least you're honest about your Original Position Fallacy inclination, though. RoninMacbeth (talk) 23:34, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Just because a state is industrial doesn't mean it has to be capitalist. That system is not without its benefits but it's astonishingly irrational and wasteful. That's the argument of Karl Marx against capitalism. He didn't mind that it is unfair, but that is crisis-prone and inefficient. The constant competition for profit it engenders essentially rapes the planet of its natural wealth just to make the rich richer and the poorer poorer. Compared to the effects this orgy of consumerism will leave behind for future generations, it is conceivable that even a world ruled by the Nazis would ultimately have been preferable in the long-term. After all, who gets to dominate and who gets to be enslaved or even to die off, that's a mere accident of history. The Germans themselves would have faced the bitter fate of the Gauls had the forest jungle they were living in not hindered the Romans from unleashing their vastly superior military power. And even so, they were probably saved because of the courage of a single daring, ambitious traitor, a nobleman the Romans called Arminius. Then again, they might never have risen to prominence had Bonaparte not attacked Russia, sealing his fate. Nor would they have enjoyed such enormous power and prestige without access to the Ruhrgebiet. Or would the Soviets have won the war had the communists not taken over and moved to forcibly industrialize the country by wiping out millions? Would they have won had the Germans not allowed them to produce tank technology on their behalf so as to circumvent the Versailles treaty and re-arm? Would Hitler ever have risen to power had Von Hindenburg not been so scared of a communist takeover? Would civilization exist today if a brave Soviet submariner during the Cuba missile crisis had not disobeyed orders by his superiors to raise hell? History is nothing but accident upon accident. If you see things that way, right and wrong makes no historical sense really. And by the way, in the 1940s world population was about 2.3 billion. A global anthropogenic distaster that happens in a world of 2.3 billion is preferable to a disaster that happens in a world of 8, 9, or 12 billion people. This is the disaster we're looking at today. Of course all of this would have been avoided if we simply had never discovered science and stuck with our traditional ignorance. By unlocking the secrets of nature and inventing the machine we have tasted of the forbidden fruit. If I had a time machine I would go back to the renaissance and made sure that the scientific revolution never took off. Another objection I have is that you assume that they would have killed everyone east of Poland or keep some alive momentarily. You fail to address the fact that the Nazis would have had to make a final decision. We don't know and we will never know for sure what they would have chosen. Would they have resolved to become a slave-owning society and free their own citizens from the burden of labor or would the ever 'industrious' Germans, as the stereotypes have it, keep on sweating? I believe that the allure of laziness would have swayed even them and they would have opted for a slave-owning society in which case they would have become a version of ancient Sparta. Their only concern would be sports, calisthenics, butt sex and guarding seas of slaves. Gewgtweg (talk) 13:07, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Only would've been better for the JOOZ Jews and not really anyone else, including the Blood God. Maim!Kill!Burn! (talk) 15:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Returning to World War One, if Germany won that, I don't know if they had any particular plans for western Europe. They had a strategy to defeat France militarily but did they actually know what to do then? As mentioned, they would doubtless have taken France's colonies, and maybe Belgium's, and maybe some border land (Luxembourg?) but probably left Western European much the same (compare 1871). Although a not very constitutional monarchy before the war, Germany was politically mixed with a strong Social Democratic party, especially in the more industrial parts, and might have liberalised in a more orderly fashion.
 * On the other hand (or other side of Europe), post-Revolutionary Russia would have been much weaker (assuming it still lost the territory it gave to Germany at Brest-Litovsk), and the Austro-Hungarian empire might not have fallen. The White Russians might have defeated the Bolsheviks, or any surviving Communist country might be weaker. The wave of nationalism that gave the world Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc, probably would not have occurred in the same way, but nationalist sentiment would have persisted and there might have been further war in eastern Europe (unless someone with real vision had negiotated a peaceful solution). In view of the actual political state of 1930s eastern Europe (lots of authoritarians, populists, borderline-fascists, anti-semites, etc) it could have been a powderkeg.
 * Also, Italy was on the winning side in WWI and still the first to fascist up. --Gospatric (talk) 10:40, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

A lecture by Gewgtweg on religion
I define religion as a set of ontological and deontological ideas subscribed to by a societal collective and generating for that collective a strong feeling of psychological or existential intensity. It follows from this definition that religion is a basic human and societal need and the prime marker of our collective identity. Just as food is the material fuel of survival, religion may be said to be immaterial fuel that enables collective survival.

Initially religion is born as a cult by a single individual with a small following. Then it reaches the minds of intellectuals who refine it. Then, a political ruler adopts it and thanks to the normative power of the actual it becomes established in great masses of people. At this point its theology gradually loses its refined elements and is popularized or vulgarized. Then, new intellectuals re-refine it again before new rulers re-utilize the new elements for political purposes and laymen, becoming familiar with it, re-vulgarize it and dumb it down. This is the process that manufactures advanced religion, i.e. religion purged of heathenism or animism. But for the manufacture of advanced religion you need an advanced society, i.e. a society that can afford major rulers, an established priesthood and huge masses of workers.

In a primitive but fairly large subsistence society, i.e. a society that doesn't depend exclusively on a stable agriculture-based economy for its survival, but other activities or theft, its deities are no more than a personification of natural goods (the sea, the sky, the earth, the home, etc.), natural activities (sex, violence etc.), natural occurrences (death, fortune, arbitration etc.) and natural status (fatherhood, motherhood etc.). Bards, poets, seers etc. (primitive intellectuals) spread myths about these deities. When economic relations start to stabilize and society ceases to be at the mercy of warring warlords, small cults appear that elaborate on those myths and at about the same time religious thinking changes focus and becomes more like philosophy or moral science.

In primitive but very tiny societies, as in those where until recently lived many tribes in places like Sub-Saharan Africa or the Amazon, animism dominates and objects of worship are various spirits that have the form of people (ghosts, fairies, dwarfs etc.), sacred animals, sacred artifacts (totems etc.) and the landscape (mountains, rivers etc.).

The relic of former phases never dies out. Hence we have mythical critters dating from the animist era, we have moral fables and myths involving deities from antiquity and we have established religion dating from a more advanced era.

We can further subdivide this paradigm. The Early Mid-Ages, the chaotic warlord era, is where we got the worship of saints from, which survives in fossilized form today (in fossilized minds). The High Mid-Ages is where we got our fairy tales, our witch-cults and our heroic sagas from. The early modern period is where we got our established religious theology. Further into the modern period we got our syncretic environment where many smaller competing religions are possible just as in the Hellenistic era.

In our Goat Kingdom we worship the religion of scientism. It involves a fascination and adoration with the idea of "science" as a source of all that is good and useful in human life. But just as someone who is most fascinated by the starry skies is hardly the most versed of astronomers, and just as someone who loves his fellow human beings is hardly the best of surgeons, and just as someone who is the bravest and fiercest in the face of the enemy (Kurds, Islamic terrorists etc.) is hardly the most efficient of modern soldiers, so do those who adore science, hardly possess detailed knowledge that sets them apart from the average clueless citizen they otherwise enjoy to scorn for their lack of scientific education.

Indeed, I doubt how many of you who you so despise religion and so love science can skillfully answer but a mere four or five of those ten questions:


 * Who was Thomas Young and what was his contribution to our knowledge?
 * What did Archimedes discover exactly?
 * How was the theory of phlogiston disproved?
 * Who was William Gilbert and what was his contribution to our knowledge?
 * Who was Joseph Black and what was his contribution to our knowledge?
 * Who was George Hadley and what was his contribution to our knowledge?
 * Who was Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis and what was his contribution to our knowledge?
 * Why was Ludwig Boltzmann isolated from the scientific community of his day?
 * How did Albert Einstein prove the existence of the atom?
 * Who was Sir William Crookes and what was his contribution to our knowledge?

If in fact proponents of scientism were more familiar with the history of science they'd discover that religiosity of some form, either won't affect the ability to make a discovery at all or it will actively help. Newton didn't come up with his pioneering discoveries in spite of his religious and spiritual inquiries but because of them. Would modern chemistry have been possible without the religious and mystical pursuits of alchemists? Religion is wrong but absolutely useful to society and scientism never gets that. Human society would not be if humans were not religious animals. Then, I hear you ask, why does atheism exist at all? Are atheists not humans? Atheism exists, my clueless friend, because the human being has the ability to question itself. And yet, in the end, atheism and skepticism only contribute to displacing current myths, just as they help now to eradicate creationism. But they will never succeed in preventing the constant formation of new ones. Gewgtweg (talk) 18:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you have access to the Internet or to a library, you can answer each of those questions in detail. (Some of them should have been addressed in grade school.) Nerd (talk) 21:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Irrelevant. Would the average proponent of scientism have studied enough to know the answers to 5 of these questions? He wouldn't. Believing in something means you don't know much about it. Fundamentalist Christians tend to be ignorant of the Bible. Science adorers tend to know little about tangible science beyond the basics. What they're best at is talking about abstract theories like the so-called 'scientific method'. Gewgtweg (talk) 13:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you define religion as a German deep-fried, jam-filled dough, It follows from this definition that religion is a snack food with a Kennedy based myth around it. What I'm saying is that is there a reason to accept your definition of religion? I can prove anything is a religion if you let me freely define the term first.Vorarchivist (talk) 21:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that I didn't 'freely' define the term at all. I defined it very particularly and precisely. I repeat: a set of ontological and deontological ideas subscribed to by a societal collective and generating for that collective a strong feeling of psychological and existential intensity. An ontology describes the nature of things and deontology informs you of your role in the scheme of things. A societal collective can be a country, institution or group. Psychological and existential intensity is the cozy feeling that you carry the message of truth and therefore, that you are 'special' beyond the human mean. This definition of religion is as precise at it gets. It is in no wise arbitrary. Gewgtweg (talk) 11:41, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I know you’re meant to be LANCB and all but I’ll just point out you never really justified the assertion that we promote scientism. Christopher (talk) 15:43, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Creationists and the like use the term "scientism" to express their distaste with anything grounded in science and reality. I adopt the legitimate use of the term denoting an intellectual movement with origins from English-speaking countries. That is unquestionably promoted here. It is exemplified by authors the likes of Bertrand Russel, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan etc. It features traditional anti-metaphysics philosophy combined with popular science. Politically, this movement tends to side with left-leaning capitalism. Gewgtweg (talk) 16:33, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Building bunkers for surviving Planet X
I don't get why that there are people who build doomsday bunkers to survive Planet X? If such an object hit Earth it would exterminate all life. Lets say Planet X hit in Russia and you built a bunker under the ice cap of Antarctica, it would not help. The impact would create Earthquakes and tsunamis all over the world, then there is the massive ejecta that would create earthquakes and tsunamis by themselves. There would be the giant fireball that would spread worldwide. Rock vapor would cover the Earth for about a year. All snow, ice and water would be gone. The surface of the Earth would melt and it would not rain for a thousand years (according to a Discovery Channel video on YouTube). What good would a bunker do if the surface of the Earth melted? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:09, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Conspiracy theorists tend to not think about their beliefs thoroughly, thus why they tend to deviate from any sort of logical sense. 03:03, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah but it's a bunker!! And as everyone knows, bunkers can survive anything all the local fruitcakes wackjobs, ahem, Survivalists must do is huddle in their bunker, pray, and think happy thoughts and such trivial problems will magically cease being an issue.  03:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah yes the bunker, where libertarianism meets incest: one of the most memorable scifi stories I've ever read. Leuders (talk) 03:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, to all of the above, the Planet X/Y/Z/Ooo, Big Shiny Thing In Sky HELP ME! wonks aren't-- normally-- claiming that said planet is going to hit us. Rather, they are of the opinion that it's going to come very very close to us (in astronomical terms, or closer) and cause all sorts of ecological/geophysical/mystical/psychological/It's the End of the World as We Know It damage.    Yes, a bunker won't do anything if it actually hit us, but they are betting it's just gonna come really really close and screw the majority of us over in a barely survivable way, while they are safe in thier bunkers to wait out the diaster and emerge into either Fallout 4 : The Nibiru Edition or a pastoral paradise just ripe for them to repopulate.  In other words, it's an almost equally improbable scenario for survival than direct impact, but there's technically a chance.  Not one worth betting on, mind you... Kencolt (talk) 05:49, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Still with that Planet X BS after so many epic fails?. Seriously. In the "it will hit us scenario", everyone down to bacteria is doomed and no stupid bunker will protect us. In the "close approach that will mess with us", the bunker could have some utility... until they run out of provisions and/or water, whatever is exahusted first. Panzerfaust (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually it is 'a cunning plan' (by Blackadder's Baldrick) to get all such persons to go quietly to the asylum. Anna Livia (talk) 21:44, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * the real tragedy of people proclaiming the end of world is that everytime they are wrong they are laughed at. they live their whole lives thought of as crazy fools, mocked each time their predictions fail to happen, their last thoughts as they lay dying thinking they have wasted their lives. and if it ever turns out they are right, they'll get five minutes to gloat before they die with the rest of us. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:56, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Even with an asteroid six miles in diameter, the bunker of average size would not be of much help. Reason- Infectious disease. So if the hypothetical asteroid hit 1000 miles away, you would have to stay in the bunker for weeks (surviving ejecta and the resulting extreme heat). Recycling piss and shit would only go so far. You survive the asteroid but succumb to Cholera or Plague or the Flu. Disease would kill your chances both figuratively and literally. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 23:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe we can create some super duper material so that the bunker will sort of float around in the magma that pours out of the cracks of the earth after impact. Sort of like a lava-submarine. And we can power the ship with thermal energy or stuff...mostly just to have airconditioning and to power our tvs and mobile devices. perhaps after a few million years...with the lava-submarine becoming a multi-generational vessel...they'll exit onto a newly cooling Earth, 20,000th generation humans will finally see the sky! And the they could repopulate the world with our superior amazingness that is human awesome-sauce! 82.158.77.178 (talk) 18:07, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There are quite a few things which will take priority over electronic devices (what programs etc will be transmitted to them) - food and drink, clothing, books, genetic diversity etc) - and the 20k generation humans will emerge to the war between the tardigrades and the cockroaches. Anna Livia (talk) 18:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I suppose all of that is true Anna if you want to look on the bright side. As for food, there will be a near infinite supply of hot-pockets and red gummybears. they can drink lava that has been cooled down. As for the state of the Earth once the lava-submarine submerges...I would imagine that the Xorg-Zurg people from the Jiji nebula will arrive beore the tardigrades...and a race of beings with no corporeal body who have mastered universal consciousness. Pity...the few remaining humans will only get a chance to look at the beautiful blue sky for a couple minutes before the Xorg-Zorgs turn the remaining humans into pure transcendent conscious energy.

Article on UK rape gangs?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527 31.205.66.133 (talk) 08:55, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh wait it's not White people. My bad. 31.205.66.133 (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement; Documenting the full range of crank ideas; Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism; Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

If you can write an article on this topic that incorporates any of those 4 things and is accurate, go ahead and write one. If you can’t, stop complaining that an article doesn’t exist. Christopher (talk) 17:59, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It could be argued that point 4 would apply.--Klaksozavr (talk) 18:38, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * But - it can't only be 4. Point 4 is about how points 1,2 and 3 are handled in the media.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:34, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * its not even point 4. the cases in rotherham and telford had nthing to do with how the media dealt with them but entirely about how the police handdled them. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Klaksozavr is very new, possibly thought that 4 applied because the media covered it a lot? Christopher (talk) 19:47, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Rape culture 31.205.66.133 (talk) 23:06, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh wait it would be racist. 31.205.66.133 (talk) 23:08, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Why not just get started on an article instead of complaining? If it is deemed not to meet the aims of the Wiki, it will be taken down or edited accordingly. But it seems to me that you are not willing to do the leg-work of creating an article. You want someone else to do it for it. Well, tough shit!Levi Ackerman (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)


 * 31.205.66.133 is a sock of banned racist user Michael Coombs of Rightpedia fame. Don't let him troll you, he is only here to stir trouble. 37.48.83.166 (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You mean this weirdo?--Klaksozavr (talk) 00:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Your posts might as well actively state "rationalwiki is intentionally suppressing information on this site because of own anti-white racism", which only makes you sound like an idiot. If there ever was a way to get people uninterested in a real story, you are doing it. CorruptUser (talk) 02:11, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 31.205.66.133 (talk) 05:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What are these links supposed to prove? The third edit you linked was copied from Wikipedia. CowHouse (talk) 14:52, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sheer hypocrisy for Michael Coombs to become obsessed with the grooming-gang thing as if he opposes it; look at his own deranged posts on rape.ODS (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So, Mikemikev is back again? Some things never change... ScepticWombat (talk) 15:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Banned from Der Vaterland
UK scored a trifecta these past few days: banning Lauren Southern, Martin Sellner of the Generation Identity (Austria), and Brittany Pettibone from entering the country "on grounds that their presence in the UK was not conducive to the public good." It's particularly ironic because, at least based on their surnames, Pettibone and Southern have English ancestry; now they can't self-deport. Bongolian (talk) 02:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's Das Vaterland.--95.208.248.45 (talk) 02:44, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I obviously suck at German. Bongolian (talk) 03:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Everyone sucks at German. It's a language with literally 16 different words for "the". CorruptUser (talk) 04:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No, it's only 6. Also, I think it would be "dem Vaterland", since it follows "from". —Kazitor, pending 05:22, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The only thing not conducive to the public good is this treasonous ZOG. 31.205.66.133 (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There's 4 genders, male female neuter and plural, and 4 cases, nomative accusitive genetive and dative. Each has its own word for "the", and most of them share so it's difficult to tell which case someone is using.  So you get Die Den Das Der Dem Des. Normally, anything ending in "er" is a Der, but there are too many exceptions like das Butter to make as a rule.  They do, horrible, unspeakable things to verbs in German, where a verb can be split and you have no idea what the verb actually is until the end of the sentence, and since run-on sentences are common enough, you could be reading several paragraphs before you figure out what's going on... CorruptUser (talk) 12:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If we all suck at German, why is there a page with all the headings and subheadings in German!? 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 19:20, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the lesson, I do actually know some German. The point is, you said there are 16 different words, but der die das dem den des is 6 different words. Different cases and genders don't make them different words. Personally, I like case anyway; it's better than using word order. —Kazitor, pending 20:52, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

its good that we ignore the bongolian's post almost completely to pick at a pseudo german statement witten as a joke. way to go pedants. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:24, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Alright, fair enough.
 * So these three, are they openly advocating anything illegal? If not, other than being assholes, what's the reason for barring entry?  Because I find "hate speech" laws that include anything other than calls for hate crimes to be a bit prone to abuse. CorruptUser (talk) 01:50, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Most countries have wide latitude to restrict who enters their borders, far wider than any standard for criminal action. (Many countries such as the US make it hard for anyone with a criminal conviction to enter even as a tourist, Israel has lately been notorious for banning people who criticise the government, Trump has spoken of banning all Muslims, and most European countries feel free to ban undesirables.) There's a possibility that these three people would have committed criminal offences in the UK, probably incitement to racial hatred or similar (which many far-right English Defence League types have been charged with), but it's far from certain. From one point of view, it's unjust. But while the right to leave one's own country is commonly considered fairly fundamental, do people have the right to enter a specific other country?
 * Here's a BBC report on the ban. --Gospatric (talk) 10:20, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, the ban doesn't appear to be all that unjustified... CorruptUser (talk) 06:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * looks justified to me AMassiveGay (talk) 13:12, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Spam
Why are there so many new accounts today? 19:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC) —part unsigned by FuzzyCatPotato
 * Maybe the bot is programed to spam accounts when it hits pi? 21:40, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Bad news
Prof. Stephen Hawking is dead. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 04:58, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And all the terrible creationists and theists and nutters come out:( Let's remember him in happier times, arguing with  British health secretary Jeremy Hunt and . --Gospatric (talk) 10:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Can we have a "Happy birthday, Steve" Holydaze template for him for January 8? Spud (talk) 13:19, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we should given how significant his contributions to the world were. Can I also take this moment to point out that he died on pi day? As far as deaths go, dying on a day related to your field of research (if possibly indirectly) isn't all that bad. 13:30, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can tell you from experience that the natural constant $$\pi$$ comes up extremely frequently in physics. Please look up the Einstein field equations (SI units), the Bekenstein-Hawking or black-hole entropy formula (SI units), or the Euler buckling equation (without which tall standing structures cannot be built), or the Larmor formula (without which wireless electronics is not possible). Nerd (talk) 02:14, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Wait until assholes as Hovind, Cameron, or Bananaman Comfort pop up. RIP. Panzerfaust (talk) 14:58, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Can I provide some goat? Him running over Brian Cox is a real highlight. 15:49, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Pity 'them lot of unmemorable wafflers' couldn't spell his name right - or accept John 14.2 and any other 'many paths' type ideas. Anna Livia (talk) 16:49, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you haven't seen it, this is a fun collaboration/tribute between Hawking & Monty Python. Bongolian (talk) 19:38, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Too late. Look up a few lines. 20:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

What could be a better way to celebrate his life and work than to watch an excellent video explaining his most famous contribution to physics?

Nerd (talk) 02:14, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Dear board, I'm taking my leave
This is a site of quality and the same can be said about many of its members. Nevertheless, I no longer desire to maintain my account as the discussions don't really provoke my interest and what I have to say doesn't really provoke the interest of others. My presence here is redundant and it is my final and unchangeable wish to be removed from the site and all my essays deleted. There were some rare occasions where I was rude to some of my interlocutors. To them I humbly apologize. Citizens of the Kingdom of Goat, I bid you farewell. Gewgtweg (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I’ve deleted all of your essays. Christopher (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As RW started, in part, as a response to Conservapedia, and this page itself has its own talk page - could there be a 'convolution of RW' where people writing 'more in sorrow than in anger' and/or going off in a flounce can congregate (and take their essays that nobody agrees with so they are not lost to posterity)? Anna Livia (talk) 17:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I would like to note that I am not particularly bitter, sulky or angry about anything or anyone here. There's just not much interesting stuff going on which makes me think that my setting up an account was unnecessary. There's too much talk about identity politics of which I have no interest. I would have preferred a more apolitical RationalWiki as well as a less humorous, more sullen, grounded approach of all subjects. I think humor is marvelous to have in your personal life. But when it is imported from personal life into intellectual issues it does harm. Gewgtweg (talk) 16:50, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't complain - do something (or start your own wiki with your rules) Anna Livia (talk) 19:46, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Given that my manner was kind and in no wise bitter and also given that I didn't try to impose anything on anyone, it was kind of rude of you to put it that way Anna. I heard you complaining that you were getting harassed recently. How would you like if someone had told you: "Don't complain. Do something or go somewhere where you won't get harassed". Gewgtweg (talk) 17:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have to say I agree. I was going to write something similar when it was posted 8 days ago but thought there wasn’t much point as you were unlikely to see any of this again. Christopher (talk) 18:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Beware
... the ides of March.

And can there be some archiving of this page. Anna Livia (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll see if I can be bothered to. I would like to know what's going on with Archivist. —Kazitor, pending 10:05, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Partly it #is# people continuing to comment on earlier discussions (for all the usual reasons). Anna Livia (talk) 12:04, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I worry greatly over the tidepods of march. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:49, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I knew it! I bloody knew it! You're the one who kept on about the Ides of Marchall those years ago. I thought your style was familiar. Wilder Bicycle 19:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Huh. I just came across a comment from 2014, thought the style seemed familiar, checked the links in your comment and yep: same IP. —Kazitor, pending 06:54, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You kinda have to admire the dedication at least. However, we've survived again. Wilder Bicycle 09:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In March, October, September, May
 * The Ides are on the 15th day.
 * Plus the Shakespeare quote. A meme-mnemonic to be passed on. Anna Livia (talk) 10:35, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

AiG's Bagels
RIGHT HERE, FOR YOU! --UglyRat (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I apologize --UglyRat (talk) 00:25, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What? 03:22, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

McMaster fired
The maniac just fired H.R. McMaster and this is so going to help the situation in North Korea, by replacing him with John Bolton.S.H. DeLong (talk) 02:39, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Which of the insincere sycophants is Bolton again? 02:50, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bush's UN Ambassador.S.H. DeLong (talk) 02:52, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is also making me paranoid about nuclear war with North Korea.S.H. DeLong (talk) 02:57, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Nah, launching a nuclear strike is a process of many steps, intended to be as foolproof as possible. It requires the full cooperation of everybody involved and U.S. military personnel have the right to refuse an unlawful order. Nerd (talk) 03:03, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Is it foolproof enough for trump?S.H. DeLong (talk) 03:07, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Whatever the case we can kiss those delicate peace talks with North Korea goodbye. 03:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is. So many ways to be halted; only one way to proceed. Relax. A lot of things can happen between now and May. Nerd (talk) 03:14, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bolton is a big fan of conspiracy theories, e.g. Hillary masterminded Benghazi, Russia election tampering is a hoax, etc. so he's a better match for Trump. Trump strongly relates to the values of authoritarians and dictators whose general philosophy is, "Why make war when you can make money?" I predict relations with N. Korea will take a commercial turn, most likely sweetheart deals that benefit the Trump family and its cronies. Leuders (talk) 03:30, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So our options are either war or the enrichment of the Trump family/regime/administration? How lovely, we either get raped from the front or raped from the rear, either way we can't avoid getting raped. 03:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah I could be wrong, but I think war is unlikely, given Trump's general inclination to exploit diplomatic relations to favor corporate interests. Leuders (talk) 15:43, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Jim Sterling's latest Jimquistion talks about video game violence and how the White House deals with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LnsmSCkWUk

Has been posted on Monday, so I apologize for the rather late video, but I feel like it's something worth bring up about here. 04:59, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's an idea. Lets arm the homeless. With shotguns.
Not kidding. Yeah, homeless people are often victims of street crime, but... Wow. Just... wow. Kencolt (talk) 11:25, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness." "38% of homeless people were dependent on alcohol and 26% abused other drugs."
 * Part of the problem with homelessness is that many homeless people consider hostels more dangerous than living on the street. So maybe we need to make the streets more dangerous? --Gospatric (talk) 11:45, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So he just saw Hobo with a shotgun and yelled "THATS A GREAT FUCKING IDEA!!!!"? 99.199.9.17 (talk) 12:31, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The really astounding bit, to my mind, is that the candidate's reason for shotguns is, apparently, because pistols have too many restrictions involved. Again, wow.  I have a feeling that this isn't an argument that has yet occurred to the National Rifle Association.Kencolt (talk) 13:37, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * its a fantastic idea. homeless people are at risk, but doing something about would require effort and government intervention. so arm them . job done. obviously that puts everyone else at risk from maruading gangs of homeless. doing something about that would would require effort and government intervention. so arm evryone else who isnt already. its a win win. wayne le pierre just cum in his pants. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:01, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Huh. Horseshoe theory is real.  That's pretty much exactly what Marx would suggest too.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:03, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fuck you, what a bunch of horseshit @ikanreed 'Legion what do you want from me  18:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Temporary Leave of Absence
I have decided to take a 3 month sabbatical, in order for me to get my anxiety under control. I need time to pull myself together and get myself back together.S.H. DeLong (talk) 00:38, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Best wishes to you. Bongolian (talk) 04:45, 17 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Good luck. That guy who summoned demons for fun
 * Best of luck. Don't bother with things you have no control over. Nerd (talk) 14:43, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bye bye. 16:54, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Good idea, I did the same a few years ago. Look after your health first. Wilder Bicycle 11:52, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

At what point in your life did you dump creationism?
For me, it was the first grade when I learned about the dinosaurs. I escaped from Area 51, please don't tell the government
 * i have never subscribed to creationism. its just not really thing of any significance in uk AMassiveGay (talk) 15:49, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I still subscribed to evolution back when I was Christian. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 20:29, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Not in Aus either. Now I'm starting to think when I even heard about creationism in the first place. —Kazitor, pending 21:04, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was raised in a secular household where my father was part of a Buddhist family (I think, but he's never in the religion) and my mom was part of a Catholic family (though even then her father was a Protestant who didn't care about his religion and her mother traumatized her with the Catholic "you are going to hell" talk, so my mom later rejected religion). So, I'm raised as a person who rejects creationism and loves the Magic School Bus and animal books. 21:48, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * B...but atheists all rejected God! 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 04:52, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder, can you reject God before God was invented? 03:11, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Never heard anything about Creationism, this being Catholic -bishops and the like talked (and talk) about issues as homosexuality, feminism, etc. but never heard them complaining about science, especifically evolution, the Big Bang theory, etc.-. At most in Catechism as well as religion classes, that I had to take, we knew about the stuff in the Bible (Genesis, etc.) but never in creationist way, as pure, undiluted, geology, evolution, etc. were (and are) taught in science classes.
 * I knew of it first thanks to Asimov on his essay books, and ignored it for the above reasons until thanks to this site was introduced to its fullest horror, and especially when Evangelism with its pastors as wise in the Bible as clueless in science came here accompanied by it and other truckload of BS. Panzerfaust (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

In my case, the dear ole sperm donor kept wanting me, my siblings and mom to go to church. He would always talk about how creationism was right and evolution was wrong. Any time there was an interesting activity at whatever church we went to, he claimed that there was not enough time. When I learned about dinosaurs and evolution in 1st grade, I questioned creationism. Being autistic, I was very prone to manipulation and creationism was shoved down my throat. I was thankful for hearing about evolution. I am trapped in a Pharmaceutical company! They are creating zombies!! --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 17:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I never had a problem with evolution and I never had a problem with creation, so... *shrugs* 141.134.75.236 (talk) 01:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Do we know it was the Russians what done it?
So we are told that there is "no other explanation" other than the Russians were responsible for the nerve gas attack in the UK. And I agree. And I too think it was them.

But isn't there a logical fallacy in there somewhere? "I can think of no other explanation therefore this explanation is true" is a form of argument from ignorance, isn't it? I'm not trying to suggest it wasn't them, I'm just wondering if the logic is good.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:51, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Theresa May said that it was either the Russians or someone who compromised their chemical warfare security. The Russians have apparently denied both, the first explicitly and the second implicitly. The basic rationale for accusing the Russians is two-fold: motive and capacity. Few actors would have had a motive to murder former Russian spies other than Russia, the nerve agent is known to have been manufactured in Russia and it is difficult for non-state actors to manufacture and safely deliver it to a victim, due to its extremely potent toxicity. Additionally, there has been a pattern of the Russian state committing extrajudicial executions abroad, particularly in the UK (e.g., ). In 2006, Russia "legalized" extrajudicial killings abroad.


 * The isn't rock-solid logic, but it is rather good circumstantial evidence, about all that is needed since this is not (yet) a criminal case. Bongolian (talk) 19:40, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with all of that. It's very strong circumstantial evidence. I agree that they had both the means and the motive. I think it was them. I'm just asking whether I am guilty of any kind of logical fallacy by saying: "I have no better explanation therefore this one is true.".Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:11, 17 March 2018 (UTC)


 * "Reverse evidence" is a strategy sometimes used in financial and criminal investigation; you try to prove that X committed a crime, and then try to prove that X didn’t commit that crime and someone else did. If a majority of evidence (motive, capacity, circumstantial, etc) indicates that X committed the crime, and all the reverse evidence (other suspects involvement are impossible or unlikely) indicates the same thing, then X probably committed a crime. Leuders (talk) 20:40, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To me, the Trump's Russian ties are partly wishful thinking. I want it to be true because fuck Donald Trump, but there's not enough hard evidence to convict. The story is also freaking convoluted. 21:44, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That’s not what we’re talkinf about. Google novichock.Christopher (talk) 13:44, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Someday I'll learn to read.:P 15:27, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Do any of you actually trust Russia
Note- Mostly speculation and my clinical paranoia.

I would not put it past Russia, considering their terrible human rights record. I think they did the attack. Don't trust the Ravens of Dee --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To put it bluntly, no. 04:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No. They went from an autocratic monarchy to the first communist state (also autocratic) and finally what is essentially the Tsardom and Brezhnev merged together. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 05:51, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Certainly not. Well, more accurately, I don't trust Putin. Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:50, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 10 years ago, I would've said that Putin was a dick, but Russia needed a strong leader to keep from collapsing further. The leader they needed right now, but not the one they deserved.  Today, after Georgia and Ukraine and Syria and all the assassinations?  No, he's bringing the world closer to WWIII. CorruptUser (talk) 12:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * not to mention interferenvce the elections of other sates, cyber attacks, army of bots on the likes of twitter, i surprised the question needed to be asked. the fact that their cheerleaders are all egregious arseholes should tell you all you need to know AMassiveGay (talk) 14:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I trust neither Russia, nor the USA. 'Legion what do you want from me  18:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * But I'd trust the USA before I'd trust Russia. The US at least tries to do the right thing.  Occasionally.  Russia?  No, they will only do the right thing if there's no better way to stick it to the US. CoryUsar (talk) 03:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Both countries are amoral, they don't care about whether or not what they do is right or wrong, they only care if it will either increase their influence on the world stage or make them a lot of money 'Legion what do you want from me  06:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What exactly did the US gain from ending the Bosnian war? What did the US gain from turning West Germany and South Korea into economic powerhouses?  The US has stopped supporting allies when those allies became too brutal and awful for even the US to stomach, but Russia never has no matter how terrible the autocrats they support.  In Realpolitik terms, the US should never have stopped supporting the Shah or Batista, yet they did.  The US has a democracy of a sort, a bit flawed but it is democracy, and as bad as things are for minorities in the US they are still better than nearly any other part of the world.  If you think France has been great for minorities, you haven't been paying attention at all.  Scandanavia?  Go ask the Sami about how "tolerant" the Swedes really are.
 * There have been maybe two times the Ruskies did anything good, and both times it was only to discredit the US. The first was the civil rights movement; it wasn't so much infected with commies as it was created by commies in order to try to disrupt the US, but it ended up backfiring as far as the Russians were concerned.  But yes, it was a huge good even if accidental, so that's one for them.  The second was opposing Apartheid, which they didn't even do much about beyond constantly insulting the US, and arguably caused in the first place, and the whole thing stopped literally as soon as the Cold War ended and the US didn't have to fear the ANC turning SA into another communist kleptocracy. CoryUsar (talk) 12:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can see how the US intervening in Bosnia, was possibly a selfless action, but South Korea? Really? First of all, the entire reason the US cares about South Korea at all is because they need a buffer against Chinese backed North Korea. that's what they gained from assisting South Korea, not to mention all the military bases there. Secondly do you not remember the 80's? Do you not remember what kind of government was in power, getting money from Uncle Sam? Also what does France and Sweden have to do with anything, we were talking about Russia and the USA. 'Legion what do you want from me  23:01, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) But there's no reason to share any of the wealth with these countries. If the US was truly sociopathic, the US would've done what Britain did and intentionally sabotage every last industry in the countries it imperialized and keep the colonies/possessions producing nothing but raw goods to be shipped to the motherland and turned into finished goods, because the money has always been in manufacturing and services, not raw materials.  But that's not what happened.  Ok, it kinda did happen in parts of Latin America, but it wasn't the norm.  As for the government in the 80's, I think you mean Park Chung Hee of the 70's.  And the funny thing about Park is that he's only hated by the generations that weren't under his boot and don't remember how terrible life was before he showed up.  Meanwhile, virtually all of Russia's puppet states were kept in perpetual poverty and the wealth sent home to Mother Russia.
 * 2) Brought in Sweden and France in regards to minority rights. As bad as the US is with minorities, well it's really awful, but what's scary is just how much worse even enlightened Europe is.  But enough of that aside.  Russia in theory was supposed to have moved on past racism and sexism, but in reality the women were little more than sex slaves for the men in charge, and the Russian policy on ethnicity was to play musical homelands in order to intentionally keep everyone too busy fighting each other to rebel against communism, which is why when the USSR ended virtually every breakaway state turned into a genocide-fest.  Oh sure, Yugoslavia made the news, but did you ever hear about the genocides in Dagestan?  I've met quite a few survivors of the genocides in Kyrgyzstan, yet I've never even seen it in the news once. CoryUsar (talk) 23:53, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 'As bad as the US is with minorities, well it's really awful, but what's scary is just how much worse even enlightened Europe is' you might have to explain that one AMassiveGay (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A bit off topic, but Europe is great for minorities so long as they don't exist in any large quantity. France routinely ethnically cleanses itself of Romani that had been there for decades on dubious claims that they were "recent migrants".  You know how in the US, a guy named Jamal only has 2/3 the chance of receiving a callback from a job application as a guy named James?  They tried that in France, and it was only 2/5th EDIT: 3/5, still lower than in US.  In theory, France is totes not racist, yet their criminal justice system is something like 50% Muslim (some sources place it at 70%, but I doubt it's that high), whereas the percent of population that is Muslim is about 8%.  Compare to the US where it's 37% black in prison with a population of 12%.  Italy isn't much better; it has been in a depression for quite some time, and there's a huge backlash against the Libyan and other African migrants that arrived in recent years, which basically means that every dark skinned person suffers and not just the recent migrants.  Germany is a bit weird; they are currently relatively welcoming of non-Germans, but sadly, that's changing.
 * When it comes to homosexuality and trans issues, yes, Europe is a couple years ahead of the US.CoryUsar (talk) 02:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * is there racism, systemic or otherwise, in europe? yes. is it worse than the US? that remains to be seen. the police arnt gunning down black folk as far as i now. also, europe isnt one homogeneous mass. plus libyans and the other recent immigrants - there is currently a refugee crisis going on that europe hasnt seen since ww2. not excusing it but italy is at the sharp end, its just not comparable to mexican migrants. there is going to be some conflict. your going to need more if you are going to say one place is a whole lot worse than the other. AMassiveGay (talk) 02:29, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There does need to be an easy way to compare racism by country. In terms of the job application thing, it varies by country but the US is somewhere in the middle-low region of major Western countries.  In terms of hate crimes, here is a great resource, and while unfortunately it's not perfectly comparable between all countries, the data does give extra information when there are discrepencies.  The US had about 7000 hate crimes in 2016, compared to 3500 for Germany, but the US has 4 times as many people.  France had 1800 hate crimes, which is slightly higher than the US per capita.  Spain's 1250 hate crimes is also slightly higher than in the US. CoryUsar (talk) 03:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i'm not sure how useful that link. it states in 2016 the us had 7321 hates crimes compared to uk with 80763. quite a discrepancy. what do we to make of this? the uk is a massively racist country? or more likely what constitutes a hate crime, how its reported and handled by police differs substantially from place to place? there is also no data from the us on if they are are prosecuted or sentenced. i do not think it compares like for like AMassiveGay (talk) 10:59, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

The military dictatorship in Korea lasted until the late 80's btw, and I could make the same argument about the Soviet Union, in fact in most former Soviet countries a majority of those surveyed said that they preffered life under the Soviet Union, does this justify the Soviet Union? Also you can't ask the people who would have disliked Park are in a ditch somewhere. 'Legion what do you want from me  06:08, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Wildbow, Ward, the Fallen, and Real Christian Sects
This is a niche topic that I don't expect many people will know or care about, but I figured that there might be someone who did and wanted to put in their $0.02, so here it is.

In Worm and and its sequel Ward, both written by Wildbow, the Fallen were initially described as essentially being a cult that worshiped the Endbringers (essentially, superpowered kaiju). Since one of the main characters of Ward is (currently) a member of the Fallen, we get a clearer picture of the Fallen than we did in Worm. They turn out to be largely similar to real-world fundamentalist Christians, with a heavy dash of apocalyptic preaching (due to, among other things, the aforementioned superpowered kaiju, who are presumably seen as messengers/servants of God).

Of course, it's not all just idle talk of fire and brimstone. They also practice cultlike behaviors, the effects of which are sometimes manifested in distinctly apropos powers possessed by the leadership (e.g, Mama Mathers and her ability to essentially project herself into the minds of people who think about her). They were also known to be involved in murders, mutilations of minorities, "a lot of low-level terrorist or attention-grabbing stunts," and more than a dozen kidnappings of young adults with superpowers (some of which wound up joining the Fallen).

I was curious if this reflected any specific group, or if it was just cultish/fundie antics exaggerated to the extremes that superpowers and a scarcity of law and order would allow.


 * Mtu35.jpg Reminds me of the plot for Marvel Team-Up 35. I've not seen such a manifestation in the real world of cults and kooks and religious fundamentalists, though. -- Cosmikdebris (talk) 03:38, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Worm? Is there an omnibus of it, I find it hard to read through many parallel stories.--Klaksozavr (talk) 21:11, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

i'm not sure you can compare this any existing cult or sect ever. as i understand, cults maintain control via psychological and physical means rather superpowers, and the source of worship generally arnt actual real giant monsters. comic book, the ones involving superheroes and powers and the like, do a piss poor job reflecting real wrld problems, as metaphor or otherwise. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

A noob asks a question
Hi I am indefinitely blocked from Wikipedia because I believe that slavery and forced labour, both modern and historical, are important topics which should not be ignored, and because disagreeing with people on Wikipedia who feel otherwise is considered disruptive. These people instead keep talking about undue weight and wikipedia is not a soapbox and accusing me of trying to right great wrongs, along with a bunch of other bureaucratic nonsense. I want to know if I am welcome to document information about slavery here instead. Ashy Waves (talk) 12:14, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe. We don't like edit warring here either. And we don't like users who don't follow advice and keep doing what they've been asked not to do here either. But we certainly see historical and modern slavery and forced labour as important topics here. So, go ahead and edit. But please take notice of the advice that other users give you. Spud (talk) 12:33, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The first time I heard the term edit warring, it did not sound like anyone was referring to a specific policy. It sounded like a very emotional way of describing a disagreement. Wars typically involve bullets or arrows flying or swords clashing. Since there was no physical violence actually involved in the dispute, it sounded like a rather melodramatic description. Within an hour or two of someone explaining that this was actually the name of a policy, and that there was a procedure to talk the article's talk page rather than just on my talk page, I was blocked, even though my last two edits before being blocked were attempts to start conversations on article talk pages. After that first block, I made hardly any edits to actual articles (just added some more references to undeleted content and made one attempt to add a systemic bias box), and stuck almost entirely to talk pages, the Tea House, and a sandbox. Then they had a whole bunch of reasons why they didn't want me talking on talk pages either. Ashy Waves (talk) 12:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * generally, what goes on on other wikis is not a concern here, doubly so for he said/she said wiki drama. just try not being a dick and you should be fine. easy enough, but some people...AMassiveGay (talk) 14:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Ashy Waves (talk) 16:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As RW has room for essays perhaps that option would be appropriate in this case. Anna Livia (talk) 17:13, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * How would I go about that, and what could I talk about in such an essay that would be of interest to people? I assume that the censorship of slavery-related information from Wikipedia would be of more interest to people than the bureaucratic nonsense. Ashy Waves (talk) 17:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i'm loathe to ask, but its difficult to respond without details and both sides of the story - what censorship exactly? id rather not rehash the drama from another wiki or jump to conclusions, but its just as easily that your treatment was justified as it is that you were hard done by. some details could avoid future drama AMassiveGay (talk) 17:55, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To give you a sense (and try to avoid the bureaucratic nonsense part of it)....
 * "Are you listetning what others say or what? As I told you, you can simply forget that such a detailed info will stay in the main article about Poland. Short section about most important topic of polish economy and you are putting there an info about... slavery? Please move this topic to the talk page.NeonFor (talk) 23:35, 13 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "Recently we have had some very minor stats added about slavery to a few main country articles like this one (as seen below). Most have been removed by others on the grounds of WP:UNDUE when the country does not have a rights probelms. I personally agree with this and removed it here and joined the talk on the users page who's adding this all over. But since this is the first place a second editor restored it....I will start a talk. Not sure a Stat of this nature with a margin of error greater then the actual number because it's so small needs to be here. If this was a country with human rights problems I could see why it would be included...but just not sure here.....so asking for imput.--Moxy (talk) 01:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "It's about undue weight ....in the same manner we dont list stats for drug addicts or the homeless or how many women get raped in a year.....all of which have much higher numbers then slavery. pls join the main talk at User talk:Ashy Waves#Edit warring at Poland and other articles.USER BANNED no point in the talk--Moxy (talk) 13:59, 18 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "We are just lucky we stooped the huge slave edits here as they where just starting on this article when people noticed the problem all over. Not sure how slavery is justified a mention here with so many other social problems and with a source that has a margin of error larger then the number given.....but will let others decide if the Dominican Republic is famous for its slavery in todays modern state.--Moxy (talk) 15:21, 18 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "The wholesale removal of this content across however many articles has the whiff of censorship of unpleasant facts.Carlstak (talk) 23:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "I get the points you're making; I just feel personally that information about the human trafficking problem is a special case to be distinguished from stats on drug addiction, homelessness, or rape. May I also point out that the problem is considered notable enough that Wikipedia has had an article about this very subject since 2011, see Human trafficking in the Dominican Republic. Carlstak (talk) 16:07, 18 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "Undue weight. Find another place to put it or not at all. This is a general encyclopedia, not a detailed compendium. CopperPhoenix (talk) 17:23, 15 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * "This is not the subject for a general country article. --E-960 (talk) 19:30, 15 March 2018 (UTC)"
 * Ashy Waves (talk) 18:17, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I would also add that The Stateman's Yearbook 2017: The Politics, Cultures, and Economies of the World does consider the Global Slavery Index's estimates to be important enough to include in many of their country articles, including Poland, even though their Poland article looks substantially shorter than Wikipedia's. Ashy Waves (talk) 18:21, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's the one thing about slavery they do consider worth including in the Poland article, "this trend can be largely attributed to Poland's rejection of slavery". I checked the closest available reference listed in the article (Norman Davies (2005). God's Playground A History of Poland. Volume 1: The Origins to 1795. OUP Oxford. pp. 126–131, 185. ISBN 0-19-925339-0.) and the only thing about slavery there involved Tartar war parties raiding Poland. Rejection seems to imply successfully ending slavery, not merely disapproving of it. It seems they want to pat themselves on the back for ending slavery without the bother of actually having to end it.
 * Ashy Waves (talk) 18:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * could you link to this wikipedia talk page so we can see the context please? Wilder Bicycle 18:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dominican_Republic
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Poland (Note that I was blocked like right after I tried starting conversation there, and didn't get back there in time to continue the conversation before being blocked again.)
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ashy_Waves
 * I'm not disagreeing that they have a lot of rules and policies and procedures I still don't understand, but they definitely treated the content itself badly.
 * Ashy Waves (talk) 18:46, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i would tend to agree with slavery stats not generally being relevant to main countries articles. there are a million different stats and facts that just arent important for getting a overview of a country. slavery would fall under this category. im not sure that information would relevant here either. i wouldnt have a clue to the specifics of the poland thing. i see no censorship here or undue bureaucracy. what happened there is you failed to gain a consensus but continued to flog a dead horse. this is where you get the accusation of edit warring. slavery is an awful thing and its good that you are passionately opposed to it, but sometimes you lose a fight and you have to walk away, even if you think you are right. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:55, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So why does the The Stateman's Yearbook 2017: The Politics, Cultures, and Economies of the World consider it worth including in their Poland article? Theirs looks a lot shorter than Wikipedia's. Nearly one in two hundred people are enslaved in Poland. The article is way longer than 200 words, so why no space for them? Why is the unsubstantiated claim that "this trend can be largely attributed to Poland's rejection of slavery" allowed to stay? Why was I blocked right after Oliszydlowski first told me about the edit warring policy (as in, actually linked to it, so I knew it was a policy and not some emotional internet jargon) and explained the talk page customs, and I had just enough time to start two talk page discussions? Why did they still keep saying I was edit warring even afterwards when I barely touched articles (except to add references to stuff they didn't delete and one attempt to add a systemic bias box) and was otherwise only editing talk pages, the tea house, and the sandbox? Ashy Waves (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Like, sure, they had this load of rules I didn't know about. And then they used those rules as an excuse to avoid meaningful discussion. Ashy Waves (talk) 19:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A few days ago I did not even know there was an edit warring policy. It just sounded like strange internet jargon to me from melodramatic internet people likening some internet disagreement to a shooting war, with machine guns and everything. Ashy Waves (talk) 19:21, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you would do well to read what a massive Gay said just earlier. You can't win 'em all. and if you're trying to convince us, by going on about what one book regards as useful content, then that won't get you far - someone could just whip out another book that doesn't mention slavery, and you're back at square one. Wilder Bicycle 19:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you don't want it on your website either, then it's probably best to make that clear now before I become too invested in adding content you don't want, which might be why he asked about it earlier. Ashy Waves (talk) 19:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You might want to have a look at our main page and remember that we are not an alternative to Wikipedia and our intention is not be be an encyclopedia. Our Mission statements are : Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement; Documenting the full range of crank ideas;  Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism; Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.  So long as any of your edits bear these constraints in mind you shouldn't have a problem.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was hoping it might fall under "Explorations of authoritarianism". Ashy Waves (talk) 19:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * (EC, bob beat me too it) look, you are more than welcome to edit and content as see fit - the belgian congo stuff looks promising - but then so is pretty much anyone else and some might disagree with with one edit or another. it need not be a fight to the death. take a look at RWs mission on the main page (the 'about rationwiki' bit) - we have a much smaller remit than wikipedia, though there is some leeway, relevance is an even bigger issue. Whole articles are deleted all the time purely for this reason. its not personal. when disagreement arises thats not going your way, just ask yourself 'is this one thing so critical to you that you would abandon all the contributions you have made or could make?' chances are are it wont be. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the missional stuff to do with authoritarianism is people who support despotic regimes (cranks, obviously). There’s certainly lots of missional stuff related to slavery (e.g. racists supporting it), but it’s not necessarily a missional subject in and of itself. Christopher (talk) 20:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of people who are not blatant racists, at least, (though I'm not sure about more subtle forms of racism) who promote this idea that slavery is over and we don't need to worry about it anymore. I consider this view dangerous because people tend to not solve problems they won't even acknowledge. As they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. Ashy Waves (talk) 12:51, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * @ The material on slavery in Poland you wanted to insert into was moved into . I guess I don't understand what the problem is. Leuders (talk) 20:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A big part of the issue is that the main Poland page does not contain any summary of or even a link to the Slavery in Poland page. Another part is that the one thing the Poland does have to say about slavery is this, "this trend can be largely attributed to Poland's rejection of slavery", which implies that slavery is not an issue in Poland. Ashy Waves (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And another part of it is that after I tried editing the Poland article, they started indiscriminately mass-deleting a lot of information about slavery that I had added elsewhere. Ashy Waves (talk) 12:48, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Please, let's have no more talk of the drama that happened over on Wikipedia.Spud (talk) 12:56, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm a wiki noob and I don't know what to do
I'd love to get into editing rationalwiki and participating in discussion but I don't get how it works. When I enter a talk page there's all these old discussions from weeks or months ago which I'd love to participate in but they've already happened :c I don't get how you guys are able to find the energy to keep refreshing the page to see if someone has responded or new topics have been added, or do you get a notification? How do you get these notifications? I only get notifications if someone reverted or changed my edits. That's another thing, I don't always have to start a new topic on the talk page when I edit an article right? Otherwise the average talk page would be 50 times longer than the actual article. So how do I explain why I made an edit without adding a talk page topic? And how do I participate in a talk page discussion without having to stop doing what I'm doing and refreshing the page and adding the :::: things and shit like that. Why are some users so quick to respond to any new topic on any article and why are some users so quick to revert edits and stuff like that? It seems too tedious to check manually so there must be some kind of automatic way to track that stuff. Also, why is this site apparently dying? Why have so many people apparently left? Dapperedavid (talk) 00:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Site has been stable for quite some time, not dying.
 * We lost a bunch of members a year or two back due to fights over I-P. Bit of warning, do NOT try to edit those pages.
 * On the top, click on "watchlist". You can add pages to the list there, to be notified when someone edits.
 * You usually don't have to create a talk page thing before making an edit, but if it's a drastic edit that changes the nature of the page, or something that a reasonable person would think may be controversial, then it's recommended to use the talk page first.
 * Not everyone responds instantly, this isn't a chatroom. Just leave a message on the talk page, come back later. CoryUsar (talk) 03:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * People join and people leave, but pretty much, the site is stable. If you look at archives a few years apart, you'll see different sets of names come and go. I reckon on average people last two or maybe three years, after saying their bit and updating their favourite topic to their satisfaction they lose interest. There are lots of people who join while in uni or school, and then they grow up, settle down etc. Only a very few of us are here for the long haul. Wilder Bicycle 09:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you 'float around RW' there are some talk pages where there is a gap of several years between comments. (In a proportion of cases the last comment 'sums up nicely' what later passers-by were going to say anyway so they don't bother to state 'I agree with the above.') Anna Livia (talk) 17:22, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Is Syria going to turn into Cyprus 2.0?
Me and an online friend have been discussing Turkish involvement in Syria lately. Turkey seems to have a goal of a puppet state, and they may partially succeed. At this rate, they might end up splitting it in two. How do you guys think this'll turn out? 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 01:52, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Except Cyprus wasn't run by a madman/regime who had thousands murdered and whose regime had killed tens of thousands as a warning to others, went to war with other nations, interfered and routinely murdered politicians in neighboring countries, funded and promoted terrorism against US forces (or any others), etc. Half of Syria being under the Turkish boot is probably an improvement for everyone except of course Syria, Iran and Russia, all things considered.CorruptUser (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i'm not sure the kurds would agree AMassiveGay (talk) 12:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if Turkey did get Syrian Kurdistan, it wouldn't end well for them (Kurds). 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 12:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I understand what you are saying, and I too want to see a Kurdistan, but let's not pretend that that's going to happen if Assad wins. He's going to go on full crackdown mode and eliminate anyone that didn't support him during the war, and the Kurds will NOT have a fun time of it.  Meanwhile, Turkey will pretend they always backed Assad, and work with him to exterminate any and every scrap of Kurdishness in Syria.  If instead Turkey is in control of Northeast Syria, it will be the slow genocide with less death but Kurdish will be illegal and every Kurd will have to identify as "Desert Turk" or something along those lines.  Best case scenario for the Kurds is that Erdogan's government collapses due to all the extra expenses, and maybe they can negotiate a better deal.  But, not very likely, and sadly, the Kurds have few good options. CoryUsar (talk) 00:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The most likely result for Turkey's involvement is that they kill some Kurds and then go home. As long as Turkey is an American ally, Russia is unlikely to be keen on them sticking around in Syria. And surely Turkey already controls enough restive Kurdish areas to be happy with. Turkish interests lie in defeating Kurdish forces to lessen domestic unrest and impress the Turkish population with a quick victory, not in acquiring land. Both Syrian and Turkish interests would now best be served by Assad winning (Turkey would have liked a non-Kurdish, friendly Sunni state in NE Syria, even if it was a bit ISISish, but there's no chance of that now). Even the US has an interest in a unified strong Syrian government, although they would prefer it to not be pro-Russian or pro-Iran. --Gospatric (talk) 11:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

and
According to the Wikipedia article, Grey's therapies "has ever been shown to extend the lifespan of any organism, let alone humans". Yet, he has gained enough attention to be on BBC and claims that his therapies will work with in the next hundred years. Does this guy deserve an article? 04:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I’d say so. Christopher (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

RZ94's short guide to creating a doomsday prophecy
Want to create a doomsday prophecy? Here is the guide-


 * Step 1- Get a Bible, but you can use the Koran or the Torah. Optional
 * Step 2- Get a bottle of booze. This method is optional as you can smoke some weed
 * Step 3- Watch a disaster movie while doing steps 1 and 2.
 * Step 4- Type it up in a word file
 * Step 5- Upload it to the internet, ideally Facebook or Twitter

Use this guide and scare the shit out of gullible! --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 15:50, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Also look for less frequented potential Armageddons; and adapt the advice here (and other 'how not to' guides) to taste. Anna Livia (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Type a random date at random. 02:35, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Get a random date and claim you use Bible calculations and add a twinge of Half-Life 3 release date speculation on there.
 * But really, let's not scare vulnerable people. 'tis not nice. 03:12, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

China's Brezhnev
Me and the same friend from the Cyprus 2.0 section have also been discussing something about China. Mao is sort of like its Lenin and Stalin combined, and Deng was kind of like its Khrushchev. After the period of less autocratic rule, they seem to be going back to the dictatorship, this time with an old guy who doesn't like the reforms of his predecessors, Xi Jinping. Brezhnev's rule started well but lead to the USSR to begin declining. Xi seems to be taking the same route. Will China have its own Gorbachev before collapsing, or is my mind making connections where there aren't any? 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 02:54, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "A little from Column A, a little from Column B", might be the answer this time. Spud (talk) 03:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The Brezhnev comparison doesn't seem very exact. Brezhnev especially in later years knew he was presiding over decline, e.g. his failure to intervene in Poland. China is still on the rise economically and militarily, even if the economy is showing signs of uncertainty (but whose isn't?), and the leadership certainly believes they're heading for greater things: Xi is expansionist not declinist. Does the west even have a plan to counter Chinese expansionism? US isolationism may be more likely. I don't think Gorbachev-style liberalisation lies in China's future, but total collapse is possible. Chinese history is a long cycle of the country falling apart before a strongman gets it back together again. --Gospatric (talk) 11:12, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

RussianalWiki
I think RussianalWiki's gone Citizendium on us. RoninMacbeth (talk) 02:15, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * you might have noticed thats in russian. AMassiveGay (talk) 03:15, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I have a Google Translate extension for that. Anyways, before I came there, the only contributions in the past 30 days have been BoNs or just spam. The community seems to have died. RoninMacbeth (talk) 03:23, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you could link a decent translation program I could at least try to keep the spam and trolling at bay. 13:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To be honest, RussianalWiki was just one guy, who was very dedicated but eventually moved on. Thanks to GC for offering to keep it clean, but how do we make it a functioning, active website? Russia desperately needs a place to fight to constant fake news. Wilder Bicycle 14:56, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Interestingly enough, RussianalWiki mostly focuses on Creationism and pseudoscience. Authoritarianism isn't even mentioned in their mission statement. My guess is that the community was so small that it continued with old RW's mission purpose, while we expanded. RoninMacbeth (talk) 15:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * was this guy actually based in russia? perhaps that was a factor? AMassiveGay (talk) 15:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Should we vote on deleting RussionalWiki? 01:18, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't see the point of deleting potentially useful information for people who speak Russian. 01:20, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * would that be something we can even do? its not deleting a single page. something for the foundation and trustees? AMassiveGay (talk) 01:28, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * that's exactly my thoughts. i think this is up to the discretion of the server's owners, not us. 02:08, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed in Los Alamitos
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/20/595289947/small-city-moves-to-opt-out-of-california-sanctuary-law

I also happen to live extremely close there, being around 10 minute local drive there. The MAGAsters existing near my town is way too close for comfort. I don't know how I'd react to those people, but I think the worst I'd do is sigh and roll my eyes at them. If you guys saw a MAGA peep, what would you do? 03:19, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i am continually amazed how laws in the us can be so divergent from state to state, and in cities too? i can understand mundane stuff like parking fines and the like, but fundamental human rights seem to differ wildly all the place without a herculean effort to get them nationwide, supreme court and all of that. AMassiveGay (talk) 03:32, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, according to the latimes, the ordinance is very confusing to people (if it isn't illegal to begin with by violating state law) and I've seen one resident in the article accuse it of just being a publicity stunt. The city is doing this to be all symbolic and shit, to send a message of defiance I think.
 * 04:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have no idea how they intend to enforce this. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 14:19, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Me neither, but it'll be fun to watch. Wilder Bicycle 11:14, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't say I'm going to have fun imagining immigrants, illegal or not, being nervous, scared, uncertain of a city that has demonstrated to be very hostile to them. 02:18, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't say I'm going to have fun imagining immigrants, illegal or not, being nervous, scared, uncertain of a city that has demonstrated to be very hostile to them. 02:18, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Getting spammed big time
Holy crap. If anyone else is online, please check the Vandal catcher semi-frequently, as I have things to be doing. I did modify the filter to catch most of them fortunately, but some might still slip through. —Kazitor, pending 10:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to take this opportunity to say: to all people who move or delete pages before patrolling them, FFS STOP! Patrolling those things after that's happened is a royal pain in the arse. If you're not careful, I'll force anyone who does it to leave an apology on my talk page. —Kazitor, pending 10:58, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * ah, sorry. I never patrol anything so that part of it slips my mind. Wilder Bicycle 11:11, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Are you sure Mises is not a big Poe?
Sure the people at Mises believe all that ultra-libertarian BS they spew?. The "child (I guess rather babies) market" and the "parents aren't forced to feed their children" is going too far, even if I'd not surprised some pro-lifers supported all that jazz in their hypocrisy.

Otherwise someone, please, send the Men in Black there!. The more I see of those sociopaths, the more convinced I'm of them being Ferengi and/or Druuge (most likely those, the only missing thing is to force to pay for natural air, sunlight, etc.) disguised to take over this planet. Panzerfaust (talk) 09:32, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Crime reduction in london vs the US
in London, there has been an increase in knife crime (for persective, its the murderrate is still half of that of New york, a city of comparable size). in response the UK government has put out an advertising campaign to persuade youths to not go out armed. my question is, is there comparable campaigns in the us the persuade youths not to go out armed? i'd imagine it may vary city to city, but the NRA being what they what they are, does it make it difficult for this kind of campaign? after all, school shootings get the headlines, but are only a drop in the ocean for us gun crime. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:40, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i should also point out this isnt first such campaign in the UK. they generally get rolled out from time to time. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:50, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of, and this is something difficult to campaign for because the self-defense argument, despite being utter rusted pellets, is common. There is also the second amendment appeal, which is just an excuse to arm people against a hypothetical tyrannical 17th century government. Also, on another note, I would imagine that the gun apologists would use the knife crime as a means to bolster why U S should arm their teeth with pistols. 22:32, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't bring a knife to a gun fight, right? More knifes around only logically means carry guns. —Kazitor, pending 22:42, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While I don't agree with the, "Buy all the guns!" mentality of the right, I think we should be able to own a protective firearm. There is a fine line between owning a gun and arming yourself to the teeth. 22:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * @Kazitor - i think you missed the point. its largely knife in theuk because we have no (legal) guns. the is gun crime and its an issue, but pales into insignificance compared to knives. i am asking about comparative compaigns in the us which i would assume targets the weapon of choice gun crime. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:08, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * in the uk the campaign is basically dont go out armed. how does the gel with similar campaigns in the us where folk are encouraged to be armed and to open carry by the NRA? as i said earlier, the focus on school and mass shootings only takes a part of the picture. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:11, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was more carrying on what LGM said, "I would imagine that the gun apologists would use the knife crime as a means to bolster why U S should arm their teeth with pistols." I can't speak about the USA as I don't live there. —Kazitor, pending 23:30, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is another debate, but there are far better ways to protect yourself than owning a firearm. As I said, the self-defense and second amendment worship is popular, I'm afraid. I don't know any real widespread campaign in the U.S. to dissuade youths from going unarmed. On the other hand, I had the impression that guns are overall unpopular with young people (though a recent poll reported by NPR and Politico contradicts]); I remember NRA struggling to sell guns to women and young people in another article, but don't remember which article that was. Anyhow, I search engined and got . Haven't heard of it earlier. Dunno if that answers the question. 23:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * it doesnt look like it. it seems to be be the more headlining mass shooters and lone lunatics, not kids fronting ending with a shooting. i cant believe there isnt anything comparable, your country is fucked up if it hasnt. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:36, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The USA is fucked up regardless. —Kazitor, pending 01:09, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Can't argue with it being fucked up. It was fucked up for a loooong time, with what, the obsession of guns (I really don't get gun culture) and the people's readiness to trust corporations over the big government boogeyman and thus their willingness to reject universal healthcare and gun control, as if the guns you own will protect you from government (even though you're more of a direct threat to your life, by owning a gun, than government is to your life). 02:12, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In most US states today, a loophole permits anyone to buy any weapon they want from some guy at a gun show. If gun regs in the US were tightened to the point where only heavily background-checked and certified sane individuals could own a non auto hunting rifle or a handgun, I don't see any negative consequences to the population or to human rights. Such a move has a high chance of actually preventing some gun violence and mass shootings. No it won't prevent all shootings, but even one less dead person is an improvement, especially if you end up being that person. Gun manufacturers of course would suffer greatly from a loss in sales. And thanks to the NRA, there are large numbers of people who believe assault weapons should never be regulated one bit because they fantasize they will need them to fight the police and the army in the event of a tyrannical government. Oh, the irony. Leuders (talk) 15:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * this is what i find so dispiriting about the whole thing. the focus is continually based around gun rights and the legalities around that. the concept of voluntarily giving up your weapons, whether they legally allowed or not seems entirely alien, the idea that maybe you should leave your guns at home if you are going to the pub seems not even to be a consideration. surely someone over there is talking about this kind of stuff? the campaign i linked in largely a inner thing, and i looked at anti-gang measures, but that amounted to just locking folk up. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:56, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "Don't go out armed, leave your gun at home", ha ha, no, no one in the US is talking about anything like that, the NRA would never allow it. It's more like "the world is a dangerous place [show pictures of minorities, gang members] you need more guns everywhere". Leuders (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * thats a little...unfortunate. that kind of makes all these recent marches entirely worthless. the kind of legislation being talked about amounts to a sticking plaster that means the next headlining grabbing shooting will have 5 killed instead of 10. nothing will change until the whole culture has changed. perversely, until it does, everything that is going on just reinforces it AMassiveGay (talk) 18:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * seriously, from what i gather, mental health is so woefully inadequate, more school/mass shootings are inevitable along with the systemic inequalities and poverty that leads to most of the gun crime in us dealt with only via a hang em and flog em approach that merely compounds the issues. i guess if it all goes well it will mean lunatics will have to take a few minutes longer to murder a dozen people. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:55, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * this is at least promising AMassiveGay (talk) 10:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. The marches are by no means worthless. In the US, such massive and inclusive public protest in favor of gun control is totally without precedent. This generation of high school kids are actually mobilizing popular opinion in the country. Leuders (talk) 14:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What I don't get is why they are wanting to reduce the voting age to 16, it makes no sense when you consider the fact that the mind isn't fully developed to grasp the full concept of right and wrong, and what the consequences of certain actions are until you are around the age of 21. Logically if we are going to bump the age that you can buy a gun to 21 we should do the same with voting. Sometimes words are a greater weapon than any gun. 14:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * All I can say is that the Inquisition has finally won in gun control. 18:12, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Try and explain this tortured logic
Somehow, I found myself here. I'm trying to understand the following paragraph:

...what? Completely fails to explain why those states actually have less gun violence in the first place. —Kazitor, pending 06:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * i thought the obvious correlation is that less guns = less gun violence 06:06, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * He's basically making a "why do you care about this while we have bigger issues to deal with!?" argument. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 06:32, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think he’s saying “the crime rate in blue states is so low, they don’t need gun control, but they’re so desperate to regulate guns they have the laws anyway.” At least it’s original. Christopher (talk) 11:32, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, that makes sense. It still doesn't address why the rates are low. Also, hm, I notice your comment uses fancy quotes (“”’ as opposed to " and '), why is that? —Kazitor, pending 11:46, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * clearly the true answer is that democrats commit significantly less crime an the only way to lower gun violence is if more people become card carrying democrats /s.Vorarchivist (talk) 18:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I got into the habit of using “ because on an old tablet of mine ‘ is the same character as the one that bolds stuff (‘’’bold text’’’,’’italic text’’) and I didn’t want to accidentally bold or italicise something. They’re equally easy to use with my phone keyboard (what I used to make that comment). Christopher (talk) 10:44, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Misundersypod your question sorry, the “fancy” quotes are the only ones I’ve ever had on the keyboards of all my computers. Maybe it’s an Australian/British difference? Christopher (talk) 10:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't see any on pictures of the UK layout. Are you saying your keyboards have two buttons for single quotes and two buttons for double quotes? Judging by where they are in your above comment, it looks like some software is doing the MS Word thing of replacing ' with ‘ if it comes after whitespace and replacing it with ’ otherwise. Similarly for “ and ”. Unless you don't know what I'm talking about: ' ‘ ’ are three different characters, and " “ ” are also three different characters. Keyboards will send the signals for ' (U+0027) or " (U+0022), but ‘ (U+2018) ’ (U+2019) “ (U+201C) ” (U+201D) exist in the character set because they look nicer. —Kazitor, pending 11:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I know they’re different characters. It actually appears to just be my phone that only has the fancier ones. Christopher (talk) 11:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Admittedly, Adams' typical reasoning (from what I've seen) is "Yes, there are other places with less gun-related crime and injuries, but that's completely irrelevant because those places aren't here." —Kazitor, pending 08:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC) This logic isn't actually that bad. The fault in this reasoning is that Correlation does sometimes imply causation. All the evidence for "smoking causes cancer" is from correlation. Ronald Fisher, the father of statistics, didn't believe that smoking caused cancer because he stuck to "correlation is not causation". I suggest reading this Priceonomics article about Fisher and smoking to better understand. The tortured logic makes sense. —ClickerClock (talk) 09:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) In blue states, there is low gun violence.
 * 2) Blue states vote for gun control.
 * 3) Correlation is not causation.
 * 4) Blue states clearly don't need gun control as gun violence in blue states is so low.
 * 5) Liberals are illogical as they vote for gun control that they don't need.
 * I think the biggest problem with it, the part that made me completely unable to understand what he was getting at when I first read it, is that he completely dodges why the blue states have less gun violence. I don't know what it is, but it can't be gun control, because they already have less violence! —Kazitor, pending 09:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You don't understand the meaning of tortured logic until you read blogs by pro smoking advocates. Basically your foe's logic always makes sense, it's only confusing because you don't understand your opponent. —ClickerClock (talk) 09:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A meaningful correlation virtually implies causation but it has to be well demonstrated that the correlation is meaningful. Unfortunately when it comes to gun control and gun violence statistics, they aren't always consistent in terms of gun ownership numbers and crimes involving firearms (across States and across western democratic countries). However, when it comes to gun control, the evidence is so clear, to not accept that gun control causes fewer deaths by firearms, is to be willfully ignorant. Gun control laws are introduced, crime rate goes down regardless of any other factor (blue or red state, level of poverty, level of social programs, attitudes towards firearms). That is pretty much as correlation=causation as it gets. And even if it were the case that correlation isn't causation (that is, gun control laws do not necessarily cause lower deaths by firearm) they can still be results of a similar variable. For example, a general changing of attitudes towards guns can result in both people voting democrat, more gun control and lesser gun related deaths. And in these cases, it is inconsequential what the trigger is for voting patterns, introducing laws and a dip in gun violence. Gun control still goes hand in hand with less gun violence. They are either correlation=causation, or if that isn't the case, then at the very least both gun control and fewer deaths are both essential to decreasing gun violence regardless of whatever other factors cause them. If there is no gun control, the likelihood of diminished gun violence is very low (though not impossible) and the odds of there being a notable decrease when gun control is introduced is very high. 82.158.77.178 (talk) 10:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I will admit I regret my inclusion of the word "tortured". —Kazitor, pending 10:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Quote marks
As a minor addendum to the above: Some at least versions of Word automatically change straight single and double quote marks to curly ones - you have to go into the autocorrect set up and manually change things. However Text documents removes all formatting and keeps the quote marks straight (unless you copy over from a text in which they are curly). Anna Livia (talk) 14:41, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Islamic theocracies and money
As it says in the Dubai article, they seem to think that once you have enough money, you suddenly aren't a theocracy anymore. The sad thing is that this seems to fool a lot of Westerners. A lot of people act like allying with countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is fine because their citizens are economically pretty well off. Well it's not. Just because a country has a lot of money does not mean that they're any less brutal. For example, if North Korea was a rich, developed country, would that make the ruling regime okay? No. So, to the Islamic theocracies, HAVING MONEY DOESN'T MAKE YOU SECULAR. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 21:51, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * *cough* if North Korea were *cough* —Kazitor, pending 22:47, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * We suck up to them and mostly overlook their strict laws etc because we need their oil, basically. Wilder Bicycle 22:57, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * and who else would buy our arms? AMassiveGay (talk) 23:43, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What happens when the oil runs out/other sources of energy are developed sufficiently for Middle East oil to be less relevant? 109.150.47.84 (talk) 23:47, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * One teacher of me said many years ago they'd again become goat herders. However I very seriosly doubt the transition to that would be smooth and they'd give up Western luxuries. My take is they'd turn the peninsula into by far the largest solar farm of the world, maybe even attracting the Chinese and/or Russia to their side (the're much closer after all) and leaving US aside. Panzerfaust (talk) 00:41, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * They would either keep control through even more brutality than they already do or Arabia would descend back into chaos. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 00:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Running out of oil is not the same as running out of money. Their sovereign wealth fund is valued at $230bn.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 06:52, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That FT link may be behind a paywall. See this one instead.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:34, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

People v Battle aka Traffic infraction is not a crime aka DONT SMASH MY WINDOW
Hey, I've been reading the articles here for a while and I absolutely love the ones about sovereign citizens. As men of science I believe you too appreciate the ability to observe pure, unadulterated bullshit in it's natural habitat. There was one thing I could never get about them, which is why they think traffic violations are not a crime. As it turns out it's related to People v Battle, 1974 case. There seems to be very, very little information about the case. I tried reading the article on it on Justia, but it only confused me (I am not a very clever person, also a pothead) and there seems to be no article on it on Wikipedia. I was wondering if some of the brilliant minds here could translate it from Lawyerese to English? I wouldn't be asking if I just want to know better, but I think a reference to it should be somewhere on RW as it seems relevant (pivotal, so to speak) to the sovereign citizen movement. And by the way, thanks David for adding to Autopatrolled group, I will do you proud sir! SirMaxKing (talk) 09:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A legal citation would be helpful here. Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 12:03, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think this is the link they were talking about (https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/50/supp1.html). I've had a read-through, though I should point out I'm in no way a legal professional, etc. As far as I can tell, it looks like it hangs on the fact that minor stuff like traffic accidents or citations don't warrant the whole "trial by a jury of my peers" because of just how many there are in a day. I suspect their "rationale" is that "if I don't get a trial, it must not be a crime", ignoring the fact that they're still violating the law, just not grossly enough to be hauled in and thrown into a cell. If anyone has more experience in translating Legalese I eagerly await being schooled. 76.208.80.79 (talk) 12:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was exactly the one. My assumption and understanding so far was that the driver's negligence of brakes resulted in deaths of people, and the point was that the crime was not that he didn't maintain the brakes, but was still charged for a crime due to deaths of people? Yeah, that's where I start getting confused.SirMaxKing (talk) 07:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Before you know it they end up behind bars for years for their contempt of court, and there is nothing funny about that when you see it not only destroys the lives of otherwise good people...it also tears apart families and friends. It is tragic. A bad attitude towards a speeding ticket can spiral out of control and land you in jail. They are pedaled sovereign citizen garbage by those who fully well know some of their victims end up in jail for contempt and fully well know the laws and the laws and the laws are enforced regardless of your approval of them. Evil snake oil selling scum. The "this isn't really a law" excuse is one of the worst (short of creating a militia). It admits (or doesn't deny) guilt, demonstrates no remorse and can be met with contempt charges. If ma seem ironically hilarious...but its really a horrid waste of everything. 82.158.77.178 (talk) 10:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Quibbling slightly - 'persons of science' is more appropriate.
 * Most 'reasonable people' accept that there are certain categories of law-violating-behaviour that merits 'fines and other responses by the authorities that causes some inconvenience to the infringer' (and possibly a court appearance before an official legal person, and possibly the right to appeal) but which does not justify trial by jury. Anna Livia (talk) 11:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Judges have no choice but to hold them in contempt (and they should do so). What is sad is that many of these people are so brainwashed that even the best lawyer cannot convince them to cooperate. Yes...they do get what they "deserve" in a legal sense, but it's really not that funny how lives are destroyed over such pointless stupidity. 82.158.77.178 (talk) 20:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * they are victims of their own dickishness. grasping at straws just to avoid a parking ticket. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * FWIW the decision seems to turn on principles of CA law in the 1970s. It doesn't establish any universal principle that traffic offenses are not crimes; only that they weren't in CA at the time.  All it takes is one ticked off state legislator to change that. Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 16:34, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In general I have a feeling those people are generally good people who want to uphold the law - the law the would not have broken, had someone not told them it's not actually a law. I swear to god Elon Musk, watching 'sovereign citizen getting owned' compilations on YT is a really entertaining activity. I wish there was some way to explain to them they are wrong. Anyhow, thanks for answers. What I want is to create some sort of list that cops could give (hypothetically - I don't actually suppose anyone will actually use that list) to those people during stops with something along the lines of 'No, you're wrong, here's evidence, if you don't believe we will drag you to jail, we do have the right, yelling 'I do not consent' is meaningless' etc etc. Because one obvious thing is, policemen are just running in circles of 'Driver's license and proof of insurance' - 'What probable cause do you have?' and obviously verbal communication doesn't have a chance to improve situation SirMaxKing (talk) 08:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Ben Steigmann complaining
Ben Steigmann's Rationalwiki article was deleted. There was evidence of sock-puppetry in the deletion with his friend Abd, but still 5 legit votes to delete it. Ben then complained to have his talk-page removed and its archive removed. There was evidence of socking and disruption here so both those pages were removed by a syop. Ben is now on a new IP claiming he is suicidal because RoninMacbeth has archived the talk-page in his userspace. Ben claims his former holocaust denial and online racism was due to drug abuse and "a period of mental illness (untreated schizoaffective)". I can sympathise if he is indeed suffering from mental illness, but all this might just be a clever tactic he is doing to get everything deleted in his name. There is no proof either way, but I will assume good faith about this, he does come across as somewhat legit. Anyone know what to do here, should the archive talk-page be removed as well? Debunking spiritualism (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If decides to delete the content in question, hurray for BennyBoy. If not, tough shit.  16:58, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * --Cosmikdebris (talk) 17:41, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It has been deleted. It can be restored if it turns out this was a ruse. In terms of errors, I'd rather risk being duped by a troll and having to restore some content than risk someone actually committing suicide over something. RoninMacbeth (talk) 18:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That should not be general practice for RW in my view, as it opens us up to moral blackmail with feigned suicide threats. We are more than happy to correct errors, and update information with verifiable changes of opinion. Suicide because of a RW page? It frankly sounds preposterous. If someone's going to commit suicide because of RW, they should be calling the suicide prevention hotline, not asking for page deletions. Bongolian (talk) 04:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but I stopped giving a shit about the talkpage for a while. Besides, it was relatively non-vital content. The talkpage of some internet (former) dickhead isn't as important as our articles on, say, Steve Bannon and Kent Hovind. If you want to bring it back, by all means, do so. RoninMacbeth (talk) 05:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Goalpost moving ?
We are living quite a funny political situation in Italy today, which can be resumed as follows: in previous legislature left and right-wing joined together so to reach majority. The newborn "Movimento 5 Stelle" (M5S) has been thus excluded from government. M5S supporter continously accused, during all the 5-years term, that this was a so called "inciucio" (kind of alliance between mafia gangs, for the only goal of splitting power and chairs). New elections put M5S in the position of reaching majority with a new alliance with, probably, right-wing people. This is now called "alliance based on institutional responsibility", "necessity of giving a government to Italy". Incidentally that was the very same argument of the previous left+right coalition.

I wonder what terminology can fit this way of argumenting, i.e. when you rewrite same notions with different words, so to make everything "morally acceptable". This is kind of goalpost moving, but I'm not fully convinced in that in this setting no goal has been moved. The goal has just been retold on a different light. It looks somewhat as a 'reversed strawman' argument. Hope in a feedback from the community. AgelinBee (talk) 07:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Do you mean they're going to form an alliance with the Lega Nord?. The only thing that I can think of is Machiavelli's "the end justifies the means", as they supposedly share among other things euroskepticism. Panzerfaust (talk) 22:03, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that appears to be what they're saying. And I agree with your analysis in this case. 02:33, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm more interested in classifying the rhetorical tool of when you depict something from a totally different perspective. "Political alliance" vs "Immoral pact between gangs" as a description of what in practice is the same thing, a majority for a government. The best similarity I could identify is with Weasel_word, but this is not exactly the case here AgelinBee (talk) 14:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * erm...metaphor? AMassiveGay (talk) 14:42, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If I am not mistaken you are looking for this 14:48, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! AgelinBee (talk) 17:18, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps loaded language? —Kazitor, pending 20:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And, from another perspective, loaded language fits also. Thanks again AgelinBee (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Who else here cringes at all of the logical fallacies used by mainstream political pundits?
On both sides of the political aisle. 71.215.119.180 (talk) 12:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If they’re constantly spitting out logical fallacies, why would I pay them attention? Christopher (talk) 13:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Politics is just a game for the wealthy, the game pieces are us. No matter what you do, you cant stop them from doing what they want. No gun will stop them, unless the entire nation went in total anarchy, as if that's a good thing. 14:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In my experience, one party is dominated by Big Tech and the other by the MIC. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 15:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What are our corporate overlords doing this time? 15:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The same as always, pointing fingers and spewing bullshit. 17:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

you sound more like uou are just complaining about the right win when in reality there sia massive campaign to silence the right to hurt american values.
 * America has no values except for the dollar m8. 'Legion what do you want from me  18:24, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The dollar, a two millennium old book and telling other countries what to do. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 06:33, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which, prices have been going up recently on just about everything but income isn't going up. 14:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

having no specifics whats to say that arguments being made are perfectly valid but you just dont agree with them? or just not grasped the nuances? fallacy bingo is a particularly worthless endeavour, which i suspect is a contributing factor AMassiveGay (talk) 08:47, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. Arguments that simply classify other people's opinions as based on logical fallacies are, at best, incomplete. This has been (ironically) referred to as the fallacy fallacy. One can use fallacies to defend a true statement. Such a statement is still true. Ariel31459 (talk) 16:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't care. I have too much time killing foes to think about logical fallacies. Besides, talking doesn't always work. 18:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

This Vice video
ShiningSwordofThoughts (talk) 00:28, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Exodus
I've added to the article about the evidence for the Exodus a section that lists the issues with so many people on the move (>600,000 men without including women, children, livestock, etc) based on simple calculations I saw on a blog, plus others of common sense when you deal with so many people migrating. Do you want I add them to justify the edits?. Panzerfaust (talk) 12:32, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

April 1st
Hey, it's not April 1st yet, is that a prank, or is the person uploading it just that lazy (as i am at times)? 15:55, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Context pls. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 15:57, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * On the recent changes page. 16:22, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's totally the first, it's been the first for almost eight hours now. Don't be American exceptionalist; there are other time zones, believe it or not. —Kazitor, pending 21:53, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Enjoy your chocolate egg plants - and the traditional wailing and gnashing of teeth that will be on the Wikipedia Main Page talk page in a few hours time. Anna Livia (talk) 22:35, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's Americentric, not American exceptionalist. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 23:11, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The edit was on since this morning, so I don't think it would have been April 1st at that time. Looks like the pranks started early. 01:20, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Conservapedia gives up
Andrew Schafly has told me on a private mail that he gives up and that Conservapedia's domain will not be renewwd. From a few hours onwards and until it expires, the site will again be "The Trusworthy Encyclopedia" and will accept edits even from unregistered users and will unblock all those IPs. Panzerfaust (talk) 23:48, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit skeptical of this. Have any corroborating evidence? 00:03, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Methinks it is April where you are ... 00:08, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Didn't you read? The evidence is Panzerfaust's [e]mail. —Kazitor, pending 00:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Post a picture of this supposed email. Also, why would he send it to you in particular and not just announce it? 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 00:52, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, just figured that out. Dumb 'murican me. 01:07, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

And I wonder if the panda egg at London Zoo will finally hatch this year. Spud (talk) 01:30, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Truswothy? Was the site about triangle frames? 01:33, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Conservapedia once accidentally described itself as "The Trusworthy Encyclopedia". The thing is, this error lasted for days before they fixed it. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 02:51, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I see, so that's why. I'm also wondering if people will notice a certain something as well. 01:33, 0 April 2018 (UTC)

Panzerfaust (obviously not your real name), censorship of school prayer is so prevalent among atheists that the insight is clearly self-evident. I wasted time with your unsubstantial additions and found a serious of insertions of the form [citation needed] or more obnoxious banners, so anyone with an open mind can see that you're a victim of Professor values. I urge you, I beseech you, I beg you: accept that chivalry prevents autism. Observation and logic dictate that Wikipedia is a like a 3rd grade essay contest that gives points for more words. Wikipedia may be a better place for you to deny that fact, or to persist in ignoring the truth. --aschlafly 07:47, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Bad prank
Congrats, you've fooled no one. Happy Child In A Man's Body's Day everyone! 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 06:38, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Lame doesn't even begin to describe this prank.--BruceGrubb (talk) 10:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Some a less noticeable till much later. 14:21, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Sweet merciful god in heaven you scared me.
Until I remembered what day it was. The Moose (talk) 07:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

PLEASE DON'T SHUT DOWN!!!!!!!!!
I just found this site today and it's awesome so I'm sad. What 'legal concerns' does this site have? Just put ads if you have financial concerns I don't care as long as there are no click ads, ads that open a new tab or ads that appear in the middle of the page!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


 * It is April Fools day so I doubt it. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 13:47, 1 April 2018 (UTC) Zombie Jesus will eat your brains


 * Hehe, well, it fooled me -- for about one tenth of a second. And then it occurred me to hit the Donate button. Cause and effect? --RichardR 16:06, 1 April 2018 (CET)

Thank fuck it's past 12:00 UTC
Dumb sitenotice joke removed - David Gerard (talk) 12:02, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I did have mixed feelings towards it, but it the end I thought screw it. I had my fun and it wouldn't be funny a second time. It never ceases to surprise me how many people forget to check their calendars. —Kazitor, pending 12:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I always check my calendar in April... 12:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Is that so? 14:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Dumb doesn't begin to describe the sitenotice joke.  The person who did this seemed to forget that it wasn't April 1 everywhere this site is accessed from.  Heck, there are places that use the Julian calendar and so it is March 19 there.  --BruceGrubb (talk) 14:25, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I knew full well it was an April Fools joke. I also knew it was a very bad one. There was no absurdity, silliness, or levity about it. It was just flat lie

that would've been very grave and saddening if it were true, with no indication that it wasn't. 174.200.1.183 (talk) 23:55, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Easter Fools
Looks like people have been taking advantage of their kids all today, on Washington Post they got a whole article on it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/04/01/an-updating-infuriating-list-of-all-the-april-fools-pranks-on-the-internet-in-2018/?utm_term=.fdcb21733920 14:28, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You do realize that mousing over the link shows that clicking on it is a log out no matter how you reformat it, right? Click baiting is not just limited to April 1.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:36, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I knew it would be obvious, but people missed an even bigger thing, and are still missing it. Here is the real link btw https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/04/01/an-updating-infuriating-list-of-all-the-april-fools-pranks-on-the-internet-in-2018/?utm_term=.fdcb21733920 14:40, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * On a side note it looks like people are screwing with the avast online security rating of this website, again.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? I put my mouse on it and it says it goes to some archive. 14:51, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The second version of the link does, not the first (it logs you out by placing the SPECIAL:USERLOGOUT command before url.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:54, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not any more, I just nowiki'd it. Wilder Bicycle 20:12, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Why did you change it, it is obvious it is a fake. What is the point of changing what I said? 20:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't changed it, I just unlinked it, to save people from the crappy practical joke that got tired ten years ago. Wilder Bicycle 22:33, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Backlash or retribution?
It looks like people are screwing with the avast online security rating of this website, again. Perhaps this is happening because these April Fools pranks are pissing people off and they are misunderstanding what "rate your experience" actually means or they are purposely misusing it to get back for the pranks.-BruceGrubb (talk) 14:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)\
 * Fuck these pranks, they're never funny, just an excuse to piss people off. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 15:19, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess no one notices what I was talking about earlier. 15:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

How many of you think that creationist schools will attempt to have graduate level "science" degrees (like the Institute for Creation Research did before) ?
I have thought about it. Though not a creationist school, Grand Canyon University has graduate level Biology and Chemistry degrees. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 17:25, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That'd be funny, imagine that all your 'references' are quoted from the Bible, and you used a legitimate science paper which the university said it was 'incorrect'... Synthetix (talk) 02:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That'd be funny in fiction, but the idea of that happening IRL is scary. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 13:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I know the fundie school- Loma Linda University has masters and doctoral degrees in biology and geology. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think Liberty already does that don't they? Tough Guy (talk) 05:25, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * In biomedical science and osteopathic medicine. The latter may get full accreditation next month once the first DO students graduate. This should be interesting for Liberty University. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 17:57, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Doomsday scenario
This one is actually supported by extensive scientific research, which suggests 2048 as a candidate for Judgment Day Doomsday. It's from 2006 so I did not put in WIGO World. Nerd (talk) 00:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Seawater fish extinction by 2048? Where is the big fish fry located? 01:21, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I’m not trying to dismiss the dire situation for marine life and ecology, but this report dates from 2006 - so what has happened since in terms of further research and/or confirmative/countervailing trends? (Btw, one example of a serious development is that, just during my lifetime, I’ve seen eel going from from a fairly available dish to a luxury one and priced accordingly, due to the impending collapse of the Atlantic eel population). ScepticWombat (talk) 13:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a mixed picture, really. The bad news is that there has not been as much progress as one would like. Ocean acidification, one of the potential causes of a mass extinction, is not going any time soon, unless we significantly curb carbon emissions. Without the ocean, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would have been much higher. Chemical pollutants have been found in the deep and rarely visited parts of the ocean. Enormous piles of plastic garbage have been spotted floating in the seas. It does not help that China and Vietnam are building artificial islands in the South China Sea and stepping up fishing and oil exploration there, wrecking local ecosystems in the process. (One has to get it or the other guy will.) The good news is that we are becoming increasingly aware of the problems. How well we respond, however, remains to be seen, if at all. 2048 is not that long into the future; incidentally, I have read reports saying that if humanity cannot curb greenhouse emissions sufficiently to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius by 2050, there is not much we can do after that. Carbon dioxide has a rather long life time in the atmosphere.
 * As for the eels, if you are living anywhere near the region from Florida to the northern parts of Latin America, consider switching to lion fish, a rapidly multiplying invasive species. Certain ecologically ignorant exotic pet owners thought they were doing the right thing... Nerd (talk) 21:16, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Hiya . I’m living on the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) side of the Atlantic to heed your advice on eel/lion fish, not to mention that I doubt it’s much of a substitute for smoked eel anyway... I’m aware of the various factors you mention, so my question was specifically whether the predictions of this particular (meta) study seem to hold true and thus whether the serious 2048 scenario it set out is more or less likely to be the one we end up with. ScepticWombat (talk) 07:27, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have not found anything specifically and quantitatively pertaining to that study. However, scientists repeat that warning from time to time: we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction, for which human activities are largely responsible. I remember first hearing about it when I was waiting for the train some years ago. Since then, I have stumbled upon all kinds of books and news articles about it. Oh, and something similar happened before: a single species caused a mass extinction due to its waste products... Whatever the quantitative accuracy of the study, one can be certain that is is broadly correct and should be heeded.
 * If you ever cross over to the other side of the North Atlantic, people are having fun hunting, cooking eating lion fish. Consider joining in. Other than properly removing the dangerous bits, there is no "right way" to prepare a lion fish dish. Nerd (talk) 14:19, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay,, I was just curious about any possible updates due to the fairly specific claim in terms of scale and date in the 2006 report. Also, while there may be no “right” way to eat a lion fish, smoking requires a fish that is substantial in size and quite fatty, otherwise you end up with a nasty, dry inedible result. Having grown up on an island known for its smoked herring, I remember that it came as a shock to some tourists there that the herring being smoked were imports from other parts of the country, due to the local stocks having become too small on average to merit viable, commercial catches of “smokable” herring (though they are still used in other dishes). ScepticWombat (talk) 14:29, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Another study, nine years later, suggests we have a few more decades. Ah, the wonders of simply changing one's search engine. Nerd (talk) 14:58, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Off topic i know, i am a little puzzled by something sceptic said. 'sides of the atlantic' was mentioned and i always assume (perhaps wrongly) it generally refers to stateside and britain. if sceptic is not stateside then wonder where in the world the price of eels is of any importance? AMassiveGay (talk) 17:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You know,, that there’s an entire continent located east of the British Isles, yet with an Atlantic coastline, yes? ;-) And indeed, some of the inhabitants of those benighted lands also prize eels (smoked or otherwise). ScepticWombat (talk) 17:25, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * i kinda guessed where eels might be popular might be popular as soon as i posted, and i am aware more than britain has an atlantic coast line. i have just never heard any reference containing atlantic and sides that meant anything other than the us and britain. to see it phrased in such a way and for it to mean elsewhere just seemed strange to my eye. plus any preference for eels instantly marks you as either a johnny foreigner or a pearly king. it is also fair to see i am not quite sure what the day it is, even after checking my phone repeatedly. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:10, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * No worries, AMG, I just couldn’t help yanking your chain a bit. But I see your point, since the expression is probably more prevalent as a distinction between the British and US parts of the Anglosphere, rather than between the US and Europe in general (yeah, sorry Brits, but geographically, you’re located in Europe). Btw, smoked eel has long been considered a delicacy (probably due to the need for particularly fat specimens and the complication of the smoking process) in my neck of the woods (obviously, as with any dish, not everyone like it, but it’s not a particularly acquired taste, either). By contrast, simple fried eel (dipped in rye flour, fried and served with potatoes and parsley sauce) used to be one of the dishes that was sometimes served ad libitum where diners would line the spines up at the edge of their plates seeing how many times they could circle the plate before being full. ScepticWombat (talk) 21:47, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * over here eel had been considered poor quality and generally foul (jellied eels? ech) that you probably just wouldnt be able to buy stuff. its only recently that some luxury smoked eel brands have appeared. couldnt tell you how popular they are, ive never tried em. i have no idea how it would relate to fish extincts, over here we are told to opt for less common types of fish rather than cod or haddock due to over fishing and what have you, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything else on the menu down the chippie. AMassiveGay (talk) 22:21, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * but i guess im quite partial to marmite, the south koreans eat dog and japanese like raw fish. different strokes. AMassiveGay (talk) 22:24, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to permanently leave the site
See y'all later!- 07:02, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * That means that I am now a mod. I will enjoy being a mod while eating my freshly picked spaghetti from a Swiss spaghetti tree. Spud (talk) 07:26, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Bye! —Kazitor, pending 07:55, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Can't tell if this is an April Fools or not... 12:54, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Probably is. 14:19, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * No...it's just a coincidence that they chose this day to announce it. YES IT'S A PRANK. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 15:15, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes it's a prank. Trust me.- 17:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What if the above comment is a prank and you're leaving for real? That would be the best prank. ;) 19:15, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * thats a frighteningly low bar in area of notoriously low bars AMassiveGay (talk) 20:17, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice try.- 21:07, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you discussing limbo dancing or dive bars? :) Anna Livia (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

No One Reads the Timestamps
I happened to notice no one reads the timestamps, you can get away with a lot, April Fools. Time to get back into my bad habit of drinking Dihydrogen Monoxide again. 20:10, 1 April 1998 (UTC)
 * So no one noticed that the dates on my posts were off? April 1998 is obviously not correct, nor is 0 April. I thought someone would have noticed what I was doing. 03:14, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Vote: Best User Signature
 CheeseburgerFace LeftyGreenMario Bob M The default "Username (talk)" GrammarCommie Bigs Spriggina

Rules:
 * 1) You can add other users and yourself.
 * 2) Ping them.
 * 3) Provide an example of that pretty user signature.

Examples

 * --Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)"
 * Example (talk)
 * 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰)
 * Example (talk)
 * 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰)
 * 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰)

Chattering
I appoint, and. —ClickerClock (talk) 08:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you meant 'Vote: least worst signature'. they are all hideous and offensive to the eye AMassiveGay (talk) 08:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Can we have a "none of the above" option? --Gospatric (talk) 10:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hopefully 'The default "Username (talk)"' will please you. —Kazitor, pending 11:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What about the snarkies who dislike the default? Anna Livia (talk) 13:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * we should pity them for their lack of taste and restraint AMassiveGay (talk) 13:47, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Clearly my signature is superior. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 13:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Au contraire Comrade, my signature is clearly the best of them all. 14:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Mine is a more obscure reference. Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 14:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Added mine. 14:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Its a hard choice. Comrad has a nifty hammer/sicle...but then cheeseburger face has a rotating hamburger. Goat has an delightful ironic cheesy font and Bob has a clear and decisive quote in his sig. But in the end i think Raysenn has you all beat. he has a randomised sig which spells out his name with various currency signs, randomises symbols including the emblematic blue star like stabby does AND puts various constructive and highly motivational inspirational quotes on top of that!!! Shabi  DOO  22:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

The default signature is bland and boring and people who have no artistic creativity stick with it. 19:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I choose to express my artistic creativity in other ways. Spud (talk) 04:00, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I vote default, I'm just an odd person so I changed mine. 14:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Count me with Spud and AMassiveGay, although IMO Bob M’s sig is within acceptable bounds. This exercise makes me think that RW needs an article on CamelCasePragmatist (talk)
 * I still need to know how to customize it, and frankly don't know what to add. Panzerfaust (talk) 12:26, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I like tacky signatres and they help break up mundane paragraphs a bit in long pages, though of course, they shouldn't interfere readability too much. 18:47, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Result
The default signature wins overwhelmingly. Makes me wonder if I should change mine, or are superscripts okay? —Kazitor, pending 05:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not changing mine... 05:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

 ✒ № 1 User Signature awarded to Tim Starling The award goes to Tim Starling, who is a MediaWiki developer because who else can the award go to? —ClickerClock (talk) 07:32, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Everyone who doesn't feel they have to wave fancy colours around to make their presence known gets to share it. —Kazitor, pending 08:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Bah, the default signature is boring. 15:04, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 42% of voters beg to differ. —Kazitor, pending 04:48, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 48% of Hungarians voted for Orbán; I don't see your point. 12:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * My point is the meaning of the five words and number that I typed. —Kazitor, pending 12:37, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The mob's opinion comes from whatever quorum here selects itself. The plain, or modestly superscripted ones, work just fine, thanks. This being a special occasion, I will trot out this fancy one I found:  22:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * At least I won third place... 00:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Trump just called Beyoncé a "negro libtard" on Twitter
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/01/politics/trump-tweets-beyonce-negro/index.html

Not entirely unexpected, but still terrible. 21:27, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Troll harder. 21:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Typical right-wing media. Apparently CNN's top dogs censored the truth just so they wouldn't piss off the Trump supporters reading their website. I'd hoped there would be a few outlets that haven't sold out to the Kochs, but I guess not. Sad. 23:37, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I have no doubt that Donald says things like that in his head, probably all the time, but is he really that stupid?Darthmaul (talk) 02:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Remember it’s dated April 1st... ScepticWombat (talk) 07:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It could be worse. There's an alternate Universe out there in which Trump and Berlusconi are presidents at the same time and great friends (and it's not the worst I can come with). Feel the horror and despair. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:31, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Well Berlusconi was (and probably still is) good mates with Putin. I despair of the human race that we keep electing these arseholes. Deep down, we're still just chimps. Wilder Bicycle 08:44, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It isn’t exactly fair to blame people for electing Putin, it’s not like they had a choice. Christopher (talk) 08:48, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I mean, he purged his only sane opponent, so as his article said, his only real opposition is even crazier than him. Though I assume you mean Putinist populists, not the man himself. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 12:56, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I wouldn’t consider all of Putin’s presidential electoral opponents “insane” (which is how I read Bigs’ comment). Sure, the runner up was somewhat dubious (while seemed to be a step up from old  Grudinin was still representing the old soviet era Communist Party), but what about  or the perennial ? Sure, they didn’t stand a whelk's chance in a supernova of actually winning, but unless such Sisyphean candidatures are signs of insanity in and of themselves, I wouldn’t consider either of them “insane”. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:43, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/01/technology/do-people-really-fall-for-the-old-fake-url-trick?/index.html Leuders (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

people believe shit like this all the time. it speaks to peoples already existing assumptions and pushes all your buttons before you've confirmed that its even remotely true. by the time you discovered that its nonsense your opinions have been hardened and you rationalise it as its the sort of thing they would say/think/do even if they didnt. you dont need to check the date to see if its an aprils fools joke, you need to stem your righteous anger until you checked such obviously incendiary claims. this is not an 'aprils fools' this is the essence of 'fake news' AMassiveGay (talk) 21:53, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Given the choice, democratic citizens will not seek out news that challenges their beliefs; instead, they will opt for content that confirms their suspicions. Everybody loves being right.. Leuders (talk) 22:52, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * they will, however, seek out anything that supports their suspicions, no matter how tenuous. no me though. i'm fantastic. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * While it's important to be aware of your own shortcomings, I myself suffer from lack of confidence in my own opinions on a lot of things because I keep thinking I fall short. Like, I always downplay myself, I never ever say I am an expert or know a lot about a certain subject. I have trouble a lot standing firm on my opinions in some cases. I keep having to rely on other people to confirm or reject what I say. For instance, if a pro gun person was nice to me and said well, this study says otherwise, I would actually rethink my position, even concede that part pretty quickly. To me, it's very frustrating that it's more of an effort to be critical of things I agree with and be extremely critical of things I disagree with. 00:23, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Jeez, dude. 01:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

A small gift for RW


The first time I spot those things and, hell, they're beautiful animals even if their eyes -as per domestic ones- are somewhat unnerving.

As the typical rambling, even if with the cultural level of those people you cannot expect very much, I'd really like preachers STFUed if they know nothing about science, even if listening one to talk about "evolutionary geology" and justifying the Flood (two as usual, no less) in a mess that includes a previous one taking place during the Miocene is priceless -I even suspect that one invents each week something different-. Panzerfaust (talk) 22:51, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Awwww. 22:11, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * its fun to see a nice 'is nature marvellous' type statement lead into a seemingly unnecessary tirade. did i miss something?AMassiveGay (talk) 22:28, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I want five. Clearly these goats have the power to drive Fundies insane. EDIT: Is it just me or is that goat smiling? 22:54, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Most goats are always smiling. —Cosmikdebris (talk) 01:09, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Here's another taken the same day (see metadata) for your enjoyment. I think it was the Alpha male:

The default camera is a potato, even if it beats the shit out of the one in the phone, so I hope to return where they are with something better. Now, why goats had to have pupils that way?. They've a somewhat disturbing look Panzerfaust (talk) 13:48, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I have a gambling problem
In the past few months, I have wasted so much money on lottery tickets even after losing plenty of money. I realized I used gambling to suppress bad emotions. I will tell my therapist at my next appointment. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 00:01, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I wish u the best on yr recovery! —ClickerClock (talk) 04:04, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's known what if any is the best treatment for gambling problems, but you might also want to contact The National Council on Problem Gambling. Best wishes. Bongolian (talk) 04:12, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Methinks Slaanesh is likely going to corrupt you as with that plague marine formerly known as Christopher Chandler. Don't make me come after you. 18:47, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Use this fancy template i made plz
—ClickerClock (talk) 04:10, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Good template and I would use it but I'm not. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 04:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * And why is this text fixed width all of a sudden?—Kazitor, pending 05:12, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Because aesthetic —ClickerClock (talk) 06:44, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I keep wondering where aces fit in LGBTQ+. 06:45, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't really care. I will leave it up to the asexual person themself to decide. —ClickerClock (talk) 07:05, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sneaky, I see you fixing the fixed width text and not saying anything about it —Kazitor, pending 06:47, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * LOL —ClickerClock (talk) 07:05, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks good. —ClickerClock (talk) 12:51, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 19:32, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 19:32, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Reminder to use your Watchlist
See mw:Help:Watchlist for more information. To add an article to your Watchlist, click the star next to "Fossil Record".

I recommend adding all articles within your area of expertise to your watchlist. For example, all autism-related articles are in my watchlist. This helps you to maintain the quality of articles on Rationalwiki.

You can also use the Watchlist to make sure inquires on talkpages are answered. I use: Watchlist, show only talkpages, 90 days to quickly look over talk topics.

Thank you very much for listening.

—ClickerClock (talk) 07:27, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes! Now I can continue my quixotic quest of improving all psychiatry related pages. 16:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Explain Bryan Caplan
I don't know Caplan but Caplan has a book about why the public education system should be abolished. I believe that Caplan is very very wrong. Your thoughts? —ClickerClock (talk) 06:30, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * When Caplan says that (and he's mostly talking about high school and college/university) it's hard to know how much is hyperbole or provocation (he says we need more vocational education, for instance, and seems to believe that past failures are sufficient reason to believe reform is impossible). Clearly a lot of secondary and tertiary education doesn't prepare people much for life or work, but that doesn't mean it's useless (or even bad value for money which is his real complaint). In the past, you wouldn't need much education for most jobs (even reading and writing beyond a basic level is unnecessary for much manual work), but increasingly people do actually need to know computer skills, science, languages, etc, for many jobs. Education also provides non-academic skills like working/interacting with different people, doing what you're told, routinely getting up in the morning, etc, which he dismisses or doesn't consider (maybe it's not the best way to teach them but equally we don't have many other ways of teaching them - conscription maybe). --Gospatric (talk) 08:50, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If his real complaint is bad value for money, then the alternatives (home schooling, vouchers, or charter schools) are generally quantitatively worse value, as has been shown in several studies. Public education is a form of coercion by some (or all?) libertarian ideologies, hence libertarians tend to hate it (especially for the taxes it requires) even if they benefited from it or work within it. Why can't we go back to the good old days when children had the "free choice" of child labor? Bongolian (talk) 02:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, for the days when our Glorious Captains of Industry (patent pending) could openly take the helm, rather than skulking in the shadows like crooks.... 02:19, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The arguments, that include to extend that to allow high education (read: Universities) to create their own curricula (I guess that would include to allow quack Universities) with no State intervention, boil down to freedom of choice and that competition in a free market will get rid of the bad ones. It does not explain as usual a lot of issues that could happen, especially on sensible studies as Engineering or medics or in what refers to the quality of said education in the case of homeschooling, etc. Panzerfaust (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Why do people complain about white privilege when the real problem is class oppression?
The fundamental theme in American society is that the poor are treated like garbage, not that Blacks are treated as garbage. Blacks are disproportionately poor, but bourgeois Blacks are not oppressed whereas proletarian and especially lumpenproletarian Whites are. The prison-industrial complex and police brutality may disproportionately affect Blacks and Latinx but they almost exclusively affect poor people of all races. 15% of Americans are poor but 90% of people in prison are. That is a far greater disparity than the racial disparity. Poor Whites are arguably even more dehumanized because at least when a poor Black is shot by police, people actually give a fuck. Poor Whites are ignored and portrayed as racists even though they are actually the least racist class of Whites, being far more likely to have POC friends than rich Whites of either the liberal or conservative variety. Furthermore, the extreme right, the GOP, the alt right and the White supremacists hate poor Whites, who they consider "dysgenic" and "degenerate", just as much as they hate poor non-Whites if not more so. However, many poor Whites do resent being told they have "White Privilege" when they have absolutely no privilege, and hearing that the "war" on drugs and crime is a "war on Blacks" when it is really a war on the poor. Rundevilrun (talk) 17:55, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * They both feed each other. Read up on intersectionalism- "Shut up, Brx." 03:38, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's untrue that "bourgeois Blacks are not oppressed" - the black middle class complains of police harassment (e.g. ; ) and do worse in employment than the white middle class. Meanwhile blacks and hispanics earn less than whites across a wide variety of jobs.
 * As for the OP's other points - does a dead black person get a better media reaction than a dead white person? Dead blacks are typically vilified by large sections of the media; there's well known pro-white bias in murder victims such as in (which is also about class). And please provide a cite for your claim that the GoP, Trump, the KKK, neo-Nazis, alt-right, etc, hate poor whites more than poor blacks, poor hispanics, or even middle-class blacks. --Gospatric (talk) 10:08, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Poor Blacks are more likely to be vilified if they get shot by police because they are far more likely to get attention. The existence of poor White victims of police brutality is totally ignored by everyone. Right-wing media is not going to waste time demonizing poor White victims because their entire purpose is knee-jerk reaction to anything that progressives support, and since progressives only care about the Black victims they are the only ones that the Right cares to demonize. (In most cases, at least.)
 * The fact that the police sometimes racially profile middle-class Blacks is due to the fact, since Blacks are disproportionately likely to be poor and therefore to be arrested, looking Black is seen as looking like a "criminal" - that is, poor. Racial profiling is easier than "class profiling", but is basically just a proxy for it. The police are also likely to profile people of any race who have visible tattoos because, even if they are middle class, they look "suspicious" - that is, poor. The police are also an extremely conservative and reactionary institution, so they must be counterbalanced by all the progressive and liberal sections of middle class society where being Black is a privilege. The very existence of Black Lives Matter and similar movements shows that Blacks have a support network from within the Black community as well as from White progressives that poor Whites absolutely do not.
 * It's true that in some ways poor Blacks have it worse than poor Whites. Regardless of class, Blacks are significantly more likely to be incarcerated than Whites. This is partly because Black poverty is more urban which is more conducive to things like gang violence and open-air drug dealing (which is far more likely to lead to arrest than indoor drug dealing). However, when controlling for poverty rates Hispanics are not more affected by incarceration than Whites and Asians (except Hmong and Laotians) have the lowest rate of all. Furthermore, the incarceration gap between Blacks and Whites has been closing dramatically over the past decade, in one of the most underreported but important news stories. There has been a massive shift in the demographic of the "war on drugs" from poor minorities to poor Whites, especially poor White women. Black Lives Matter would have made more sense trying to make criminal justice reform a "Black" issue if it had arisen in 2001 rather than 2014.
 * As for the right hating poor Whites, this is obviously obscured by the fact that the very existence of poor Whites is largely ignored and its not a subject anyone talks about much. But their are numerous examples implying that. For instance some skinheads in Oregon murdered a homeless crack addict as part of a crusade to wipe out "undesirables". He was White. The alt right is constantly having casual discussions about sterilizing poor people. Since they want a White ethnostate they clearly have poor Whites in mind, not the poor Blacks that they just don't want in their country. The 1980s GOP rhetoric about "welfare queens" and being "tough on crime" was often used as a racial dog whistle, with the purpose of getting racist Southerners to go along with what was really a classist agenda by making the face of "undeserving" poor people Black. Still, "welfare queen" was primarily a classist slur and only secondarily a racist one, middle-class Blacks obviously not being "welfare queens". But is true that back then the demonization of the poor was highly racialized. However, more recently there has been a greater focus on openly hating the poor across racial lines. Romney's "47%" comment couldn't have just been about Blacks, who are only 13% of the population. Paul LePage of Maine bases his entire agenda on making life hell for "criminals" and "welfare bums". Maine is an overwhelmingly White state. Infact, many conservatives defend themselves against charges of racism by basically saying that they aren't racist, they just hate lazy poor people of any race. Unlike overt racism, overt hatred of the poor is quite acceptable and mainstream among conservatives. Whereas conservatives only dislike middle-class Blacks because they are overwhelmingly Democrats, and are seen as "defending" the worthless poor Blacks out of racial solidarity. Rundevilrun (talk) 15:48, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * tl;dr 02:55, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Please make your point compendiously plz. The wall of text hurts my eyes. —ClickerClock (talk) 03:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "Please [imperative] please"? —Kazitor, pending 04:52, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Citation needed. Christopher (talk) 07:25, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

It is difficult to deal with racism in any obvious way, and at the end of the day, we complain about it as though it were like the weather. There's the old joke, "everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." How to change the mind of a racist? I don't know. A lot of us have hoped that over time and successive generations, racism would die down, if not disappear. It is illegal for any organization receiving federal money to discriminate on race or religion. Thus, it is arguable that, apart from preventing states gerrymandering voting districts (a serious problem) and enforcing the law, there is little more for the federal government to do. On the other hand, working for economic justice is a very different matter. For example, before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, how many Americans, including millions of people of color, died because they could not afford proper medical treatment? It may be that there are, today, too many poor people to politically make the case that some minorities deserve special help. If real poverty could be practically eliminated, problems currently seen as the result of racism might subside.Ariel31459 (talk) 14:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Help with downloading issues of an old journal
I love reading an old German-language scientific journal called Annalen der Physik.

I have free access to most of the issues listed on wikisource https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Annalen_der_Physik#1917 but unfortunately quite a few can only be accessed from the US. Since I don't live in the land of the free I attempted to circumvent this by using a proxy. Then I found out that only logged in members of certain US university institutions can download whole issues. Otherwise, all you can do is look at some pages in a slow and irritating process. Could any of you use the Michigan-USA or California-USA links at wikisource to download the issues? Wiedemann's 264, 271, 276, 279 and others can only be accessed from there. Gewgtweg (talk) 18:04, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh god, please don't unironically call the USA the "land of the free". —Kazitor, pending 03:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * pretty sure he was doing it ironically- "Shut up, Brx." 04:23, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

try lib-gen or sci-hub 13:42, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Awesome resources. Gewgtweg (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Both of those ( and ) are piratical, and have been sued by Elsevier, with domain blockage in some parts of the world. Bongolian (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Went to nominate my name in the signature contest and my profile information is now in the Saloon Bar
How did that happen? --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 23:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * You are using { when you should be using [   Leuders (talk) 23:31, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

A prank call I got
Someone prank called my house and said that there was a chupacabra in my apartment complex. 𝔊𝔬𝔞𝔱-𝔈𝔪𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔅𝔦𝔤𝔰 (𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔡𝔬𝔪/𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰) 03:42, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Chupacabras are no laughing matter. You'll have to thoroughly inspect and ensure there are no Chupacabras at your residence for the safety of any and all goats in the area. 174.200.8.18 (talk) 04:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * M'kay. 04:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Not sure whether to WIGO this
It's a bit minor, but a town council in Britain is forced to issue a formal denial of the conspiracy theory that its new tech is causing miscarriages and killing wildlife. Wilder Bicycle 11:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds WIGO-able. I don't read the WIGOs though. —Kazitor, pending 11:21, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The subject is easily wigo-worthy, but I wonder if it's too minor - just a local news story. In these days of floods of crap WIGOs I'm hesistant. Wilder Bicycle 11:26, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the conspiracy aspect makes it good enough ,especially because of how strange it is. Maybe this is the start of a new conspiracy theory.Vorarchivist (talk) 18:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Trump on the fire in Trump Tower (killed 1 person)
Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU! At least he's not sending "thoughts and prayers"...? 15:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * When I saw this, I wished it was Trump... 15:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not funny at all. Nerd (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * No, it's not, wishing death on someone is one of the worst things one can do aside from killing the person. 15:50, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * what about a maiming? or rape? or stealing their pocket money. get a grip. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:32, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I wasn't trying to be funny. There's a major difference between wishing someone was dead vs. wanting to kill someone. That difference is intent on killing someone, the former has none. As AMassiveGay said, get a grip. 16:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In other words you are saying that you wish something happened and they died. Indirectly wanting someone dead without your own hands getting stained. 02:13, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * holy fuck, i wish people dead all the fucking time. its an empty expression to convey your displeasure, usually not even being voiced. its not actually craving the death of some one. i do not sit and pray or implore the universal for to destroy them. it is not a voodoo curse, nor is the 'the secret' real. no one sincerely wishes death on anyone not does anyone sincerely believe it will happen. wring your hands over something that matters AMassiveGay (talk) 04:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I understand it is a "empty expression to convey your displeasure" but having a brother who is autistic I have learned people can take it to heart a lot because they don't understand. Surely, there are better ways to say it, right? 14:08, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Aside from the fact you shouldn’t wish death on anyone, do you really want Pence to be President of the US? Christopher (talk) 16:52, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "do you really want Pence to be President of the US" Not really. I take it back. 16:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Server reboots, 0600 UTC on May 1 and May 3
so that's 7am BST, which is when my first alarm (of two) goes off, so I may even be awake then to check stuff is OK if I remember!

last time they did this everything came back ok, I don't expect any problems.

but expect a slight service hiccup around this time. - David Gerard (talk) 16:02, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * So will we notice anything (i.e. unable to connect) during those times, or will it be unnoticeable if everything goes well? —Kazitor, pending 21:52, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Creating a page on bipolar disorder
Who wants to help me create a page on bipolar disorder woo and denial? I have bipolar I disorder, so I am a bit of an expert. On the Internet, I have repeatedly encountered people who deny that bipolar is a real thing. I see you have a mental health woo page, but it would be nice to have one specifically for bipolar disorder. I'm an atheist and I have used this site for years. I'd like to give back. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Egm / talk / contribs
 * I suggest making a draft and updating it when you have the time, and that way you may not need help from another person. 01:41, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Woo telephone calls
Given the number of phonecalls attempting to get bank details, take over computers etc, should there be a RW article on the topic - see Fun talk:Phonecalls from Microsoft‎‎ for further detail. Anna Livia (talk) 18:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * That's not woo, it's fraud. where's the woo? Wilder Bicycle 19:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Phone spam perhaps? (And woo can overlap with fraud by the perpetrators and others.) As there is a RW article on spam and the above Funspace article there should be some coverage of the audio version. Anna Livia (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

So there's this guy on Discord who seems to be pretty right-wing, and his statements have made me conflicted
So there's this guy on Discord who feels pretty strongly against gun control, and is pretty much a conservative by admission

Thing is, though, for some reason, some of what he said has pushed my buttons, but I just can't think of any proper rebuttal for them.

Some random examples, he has stated that


 * David Hogg is "a puppet for the left media"
 * The media is making the Parkland kids out to be experts that are immune to criticism
 * I've seen this brought up in a few places, but only in pro-gun rebuttals. Where is it coming from, exactly? For the record, I do think that things like the price tag thing and insults to people like Marco Rubio might be a bit overboard, but I don't think that should undermine their message
 * I've also seen it floated around that channel that they're just kids, so what do they know about this sort of thing. The kicker? The guy is younger than them.
 * That March For Our Lives wasn't really "kid-ran", but organized by a billion dollar organization
 * That the statement from that NRA spokesman that "No one would know [their] names" if the shooting was thwarted wasn't REALLY an attack
 * "If you do actually listen to those kids, theyre in favor of taking away guns and repealing the second amendment. That's the major majority."
 * Kneeling for the flag is "super fucking selfish [...] all the soldiers that died for our freedoms and these kids are shitting on those freedoms"
 * Sandy Hook was most likely staged. The evidence? There's no CCTV footage, and the after-action report took a whopping 5 years to be released, and apparently some of the kids were seen alive afterwards (though he never gave any examples afterwards)
 * Alex Jones has never said any fake news

I feel like that last one should be super easy to refute (after all, one of the sections on the article on him here calls him "Godfather of fake news", but I'm not sure I can find any examples. Well, I did bring up the thing about children being sent to Mars to work as slaves, and his response was "I mean a real news about politics, they have their conspiracies". He also posts stuff from Ben Shapiro, James Allsup and Steven Crowder.

Whether I should listen to what these people have to say, I'm...conflicted. I've spent quite a bit of time on Reddit, which may have given me the impression to take stuff from them as conservartive propoganda, but after listening to some of them, like this, I somehow can't think of any kind of rebuttal. Maybe I just suck at research and debate.

I guess I could just ignore him or leave the server, but the server's for an unrelated purpose I actually have something of an interest in.

--DoomTay (talk) 00:28, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * thats a list a bullshit statements and conspiracy theories. whats to be conflicted about? AMassiveGay (talk) 01:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This comes across as concern trolling, but while things like "Sandy Hook never happened" and "Alex Jones totally speaks the truth guiz" are obviously bull, what exactly would I say to the kneeling on the flag thing, or the claim that the Parkland kids' goal is repealing the Second Amendment? Hell, I asked where the idea that they want a total "gun ban" came from, and was told "maybe you should read what we're saying. you'll get the context" the guy went on to say "because when you say 'i want to ban semi-automatics' or 'high capacity mags' you basically want to take away all modern and efficent guns", or that background checks are already such that a misdemeanor can bar you from getting a gun--DoomTay (talk) 01:45, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Welcome to the Gish Gallop. It's basically a shotgun blast not meant to be responded to. ("Kneeling on the flag"? afaik, nobody has done that) I suppose you could choose to engage it in various ways, but the fact that someone claims 'Alex Jones tells the truth' gives you a license to walk away. Leuders (talk) 02:01, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Whoops. After rereading the original quote, that was supposed to say "kneeling FOR" the flag. But yeah, I agree that thinking so highly of Alex Jones, coupled with the other conspiratorial stuff, deals a heavy blow on his credibility in my eyes. --DoomTay (talk) 03:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Also note that closer examination of facts used in their video as debate-stoppers reveals many obvious flaws. Leuders (talk) 14:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * No one is saying the children are experts on gun control policy. Though its quite likely they are far better informed than the average citizen. What they are experts at isn't gun control policy...but the kind of enviroment they want to spend 8 hours a day in. A place where gun violence is quite possible. They are also "experts" (as all students are) in the kind of world they envision for the coming generation. They aren't impervious to criticism. Much of the criticism against them is vile word vomit, insults, dismissal, highly falicious arguments. The status-quo has had a monopoly on gun-control narratives for decades and suddenly feel cornered and on the defensive. Their response is to tell the kids to shut-up. The kids are often criticised for simply expressing their point of view. Expressing anger at how their friends were murdered. Expressing their fear of going back. People want them to fuck-off. That isn't criticism. Very very little of the pro-gun commentary post-massachre, is actually disected to the arguments the students make. If they did...you would have a gun-control debate. Not a "kids can't tell us what to do" debate. Shabi  DOO  17:15, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The Parkland Movement to empower the support of stronger gun control laws is both impressive and significant. They represent the potential political muscle to make government pay attention. I am a big fan. Because laws need to change, they represent a more vital movement than any in recent American history.Ariel31459 (talk) 17:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * i just do not believe anything significant will come of it. it will peter out. the US just cannot help itself. some specific kind of assault rifle will get banned, bump stocks, large capacity ammo clips will go maybe, all a bone thrown by the NRA. increased background checks will do little if someone snaps after they've already got their guns, and 32 people were murdered at virginia tech with only hand guns, and i have no faith in your mental health care. it will have no effect on the social problems that result is in most gun crime. Trayon martin was gunned down and you let the man who murdered him walk free. you need a massive cultural shift. gun ownership needs to be seen as something odd, something suspicious, seen as something on par with paedaphilia. no 'some guns for defence is ok', no 'some guns for hunting is fine', no treating the constitution and the 2nd amendment like a sacred text beyond reproach, beyond review. The US worships its guns. look at the movies, at tv, at video games. they are fetishised, lionised, adored. a cultural shift is needed, and i dont see it happening. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * To me, from outside the US, the Parkland students seem to be doing all they can to avoid upsetting people about the second amendment. The line seems to be - "Sure it's OK to carry a gun - but only so big and with this many bullets". But isn't the problem carrying the gun in the first place?
 * Which brings me to my second point. Trump and others have been widely criticized for their suggestion that "more guns" are the answer. The logic being that if everyone carries a gun then everyone can defend themselves from all the other gun-carrying lunatics. While this seems pretty bizarre to european eyes, I would say it make sense in a country where you have the second amendment. As long as you have a generalised right to carry firearms then carrying one would seem to make sense. It's the logic which flows from the second amendment.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In fact, no. People carrying guns through controlled regulations is not inherantly bad. It is allowed in some Canadian provinces and part of Scandinavia and Switzerland and none of them are in bedlam and see very rare massachres. Its the controlled aspect that is so important. And that controll can be so restricted I think most 2nd amendment peopole would bust a nut if it were proposed in Amerca. All these countries include most or all of these:
 * Proof of proficiency with firearm
 * No more than 1 or 2 firearms.
 * Annual license renewal
 * Firearms only for limited means based on occupation or sport (hunting, security)
 * Mental health backround checks
 * No criminal record
 * No history of domestic abuse
 * Own and use gun safes well out of childrens reach
 * Yearly target practice
 * Inspections (of gun safe in house or of firearm)
 * NO POINTLESS WEAPONS OF RAPID MASS MURDER
 * As you can see...with most of these or all of these controls, carrying a gun is not necesarily the problem. Idealy no one would have weapons of murder from a distance. However, short of that never ever happening in the next century in America...control is the goal. Don't expect American to adopt anything like the extreme control in parts of Canada or Scandinavia (parts of which have quite high rates of gun ownership and quite low firearm deaths). And it isn't just about murder...its even more about accidents and botched suicides which are much lower in other countries with controls. Starting with background/mental-health checks and no assault weapons would be a fine fine start. Shabi DOO  13:56, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * So true. After 9/11 they didn't say "the only way to stop bad guys with box cutter knives is good guys with box cutter knives", they fucking banned them from passenger planes and massively tightened security. More tightly regulating things that are a danger to public safety is just common sense. Except to self-centered and spoiled Americans, who think, "I'm law abiding and sane, why should *I* have to give up my cool AR-15 just because *some other people* kill schoolkids with it?" Leuders (talk) 14:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * One of the problems the US faces in concern to firearms is the fact that the layman's understanding of the second amendment and whats actually printed on the document are two entirely separate things. That is to say the average US citizen does not possess a constitutional right to firearms, per the document in question. It merely states that the military has the right to be well supplied, and that citizens have a right to enlist, and that's it. 15:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * as I said earlier, 32 people dead at virginia tech with only hand guns. Regulation is only part of the picture. you need a cultural shift. other countries with guns seem to manage fine, but other countries dont have anywhere near as many guns per capita as the US (US - 89, Switzerland - 46. Canada isnt even top 10). you own half the worlds gun. other countries dont have anywhere near the gum homocide rate of similar high income countries. shabidoo says 'it isn't just about murder...its even more about accidents and botched suicides'. this is just false. it might true in other countries where folk arnt constantly murdering each other, but in the US, its very much about murder, suicides and accidents are very much a side issue (you also say the us has a lower gun accident/suicide than other countries - this is very much false also, US no. 1).


 * Proficiency and gun safes dont stop murderers. other countries have socialised medicine, how does that factor into mental health background checks. what other country views guns not just as a right, but a god given sacred right, codified the one document more sacred to americans than bible? (even atheists love themselves some sweet sweet constitution). we talk about rabid 2nd amendment nuts, but you are all just arguing about its interpretation. no is talking about nixing it completely. and they should. to say nothing of the fetishisation of guns, the social problems and inequalities that lead to gun crime, or the rabid paranoia of government tyranny enshrined in the 2nd amendment, the american exceptionalism strangely combined with a delusion that other countries have the same problems (look at how a spike in knife crime in london is jumped on 'its a people problem not a gun problem).


 * heres an analogy. i have a substance abuse problem. when i am not on them, everything is dandy. i eat properly, i look after myself, i get things done and i function like a normal human being. then i get high and things get chaotic very quickly. after week long binge, i tell myself, next time i will stop after a decent night. i wont do all the crazy self destructive shit. i will have rules. but i always do the stupid shit. i always break my rules. everytime, coming down, i assess the damage and i say next time it will be different. it never is. some folk can use drugs responsibly, i cannot. i cannot help my self. america has a gun problem. some countries can use guns responsibly, american cannot. it cannot help itself. you have people saying you cant take their guns, and and you bend over backwards to say you are not going to take their guns. maybe you should.


 * some stats to back up some of my points AMassiveGay (talk) 15:49, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course gun safes prevent some murders. Guns are not easily accessed by those who don't have the code/experience with it. It keeps the guns out of the hands of everyone except the person who owns it. And more importantly...it prevents accidents. Children shooting one another by accident or on purpose. This is a no brainer...and there should be no excuses. Gun proficiency also helps avoid some accidental deaths and for the well trained can lead to immobilization rather than death (which is hopefully the result). Mental health background checks are an absolute no brainer. It keeps some guns out of the hands of some people who should never have it. As with those with criminal records. Banning assault weapons is also a no brainer. No one needs them. Mass murder and accidents happen with them. Get rid of them. No excuses. These are simply necesary requirements for gun control...but of course that isn't enough to deal with the problem of weapons of murder from a distance. Police crackdowns on illegal arms are also essential. As is dealing with the sources of poverty, crime, domestic abuse. Clearly a change in gun culture would be beneficial. But gun control is a necessity.
 * Buying illegal guns and trying to control illegal guns are not comparable to buying illegal narcotics. Taking a narcotic that harms no body...is not remotely the same as buying a weapon capable of death/murder. If the police were as zealous with confiscating firearms as they are with petty marijuana "crimes" then you would have at least a few less murders/deaths/accidents. Comparing illegal drugs to weapons is a terrible analogy.
 * People who can get a gun whenever they want, don't know how to use it, makes it available to anyone in the house who wants to use it (or curious children), who may have mental health problems, and with weapons far more dangerous than any applicable use ... leads to death. Such controls doesn't stop all firearm related murder. But it prevents many of them. Just as important is, it prevents accidents and it prevents some suicides
 * There is no end to the resistance of gun control spouting claims of "yeah but its pointless without x" or "yeah but it won't totally stop x" or "yeah but x, y and z" clearly demonstrates that yes, a culture shift is very much needed. But these controls are essential (along with crackdowns on weapons, preventing the conditions that lead to firearm crimes and a cultural shift). There are just endless excuses, arguments of American exceptionalism and a refusal to consider that which has worked. Shabi  DOO  20:40, 10 April 2018 (UTC)


 * 'Of course gun safes prevent some murders.' really? if only that guy in vegas had a safe. prevention of accidents and kids getting hold of ya guns, sure, but murder prevention? the issue isnt illegal guns so much (though surely an issue) but the fact that anyone can legally get guns. a safe isnt going to stop someone killing with their own legally acquired firearms. i might agree with you if you actually gave any reasoning on how gun safes prevent murder, but i guess you forgot.


 * 'Gun proficiency also helps avoid some accidental deaths' yes you are correct. Accidental deaths. that boy who did sandy hook, the vegas guy, they seemed pretty proficient. no accidental deaths there. its a side issue.


 * of course mental health checks are a no brainer, its just you missed my point entirely. how effective will they be with the woefully inadequate health care in the US? the guy in vegas had no known mental health issues. the charleston church guy had none and was competent to stand trial and get the death penalty.


 * and i agree, an assault weapon ban is a no brainer, but i repeat for a 3rd time, 32 DEAD AT VIRGINIA TECH WITH NOTHING BUT HAND GUNS. i am not denying gun control is necessary what i am saying is meaningful effective measures are impossible without a seismic shift in culture. i am not seeing this.


 * i am seeing the same old arguments, the same old sops that everyone busts a gut to maybe get through, and for what? it takes a couple of minutes longer to murder a dozen people while the NRA rubs their hands in glee as they watch you triumphantly celebrate the scraps they've allowed you.


 * Yes you are right. buying narcotics is not the same as buying illegal (though the issue is legal) weapons. its also not the point of my analogy. the point was the continual rationalisation, the continual excuses, doing everything but address the real issues. the analagy was with addiction and the self delusion that goes with it. we've all heard 'this time it will be different'. i hope it will, but it remains to be seen.


 * All these arguments about regulations and proficiency and safes are all more of the same arguments to avoid what for me is a real no brainer. Get rid of your guns. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:11, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This betrays an incredible ignorance of gun culture and firearm law in the USA. All of these particular gun regulations I mention don't exist at all in many states and when implemented they save lives. And in a country where the constitution guarantees owning firearms...and absolutely zero sign that politicians and the states will ever revoke that clause for generations to come then these regulations are a start that makes a difference. Yyour attitude of dismissing implementing other measures as a distraction (like proficiency, safes, background checks, limited ownership, gun crackdowns) is ridiculous. Steadily adding controls can help normalize more critical attitudes towards guns. And in the mean time...these measures SAVE LIVES, a notable number of lives, from murder and far more significantly: accidents and suicides. Advocating and fighting a difficult uphill battle for these kinds of controls (saving lives and changing attitudes) is a distraction from your more realistic and reasonable goal of taking guns away from Americans. Seriously? Shabi  DOO  23:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * it seems you havent really grasped my point. of course it is unrealistic to expect americans to give up their guns. of course it unrealistic to for americans to ditch the second amendment. THATS MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT. its not even on the table. no one is even talking about it. Nothing of any worth will happen until you do and that requires a massive shift in culture and opinion, which as i have said repeatedly, IS NOT HAPPENING. i am well aware the regulation that you suggest is the best you can hope for. does that not anger you? does that not disgust you? that your starting position is one of compromise that is inevitably going to be compromised even further? and yes talk of proficiencies and gun safes IS a distraction. you are complicit in the distraction. Suicides and accidents are surely an an issue. a big issue. but they are not the issue that is being debated. Murder is issue being debated. while you talk of accidents, the parkland students are talking about murder with guns. you talk of regulations normalising gun control, but it wont. it will stunt it. you'll fight tooth and nail for half measures and at the next massacre, the nra and friends will say they've already given up so much. it will take the fight out gun control proponants. i'm all for regulation. fill ya boots on regulations. i am saying they dont go far enough. i am saying when someone who is clearly not a 2nd amendment nut cannot even contemplate a us without guns then they will never be enough. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Friendly reminder that outdents exist. 01:47, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't own any guns. 01:52, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "gun ownership needs to be seen as something odd, something suspicious, seen as something on par with paedaphilia. no 'some guns for defence is ok', no 'some guns for hunting is fine', no treating the constitution and the 2nd amendment like a sacred text beyond reproach, beyond review. The US worships its guns. look at the movies, at tv, at video games. they are fetishised, lionised, adored. a cultural shift is needed, and i dont see it happening."
 * I agree with all of this. In a very ideal world, no one and I mean no citizen should own guns unless it's strictly for collection (and the gun is completely nonfunctional). Guns are detrimental to self-defense. And unless you're starving, no one should be hunting for sport either. I like to add on about the fetishization of guns; you cannot overstate how low gun defenders a.k.a. the Parkland "critics" will go. The moment kids experience a shooting and think "oh my god, my classmates died from a gun; there's something wrong with this culture and we should speak up" they suffer a relentless onslaught disgusting lack of respect ranging from naked viciousness ("they are crisis actors", "Hogg looks like Hitler", "these kids are spoiled brats", "these kids need to experience life", "they are bullies", "they are just pawns for mainstream media", "the moment they get public, they shouldn't criticize", "they are bullies", "since they mistreated the poor kid, they got what they deserve", "Soros paid them", "HAHA, Hogg didn't get accepted to UCLA") to thinly veiled pseudo-intellectual conspiracy putridity that invalidates their feelings and denies their agency ("the kids aren't immune from criticism", "they want to take away our guns", "they are just kids", "the parents did this"). I'm appalled and ashamed of my country for housing these sorts of people, all sorts of people from random yahoos on Twitter to more powerful media figures like Ingraham, the moment they or their precious 2nd amendment and guns feel threatened, they feel fine to act like complete jackasses. 20:26, 11 April 2018 (UTC)