RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive369

One of the dumbest things my dad did (okay, there is a very long list of stupid stuff he did)
I remember back in 2001 about a few weeks after 9/11, my idiot dad did not want to call French Fries well um....French Fries. Oh no he wanted to call them "Freedom Fries". The last time I checked, France had nothing to do with 9/11. If I had to guess behind my dad's strange logic- he was afraid of foreign people.

Then again, he was the same person who believed that Rock n' Roll music was a product of the devil and that cooking was only for women. He was very sexist, homophobic and I believe to be very racist (my memories of him are obscure. I forgot what he looked like). --Possible Goat (talk) 01:50, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Your memory is a bit hazy. Freedom fries wasn't a few weeks after 9/11(/2001).  It was about a quarter year before the Iraq war in late 2002.  The complaint being that France used their position on the UN security council to block war on Iraq on the basis that, gasp, there wasn't compelling evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We sure showed them.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 13:43, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Did your dad get divorced? Metazero 14:48, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * of stupid shit our parents did/do that winds us up and fucks us up,it is likely we all have a shit ton of stuff. might not the healthiest to dwell on too much it of it. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:57, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fries aren't French either. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6C6F:9905:733F:6645 (talk) 15:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, they are Belgian.

Actually, post-WWII, the U.S. was feeling pretty damn smug (I mean, they just won (well, the assisted, but they didn't care) a war and used a really powerful weapon that barely anyone knew the side effects of at the time to defeat Japan) and decided to rename two German foods. Sauerkraut was named "Liberty Lettuce". It didn't go so well and the renaming was revoked. But one dish known as a Frankfurter got renamed as the "Hot Dog". That being said, the original frank's probably better than the hot dogs in the store. Metazero 15:12, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to windsor is the classic of this trope. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Suspect etymologies ITT. "Freedom cabbage" was during world war one.  "Hot dog" as a term for low quality sausage dates to at least this 1914 comic strip.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * When anyone complains about "liberal cancel culture" I just tell them about "conservative cancel culture" being a whole lot more prominent with "FREEDOM FRIES" as the ultimate form of cancel culture to ever hit the 21st century. I mean...Republicans tried to cancel and entire country by insulting the French, making jokes about how easily they surrender, changing the name of fried food and encouraging boycotts of French wine and cheeses (amongst many other stupidities). Was it in the name of bringing about better justice or understanding or equality or any noble practice? No it was because they (with the overwhelming majority of the world) thought the war was a stupid fucking mistake that would murder thousands of people pointlessly and entirely destabilise the whole fucking region. Not only did France have to deal with those stupid Freedom Fries nonsense, but also had to endure a dozen Jihaddist terrorist events ever since (along with Spain, the UK, Scandinavia to name a few other European countries). So when I read of Americans wanting to vote for Trump because of their fears of cancel culture, I can only roll my eyes cause I wonder how many of them admired the emergence of "freedom fries". Shabi  DOO  16:10, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * We call our article on that conservative correctness ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:37, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If you want to find a right-wing version of cancel culture, you can always visit our article on right-to-work laws. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  21:04, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Shabi, ahh, I don't think we import a lot of French Fries. They come from Idaho. nobsBlack Guns Matter 04:07, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I was a parent in 2001/2 (and still am! :)) and well recall the US getting all frothy about anyone who dared disagree with Dubya and co's march to unjustified and cripplingly expensive war. From this distance the susceptibility of the US public to loony tunes hasn't changed much.  Not that US folk are any different from anyone else - but they seem to fail to use the advantages of democracy and free press to get past the bullshit, whereas you can sort of understand why the people in say China and North Korea and Russia can't. Aloysius the Gaul 23:25, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * For what I mentioned- I was 7 years old at the time and I did not understand the whole issue at the time. Looking back, you should not fill the mind of a child with nonsense and conspiracies. --Possible Goat (talk) 02:01, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * All the Iraq war did was allow China's GDP to triple while the U.S. barely doubled. nobsBlack Guns Matter 04:07, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Request for help with the Finns Party article
Bongolian approved my moving of Finns Party into the mainspace. However, I think the article could use some pictures. I have ideas, but I really don't have the grasp of the legalities...what is fair use and open source and what not. Anyone willing to help me with this? Coigreach (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Legality flow chart

++       ++ |                |        |   Great, it's  | | Did you take  |  yes   |   yours. Do   | | the picture? +>  whatever. | |               |        |                | +---++        ++         |         | no         | v ++-+       +--+ +---+--+       +--+        |        | No        | +---v--+ Yes  +---+ +--+      |                   |         |no               +---+ | +v-+      +---+ +--+      |                       |          |yes             +---+ | +-v-+ +---+    ++          |yes +-v-+ +---+
 * Was it posted |  yes   | It's not yours,  |
 * somewhere with ++ but you can share|
 * a free license?|       | it here          |
 * Are you making  +---+ Do not use the    |
 * money off it?   |       | image             |
 * Is the usage     |  no   |There are other legal  |
 * entirely         +---+reasons to use it,     |
 * educational?     |       |but probably don't     |
 * |      |use it                 |
 * Is the version    |  no ++
 * you're using      +-+Could infringe          |
 * lower quality     |     |                        |
 * than the original? |    |                        |
 * Likely to be fair use, but respect the author     |
 * if they ask you to take it down                   |
 * ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 00:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Good news
We got some issues of Klassekampen, and I have found one anti-transphobia article in "Kronikk og debatt" and one somewhat ambigius (Feel free to correct me)!--HedvigsenSkreonk here 07:46, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You may need a bit more context here.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:25, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Convincing a close friend out of new age nonsense
Should I and how would I go about deconverting a loved one from their more nonsensical beliefs? Sadly, they buy into a whole range of woo and "spiritual" beliefs, from regular old astrology to meditation woo, manifestation, and law of attraction babble. The justifications being that "science doesn't know everything" and "you'd know if you experienced the things I've experienced". It's one of very few things we disagree on and it's beginning to start hurting our relationship and encroaching into personal matters. How would you go about convincing someone that there's a full and satisfying life beyond all this comforting baloney? Would love to hear the input of the rationalwiki community. Thanks in advance. Freddurst gaming (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's hard. We do have a page for the exact phrase science doesn't know everything, but arguments from personal feeling, we don't have a good page on, even though it's a common argument.  The closest we come is anecdotal evidence, but that's not really quite right.
 * Personally, I'd restrain my arguments with them to just when it starts infringing on making sound choices(like in medical care). Merely being wrong doesn't warrant an argument.  I guess a good question to ask is "why do I want to convince them?" and that will help inform you how to structure your argument, so it come from a place of genuine caring, rather than just being right.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:37, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I find that a lot of people who believe in that sort of thing want to believe. They want to live in a word where they are governed by benevolent otherworldly forces and that when bad things happen they can be mitigated by ritual or prayer or at the very least they can pretend that such bad things are part of a greater plan that will benefit them in the end.  I don't think it's likely that a single conversation or even a series of conversations would change a person's mind.  If they abandon their beliefs, it will come from disillusionment from either a great travesty (maybe their preferred new age "thinker" turns out to be a pedophile) or from repeated disappointments (all the other new age people they meet are fucking idiots, treatments repeatedly don't work, their wallet gets hammered).  The best you can do is make sure they don't hurt themselves, perhaps by spending too much money on seminars, or rejecting conventional medicine in favor of quack therapies should they contract a serious illness.  In such a scenario, you may have to accept a permutation (so they heal their cancer through the power of prayer AND surgery/chemo).-Hastur! (talk)  19:09, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

RationalWiki's opposition to spirituality is based mostly in ignorance and spiritual retardation, and most of their objections can be corrected with context. Does your loved one believe in astrology literally or metaphorically/archetypically? What "meditation woo" are you referring to? Because meditation can certainly have a profound effect. Manifestation and law of attraction just refer to the placebo effect or something similar. RATIONALWIKIANS are mostly logical positivists and dumb materialists, so there's that. HairlessCat (talk) 22:45, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ugh Hariless, please take the time to actually read the stuff people say. The title of this topic is "New Age Nonsense" and of new age garbage, I'd guestimate 95% of it is pure invented bullshit only some of it vaguely grafted onto western-friendly religious practices from exotic religions and the poster mentions "a range of spiritual belief" which is hardly an outright dismissal of ALL practices of spirituality. If you read the meditation article of this wiki (you probably didn't) and pay attention to what people say in this saloon you'll note that anything beneficial from meditation has been recognized. I personally meditate because of my hypertension. I know tons of rationalists and atheists who do to. That doesn't mean, just because a FEW benefits of SOME forms of meditation having empirically proved benefits means that ALL meditation is good and that ALL of the benefits that people claim are actually true. For the most part you need to control your breathing, be relaxed and work on your thoughts and yeah...your blood pressure goes does along with other benefits. That doesn't mean you have to become one with the universe, pay a so called "guru" to help you, follow a Hindu orthodoxy or engage in accompanying nut-case new age beliefs or believe that meditation will cure everything. That applies to all new age nonsense. If there is something beneficial from it, that can be empirically proven, then none of us here would have any reason to deny the aspects of it which are beneficial and we wouldn't have any problem embracing it in a form divorced from the totally unnecessary ritualistic aspects. Zheesh. Shabi  DOO  23:02, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. HairlessCat (talk) 23:30, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In personal situations, rationalwiki is a resource, and will be here. I have a buddy, he's a solid guy, he's super taken in by Ghost Adventures and it blew his mind when I said "Ghosts aren't real."  He's already signed up for a tour of the super haunted Missouri state prison.  I kinda want to go, but I don't think my car would make it.  But the thing is, after I told him I don't believe in ghosts, I didn't stop talking to him about it.  I asked him if cemeteries are full of ghosts, he said probably, and I asked hiim about the rules of being a ghost.  Does a ghost have to be tied to an experience, a place, or a feeling, like why would there be ghosts in a graveyard?   His response was that a ghost could go anywhere.  As amped up as I was to slam down the idea that if a ghost could go anywhere they want, I just said "okay" because I don't know what this guy is talking about.  He's smart, charismatic, and he's got a God belief that is accepting, I'm not going to shit on that.  I'm not qualified to shit on that.  But he knows that I don't believe in ghosts, and through other conversations, I know he thinks the "Attack Helicopter" gender identification is dishonest.  So, in the end, if this guy believes in ghosts, and he thinks I'm stupid for not respecting ghosts and demons, but we still trust each other as friends, I don't care.  I don't need him to stop the woo.  I had a buddy try to faith heal me, as well,  but this is getting long.  You can't cure somebody of nonsense  But you can ask them questions about the nonsense. I don't know if your friend is a guru, but ask how the things work, don't get pissed when they don't have an answer.  Just a suggestion.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:31, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

I have the sneaking suspicion that Hairless is from Actualized.orgMachina (talk) 17:23, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

4004 BCE
Apparently, October 22/23, 4004 BCE was the day the universe was created according to the Ussher chronology. This is about 700 years after the only exact date from the time period, January 1st, 4713 BCE, the beginning of the Julian period. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  18:05, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As the JP was invented long afterwards, what is the connection? Anna Livia (talk) 23:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm kind of wondering what the point is too. The silliness of Ussher chronology is well known. And well - so what?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:24, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Looking for an article
I'm looking for an article on this term that describes separating fact from woo, in topics such as hypnotism or radiation study where such a process is required. It's called.. Like, maginanianism? Something like that? Metazero 20:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Science. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 21:17, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

The Islamic Golden Age and how it made the world a better place
https://youtu.be/9M5wyH4kNZE 05:48, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Can Islamic and Arabic ideas be uncoupled already? I mean, Namaste, good work and great leaps from an Islamic culture, I don't think as Christian culture is inherently thrifty. Retcon, it was solely through the lens of religion that a culture arrived at ideas.  I don't dislike this kind of stuff, I'm just getting impatient. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The majority of Muslims are NOT arab. They make up just over a quarter of the Muslim population (and that's including those who speak variations of Arabic that can easily be considered a different language). On top of that are several Arab countries with significant Christian populations like Lebanon (almost half), Syria and Pre-Israeli Palestine and Egypt. Then there are Arab Druze and untl recently a significant number of Jewish Arabs (many of whom have morphed into Israeli's quickly losing their Arab identity and language). So yes...you can certainly uncouple Islamic and Arabic ideas because Islamic ideas are heavily influenced by non-Arab cultures and not all of Arab culture is Islamic. Shabi  DOO  04:10, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know, it didn't sit well with me either. I was just coming back to edit that.  I was gonna replace Arabic with Middle Eastern, but that's still unrealistically monolithic.  It's really difficult and I think you said it well. The whole assumption, is Arab is the same as Muslim, the same as Middle Eastern is kinda what's digging at me and I'm not saying my words right.  The presumption of the "Islamic world" to describe a culture that is predominantly Muslim isn't my gripe, but it's at the heart of it.  It's the inevitable idea that anything good must be a larger product of the mainstream culture of the time. I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore, something like assimilating testable, true ideas into a monolithic idea like culture discredits the ideas and upsells the culture?  I dunno, I'm being impatient.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:59, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The Islamic golden age encompassed Iberia (current day Spain and Portugal) all through North Africa, the Middle East (which is in fact not the same as "Arab", since Arabs are not only located in Arabia but also other peoples as well), the Caucasus and even western China. I recommend watching the video. 09:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * @Shabidoo It gets even more complicated when you remember that most "Arabs" are Arabized rather than ethnically Arab.  It'd be like if France conquered/dominated the entirety of Europe and declared all white Europeans to be French, everyone spoke French although with regional accents and different local cultures. CoryUsar (talk) 18:23, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Haha, I think you're explaining the difference to me, not Shabidoo. But I appreciate it, I was firing off on something entirely different from this post because I'm a drunk idiot sometimes. I really don't like the idea of conflating culture and religion, and I brought ethnicity and localization into it.  Past the limit, thank you all for the context.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:37, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Trump mocking the United States Armed Forces
It has been going around the news that Trump called dead soldiers losers. Does he think that it would be a good idea to mock a group that could remove him from the office by force? It is not like that the Secret Service would be able to stop a full scale military assault. I come from a military family and it angers me that Trump has the nerve to say that. It is true that I personally did not serve but I don't think that the military would take a mentally ill Autistic guy with asthma. I actually contacted a National Guard recruiter and I was told no when I mentioned my problems.

Trump fakes a medical condition to avoid enlisting yet he calls military personnel losers. I am ranting I know. It just pisses me off so much. --Possible Goat (talk) 01:04, 5 September 2020 (UTC)


 * You have any proof of this? Let's see it. 2001:8003:59DB:4100:38CD:E2A:67BA:3974 (talk) 01:26, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/biden-demands-apology-after-reports-trump-called-fallen-soldiers-losers.html --Possible Goat (talk) 01:47, 5 September 2020 (UTC)


 * “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” Trump told aides after scrapping the visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, according to The Atlantic. The magazine did not identify the aides. The report said Trump later referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France as “suckers” for getting killed. So an anti-Republican outlet (The Atlantic) claims that some MyStErIoUs MaGiCaL aids ToTaLlY HeArD tRuMp SaY tHaT. You would believe anything you heard if it was anti-Trump. Four More Years. 2001:8003:59DB:4100:38CD:E2A:67BA:3974 (talk) 01:59, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The concept of anonymous sources is not new. Obviously they didn't release the names of the four different people who corroborated the story.  And given Trump's history of comments on other veterans (such as John McCain), nobody is surprised-Hastur! (talk)  02:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Four different people who corroborated the story, remember all the "corroboration" for the Trump-Russia Collusion Nonsense? It's an election year and anything that can be said to slander Trump will be said. If you think this will have any effect on the upcoming Trump landslide come November 2001:8003:59DB:4100:38CD:E2A:67BA:3974 (talk) 02:05, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting that you go on about wanting to Re-eclect Trump with an Australian IP address Rockford the Roe (talk) 05:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Here's the hotter take. With regards to WW1 and vietnam, which were the apparent topics of discussion, the fat piece of shit was 100% correct.  Dying in wars that served only as proxies for imperial power struggles, whether they be the Old Europe imperial powers or the US is a waste of a human life.  Your own if you get drafted, sad to say.  I don't extend Trump enough credit to think that he was saying that, but this weird taboo against saying that dying "for your country" is anything less than an ideal reason to die fucking sucks.  As a political point to attack trump on, it may or may not work, but hero worship of soldiers is a bad thing, and leads to bad things.
 * Also saying "He's a draft dodger and he disparages troops who went" doesn't actually highlight hypocrisy. Both sides are 100% consistent with the ideal(I use the term loosely) that "Going to vietnam is a bad idea".   ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:03, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Whether it happened or not, it sounds fucking... Unreal.  There are a million other things, don't get caught up on Trump saying something stupid/  It's only ever worked in his favor, fucking maniacs. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:46, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * But the alternative is having a specific and clear policy vision that voters can identify with. Can't have that, so obsessing over stupid shit it is.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 13:34, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * And I agree, the trouble is the journalistic approach. I don't think the Atlantic is reporting fake news over a political slant, but the editors shouldn't be slobbering on it.  I don't know what to make of it.  But I know what damage can be caused.  Washington Post ate up the Snowden leaks, and then called him a traitor.  The job of an editor in a journalistic environment is to protect the journalists and their sources from some kind of huge misunderstanding.  I don't think the Atlantic did very well with this piece.  And yeah, I think those words probably came out of my President's mouth. I'm already disappointed, I already don't think he cares, now the Atlantic has to suffer the fake news branding.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:22, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Thought of a positive in this
Trump loses the entire military vote. That is a positive right? --Possible Goat (talk) 23:06, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Check the crosstabs on polls in a week or so and be disappointed. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:51, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Is it worth it?
Would it be worth exercising more energy towards documenting and making whole pages on crank/wingnut youtube channels? Would be a fun read. Metazero 20:25, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Only if they’re notable. I’ve been around long enough to remember the Great YouTube Purge. 22:09, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What Duce said, plus: If you really have a lot of energy to expend and feel strongly about a particular YouTube crank/wingnut theme or topic, perhaps you could do a meta-analysis of some kind and post it as an essay. That might make for a good read. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 22:42, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * At the time of the Great YouTube Purge we decided that we'd only allow articles on YouTubers if they had a thousand subscribers or more. I thought that was quite a generously low number at the time. It seems like an even more generously low number now. But there it is. If you want to create an article about any crank YouTuber who has at least a thousand subscribers, go ahead. Spud (talk) 01:37, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

The perfect piece of social satire of the War in Iraq and the Republican Party
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0643105/

General synopsis- a person by the name of David Murch who works in the Republican Party wishes for soldiers who died in a war (based on the Iraq War) to come back to life and express their support for the ongoing war. The soldiers who died in the war return to life. They don't eat human flesh or go on a killing spree. They return to life so they can vote. Instead of supporting the war the reanimated soldiers speak out against it saying "We died for a lie. Our comrades died for a lie".

I recommend it as it pretty much captures the hypocrisy of the conservative right and the pointlessness of the Iraq War. --Possible Goat (talk) 23:25, 5 September 2020 (UTC)


 * For any of you Yanks or people with a means to bypass geolocks (ahem) here's the episode in question https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/286424/s01_e06_homecoming Cardinal Chang (talk) 07:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, the poem Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon has always captured the hypocrisy of war, as read here by the actor Stephen Graham. (Fuck poppy day) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLuTiITZykg Cardinal Chang (talk) 11:11, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Knowing anything for certain
So I saw the above in regards to whether we know anything for certain. I know I heard Matt Dilahunty say that nothing can be known for certain because there is always that degree of doubt. Which I can sort of agree with, but science never operates on certainty. So while I can't say it's with total certainty I can say I know things to be true. As for words I wouldn't call them a lie since it doesn't matter what we call things when we know how they interact with each other.Machina (talk) 00:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Knowing for certain" usually applies to something a person wants in life. Nobody is truly certain of when the world will end or what will exactly happen the next day. Life has too many variables to be certain. On a personal level, it works. --Possible Goat (talk) 01:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I figure it's not generally worth pondering these things too deeply, since no matter how much I contemplate life's vicissitudes (now there's a reference well beyond my years, any ALF fans out there?) the world as it is will go on. Among many other philosophies I studied Carvaka (how is that not an article here?), and it basically says that your (generic you) experience will allow you to make some basic inferences (such as if there's smoke, you can reasonably conclude there's fire and act accordingly), but to push it beyond that is a fool's errand that only burns mental energy best spent on enjoying yourself in the one existence you definitely have. And in my own laconic philosophical outlook, I'll live my life, contradictions and all (Rush once pointed out that we all fight the fire while we're feeding the flame, though I'm surely guilty as charged I try to minimize it) and worry about acquiring an afterlife and any accompanying deeper knowledge after my life. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 02:49, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I honestly don't know. I got it from here along with alleged proof of solipsism being true. https://www.quora.com/profile/Aiden-Merrett/answers/PhilosophyMachina (talk) 03:39, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * if you are certain of too much, it can look delusional or idiotically arrogant. on the other side is to be crippled by self doubt and indecision. its often not an easy balancing act, often being certain of the wrong things while hesitating and doubting what used to be a given. its something i have great difficulty with at present, and introspection makes for more uncertainty. i can never be sure if the things that eat at me, past traumas that seem to grow in significance, are really significant or ive latched onto those things to avoid other things? we are often not the best judges of our character. often we need someone outside of ourselves to give perspective. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:34, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The philosophical study of knowledge is called "epistemology". This field has been addressed by most of the most famous philosophers in history.  From Socrates' "All I know is that I know nothing" to Des Cartes and his demon, arriving at "I think therefor I am" as incontrovertible knowledge, to Hume and questioning how you could ever connect cause and effect directly.
 * But friend Machina, we all have a great tool, an amazing tool. The scientific method.  We can refine our knowledge by a process of ridding impurities.  Finding ways to test the truth of thinks we believe are likely to be true, then getting rid of the ideas that prove to be wrong.  With this process, which history has shown to be incredibly reliable, we can never arrive at the certainty you crave, but we can do a lot better than Socrates and his universal ignorance.
 * Why demand that you be right about everything, when you can be wrong about less things than you were yesterday, and be part of humanity's march of progress? ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:53, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The problem is the scientific method can't work against the big questions that are the real issues since it is only based on observation. It also suffers from the problem of induction and that the method itself cannot be validated by the scientific method. I mean if I want to be close to certain all I can really know is what I observe and feel. Science can't tell me if others see the same thing or feel the same thing or otherwise. That's all faith and belief.Machina (talk) 20:33, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Become and absurdist. It's the existentialist philosophy that all the cool kids like.  Answer "how can we know for sure" with "what are you gonna do about it, give up?".  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:26, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

It honestly reminds me of solipsism which I'm still trying to move past. I get varied answers on it though:

"Does one need to overcome it? I would say some aspects of solipsism are useful, in that it allows you to understand that your reality is entirely your creation and we are ultimately in a simulation. You can learn cause and effect this way, how you operate in fertile soil, and so forth. You can debate the negative and positive effects of solipsism for ever, but really how can you just make this life your best life?"

Though I'm not sure about absurdism though. I never found Camus' arguments particularly compelling since he advocates against suicide when suicide solves the problem by removing it. He says it's not a solution but why? Just because he doesn't think it is? I mean it technically is.Machina (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * How high the bar is set regarding what kind of evidence is required to be certain depends completely on the circumstances. For example when talking about common knowledge, trivial facts or giving testimony to a friend or making a general claim the bar is set fairly low. "I'm certain Sarah was there because I saw there and saw Sarah and talked to her" is pretty much enough unless you have good reason to doubt the testimony. The same with "I'm certain John owns two dogs". When it comes to court testimony the bar is set a little higher (for good reason). When it comes to making predictions about the future for a variety of tasks it again depends very much on the circumstances. "I'm certain the sun will rise tomorrow" doesn't communicate that you have utterly zero doubt that the Earth won't explode or some inconceivable astronomical event would happen (though you could make that claim and nobody would care) you are just saying that in terms of whatever project you are working on that depends on the sun rising tomorrow, you are certain that will happen and you'd be right to make that claim. However when making predictions that don't have say, over a billion years of predictably occurring, then you cannot make many claims with certainty like: "I'm certain it will rain at noon tomorrow". There are other cases where the bar is set higher and higher. The bar however becomes beyond reach when we are dealing with situations that require absolute infallible certainty which usually deals with metaphysical topics. I cannot imagine any circumstances in any possible reality under any conditions where at least a morsel of doubt isn't justified when making any claim about the existence or non-existence of something, let along broad claims about how the universe works. In this sense the guy who made that quote is right. Anybody who claims with absolute certainty God does or doesn't exist is a fool. But he goes to far when applying that to "I am certain without a doubt that my Son was born without his left hand". I mean...in this kind of case, we don't need cosmic certainty do we? Shabi  DOO  19:19, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why is suicide "not an answer"? Because you don't get the satisfaction you're looking for there either.  You just stop feeling anything.  It's like saying quitting is an answer for how to win a football game that has no timer.  The people who score some points but never finish the game get so much more than the people who never play.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:31, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

I doubt that. Being stuck in an endless game seems dull and nightmarish. What kind of game has a score and no winner? There is no point to playing such a game. Better to quit and drop out and gain more than just go on in that hamster wheel. Quitting is how you win a football game with no timer. Machina (talk) 03:20, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah you seem to be operating under the assumption that if you quit the game, there's something better to do instead. Nothing.  At all.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:51, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * But there was something better, quitting. Why would I play a game with no end and no score?Machina (talk) 17:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Lots of people enjoy those sorts of things. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Did Q get anything right?
Just a superficial question really from today's WIGO about Qanon being an evangelical cult - has any "drop" turned out to be true, ie actually happened? Aloysius the Gaul 23:25, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Considering it was all meaningless gibberish that right wing media addled crazies interpreted at their whim, sure. The same way nostradomus "predicted" things by ranting about nonsense, and people post hoc decided was about 9/11 or hitler or whatever dismissing the glaringly inaccurate parts of even "accurate" predictions.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:17, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The secret to correct prognostication is being vague, or just spouting gibberish. Bongolian (talk) 03:52, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Here I'll tell the future for you. The second will become the first, and the lanes will swap.  Those who seek the heart will succeed and a king will fall.  Five great stones will fall.  Be ready for the coming harvest.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 04:28, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * King Charles the XI of Sweden led the 30 years war, after wards he was succeeded by King Charles the XII who became the new king (the second will become the first). The war would change into the Great Northern War (the lanes will swap).  King Charles the XII was shot through the heart while invading Russia and died (Those who seek the heart will succeed and a king will fall).  His remaining army was destroyed and had to limp back (five great stones will fall).  And the Russians had a prosperous coming decade after securing their borders against this threat (Be ready for the coming harvest).  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 12:32, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The fact that I knew none of that drives home how little pre-20th century mainland European history I know. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:51, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In a bizarre sense, which requires a bit of stretching, they did get one thing right. Trump is indeed better than a satan worshipper who rapes and sacrifices babies.  You can tell a lot about a person by the lies they tell about their opponent.  Bush, for instance, was better than either a weirdo who thinks he invented the internet, or a guy who faked injuries to get more purple hearts.  If Bush was worse, he'd have to make up even nastier lies.  If Trump was better, he'd need less extreme lies.  CoryUsar (talk) 13:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

"It's not safe out here! It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross...but it's not for the timid." Q, Stardate 42761.3. But I may have the wrong "Q".Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:50, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Q probably got one or two things right by virtue of cold reading the audience (4chan users are fairly easy to cold read, their demographic is easy as fuck to determine) as well as being vague enough to be able to get fit into anything. Doesn't change that the entire thing is still a bunch of trash. Also, funny you bring up that Q, given that he's likely the inspiration for the "character" of Qanon, according to multiple people who claim to have been Qanon at some point (back when it was still just about pranking /pol/yps). 20:41, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Really. John de Lancie, the actor who played "Q", is somewhat of a skeptical activist.  But I guess anyone can use a letter.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:20, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm guessing all the above amounts to "no"! ;) Aloysius the Gaul 10:18, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * When it comes to Q, you gotta at least feel pretty shitty that the country got fucked over for four years by a bunch of people who use their real name as their Youtube channel name, still have their default initial letter avatar, and have no videos. Metazero 00:26, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

A Cute Story
I just have to share this. My niece asked her grandma "My dad said you have a dog in a jar." My mom said "well, kind of... Do you want to see?" Of course my niece wanted to see it. My mom has my dog's ashes in an urn. "Can you open it?" "Oh, no, sweetie it's not a dog anymore, she's ashes." My brother misses our dog enough to just talk about her. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Star Trek: Lower Decks
Anybody seen any of these new episodes? Shabi DOO  13:59, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not awful. Not nearly as good a commentary on the ST mythos as The Orville, and nowhere near as funny as Harley Quinn. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 16:42, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it is outrageously hilarious I've laughed out loud a lot. It's fun to see a ST that shows how things would really work on ships (human dysfunction and ineptitude). Shabi  DOO  07:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not against having a new Star Trek animated series, but I'm just tired of the same-ol CalArts style that's everywhere. Rockford the Roe (talk) 05:40, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * At least these characters are not horribly chibified and have real mouths. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 16:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Revising the Leo Gura Page
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Leo_Gura#Garbled_Garbage_On_the_Topic_of_Science

So I took a second look at the page and it seems like an apologist went through it to try to make him appear less batshit than he already is. I mean they tried to suggest that saying the physical world isn't real as sound from an epistemological point (which from what I gather it is not). I ended up removing a lot of things that simply weren't true about him.Machina (talk) 02:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Lol, I'll put in more apologisms later today. HairlessCat (talk) 13:59, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Somehow I suspected it was you. The page was fine as is and being a former member of actualized.org I can tell that it's spot on about it. To summarize the forum, everyone else can be wrong but not Leo. He took a break because his spell over the forum goers broke and they started calling him on everything.Machina (talk) 17:42, 6 September 2020 (UTC) I also saw that you removed a lot of evidence showing just how batshit he really is, even to the point that people in the psychedelics community even think he's crazy. He takes drugs and rather than admit that what follows is just the effects of a drug he tries to spina story about how it is the true of reality when it's not. It's just a drug. Stop trying to preach nonduality when there is no evidence for it.Machina (talk) 18:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnwFmaLiKl4 HairlessCat (talk) 18:46, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Experiencing the effects of a drug only speaks as to what the drug itself causes, but that is it. The experience itself says nothing about the nature of reality. People feel the need to assign meaning to things where none exists and that is never more prevalent than in psychedelics. It's why most of the ramblings after it can be easily shown to be wrong. It's like people thinking Adderal makes you smarter when it really doesn't, it just gives that feeling. All psychedelics shows us is what happens when you ingest them and that's it, same with any drug.Machina (talk) 23:33, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I also fixed a lot of your other edits that tried to make Mckenna seem less looney. You can't be an idealist and believe in materialist neuroscience.Machina (talk) 23:50, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Additionally I deleted a lot of your edits on the Leo page because none of them are rooted in science or rationality (especially the point about psychedelics fostering intelligence and rebellion, that is NOT what the study said at all) and most of it is trying to paint Leo in a light other than what he is, a woo peddler who's fanbase imploded on him once they started questioning his proclamations.Machina (talk) 00:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Aren't you somebody that's always ranting about solipsism and semi-Buddhist dualistic crap that's absolutely stupid on all conceivable levels? HairlessCat (talk) 01:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Coming from someone trying to pass nonduality as valid and trying to make Leo’s post seem sound I don’t think you have any grounds to call anyone’s claims stupid, at least solipsism has some basis for belief or truth unlike Leo’s stuff. Dude doesn’t even see how his whole school of thought leads nihilism like most monism philosophy.2600:387:9:5:0:0:0:16 (talk) 05:06, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Solipsism is a lot more nihilistic than you think. I also don't understand why having a physical world and spiritual world (dualism) is any less nihilistic than idealism. HairlessCat (talk) 13:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

It’s not nearly as nihilistic as monism. It’s the same reason why many worlds leads to nihilism as well (if you’ve seen rick and morty). Physicality allows for the creation of meaning since there is an external world you can impact and other people as well. Spirituality often leads to nihilism as well as idealism by positing there is no physical world. As was mentioned above, someone who believes in monism or is trying to make Leo seem like less of a nutter than he actually is has no right to call anything else people say nonsense.2600:387:9:5:0:0:0:16 (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems very arbitrary. HairlessCat (talk) 17:09, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not though, it's pretty straightforward and demonstrable. It's way monism never really got off the ground and neither did idealism.
 * An effect on a mental construct isn't different from an effect on something physical. It's totally irrelevant. Even if it were nihilistic, comfort is not the standard of truth. HairlessCat (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Uhhh yes it is because something physical actually exists and has an impact on things around it. It's why idealism leads to nihilism (and also why it doesn't explain anything really). Comfort may not be the standard for truth sure but then again that would put into question the value of truth then if all it causes is pain then what's the point? I mean looking at Leo's stuff I see no reason to believe any of it is so no matter how emphatically he feels about the matter. Drugs don't yield truths. His rhetoric is the same I hear from any other spiritual quack about how "you don't get it", "it will unravel everything", "your mind won't let you", blah blah blah. I've heard it all before and that one think I ask each of them is how do they know? If they say they just do then I ask how do they know that it is true? In short their insights are more like axioms in logical systems and they just run with it while believing that it's so powerful it must be so. But again, I see no reason to believe your words. Even if I have the same experience (and I have) that doesn't mean anything, because I don't know if what I saw was really truth or lies. They all need to take a step back and a page from science and learn to just...chill out.2600:1700:1C80:5190:5100:EE9A:D500:F07C (talk) 21:57, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Help with analysing alleged photo of an "real spaceship"
Around March of 2016, a man known as John Macdonald claimed to have had an encounter with an alien space craft, to prove this, he allegedly snapped a photo of it:

According to John, the spacecraft was hovering 50 to 70 yards above ground, and it made a noise like a thousand vacuums. According to Macdonald it's certainly an alien spacecraft.

It seems like this story did not get much coverage, I could only find an article from the Huff Post, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Scotsman, Metro and The Mirror; it just seems to have been a story that came and went and was exclusively covered by clickbait Tabloid magazines as opposed to more credible sources.

All the articles rehash the same details and all of them set up a straw man argument that sceptics will say it's a drone, and then quickly discredit that claim.

"A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said: “It’s possible to fly a drone in darkness, but you have to keep it in your line of sight at all times.

“If you are flying something in darkness it is difficult to keep it in your visual line of sight.

“Even though it has lights, you won’t be able to see it sufficiently well to control it.

“At night, you can’t see obstacles because the obstacles aren’t lit.

But John dismisses the idea that his experience was anything other than out of this world.

“I always thought there was something out there, but have never seen anything until now,” he added.

“There is no doubt in my mind. I know what I saw.”

Drone pilot, Jonathan Hall, from Southport says he is also convinced that the image is not a drone.

The keen amateur said: “I have no idea what it is but am pretty sure it’s not a drone craft.

“I have flown quite a lot at night and the size and shape of the lights look like no drone I have ever seen before.”"

I find it odd how this straw man is set up, based on the shape, no one would think it's drone, it looks like a generic flying saucer outline. Instead of trying to figure out whats in the picture, the actual credibility of the picture should be put into question.

I've only found one site claiming it to be genuine

"The image does not seem to have been tampered with according to our experts and Mr. Macdonald swears by what he saw. There were no other witnesses to the event as of yet." Source

This statement comes from an Alien and UFO research website that pushes for alien conspiracies and such, the process of verifying the images integrity is not detailed and the credentials of the "Experts" is not given which leads me to believe that the claim is bunk itself.

The credibility of the story relies on the credibility of the photo, and the photo looks like a generic flying saucer outline, which would not be difficult to create with the software available at the time. The place where he heard/saw this was Rossie Ochil, Perthshire which seems to be a massive desolate farm field with only a small number of hotels.

What do you guys think?--WMS (talk) 14:35, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's another unconvincing flying saucer story. The fact that it only got into the tabloids - presumably alongside stuff like "a yeti ate my cat" - is all you need to know. When you have something from "Science", "Nature" or even "New Scientist" it will be interesting.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like a drone, sounds like a drone, acts like a drone. I wouldn't quite call that sufficient identification to disqualify from UFO status, but I wouldn't attribute it to aliens. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 18:10, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there seems to be many UFO stories like that, and I keep falling for them because anxiety. I think I just need to lay off the internet for a bit to let my sanity back in. Thank you guys for clarifying this. I also will be more cautious when I see stuff like that in tabloids. -- WMS (talk) 18:25, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-man-took-photo-of-an-alien-spacecraft-in-2016.11376/ Metabunk is a good place to start looking - even if there isn't a definitive answer as in this case - but looking like "just another hoax". Just take the guy's name and add metabunk in any search engine :) Aloysius the Gaul 20:33, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why would advanced aliens even come here? We’re savages. They probably avoid us for the same reason we avoid the Sentinelese. 22:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I would love if there were more jokes about the eucharist as being the reason space-Jesus has yet to return. Imagine if there was a planet where, the last time you visited they tried to murder you, and in spite of that happening 2000 years ago, 1/3 of the locals have ingrained in their religion this ritual where they actually believe they are devouring the body and blood of you yourself.  Would you ever set foot on such a planet? CoryUsar (talk) 00:18, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Crucifixes make Space Jesus a bit queasy, too. Raptor Jesus, though, totally loves all that shit, the sick fuck. Le législateur (talk) 00:44, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * im pretty sure space jesus would be very much down to visit a planet where 1/3 of the planet worship him as a god. im sure he be very interested in the eucharist too and be most to keen to suggest other more carnal ways the faithful can feel a bit of space jesus inside of them. pretty sure space jesus would be up for it if the faithful where up for it. space jesus would be sure to stress that anything goes with space jesus. aint no sin with space jesus. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:37, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * New idea for porno series; Jesus Loves Everyone. CoryUsar (talk) 21:26, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Mass Protests Erupt as China Moves to End Mongolian-Medium Teaching in Schools
Mass Protests Erupt as China Moves to End Mongolian-Medium Teaching in Schools. Discuss.
 * China does seem to be on a death march to becoming a single uniform culture. I wonder if they get sympathy protests from Cantonese speakers who know they're next.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:32, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Another day, another authoritarian government seeking to exterminate any culture not party approved.RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Umair Haque (i'm new here)
https://eand.co/

Is this guy a legitimate source or a nut? Please answer he is scaring the shit out of me!
 * "Person with pet social theory" almost always straddles the line between crank and reasonable. They propose maybe a little too much new jargon to explain relatively basic ideas.  It's definitely not any of the following: science(he doesn't propose a way to test his ideas), established(he's proposing a new idea), or academic(it doesn't lean heavily on citing established sources).  That being said, he states his ideas pretty straightforwardly in common parlance, and it's not really that unreasonable a goal in shifting thinking(to me).  You can treat this the way you treat any other political opinion people have.
 * I don't know what scares you, though. So I'm maybe missing something?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:30, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

A note on this Page
Please join discussion on Leo Gura page, recent edits look like an attempt to legitimize cranks.Machina (talk) 06:05, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Too much pink energy is bad for you. — Oxyaena Harass  08:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It feels like it was edited by either Leo or someone from Actualized, I mean they even argue against rationality.Machina (talk) 14:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The Three Little Philosophers of Science(comic)
The Three Little Philosophers of Science.

I like this comic, though I think it doesn't give Popper a fair shake. Theories shouldn't be subject to strict falsification. Laws, models, and hypotheses, those should. Theories arise out of coherent collections of those core pieces, that all contribute to each other. And they fall when they don't have enough of them to continue standing, and change when new ones get integrated or old ones evolve.

Falsification as the only principle of science may be wrongheaded, but as a driving principle it works great. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft: Left-wing glossary needs your help
As part of the to do list, I created a draft for a left-wing glossary and I am asking the community to help expand it preferably with sources.–Tuxer (talk) 17:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What purpose is this serving? Who's confused?  What missional elements do they run into along the way?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:09, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's also extremely biased. For example, "Privilege" is NOT something the "majority" group has, it's something any group can have so long as they have an advantage people outside the group don't.  Rich people are not the majority in any country, but they definitely have privilege.  Privilege also isn't one way; women have privilege, even if female privilege is not nearly as valuable as male privilege. CoryUsar (talk) 00:29, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to have definitions around specialized language involving things like race/BLM, antifa/anarchism/radical-left, radical environmentalism, etc, which are generally considered sort of missional, and are often inaccurately defined elsewhere (especially in MSM and right-wing sources), as well as documenting terms made up by the far right to disparage those on the left (which is also missional). By comparison there is Feminist glossary and Transgender glossary. But it makes more sense to divide it into some kind of race glossary/ies, environmentalism glossary, far-left glossary etc. Things like privilege could go into the existing feminist glossary and/or a race/Black glossary. It doesn't make any sense to include terms from traditional trade unionism that you can get definitions in any dictionary or encyclopedia, or generic left-wing terms. --Annanoon (talk) 09:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Any multilingual people want to help expand/launch Draft:Alt-right_glossary_(non-Anglophone)?
I'm a big fan of Alt-right glossary, and stumbled across this draft that was started by an IP this year, and lists (mostly Finnish) alt-right vocab. I speak Spanish decently and found a magazine article from Spain that listed a number of unique terms of the Spanish alt-right and have added them in. I'm also going to drop into a few of the language-learning subs on Reddit for languages that I don't speak, to ask if any folks there have terms from their language that they want to add.

If anyone here speaks another language and is broadly familiar with the alt-right movement in your language, and their specific vocab (beyond just their direct translations from English alt-right vocab), it'd be cool if you could drop by and add some terms (and sources) to expand the list, so maybe we can get it moved out of Draft. TapTheForwardAssist (talk) 19:17, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Insert Daily Wire clickbait headline
Anti-Semitism, Sexual Assault Charges — What Is Kamala Harris ‘Proud’ Of? 2001:8003:59DB:4100:D4C4:949D:F6B1:B130 (talk) 21:05, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Daily Wire lmao. 21:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Wait, paywalled? I thought daily wire was one of those billionaire backed money trains that pays middling writers to eternally regurgitate right wing propoganda under the approximate facade of "legitimate news source" and rarely, if ever, make any actual profit.  You know, like The Federalist or Reason.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 00:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Very strange demographic claim from a Christian "science" blog
I was curious what religious people thought the world was like before the great flood. one guy seems to think there were 10 trillion people on Earth. I'm not asking for a detailed debunk, just wanted to share a very odd theory. opulation Growth – How Many Died in Noah’s Flood? Neo Stalinist (talk) 17:59, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * So fundies think God killed way, way, way more people than communism ever did. 18:44, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Friendly reminder that Jar Jar Abrams is cringe
Enough said. 2001:8003:59DB:4100:7926:2BAF:722F:59D9 (talk) 05:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fighting racism, one lens flare at a time-Hastur! (talk) 05:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

wut
"As for animal conditions, who really cares?" -Someone here. HairlessCat (talk) 20:39, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that sounds like something "someone here" might say. So?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:04, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I eat borgar. 23:14, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

More Daily Wire shite
Torres has made "public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama."
 * Abortion is cool. I like it. I also like the taste of fetal meat. 21:50, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * These shitty propagandists quote a tweet that says verbatim "You know fetuses can’t scream, right?" as the basis for that headline. Let's put a moratorium on daily wire posts in the bar please.  It's definitely spam at this point.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 23:02, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I was gonna do a dry pussy joke, but I’m pretty sure I’m late to that party. 23:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

God I am a weird person
Most people get excited (not sexually, I am sure plenty might take the word excited out of context) about when a new episode of a TV show airs or when a new movie comes out. I on the other hand get over joyed when I hear an activation of the Emergency Alert System (I make those type of videos anyways).

An example- a few weeks ago I heard the SAME header and attention signal (aka, EAS tones) from a TV in the apartment. On my mom's TV was a Monthly Required Test of the EAS. I was actually happy to see it, mainly to record it and upload it to my YouTube channel (which I failed to do).

My hobby is at least not as odd as ceiling fan enthusiasts (yes that is a thing) or elevator enthusiasts. I am not going to judge though. --Possible Goat (talk) 01:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * God you are. Stay weird. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Eh, do what makes you happy. 15:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * rational Zombie - try some fanfic - some of the stuff is #very# weird and some of the writers do act as you suggest. You could also submit EAS-themed-fanfic if you are so inclined. Anna Livia (talk) 23:07, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Although I'd suspect that might be a one-note plot. (I have no regrets.) Kencolt (talk) 05:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

The Welfare State Did What Slavery Couldn't Do
The Welfare State Did What Slavery Couldn't Do Mises Institute
 * Ah yes, the "Somalia is stateless and loving it" group. Mises Institute, lmao. 18:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Educate yourself, BoN-Hastur! (talk) 18:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do….And that is to destroy the black family."
 * Um, are they aware of the fact that slave owners could and did break up families by buying and selling people? I've heard anecdotes about paternalistic owners who would honor slave marriages. But, how many slaves in America actually lived in an "intact family" unit? We can't answer that question directly, but from "Paul D. Escott's "Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives" there is a table on page 138 that indicates about 20% of slaves left their old master's homes to reunite with family after the Civil War. A few others to get married. This, presumably, understates the number of split up families as some people probably had been split up but were unable to reunite. Neo Stalinist (talk) 04:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I love articles like this where you have to read halfway down to get to the meat and potatoes. "If it elevates one class by harming the status of another class, then it is discriminatory and unjust on its face" -- Unless, the second class was unfairly advantaged. If so, you just bullshitted yourself into a really sleazy conclusion. "The new commission will almost certainly take the latter path." -- Article is based on pure guesswork. I'd call it nothing but a hit piece. Doesn't even establish its narrative. Oh and halfway down, it's nakedly racist. Why did I read this? Tulpa001 (talk) 07:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Remember when Trump was for open borders?
Here: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-2013-borders-global-economy-2016-10?r=US&IR=T

[...] [T]he solution is clear. We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability.

04:17, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

What logic could be applied to this dumb fear?
I know nothing about American politics, I know nothing about Ronald Reagan, however, for some reason, I stumbled across weird things claiming that Reagan was proving or warning people about the existence of aliens in his speech about how an alien invasion would unite humanity. The first instance of it was from that alien interview "documentary", which has been the main source of my anxiety relapse, this anomalien article which details that Reagan had multiple speeches about stuff like aliens and apparently he was interested in the topcic, as well as apparently telling Spielberg that "not many people know thew truth" during the screening of ET, and this express article which, as stated previously, I no longer give any credit to, but he title itself has linked into my fear and caused my brain to go haywire.

What I'm fearing is that Reagan attempted to "warn" people of an "alien invasion" which so many UFOlogists claim. I feel bad about asking for logical help with this, and I am really really sorry about the constant barrage of this but this fear, this anxiety is so difficult to control and when it's pointed out to be bullshit it goes away. Again I'm really sorry about this, but would anyone be able to help me, I guess, debunk these claims by UFOlogists for peace of mind? Thank you in advance, and again, very sorry.--WMS (talk) 20:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Eh. It makes more sense than Q-Anon, anyhow. Kencolt (talk) 05:42, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If you're dealing with a phobia, I'd recommend first looking a psychotherapeutic approaches like exposure therapy, to deal with the emotion part. If that hadn't been mentioned before. As far as the likelihood of a UFO invasion, which is something I wouldn't fear if it did happen, a study of physics makes it look very unlikely. One, the speed limit of light is a very expensive barrier to overcome. We don't even know for sure if it can be overcome. It would have a massive energy cost if it could. Finally, if they came anyway, they'd be investing a thousand years of travel just to come and mess with us. Secondly, there's nothing on earth you can't find on another planet. So they'd be wasting their time big time. Tulpa001 (talk) 08:26, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for giving this logical over view and counter arguments, it managed to dispel the fear that I had of it. Again, thank you so much for giving a very robust and logical counter argument against that bunk that some ufologists pushed, it honestly has helped a lot. In regards to the phobia, yeah, I think at this point this anxiety has turned into a full blown phobia and I believe I need to seek help to deal with that, I did attend CBT and that worked for some time but I think I need to look into more psychotherapy like you said. But honestly, thank you so much for this, both the advice on getting help and the logic, I very, very much appreciate it :).--WMS (talk) 12:17, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No problem. ;) Tulpa001 (talk) 13:23, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

China India Border tensions flaring up
China is arming its soldiers 2001:8003:59DB:4100:10E8:B13E:C410:3A6E (talk) 05:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah baseless conjecture, where would american foreign policy be without you. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

19 years ago...
Terrorists hijacked some planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another plane, which was supposed to hit either the Capitol or the White House, was retrieved by the passengers. Because of this day, people are doing the blame game, some are "skeptical" of other people's religion, and politics officially became a shitshow. We could remember the first responders of 9/11. Instead, we are blaming it on some weird, and even dangerous, conspiracy theories for the sake of blaming it on others. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  11:31, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Just personally, this year’s 9/11 feels weird to me now because we’re in an ongoing American civilian mass casualty event with an even higher death toll. 13:45, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * People react differently to violent death than other premature preventable death. I don't know if it's "human nature" or the fact that there's a directly culpable enemy, but its undeniable humanity's greatest and deadliest enemies are microscopic and have been since the dawn of the species.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * doesnt matter what one does, you will get a cold, you will get the flu, eventually you will get cancer, the heart will wear out, and you have no control of your genetic shortcoming you are born with. terrorist attacks, car accidents, and the like are rarities. they stand out and are ultimately man made calamities, whether accident or malicious intent. you can put a human face to it and solutions to prevent further calamity of the same kind are relatively straight forward, simple. we have control over this, its shocking when something happens showing we are not in complete control, but better security, tighter laws, better saftey standards, we can say we got it covered. failings in humanity or what has been built by humanity fixed by humanity. we have agency here. who do i blame if i die from flu, and what can be done to prevent someone else dying from it thats you not doing already? for most of us its out of our hands. we cannot function if we didnt for the most part not think about it. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Too many people are reflecting on the human tragedy 19 years ago, while ignoring the ongoing human tragedy that has killed at least 63 times more people.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 9/11 killed as many people as the number of Black people lynched between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. But in the same time, numerous preventable diseases killed orders of magnitude more Black people, but no one would seriously argue that Pellagra was more horrific than the Klan.CoryUsar (talk) 18:58, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What the actual fuck.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 19:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 9/11 was about the equivalent in death toll as all the lynchings of Black people in the Jim Crow era combined. Admittedly, the lynchings were probably worse, considering it was "people murdered by their neighbors", and not "people murdered by a foreign entity".  Yet in the same time of Jim Crow, many, many diseases ravaged the Black community, with hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of which were preventable, and we have basically forgotten about things like Pellagra, Cretinism and Hookworm.  So your implied argument that COVID is orders of magnitude worse than 9/11 because orders of magnitude more died is, simply put, deeply flawed. CoryUsar (talk) 19:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * see i thought rips point was that covid is a current on going tragedy, still killing folk, where action taken now could save lives, while 9/11, the effects of war that resulted not withstanding, isnt going to be killing too many more people, and dwelling on that past tragedy, 19 years on, doesnt really help with the more pressing current tragedy. with the divisive way 9/11 is used by all sorts of people, you could say its actively harmful to focus too much it when just wearing facemask is party political and no one is pulling together. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I will agree that we should be taking action and Trump has bloody mucus on his hands, but I won't agree that the death rate itself is a good comparison. CoryUsar (talk) 21:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Literally exactly . -RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

TOOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fcG3sxvII HairlessCat (talk) 14:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I remember this one/ Natbard Hames is a fucking force, but all his stuff kinda sounds the same.  He did A Perfect Circle, and it was just Tool radio edit.  I don't think I'd want to make music with Maynard.  He's kinda sitting in my list of tunnel visionaries with Ben Folds. Very cool, very good, but after some recognition can't quite get out of writing the same song over and over.  I think more input from the band, (their early stuff) makes the music biter with artists like these.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Holy fuck yooo this is a classic also their new album is probably my favourite, they just smash them mf drums and make the songs Long As Fuck that’s the good shit 01:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Left Ben Folds alone there... Ben Folds, notorious drum smasher. you're just gonna leave that alone... OK, whatever and ever. amen. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:09, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Oh shit didn’t see you mention him wasn’t reading too careful. Ben Folds is absolutely fucking excellent and Groovy. Love his damn music so much. Hopefully I get to see him next time there’s “Live Shows” and such. 00:26, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Trump says another country could be ‘added into’ Israel-UAE signing ceremony
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-says-another-country-could-be-added-into-israel-uae-signing-ceremony/ President Trump leads the way. The Best Is Yet To Come.]
 * Neverland?-Hastur! (talk) 05:37, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Agbrabah. 13:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Erewhon? Although he pobrably believes The Land of Bunga Bunga is real. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:55, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * " The Islamic Republic of Eastern Samothrace " http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-1173 Artificius (talk) 01:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Link spam
Imagine living in a world where this book exists and you still believe this fairytale nonsense.


 * Ah, probably because anyone who studies communism seriously is already aware of the contents of that book. Though, it seems to be misattributing the actions of Russia to an ideology. Weird. Apparently, the authors of that book think that "Communism" is Bolshevism, and "communism" has existed for centuries and is not the topic of the book. Tulpa001 (talk) 05:13, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Proving Homosexuality
So I got into an argument with someone over soulmates exist. I said that I don't think they exist and that they said they do. I said that without evidence I don't see a reason to believe that and then they said it's their opinion. I said that it's not an opinion that it's claim to fact, opinions (to me) are value judgments. Somehow we ended on the subject of homosexuality and them saying to prove homosexuality saying it's a belief. I say it's not a belief and it's an actual thing that exists and the evidence is everywhere. They told me to prove it so I pulled up animal studies and they said that those animals aren't gay they just act that way due to circumstance. Then I tried to tell them there are genetic components to but it's also a bunch of other things. We don't know the exact cause but we know it exists. They asked how, I said you can literally look at guys kissing or anything like that and they said that's not proof that they are gay, they're looking for something biological as proof. This went on in circles with me trying to say that you can't equate a belief in soulmates with homosexuality being a belief (because apparently being sexuality attracted to a man is a belief). I couldn't offer genetic proof of it because it's complex as to what actually causes it. But that doesn't men it's not real or does not exist, unlike soul mates. It sort of got me in a dead end because if two guys kissing, personal reports (which apparently are beliefs, or on some cases putting the argument on what if they're drunk. I tried to mention that these studies that measure the percentage of people that are homosexual obviously would not factor in drunk people, but that wasn't good enough), or even two guys having sex is not evidence. I mean if that isn't evidence that I don't know what else to say to them. Unlike soulmates, homosexuality actually exists. To equate the two as personal beliefs is just stupid.Machina (talk) 07:13, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Machina, I'm glad that for once you've trusted in your own common sense and not been baffled by bollocks. Remember that experience the nest time you read on a Buddhist website that potatoes are just an optical illusion or some such codswallop. Spud (talk) 08:10, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Well I hit a wall because what I said: observed behavior in animals and all that, didn't apply. I mean genetics is part of the story but it's more complex than that.Machina (talk) 17:26, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, observation is an important part of science. And homosexual behaviour can be observed in animals as well as in people. No doubt some people will refuse to accept that as evidence that homosexuality exists. I have a feeling the person you were talking with would swear blind that chocolate cake doesn't exist. You could give him a piece of chocolate cake and he'd eat it and still insists there's no such thing as chocolate cake. Like I said before, stop letting those shysters baffle you with their bollocks. Spud (talk) 01:30, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

In regards to LGBT people, I think the only necessary proof that it’s a “real thing” is the fact that 1) LGBT people exist, 2) they are generally happier living their lives freely as LGBT people (assuming that discrimination/bigotry/violence/etc are avoided), and 3) I don’t think people would go to the effort of being treated like absolute shit just to prove some kind of random belief. I mean shit, I’m trans and that shit is. It’s tough. In regards to soulmates, I think it’s easy to think Of someone as a soulmate, and hey, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But also. Thinking someone’s your soulmate can make it feel way fucking worse when it eventually turns out you have various irreconcilable/incompatible traits, and then they dump you via text while you’re asleep but ANYWAY. Point is, I don’t believe there’s any mystical kind of soulmate, but apart from that, I think it’s such a vague, personal term that I’m not confident saying that they do or do not exist. One person’s soulmate is another person’s hookup I guess. Long story short, unless you’re making supernatural claims about “destiny” and “spirits” or whatever (which are pretty obviously nonsense), I think it’s impossible to broadly make any kind of declarative statement on the existence or nature of “soulmates” in general. 02:14, 8 September 2020 (UTC) Well I was just a bit miffed that they equated the provability of soul mates to homosexuality.Machina (talk) 20:05, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean...Jesus Christ. Millions of men don't play with other men's genitals because they want to be different or go against the crowd while at the same time putting up with endless bullying, social disdain and in many countries the threat of being murdered for it. And yes, when a sexual activity is prevalent across all cultures/societies at around the same rate then it is without any doubt "normal human behaviorism for a consistent percentage of humans". The fact that it is found all over the animal kingdom (including mammals) helps support that. I mean honestly...what do these gay deniers think...that men in muslim countries suck dick cause they're curious about it and then cry themselves to sleep at night wishing they were straight...because it seems like some fun or fashionable thing to do?
 * The mathematics behind "soul mates" has been worked out by several mathemeticians and xkcd. If all human beings spent 5 hours a day viewing real time videos of other humans for a few seconds each, and there really was only one real person out there for you...then the tiniest tiniest fraction of people would ever find their soul mate. Since we humans don't even do that...it means only the most negligible number of humans would ever, by chance, come across their soul mate. And yet a far far large number of humans claim they have "met their one and only soul mate" which is enough to pretty much toss out the garbage idea that there is one and only person out there for you...unless you believe in some sort of cosmic magic that "you were meant to meet each other" which is also stupid considering the very large number of humans who have been actively searching for soul mates and never met them. Plus there's no such thing as magic...so it's all pretty stupid. The person you were debating with is an intellectual fraud. Shabi  DOO  21:29, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * what the fuck is there to be proven about homosexuality? what the fuck does 'homosexuality is a belief' even mean? its complete arse. it sounds more like the old 'homosexuality is a choice' bullshit which is not something worthy of debate. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The argument was that you can't prove it because there is no specific gene that codes for it and behavior isn't evidence of it being a thing because they might either be drunk, experimenting, or something else. They used women as an example (and themselves because they are a women and they experimented). As for animals they said that it is because of other factors and not because that they are gay.Machina (talk) 23:57, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I found a channel
I found a channel called Just A Robot. It is pretty bad. It is not updated anymore though.--HedvigsenSkreonk here 09:09, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think he made a new account. Search him up. Metazero 15:49, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Send me a link please.--HedvigsenSkreonk here 06:26, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx7zVBfmStUMVRlVc-B2s8g Metazero 23:19, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

The pretty soy boy thread
[https://www.foxnews.com/media/the-atlantic-end-nobel-peace-prize-trump The Atlantic is run by beta males, cucks, simps, and soy boys. Sad!]
 * What is a soy boy? Shabi  DOO  03:04, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a person who does not believe the myth that soy feminises you because it contains plant esters phytoestrogen. Tulpa001 (talk) 03:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, it's the somewhat obscure sidekick to the little-known superhero, Captain Tofu, Master of Alternative Proteins. Kencolt (talk) 03:25, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh charming. So it's like a cuck. I suppose any online male who doesn't make jokes about slapping around disobedient girlfriends or brags about screwing a passed out girl is labelled a "soy boy" then? Shabi  DOO  03:37, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. Also, apparently, anyone not masculine enough has a hard time believing right wing conspiracies. Tulpa001 (talk) 03:47, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It is often used these days as a generic insult, but the term originally referred to men who lack traditional indicators of masculinity, attributed to a phytoestrogen-rich diet of soybean derivatives. It’s related to a perceived trend of such men taking selfies with gaping smiles and the inferred cultural conditions in which such selfies are taken. The implication of its use here is that the people running the Atlantic have deleterious lifestyles that has resulted in poor development of body and character, in turn resulting in an action that the speaker thinks is ill-conceived. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 03:50, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * An in-depth video on this: 04:10, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * There's also a rationalwiki article on soy boy if anyone else wants to read it. WhatIsAGoodUsername (talk) 18:15, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Joe Biden is a "Super Catholic"
According to the media he is a Profound Catholic. Who believes that? 2001:8003:59DB:4100:10E8:B13E:C410:3A6E (talk) 05:29, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I do. I know lots of liberal Catholics.  More than I do conservative catholics, as a matter of fact.  Also, for your own sake, please either get a job or learn how to rig a bot to make these posts for you.  This is getting kinda sad-Hastur! (talk)  05:32, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bots are disingenious. All these posts come straight from the heart. Very important! 2001:8003:59DB:4100:10E8:B13E:C410:3A6E (talk) 05:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Considering he actually goes to mass on Sunday, I'd say he's a Catholic. Also we shouldn't judge whether a person is religious or not, rather whether they live the values of their faith, which again the answer is obviously yes.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:25, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Catholics are weird. From my experience, their biggest gripe is with materialism.  As long as you believe in some kind of magic, they tend to be very nice and hold on to the hope that you'll figure it out via the catholic lens.  I've got a buddy in catholic college, believe it or not he had never looked at scientology, I did a quick explanation of thetans, and he said "That's more believable than materialism." I was like "Scientolgoy was invented by a guy who is proven to have just made it all up as he went, I can't just recite L. Roh Hubbard's history from memory." and my buddy said "That sounds like possesion."  OK FINE WHATEVER.  "Well, agree to disagree."  I haven't read Confessions yet, he asked me to, the first two chapters are presuppositions, I get so steamed.  I don't care if Biden is a Catholic, I don't care if Trump is a Christian, do we understand why those labels are important to American politics?  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:36, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * what with the up coming election, i am sure that some will suddenly find it matters a fair bit. maybe they will go with its the religion of foreigners from south of the border. or maybe because if bidens a good catholic he will obey the pope, and the popes a communist, antichrist, foreign, and he'd be calling the shots in a biden presidency. or just penis envy from prostestant ministers whos reach is limited to the town their church is based in and everyone knows the pope, and the catholics have better branding. child abuse scandels and coverups probably get an airing. and whatever the pope just said that makes trump look like a dick. oh and america was started by people who thought the church of england was a little to popey for their liking. is biden being catholic not reason enough to be revive a good old tradition of american bigotry. theres not enough of that sort of thing stateside, you really need more things to separate the unamericans from the the real patriots. the klan dont like catholics, but very keen on trump. they'll love to get some airtime thats not about their racism. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:52, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * One extremely devout Catholic was Vince Lombardi, who went to church literally every day; he cited his faith as the reason he accepted non-white and gay players on his team and demanded everyone on the team treat them as equals. I'm an agnostic, but if religious beliefs are motivating someone to work towards the same goals for the right reasons I'll go with it. No need to let something like that get in the way. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 18:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * it is, as they say, a broad church. the official line on things like contraceptives and the gays is less than stellar, while its various institutions run the whole gamut from commendable to fucking awful and can differ from country to country. how much does the label 'catholic' actually tell us really about a person and their views and their choices they might make as a result? with biden its his decades in politics that provide more light on his character, his catholicism, if something not previously considered should be little more than nuance. hes not not a new face where information is limited and every scrap that turns up might be all a voter has to make a choice at the polls.
 * it is though the us, with its famed separation of church and state, and everyone is very keen to know what church you go to. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:59, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I sometimes think it's a shame that Biden isn't the person Trump portrays him as. Wouldn't it be great if he really were the anti-religious, hard-left, anti-gun crusader Trump describes?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:09, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

New article Frazzledrip (the claimed secret video of Hillary Clinton torturing a small child and wearing her face as a mask)
This is a topic that has ebbed and flowed in popularity but seems to be creeping back into online awareness due to #SaveOurChildren, and I noticed there appears to be nothing about it on RW, so I made a quick short article about the theory. I'd welcome anyone else who covers stuff from the greater Pizzagate/QAnon field to weigh in. TapTheForwardAssist (talk) 19:14, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Jeez. Also,, I am writing this from my Nintendo 3DS.––HedvigsenSkreonk here 20:47, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * already a good article. I would also recommend Folding Idea's new video on flat earth to anyone looking at creating Q articles. In search of flat earth Tulpa001 (talk) 21:19, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Format your citations. Those bare links look like shit. 22:56, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bongolian (talk) 00:13, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Be nice. 09:25, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Big Sad
So, I just discovered today that my crush has a boyfriend. Just... Really sad. I've been rejected three times already. I was really looking forward to like, doing things together and telling stories. I love to tell stories. Metazero 19:11, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not that it makes the underlying problem better, but have you thought of blogging? Good storytellers attract a crowd, I'm sure there are people who'd love to hear what you have to say. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 20:03, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That really sucks. Even the best catches out there get rejected three times in a row (or more). I hope that heavy feeling goes away sooner than later. I agree with The Blade, you should totally tell your stories. Write it down and post here a link to it!  Shabi  DOO  20:28, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Never say never. It may seem impossible now, because you've been rejected so many times, but I've found that it's actually quite unlikely for anybody capable of introspection (so, not incels) to be single for their whole lives.  Find what's good about you, find what's bad.  Put forward the good things that make people like you and work on the ones that drive people away.  And, the more you get rejected, you'll start to notice behaviors indicating which women/whatever-you're-into are and aren't interested, streamlining the process significantly.  But if you want a tip, people who like you will want to be around you and talk to you more.  It gets really obvious, actually.-Hastur! (talk)  21:00, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Rejected 3 times? Even if you are Brad Pitt, you are going to be rejected more often than not, just a part of life.  Best thing to do is just meet someone else and ask them out.
 * Protip; the "Friend Zone" is actually a great place to be. Why?  You get introduced to her friends, and can date them instead. CoryUsar (talk) 01:49, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * buddy if you have a crush on a youtuber then you really can't be in the friend zone Metazero 14:33, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I am now a Christian...
Checkmate Atheists!

If Atheism is true, how come the ice cubes in the tray fit perfectly?

If Atheism is true, what keeps Australians falling of the globe?

If life came from water, why is there still water?

Checkmate! 05:21, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I was going to say that video was a bit of a tired old joke, Then I saw it was made in 2007. It's striking that, 13 years later we've had two Conservapedia clods use the phrase "Checkmate, atheists!" in all seriousness on this site in the past week. Spud (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the best argument is, "If evolution is true, why are there still fish?"Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:23, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Then how did God exist? Metazero 14:32, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Prove that he did. Checkmate!!! Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:29, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Aggretsuko
I've stumbled across a strange yet helarious Japanese animated series (a cute little bear and her nervous working life interspersed with her love of screaming death metal music when she reaches her rage limit). I think some users here might really dig this. It's on Netflix or easily pirated for those who live in countries where pirating is common and you have no scruples about doing that. Made me laugh out loud once or twice every episode and I give props to the usually unpredictable story-lines. Shabi DOO  07:46, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, Retsuko is a red panda, which despite the name ain't a bear. (If nothing else, I know anime.)  But the rest is pretty correct.
 * The character (and later anime-- both versions) was created for Sanrio, of all companies. Sanrio, by the way, is best known for it's number one property-- Hello Kitty, which might help explain the art style during the more sedate moments of an Aggretsuko episode.  And where almost everything else in Sanrio's stable of characters is designed to appeal to a generic sense of kawaii, as well as a general fantasy-like backstory, Retsuko is an office lady (the female version of the salaryman) in a large corporation, dealing not with dreams of the ballet or fairy-tale like surroundings but office politics and romantic desperation.  It's pretty much Sanrio subverting itself. Kencolt (talk) 08:08, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the background info. How do you like the series? I'm halfway through the second season. Though I found the first season a lot more hilarious and unexpected and even eye-opening. Shabi  DOO  08:50, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's actually one of the most realistic depictions of regular life in Japan. Well, not dating a slacker Elon Musk, and most people don't end up involved in J-Pop, but just about everything else.  Also, the J-Pop is spot on though, even if getting the main character involved is a bit forced.  There's actually a trend of young overworked Japanese women that go to karaoke to scream death metal.  You learn WHY Ton (the pig) still has a job in spite of being an otherwise horrible boss, and why he got to be the way he is; he's actually my favorite character in spite of being an asshole.CoryUsar (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Ben Shapiro 2: Electric Boogaloo
| Abigail Shapiro. I guess it runs in the family. Metazero 14:30, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 404 on this link? I find myself equally fascinated and disturbed by her singing voice. Bigwiggler (talk) 15:46, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

How to add images from WP?
I saw it is possible to load images from Wikipedia. But it doesn't work with the movie post of Cuties.Pam (talk) 16:08, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You can add images, sound files and videos from Wikimedia Commons to pages here in exactly the same way that you can add them to pages on Wikipedia. All files on Wikimedia Commons are supposed to be in the public domain. Fair use images used on the English Wikipedia, such as posters for recent movies, are not on Wikimedia Commons. They are uploaded locally to Wikipedia and that means we don't have access to the same image here. See Help:Images for more information. Spud (talk) 01:07, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The movie poster is a fair-use image on Wikipedia and I think it should be legal to upload it here on RW. But I tried and it seems that I can't, probably because I'm a new user.Pam (talk) 08:49, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Doing uni shit when tired
Hello there. I have to do just so many assignments and learn HTML etc over the next couple weeks or so. I’m stressed because my brain makes it very hard to focus unless I’m taking some kind of stimulating drug (but I don’t have a prescription or consistent access to those) and, additionally, over the past week or two I’ve been pretty consistently needing to sleep overnight for 12-14 hours and then have another 2-6 hour nap in the day, while feeling exhausted the whole time I’m actually awake. This makes things difficult. Any advice? 203.111.4.57 (talk) 09:43, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It’s also very important to me that I do well, bc I have started and then stopped uni with different things like 5 times over the past couple years and I really really want to stick with it. I don’t have enough experience etc to get ANY job (didn’t get one in high school so now there all like “why should we give you an adult wage when you don’t have adult experience). Means testing also means that I can’t get any social support for the next 2 years bc of my parents even tho I don’t have a good/significant relationship with them. So this is basically my only chance, and also the only thing I have to occupy my time. I can’t quit but it’s so fuckingn hard and I’m really stressed. 203.111.4.57 (talk) 09:47, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If a doctor/psychiatrist won't prescribe you a stimulant like Ritalin (or if you can't afford it), I'd shoot for coffee. Make yourself a little pot of turkish coffee, revs me up every time.  Throw in a few extra spoonfuls just to be sure it's strong enough.  Although if you're sleeping 14-20 hours a day I'd definitely try to see a specialist-Hastur! (talk)  10:26, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * That amount of sleep per day (16 hrs) is medically unusual. I'd see a doctor. Stress can mess with your metabolism, so interim advice may be to make sure you're eating enough high energy foods, as lack of food can cause extreme tiredness. Tulpa001 (talk) 11:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

13 Year old kid with Autism gets shoot by police in Utah
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/08/linden-cameron-police-shooting-boy-autism-utah

https://www.gofundme.com/f/linden039s-medical-bills?d=zd8hBGRBtA8v%2BIRBNyKFkAg0nP4VbRp0NXDWJkBNtrE%3D

Anyone mind if I post it's fundraiser here? I tried to do it on a discord channel, but they didn't want to, because they think it's a scam. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:4435:52DF:7AD:8C77 (talk) 19:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's hard to walk the line between victim blaming and giving advice to prevent this in the future, but don't ever, under any circumstances, call the cops on anyone you care about. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah “welfare checks” put people in way more danger than if they’re just left alone. 20:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Situations like this are the perfect example for why:
 * People shouldn't call the police
 * There should be more mental and behavioral health professionals taking 911 calls
 * Most peace officers should be unarmed
 * But why imagine a new way to do public safety when we can just accept that the police kill 1,000 people a year and waste billions in payouts for excessive force settlements.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:42, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * @Duce Hardly. Police saving lives rarely makes the news
 * @Rrip I agree with some of this. If every police department needs a SWAT team for dangerous missions, they need an unarmed "orderly" team for mental health and such. CoryUsar (talk) 02:46, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The point isn't about them saving lives, it's about the system being corrupt enough that shit like this honestly isn't shocking. The phrase isn't "a few bad apples and the rest are okay," it's "a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch." And that ignores other, structural critiques I could put out, such as that the police enforce the power of the state and ruling class, they do not protect the general public, for one. — Oxyaena Harass  07:51, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * They do protect the middle and lower-middle classes, even if those cases aren't a priority. After all, the police themselves are generally from lower-middle class backgrounds and in the middle class themselves.  The underclass tends to be treated like shit, but that's because everyone treats the underclass like shit.  If you don't think those classes receive police protection, well, just who do you think benefits the most when muggers and car-thieves get locked up? CoryUsar (talk) 13:24, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not gonna get into what I would describe as over zealous generalizations or assumptions about socio-economic status and motivation. What is clear, is that the idea that lethally armed officers are going to solve the many problems that American society has decided to dump on police, is false. Though my particular feelings on police are rather extreme (#ACAB), I think it is clear to everyone public safety needs to be re-imagined with less of a focus on punishment and force, and much more on rehabilitation and deescalation.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:48, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Just going to say that most police shootings involve an armed suspect and shots fired. There's suicide by cop there too. Citing sheer numbers is just going to make police apologists say this and deny there's a problem. Instead, focus on the unarmed shootings and check out the percentages. It's disproportionately people with mental health disorders, particularly because these people tend to have trouble understanding and complying with demands and act unpredictable on top of police lacking good training for dealing with them. If we're going to do something about the police I also suggest tackling the disastrous idea that everyone should own guns. Private gun ownership is the overwhelming reason that police kill 1,000 people. 17:55, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Except that's not nearly the only problem with policing. — Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  17:59, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't argue it is. I'm referring to just that one statistic that acab types like to share and that it's an easy-to-refute one, and I'm suggesting to look at percentages rather than sheer numbers. 18:41, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 100% LGM, private gun ownership is a critical factor. But again, if the police had actual consequences for killing people/ using force, there would be less of it period. There are plenty of examples of police using excessive force usually don't grab headlines, but are arguably more harmful.-

I keep saying; collective punishment of police departments when someone is killed. Something minor, but enough that no good officer would protect the bad ones. CoryUsar (talk) 00:50, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Really bad idea that's going to get police killed and possibly more as suspects can and will try to take hostages or use body shields. What to do if such a law is implemented? Again, the majority of police shootings involve an armed suspect. Check out a number of any recent police shootings, not just viral ones, you'll see pretty quick.. 23:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * End qualified immunity and make corrupt cops accountable for crimes they commit. The current system is a joke and police reform is desperately needed. Letting crooked cops off the hook creates civil unrest and distrust in government. --Possible Goat (talk) 16:14, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Really big thing, and a minor change; If police just didn't kill people. Currently it is accepted that police kill people, if we as society made clear that is not an acceptable outcome, that would massively change interactions with police.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Award following Israel-UAE deal
The proof–Tuxer (talk) 15:38, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Nominated by far-right politicians in Norway. Can the award ever be taken seriously again? Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:36, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I must be high. — <font color="Red">Jeh2ow <font color="Blue">Damn son!  16:39, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There is only 1 reason he wants this prize; Because Obama received it as well. He's so pathetic.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have to say kissenger was a near death blow, and Obama for doing nothing came close to finishing it off. Aung San Suu Kyi going on to endorse a genocide was pretty depressing too.  But don't worry about trump winning.  The peace prize is a popularity contest among "respectable people" which is the inverse set of people who like trump.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:58, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * How about nominating 'the other place' for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for 20 years of bringing people together to cooperate in increasing the sum of human knowledge (should the world and the Nobel Institute last that long). Anna Livia (talk) 19:06, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is one of the few genuinely good things about the internet. Unambiguous positive thing made by people for people.  And, come to think of it, one of the least awful moderation policies among the entire web 2.0 slate.  If you get banned from wikipedia, not only do you get a reason, you get to publicly defend yourself, and appeal the descision.  I don't think any of the other big names allow that.  Facebook, twitter, youtube, even tumblr.  You just get banned, quite possibly by a robot, and don't know why, and only have an opaque webform you send into the corporate ether if you think it's wrong.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:40, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Norwegian people nominated him? I think I am moving to Sweden.--HedvigsenSkreonk here 09:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Your far right parties have always sucked as much as ours. They just don't exist in a broken duopoly that never allows any progress.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:08, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Did Trump even have anything to do with the Israel-UAE deal? Seems to me that the UAE was just following its Sunni Arab partners in recognizing Israel as the lesser evil versus Iran. 19:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Nominations can be made by a wide range of people and hte act itself is of little or no importance - just a headline grabber. See also BBC article on the matter  Aloysius the Gaul 21:04, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * A reason is irrelevant for nomination — any one of 3000 people can nominate whomever they like. Hitler was nominated in 1939 by an ANTIFA parliamentarian as a joke of sorts. Nomination doesn't have any meaning except publicity, which is all that matters to some people. Bongolian (talk) 03:04, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is not really notable, since anyone from members of the Maltese parliament to university professors of law can nominate for it. Even the Secretary of State could probably nominate Trump, since Cordell Hull nominated FDR in 1938.

President Trump has made a vast number of accomplishments in foreign policy and thus deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. LTMay Dataclarifier be well! 18:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Destroying the US empire and internationally isolate America is a great accomplishment.–Tuxer (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * This award was a joke since Obama won it. Why anyone takes it seriously is beyond me50.86.22.101 (talk) 13:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

So I bought a gun...
It's not much for fighting, moreso for fun. Just curious, are there any other firearm owners here on Rationalwiki? Bigwiggler (talk) 17:21, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * fun? Fowler (talk) 17:30, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's an American thing. CoryUsar (talk) 17:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also an innuendo thing. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 17:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Jesus fucking leaping lizards. Shabi  DOO  17:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, as a member of the SRA I am a proud firearm owner and user. No, that does not make me a mass murderer. I was robbed a month or two ago, hence why I got a gun. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Firearm ownership is a constitutional right here in the US, and in many cases it just makes sense to have one for personal defense. 18:27, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * While I respect the Constitutional right to own a firearm, I personally dislike them, and wish we could reduce their availability.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:46, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't trust the state to begin with. Hierarchical power structures always allow for fascism to creep in, and so at least some semblance of an insurance policy in case it all goes to hell is needed. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:52, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Guns are a medieval technology. Preventing people from having them would require that they be prevented from being able to conduct industry. You can make a gun from inexpensive components you can find at most any hardware store. This isn't as bad as alcohol prohibition (which is neolithic), but it's not viable as a policy. Consider who will and will not be affected by attempts to limit the availability of guns, and whether that is the desired effect. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 18:55, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * When there's a market there's a way, so to speak. Prohibition always has the opposite of the desired effect. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I find the effectiveness of protection to be on the same realm of putting mines in your home. Yeah, it can defend you from robbers. You're just more likely to just step on one though. If a state wants your hide, they're going to have you own a gun while they remove actual insurance and health protections and keep your income stagnant to keep you buying guns that feeds the gun lobby. 18:57, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I know there's resources out there for left wing people who want guns(not me) and don't want to back right wing shitshow arms dealers, but I've only ever seen them as ad-hoc internet posts and never anything comprehensive and useful as a reference. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

What about crossbows this gives a summary of the situation in the UK. Anna Livia (talk) 20:09, 14 September 2020 (UTC) By western standards America is a very violent country and adding more guns into the mix is fucking lunacy. It's simply another case where the rest of the civilized world watches baffled and flabberghasted that people think "more hand guns in people's hands means more safety" make sense. A simply survey of the number of murders, accidents and gun-suicides would suggest that it doesn't make sense. Constitutions can be changed. But its obvious people don't want that to change because they see it as some right etched into the constition in unerasable ink. Because people like having their toys and a false sense of security. So perhaps if you honestly live in a super super dangerous neighbourhood where there is honestly a high chance of someone coming into your home and murdering you with a gun...it might make sense having one, cause few people want to see any meaningful change to gun culture. But in the big picture, none of it makes sense. It's the god damned twilight zone. Shabi DOO  20:34, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The solution to gun violence isn't "take away the guns", it's "take away the poverty". Won't stop all the crime, obviously, but it will eliminate the bulk of it. CoryUsar (talk) 20:57, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Going through the military service twenty years ago had the double effect of making me a pacifist and causing a Pavlovian distaste for ever firing a gun again. The pacifism came from the sheer idiocy of having to endure being bossed around by some self important prick with all the conceit of someone few months older than me with extra six months of military experience. The Pavlovian part was a result of one day at shooting range, when two wasps (aggravated by the shells from my assault rifle flying into their nest) stung me straight in the head. Never again thanks. 21:21, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No the solution is to do both. Almost every other western country has banned most non-hunting firearms (or at least regulate the shit out of those who do have them) AND made a serious effort to tackle poverty (with varied levels of success on the poverty front). You don't have to choose only one.	Why would you? Just per the accidental deaths (and injuries) and gun-suicides alone it makes sense to ban them. And if your doing it just for fun...zheesh...join a paint ball league. Shabi  DOO  21:24, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There are millions of guns in the US. Trying to ban them would instantly create a massive black market. 21:27, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. There is absolutely no hope of banning guns in the US. We need to make them unpopular. Laugh at people who make themselves look like simpletons wearing guns and edgelording all over facebook and twitter. We need to look down our noses at people who think street executions of rival gangs is a good idea. However, if the culture of pointless rapid fire house wall penetrators collecting weren't in effect, banning the manufacture of guns would create a barrier to owning that would eventually reduce ownership. If only we could convince the US military to not sell their surplus to mexican drug cartels as part of their "sting" operations. Tulpa001 (talk) 22:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * How about we focus on the "Well Regulated Militia" portion of the 2A and require gun ownership be attached to a registered group to enforce laws. Also would be great if the US seized control over small arms production and encouraged people to turn in their guns for money.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

You frequently fail to deal with the emotional demands of an internet slapfight. What makes you think you're remotely equipped to use a firearm effectively in a moment of genuine crisis? Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 23:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed HBC is right here. In addition to the "lives in a super dangerous neighbourhood with a high chance of someone breaking into your apartment and murdering you with a gun" comes good proficiency with a weapon under stressful dangerous circumstances (which I doubt 99% of handgun owners have). In Belgium (and many European countries) if you want to own a hand gun you need to get a license (not easy) and if you even get it, you have to go through training (redo that every so many years) and be certified, visit a shooting range for target practice every three months or so, have a gun safe out of sight and out of reach of children, store the bullets and gun separately, be a member of a shooting club (and stay a member) and without fail open the door to your house if a policeman comes to inspect how you are storing and maintaining your gun. Only if you do this can you own a handgun. Advanced weapons are completely banned. Hunting rifles have slightly less stringent controls. Just about nobody disagrees with these controls and many would prefer that ONLY people working in security could own them. I would argue that anybody having a gun for "protection" should meet these standards (training, proficiency, practice, stringent safety practices etc). If you don't know what you are doing with a gun then the likelihood of fuck-ups and tragedy go up very much, making the whole point of owning the gun in the first place moot. Shabi  DOO  09:31, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you saying the cops and the government should have more guns? Why do cops have guns again? Especially given how poorly trained they are. Tulpa001 (talk) 23:44, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Nope. Most police should not have lethal arms. Less than 10% should have tactical weapons training, developed by the federal government. I personally would like an end to private gun ownership, but the federal government has the power to limit it, and also destroy weapons people turn in.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:53, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, that sounds reasonable. If perhaps a little bit big government. Tulpa001 (talk) 00:49, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

The Dumbest Take
Courtesy of American Enterprise Institute. But could have easily been written by RobS I'm especially fond of this nugget:

Considering Trump and the GOP are no longer separate from each other and it's active encouragement, it seems the GOP will literally use any excuse to vote for a person they know is reprehensible.RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:16, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey look it's the "No matter how far right you go to try to appeal to 'moderate republicans', they always find an excuse to vote republican" iron law. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:20, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Best way to talk to an antivaxxer?
So I managed to start a conversation with someone who was trying to convince me that vaccines are evil science experiments essentially. I'm not falling for it, but they keep engaging me and I didn't want to be a jerk so I'm actually trying to see if maybe I can actually clear up their misconceptions about vaccines. Kill 'em with kindness and actual scientific evidence was what I had in mind. It might not work, but I wanted to at least try. Does anyone else have here have experience doing this? And when will I know if I'm just wasting my time? WhatIsAGoodUsername (talk) 11:58, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I've heard several people talk about this topic, best rhetoric to talk someone out of anti-vaxx. But it's a big topic and somewhat subjective. Your approach is probably as good as any. What will generally work on a person is highly individualistic, so different approaches will work on different people. Most people try to combine multiple strategies, as this is almost always more effective. Some general strategies include, don't tell. Ask questions. If they say something themselves, they have a harder time arguing against it. Cover emotional appeal. Create a moral narrative. Something like, if you don't get vaccinated, the children will die. Something you can back up with data. Don't push hard, that usually leads to raised barriers. Don't be afraid to laugh at silly stuff. Conspiracy minded thinkers crave knowledge that is secret. I don't know how to turn that into a strategy. If you don't know something, say that you'll think about it. Appearing to know what you're talking about can backfire if you don't. Tulpa001 (talk) 12:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Alright, main points of value.

Tulpa001 (talk) 12:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Vaccines are for herd immunity. They are necessary to protect immunocompromised members of society who can't get vaccinated.
 * Vaccines are tested to hell and back, primarily to ensure that they are the safest medical products on the market.
 * One discredited study found that vaccines are linked to autism, dozens of others found the exact opposite.
 * Vaccines don't do 100% immunity, and they don't have permanent effects. But it's a statistics game. One third increase in immunity can be the difference between the plague, and the extinction of a disease.
 * The primary legacy of anti-vaxxers has been diseases, often really bad ones, coming back from the brink of extinction. -- If they had been extincted, then there'd be no more need for the vaccines.
 * Getting vaccinated usually reduces the severity of an illness if you do get it.
 * Most of the unhealthy chemicals anti-vaxxers complain about are no longer used in vaccines. But they also complain about perfectly safe chemicals.
 * People (and children) die from illnesses. People can rarely get mild flu like symptoms from vaccines. (and exceedingly rarely, nasty allergic reactions) Which is why you should hang out at the hospital for 15 minutes after getting the shot.
 * Don't forget, Andrew Wakefield filed a patent for a measles vaccine less than a year before his fake study. If the MMR vaccine was "proven" to be unsafe, he'd stand to make a small fortune. CoryUsar (talk) 14:48, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * But also remember trying to convince the person you're talking to on these points is frequently a wasted effort. You don't get into conspiracies because you're a rational person swayed by sound argumentation.  There's usually a psychological need that the conspiracy provides.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:16, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the advice. They seemed interested with engaging with me at first, but after a few messages back and forth they started to ignore me. Oh well. I wasn't that hopeful to begin with, but it still sucks that I couldn't change their mind. WhatIsAGoodUsername (talk) 18:38, 14 September 2020 (UTC)–
 * I actually have that psychological need to some extent, but I'm more of a hyper-conspiracy theorist. That is, I am prone to believing that the conspiracy theory, is itself a giant conspiracy.
 * Vaccines cause Autism? Nope, it's a conspiracy by one intelligent but sociopathic man with the backing of some big corporations to discredit a safe procedure in order to make boatloads of money
 * GMOs inherently unsafe? Again, no, it's part of a wider conspiracy by Big Organic to reduce the food supply in order to jack up the price to extreme profits.
 * 9/11 Truthers? That's just one small part of the Russian's (and China's and a lot of others, though not unified) plot to undermine the US by delegitamizing the US government in the eyes of its citizens in order to facilitate a breakup of the US as part of a divide and conquer strategy.  Others include Kennedy assassination theories, MLK assassination theories, and so forth.
 * Meat and so forth bad for you? Re-read our article on Art.  Specifically, Art used to be something that was exclusive to the rich with the middle class only barely able to afford anything and only on the most special of occasions, but once Art became cheap, the rich responded by making Art ever-increasingly obscure.  Likewise, humans always ate animal products in some form, but fresh high quality meat, and not just meat but specifically the muscle tissue instead of the intestines and other organs, was for rare occasions while the wealthy could have meat daily if they so wished.  Today, meat is so cheap and common that poor people usually eat meat on a daily basis.  So in order to make food once again something for the rich, Veganism was invented.  A purely Vegan diet was impossible for primitive humans, and today requires special knowledge of nutrition and more money than poor people have available, so it's the new elitism.  Part of the reason Vegans sneer their noses at lesser people is because that's the core of the culture.
 * Not sure what kind of person holding these views makes me. CoryUsar (talk) 16:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It makes you an idiot. Strawman of veganism noted. Try talking to actual vegans for once and hear what they have to say. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Going back to the original comment - 'Appeal to Wikipedia' - 'You are in favour of the top picture here.' Anna Livia (talk) 20:05, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have talked to vegans. Some of them were into the whole "not harming living creatures" spiel, but most of the ones I talked to were the evangelical holier-than-though types.  They aren't the majority, but they are the loudest and because they intentionally go out of their way to interact with others, are the ones most people, well, interact with.  Those people don't care about animals, they care about you knowing how much better they are than you.  It's about elitism, not ethics, and when they and others like them such as PETA publish bogus "studies" claiming meat or milk is inherently unhealthy, it doesn't come across to me as "the ends justify the means so if we have to lie to get people to eat less meat, let's do so", it comes across as snobbery.CoryUsar (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

We already had a section on this on the Antivax page: Anti-vaccination movement. Bongolian (talk) 07:36, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I noticed a rise in the amount of Biden-Harris signs in peoples yards
Although I live in the heart of Trump country (which sucks), I have noticed the increasing amount of Biden supporters. Maybe it is a sign that people have come to their senses and realized that Trump is a good for nothing pseudoscience promoting racist con artist. --Possible Goat (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * One thing that has unfortunately become apparent in recent years, election results are not predictable by any previous indicator. Look at the last US election, Brexit, Australian Independence vot, UK general elections over the last 3 years, Irish general election. THe opinion polls and pundits got them all wrong. We all hope Trump f**ks right off with a humiliating defeat in November but his core voter base from last time are still as ribald and have raging hard ons for his victory. Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * uk elections and brexit were entirely predictable. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:23, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I can recall a pundit promising to eat his hat if he got it wrong. Hat remains unsalted and whole. And in the recent Irish General Election no one, not even Sinn Fein, could have predicted the swing towards Sinn Fein in the voting Cardinal Chang (talk) 18:34, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I recall Brexit polls being very close, but Labour in the 2019 election at least had been behind by a fair margin for the last few months before voting day. Corbyn is kind of like Sanders-outside of his core base of admirers nobody really expected him to actually win.-Flandres (talk) 17:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * THey were indeed, but it's beside the point, the core point I was trying to get at, and it seems, failing, was that in the current political climate of micro targeting and highly sophisticated proliferation of candidate propaganda, it's no longer easy to see who will win an election from even 2 months before an election these days. THen again, didn't Fuckface Von Clownstick say he'll get 8 more years, and extra 4 because he had such a hard time during this term? Cardinal Chang (talk) 18:34, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The only people who didn't see Trump winning in 2016 were being willfully ignorant, and generally ignoring historical trends. And that failure has created and overreaction in 2020 to conclude that despite the plethora of information available, Trump will somehow defy gravity again. I find this tiresome, and frustrating. Sure work hard to elect Biden/Harris, assume everything is wrong and bust your ass. But at the same time; recognize Trump is historically unpopular, his record is historically among the worst for an incumbent, and his general attacks seem not to be working. These two thoughts are not contradictory.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:44, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The historical trend was that the party with more fundraising is the party that wins, and Hillary outspend Trump 2 to 1. It wasn't willful ignorance that led to people thinking Trump didn't have a chance, it was the inability of pollsters to account for the people that openly stated they hated the guy but secretly tolerated or agreed with him.  The "Silent Majority" was an actual thing in this case, sort of. CoryUsar (talk) 21:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

You have sprinkles of truth in this nugget of shit. While conventional wisdom would say spending more would equate a victory, historically it's a better indicator to look at who won the past two elections (Dems) and assume the other party wins the next. American's tend not to vote for the same party three times in a row (the exception being GHWB in 1988, FDR in '40 and Truman '44 - '48) It also isn't a majority that supported Trump, the majority supported HRC. Trump however won undecided voters that hated both candidates and chose late. Trump is presiding over a recession (which doomed GHWB), has a net loss of jobs during his presidency, and has never once gotten above 50% support from the general public. I'm not saying he's doomed, but it doesn't look good.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:23, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This will be morbid but either way- with Trump holding an indoor rally (https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrC1CovE2BfMHoATRzQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTEyOWJvdDhzBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQzA5MTRfMQRzZWMDc3I-/RV=2/RE=1600160688/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fnews.yahoo.com%2fwatch-live-trump-holds-indoor-232600645.html/RK=2/RS=SiNOxM523SeDDZPWmU8t9M9BjAk-), maybe natural selection will run its course? Yes it is a morbid joke and I want COVID-19 to be stopped in its tracks. --Possible Goat (talk) 01:13, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * @Rip
 * In 2000, Gore would've won the election hands down had it not been for the stupid butterfly ballots supplied by Bush's brother Jeb. And had the whole recount gone through, it actually would STILL have been for Gore, so he did win.  But, politics.  So in the 3 prior 2 term presidencies, the same party won the third election twice.  If we go back further, GHWB was actually the most popular president since JFK, even beating out Saint Ronnie, and would've won the 1992 election without Perot, so we nearly got 4 terms there.  There were issues with the 1960 election, Kennedy stole Illinois though it wouldn't have mattered, but we nearly got Nixon a few years early.  As you mentioned, we had a long chain from FDR and Truman, but before FDR, it was a long chain of Republicans.  That chain would've been even longer had it not been for Teddy Roosevelt acting as a spoiler in 1912, but even then, that's also a 3 term chain.  And you are honestly going to say we should assume it's going to flip? CoryUsar (talk) 01:48, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You're way off base on Papa Bush. He was wildly popular after the first Gulf War, but dropped as low as 29% in the summer of '92, and only recovered to ~40% approval by election day. Given those kind of headwinds, it's nuts to add his vote total to Perot's, and claim he would've been a shoo-in without Perot on the ballot. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 18:42, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Concur with HBC here, that's a wild assumption. I also wouldn't include any election before 1932, which really established the modern political party governing principles. Since '32 there have been 22 presidential elections, 11 featuring a candidate representing a party that has controlled the presidency at least two terms. The opposing party has won 9 times. Seems like pretty good evidence.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a bad idea
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-grossest-video-on-the-internet/answer/Franz-Josef-Wollang

An answer I came across that got me thinking. To me the idea of exposing people to such videos and acts in moderation sounds...terrible. I mean I understand the outcome they are going for but rarely do witnessing such horrible acts do people leave feeling like they are more empathetic. Usually they are scarred pretty badly and take time to get over it or to forget. I mean people who lived through war are never the same and not in a good way. Considering his views on other answers (which I peeked into as well) this sounds more like one who spends too much time in theory and not practice.Machina (talk) 02:04, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree. HairlessCat (talk) 02:11, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Do we have any compelling evidence to offer about that? Subjectively it sure seems true that it messes you up, but objectively?  I don't know.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:09, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I mean you have those PTSD cases from wars past. Or those who are haunted by the actions they had to commit during war in order to survive. It just seems like intentionally exposing people to such horrific images doesn’t have the effect they believe it does.Machina (talk) 16:52, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * i dunno how compelling this is as evidence but there is this. Also i heard that the makers mortal kombat were asked to view lots of graphic images of death so they could make their game more realistic and also went on to develop ptsd. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Which just makes me wonder how the guy can honestly view exposure to this stuff as a way to make someone stronger. Yes I know it's a part of life but we evolved disgust for a reason. I mean the horror I experience at imagining this stuff prevents me from acting on it, among other things.Machina (talk) 19:49, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * i'd imagine if done in controlled way it is feasible to get some benefit maybe. kinda like how those with a phobia of some kind can expose themselves in a controlled way to what they fear until they can overcome thir phobia. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:16, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

But the thing about phobias is that they aren't always rational which can be used to show people they aren't what they think they are (wow that was terrible). With the stuff he's talking about there is a very real concern at work.Machina (talk) 02:05, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I need a break.
I will temporarily be inactive on RW as I focus on classwork (from home, obviously). During the weekend, I will come back to be the sysop, but in the meantime, make sure this wiki doesn't go to shit. We apparently had a troll named "Catgrrl0-37" who removed a huge chunk of the Reddit pages involving moonbats. She is either a). an example of a regressive leftist, b). a 4chan troll, or c). a bored teen that wants to start a shitstorm. For fuck's sake, she even called a transphobe, which is a dumb idea because of the fact that, oh I don't know, OXYAENA IS A TRANS WOMAN!!! Another person called "Pam" wrote an article believing that Donald Trump calling Neo-Nazis "very fine people" is a lie propagated by the liberal media. I had to delete that page because even if Trump never said that, which he did, it's still hopelessly off-mission and isn't important to RW's interest at all. I could ban more trolls, but I have schoolwork to focus on, so please moderate the wiki for me while I'm gone. — <font color="Red">Jeh2ow  <font color="Blue">Damn son!  13:31, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Technically, being transgender isn't proof of not being a transphobe. After all, there are lots of Black people who are racist against other Black people. CoryUsar (talk) 15:00, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've personally seen a notable amount of transphobia from the LGTBQ+ community (especially in certain kinds of gay bars where trans people meet extreme hostility). Shabi  DOO  15:23, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There's even terms for particular kinds of transphobia that's only comes from trans people. "Truescum" e.g. refers to a trans person who thinks you can only count as trans if you do a certain amount of physical transitioning.  Naturally a lot of those people focus on genitals.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:56, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if I'd expect less or more transphobia from gay men than straight men. On the one hand, you'd expect gay men would sympathize with someone else kicked out by their family for their own sexuality.  On the other, the gay bar is "their" place, and it's irritating enough to be viewed as "entertainment" by straight women on a bachelorette party, and some might view trans men as encroaching on "their" territory.CoryUsar (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I understand. The point I'm trying to make is that Oxyaena is not a transphobe. The end. — <font color="Red">Jeh2ow <font color="Blue">Damn son!  16:02, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I’ve seen Oxy rail pretty hard against truscum. She’s not that nor is she even possibly a transphobe. 00:23, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I would love to see their reasoning for how I`m truscum lol. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:10, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

My fucking arse
Some fucking TERF has announced a book called "The end of gender". I forgot her name, but she has published transphobic tweets. Look up the title of the book if you want to find out her name. Could prove useful. Hope she gets banned from Twitter.--HedvigsenSkreonk here 09:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I looked up the publisher, Threshold Editions, and they specialize in publishing nothing but hate-filled garbage and conspiracy crap. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also I have pirated the book and can give a summary level assessment of its easily debunked points
 * Chapter 1
 * She claims explicitly that biological sex is a pure binary. This is not at all in keeping with the evidence available.
 * She claims testosterone fundamentally and irrevocably affects brain development, gleefully ignoring the overall similarity of all humans' brains, and how varying levels of testosterone would completely contradict point #1.
 * She takes the position that because Kleinfeller's syndrome is deleterious, all non-binary variance in biological sex characteristics are "just" disorders. Shitty on multiple levels.
 * She then goes on to say that telling and children anything contrary to these shotty and suspect arguments is "miseducating" and "propoganda". A common refrain among bigots who want to crush acceptance through history.
 * Chapter 2
 * She goes hard into "men's brains and women's brains are just so totally different" citing relatively inconsistent statistical differences in brain region sizes, as if they were universal.
 * She argues neuroplasticity is no basis for arguing for human variation, with a completely unstated but repeatedly relied on assumption that all trans people are "pushed" by society to be trans therefor plasticity is covering up real universal human gender differences, rather than the much more sane and in line with listening-to-a-single-trans-person-for-a-goddamn-moment reality that society constantly pushes people's behavior and expression toward an enforced gender binary, and exploits our plasticity towards that end through constant reinforcement.
 * She acts like she's a feminist for backing James Damore, because he hated trans people while also hating cis women. With friends like these.
 * She spends an entire section saying "sexism in STEM isn't real women just don't like math" too.
 * I think that's all the hate I can stomach for a day, but there's tons more garbage of a similar sort. An absolute parade of poorly disguised hate.  Yuck.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Far right nationalism, pseudoscience and COVID-19
I noticed that countries with growing far right nationalism and supporting pseudoscience have the highest cases of COVID-19 infections. Bet you probably know which countries they are. --Possible Goat (talk) 23:27, 15 September 2020 (UTC)


 * it's not surprising. when you refuse to listen to both the medical establishment who are trying to curb deaths and stop the pandemic through credible research and the few sensible people in their government who agree with the health experts, of course the covid deaths and infection rates are going to skyrocket.


 * interestingly, this only seems to be a major problem in the us, though other countries experience this to a much lesser degree. this could be due to america's cultural expectation of "solving problems yourself". sadly, this goes horribly wrong when you're using faulty methods and biases to solve these problems. Autumncheney (talk) 00:58, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Garbage in, Garbage out. The overwhelming number of cases are unreported, at least internationally.  Russia and China are absolutely lying through their asses regarding known cases, and many other countries simply aren't capable of running all the tests.
 * Within Europe, Italy had COVID the worst, but as far as I'm aware, there wasn't a far-right nationalist surge. Maybe there was? CoryUsar (talk) 13:18, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Dublin, last Saturday outside Dail Eireann (Irish parliamentary building) that's a woman in her 60's with a vicious wound on her head. https://twitter.com/vmax_14/status/1305170471307161603 Well known members of Irish far right groups can be spotted clearly shouting at the camera. Particularly Craig Fitzsimons Cardinal Chang (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Additional videos plus afterwards https://the-beacon.ie/2020/09/12/video-far-right-protestors-attack-anti-racism-activists-at-the-dail/ Cardinal Chang (talk) 14:54, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The fascist Lega Nord was in Italian government until last year, and is tied with Berlusconis Forza Italia as the biggest party in the Italian parliament. I'd say far right is pretty strong in Italy. 15:09, 16 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Berlusconi, everything Trump wishes he was, has some seriously dodgy connections, from rumoured Propaganda Due involvement, to swindling an heiress out of her villa and artworks. I can remember being in Rome around 97-98 and seeing neo-fascists openly parading around the Spanish Steps and Circo Massimo chanting Forza Italia. (Side note, Tunnel B a rare satirical programme on italian tv tore into Silvio and his previous campaign of "If I'm not reelected I'll have to shut my TV stations and cancel your favourite soaps." Prick got reelected.) But, the far right were a strong political entity before he decided to run for office (and avoid investigation from Operation Clean Hands) he just bullshitted them for his own means. What's more worrying is the jewellers son running Lega Nord, Salvini isn't pretending to hate anyone, it's genuine and alarming Cardinal Chang (talk) 15:30, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, new question. Which major countries are NOT suffering from increased far-right nationalism? CoryUsar (talk) 15:22, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Singapore and China? Cardinal Chang (talk) 15:32, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * OR pedantically, Russia is not suffering from an increased far-right nationalism, it's still at the same levels. Cardinal Chang (talk) 15:32, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In fact, Putin's inexplicable popular support is starting to collapse a little 70% being a near-record low is kinda insane though ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder were far right headbanger Viktor Orban is positioned in local support these days. Is it holding or hopefully waning? (Loved how ten years ago Olen Steinhaur referenced Orban in the book, The Nearest exit as "Fans of Zsuzsa Papp’s biting Blikk commentaries on political targets such as right-wing nut job Viktor Orbán" Cardinal Chang (talk) 15:57, 16 September 2020 (UTC)


 * As far as I remember, Spain is still the worst covid stricken country in Europe, and Vox has been on the upswing for an age. Poland isn't doing that well last time I checked (last month) and it's political situation is also right wing swing. Italy had the worst cases, but it was one of the initially stricken countries and has since gotten a handle on it. (in relation to spain, it's still 1,000+ cases a day though)Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:07, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Technically San Marino is the worst hit country in Europe. But of countries with significant population Spain is number one in confirmed cases and Belgium in deaths per capita (though I read somewhere that in Belgium they marked all deaths in nursing homes as Covid deaths at least in the spring). 17:28, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Spain and Belgium both have far-right parties but at a national level they got 15% share of the popular vote (or less) and they are not a part of government coalitions. They only make up part of regional governments (only in three regions of Spain) and in two cases aren't even in the coalition (they are simply voting partners). Overall they have a low number of seats. VOX (Spain) and Vlaams Belang (Belgium) are loud nasty parties but again, they represent a minority of views and have no power (nationally) and very little power regionally.
 * So while yes this correlation does apply to some of the bigger countries like Brazil and Russia and moderately to the US (though I'd hardly call the republicans far-right as nasty as they can be) it doesn't apply to other countries like Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden or Portugal who all at some point or now had big problems. Shabi  DOO  17:43, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not "1 in 7 people are now far right nationalists", that's "1 in 7 people aren't just far right nationalists, they are so far right nationalists that they view it as being more important than workers' rights or the environment". So those views aren't nearly as much of a "minority of views" as you seem to think. CoryUsar (talk) 18:06, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * We are talking about a connection between right wing governments (or support) and COVID. Not about people who would potentially vote for a far right party if they happened to not have other concerns that they cared about more. Ultimately that is the barometer of far-right support, at least in Europe with proportional parliaments where the parties have little to no chance of joining a governing coalition: I will throw away my vote to voice my bigotry and uber-conservative views rather than vote towards a party that will actually do anything I care about. 15% of Spaniards preferred their vote meaning nothing other than their bigotry (despite there being a party that would represent most of their political views minus a couple of the more extreme ones and the blatant bigotry). In any case, it seems that having a far-right government means it's likely you have a bad COVID policy but doesn't guarantee it and having a bad time with COVID most certainly doesn't mean you have a far-right government. Shabi  DOO  21:23, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Considering "right-wing" and science denial go hand in hand, I'd consider this to be a weak indicator.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:48, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it looks like the stronger correlation is between pseudoscience and outbreaks. Though, I haven't read any studies on that. Another possible factor is rebelling against government instruction, but I've not heard much talk about that.
 * Related, there's been a growing trend of voters breaking off from moderate parties and voting extreme in Europe. Tulpa001 (talk) 04:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

go to the bathroom now!
Hmm, for a website with an Alexa rating higher than that of CP, it seems that there's 0% progress so far (while I'm typing this message) in raising $3,500. Could it be that Ken DeMyer has been right all along? Checkmate atheists! LTMay Dataclarifier be well! 18:00, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The counter isn't updated automatically, you twit. And the fundraiser opened only yesterday. Checkmate, asshole. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 18:04, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What's CP got that beats the wiki, LT? That Alexa rating should say it all. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * At least we don't pass off sarcastic mockeries, lies, slanders, and expletives as acceptable substitutes for encyclopedic and factual information. LTMay Dataclarifier be well! 18:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, you do all that and claim it to be gospel. Clearly better than what we do. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:23, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's like Biden claiming that Trump "wants to defund the police"; CP has a no-profanity, no-expletive policy as compared to this site that frequently uses cuss words as substitutes for meaningful contributions. Checkmate atheist! LTMay Dataclarifier be well! 18:26, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 18:30, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * LTMay Dataclarifier be well! 18:33, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have to admire your shining wit and meretricious mannerisms. The Blade of the Northern Lights (<font face="MS Mincho" color="black">話して下さい ) 23:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have to admire your shining wit and meretricious mannerisms. The Blade of the Northern Lights (<font face="MS Mincho" color="black">話して下さい ) 23:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTomMm61Ixw 19:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC) , CP does not have a no fucking profanity rule. I've seen that fucking shit there myself in mains-fucking-space. If you donate $100 to RW, I will tell you where to go fuck yourself , since you're obviously too big of a dumbfuck to find the occurrences yourself. If you donate $1000, I tell you where the secret non-mainspace buggery-fuckery is. Bongolian (talk) 04:29, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Anger
So, here’s the thing. When I was a dumbass teenager I was really angry all the time. I eventually grew out of that, and realised anger is usually unhealthy and makes me feel like shit and treat others like shit. Recently, though, looking at the state of the world has started to make me absolutely furious. I know some would argue it’s a reasonable reaction to things like massive state violence in the US, governments actively letting people die of a horrific disease, concentration camps for refugees in my country, etc. But I don’t want</I> to be angry. It makes me act in ways I don’t like, and it tends to become a really unhealthy addiction for me. Taking action/protesting etc doesn’t help, because I see how it doesn’t work and that makes me even angrier. Cutting myself off from the media about this shit doesn’t help, because I still know it’s happening and hear about it every day from my friends across the globe. I just want to go back to feeling relatively calm, at peace with things. How do I do it? Does anyone have experience mitigating their anger about this shit? Thanks. 08:53, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Study Modern Stoicism.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Stoicism with respect to the state of world affairs is essentially washing your hands of it, since it's trivial to declare it "not within my power to fix" and treat it as an acceptable thing. Directionless anger is harmful to the self, but I wouldn't be too quick to retreat to any sort of hyper individualistic representation of social problems.  To fight for change and fail is still noble, and focusing entirely inwardly isn't great.  I don't think the Modern Stoics really have a great answer for that problem.  Then again, I'm a hypocrite, and that is my own last line of mental defense.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:32, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Stoics would wash their hands of anything over which they had no power. Or at least they would avoid getting emotionally involved over it. You cannot stop a storm by being angry at it, though you can take the action of getting out of the way.
 * As far as world events are concerned. Can you influence them? To the extent that you are able, you should. If you cannot affect them, then you need to accept them.
 * The poster was was looking for ways to overcome their generalized anger at the world and the way it is. At least looking into the ideas of Stoicism would give them a possible way forward.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VANyaiRpNGo 17:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Stoicism is an interesting one. Alternatively, I believe Buddhism, meditation specifically, provably reduces the subject's anger response. Tulpa001 (talk) 05:11, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

there is a lot in the world to be angry about. be angry. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:26, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Raw salmon especially. 13:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Where should I put this Business Insider dumb take?
I recently placed an article from Business Insider about how the modern workplace is communism in the Blogs WIGO, but I also think it belongs in clogs. The article is kind of reasonable, funny enough, it's the way that's written that is stupid.–Tuxer (talk) 09:28, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Blogs is supposed to be for good-quality blogs/opinion pieces on missional topics, Clogs for silliness. Even if you agree with it, if it's silly it probably belongs in Clogs (or doesn't fit anywhere). There's some overlap, with sensible articles about silly people/ideas often ending up in Clogs. Things in Blogs will be downvoted for being silly, things in Clogs will be... well Clogs is a lottery. (Votes don't matter at all.) --Annanoon (talk) 12:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Definetly clogs. If it's a dumb person being dumb, clogs are where it's at, no matter how "reputable" the dumb person is.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:30, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I read that and tend to agree with most of its points. We have been conditioned to tolerate various forms of intrusions and censorship by businesses and other employers that we would never tolerate from governments, and because it's a business doing it for profit it's all OK.  'Human resources' as an engine for ideological conformity hqas been an issue for me for years.  It's the same problem with ownership of the Internet by busiesses makes it possible to lobby those busiensses to run ideological enemies out of town, and since it isn't the government doing it it's all OK with some people.  We've basically substituted social control we don't get to vote for (because 'property') for the kinds we do, and that's what puts the pseudo in pseudolibertarianism.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 22:55, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Pseudolibertarianism? Is it libertarian to have little oversight so rules can be made ro exploit workers? Sincere question. 00:08, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's a timely piece from WIGO news - Major retailers used the trillions in bailout to engage in stock buyback and then slashed workers' pay
 * That is a question I am also interested in. The logical consequence of a Libertarian's rather specialised definition of freedom seems to imply we should give up freedom to corporations instead of the government. Their definition also seems to ignore wealth disparity entirely. Tulpa001 (talk) 05:32, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Libertarians want freedom for corporations and slavery for everyone else.—Tuxer (talk) 10:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's just it. What I want is maximum personal autonomy and minimal social control.  That's the selling point of libertarianism, but it takes away with one hand what it offers with the other.  Which is why I consider the property and contract nonsense to be pseudolibertarian; it would not result in a freer world. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 15:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Climate change: Just what is going on?
First: What exactly is the climate pattern? Most climate denialists point to people saying that it'll always get colder or that they'll be a record high. Any climate genius explain what was going on?

Secondly: "Global warming was happening, it was caused by humanity, it is a very bad thing and previous governments could and should have done something, but it's too late now!" Why is this false? Can governments do something? Metazero 21:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Governments can do things to stop it from getting even worse than it's going to be anyway. Unfortunately, some of the biggest contributors towards the climate change don't seem willing to. 22:10, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * They don't, therefore it should be true... Metazero 22:11, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "people saying that it'll always get colder"
 * Idiots say this because they fundamentally misunderstand what "climate" means. Additionally governments need to do two things they have generally refused to so far: 1) Harden infrastructure against the inevitable climate events that will happen and 2) Reduce carbon emissions aggressively to stop the planet warming, and eventually reverse those effects. Both require a tacit acknowledgement human activity has a large effect on a warming planet, and that uninhibited industry is a good thing, which isn't super popular.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:26, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * When people claim that the Earth is cooling, they like to cite record low temperatures. Thing is- when you destabilize a climate, everything goes out of whack. You may get record low temperatures in areas where it is not supposed to happen but that is from a destabilized system. Eventually it evens out to much warmer temperatures. Climate change is also a gradual process but climate change deniers ignore that too. They think that because the worst effects don't happen immediately then they claim that it is not happening. Go figure. --Possible Goat (talk) 00:05, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Global warming is an aspect of climate change associated with the global average temperature. Which is about 1.0 degrees celcius hotter than it used to be. This is also a pretty easy graph to hunt down. If you can't debunk that graph, specifically, you failed to disprove global warming. When looking at this subject, it's important to keep in mind that the earth's climate has a lot of inertia. So changes made today won't have their main effect for many years. Tulpa001 (talk) 05:46, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks for that guys. Metazero 13:08, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Best title?
Which title would be best in your opinion (for a page on discrimination against Muslims)? Feel free to add options if you have alternatives. Islamophobia Anti-Muslim bigotry Anti-Muslimism

05:30, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why are you even asking? "Islamophobia" is the most commonly used term to refer to hatred of Muslims in English. That's why we use it. We should avoid using terms that we've just made up ourselves as much as possible, even if they do describe something more accurately. And we certainly shouldn't have article titles that are words or phrases not used anywhere else. Spud (talk) 06:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I wanted to know which title would fit the best. Not for this wiki, but rather mine (I wasn't sure what to title my article on islamophobia). 07:07, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I'd recommend that the title you use for any article on any English-language wiki be the most commonly used English word for that thing. Any other terms for the same thing should, of course, be redirects. And again, avoid using any words or phrases made up by you or other users of your wiki. Spud (talk) 10:30, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't make up the term, actually. It is a clarification since "Islamophobia" can be misconstrued as "opposition to Islam" and thus be conflated with "hatred of Muslims"; opposing Islam as a religion (I am an atheist and I oppose all religions by default) isn't the same as opposing Muslims as human beings. I forgot the name of the German author I got the term from, but it nullifies the attempt by "centrists" to equate hatred of Muslims with criticism of Muslims. 21:49, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Was the German writer writing in English or did you translate the term yourself? If you translated the term out of German, you've basically made up the English phrase yourself. Either way, if it's just been used by one person so far, no matter how important and influential that person is, and it hasn't caught on in wider society, it shouldn't be used as an article title. Go with the more commonly used term. If you think the commonly used term is a misnomer then by all means include a note in the article explaining why that is. Spud (talk) 02:31, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Why are you asking us for advice on your own, completely separate wiki? Ask the editors there. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  02:33, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * And, notice how nice I am being by willingly giving you advice for your own completely separate wiki. Speaking of which, you really ought to do something about the main page. Put something on it to replace the default text. You can put a temporary placeholder there for now, like a massive picture of a red rose, and put in proper content a bit later. Spud (talk) 02:41, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah I am working on it (I am currently occupied with the SEO stuff and creating icons for it). 02:49, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I didn't initially say why I am asking the question, I only said it was about my own wiki after Spud asked about it. I don't think asking generic questions like "do you think this term or that term is better?" is problematic. Unless you have your own far-leftist wiki,, which would be quite embarrassing. lol 02:53, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's lazy and disingenuous. Also, . — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  03:22, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Is it more disingenuous than you apologizing for telling me to kill myself after I outed your action? 03:25, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  03:35, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Now, to be fair, she never told you to kill yourself. At least not in that particular instance.  She merely said she hopes you die of cancer and that she wants you to rot in your own piss and shit, as part of a greater rant.  Apparently after he pointed out that she used a source that's a front for the DPRK-Hastur! (talk)  03:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * True, there is a big semantic difference between "hang yourself" and "I hope someone hangs you". 03:43, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * i must have missed the vote over at the moderation page where we decided to all move forward by testing oxyaena's resolve by needling her and rehashing previous drama all those votes were meant to draw a line under. nothing at all bullying about none of this, no sir.
 * you two fucking knock it off AMassiveGay (talk) 07:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Who is "you two"? 07:19, 13 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Islamaphobia is an inaccurate term as it refers to a religion and not the people. One choses to be a follower of Islam, (The worst religion) they don't chose to have skin melanin. Anti-arabic bigotry works best but of the opinions shown Anti-Muslim bigotry is the best.50.86.22.101 (talk) 13:27, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Points for managing to be racist and islamaphobic in the same breath, kudos.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:25, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * How is that racist. He's directly saying that race is not a choice and that we should criticism hyper religious Muslims based on their religion and not race. You're fucking retarded. Thus the term for racism towards Arabic people would be anti Arabic. This is a literal representation of Liberal white guilt.2600:1702:2A00:B3F0:1C74:429:2E26:D9B5 (talk) 21:52, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * this is just thedarkmaster2 agreeing with another post they made 22:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Lmao imagine replying to yourself with a new IP to make it seem like you have more support. How sad. 23:34, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

"If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at”
Besides this being a disgusting take from Trump, it hilarious because Trump would HATE living in red states. As WaPo points out, things are poorer, have fewer things he likes, including most of his properties. Also his statement is false, looking at a percentage of population, red states have had more deaths, and have been rising more lately.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:15, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Is Louisiana a blue state now? It has more Covid19 deaths per capita than any country in the world except for San Marino (a country so tiny, that 42 covid deaths brings it to the top of the ranking...which proves that sometimes statistics are kind of useless). Hell, even Louisiana is above every real country in the world except for Peru. And every state in the United States except for Maine, Vermont, Wyoming, Hawaii and Alaska have higher Covid19 death rate than the world average. Seriously, what the fuckety fuck? 01:00, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that "looking at a percentage of population, red states have had more deaths"? The New York Times says: "If measured by which party controls the governorship, then the death count is even worse in blue states, with 116,782 deaths to 78,661 in red states. Measured against population, those blue states have about 25 percent more deaths than red ones." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/politics/trump-america.html -TheOldMan (talk) 17:14, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Why has the ratio of blue-state to red-state deaths shifted? Because most of the newly occurring deaths are happening in red states. Since mid-June, a majority of the new coronavirus deaths each day have occurred in red states. Since mid-July at least 70 percent have." Total deaths in blue states are higher, but also they are the two largest states (NY, CA). The other WaPo link puts it into starker contrast, if you separate red states in terms of deaths, 90,000 would still make it second only to Brazil.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:21, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Blue states overwhelmingly have a much much much greater concentration of metropoli and dense cities (New York City, Washington DC, Phili, San Fran, LA, Chigaco just to name the biggest). In Europe the worst hit places are countries with dense cities (or dense countries per Belgium and the Netherlands). As well as countries with stupid COVID policies. From everything I've read it seems that having dense cities and/or having stupid COVID policies both contribute towards bad COVID numbers no? Blue states have dense cities (or urban areas at least) and SOME and only some have wiser COVID policies and red states have only a few dense cities and quite a few have ridiculously super stupid COVID policies. Makes for a very mixed bag no? Shabi  DOO  19:24, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's more Trump making crystal clear, he doesn't give a shit about people who die in states that didn't support him in 2016. But as someone who lives in a state, that is red outside of urban areas, there have been massive outbreaks in the rural portions of the state that far outstrip the urban areas in cases per 100,000, and have been adding more cases daily. The outbreaks are also connected to violating the states very strict orders for houses of worship.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:47, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Is Trump foreshadowing Arizona flipping blue?-Hastur! (talk) 19:40, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I remember a debate.
I was checking the comments on a YouTube video titled something like "Stupid people?". I saw a comment saying "People who think there are more than two genders." My reply was "For me it is the opposite." Then I got a reply saying "Gender is what you are born as." Tried to explain that was not the case, but I failed. They even tried to tell me that it was determined by wether someone has a 🍆 or a 🐈. Sex and gender confusion at it's finest.--HedvigsenSkreonk here 07:01, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah YouTube comments tend to not bear much fruit. Don't engage if you think people will hurt you. 07:08, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Words have meanings" is a phrase I fall back on a lot, but a lot of people never learned those meanings. Trying to explain how they're wrong bypasses the fact that you aren't even standing on the same ground.  They see the word "gender" and it brings back a thousand conversations they've had and a hundred forms they've filled out where it was synonymous with sex.  You see the word, and think of the social mores and assumptions that are commonly tied to that biological sex.
 * I don't think bridging that gap is terribly likely to make the person you were talking to not a transphobe, but recognizing that the gap exists is important. Language, after all, is just as socially constructed as gender.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Drop what you're doing
The 2020 ignobels are out! Where else are you going to learn what kind of eyebrows narcissists have ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:21, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Or whether shit can be turned into effective cutting tool. 15:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Yeah, we took these gators and gave them helium, because we wanted to know what they would sound like. For science.  No, we weren't drunk OR in Florida at the time, why do you ask?" CoryUsar (talk) 16:20, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Philosophy seems useless to me
https://markmanson.net/why-we-all-need-philosophy?utm_content=bufferb27cd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=facebook-posts&fbclid=IwAR0ScH7fAXxVsKwhUBuLwjRANlrRos-o4LnV3YVV0k4GSpypJLug5_FwPEU

It sort of popped into my head as I was reading this and wondering if we were talking about the same Philosophy (practice). As far as I know the same debates in philosophy have been raging for thousands of years and no one has gotten an answer. It seems to me like philosophy is less about truth and more about validating what you already believe in. It doesn't give or help with meaning, in fact it does the opposite. Even in terms of morality no one can agree on what is the right thing to do or how one should live. Honestly the whole article reads like someone utterly ignorant of what philosophy eventually leads to, which to me looks like nihilism.Machina (talk) 23:35, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to write out a whole spiel about this for the 10th time. Parts of philosophy (just like parts of historical research, political science, psychology and even physics) is garbage, especially the post-modern kind. A lot of it is extremely useful. I will simply list extremely useful philosophy that affects your every day life. I am sick to fucking death of people slightly versed in philosophy and ignorant of most of it dismissing it.

That is just a highlights of the list. Knowing the historical development of western-thought is also extremely invaluable even if much of it is now obsolete, just as knowing the historical development of any field is useful though I'd say in philosophy it is even more so. After all, the philosophical systems of Plato, Decartes and Kant profoundly affect the development of the culture you live in and your world view. Shabi DOO  00:43, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Critical thinking and fallacies (note that a large portion of this website is dedicated to this extremely useful field of philosophy)
 * Formal logic
 * Theory of artificial intelligence
 * Bio-ethics
 * Legal ethics
 * Philosophy of emotional experience of art
 * Philosophy of non-belief
 * Theories of consciousness
 * As much as I love to burst bubbles everything you listed is irrelevant to my daily life, except legal ethics.Machina (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not directly, but they will all have indirect effects - and some of those will be very important. The medicines you or your kin use, the adds yo'all get on social media, the smart phones and computers you use, the arguments/discussions you have with believers/non-believers, the ethics of corporations, governments and individuals you deal with - all these are affected or derived by/from various aspects of philosophy.  Just that most of those effects are removed from your conscious knowledge. Aloysius the Gaul 03:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't affect the medicines I use, or the ads I get, or the smart phone or computer I use, or my arguments with believers/non (because I just don't, the existence of lack of God doesn't affect my life), same with everything else. Ethics is founded on our biological drives after all because at the base level no one can say anything is good or bad, hence it doesn't affect me. Stop trying to convince philosophy majors they didn't waster their money and time.Machina (talk) 17:07, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also no one agreeing on anything is exactly why we need philosophy. It helps you frame ideas, interpret knowledge, discern sound and unsound reasoning, and come to meaningful conclusions about what their differences actually entail.
 * Without philosophy, you'd still have some people arguing that morality about rules while others argue it's about results, but you'd have no idea how they came to those conclusions, or even that that is their fundamental disagreement. You want answers, you should want questions.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 00:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No to all of that. If there is one thing I learned from studying philosophy is that two people can end up talking their mouths off and end up saying nothing at all. It doesn't lead to meaningful conclusions, they can't even agree on definitions. I mean any philosophy has to start with axioms they can't prove. In fact I would argue that philosophy is the reason why no one can agree on anything because it dilutes clear and decisive points into abstract and vague nonsense to the point that no one ends up anywhere. In all my years things only got muddier when I studied philosophy. If I never touched it I would have been spared a lot of headaches like nihilism, solipsism and a bunch of other stuff.Machina (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes people CAN end up talking nonsense - but it is a mistake to conclude from that that all people talk nonsense and therefore nothing useful is ever gained from all these things. A basic logical error that you might have avoided with a little more thought ....tee hee hee...Aloysius the Gaul 03:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * When you speak to enough philosophy majors you'll see it's not really a mistake or logical error. Also why would I want questions? Questions are useless to my daily operation. Most animals don't need them and do just fine so what should I want them? Especially when they do more harm than good.Machina (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

That's a weird fucking list if you're trying to sell it in terms of utility to the general reader. The world would be a considerably less troubled and stupid place if most people could just combine simple applied ethics with some basic grasp of epistemology. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 02:30, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you insinuating that the people here reading on this salon are dullard general readers who cannot figure out the importance of philosophical work on artificial intelligence theory, consciousness or formal logic? Shabi  DOO  02:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * And that's a weird fucking response to pretty mild criticism of your list. You mention below you "studied philosophy at three different universities". Did you actually complete a philosophy degree at any of them, or did you take some phil. modules as part of your other studies?


 * Forgive me for asking, but you get strangely grandiose and say some odd fucking things when the subject comes up. I suppose what I'm really trying to find out is whether you're just a bit bonkers, or overcompensating for some reason. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 23:26, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I have a Bachelor and Masters in Philosophy from Leuven University (one of the world's most prestigious philosophy institutes). What about you? Tell me what's so grandious and I'll back up what I say. My aesthetics prof is a consultant for a French movie studio, Waltzers just war theory is used as a template for the war policy of countries including Belgium. There's nothing grandious about that. Also saying that somethings a weird fucking list isn't mild criticism. Talk about being bonkers HBC. Take a lookin the mirror. Shabi DOO  04:36, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bit bonkers it is, then. Bonus bonkers points for "Grandiose? Moi?!" right after "one of the world's most prestigious..." You'd struggle to get that one past a script editor. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 02:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry would you like me to hold that mirror up to your face for you? I mean considering the only philosophical text I've seen you quote was terribly written hackwork I can only imagine you're an armchair enthusiast hiding behind a wall of disparaging snark and smug bad-ridicule. But that's always been your modus operandi on the wiki...to accuse others of the very thing you are an expert at. Shabi  DOO  02:24, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah, yes... the "hackwork" that you immediately identified as the work of an "undergraduate", when it was clearly the work of a philosophy of maths subject specialist. And which, for additional comic effect, you proceeded (and apparently wish to continue) to disparage, rather than simply owning the fact you said a Dumb Thing In Haste. You really should consider the logical possibility that I'm mocking you because you totally deserve to be mocked in this instance. Learn & grow, man. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 00:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That was a garbage article written in the quality of an undergraduate, I don't give a shot if the writer is faculty and you should be embarrassed to have ever have linked it. The only thing that Machina was right about was that there is had philosophy out there and that was a prime example. I can only conclude you yourself are an undergraduate trying to maintain the air of knowledgehood by shitting on others and making no arguments to defend in the process. Take a look in the mirror and learn to grow up first before lecturing others to do so. You HBC are the ultimate pet-asshole here only you're no ones pet. Just a snarky substanceless asshole. Shabi  DOO  00:31, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Go home, Shabi. You're drunk. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Helena Bonham Carter, when will you realise that both of us are just putting up a front to hide our burning raging desire for one another? It's just a matter of time until we get into a raging physical fight breaking all the furniture until it evolves into a passionate weekend long love fest. Stop resisting. The sooner we give in, the more we can enjoy our ignited romance. Shabi  DOO  01:19, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Did we just go from "You are condescending Shabi!" to "Me? I am Educated, you peasant!" followed by "Go fuck yourself." and finally "Helena I hate your fucking guts, please have passionate sex with me"? Mkay then... (still a better script then that shitty movie Helena was in. Fight Club, or whatever it's called.) - Rairyu75  ( Talk ) 01:48, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes that is an absolutely completely 100% accurate description of everything that was said and a proper reflection of undeniable truth. I'm sure that Kant, Kierkegaard and Flippen-floppen-gugen-witz would all completely agree Shabi  DOO  02:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yikes. Drink plenty of water before you go to bed, man. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 02:55, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's such a pity. We really could have had something there HBC, just think about when Brad Pit and Angelina Joelie completely destroyed their house in Mr. and Mrs. Smith in a rompous shoot out turned mad make-up scene. Another time Lyrithya. Shabi  DOO  03:01, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

In truth, I regret googling Lyrithya and finding your Uncyclopedia contributions. Given your sloppy opsec on the Shabidoo handle, the worst of your "bad taste" shite should be considered an ongoing professional liability. I'd attempt as deep a burn as MediaWiki will allow. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 03:05, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm really flattered you'd make such an effort to chase me around the internet. You know a couple days ago I would have been interested in your acidic rage which is really flirting but after turning me down the first time I'm just not interested anymore HBC. But thanks. Maybe some time in the future. Hugs. Shabi  DOO  06:48, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, Hemingway. It's your hostage to fortune, and you're welcome to it. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 23:54, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Philosophy of consciousneses amounts to garbage to me, same with artificial intelligence (we aren't going to get to the point where it becomes a problem). Neither of the two are relevant. I don't need to look at what consciousness is or how it got there or why.Machina (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, you don't need to learn or understand anything. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 03:04, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You're a fool if you think that those topics don't affect your daily life. You don't have to actually know the bloody theory for it to reach deep into your life, zheesh. Every single one of the topics I listed are relevantwhen you browse the web or watch a film on your computer. Deep learning is already present in your daily life (a component of artificial intelligence research) and it's ridiculous to think that the study of artificial intelligence (and the theory it is based on) isn't one of the most critical studies happening right now that will shape the future. I'm sorry you took a shitty philosophy class or two or don't have a "nonsense filter" to drown out the bad stuff. I'm sorry you cannot study a philosophical concept without becoming obsessed with it and allowing it to instill irrational existential fear in you. No one is obliging you to study it. Can't handle it? Don't like it? Don't read it. But don't pretend it's all a pile of junk when you are clearly so immensely ignorant of it you don't even realize to what extent it shapes your life. LMAO Shabi  DOO  03:10, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is that there is no "bad philosophy" since anything in it can be made to sound legitimate and there are no hard and fast rules (because even the rules can be questioned). Also shapes my life? It's had very little impact in the way I live and see the world. Philosophy of AI is quite useless as the more pressing concern is surviving our environmental disaster, we aren't close to the point where AI will be a problem. It's not critical. It sounds more like trying to rationalize that the time spent reading it was not an utter waste. As was mentioned the same debates have been going on for over 2500 years. At least science moved in that point.
 * ikanreed said it very well, you don't HAVE to understand anything. It's a tough concept because philosophy isn't taught very well, basically you won't see it in western schooling unless you specialize in a subject or look for it yourself.  The idea that "so what, you can't see this anyway" is kinda glossed over, and I think it's a really important question. I don't think your questions or comments are worthless, and I don't think the answer is something you could just pull out of a book.  The idea that any possible solution to a question is found from a list that can be recalled and recited, well, that's basic AI.  So, where would you differentiate basic AI from human intelligence?  We already have AI that calculates algorithms of patterns and weighs those solutions on algorithms of probability of successful outcomes.  It's not like it's slowing down.  The idea that it "will never be a problem" relies on some ideas about consciousness that other people might not share.  If an AI were to have a better explanation of why it. itself, had more agency than you because it could pull all the information ever recorded and act on any single instance due to that ability, would you be necessarily compliant with any decision it arrived at?  Even if it didn't have information that you had, but had never recorded?  Me, I don't know, but that's why we talk about it.  And sure, maybe my ideas aren't going to stop some Skynet or whatever, but it's not worthless to weigh the ideas and the potentials. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If you think that philosophy is useless to you then it probably is. But that just tells me something about you.  Philosophy is actually very useful in many endeavors which have been mentioned.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:45, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Uhhh, the problems in those many endeavors are due to philosophy, same with ethics. Also AI is not an issue at the moment, still just another bid by philosophy majors to attempt to validate their years of study.Machina (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Gol I studied philosophy at three different universities in Spain, Belgium and Canada and for the most part it was taught exceptionally well (minus the two postmodernist professors I had had). Probably the most important subject one will study is the "intro to critical thinking" and I agree that it is truly best that you have a very good professor for this one. I think it will make or break your academic career and interest in the field. The seminars were also truly excellent (if you have good classmates the discussions are great), they were usually in super specific topics like "emotion and art" (think the science behind how movie studios manipulate audiences through psychology and an understanding of western narratives), "just war theory" (Waltzer's extremely influential work on rules of engagement for modern warfare) and Poppers Open Society (Popper's extremely insightful argument that the most fundamental strength of democracy is not so much to represent the will of the people but the possibility to remove bad, menacing or dangerous governments). I had a great time studying it and my non-philosophy studying friends who came to sit in on some lectures thoroughly enjoyed them. Shabi  DOO  15:58, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's awesome, that's great. I'm more speaking to your point that "critical thinking" is very important. I agree with that 100%.  I'm all public schools in the American midwest.  I'll admit I dropped out college because I couldn't afford it anymore and I was stuck in a well of prerequisite rehashing of high school level rehashing of middle school level information into the second semester my sophomore year.  I think it's cool that you got to go to multiple colleges in multiple places and pursue philosophy specifically.  I'm glad you did it.  It's unusual.  I was lucky that I grew up in a home that engaged in critical thinking.  My mom is a third generation public school teacher and I benefitted from that.  I had lots of teachers that let my bad habits like never having my homework on me slide because I actually engaged in class.  I got a full ride to a small private Christian college that promised ties into journalism.  I had a Machina moment, in an early college class "Ethics in Film" where I posited that personal accountability can't exist, because the future is based upon the present and the present is based upon the past.  The teacher didn't just brush me off, she looked at me like I was a monster.  I thought it was because I had an airtight argument.  I took another class with her, and I started to fail because she required everyone to take notes.  I dropped it before the cutoff, and she kept me after class.  She asked if it was because I was required to take notes.  I said "well, kind of..." and she cried.  I had really miscalculated that a Christian college might slant their education.  I transferred, had to pay for my sophomore year myself, got all of my credits wiped as electives, and had to start my college career over as a sophomore with 36 credit hours of electives.  I wouldn't say I've self-educated as rigorously as I could have got a formal education, and I really try not to pretend I have.   But at no point have I struggled to label every part of a cell or write a history paper, reciting information is very easy for me.  I've struggled to pay my rent and pay for school.  I've gone past credit lines.  I've taken my savings account down to 16 cents to get bread and salami to last me for days.  I got back up, I'm well fed now, and rationalwiki has really helped with self-education, over the course of almost a decade since I found it. I've, as your non-philosophy friends may have, really enjoyed discussion.
 * I appreciate your insights, regardless of our different backgrounds. Thanks for sharing, I do believe you've had a great education in philosophy and I'm really glad you're sharing it here.  I'll take anything I can get, you know?  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

But that somewhat proves my point about philosophy, all those topics are useless. The debate over what can be considered art and why, just war (there is no such thing and rules of war don't really apply at all), and you pretty much listed one of the major flaws in democracy.Machina (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC) Machina, you are an intelligent person I don't know how you can be so ignorant of how essential these topics are to your every day life and how flippantly dismissive you are about shit you know little of. If you've ever watched a Marvel super hero film then you should know the amount of work that goes into manipulating the audiences emotions (it comes down to an actual science) and the work that goes into western narratives. Of course it's bloody relevant because the film industry relies on this research. Go watch a Marvel Film, what do you think the writers just pull this shit out of their asses when making a 200 million dollar (or much higher) budget film? Just war theory has been incorporated into several Nato countries military engagement policy. I don't see how these theories are irrelevant if those policies are actually used by countries in practice. What more do you bloody want from an academic discipline? There are rules to war and when countries break those rules there can be geo-political consequences. You're ignorant if you think otherwise. If you think that the ability to kick out a bad government is a weakness of democracy then you know next to nothing about the history of democracies in the last 150 years. You talk dismissively about philosophy and philosophers trying to justify their garbage academics but all I see is a person drowning in metaphysical concepts that he cannot psychologically handle and just dismissing an entire field as an intellectual self-defense mechanism. That is obvious to everyone considering your obsession with solipsism and inability to listen to anybody and their highly rational responses to your issues with the topic. I'd say the same about your approach to many other topics. You complain about philosophers babbling with on another and not listening, but when I think of philosophical conversations here on this wiki I've seen many insightful comments and you pretty much never listening to anything anyone has to say. Perhaps when you are describing your criticism of philosophy you are just describing yourself. You can keep saying "ugh this stuff is just all irrelevant" all you want, it still seriously affects your life. If you want to cover your ears and eyes and go "lalalala this is all irrelevant" and wade in intellectual ignorance...so be it. Shabi DOO  17:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Then you are woefully misled. The Marvel movie plots do seem like they just pull it out of their asses. As I said there is no such thing as a just war, that just proves my point about philosophy being used to rationalize what you want to be true or already believe. You are ignorant if you don't think countries break rules in war, they just avoid getting caught. It's like saying the parties in the US don't spy on each other, they obviously do they just don't get caught. How ignorant can you be? And "bad government" is a matter of opinion, which anyone can spin to make it appear as such (no thanks to philosophy). You'd need only look at America present to see how far democracy got us, a popularity contest where emotions rule (in fact that is why they said democracy was terrible). Also no one posted a rational response to solipsism, mostly because they haven't experienced what it's like to get caught in it. They were useless, all that it amounted to in the end was "you just have to not believe it" which doesn't mean a lot. The solipsism thread was of less use than nothing at all. It's not a defense mechanism, I've felt like this about philosophy before. All it has is questions and no answers, which again is....nothing. All the big questions and it's still got nothing. So then one must ask...why bother? Seems better to just say "F it" and go about your day. Philosophy kind of reminds me of a treadmill, I'd let that sink in. Everyone else can waste their times hitting the dead ends that philosophy is full of. I still think philosophy tries to justify it's existence with these big questions that don't ultimately matter, but they pretend it does (I mean someone has to). It can't answer solipsism, nihilism, ethics, AI, any of that. It truly is good for nothing. Better yet read this, it summarizes my feelings: http://faculty.fiu.edu/~harrisk/Paper%20Assignments/Articles/Philosophy%20is%20a%20waste%20of%20time.htmMachina (talk) 04:40, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah Machina and the sky is blue and the world is flat. You're just an extreme intellectual nihilist who thinks everything is stupid, false, impossible and pointless. I can't discuss anything with someone who just denies everything. That's what's so ironic here because you pretty much parody the pessimism and "fuck you" of Nietzsche. In any case, Good luck with that. Shabi  DOO  04:45, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I like philosophy. I'll add three reasons why it's critical that I didn't see in the above argument. There is irony in using philosophical argumentation to argue against philosophy. Without a philosophical base, one cannot judge the utility of any situation. Philosophy gave us math and science. It is a nursery of sorts for new ways of understanding the world. Logic and observation, a.k.a. math and natural science, are the absolute best tools we have for sorting between what is true and what is not. I suppose you could in theory go through life without this ability. And political philosophy. I do not think it is possible to successfully navigate politics without engaging with political philosophy. It is indeed true that the animals do just fine without philosophy. Humans who want to live as animals call themselves primitivists. Tulpa001 (talk) 04:29, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You just added three reasons why it's not critical. Even with a philosophical base you can't judge the utility of any situation. I also wouldn't give it math and science because those actually work unlike philosophy. It's also not a nursery of sorts but rather a smoke bomb and that intentionally confounds any simple concept or understanding and questions everything to the point of oblivion. Political philosophy is also not the relevant in the modern world.Machina (talk) 04:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Intentionally confounds"? Again you are describing yourself. Shabi  DOO  04:49, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Machina, I want you to explain your experience with Buddhism. You can edit my userpage, or you can put it on my talkpage, that's more normal.  I would really like to get some points, and you don't have to do it here.  But it sounds like you have some shit to say, and I don't think I get it, but I also want to know about that Buddhism you left behind.  I'm off for the night, but seriously, if Machina edits any of my shit, leave it.  Permission granted. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:12, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

No I'm describing philosophy. I'm not the only one whose life was worse off after taking it, and there are others who can see how it just muddies things up with tons of questions with no answers. Ethics becomes more about making you feel bad rather than what is right or wrong, so it just boils down to emotional appeals (which is why it's been stuck for thousands of years). It's true what people say, philosophy is more like glorified opinions. It doesn't teach you how to think but what to think, but then again it hasn't settled any of it's debates since it started. As for my experience with Buddhism well lets just say it was bad.Machina (talk) 19:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I get that, you don't have to tell me about it. I just want for you to have a space to wreck up like you deserve to.  I know it doesn't work if I invite you to do it.  But I also read the things you write, like I actually read them.  I did a thing, at that Christian college I wasted a year at, when I got so fed up with bullshit.  I had gone home for Christmas break, came back and my was told everyone in my building was getting an $80 charge because somebody who stayed over the break had sprayed the fire extinguishers all over the halls.  Everybody knew who did it, but nobody was going to tell on them, so the whole building got a charge I literally couldn't pay except for my Christmas money.  So, with my Christmas money gone, I literally Solid Snaked my way into the boiler room, I dunno what else to call it, the locked room with all the water heaters and some janitorial shit, the door had a vent, I unscrewed the outside vent and kicked in the inside vent, then just climbed through it like a dog door.  I closed the direct lines, the cold water.  I left the lines that went through the water heaters open.  I screwed the vents back in place and went back to my room.  Y'all can have water, but it's gonna be hot.  There must have been 6 water heaters down there.  There was not a shortage of water, just imagine if every time you wanted water you could only turn on the hot.  It took 4 days to solve, it was me, MUAHAHAHAHA, that school fucking sucked, and that dorm fucking sucked.  My roommate wanted to watch old VHS tapes of his high school football games.  Little bit of irony there, me complaining about that. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:16, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It took four days before they solved the problem. Four days of scalding showers and brushing your teeth with steaming hot water. All I did was shut of a couple valves, should have been easy.  At least people here are responding to YOUR misanthropy.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:22, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a bummer you had a shitty dorm. It's such a lottery who you end up living with and how well you get on with them. What I don't understand is why you didn't actually sabotage the dorm room of the guy who sprayed fire exinguisher everywhere. I mean you could have just prayed shaving cream foam all over his mattress, books, carpet, clothes and window! 05:30, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't get it either, except I felt like I was the only one who was angry. There was something so funny to me that I had to brush my teeth with the hot water too, like, I didn't get along with a single person there, I didn't have anyone in that dorm that I cared about.  I went into that room a few times, since I figured out how I could.  But I never reconfigured the water lines, I was really happy with how it turned out. Freshman class had maybe 500 people in it.  You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a friend at a Chrstian college of under 1200. And I gues a point missing is I didn't tell anybody, I didn't do it for clout, I just did it because I was pissed off at them.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:45, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Lemme be fair to the experience, ther was another dorm building, and I made friends well there, but I was in the athletics dorm. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:22, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Just my two cents
Seems like the complaint here is that "bioethics doesn't influence my life directly therefore it's useless garbage", correct me if I am wrong. Well, I disagree. Bioethics does influence your life in significant ways if we add all the small parts to it. Bioethics deals with how the food that comes to you everyday might not be contaminated with rare metals or how the meat that one consumes (assuming they're not vegetarian) didn't come from am infested slaughterhouse that denigrates animals, their welfare and our public health. Or how bioethics deals with designing ethical experiments so that we can test medications on animals and, if it succeeds on other trials, on humans. I also don't think you need to live in an isolated cabin in the woods of Siberia to be isolated from the topic of bioethics; after all, environmental concerns dealing with the populations of elk or rodents would also fit in that (and they would be adjacent to your life in the Siberian cabin).

Eh, rant over. But I like philosophy and I think, as Shabidoo said, postmodernism and the other stupid far-left stuff is pretty useless and taints a lot of humanities. I do really appreciate ancient Greek philosophy though, everybody should at least know a tiny bit about Parmenides, Heraclitus or Epicurus. I at least enjoy it. 04:46, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the biggest recruiting drive for philosophers at the moment are government health departments and hostpials directly hiring consultants to help develop a countries or hospitals medical policies on, for example surgeries and dealing with questions like parents denying their children treatment, the use of medicines, operating with limited consent, euthanasia, how clinical trials are run, patient privacy and confidentiality etc. I wish I actually had specialized in bio-ethics. Nice salary and a big demand for them now, not to mention it is an extreeeemely interesting topic.  Shabi  DOO  04:56, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As a biologist, bioethics was mandatory discipline to cover in our curriculum (required for laboratory work), and I really enjoyed it. One of the most fascinating lectures was called "What is a disease?", where we discussed how that label is very "common sense" based rather than scientifically. And it is really hard to pin it down if you think about it. 05:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

You sort of prove my point how philosophy purposely muddies things for no good reason. I also think you're wrong on the hiring for philosophers in those areas because I have plenty of family members in those fields and they say that isn't true at all. And again you show how bioethics doesn't impact my life at all. I wouldn't consider meat not being contaminated bioethics, sounds more like just business. Same with the conditions of the animals, I mean if people get sick and die from your food they can't exactly buy more of it. As for animal conditions, who really cares? I could go on but you aren't exactly proving your point here. Also I had to laugh at that Philosophy of the Emotional Experience of Art.Machina (talk) 19:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Machina nobody can take you seriously here. Almost your entire contribution to the wiki has been posting and asking for commentary (and ignoring that commentary) on nothing but philosophical questions you are really concerned about the answer to. And now suddenly you think those questions are useless? I guess that means you'll no longer post articles or questions on "can we know things for certain"? (Posted only last week) a dozen on solipsism and countless others on clearly philosophical questions. I guess that's sort of a good thing considering you never listen to what others say in response. Shabi  DOO  02:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

It only serves to underscore my point on how useless philosophy is and how it does more harm than good. My brush with solipsism along with a few others I have talked to. Even discussions like this:https://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9340&start=30 They all leave me convinced that philosophy only serves to either rip joy from you by questioning what makes you happy or to muddle things to the point of stagnation. I mean they can't even define good and bad let alone agree on what is or is not either option.Machina (talk) 01:51, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Might I suggest then Machina, that you get over it, never pick up a philosophy book again, never attend a philosophy lecture, not watch philosophical videos and perhaps GO DO SOMETHING ELSE!? Best of luck in whatever non-philosophical intellectual endeavor you engage in. Shabi  DOO  02:25, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As someone who attended one semester of philosophy (bachelor) at the University of Brasília, I can attest that some philosophy courses are shit. The professors are passionate, but the funding is very low and the place is decaying. Which is not the case at all with STEM fields. I really enjoyed my lectures in ancient Greek philosophy, but I decided to go for biology rather than philosophy. Maybe y'all have different experiences, but the financial environment for philosophy seems quite underwhelming. But the subject is vast and I have no doubts some people really enjoy it. 05:38, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * (I am not trying to confirm Machina's point, I enjoy philosophy, at least as a "hobby"). 05:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I only have one fellow graduate I know of who didn't end up in a nice job after graduating. Many of my friends went to work in civil service jobs (some fantastically paid EU work, political lobbying and several corporate jobs). One friend works in jurisprudence, another in AI (he had a join degree). A few friends went into theology (gross). Several are also in communications (a philosophy degree is a very good start for comms). A couple went into NGO management. One is a human rights specialist (she did her thesis on the philosophy of human rights). One friend works for a major production company. A few do advocacy work. Several are now teachers or professors themselves. One went into human cognitive development. A couple acquaintances are well published journalists. One friend is a junior diplomat in the Spanish foreign service now. It is, a raving myth that the job prospects are low in Philosophy. Though it is very true that for the first few years after graduation things go slow. For some rather slow. Appart from my buddy who is now in construction work, I don't know a single person who is complaining or regrets what they studied. Shabi  DOO  05:54, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't take it personally. It honestly really really is a total lottery who you end up with. I had awesome dorm mates in the two residences I lived in in Leuven and my erasmus year in Spain. Endless parties, awesome fun friendly people. Got along with just about everyone. Like funnest happiest years of your lives. And then I spent a year in New Brunswick Canada and, while I made friends easily on campus through class, my dorm mates were in general boring whinny dicks. Not a single fun party. Miserable unfriendly people. I honestly don't think many people liked many other people. There was just a cloudy atmosphere in the house. It's a bummer you didn't have a blast. I think everyone should have their party days in their 20s! Shabi  DOO  07:04, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

It's not a raving myth that the job prospects are low for philosophy, many people I knew had to get another degree because they couldn't land a job with their philosophy majors. Civil service sounds awful from what I heard. Even if you knew a couple people that went on to better things I'm willing to bet that much of their current jobs have nothing to do with philosophy. In fact, much of the jobs you listed don't have much to do with philosophy at all and you can land them with just about any degree. So in other words the skills you get from them don't make you much better than someone who studied a more "useful degree". At let medical school teaches you something useful, same with an engineering program, or even just a degree in business. They might not tell you personally they regret it, likely to convince themselves as well, but they are just as replaceable. Hence philosophy is still a useless degree, it's even an in-joke at my university and to several recruiters I've spoken to. So once again you end up with a degree whose skills aren't relevant to daily operation.Machina (talk) 00:05, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a prime example of you not paying attention to shit people write. I just told you every single fellow graduate but one has a very nice job. And you reduced it to "a couple people". You don't listen machina, you skim and then repackage what people say and dismiss stuff you don't like. You also just dismiss and disparage shit you don't know anything about. "Civil service sounds awful". But of course those are the jobs of millions of people doing literally thousands of different things. And it all just sounds "awful" to you? Your ability to sweep away an enormous category of things you know little about is legendary by this point. And its based on what? Your career as a civil servant? Working for a ministry? In the foreign service? As a policy researcher? Of a small evironmental agency? Of a small group that helps people? The reason some of those people were recruited for their various jobs was because them studying philosophy gave them rigorous critical thinking and analytical skills which can be applied to a huge variety of jobs and yes those skills are highly valued. It's something you've likely completely missed or looked over because you're so busy obsessing over the most abstract metaphysical questions you've missed the bread and butter of the subject. But you're so adept at dismissing shit I literally think there is nothing I can say that you won't find a way to disparage so, lets say, this is my last post on a subject you "dislike so much" but cannot stop talking about or obsessing over. Good luck Machina. I hope you find something else to do. Shabi  DOO  07:11, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * i rather like a civil service job, even though thatcherite fucknuts have made them less attractive and far from secure these days. i liked the ones i had within that whole sector. i liked earning my crust where my focus was essentially being useful to people and world at large rather than breaking my back making some other cunt rich. happier days AMassiveGay (talk) 08:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah. In fact, I don't know about the UK, but in Spain and Belgium, a civil service job is the dream for a lot of people and an EU job is the ultimate victory. Guaranteed life work, inflated salary, serious labour regulations, long lunches and, of course depending on the ministry and job, interesting work (though if you don't like work...lots of easy uninteresting work if you prefer which some obviously do). My friends in Madrid get jealous anytime someone snatches up a life-long civil service job. Shabi  DOO  08:39, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In fact I made it to the second interview of an EU job in Brussels, 58,000€ (virtually tax free) in a beautiful office building with nice people. Lost out to it to another guy. Biggest career tragedy of my life. After the second interview the guy sponsoring my application took me to the employee restaurant for lunch. I wish he hadn't. Somehow the ministry snagged a french chef. Three course lunches and wine for 5€ for employees. The lunch alone made it a devastating traumatic loss. Shabi  DOO  08:47, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * (ec) once upon a time it was so in the uk. now its all contracts, and business needs and efficiencies after efficiencies, while elements in press vilify civil servants (a hugely broad term - driving instructors are civil servants for example. are nhs staff civil servants? its not all walking corridors of whitehall is what i mean) as lazy and wasteful and begrudge you getting paid a fair wage. used to be the lower pay than the private sector was balanced with job security now just the lower pay, and services get more and more stripped back and understaffed, suddenly those people complaining about paying your wages find the services provided are broken and thus justify their antipathy.
 * ive only ever been in positions of drudgery, mind. still preferable to drudgery in private sector. its nice to feel useful and not just out for yourself, or whoever it is reaping the rewards of your toil. AMassiveGay (talk) 09:06, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Look...once upon a time I thought I loved philosophy when I took it in high school. But then more I got into it the less I could make out what people were saying. The language or terms people use just confused me and the parts I could make out shocked me. It was nothing like I thought it was in high school.Machina (talk) 01:48, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Cartesian epistemology is fucking useless to me. Pragmatism is the only needed philosophical view. Pretty much everything was called philosophy before it became useful. Metazero 14:13, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, now you're getting it. Consider this. You can blame philosophy for for injury, but did you learn how to use it? If your injury stems from philosophy, I'm really sorry but nobody certified you to use it.  You might know some inner workings and problems with it, that's the self-reflective human experience, but that doesn't mean it's a useless tool.   Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:54, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

What's a good Batman comic to read?
I've read TDKR, Year One, The Long Halloween, and several others. Do y'all know of any? — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  20:21, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You've read the Long Halloween, so if you haven't read the "Dark Victory" yet, you should. It's great. Also, "The Man Who Laughs" and "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" are great in my personal opinion. 20:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Killing Joke has...problems...that even | Alan Moore admits to. Still, it has its moments. 20:41, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth. IF only for the incredible artwork by Dave McKean, added bonus, the story is excellent too. Shame the rich orphan using his millions to beat the fuck outta people as a solution to societies ills instead of spending his millions on engagement, funding and support doesn't wear well these days. Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:34, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I never managed to read through Arkham Asylum. The art is fantastic, but the fonts are just too hard for my eyes. I understand the attempt to express insanity through fonts, but I just couldn't handle it. I still have it in my bookshelf though, so maybe one of these days... 21:43, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know many, but White Knight was pretty interesting. Metazero 23:13, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Batman #66 from 1951, the Joker forces Batman into a boner. Spud (talk) 01:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've been a rabid comix fanatic for over 40 years, but I have only a few Batmans in my collection. I do consider a classic of the genre. But for pure classic Batmans, the boner episode can't be beat. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 01:55, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Can recommend the Killing Joke to be quite honest. Moore is one of the most fickle creators out there, and I'd hardly take his opinion on a work as gospel as to how it should be viewed. The man is kinda notorious for having piss poor relations with DC (not unjustified), which makes his opinions on... anything to do with stuff he made for DC kinda dismissable. That said, yeah there's definetly a Women in refrigerators problem with the comic that Moore did admit to. Beyond that, I'd honestly say that in spite of everything, it has one of the most uplifting messages in comics out there and you'd be selling yourself short by not reading it. Just stay the hell away from anything that DC attempted afterwards to cash in on it (the closest that you might get for a "good spiritual successor" is the recent Joker movie, and that's honestly mostly because Joaquin Phoenix is just a fucking incredible actor. 11:00, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Mad Love" by Bruce Timm & Paul Dini is excellent, one of the best DC comics of all time (no, really). But stay far away from the proto-fascist "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" and the downright terrible and full-on fascist "All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder". Dendlai (talk) 03:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Anything from the earlu 1980s or before - really, anything from before Frank Miller got a hold of him - will be better than anything that followed. If you want Batman as he should be, watch the Adam West TV show.  The comics from that era can also be highly recommended.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 06:15, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I never finished reading White Knight, but from what I read it was pretty good. I've also read Batman: Year 100 now that I think of it, great work of cyberpunk right there. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  07:58, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also,, I don't plan to. Linkara's reviews of them are funny enough as it is. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  08:00, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Batman: Year 100 by Paul Pope is fantastic. His art is out of this world, and it's set in a sort of dystopian future surveillance state. Must read. 138.207.198.74 (talk) 16:14, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No Man's Land is probably the best Batman story-arch. I also enjoyed Batman Black & White. Black casebook is super wild,  and helps the context for The Black Glove. The book I kept finding myself reading over and over again was The Gates of Gotham which kind of ties in to the Court of Owls, but has an anti-robber-baron message.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:35, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have a mystery Batman thing, I had a Batman comic as a kid, probably 1993 no later than 97, where the joker woke up in a strange fantasy universe, was told he was just a painter, I think, who fell off a ladder and got knocked out. In the new universe, Batman and the Joker were tyrants, and I remember vividly the way they were drawn.  Batman was crazy musclebound with hook shaped nipples, fantasy land Joker was similar, Batman and Joker tore the city apart and kept everyone in fear was the theme and in the end of 1 normal guy coma Joker smeared white paint on his face and cliffs were hanged upon. The Joker is such a cool villain. I got the comic in a dump trade from my brother for my MTG starter pack, I let all my comics go in a garage sale when I was about 11.  The collection was a hodge-podge, nothing in series, but I had memorized every one of them. Not so clear on them a million years later.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:45, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have a mystery Batman thing, I had a Batman comic as a kid, probably 1993 no later than 97, where the joker woke up in a strange fantasy universe, was told he was just a painter, I think, who fell off a ladder and got knocked out. In the new universe, Batman and the Joker were tyrants, and I remember vividly the way they were drawn.  Batman was crazy musclebound with hook shaped nipples, fantasy land Joker was similar, Batman and Joker tore the city apart and kept everyone in fear was the theme and in the end of 1 normal guy coma Joker smeared white paint on his face and cliffs were hanged upon. The Joker is such a cool villain. I got the comic in a dump trade from my brother for my MTG starter pack, I let all my comics go in a garage sale when I was about 11.  The collection was a hodge-podge, nothing in series, but I had memorized every one of them. Not so clear on them a million years later.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 07:45, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm getting a beer
It's been a hell of a week both on the wiki and in real life for me. I'm going out to buy some beer because I really need it. I'll see you all in about 14 hours, I guess, when it will be the start of a new day for ,e. Spud (talk) 11:00, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Whiskey before beer, your in the clear!-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:20, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've got a bottle of Highland Park and about 5 litres of beer waiting for me to get home from work. Need to replenish the beer supply tomorrow, but the scotch should last me through the weekend. 16:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It goes, "Beer and wine, that's fine. Wine and beer, bad idea." So, "Whiskey before beer, you're in the clear. Beer before whiskey.... makes you frisky?" No. That'd be a good thing. Anyway, I'm happy to say that the world seemed like a much better place after four cans of Heineken. Spud (talk) 03:30, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * El Frutero.jpg found this thing called "El Frutero Sour Ale" that is made by a local brewery in Virginia and has a sweet and sour flavor accented with a distinctive hot pepper taste. For bonus points the brew's label has a picture of a cartoon frog holding a flaming popsicle with his tongue hanging out. After a couple of these, all the drama here seems rather...sublime. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 03:45, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally I'm drinking blood orange cider rn. Fucking delicious-Hastur! (talk) 05:49, 19 September 2020 (UTC)