RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive360

Homeopathy
The crazy government of my country, India, has decided to officially promote an homeopathic drug - Arsenic, sugar pill, 30X dilution, for safety from coronavirus! That's right. Incidentally, some a family related to my grandmother, were all homeopathic doctors. So they have put their trust, and are buying this state-sponsored vaccine. And my father tells me that homeopathy works because his father had brought a homeopathic sugar pill for a cousin suffering from appendicitis. And according to the tale, it cured the problem in a day. Am I supposed to take that seriously? Teerthaloke101 (talk) 08:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * At least India isn't promoting bleach as a cure for coronavirus. — Oxyaena Harass  09:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No, but their "guidance" is almost in the same league.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:27, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Your dad's tale is standard placebo effect, which is the main thing that makes the average person (i.e. not "true believers") think maybe there is something to this homeopathy stuff. The odds are pretty good it wasn't appendicitis but just something like bad gas. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I had not read this. What the hell is wrong with people's brains? Teerthaloke101 (talk) 10:09, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The Ministry of AYUSH has a quack Miranda warning of sorts at the bottom, "Disclaimer: The above advisory does not claim to be treatment for COVID 19." Bongolian (talk) 19:51, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So it does. Interesting.  Their website  Ministry of AYUSH  probably needs a page actually as there is a load of weird stuff there.  Not all with discalimers.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:06, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good project to spearhead. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 00:57, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This is literally just standard politician's syllogism: we must do something; this is something; we must do this. Then they have at least the appearance of "doing something about it". You don't think this is motivated by strict scientific reasoning, do you? --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:05, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Is there a gif like this but for other continents?
I am talking about this but for other continents and if there are, where can I find them. Tuxer (talk) 14:43, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No. It's not supposed to be for a continent. It's supposed to be for the Arabic language and it includes flags of countries in Africa and Asia where Arabic is spoken. However, there's no reason why somebody shouldn't create gifs like that for all the continents. Spud (talk) 15:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Spud. It would be useful for the situations where it's it's basic this entire region instead of putting down like 5 or six flags. I could take a look into doing that later today. (Technically there are other versions of that file, but like Spud said, they're actually countries that use 'X' as an official language, not countries in 'X' region/continent. More info here: Template:Ar.)--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 15:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So, it's a Commons file, I should be able to modify it pretty easily to get a countries of the Middle East version. I'll do a few regions and upload them there and bring the links over, but my lunch half-hour just ended so it'll have to wait until later today.--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 16:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Spud (talk) 16:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Okay,, we have some flag loops of country flags for regions. Middle East flag loop.gif (Middle East), Central America Flag loop.gif (Central America), Canada Mexico United States flag loop.gif (Canada, Mexico, United States). At some point, I might make a European version of this, since technically the EU flag refers to a specific entity which excludes a bunch of European countries, like the UK, Norway, Switzerland, etc, so it's not rally a suitable substitute for continent of Europe.--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 21:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I have thanked you over on Wikimedia Commons. I will thank you again here. Thank you very much. They're great. Spud (talk) 01:14, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Deleted page
The below is copied and pasted from a comment I just posted on the talk page of Kill-all-uglies, a page I just deleted. I am reposting it here so others can see that I have deleted this page and the reasons I have done so and weigh in and respond on this decision as they see fit.

I have just deleted this page due to the obvious lack of notability, and lack of coverage in any independent sources, of its subject, and the sensitivity of many of the allegations and events described on this page. Furthermore, pages about this person have been deleted from Wikiquote and (repeatedly) from Real Life Villains Wiki. If anyone disagrees with this action they are welcome to revert it and explain why. Jinkinson (talk) 16:08, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you did the right thing. Spud (talk) 16:25, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Luddite needs help
I may have found the scoop of the century, but my computer skills are close to zero (at one point in my life I repaired IBM Selectrics, I did redeem myself by ditching my B.A. in History/Political Science and ginger back to college to get a BSN in nursing. (The first thing you do is turn it upside down and shake it to see how much crap, like erasers, paper clips, loose change, crumbs from lunch or a snack or meal, and all kinds of assorted junk fall out, including quite a few roaches once, evidently it was nice, warm, and homey. About 30% of the time, problem fixed due to my repairman acumen.) Anyway, the Daily Mail.co.uk may have actually posted its first accurate, decent, and good story in its lifetime. They may have occasionally hit one mark, but all three? I think not! They made a pretty decent showing covering the antiscience coronavirus protests in Michigan and some of the people behind it while also taking swipes at their Mormons Losing Money (MLM) scams that are making them rich. If someone with the know how could post the info to the current news section I sure would appreciate it. Thanks. Willie Earl https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8238433/Organizer-Michigan-lockdown-rebellion-pushed-bogus-cure-coronavirus.html
 * Sadly IMHO it's a little bit old IMHO for the "what is going on with the coronavirus" page (April 21) but it might be interesting to put this in our COVID-19 page on lockdown protesters to further correlate that group with woo-pushers. He's definitely the leader of a notable Facebook anti-quarantine group (recently shut down). The podcast he makes is littered in various places across the Internet such as here, seems minor but still. He seems to also be involved in the motivational speaker scene (also not a surprise). I'll have to verify the quotes when I get a chance because Daily Mail, but if true, it's one of the few times a Daily Mail article actually is worth anything. Soundwave106 (talk) 19:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

A conundrum
This, of course, not ideal. I have dropped off from music sharing. There was a complaint a while back that was like "3 youtube videos wrecks the page," and I want to kinda abide that nonsense, since I don't know, but I'm also a rude boy at heart [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLAlgnF1iLA[/youtube.com] I just took a break while I was writing this out and had a potential breakthrough, what if we had poll-page for music videos? I know YouTube already functions with upvotes and downvotes, but there could be a link without an embed and a short description and a signature on each one. I am likely to go on very long this plus that minus that kind of diatribes from this point forward. Can I get a ban until Tuesday? Monday is a holiday. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:09, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Basically, I'd like to have no input since I don't actually work on the site. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:20, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that dumping moving music videos into their own separate page somewhere would be a great idea.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:25, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Since this is the Saloon Bar, can we call that hypothetical page the Jukebox? Spud (talk) 11:08, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Excellent suggestion!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:25, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Music videos are generally non-missional. So, it's a waste of bandwidth and RW's cash, which could instead be used to fund system maintenance and upgrades. If you're here primarily to do non-missional stuff, there are better places to do it. Bongolian (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure you if are responding to anyone in particular but I have never posted a music video in my life and I have no intention of doing so. Furthermore I support your implicit suggestion that they be banned.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 06:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Let's not make a song and dance about it. Anna Livia (talk) 10:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I understand. I would have to sandbox it, I'm not so cold as to think there's no merit to art, and I'm not so impractical as to think there's a way for me to actually maintain it.  My plan is inadvisable, I checked the fossil record, I basically live in sandbox, but it wouldn't be good for me to run the sandbox. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 00:40, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Ethics of Human Cloning
I was thinking about it after completing the "Newsflesh" trilogy by Mira Grant. At the end of the second book a dead main character was cloned and had all memories of the original person she was cloned from.

Now, would it truly be ethical to completely clone a human being with all memories of their dead counterpart? I personally don't think it would actually be ethical if you cloned a person with full memories of their previous form. Might cause serious emotional harm in the long run. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 14:50, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * How are you going to clone memories? The clone would only have the DNA - not the memories.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:09, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, in general the sci-fi concept of cloning is way off compared to what an actual clone would look like. Strictly speaking a clone doesn't have to resemble its progenitor in any way at all.Flandres (talk) 16:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Would cloning a person with their old memories ve immoral though? How is it less immoral than bringing an actual baby into the world?  One is entirely defenseless and devoid of any knowledge and is a tiny defenseless being, the other one has the advantage of years of knowledge to give it a fighting chance.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 18:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm guess that's a good point. Is it moral to produce helpless, tiny, ignorant humans?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:40, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * what kind world has the tech to produce clones with someone elses memory but babies are seemingly abandoned at birth in the wilderness? whose memories does a clone have might impact how things go for them, and how such clones are viewed. what purpose was the clone for? a dying king gives a clone his memories to continue his rule as if still the same person. only the king is still dead, and a clone who remembers the dead kings memories is a no body with a unearned sense of entitlement, their only advantage is to the dead kings biographers. id imagine clones wouldnt be popped out and abandoned but would released after a period of orientation and support while a clone gets to grips with its existence. does the clone get total recall of all life experienced by the original, or the hazy unreliable memory of real people? how much emotional investment to someones elses memories? will it think the same or feel the same way about those memories? who knows its a clone? does the clone know? can you co exist with your clone? are you certain you are not the clone?
 * what do amnesiacs tell us about the effects of memory on personality? would you still be a prick if you forget that you were a prick? AMassiveGay (talk) 23:28, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

How do I screenshot CP using the bot?
I posted on thios topic on the Tech Support page, but nobody replied. 17:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There used to be a functioning capturebot that would do this sort of thing automatically. You're basically on your own, but we have instructions for the manual methods here: Help:Screenshots. Bongolian (talk) 20:04, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Epoch Times in my mailbox
I got an unsolicited copy of Epoch Times today in my mailbox. It appears to be similar to the one that was distributed in Canada last month, but this one is 16 pages instead of the 8-page Canadian one. It includes an editorial that say that COVID-19 should be called the 'CCP Virus', and insinuates that the virus might have been developed at the "Wuhan Institute of Virology, China's only P4 lab" (P4 is the highest level of ). Bongolian (talk) 03:10, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Whoever distributed is certainly mistaken into thinking you own a pet bird in your house. 03:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Or maybe they think the toilet paper shortage is still a thing?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 06:53, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Canceling
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think this is necessary: I don't think cancel culture is a good idea. Of course, being more unpopular because of a bad opinion is something. Having your life ruined and getting death threats is a completely different story. Now that I said it, one of you can dox me for being to right-wing. In fact, canceling people, once done by the left, has now been manifested by the far-right. For example, Jeannine Cummings got death threats because she wrote a book supporting Mexican migrants, even though she wasn't a migrant. A lot of things that lefties do end up on the other side of the spectrum. I think this wiki is becoming more and more conservative, and it's easy to see why. If you excuse me, let me prepare for if I get doxxed, or even murdered for my opinion. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  19:46, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I guess to me it depends on what level we're cancelling people. I've no qualms with Louis CK being driven from the limelight.  He's rich, he'll be fine.  Probably a little too fine.  But sometimes people seem to want to target much less fortunate individuals and if they end up out of a job that hurts a lot more. - "Shut up, Brx." 19:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * "Cancel culture" is just a new term for the various mobs that love a celebrity scandal getting worked up about whatever tickles the mob's anger button that week. It is not new. Just ask or  or, fuck, even the . (As these examples show, it's not just the tool of angry hard-headed left-wingers.) Being a celebrity means being a public "brand", so some of this comes for the territory. But sometimes they say more about the audience than anything else. For instance, booting the Dixie Chicks off mainstream country radio simply for feeling ashamed that Dubya was president (not an unreasonable opinion at all, mind you!) may have made the jingoists feel good or something, but the only real net effect was that it only confirmed that mainstream country radio was boring and monotone (foreshadowing the devolution of the mainstream into misogynist, predictable, dumb "bro-country"), and that the only interesting, real country music made anymore usually was given the "alt-country" or "Americana" label, and wasn't anywhere near a mainstream station dial. Because a celebrity is a public figure, sexual misconduct and violent acts will have even more impact. It's not new for a career to be derailed by sexual mischief, either (just ask ). The only issue here from my perspective comes when the charges aren't real (see Fatty Arbuckle) yet the yellow journalism smear-a-thon (whether it be, the Daily Mail, or low-IQ YouTube vloggers) acts like it is. Soundwave106 (talk) 02:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

its one of the few options for people have to effect any kind of change, where public discourse on social media is largely screaming into a void smeared with shit, and political and electoral systems seem to feel disenfranchising for one reason or another. you effect immediate change at local level, maybe briefly touching on national levels. but the local level means targets might not always warrant the attention. the issues might become secondary to the power trip, while some sides are impacted more than others. louis ck for example, can get away with much, his fanbase will ignore criticism from feminists or the left. his audience wont cancel him while those who would are not going gigs in the first place to miss their custom. someone on the left however, right winger will go after with hypocritical zeal, while the their natural audience will reject anything short of ideological purity. the right is bolstered, while the left eats itself. dialogue, concensus, the building of bridges and the greater good. takes time and effort to even to agree to your goals, while coalitions and good will can vanish in a moment not defeated by robust argument but by simply shouting louder. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:37, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Boycott, shunning, and similar tactics inherently skew right-wing. This is basically how the Roman church was able to sweep their child abuse problem under the rugs for years, even when it was generally common knowledge around newsrooms and courthouses.  But if a news outlet dared to raise the subject, the priests would tell the faithful to go after their advertisers.  These are the weapons of outraged piety.  And in the echo chamber of social media, people are encouraged to treat their political attachments as sacred truths, so that their answer to contrary opinion is to burn the blasphemer.  This is a very bad thing.  And it cuts both ways; among certain circles 'socialist' is an insult combining 'tyrant' and 'traitor'.  You may have noticed that soldiers and police officers are all 'heroes' now; I remember when they were all 'pigs', so this will never sit well with me.  And I certainly don't think Louis CK deserved any kind of reprisal.  I was only peripherally aware of what he had made anyways, but the USA is terribly cruel to creative types and does not need to be made crueller. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 21:24, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I really don't see how boycotting is inherently rightwing. The Montgomery bus boycotts spring to mind- "Shut up, Brx." 21:36, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Some cancel culture is excessive, a few people get dinged for simply saying something unwise or having said something that was fully tollerated 20 years ago. But a lot of it is totally above board. How would you propose moderating cancel-culture? Shabi  DOO  00:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The notion that things were 'tolerated' 20 years ago and have become intolerable now is deeply repugnant. Why are people today so brittle?  How did we come to such a place where we're in such a hurry to move backward?  Morally aggressive proprieties are inherently right-wing, because the aggressors here have arrogated to themselves the power to declare words and works taboo and unfit for public consumption.  No amount of 'feminist' or other dubiously leftist cant can conceal that they're basically standing in the shoes of Mary Whitehouse or Tipper Gore. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 05:16, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I feel like this video and its transcript version are relevant to this discussion. 03:48, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What the hell Smerdis? Outright racist charicatures were tollerated. Calling someone a stupid faggot was tollerated. It isn't any more. While I certainly agree that in some cases (not the worst) if someone is found to have done this in the past, ruining their lives is overkill. But if their reaction is to just defend it, as though they still agree with it, is as bad as doing it now. I've sensed over the last couple days, both here and in the coop, that some people feel reacting to racism or homophobia or grossly offensive shit is somehow overkill, or we just shouldn't be offended or in your case that its simply "brittleness". Sorry privileged person, but if you have ever suffered real persecution, daily shame, hid who you are, live under discrimination, have been physically or psychologically abused...ITS NOT SOMETHING THAT EASY TO JUST DISMISS. And we shouldn't have to fucking deal with it. It's the 21st century. This shit is old and should be over with. Listening to people tell you "not to get so worked up over it" is almost as bad as being insulted or intimidated or made to feel like a sub human. Fuck that shit. I agree...some cancel culture is over the top. Not all of it. Some of it makes total damn sense. People should stop saying pointless, stupid, intimidating, demeaning, offensive shit. Just fucking stop it. It doesn't hurt anyone to stop being offensive. Offensive people are the ones who have to get over themselves.  Shabi  DOO  06:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * “But if their reaction is to just defend it, as though they still agree with it, is as bad as doing it now.”
 * It seems that the concept of disagreeing with something while believing that it should not be suppressed by force is disappearing from our culture. This is a bad thing, and so obviously bad just a few years ago that it was used as a comedy premise. https://youtu.be/hxEARZCQhoE


 * “Sorry privileged person, but if you have ever suffered real persecution”
 * It sounds like you’re imagining a hypothetical person who has been oppressed, then getting offended on their behalf. This is not a reasonable thing to do, let alone use as a basis for policies. I would propose that people who have experienced “real oppression” would typically not be very concerned about words on the Internet. The people who implemented the First Amendment, for example, had just fought a war against a government where various forms of speech were considered treason and sedition.


 * “ITS NOT SOMETHING THAT EASY TO JUST DISMISS”
 * It actually is. The only person who can control your emotional reactions to words is you, and you don’t have to become upset at words you disagree with. Many people don’t, after all. Children used to be taught a little rhyme about sticks and stones to put this sort of thing in perspective. Physical violence warrants aggressive defensive measures, but words do not. An inability to moderate one’s emotions in response to minor negative stimuli is what emotional brittleness is, and it used to be something that children were expected to grow out of.


 * “It's the 21st century. This shit is old and should be over with.”
 * It’s actually rather new, historically speaking. It’s generally been the case in human societies that people faced severe punishments for speech that offended mobs or those in power. But around the Enlightenment, some people argued that freedom of speech is important, and this was used as the basis of laws in some places. These laws have been in place long enough now that people have forgotten why they were put there.


 * “It doesn't hurt anyone to stop being offensive.”
 * Likewise, being offensive doesn’t hurt anyone. The offended party is the one responsible for any “hurt” since they have unilateral control over whether and to what degree it occurs (unilateral control is a useful heuristic for assigning responsibility, you see). And conflating taking offense with being hurt is sloppy conceptual mapping that leads to silly conclusions like that people should stop being offensive. If that’s what you want, go ahead and give a clear delineation of precisely what is offensive and what is not. Since the notion of what is offensive is subjective and varies from person to person, that’s not a reasonable basis for an actionable policy. I think that the views you expressed here are very offensive, for example. Are you prepared to stop expressing them because of that? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 11:00, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * P.S. This is an authoritarian-libertarian issue, not a liberal-conservative one.
 * the above post is utter nonsense that can only be true for unfeeling automatons living in a bubble divorced from all reality and human experience. nursery rhymes are not known for their scientific rigor and I bet your mother told all bullies ae cowards who will run away when confronted, a similarly bullshit piece of advice mothers tell their children thats patently false. that words can do no harm, or that only you are responsible for the hurt words can do is absolute dogshit, that displays a callousness devoid of empathy and an ignorance of mental health issues such as self harming behaviour and suicide. its an argument so often made by those who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions or to even consider other people or the environment they occur in, or to moderate their own egregious behaviour. here it is an argument so abstracted from anything resembling real world examples, where it would be a first rate display of selfishness and victim blaming, devoid of any context it is delusional self aggrandisement of a supposed moral fortitude and an inhuman level of emotional control and detachment. its not difficult to dig up examples of harm to individuals effected by the words of others. its not difficult to see where words contribute to febrile athmospheres that have led to physical assaults and murders. I agree it is all easy to dismiss, with obliviousness and semantic pedantry. just not convincingly. actual suicides are less easy to dismiss. the murder of jo cox cant be handwaived away. the emotional impact of ones words cannot be separated from the physical actions or harm produced. is that not the point of ones words? o illicit some kind of effect? sadly just as easily inspiring festering hate or self loathing as charity and bon homme.
 * its curious that this argument is always made along side a lazy defense of free speech. I wonder why free speech is of any worth, given how little you think speech can do. even the most stubborn free speech absolutists accept that can speech cause harm and is a price we pay. AMassiveGay (talk) 13:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I see we have an article No platform which goes into issues related to this.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In the generally free West, except for certain boundaries, nobody can tell anyone what entertainment to consume in the end -- it is a personal decision. The danger of any "cancel culture" comes only with any sort of ruling authority. If small, there is the possibility of a "" deal, where localized prissy moralists ban works of considerable merit for moralistic idiocy and thus the only long term impact is a sort of a Streisand effect. If large, you get despicable situations where authoritarians arrest/purge/execute any artist they don't like (see in Germany or Stalin's "). I have not seen any sort of "ruling authority" with "cancel culture", it's all Twitter mob opinion. So what's the problem? As I see it, it is just an opinion. In older times, I thought a comedian like  was a sexist homophobic asshole (an act, but not a funny one). There is, unfortunately, an audience for that bullshit, but he's not funny to me, so I didn't watch. I suppose I "cancelled" him in modern terminology, I prefer terms like I think he sucks. There are a few artists over the years where their off-duty behavior became shitty enough to me that it overtakes the art, and I no longer support their product (Scott Adams comes to mind for me) and their are a few artists where for me the art is too good in spite of some serious character flaws ( (racist dipshit) and  (don't leave your kids with him) come to mind here). These are all my personal opinion, nothing more, nothing less. If a Mary Whitehouse like figure begins emerging from "cancel culture", let me know, because that's when the issues might start. At present, I struggle to think of an artist actually significantly impacted by "cancel culture" to be honest (hell I actually can't recall if Mary Whitehouse even changed anything significantly). At least, not in a way that wouldn't have been similar in the last 40 years or so. (Roseanne Barr was booted off TV for being racist in public? Being racist in public would get you booted off TV in 1988, too.) Soundwave106 (talk) 18:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Except of course I have dealt with LGTBQ+ bullying my whole life. And it still comes up. Even in a gay paradise like Madrid I face insults for holding hands, disease when I bring up my identity and conceal who I am while traveling to more conservative neighbourhoods or other countries. I've heard the word faggot used derogatorily a dozen times this week in public. The best of us can only take it so much. I say to all the poeple who have never have never undergone life with daily bullying (especially in highschool) for an inherant quality you cannot change and daily reminders about how subhuman you are...you have no fucking clue what it's like. Fuck you telling us to just let it pass. It gets easier if you live in a bubble and it gets less exhausting but it is only natural to get exasperated. The comments don't just mean a shitty opinion. But they add up. And it makes life miserable for most people and under no circumstances will I not call out this bullshit. If I poked you in the face five times a day and after a week you lashed back and I told you to just calm down and let it go you'd be as incredulous as most marginalized people are when they are told not to be so brittle. Fuck that shit and fuck you. The solution is beyond simple: stop saying offensive shit. It literally costs you absolutely nothing to not be offensive and makes the world a whole lot less miserable for millions of people. I no longer have an ounce of patience for dipshits who don't know a second of what its like to be beaten down...to be told not to make a big deal about being beaten down. Shabi  DOO  11:51, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ever hear of Daryl Davis? In addition to being an unbelievable musician, he's gotten more than 200 people to leave the KKK through a lot of listening and letting people talk their own way into showing themselves how untenable their views are. Obviously it's not 100% successful, but he sure has a lot more robes in his closet than I do. And when someone said it wasn't the job of marginalized people to explain themselves, he completely disagreed and said it was everyone's job to explain themselves; yeah, it's tiring, but lots of things are tiring and we do them anyway. Notably absent from his repertoire is shutting people down. The documentary on him is called Accidental Courtesy, I'd link to it if I could find it but there are plenty of interviews and speeches of his readily available. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 18:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So, here's the thing. Most people who are "canceled" or "deplatformed" (The term you are using "Canceling" as a euphemism for) tend to be public figures. Very few tend to change their views. It's easy to deconvert some nobodies, normal people who follow, it's quite another to tackle someone like say... Richard Spencer. So. Until someone deconverts several major white supremacist figures using "Debate over deplatforming", I'll remain skeptical of methods like this one. 19:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems to me that Grand Wizards and Grand Dragons in the KKK are, in their world, fairly major figures, if not necessarily in the broader public. Though Davis actually did speak once about Richard Spencer when asked about him in his heyday, Davis said it'd likely be a few years but would almost inevitably be knocked off as top dog (was he ever right about that...) and then there was a good chance he'd be someone salvageable. He emphasized it doesn't happen overnight, so if it does happen it'll be a while yet, but it'll sure be great if it does happen; clearly punching him didn't work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 19:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't advocate for punching Spencer. 19:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Didn't mean to imply you did, only noting that 1. it happened and didn't dissuade him from his views and 2. the Davis approach is the diametric opposite. Don't want to make it seem you advocated for it, sorry. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 19:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

“the above post is utter nonsense ” Since you’re not making the case yourself, let’s go through that blog post.

“1. We’re hardwired to feel emotional pain as well as physical pain.” Yes, obviously. Like physical pain, emotional “pain” (an unpleasant sensation at experiencing negative emotions) serves as a driver that prompts aversion to potentially harmful things. That does not imply that emotional pain is itself harmful, which is in part the issue under contention. For contrast, physical pain is typically prompted by physical damage (that is, harm) to the body.

“2. Social pain may be more like physical pain than not.” By which the blogger is referring to some sharing of the neural circuits being involved in each. Which is, again, unrelated to the issue under contention.

“3. Words hurt just like sticks and stones.” Figuratively, that is. This section talks about negative effects of emotional trauma. Which are real. But they are rather different from physical trauma in being dependent on the emotional states of the people experiencing them, which are or can be under the control of the people experiencing them. Which is the point of contention.

“4. Some of us are more sensitive to pain—both social and physical— than others.” Naturally. People are different, after all. But pain is not synonymous with harm. A bullet can cause harm regardless of how much it hurts, and this harm does not depend on the emotional state of the person getting shot. Not so with emotional trauma, which is a very big difference.

“5. Emotional or physical, pain hurts more when it’s deliberately inflicted.” Sure. But again, this is unrelated to the issue under contention.

“6. "Getting over it” is so hard you may need help.” The content of this section deals with the shared neural circuits mentioned in point 2 (and is therefore unrelated to the issue under contention), but the section title does bear discussion. Emotional resilience varies between people. I said that adults used to be expected to be able to moderate their emotional responses to minor negative stimuli. A psychologically healthy adult should be able to get over daily problems without help. That doesn’t mean that their resilience is unlimited, and many psychologically healthy adults may acquire emotional trauma that they need help to overcome. However, this would be for things like fighting in a war, and for perspective, many people who go through things like that get over it just fine on their own. People are different, after all. But psychologically healthy adults do not need help to get over words on the Internet. That should be tautological, but here we are.

You posted this as if it supported your case. Did you actually read it?

“that can only be true for unfeeling automatons living in a bubble divorced from all reality and human experience” Or, you know, adults with agency and self-control. Those used to be desirable traits, and lacking emotional maturity was regarded as a serious character flaw.

“nursery rhymes are not known for their scientific rigor” Nursery rhymes of this kind traditionally came about as ways to teach basic knowledge to children. As with other traditions, the ones that worked well enough to persist tended to hang around. It’s not science, but have many of your own beliefs been subject to such empirical testing as that?

“I bet your mother told all bullies ae cowards who will run away when confronted, a similarly bullshit piece of advice mothers tell their children thats patently false” That’s actually a rather new interpretation of bullying. Traditional remedies for bullying tended to let children work things out for themselves, and thereby learn to manage conflicts on their own, either by learning to conduct interactions with hostile people (because that doesn’t have any relevance to modern life, right?) or by physical violence that dissuades further bullying. I find it curious that you too present a hypothetical situation where you imagine people acting a certain way, then use that in an argument as if it were relevant. In my experience, bullies typically bully for the enjoyment of tormenting others. Deny them that emotional reaction, and they tend to lose interest. The one time my parents got involved was when a persistent personality conflict led to disruption at gradeschool, and they coordinated with his parents to have us spend time together outside school to hash out our differences. He he eventually became one of my closer childhood friends.

“that words can do no harm, or that only you are responsible for the hurt words can do is absolute dogshit” That’s literally how it works, though. Words themselves are not harmful in any way. Unlike, say, getting struck by sticks or stones, where there is physical damage that depends on the actions of the person hitting you with the sticks or stones. Words “cause harm” (which is a misleading idiom) via emotional responses, and emotional responses are the purview of the individual that experiences them. People vary in this regard, and respond differently to the same words. This should be obvious, so perhaps the disagreement is about the question of whether people should take responsibility for themselves and exercise agency in emotional matters.

“that displays a callousness devoid of empathy and an ignorance of mental health issues such as self harming behaviour and suicide” Generally speaking, emotional trauma is not fixed by coddling the person experiencing it so that they don’t experience negative stimuli in the future. It’s fixed by teaching them cognitive techniques to manage negative stimuli and emotions in productive ways, so that they can manage problems effectively in the future. Perhaps you care more about showing how virtuous you are with vague but fervid declarations than about practical measures that improve people’s lives, but I don’t.

“its not difficult to dig up examples of harm to individuals effected by the words of others” Can you find a single example in all of human history? At least in a causal sense. As worded, you’re invoking the idea that people can be harmed, and that in independent circumstances they can be affected by the words of others, which is not what we were discussing. The links you gave don’t discuss the former at all. They’re about identity theft and assassination. Policing words is a lazy proxy for the actual issues involved.

“words contribute to febrile athmospheres that have led to physical assaults and murders” Assaults and murders are physically performed by people who choose to do them, not by words or a vague metaphysical “atmosphere”. Just three sentences before this, you were making a point about personal responsibility.

“the emotional impact of ones words cannot be separated from the physical actions or harm produced” Empirically, it’s blatantly obvious that they can, to the degree that this argument strongly implies the use of homebrew definitions. Would you care to share the definitions you’re using here?

“is that not the point of ones words?” Words are symbolic representations of concepts. Their purpose is to express or communicate information. This can include emotional expression, but that is not their only purpose

“its curious that this argument is always made along side a lazy defense of free speech.” I suspect that this has something to do with the calls to restrict speech and other expression commonly found is these arguments. And characterizing it as “lazy” doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

“I wonder why free speech is of any worth” As I mentioned above, people have forgotten the reasons for free speech. The practicality is that it’s a mechanism for resolving conflicts peacefully. Preventing undesirable speech doesn’t make conflicts go away, and preventing peaceful resolutions tends to lead to things like political violence that cause trouble for everyone.

“So what's the problem?” There is a difference between not watching something you don’t like and preventing others from watching something you don’t like. Social media mobs generally try for the latter.

“If I poked you in the face five times a day” Assault/battery depending on jusrisdiction, and grounds for a restraining order. Words and physical actions are rather different, you see.

“Fuck that shit and fuck you. The solution is beyond simple: stop saying offensive shit.” I notice that you haven’t stopped expressing your offensive views. After all, you’re spitting on the legacy of the Enlightenment and much of the cultural infrastructure that allows our society to have nice things, and I find that to be very offensive. Why the double standard? Can you give an objective definition of what “offensive shit” is? Keep in mind that offense is a subjective phenomenon. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 00:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * “the emotional impact of ones words cannot be separated from the physical actions or harm produced” "Empirically, it’s blatantly obvious that they can, to the degree that this argument strongly implies the use of homebrew definitions. Would you care to share the definitions you’re using here?" People are easily influenced, and words can have powerful effects on other people, your viewpoint is incredibly naive. Hitler for example was a true magician at rousing crowds into action, and into influencing others to do his bidding. Do you think he accomplished that by remaining silent, and performing mime tricks to communicate? The words of people in power grant a legitimizing effect to ideas, this is empirically demonstrable. Your typical centrist skeptic bro bullshit is just that, bullshit. Meaningless deepity. — Oxyaena Harass  00:53, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * its a long old post that has literally nothing worth unpicking. literally nothing at all. nothing remotely grounded in reality or reference to real world examples, just semantic pedantry, misrepresentations, and empty assertions. such wonderful sealioning framing an exquisite heap of dogshit to tell us we can direct our efforts to something more worthwhile. well done. its quite something. just not a very good something. AMassiveGay (talk) 01:16, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * “this is empirically demonstrable” You seem to have missed the point being discussed there. AMassiveGay was making the point that words themselves can be harmful, via words being conceptually inseparable from their associated emotional consequences, and those being conceptually inseparable from physical actions and harm. I mentioned empiricism because, if you actually look in the real world at how these things work, they’re not just conceptually separable but obviously physically separate events. You brought up Hitler, so let’s discuss Hitler. When Hitler decided that the Jews of Germany should be disarmed, his words to that effect did not teleport guns out of their possession. Rather, his words convinced people under his authority to act on his behalf, doing things like performing raids according to the firearm registry enacted in the Weimar Republic. Tangible results were produced by physical actions performed by people, not by Hitler’s words themselves. The pen being metaphorically mightier than the sword is a different issue.


 * “its quite something” It seems that you disagree with what I said there. Can you quote a single specific thing that you disagree with, and explain why you disagree with it?


 * “sealioning” You seem to have misused that bit of terminology. I wasn’t “just asking questions”, I was directly explaining why I am right and you are wrong. The questions I asked were rhetorical (“Did you actually read it?”) intended to steer the course of discussion or Socratic (“Can you give an objective definition of what “offensive shit” is?”) intended to prompt a closer examination of beliefs and the realization that my point is correct.


 * And I saw that, Oxyaena. A reminder. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 04:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hearing insults and slurs (along with looks of contempt peppered with occasional moments of aggression or even violence) beats you down. I cannot imagine how anyone on Earth would find this controversial unless they've never paid attention to it and imagine themselves somehow a psychological superman. Add that to being told by people that you are subhuman deserving lesser rights mixed with having to be careful for your physical safety in more extreme environments, unwelcome reception in others, noticeable disdain (all of this on a daily basis) and yes...those empowered enough stop tolerating it. Of course we call out offensive bullshit. And of course if we have the means to, we can make the worst offenders pay a social price. I mean a business leader saying "America sucks...this country is a piece of shit" will pay a social price and a corporate price because of their meta-offense. Why should it be any less different is someone offends all women (51% of the population). African Americans (15% of the United States population). Or LGTBQ+ (various numbers given)? Especially when they are marginalized people whose very few tools that exist to gain real equality are fighting back on offensive shit and enforcing a price? Or should we just continue living like sub-human beings in silence being the ones tolerating this shit and us being the ones paying the social price all the time? Shabi  DOO  06:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is a decent distillation of what I was getting at above (20:30 is the real heart of the matter, but why would you want to skip the kick-ass piano at the beginning and end?). Talking with, instead of at, people doesn't mean agreeing with them or promoting their ideas. It was people willing to talk with me, instead of at me, which gave an ASD person like me a chance to try to see a broader perspective; goodness knows I'm insufferable in many ways, but a few people still gave me a shot and I'm absolutely in a better place for it. I can't stand the Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield types, but allowing the anti-vax nutcases to go berserk in public now will only make them look more ridiculous when (I hope someday!) we're lining up for a COVID vaccine as they hack their lungs out. And easy for me to say, but I encourage using ASD as a foil for humor; I've been known to affect a Rain Man, and most of the humor has something relatable (this is a personal favorite). Given how much the attendant shortcomings seriously interfere with my life, at least that makes them good for something. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 07:28, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * to bon - still misrepresenting whats been said and still not providing any basis at all for any thing you claim, and not understanding the sole example given.


 * harm caused by hate speech

  its just fucking idiotic to deny any harm to an individual as a result, your arguments amount to nothing more than because you say so.


 * you don't seem to understand context. the context for hitler as an example here is anti semitic propaganda used in the Nazis rise to power, its use in consolidating power, its use in reinforcing obedience and loyalty of the rank and file of the military, and in ensuring that they would 'just follow orders' and commit ever escalating hate crimes all the way up to genocide. we could go even further an look at anisemitism that was already present and examine how hate speech perpetuated and exploited it.


 * we can see similar tactic used by other genocides that have taken place, such as Rwanda and how tutsi were dehumanised, such as through the hutu ten commandments, priming hutus to commit genocide.


 * today, we can see the radicalisation of vulnerable individuals to extremist causes, how once radicalised, it isolates them from friends and family, and from mainstream views, in a bubble of hate speech and reciprocal radicalisation, making violence seem ever more permissible.


 * you missed the point of the reference to the murder of jo cox. it was an example of how as a result of the Brexit ref, anti immigrant sentiment had been ramped up by racist reporting and racist propaganda, wartime rhetoric and the branding of all opposition as 'traitors', made racism more permissible, made racist attacks to increase, and allowed for someone to become convinced murder was necessary for the good of the country.


 * none of this happens in a bubble, they are not the sole causes of events. they are contributing and manifestations of factors that directly cause harm to individuals, their specific communities and the wider community, and contributing to the actions that may be taken by them or others. they are inherently linked and cannot be so easily separated despite your baseless insistence to the contrary, which remains dogshit. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:52, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * “I cannot imagine” I mentioned above that people are different. Some people may be figuratively “beat down”, but some people aren’t. In the scope of abuses that humans have suffered historically, insults and slurs from strangers as people go about their business isn’t particularly severe. There are still slaves in the world, for example, and they may be literally beaten down with fists, whips, or other implements. Lots of people live in physically dangerous places where they may be robbed, beaten, raped, or killed. Those things happen to millions of people each year. When faced with difficulties, people generally pick up and move on with their lives, which they can do because most humans are psychologically capable of dealing with hardship. And unlike physical abuse, verbal abuse can be prevented from causing harm by the person experiencing it. Constructing a victimhood narrative helps no one, most particularly the person experiencing the abuse, who it encourages to remain fixated rather than moving on, and to minimize personal agency leading to feelings of helplessness. Emotional trauma is fixed by maintaining normal activities including exercise and social interaction, and by therapy that teaches how to manage emotional difficulties and take responsibility for one’s life experience.


 * In a world where there are a lot of people with different opinions, it is not reasonable to prevent people with views you find offensive from speaking those views where you may encounter them. There are, after all, no objective criteria by which something may be judged offensive or not, and in a world where there are a lot of people with different opinions, you’d be hard pressed to find something that someone doesn’t consider offensive. As such, that someone finds something is offensive carries no moral or practical weight. If you want the person responsible for the offensive thing to be punished somehow, it takes a stronger case than merely being offended. After all, I note that you’re continuing to advocate for a position that I find offensive. Can you articulate why that shouldn’t meet your threshold for prohibition?


 * “harm caused by hate speech” Is this an attempt at a Gish Gallop? If you were correct here, a single example would have sufficed. But since you’re again not making the point yourself, let’s go through those links.

“Psychology and hate speech: a critical and restorative encounter” This is an editorial, not a study. It is worded as a justification of South Africa’s hate speech laws in the context of a court challenge, but the actual relevant content aligns with what I’ve been saying. That is, “hate speech” is distinct from violence. That last sentence is nearly a quote from the text, btw.

Also, it’s filled with things like “In viewing the courtroom as a space for (re)negotiating social power relations, this encounter of the psychological with the legal holds promise for transformation and restoration both within and outside of psychology”. Stuff like that is why I don’t like critiquing humanities. Try to find things with math.

“Evidencing the harms of hate speech” Aha, an actual study! And nominally the sort of thing that would be relevant! However, the structure of the study doesn’t actually investigate what we’re discussing. It interviews some minority-group people about discriminatory or derogatory speech without regard to whether it actually met a set definition of hate speech or whether the person interviewed actually experienced the speech in question. Interviews of this sort can be useful in getting a basic view of a community’s views of an issue (which was the purpose of the study), but it doesn’t provide a rigorous basis for evaluating whether something is harmful or not. To quote from the study:

“readers may disagree with the designation of some of these (“i am upset by it”) as ‘harms’ “

“some of the interviewees said they thought a target could just walk (or run) away from a hate speaker, and sometimes they brushed off the incident as being ineffective.”

“Feelings of being hurt and upset do not, and many argue should not, reach a standard for legislative intervention.”

So this doesn’t advance our discussion. It just takes your position as granted and concludes that the Australian hate speech laws are doubleplusgood. Also, N=101 is too small for the effect sizes typical of psychological studies.

“DO OFFENSIVE WORDS HARM PEOPLE?” See Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. To quote from the first paragraph, “therefore attempts to restrict speech on a universal basis are misguided.” Another quote from later on: “There also remains a fundamental problem establishing what constitutes harm or distress as a result of verbal abuse, because different researchers use different criteria. Heyman, Feldbau-Kohn, Ehrensaft, Langhinrichsen-Rohling, and O’Leary (2001) noted that there is no consensus for delineating criteria for distress from verbal or physical abuse. … Another problem is the misrepresentation of the relationship between speech and harm.” (Page 88 - please read the “Flaws in Verbal Abuse Research” section. It aligns squarely with what I’ve been saying.)

“Immigrant Suicide Rates as a Function of Ethnophaulisms: Hate Speech Predicts Death” Correlation does not imply causation. What caused death? The individual people killing themselves in various ways. I mentioned earlier that a useful heuristic for assigning responsibility is identifying anyone with unilateral control over whether something happens or not. In this sort of situation, there is such a person, so assigning responsibility is a simple matter. Do you have anything to say to that?


 * “its just fucking idiotic to deny any harm to an individual as a result” In the manner of chaos butterflies spinning causal webs through the whole of the cosmos, sure. It looks like the crux of our disagreement is that I assign personal responsibility to individuals that do or control things, while it seems that you do not.


 * “the context for hitler as an example here” is to make Oxyaena’s point above that words are tantamount to actions. I could quote the relevant bits, but they’re just up the page.


 * “priming hutus to commit genocide” Which was not the genocide itself. Do you propose that people be prohibited from convincing others to disagree with you? Or should we just stick with the prohibition on genocide here?


 * “it isolates them from friends and family” What isolates them? Their own words and actions.


 * “you missed the point of the reference to the murder of jo cox.” No, I understood the point just fine. I just disagree with it. As I said, that was an assassination. The responsibility for that event lies with the person who killed him. Why, if the speech caused it, weren’t millions of other people who had also heard that speech going out and killing politicians? It’s not because of the speech, it’s because they didn’t choose to. And Thomas Mair did.


 * “they are inherently linked and cannot be so easily separated” As parts of the cosmos, everything is inherently linked to everything else. That’s not particularly relevant for much of life, though. I just separated those things. What do you have to say to that besides “nuh uh”? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 09:08, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * i'll tell you what, I will respond when you actually respond to what was presented. I will respond when it appears you might have actually understand what was presented. I will respond when you support your assertions. there is little point otherwise. there is nothing to respond to. i'm not so arrogant as to believe my arguments are water tight or unassailable. ive made my case. ive supported it. I'm happy with it. you've misrepresented every part of it, misrepresented every point made in this thread. there is little reason to counter points made up of semantics and unsupported assertions, or a string of quotes you've taken out context that simply do not say what you claim. I say read what was written again, its pretty clear what was being said or claimed. its nice touch ending with 'nuh uh', since you have not once provided anything to support a word you have said. its all unsupported assertions. not even bothering to support your initial claims, that words can do no harm and we are responsible for our own actions, that even how something effects us is a choice. no evidence of any kind for the lack of harm has been forth coming, and no one but you has been positing personal responsibility as a binary either/or. you've only ever displayed wilful stupidity or just plain stupidity, but its not been in good faith. we are done. 12:15, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

“i'm not so arrogant as to believe my arguments are water tight or unassailable” My arguments are watertight and unassailable because I make it a general practice to know about a topic before I argue about it. It’s not difficult to produce solid arguments if you do that.

“not even bothering to support your initial claims, that words can do no harm” The context of the discussion is people being “canceled” in response to offensive speech, ostensibly because the speech is harmful. The burden of proof is on the party making such a claim, in particular that such harm warrants restrictions on or punitive measures for speech. As for support, your own links seem fine. Did you read the “Flaws in Verbal Abuse Research” section I mentioned? It’s pretty relevant. And words literally do not do any harm. To repeat, any harm resulting from words is a result of an individual’s own emotional responses, and those responses are in principle under that person’s control whether or not that control is actually exercised. If you want support for that, I could supply references for trauma therapy where people do just that, but instead have a link about Stoicism, which people have been doing for millennia. Other schools of philosophy have made the same discovery over the ages, which has resulted in things like Buddhist monks having a strong claim to being the happiest demographic group in the world. In my opinion, a society that cultivates emotional maturity and open communication is preferable to one that suppresses freedom of expression to cultivate emotional frailty.

“we are responsible for our own actions” This is rather tautological, so I had hoped we could agree here. Do you want to discuss the philosophy of agency, causality, and responsibility?

“that even how something effects us is a choice” Bullets, no. Words, yes. Just how it works. The case was closed millennia ago.

“no one but you has been positing personal responsibility as a binary either/or.” What I proposed above was a heuristic for determining responsibility in certain situations. That is: IF a single person can unilaterally decide whether or not something occurs, THEN that person is responsible. No one has disputed that heuristic, just implications that they don’t like. That political assassination you brought up, for example, was obviously the responsibility of the guy who killed the politician of his own accord. Naturally, not every situation involves a single party with unilateral control. For example, if the assassination had been a hired hit, the assassin would no longer have unilateral control over whether or not the politician would be killed or not, because the sponsor could hire a different assassin if one refuses to take the job. Both the assassin and the sponsor would bear partial responsibility in this case. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 13:45, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Free speech in and of itself
While I don't mind cancel culture for the most part (as stated above), I do feel compelled to defend the concept of free speech, at least in terms of government. While it sounds fun to simply outlaw all the points of view we disagree with, we have to remember that we live in democratic societies. If we set the precedent that it's okay to determine what people are and aren't allowed to say, we may well end up disappointed with the results. Would you want Donald Trump and a Republican majority congress to decide what is and isn't okay for you to say?- "Shut up, Brx." 20:43, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The thing is that we all heard this naive absolutist defense of free speech too many times. It's a talking point, a cliche, a meme, a car bumper sticker, with no persuasive power and naively overlooks how platforming is abused to spread viewpoints that ultimately harm people (fake news, conspiracies about the pandemic I can't remember the name of, and so on). It's also very naive and dangerous to suggest that these sort of viewpoints are simply "points of views we disagree with" as you will lump in Nazism, pedophilia, Sandy Hook truthers, death threats, doxxing, and more which are forms of speech no matter how you say otherwise.  20:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Tisane. That is all. 21:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Like I said, if it weren't for the first amendment, Trump would be deciding what is and isn't okay for us to say. And look in European nations, where open racism and nazi paraphenalia are effectively illegal.  Is Europe free of racists?  Free of bigotry?  Quite the contrary.  It's fun living in the liberal bubble, but the real world is where the work gets done.- "Shut up, Brx." 21:35, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Good thing I'm not a liberal. Also, in your child level understanding of philosophy, you may have missed that we aren't the government, that there is flexibility in what the government can and cannot censor, and furthermore your logic can be used to defend some indefensible shit. So yeah. Have fun in the kiddie pool of philosophy, I shall engage in reality. 21:41, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I do feel compelled to defend the concept of free speech, at least in terms of government. I have no idea what you were talking about, but I was very much talking about government. Anyways, if you've an interest in philosophy, this has all already been debated at length.  Look up the concept of a pastoral power.- "Shut up, Brx." 21:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok. I'm unbanning Tisane then. Cause why not? Free speech right? Oh, And Bryan See too. And really any other toxic shits I can find. 22:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Wut. I feel like there's a serious miscommunication here.  I have been talking about free speech on the government level this entire time. To clarify, I am not talking about free speech on RationalWiki, at least not in this thread. - "Shut up, Brx." 22:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that Trump is already toying with the dangerous idea of meddling with speech. His administration did try to remove references to climate change in various scientific organizations. 22:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * trump doesn't have to do anything to free speech. no one trusts the media in the us, with continued accusations of fake news and bias no one trusts anything that does not confirm ones own biases and everything is else fake news. real news is drowned out by a sea of bullshit. worked well for trump, its only the coronavirus and a 100 000 dead that's ruined it for him. your problem is you have too much free speech. its choking you. AMassiveGay (talk) 13:10, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The principal public forum of this moment is corporate controlled and privately owned. Those who confine free speech concerns to the actions of governments are literally living in the past.  I strongly believe that people who urge corporations to suppress opinions because they own the media and are not answerable to voters have chosen poorly and failed to think through the implications of what they're asking for.  This is especially true if they also hold various leftish opinions about economic policy.  Give corporations carte blanche to suppress opinions and you are inviting them to declare any opinion that might threaten their bottom line unacceptable.  This will not work out well for anyone.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 04:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * On that sentiment we're largely in agreement Smerdis. 14:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Many of the recent manifestations in media are, I think, a result of the massive proliferation of new media, creating the effect of an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of keyboards: assembling a patchwork quilt of sense and nonsense. Free speech doesn't exist everywhere. It is however, desirable that it exist somewhere. Ariel31459 (talk) 18:10, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * But corporations already control these platforms? YouTube is particularly very abusive with its demonetization of LGBTQ+ content but there's Facebook and Twitter bending to the whims of anti-vaxxers and stuff to ban and remove posts. 22:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Basically, what is anyone afraid of? That the US government would crack down on free enterprise because it is suppressing the speech of the head of the executive branch of the US?  Bluff, insane bluff, anyone who takes that seriously is fucking lost.  Like, look at that question.  Does the head of the US executive branch not have other methods of speech?  I's a power play, Trump thinks Twitter will lose money if he steps back from it, and he thinks Twitter will groan and oblige because, let's face it, people check the president's Twitter.  Maybe Twitter wants to fact check, maybe it's conspiratorial.  Are we actually afraid Twitter is going to go down?  Does Twitter ACTUALLY suppress conspiratorial baseless cuckoo bonkers garbage because it is a political motivator?  If the president of the US shuts down Twitter, say, tomorrow, what does he gain and what does he lose?  I say do it, motherfucker, do it right now if you're so big.  Collapse on the free enterprise that you benefit so much from, and see if your base can keep up with your nonsense without it.  I know Trump won't answer for anything, and shit is getting fiery, Trump is building up a fucking baseless monster.  Just cut the cord already, if you're so correct.  But he won't do it tomorrow because of Tsun Zu bullshit.  The administration wants what China and Russia have, state run media. This is a big bluff, the fewer real things, the absolute better and it doesn't matter where the false things come from right now, it's the divide and the act of suppression that hurts, fill in the truth later.    Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:14, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I literally cannot take anyone seriously who thinks that insulting, derogatory and even aggressive language (sometimes accompanied by violence) towards marginalized people who chronically face discrimination and fewer opportunities...aren't beaten down by it. Especially if its something they frequently experience. I mean...it's like saying kids who are bullied in school aren't adversely affected by it. Only in theory bullying ends when school ends, or when adults intervene or when you switch to a less toxic place. Unfortunately that bullying follows people who are visible minorities or visibly (or openly) marginalized people. The bullying...in other words lasts for life. Only in adulthood it is not always as overt and its easy to think it doesn't exist or doesn't make much of an impact. It does. For the love of God the only people who don't seem to get this are those who have never experienced (or fully see the extent of) bullying or have some miraculous psychological fortitude and are shocked that not everyone else does. And what does all of this really come down to. Why the big fight about what should be an obvious problem with the human condition? Cause you're pissed you can't use overtly offensive language? That not being able to say stupid offensive shit is such a major attack on who you are and how you express yourself that you'll start arguing that this shit doesn't adversely affect people when...you know...marginalized people have been saying out loud for decades that it does? It says more about you as a person that you'll struggle to be able to say demeaning hostile intimidating pointless offensive shit regardless of the human toll. Shabi  DOO  15:43, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I’m a bit curious as to which ”European nations, where open racism and nazi paraphenalia are effectively illegal” you are referring. True, in Germany, Nazi symbols are outlawed (at least outside of, say, educational contexts and the like), but European laws tend to focus on active and public incitement to hatred, usually with the implicit or explicit threats of violence this entails, not merely to being openly racist.

The very fact that there are several, prominent, European racists who are very active in online illustrates that the laws don’t apply to ”open racism” in general. I think that while there definitely are good arguments for the “get them out into the open” line, there are at least equally good arguments for putting certain limits on the amount of (in)direct threats you can apply to groups, just as against individuals. Basically, it makes little sense to me for it to be illegal to threaten a specific gay or Jewish or whatever person, while defining chanting threatening slogans against ALL gays, Jews or whatever in general as being fine, simply because they are depersonalised.

Indeed (Godwin alert!), reading some accounts from Germans during the Third Reich, it was exactly the depersonalised categorisation that was the most virulent among broader sections of society, rather than the targeting of specific individuals, with some Germans being shocked when such “generic” antisemitism impacted Jews they knew personally (but had kept mentally separate from the concept of “the Jews” in general). ScepticWombat (talk) 07:46, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Bizzare nonsense on WhatsApp.
Two snapshots of a bizzare nonsense rumour about Covid-19 on WhatsApp. Teerthaloke101 (talk) 08:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Clearly, the NWO isn't using a virus to kill us; they are using a bacterium to destroy the economy and build funds through the medical industry, rendering everyone subservient to GEORGE SOROS. TPTB.  Clearly, THEY are responsible and must be stopped. HairlessCat (talk) 17:07, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Most fatalities from Spanish Flu were due to opportunistic bacterial infections that were themselves the proximal cause of death. This seems to be invoking the same idea, though we’ll have to see how accurate that is. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 04:40, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The biggest problem is that Italian Ministry of Health did not say anything like what is being attributed to it. Teerthaloke101 (talk) 16:24, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I've seen similarly idiotic posts on Facebook in Portuguese. The sad thing is that there are really gullible people out there who will believe anything, including this. G Man (talk) 04:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Larry Sanger: Wikipedia Is Badly Biased🇱🇮
Just WIGO'd a blog post by Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger accusing Wikipedia of having a liberal bias. Hmm, where have we seen this before? Normally this would be a case of DFTT but given who it's coming from, I think it warrants more attention. Maybe he's trying to promote his upcoming Encyclosphere project? —  python coder    (talk &#124; contribs) 20:53, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I was compelled to give Larry Sanger a fair treatment and read his hot take but I stopped at "The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing 'Obamagate' story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump." 20:59, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh so I tried continuing and apparently, Larry Sanger is bothered at the word "false". "Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are 'false.' Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution. You might approve of Wikipedia describing Trump’s incorrect statements as 'false,' very well; but then you must admit that you no longer support a policy of neutrality on Wikipedia." He's really confused that "false" and "neutrality" aren't mutually exclusive terms. 21:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Anyway I really hate how these people try to politicize fact-checking. They expend no effort trying to understand what makes a source reliable or not, they just complain about bias when Wikipedia exercises its policy on sourcing and then the conclusion happens to run against their ideology. This man has the nerve to bring up "questions" about MMR and climate change regarding Wikipedia's bias makes him look ignorant and petulant. They don't realize they're politicizing this, and that's dangerous as they've already politicized climate change and vaccination to dire consequences. 21:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * OBAMAGATE! 21:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Is this guy trying to hop on board the profitable American conservative quackery circuit? His list is pretty much all the standard stuff that the alt-right, with a strong United States political bias, would claim about: Trump good, Obama bad, abortion evil, we must listen to "minority viewpoints" on global warming, MMR vaccines, and alternative medicine, wah I don't like what they say about Christianity. Drug liberalization is the only kinda oddball one here. The "Encyclosphere" he is trying to start has the self-referential quote "No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us." Looks like he's trying to start Conservapedia Part 2: Electric Boogaloo to me... Soundwave106 (talk) 22:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Eh, I wouldn't call it "alt-right" but just the typical brand of Fox News conservatism. Which is still an ugly set of viewpoints, particularly on climate change denial (which tends to coincide with less savory viewpoints in my experience especially in the recent years; if you're still denying human-caused climate change in 2020 there's probably more tapeworms yet to be found in there). 22:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Conspiracy idiocy has been an integral part of American conservatism for decades. 22:35, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * True. I guess my thought was more that Wikipedia's list of controversial issues has a much broader depth then mere populist USA right wing talking points. The Wiki list leans populist as a whole but is not Rush Limbaugh talking point regurgitation for sure. (For instance, it is not surprising to see fandoms with certain dogmatic elements like Star Wars and Star Trek on the Wiki list. Note that a more heady "controversial topic" like, say, the widely differing academic opinion surrounding Thomas Piketty's , doesn't even make the cut.) Doesn't matter, it seems like Sanger's been pissed off for some reason at Wikipedia since he left (his "notable" stories post-Wikipedia was, of course, the spectacular Citizendium failure, and ) so....
 * Encyclosphere? How many failed encyclopedias is too many?- "Shut up, Brx." 22:38, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Obama was a complete piece of shit president, but focusing on these fake manufactroversies instead of the real issues (charge Obama for war crimes, cause he committed plenty) does him, and the rest of the right, no favors. I would express major joy at seeing Obama arrested and sentenced for crimes against humanity however. — Oxyaena Harass  01:02, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't hold back comrade. Tell us what you really think. Ariel31459 (talk) 18:15, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * He expanded the disastrous War on Terror and further gutted the 4th Amendment than even Bush did, mocked and supported the brutalization of Occupy protesters by pigs with badges, destabilized Libya into a Jihadist shithole, really Obama was probably the biggest disappointment of the 21st century in terms of US Presidents. — Oxyaena Harass  00:07, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This was the same guy who, when launching his own "alternative" to Wikipedia in the form of Citizendium, stated that he thought the problem was that expert opinion was being overwhelmed by mob rule, and built Citizendium in such a manner that the experts would have absolute authority over the articles under their purview. Now, he's saying the opposite, that we need to let "the people" decide rather than the experts. I'd wonder what changed... except I don't really need to, it's just him being a contrarian trying to pander to right-wingers (and probably launch his next big, doomed tech venture). KevinR1990 (talk) 19:37, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

It helps to remember that Wikipedia was literally founded by Randians who knew each other through an email list for Randians. I would expect there to be more of a systematical libertarian bias, although in reality Wikipedia has a dark side and there are some power users who prevent certain articles from seeing much criticism of certain powerful people. They use byzantine rules like lawyers, and back channels to get fellow power users/administrators on board, and some Wikipedia articles are outright bought by rich men who want a complementary resume of them on the internet. They pay companies that specialize in writing articles that meet the rules and which won't be taken down, by people whose entire job is to write Wikipedia articles on behalf of clients. Itsnotthatsimple (talk) 05:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

DALP protests draft
I've started a draft on the DALP protests and I would like input, though there is already a page so I will move it. Also could someone please find links about conspiracy theories regarding the protests? Tuxer (talk) 23:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Thoughts on "And did those feet in ancient time" (Jerusalem)?
I've come across they hymn "And did those feet in ancient time" a few times recently in TV & movies. The hymn is almost a punchline in at least two Monty Python episodes, which goes over my head. As an American, it did not register with me at all as to what it was, but it always seemed peculiar to me. I was surprised to find out that the lyrics were by William Blake, with whom I was primarily only familiar with his Songs of Innocence and Experience and his graphic art. After reading the complete lyrics and reading a few commentaries on the song, I find it quite puzzling that the song is an unofficial English anthem, and there are even proposals to make it the official one. The song's lyrics actually refer to a Luddite-ish historical event ("Among these dark Satanic Mills") as well as a mystical form of British Israelism ("And was Jerusalem builded here") according to what seem to be rather mainstream interpretations of Blake's intent. Any Brits care to comment, e.g.,, ? Perhaps it's even worth making a page for it. Bongolian (talk) 05:42, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure what we would say about it. Blake was a strange and controversial character even in his own time.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 06:43, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey! I'm a Brit too. How could you overlook me? Anyway, I think a lot of the song's popularity is simply down to the words "England's green and pleasant land." I certainly don't think that many people who sing it with gusto these days genuinely think they're God's chosen people. And I'd just like to say, "And did those teeth in ancient times..." "It's a man's life in the Cardiff Rooms, Libya." Spud (talk) 07:06, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry about forgetting you, Spud. I remembered that after posting, then got distracted. Bongolian (talk) 08:09, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * ex pats don't count. splitters AMassiveGay (talk) 09:22, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * its just nice uplifting song. Jerusalem is being used as a metaphor for heaven, and as such is has been popular with lots of social movements. its has an optimism to it, that lends itself well for coming together and building a jolly future. the suffragettes used it, the labour party still uses it. England has no official anthem, god save the queen being the british one, and rather dreary, so sometimes gets played at sporting events. its been associated with the womens institute for years, a quintessentially 'English' organisation summarised by jam and Jerusalem. there are periodic flare ups of 'England should have its own anthem' and Jerusalem is indelibly linked with England and Englishness of a particular type. plus everyone sings along at the last night of the proms, so its got the anthem chops while being a whole lot less jingoistic than land of hope and glory. and its a pleasant tune. I wouldn't get too hung up the lyrics, though 'dark satanic mills' is less about ludditism and more the fact that the industrial revolution can be characterised by hellish dehumanising and exploitative working conditions as it can for technological advancements. those mills really were ugly polluting blots on the landscape and a literal hell on earth for the their workers.
 * could do a whole lot worse for a national anthem. could have an ode to war, for example. or god save the queen. its so fucking dreary. AMassiveGay (talk) 09:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would certainly not like to see it as a National Anthem. The "Did these feet in ancient times" bit is often thought to have been inspired by weird ideas of British Israelism and to refer to a hypothesized visit to Great Britain by Jesus ("England" not existing at the time). I can't remember if this was supposed to be before or after he died. It would be like inshrining  the Mormon idea the Jesus visited the US in the US National Anthem.  I do accept there are other interpretations of this line though.  (From yet another forgotten Ex-pat Brit)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 10:43, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah. The idea is that Joseph of Arimathea had business that often brought him to Britain. He was a friend of Jesus' family and took the boy Jesus to Britain with him. Utter nonsense, of course. Not even supported by anything in the New Testament. Spud (talk) 12:05, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * From my non-British perspective, a lot of the popularity of the tune probably lies squarely on the composer, . It's a good tune IMHO, particularly compared to other "national anthems" (patriotic music tends to not be a place where one looks for good tunes in general), and designed as a nice simple, but not banal, unison song that everyone can sing along with. I don't think Parry intended it to be a "national anthem", he initially composed it for a World War I effort, but later gave it to the women's suffrage movement (which was more the type of cause he supported) for their own use. Even so, I'm not entirely sure how any of this fits well with the Blake text other than vague upliftness and that's how the early 20th century art world rolled and whatnot. The large orchestration by (the Land of Hope and Glory composer, originally Pomp and Circumstances #1, a piece used in the United States for countless graduations for some reason) is what you typically hear these days. Soundwave106 (talk) 13:13, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * the text works well, basically says if jesus had made a visit, it would have made England quite lovely, or specifically heaven. the last verse says we can all come together to make England heavenly in reality. it is a little too explicitly Christian to fly I suspect, and the Englishness is of a rural middle England, ideal of country fetes vicars - the jam and Jerusalem thing, probably not so representative today, but nigel farage would cum in his pants at the thought of it, so boris would try to push it through if it were anyway a serious possibility. its definitely the kind of imagery he'd invoke in a speech, if he bored of allusions to the blitz. he probably has used it in a speech if I could be bothered to look.
 * we will have to make do with god save the queen. is a national anthem strictly necessary? AMassiveGay (talk) 13:53, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a useful thing to have if everyone else has one. You might look pretty silly at the Olympics just having a quiet time for three minutes after after accepting your gold.  Having said that, the Spanish National Anthem has no words. It's just a rather boring piece of music.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:00, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I might have missed the window for that to be concern. I suppose id still have to hang about for bronze, so maybe. I might need an event that's not super popular and the few who compete are really rubbish and disqualified for doping or something. honestly though, if its god save the queen, im not going to bother. so its dreary and its cost us a medal at an Olympics for something that im probably for defo would have won. curling maybe? pretty sure I can use a broom AMassiveGay (talk) 14:17, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Of course if something - anything - is chosen as a separate national anthem for England, different from the UK one, that does mean that the next time England play Liechtenstein at football, they won't play the before the game. Spud (talk) 23:43, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

"Among these dark Satanic Mills" was a reference to a specific event in Blake's time that likely inspired him, the (possibly arson) fire of the Albion Flour Mills. The Mills had been characterized as taking away traditional millers' jobs and using cheap imports. A dissenting interpretation would seem to make it even worse as a national anthem, since it characterizes the Church of England as the 'dark Satanic Mills' (see ). As an example, the book Against Technology from Luddites to Neo-Luddism by Steven E. Jones (2006, Routlege) uses Blake's poem a few times in reference to Luddism. Bongolian (talk) 18:13, 26 May 2020 (UTC) (reset) I read somewhere - the answer to the first verse is 'No' and to the second 'Do it yourself.' Anna Livia (talk) 22:55, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * by the time it became Jerusalem it was far removed from any context that could suggest luddites or non conformists, and there is nothing within the piece itself nor has ever really been clearly one thing or another. its meaning is what ever it has been wheeled out for which for 100 years has been social movements and patriotism. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:58, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Jerusalem the hymn and "And did those feet in ancient time" should not be viewed or understood as the same thing. AMassiveGay (talk) 08:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Using the GWAS to predict GDP of countries
Wow, look at the strength of that correlation. Really makes you rethink how much genetics contributes to the success of a country. Really goes to show how unimportant humans are, and how much the particular subspecies of mouse-eared cress that grows in your country matters. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:59, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you explain it? It leaves me a little puzzled.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 10:33, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Racist shitfucks like to do this kind of analysis, where they use the sampled genetics of populations in a country to "predict" the GDP of nations with relatively strong correlations. This person has applied the same methods to the genes of a weed noted for growing in gaps in sidewalks and found similarly strong results.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:12, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think Bob M may have been looking for an explanation for why a graph correlating a statistical measure of GDP with a statistical measure of predicted GDP would show that. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 17:50, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Because that's what the dipshits he's parodying do. "Polygenic score" is a code word for "No actual analysis".  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I must admit that I don't really understand what the two axis of the graph are trying to tell me based on how they are labeled. But that may be a consequence of my not understanding the terms or lack of context to the argument being made. In any event I guess its the "correlation does not equal causation" problem and this has always been my favorite site for demonstrating that. :-)
 * Except of course the glaring (and numerous) exceptions. N. vs. S Korea. Taiwan and HK vs. China. Malaysia vs. Indonesia. Turkey vs. Turkmenistan. Chile vs. Bolivia. Zambia vs. Zimbabwe. Pitcairn Islands vs. New Zealand. Austria vs. Romania. California vs. Alabama vs. Conneticut. Greenland vs. Nunavut. Somalia vs. Djibouti. Shabi  DOO  12:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

CGP talks a bit about spoiler effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Scroll to around 5 minutes into the video. It's a really good video that I think some people could really get use out of with the current election coming up. 17:19, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * My main problem with this type of argument is that it is using percentages, but also creating the percentages to fit an ideal. Like, the oldest version of the bulls-eye fallacy.  I don't disagree with the premise, when there are two insurmountable parties, choosing the lesser of two evils to mitigate damage is preferable.  And when there are two major parties, fighting for a third party is, well, creating damage against the two parties and most likely against the party you would rather support in face of the other.  However, arguing that this is the trap, I agree with, but just making up statistics and scenarios and calling it good enough as a teaching tool, fine, but it's a really bad argument and it's not where you want to rest.  Whether the next video offer solutions is suspect, when the premise is built on a premise.
 * Causing harm to a party you'd prefer is not that bad, when the parties are so similar. This is voting.  Being willing to stand up and say "No, you will lose the election AGAIN, and I will suffer for it" isn't exactly screaming into the void.  Another 4 years, woof, I get it, it's scary.  But your second choice fucking sucks and doesn't care about you.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:57, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Right now the issue goes beyond your own petty "hah I sure showed them to not care about me". The Republicans are literally responsible for... well, almost every major trouble over the past several years. Are you suddenly forgetting about the kids in cages, the family separation, ICE, the poor response to COVID, the rise of white supremacy, the increase in hate crimes, the attempt to literally define transgender folks out of existence and of course, our most recent thing with BLM going the way it is going. These are all things that have resulted in the death of tons of people and the blood of that is on the hands of the Republicans. This is the party that wins due to that. Is that awful? Yeah it fucking is, first past the post is terrible. But until you can change that system, you're letting these idiots get 4 more years of doing that and removing any and all checks and balances they have. After 4 years, you may even end up with Trump just declaring himself a dictator for life. Keeping that proto-fascist in office to show the libs what happens if you don't choose your favorite candidate is going to end up with people fucking dying. 12:28, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not disagreeing with any of that, and I know, that's pretty much troll fare, I'm not trying to say that. I'm not forgetting about kids in cages, or the rise in hate crimes and white supremacy, and I agree the Republican party platform is really not nuanced.  My complaint is not in that vein, but in the arbitrary use of statistics to explain a point where a LOT of people are confused about statistics.  It would be dangerous to take those points to a current political level, and I think I did that first, maybe, but the way the back and forth between two parties works isn't actually what HAS to happen to see change.  I didn't say it was bad, I tried to qualify my only complaint.   I agree, the Republican party riles up the left, I agree, the Democratic party riles up the right, and that is historically more dangerous.  But we're supposed to be voting on policy.
 * I fully understand that we, the American people, do not vote on policy, we vote against which party we think will cause more damage with no hope for any greater good than "not worse than yesterday." And both parties have to sell big lies, if the hunt was just for that point that puts them just over 51%, it would be Clinton trying to quell the riots.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:29, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Informative article on people who cannot get vaccinations due to medical conditions
https://www.healthline.com/health/vaccinations/immunization-complications#takeaway

Very well put together and written to where most people can understand. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 18:23, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

those are antivaxxers bro &mdash; Unsigned, by: 162.253.71.21 / talk
 * Anti-Vaxxers would probably distort the article for their own purposes. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 12:06, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Magic: The Gathering
Anybody else play this? Just made a new deck on Arena featuring Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt. Might be my new favorite card. I call the deck Snap!Dax because who doesn't love 90's dance music, amirite? What does everybody think of the Mutate mechanic?- "Shut up, Brx." 02:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I picked it up when I was 10, my brother and I both got starter packs because we had just moved to a new city and had nothing to do. He kicked my ass EVERY SINGLE DAY for an entire summer.  I eventually played the Xbox Arcade versions, rules were unbreakable, no cleanup, fine enough (except I think you can get mana screwed while your opponent always gets a hand).   Occasionally I'll play with some super casual friends, and I've usually complained to them enough about how much I hate the game that they go unfairly easy on me.  UNO is better with an AI ref also, when the rules are unbreakable and instant, holy crap the game gets intense.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:21, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Many, many years ago, I played when it first came out. I played a Fire based deck, and somewhere around here in some crate in my attic I doubtless still have those cards.  Since then I've played dozens of other CCGs as well-- had a surprising amount of fun with Legends of the Five Rings, and being a World of Warcraft player the PC based Hearthstone is always an option, but I do remember the original, first CCG... and that goddamned ante rule that we pretty much scrapped because it sucked donkey wang.  Tell you what, when that one was scrapped officially, we all rejoiced. Kencolt (talk) 07:50, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You guys should try Arena. Free to play, easy to pick up.  Not sure if you'll like the current meta, though.  Agent of Treachery might seem too expensive to cast, but not with the current card lineup- "Shut up, Brx." 20:47, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I couldn't quite get into Hearthstone, probably because I couldn't figure it out. A few years ago, I don't even remember, I had a Priest deck that was all "this guy takes damage, this guy gets stronger over time" and it worked until the next season when half those cards got cut.  God, what was it, the Annoy-o-Tron or something, and the one mech that just built attack every turn, and all the shit that gives their neighbors shields, and the big scaries that could survive damage but got stronger if hit, Trog whatevers, and very cool placement mechanics.  It was a good deck, I didn't get that far with it, but I was so proud of it. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 00:51, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Excited for you, BrxBrx, I'm definitely disconnected from it, but I know how nuts MTG decks get. The last game I played was a 3 v all and I got a guy's Bottle Gnome leftovers to build my deck with. I let the guys hit away at each other and when it came to me, I had to explain that declaring blockers and tapping cards were two separate phases.  Got all my health back, took no damage, and won against a fully tapped army with a leftovers deck, being like "guys, I hate this game."  It's a cool concept, but the rules are so wildly important.  I also played UNO with some friends, and I couldn't talk them out of little kid rules, even thought I kept telling them "No, this is why the game is bad."  Draw until you can play?  That's how UNO does not work. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 00:54, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's the great thing about the digital format. Handles the rules for you- "Shut up, Brx." 02:09, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I play the Pokémon Trading Card Game. --Delibirda the Annoying Grammar Nazi (talk) 19:42, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

NERDS AMassiveGay (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You forgot the video that goes with it. Beyond Reality (talk) 12:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

How hard is it to find players for the Pokemon Trading Card Game now? If I ever find my old cards I'd like to give them away to some kid who still plays them, but I don't even know if people still play with the old cards. Itsnotthatsimple (talk) 06:01, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

The Iraq War: Sending soldiers overseas to die for a lie
Soldiers and civilians got to die for a lie, all for a mere oil grab. I think about things like this often.

I cannot see why people supported the war, it is just sick to support the slaughter of people in the name of a lie. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 14:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, Bush 43 was very good at narrative-making in the aftermath of what was, to be fair, a national tragedy. The Democrats did what the usually do(fail miserably when presented with a golden opportunity) and did not oppose the war in any meaningful way as a party leaving a void in terms of narrative Bush of course immediately filed. He created an environment where he was a almost holy leader, sacrosanct and too "purely american" to question, and the Democrats did not do enough to prevent that. So, the public went along with it because otherwise you were "surrendering to terror" and the Democrats failed to provide a strong alternative and say there was another way. Have you ever heard Herman Goering's quote about starting wars?-Flandres (talk) 14:45, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * how'd you figure 'very good' at narrative making? a chimp could good have got the us to go to war after 9/11. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Not just the war, but the elevation of him to a figure fit for a Hellenistic ruler cult. All of what came afterword, when he was the Thirteenth apostle in the manner of a byzantine emperor, who could get even liberals to go along with it(also perhaps not Bush, but more truthfully his handlers, Rove, Cheney, the like). Afghanistan, well that was easy to claim just cause, but he directed it to a more or less completely unrelated country and yes, it was shockingly popular at first before that aura of righteousness went where it belonged. Even as protesters climbed into the millions even Democrats dissembled them as an Un-american fringe.-Flandres (talk) 15:48, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV2Mrf41W6Y HairlessCat (talk) 15:54, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 9/11 broke americans' brains, who were used to never facing any consequences for their actions, and thus awoke a deep seated bloodlust in 3/4 of the population, much to the terror of anyone with even a shred of humanity. Iraq was the convenient place to target that hate for W's political aims.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:38, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, basically this. The Democrats wouldn't have dared try to deny Americans the blood they so desperately

wanted after 9/11. Americans had decided that because brown people did 9/11, brown people had to pay no matter who or where they actually were. 19:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So, there's this point. We can't vote for them, they lied to us.  And somehow, that's been turned into a partisan thing.  I heard today that Bill Shatner and Bill Nye cannot describe how rocket launches work because they are actors.  I made one comment that "Donald Trump can probably explain how medicine works, though" and the huffs and puffs were palpable because I was trolling.  I shifted to Kerbal Space Program, and we all agreed, I don't think I "played" Kerbal Space Program.  I think I "worked" for Kerbal Space Program for a little bit, and I think I was bad at it.  I got an orbit around the Mun, but how do I bring that back, holy shit, the phrase "arcs of shame" came up, brilliant, and "more boosters" which I got mad at until I found out that was a joke, and yeah, it's fucking hard, the rest were just jokes on Elon Musk being solely responsible for the failure. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 01:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's just not about lying anymore. It's about creating a second truth, because the first truth is inherently nonsensical "What I want to believe" garbage that isn't even nihilism.  We have no choice but to answer to the second point of reality.  Solipsism.  I swear, that just hit me, post immediate.
 * The failure of Solipsism is it doesn't work on what we actually believe. It assumes what we want to believe is what is going on. What you want to believe is not always what's going on.  Do not use Descartes as an end-all be-all ticket to denying the rest of your experience.Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:00, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No, the failure of physicalism is that it assumes what we want to believe is what is going on. The material world is an assumption, a rather egregious one.  Solipsism doesn't fail because it's illogical; it fails because it's egocentric.  Ego exists in consciousness, not the other way around.HairlessCat (talk) 12:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * A profound argument from ignorance is still an argument from ignorance. The a priori rejection of deterministic materialism doesn't suddenly make gravity stop operating.  The evidence of a coherent material world driven by mostly predictable mechanical forces slaps every one of your senses in the face every second of every day for your entire life, and it takes a rather severe degree of up-your-own-ass syndrome to call that the assumption rather than whatever convoluted philosophical thought experiment it takes to posit an alternate explanation.  Des Cartes' demon can suck a dick.   ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:32, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Why would gravity stop operating? If I look at quarks, the quarks are still in reality.  Just because they are perceived in a field of consciousness and not verified to be really real solid physical things does not mean they don't exist as things.  The evidence of a material world does not slap me in the face when I look at my mental field of vision; evidence of a mental world slaps me in the face when I look at my mental field of vision.  This isn't an act of mental masturbation done by a brain; this is mental masturbation done by brain done by mental masturbation because mental masturbation is where things are ontologically.  You are making the assumption that objects exist independent of consciousness, but I understand RationalWiki has a weighty, intense boner for logical positivism--in which case--the assumption is perfectly practical and always has been.  I'm just saying that it's not true. HairlessCat (talk) 21:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * And to think, this started out as a thread about the Iraq war....-Flandres (talk) 21:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Media criticism beyond the fascist right, consumerist 'center', or socialist left?
Hello lads. Longtime lurker, first time Saloon Bar-er.

I'm noticing more of a movement in the alt-right toward some kind of "cultural conservatism," a.k.a "traditionalism," and the rejection of what they like to call the "degeneracy" of mainstream consumer culture. For example, a newly popular rightwing subreddit is r/ConsumeProduct, which puts commercial materialism up against some sort of idealized Christian purity. Real Kinder, Küche, Kirche type stuff. Obviously part of the motive there is to whip up hatred against LGBTQ people, unmarried women, nonwhites, etc.

On the other (political) hand, there is a pretty well-established anti-consumerist commentary on mainstream culture coming from the more socialist left. For example, part of the appeal of podcasts like Chapo Trap House is that they take the piss out of upper-class darlings like Hamilton. They call out the pandering of "woke" corporate branding. But the critique is also in the context of leftist politics, not just the media content itself. Then there's the "stupidpol" wing, who seem even more allergic to things like ethic/queer representation in media, because identity politics fails to challenge capitalism.

I'm fed up with the consolidation of media companies and the way superheroes, sequels, violence and children's entertainment have taken over the cultural landscape for ostensible adults. But I'm in search of critique or commentary on these things that isn't just an expression of the author's politics. Does that make sense? Or is it futile in the sense that all critique is inherently political?

yub nub (talk) 19:13, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There is a saying on the Left; "everything is political" meaning that everything and everyone, no matter to what degree or intent, expresses some form of political views. Even being "apolitical" is itself political. Does that make sense or help? 19:24, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the best way to determine this is what you're looking for in criticism. As GC said, everything is political, but if we go by the definition of both stupidpol and the right (and Chapo to a lesser extent), what is political is highly determined by your personal worldview, because what is political is what challenges your personal beliefs in this definition. To take an easy example, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an excellent case study of this. If you care a lot for the story of the game and lean right, you'll probably have a knee jerk reaction to someone saying that Quiet having her ass out so much is kinda sexist and claim it's political, whereas if you're leaning left, you probably will not have that kneejerk reaction, even if you disagree with the conclusion (as I do, Quiet is a pretty interesting case of challenging sexism, although like most things in Metal Gear Solid it's difficult to define without going into an hour long spiel. Kojima is a great director is what I'm saying.)
 * Calling media sexist is by this definition a political thing on the right and not a political thing on the left. What I would recommend you do is find a critic who is good at defining themselves by what kind of media they like and wears that on their sleeve, rather than someone who defines themselves by what they dislike (there's asterisks here, such as Yahtzee, but those rely more on what you know about him beyond ZP such as his writing or indie game dev work).
 * You might not entirely agree with them politically, but you know where they stand and what they enjoy. It's why I can politically disagree with Jim Sterling (personally don't swing as far left), yet still embrace the fact that when he likes a game, it's probably something I will enjoy too, since I know that what we both like in games (good single player content, engaging mechanics) mostly lines up with what I enjoy. I can say the same for videogamedunkey, moviebob, Yahtzee, hbomberguy (loose definition here) and the other critics I follow.
 * Basically, the best thing to do is find someone who likes what you like and branch out from there. Looking for negative criticism is generally just going to lead you to grifters who want to squeeze money out of you like Chapo Trap House and adjacent podcasts (or if you swing right, folks like Sargon of Akkad).
 * Does that make sense? 19:45, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * im not sure what the complaint here is. you want critiques of media consolidation but don't want it political. how could that not be political? as for superheros, kids stuff - essentially geek culture, great for merchandising, and sequels proliferating the cultural landscape. well, that's still about media consolidation. its all going to have the slant of whos doing the critiquing. I don't know what your issue is here AMassiveGay (talk) 20:19, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * "Not political" in OPs wording means "things that don't challenge my worldview too much". 20:22, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not too hard to find many articles that go into how some feel superhero movies are over-saturated / overdone / etc. or how Hollywood has too many reboots, sequels, and remakes without going any sort of "politics" beyond Tinseltown economics and movie buff type stuff. On a topic like violence in media, though, politics is going to creep into the discussion naturally due to the subject matter. r/ConsumeProduct is just the usual American fundie ninnies complaining about porn while putting on a front of growing veggies at home... meaning it's not about consumerism at all, it's just the usual fundie bullshit that's been an American tradition for pretty much the lifetime of the nation. Staying away from bullshit like that will definitely help. Soundwave106 (talk) 23:21, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Be careful how heavily you are using left and right politics. They are a convenient barometer of political ideologies and in non-Anglo Saxon countries...how to place political parties in a legislature. However dividing the world into two political tribes confuses everything. So saying a "leftist" critique is not a great idea. It is incredibly vague and overgeneralizing. I know the US media (some of it) and British tabloids have started to tribalize voters into left and right, but its super artificial and I don't think much profound can be said. Sure, far-right is better defined. But I'd highly recommend using other terms. Be more specific. Also, I'd be careful to what extent you consider a Reddit group notably representative of political movements. What's important is to what extent they are active in disseminating their ideas and how activist they are. How well they broadcast their ideas beyond loyal visitors to their sites and how far they mirror or, better, how far they penetrate intellectual/academic/media/political circles. Shabi  DOO  02:05, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I do think there is something very busybodyish, very Mary Whitehouse or Tipper Gore, about critics who judge media and games by some highly moralized standard of political orthodoxy. I was around in the 1980s and 1990s, and remember the manufactroversies about  and  in comic books, where the people who judged them in moralistic terms were hardly the core audience.  This is a RCH away from kink-shaming, and I despise kink-shaming.  And this holds true regardless of where the moralistic critic is coming from. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 03:12, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * From what I've seen nobody's doing that, it's rather how only certain groups get a particular treatment, at the expense of everyone else. That is a really oversimplified analysis, but there's nothing moralistic about it. Why do women more often get sexualized treatment than men? The only reason there's been any change on this subject is because of critical analysis like this. — Oxyaena Harass  06:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The reasons women are sexualized more than men are: men were traditionally more powerful in a sexist way that has left an imprint, men consume more of the media formats where sexualization is most extreme, and men are hornier than women. This is pretty simple stuff that doesn't really require any sort of labyrinthine critical analysis.  Going nuts over this stuff leads to things like Gamergate, which was only more vapid in my opinion.HairlessCat (talk) 12:14, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * the sexualisation of women (or conversely, saintly chaste in their depictions) in some mediums would be far less of an issue if it were not, for the longest time, the only representation ever given, or that any attempts to try something else is loudly denounced. its the when looking at treatment of minorities - its not so much representations have stereotypical and negative, its that's all there has been. until sexism, racism, homophobia and the like are absent or at least greatly diminished in society then its very difficult not view such depictions as regressive and as reinforcing negative stereotypes in peoples minds as a reality.
 * it is not just about how women and minorities are seen by men and the majority, is the effect it has on women and minorities themselves. its easy to find discussions about some ground breakingly progressive depiction of, say a black doctor where black people say they did not know it was possible to even be a black doctor until they saw it on screen showing anything was possible and consider it a valid and very real goal. a lack of variety among suitable role models put limits on ones aspirations. AMassiveGay (talk) 13:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * More strong, intelligent, and upstanding role model women and minorities in the media--by all means. It's just my personal opinion that mindless sexual eye candy shouldn't be totally eliminated.HairlessCat (talk) 13:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The general trend I've been personally seeing is that mindless sexual eye candy isn't being eliminated per se, but more mindless sexual eye candy is being made with women in mind. At any rate, in accordance with the "TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life" philosophy, I've personally found that the vast majority of media uses stupid simplistic tropes and a heck of a lot of these tropes are dumb stereotypes. And many of these stereotypes actually move product. Bro-country encapsulates a fairly ridiculous stereotype, but it moves units, many to the same people it stereotypes. The top hip hop styles (whether it be the type still wallowing in 1990s gangsta tropes, or the more popular "bling trap" of today) are honestly also pretty ridiculous, but they move product, for the same. It's actually a marketing strategy to change, pro-wrestling style, into a dumb stereotype these days to move product (many of the people on "reality shows", like your Duck Dynasty types, certainly do just that). Likewise, "sex sells", and there are certain dumb tropes about the role of men and women in society. Many of these "dumb sexualization tropes" move product, too!... although times *are* changing. (Beauty pageants were, back in the day, one example I can think of. Although it's hard finding hard numbers, I remember that the beauty pageants actually were marketed more for women then men, with old articles like this seeming to confirm this. ) I guess that's the problem with going nuts over mild ethnic stereotypes -- sure, but that's a general problem with most of the dumb side of media. I can see the argument where, if a mild stereotype is actually the dominant portrayal of an ethnic group in media, and generally thought of as negative within the community, you don't want to encourage this (probably the best argument against, say, the Apu Nahasapeemapetilon/Simpsons issue). But elsewise, the main combat from my perspective to the dumb stereotype is to encourage smarter media, and spend money on that. Dumb tropes that move product isn't going to go away anytime soon. Soundwave106 (talk) 14:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Female sexualization in popular media was originally a vehicle to capture male interest. Production companies were, after all, selling something to men. Women, on the other hand might have been fascinated by the fantasy of being irresistible. Sexualization of one, or several, characters was a dramatic technique once thought to be indispensable for any popular story or film, because it established a female character's importance in the structure of a male narrative. Reviewers talk a lot about strong women characters. In 20th century media a strong sexual presence was a proxy for strength in female characters. The sexualized heroine could manipulate ordinary men. Very often the central male protagonist in a story is the only one of the dramatis personae capable of resisting this type of manipulation. Modern fiction is replete with the "battle of the sexes" subplot. Female protagonists should not always be represented as exceptionally beautiful. There is no need to get rid of sirens altogether, and I suspect to do so would immiserate popular entertainment media. Ariel31459 (talk) 18:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So, two points. One, you seem to have used a bit of an appeal to tradition there, and as the "White Savior" trope illustrates, not all tropes in media should be continued. Secondly, I doubt the media will become less sexualized anytime soon, short of someone like Pence getting into power (which he might depending on the 2024 POTUS primaries, which will be interesting.) 18:28, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, media probably won't become less sexualized. On your first point: I was describing 20th century fiction. I suppose I could praise it as well, but I am more interested in describing it and understanding why it worked. Here is an old Commercial about the relative nature of sexualization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpypTXccG2I Ariel31459 (talk) 18:51, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Some nice anti-orthodox music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTtzB17SKwQ HairlessCat (talk) 01:53, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Great for torturing terries- "Shut up, Brx." 02:10, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's the price we pay for . . . uh . . . freedom.HairlessCat (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Arguing with stupid people...
...is it ever worth it? Shabi DOO  16:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * for the lulz- "Shut up, Brx." 16:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The purpose of RationalWiki is basically to argue with stupid people without actually talking to them.HairlessCat (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

It depends. People are far more likely to be wrong or indoctrinated than stupid.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Depends on intellectual honesty. If someone is being intellectually dishonest (ie. pushes fallacies when confronted and doesn't let them go when you point them out), then don't bother. Otherwise, you might change some minds. 17:36, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of your point. What you are talking about is not the same as "stupid" which was the question I was responding to.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah sorry, I should have made it more clear. It's only worth arguing with stupid people if they're not being intellectually dishonest about it. Does that make sense?
 * (EC)But, from your comments, - I suppose that you wouldn't argue with anyone who you did not consider intellectually honest - whether they are "stupid" or not. So no I'm still not seeing the relevance. But I guess it's not that important.
 * More interestingly, does anyone feel there is something kind of ableist about using "stupid" so casually?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:12, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably, but calling people stupid is so thoroughly inculcated into our culture we may as well protest the very concept of insults. So we try to distinguish between stupid people we disagree with and stupid people with a legal disability- "Shut up, Brx." 18:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's an interesting discussion to be had, but frankly unless you want to go to the kiddie TV type of insults (which yeah, there's a lot of fun to be had in calling someone a big doodoohead, but that's just me and is funny in a different way), I can hardly think of an insult that doesn't carry some sort of connotation to ableism. While we agree that there's certain words that are over the line (ie. the word we describe at Intellectual disability), those mostly tend to come from the fact that they are still mainly used in that fashion by ableists to describe those people. On the other hand, words like stupid or dumb aren't used as often against people with legitimate disabilities, which I guess makes them seem somewhat societally more acceptable. IMHO with this, the line should be drawn where you think it's appropriate and to respect it if the other person asks you not to use it. I personally stay away from the harsher terms myself, but I think it's a personal matter here. One thing that does intrigue me is that the word "gimp" is apparently used as a slur, but I've literally never heard anyone use it beyond the description of a gimp suit... which is kink stuff, so that suprised the hell out of me when I learned it. 19:44, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * After deleting an introductory phrase qualifing this sentence that deflects my responsibility for making it, if a phrase like "stupid piece of shit" more offends someone because of some distant inferred connotation about the universal fundamental equality of mankind, rather than the very intended insult to the kind of person someone is clearly choosing to be in the moment, you might be going to far with trying to stop ablism. People are capable of acting like absolute dumbfucks without having a fundamental and intractable inferiority tied to some kind of discrimination.
 * Ways "stupid" can apply to impugn character without meaning a goddamn thing about people with disabilities: not applying a moment's critical thought to whatever stupid idea passes your head, revelling in ignorance and refusing to engage with freely available information, putting no effort into formulating a coherent understandable version of your thoughts, or embracing overly simplistic beliefs because they're easier than more nuanced ones. You have to have seen far more of people being called dumbasses for those things in your life than being slow witted at mathematical problem solving or a lacking an expensive education and the skills that entails.  I don't like ablism, it's very rarely justified, but I don't much like linguistic reductionism either. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:22, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Never got much out of arguing. Belittling them, on the other hand...  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:07, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, at least they won't ask you questions anymore, sheesh. If you've ever been in charge of a project, though, maybe you want them to ask you questions.  I had a slow morning at work, I had probably 10 legitimate questions per hour since I was taking the time to cross-train and also playing two roles at once.  Then things got busy, and I still had 10 or more questions per hour, and I had to play three roles.  I have two leads out sick, one sick with the Rona, one preexisting condition, no useful help in his department, that's my fault.  I took over his department for the past two days, and everything seems like a stupid question when you know the answer to it, but you have to answer.  So I threw in a potential second lead.  The guy I threw in has a ton of experience and he did extremely well, his native department did not do so well after that.  I really only had to teach him organizational tricks before he got really comfortable and asked me some good questions.  It was also a weird day, 1 day drop-offs didn't show up until after 3, and usually those need to go out the same day.  So here's a stupid question, how do you get networking equipment at 3 pm and get it QC tested, refurbished, and packed and shipped by 6 pm?  The answer is, we have to do that sometimes.  It's a stupid question, and it's a stupid answer, and anyone who wastes time saying "but this is hard" is caught up in the stupid.  But there's a stupid kind of magic about that place, and it relies on not arguing with stupid people, rather making the magic happen even when it looks really, really stupid.  We have survived the big lockdown, not only as a business, but as a crew.  This week has been rough, I'm on three 10 hour days, and I've got some stupid complaints that don't matter about how each department is working, because they are nothing new, just people pushed into roles aren't used to dealing with one or two mishaps in their chain per day.  Can't complain that I got the Monday off, though.  Little benders pay big dividends.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 01:27, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * TBH if you're arguing with people working for you, that's also bad. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 02:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, working "for" me isn't how I see it, they are working "with" me and I am working "with" them, and mostly "for" them. That's not jargon, that's really how I manage things. But I don't make arguments out of little things, got a better idea, I'm not gonna tell you it's wrong.  Got an idea that won't work and I know it, I'll work with it until it breaks and then fix it.  Got no idea what you're doing, and you just run off and do something really wrong?  Well, I have to fix that, that's the actual limit of my job.  Arguing with people working for you is bad, I agree.  But I do what I can to work for the people I work with, even if it would make my life a million times easier if I could just be in 5 places at once.  I enjoy my job and I like my coworkers anyway.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:59, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

There are some things that can make it worth it. For one, refusing to argue in support of your position means that you cede any point of disagreement, which may lead to undesirable outcomes. Another is that if you actually know what you think you know, you should be able to trace explanations back to first principles, understand each step, and explain each step to someone who doesn’t know it. Actually being challenged on that can point out any places where your own understanding may be lacking. Also, some people may find that sort of thing enjoyable on its own, regardless of the other factors involved. And who knows, you might change their mind. I was once cold-called by a tea-partier to discuss politics, and I got him to admit that there are merits to socialism. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 06:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * there are plenty of cases where it just isn't. some issues are just not up for debate, that make just questioning them make you suspect someone either stupid or trolling. other times an assumption of good faith has you making a point that is responded to with a reply leaving you incredulous at how they could possibly have misinterpreted your point the way they have. it can make you doubt your sanity, studying what you said in case maybe there was ambiguity, but no, its trolling or stupidity, leading to a drawn out debate where you have to clarify every point made as it is misinterpreted each time in ways they just couldn't have got from what you have said. stupidity or trolling, same result - frustration.
 * all the above doubly so, if the issue under discussion is deeply close to your heart and a frustrating encounter leaves even more despondent. 'fuck off you imbecile' can be the best response some times if one is required. 'if you say so' is better when you can just walk away. no need to argue the toss over everything AMassiveGay (talk) 14:23, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I commented on this pretty selfishly. Aaand, I overshare, but I've not been able to see my family or friends for a while.  I did read the Larry Sanger piece on a, I don't know, 6 minute lunch break, and I really don't want to go back to it, I'm guessing NPOV is neutral point of view, because he define it, but I absolutely loved that final thing he said, his point that we've all read his whole deal over, "they live in a fantasy world of their own making."  It was such incredible lever of irony, because the guy is lamenting that his point isn't propped up like it's also true.
 * I'm surprised we aren't touching the George Floyd incident. I don't know whether to think that's cool, or to worry that we want something, or that we're scared to talk about it.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:23, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

this is ableist and you could also be stupid, how would you know without arguing for a few minutes &mdash; Unsigned, by: 162.253.71.21 / talk

I think it depends more on whether they're open-minded than whether they're "stupid." You can reason with dumb people if you're patient, and can explain things, but you can't reason with people that won't listen to you even if they are potentially able to grasp a lot more if they'd just listen. Itsnotthatsimple (talk) 04:50, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * “some issues are just not up for debate, that make just questioning them make you suspect someone either stupid or trolling.” There is nothing at all which is not in principle up for debate. Certain things may not be debated in certain times or places, but that is not at all the same thing. If people are going to have a meaningful discussion about important topics, the sorts of things that people may not like to question can easily come up as points of disagreement. Do you expect people to just agree with you without justifying your position?


 * “if the issue under discussion is deeply close to your heart” That makes it all the more important to examine critically. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies. They motivate rationalization, and if they’re strong enough to shut down debate altogether, they prevent you from being more correct than you are now. And without critical examination, how do you know that the conviction is correct in the first place? If the issues they relate to are close to the heart, it’s particularly important to be correct about them. Unfortunately, intuition is not generally reliable, and the world often works in ways that humans find undesirable. If you with to pursue the truth, you may find that you must give up some cherished notions.


 * “I'm surprised we aren't touching the George Floyd incident.” https://youtu.be/MpPvGlrqhdA 192․168․1․42 (talk) 13:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Autistic People: Kings of Social Distancing
Lack of social skills is not such a bad thing after all. Take that neurotypicals! Okay I am actually talking about people who hate those with Autism. Maybe this is a bad attempt at comedy. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 20:04, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * On the other hand I did say that extraverts, the kind that U.S. society puts a lot of value in, are going to kill us all. 20:05, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * As a editor with autism I can say it has been... helpful. A combination of that, the fact that I work from home, and my limited economic means have always prohibited me from most recreational activities that involve leaving the house anyway(I did not lose the opportunity to go to restaurants and theaters, I never had it) means this pandemic has really not impacted my daily routine at all even as the deaths climb into six digit figures.-Flandres (talk) 20:12, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I had an idea for a joke about this post being "reverse abelism", but then I realized how potent Poe's law is and there was no formulation of that joke that wouldn't be taken seriously. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:29, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * As a person with Autism and a laundry list of psychiatric disorders, I will happily mock those who support discrimination against those with disabilities. I often crack jokes about how stupid the KKK or Neo-Nazis or conspiracy theorists are. If someone supports discrimination I will happily mock them and not feel sorry for them. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 20:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of formulations of that joke that wouldn't be taken seriously. They just wouldn't be funny. HairlessCat (talk) 21:10, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

When was the last time an american insurrection/riot/protest of any scale seized a police station?
I don't think it'll last, but there's definetly some hint of things breaking loose in the social fabric of the US. Not really a open revolution or anything, but there's a functional and not just reported distrust of social institutions at a level I don't think I've seen in my lifetime. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 04:34, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What are you saying will not last, may I ask? The riot, or this overarching lack of trust in social institutions, this unraveling of the grand american tapestry?-Flandres (talk)
 * I think the referent is the police station being seized by the insurrection/riot/protest. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 06:21, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What I find confusing is that those "don't tread on me" conservatives who proud of their anti-establishment, anti-elite, anti-government, anti-authority sentiments are extremely pro-police on these occasions. They are the ones who always boast about having 100 guns in their yard and ready to riot against "government tyranny" or whatever that is. Dogeatsdog (talk) 10:00, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not surprising if you think of these conservatives as racist fascists. Which is what they really are. They are happy to accept government tyranny if it's their kind of government tyranny. Soundwave106 (talk) 12:57, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In the ideology of “don’t tread on me” conservatives, people should generally be able to go about their business without interference from the government or each other. Laws are to be minimal, setting basic ground rules intended to maintain the desired state of peaceful individual liberty. When these laws are broken, it is the duty of the government or capable private citizens to put a stop to it and restore order. Theft and the destruction of public and private property are some of the actions they believe should be illegal, so police suppressing riots and looting is a case of police doing exactly what the “don’t tread on me” conservatives think police should do. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 10:54, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So feudalism. 12:36, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The "looters" are setting up mutual aid stations with the looted goods to support fellow protestors . You know, because helping people in need is more important than profiting off their poverty. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  08:56, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * “if you think of these conservatives as racist fascists. Which is what they really are.” Have you ever talked to some of them? And then listened to what they had to say?


 * “So feudalism.” Feudalism is a kind of social organization in which land is controlled by “lords” who permit “vassals” to use it in exchange for service of some kind. There are typically several tiers of this relationship ranging from a king who personally owns a country and delegates control of regions to various nobles, down to peasants leasing farmland from a local baron. Feudal rights were generally minimal outside the oaths of fealty. In Gadstenstan, everyone owns land and does what they want with it. Apart from basic things like a military, police, and courts, which keep the system running (there is some disagreement about the finer details of this), things are organized by voluntary commercial interactions.


 * “setting up mutual aid stations with the looted goods to support fellow protestors” That doesn’t mean that the goods weren’t stolen, or that the people doing it are’t accurately described as “looters”. Or that the people whose ideology I was describing would want police to put a stop to it.


 * “profiting off their poverty” Are you referring to Target offering goods for sale to poor people? And then poor people choosing to buy those goods? Consider that most of the businesses looted in the LA riots never reopened. Suppose that the Target store never reopens. The poor people in the area would then no longer have the option of shopping there. Do you think that they would be better off as a result? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Is there any evidence this is actually what that is? Even if we put aside the issues I raised below, about being cautious this is actually from the recent protests given the scant evidence (given that it could be e.g. from after some natural disaster), there's nothing in that video which suggests this is looted good. I found the original which is from an RT.com senior editor [//twitter.com/SophNar0747/status/1266178599079510016] and for all the flaws of RT.com, it's enough for me to accept this was really a recent photo. But I looked through the other tweets and responses, and I'm not seeing anything which demonstrates either way that these were looted goods as alleged. There are ample media reports suggesting that in response to stores being shut down due to the rioting, looting and destruction, plenty of people have donated goods often including many coming from outside the area (since they need to be getting the goods from somewhere) which have been provided in various ways including by setting up collection points [//kstp.com/minnesota-news/volunteers-donate-food-manpower-in-support-of-south-minneapolis-residents-/5747401/] [//www.insider.com/minneapolis-food-drive-middle-school-community-donations-2020-5] [//www.startribune.com/minneapolis-residents-step-up-to-protect-their-neighborhoods-from-little-earth-to-longfellow/570910552/]. I'm sure some of the looted goods ended up as donations, but if people are going to claim it was a majority, or even a substantial minority, we need far more evidence than that picture.  IMO it's a mistake to romanticise looters, I'm not saying that they're all evil people who need to be locked away for life. I'm sure they have various motivations and reasons, but I definitely don't think many do it for some sort of community spirit. However I'll freely admit I don't have good evidence for this, just like we don't have (AFAICT) good evidence for the contrary claim that they're doing this to set up mutual aide stations and help people.  I do think there are a large number of people who are horrified both by what happened to George Floyd and the horrific way the police in the US often treat black people, and who fully support peaceful protests and who while they may agree that the way the police have handled the protests has sometimes or even often been wrong and harmful and can understand the anger, are not going to look favourably on the violence, looting etc and will fault those involved. Most recognise it's only a small minority, but reading people almost glorifying the violence doesn't help matters, and does risk turning them off supporting the protests and protestors and therefore any support for change.  I'm reminded of a video I once saw of someone in Hong Kong who was set on fire. It was alleged that he had been attacking protestors before hand, I never worked out if it was true. [//observers.france24.com/en/20191113-gruesome-video-man-set-fire-hong-kong-marks-escalation-violence] (As mentioned there, there were also claims it was staged/fake, but I saw enough to convince me this wasn't the case, and most of the evidence to support that was poor. Just because someone wasn't lying on the ground in agony doesn't mean they weren't substanially harmed.) What was clear is that at the time he was set on fire, he wasn't doing anything which would justify such a violent response. Therefore for me, and I think most others who saw it, there was no justification for what was done to the man.  Seeing a bunch of people on Twitter most of who I am confident were real ordinary Hong Kong people down playing the incident (I don't mean those who suggested it was staged, but those suggesting setting someone on fire wasn't anything that bad) or worse suggesting there was justification for it definitely did not make me favour them. I'm sure it was only a tiny minority of people who felt that way even though it was actually a large percentage of Twitter commentary I found. But such attitudes don't help win support especially since a lot of people are going to read that and be horrified and not think "well yes it's horrible, but whatever the situation you always getting people saying horrible things" but instead "fuck some of those HK protestors are horrible, maybe China is right to want to deal with them".  Nil Einne (talk) 07:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eurl9d9hy3U&t=19s HairlessCat (talk) 18:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Don’t know if this is really the right place to ask but
Does anyone know whether being underweight affects your coronavirus risk the same way being overweight does? I’ve looked around but haven’t found anything. I’m underweight (BMI hovers around the 16-17 range usually, though I have been losing about 0.5 kg/month for a little while), and while I seem to have various health issues that I think are related to that (dizziness, fatigue, anaemia, more frequent colds/whatever, etc). However, a lot of my appointments/obligations have stopped doing it over the internet/phone, and I’m trying to assess whether it’s worth the risk. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks! 14.200.168.113 (talk) 15:23, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Being underweight only really has significant health detriments if it's to the point of anemia. Since you specifically call that out, yeah, I'd be concerned that you're partially immunocompromised.  Not a doctor or a medical researcher, though.  You should consult a medical professional who can perform diagnosis, not random internet strangers.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:29, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Well that’s part of the problem - a lot of my doctors have stopped doing phone appointments and, luckily for me, most of the ones who still do are also the ones who, in my experience, are either less competent or less trustworthy. I suppose though one or two in-person appointments to assess my overall level of risk is probably the safer choice in the long run, if there is some kind of increased risk. Thanks. 14.200.168.113 (talk) 15:34, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Also not a doctor, but I'd be more concerned about a consistent largely-unexplained weight loss than I would be about the potential risk of Covid 19. But - good luck.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:20, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah been trying to find an answer to that one for ages. Seems to be related to some kind of persistent digestive issue. So far we’ve ruled out most of the obvious answers, right now we’re investigating potential parasites and/or liver damage. Been investigating for the best part of a year now, and still no answers. It’s definitely got much worse over the past four or five months though - before that, even though I was (only just) underweight, I wasn’t losing it like I am now. Hopefully some kind of answer shows up soon. Thanks for the support appreciate it. 14.200.168.113 (talk) 17:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I wish you the best of luck, but personally I think you have the right to be worried. As stated above, you should be more concerned about the unexplained weight loss than the slightly low BMI. CoryUsar (talk) 08:18, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I've permabanned Ken
So that this doesn't slip under the radar, I'd like to point it out. Since, after 4 days of inactivity, the Coop case had 14 votes in favour of banning him and 10 votes against it, I have gone ahead and permabanned User:GiuocoPiano and User:Margon282. I have de-sysoped and permabanned User:Newton. Spud (talk) 16:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What on Earth happened? Just curious. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 18:47, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Adding conservapedia in mainspace, using ratwiki to soapbox for his essays on conservapedia about how he hates atheists, gay people and us, using his userpage to preserve a removed comment that broke our community standards and being obviously here to just stir shit. RationalWiki:Chicken coop/Archive101 if you want to read the discussion back. 20:19, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Never actually interacted with the banned user but dude sounds like a real asshole. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 20:33, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ken Demyer is pitifully sad and the notion that anyone might feel threatened by him is inalienably alien to me- "Shut up, Brx." 01:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19: The Game (I wish I was joking..)
I can't be the only one that thinks this is distasteful.. Beyond Reality (talk) 17:21, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * not especially AMassiveGay (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems quite tame compared to back-in-the-day newgrounds games. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:34, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Guess Plague Inc. is not good enough for some people? Speaking of which, there are already plenty of COVID-19 scenarios on Plague Inc. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 20:37, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * If you were playing as the virus, that would be really tasteless (although I can think of more tasteless things). But if the aim of the game is to defeat the virus, I can see the appeal. Spud (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Have not played Plague Inc. in a while. I do know that there is a YouTuber named "Pravus Gaming" who does Plague Inc. play videos and he played one of the COVID scenarios as have similar YouTubers. Plenty of other scenarios that can be made in the game and there are mountains of them. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 01:11, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What about 'Ring-a-ring-a-roses' - and the wall-paintings of the dance of death? Anna Livia (talk) 14:25, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * And during the 1918 influenza pandemic, children used to chant this rhyme while jumping rope, "I had a little bird,/Its name was Enza./I opened up the window,/And in flew Enza." Spud (talk) 01:02, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It turns out sneeze noises are totally a choice. You can sneeze like "Ah-choo" or "Ah=shit" or "Wu-han" or "Fuh-huh-huck me."  Not even a joke, mess around with your sneeze noises, change your sneeze noises, you can do it literally on your next sneeze.  This game is just a thing we're faced with, but with different noise on top of it. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:53, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like the US is officially withdrawing from the WHO
I predict no ways this improves anyone's lives anywhere. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Donald "I take no responsibility" Trump:

20:30, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The US government and the WHO, it's hard to say which one thoroughly beclowned themselves worse in this fiasco. And this sure doesn't help. The Blade of the Northern Lights (<font face="MS Mincho" color="black">話して下さい ) 05:36, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * seems pretty obvious who looks worse. im a little perplexed at the suggestion that they've been as bad as each other throughout all this. they are clearly not. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * When was the last time the Trump administration paid into the WHO fund? As far as I recall they haven't paid in two years. Could this simply be a case of Trump finding an excuse for not paying? A typical corporate externalising practice? Cardinal Chang (talk) 09:14, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not think it is anything else but an excuse. he gave a 30 day ultimatum for reforms, in the middle of a global pandemic probably not the best time to put in effect, then declared 'too late' after 10 days. not to mention all the potential issues with china being less than open or early denials of a problem, did not prevent WHO from keeping governments informed of the dangers posed, including the us who only took any action 6 weeks after a pandemic was declared. its more scape goating and denying responsibility, more claims its every one elses fault except his own piss poor leadership. it probably doesn't hurt it saves some cash too. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:10, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I hate sinus infections
Been suffering for over two weeks. Happens once or twice a year although getting blood in my mucus is a new one. My brother had a phone appointment with the doctor and I was able to get it mentioned during said phone appointment.

Doc stated for me to stop using nasal spray for the swelling inside my left nostril. Still stuck using over-the-counter medicine for the time being. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 01:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC)


 * We have mature evergreens here, and this is the time of the year that a couple of them release massive amounts of pollen that make the whole back yard appear like it's enveloped in fog. It's quite surreal. The pollen makes our younger cat sneeze for a couple of days, otherwise we've observed no ill effects. Be careful with that nasal spray. Cosmikdebris (talk) 04:00, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I live in the countryside of Mid-Michigan, plenty of pollen from flowers and animals. I also live next to a few farms. I am doing fairly okay with allergy meds although the doc stated to call if symptoms get worse. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 19:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)