RationalWiki talk:What is going on in the blogosphere?/Archive15

Shortwave
I kind of miss shortwave radio. Still have some of the recievers, and this was my go to source for different perspectives on the news. I'm old enough to remember the magical nights of AM DX, especially on the car radio traveling with family. Still do that sometimes looking for Cleveland baseball games. Fond memories of CKLW. But most of what you pick up now is evangelist crap. On occasion, on the right nighs ibn spring or fall, you can pick up music shpws frpm Latin America which sometimes repay a listen. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 04:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Eating meat associated with better mental health?
The end of the study says: "This study was funded in part via an unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The sponsor of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report." 

Beef Checkoff's official website says: "The Checkoff program was designed to stimulate restaurants and grocery stores to sell more beef and encourage consumers to buy more beef. This is accomplished through initiatives such as consumer advertising, marketing partnerships, public relations, education, research and new-product development." 

Totally not fishy at all! LongStylus (talk) 18:23, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Correlation. Meat consumption could coincide with more disposable income. Meat production IS associated with richer countries. 18:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The article also specifies that the study cannot tell the temporal order. Maybe people with worse mental health are drawn to vegetarian diets believing meat is the cause of their issues, creating a correlation like the correlation between diabetes and diet soft drinks. Maybe western vegetarians are bullied into depression by meat eaters... 2804:431:CFC8:B8DC:5A94:F08C:D074:6B83 (talk) 21:14, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * More likely the other way around. IME vegetarians tend to be evangelical about it, ascribe bizarre virtues to their diets, and otherwise display histrionic personalities and various messiah complexes.  Any pushback they get is likely from all of this.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 23:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * honestly find fucknuts to be equally dispersed between veggies an meat eaters. fucknuts on both sides get very tribal AMassiveGay (talk) 22:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In my experiences, I've seen more meat-eaters that are dogmatic about their diet. People like Jordan Peterson, his daughter and Tom Naughton think that eating more meat is super healthy and is something most people aren't doing. Nothing can be further from the truth. The average Canadian diet already contains too much meat, and perhaps the same goes for the American diet as well. LongStylus (talk) 18:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * yes chimbo it sure is too much even though meat consumption is declining. 2600:387:9:5:0:0:0:6B (talk) 19:13, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Your own source says meat consumption averaged about 250 lbs per person in 1999 and 264 lbs per person in 2020, so that's an increase. Higher meat consumption (processed meat, red meat and poultry) is linked with obesity, even when controlling for lifestyle choices and calories. LongStylus (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This is the study I forgot to add: The above is a supplement. LongStylus (talk) 21:44, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Even then, there different eating fried chicken with burger and steak with salad. 2600:387:9:9:0:0:0:4B (talk) 14:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Slavery is not the origin of capitalism
Sherlocks's lack of shit aside, that's not what the article proposes or concludes. There's enough stuff to pick apart there without setting up a straw man. LondonGrump (talk) 00:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know who wrote that in, but I'll erase it. G Man (talk) 01:20, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

article about Putin from The Atlantic
i know this is not a big deal, but it's kinda bothering me at the moment. i'm running on about two weeks of sleep deprivation. in the edit summary, i said "article dated as of february" when i meant to say "article published in february." anyway, i'm pretty sure you guys get the point, but i (sometimes) get real nitpicky when it comes to spelling, mechanics, usage, and grammar. G Man (talk) 05:30, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

gas is not petrol
stoopid mericans AMassiveGay (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

british empire
i am reminded of a quote from orwell 'hypocrisy is the british vice' AMassiveGay (talk) 21:46, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Whoever posted this article either only read the title or the first few sentences. To just call this article "The british empire was worse than we thought" is just clickbait in my opinion since it goes into a lot more. Ryan1257 (talk) 06:00, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * just what is it you think the wigo gets wrong? its clickbaity but not really inaccurate. 'worse than we thought' - for me it should be 'really was awful, but you knew that already'. i used to be more neutral about it, framing its horrors as just the way of world back then, that it was a different time. my thinking shifted gradually as the more i learned of events, the 'good' we might have done was only made possible by and completely outweighed by all the sheer fucking evil that it is simply obscene to talk of the good from this stain on our history. and when the wounds we inflicted on so many peoples have left ugly scars or are still open and still not healed to this day. for the british public? 'its worse than we thought' is something that should be made clear to them. every brexiter should learn that 'its worse than we thought.' every MP draping themselves in the union jack, every talking head  in media telling us the commonwealth is just waiting for us lead them in the empire anew, every reader of the mail and express, every defender of statues celebrating slavers using history as a shield, should be made to learn the actual history of the empire and what made britain 'great' really was so much worse than we thought.


 * in the uk, the empire is sold to us as something we should be proud of. as something that should entitle us to be seen as one the worlds great powers, commanding respect from the nations of the world, the rich nations, the poor, the developing and the developed, superpowers. we dont have the economic or military might we once had, but we've got the history we are told. our sense of fair play, we didnt just impose our laws on the world, we were bound by them too. dont keep knocking britain, they will say. we ended slavery they will say. we are told our history should be lauded, but we never actually discuss our history. no one will discuss the horrific things we did, and if you do you are always knocking britain, sure we made some mistakes but empire wasnt all bad, we did some good too you know. 'some mistakes' are not explained to us, and we get beaten over the head with the 'good', which is also shrouded in vagueness and jingoism, with spirit of dunkirk and blitz spirit sprinkled liberally throughout. this is what is sold to us and we buy it because we dont know our own history. our history to us has the look and feel of last night at the proms. the good old days when the sun never set on the empire gave us a distorted sense of our own importance and inflated sense of our powers that took us decades to come back down to earth and come to terms with the death of empire, to engage with our european neighbours and to cooperate and trade. that we did not dictate the rules any more, we had to give instead of just taking, and our empire was long dead, and our former colonies did not revolve around us any more. we could start to draw aline between the old dead empire and the united kingdom today as seperate entities. judge us on we what are now, not then. but of course brexit happened and set this process back decades. the celebrating the glory days of empire, reminding us we were 'great' once and we can be again, we remembered a fantasy of the time when we ruled waves with no regard or need for europe, and we were made to believe it could be again as leaders of the commonwealth apart from europe. we believed it because we do not know our own history. we do not know the history of our empire.


 * the horrors that our empire produced did not touch the islands were the empire was ruled from. we saw no slaves here, they were all transported the the colonies, goods in transit at best. we did not see our resources plundered and stolen, we saw riches and exotic goods flow into our shores. we saw the buildings and wealth that the empire brought us. we were not beaten and murdered by foreign invaders, and we did not see our troops beating and murdering anyone on our islands. our democracy and our justice gradually formed and grew with our wealth, our civil rights debated and fought and won, it was great the to be the great british. british law were our gift to our colonies. there was no greater gift. but we did not give this gift, that is the lie we have told ourselves. while british democratic ideals were flourishing in britain, we made damn sure it didnt flourish in the colonies. the rule of law we are so proud of that ensure fairness, that we are bound by, did not extend beyond our shores. the british empire really was fucking fantistic for all us on this island and at the centre of the empire we didnt look beyond our island, everything came to us, to see horrors first hand. we didnt see the misery we inflicted, we didnt discuss the misery we inflicted, and we still dont. we dont want to. we need to be able to celebrate it, be proud of it. if we saw it for it what it was, what literally built britain, the misery it was founded on, we would not have bought the lies that brexit depended on.


 * its why statues of slave traders and imperialistic monsters are defended so vigorously. its not history they are championing. its an ignorance of history they seek to maintain. the post war consensus was a direct result of our empire expiring. its when britain stopped being 'great' for some. when stopped being british even. a poor grasp of history, imagining a fanciful better time before it, saw us hack away at the consensus that brexit is the culmination. no, it was not wonderous, we should not be proud of it, look at what we did when we were the rulers of an empire. our former colonies remember what we dont. a significant percentage of the british public originate from former colonies, they remember too, just as we try ignore their contributions to britain and their treatment at the hands of empire, and talk misty eyed of the days before their arrival to our shores and the british did not include them. the commonwealth wont save us from brexit, it wont save us from ourselves. we have an old etonian apologist for empire whose premiership is founded on nostalgia for the days of empire. we need to be told, again and again, 'it was much worse than we thought'. until we do learn our history and come to terms with it, britain will never be 'great' againAMassiveGay (talk) 13:45, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, okay, please don't jump on me with some of your frustrations with your country ignoring the bad parts of its history (I'm an American, talking about the bad parts our history is "anti-american" as far as some states have decided). I just thought that the reasons the author disagreed with some of the conclusions in the book he was talking about was interesting, namely how "liberalism" was a changing beast.Ryan1257 (talk) 17:55, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Not going to start an edit war
Especially when I just got my mop, but if you have any objections to the content of someone's WIGO,, you should really take it to the talkpage first. Vee (talk) 19:27, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Ok, I made a mistake with the rollbacks so it is back to the original but my point remains. The unsubstantiated reference to "British aristos peace offers to Hitler" is inflammatory, Godwin's Law, and not even related to the article in question. Secondly, the claim that the Russian invasion is "genocidal" is another baseless point. There are war crimes, crimes against humanity even, but a war of extermination is so far into lalaland I don't know where to start. An Advocate (talk) 19:33, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Zelenskyy himself has called Russia's war an "extermination campaign", so it's not like it's without precedent. Vee (talk) 19:34, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm sure he isn't biased at all. An Advocate (talk) 19:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It's still precedent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Vee (talk) 19:58, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Since it's my post, let me reply. ""British aristos peace offers to Hitler" is inflammatory, Godwin's Law," is a reference to Lord Rothermore and the Daily Mail headlines at the time. https://henrypoole.com/individual/1st-viscount-rothermere/ https://pressgazette.co.uk/hitler-the-daily-mail-and-how-lord-rothermere-showed-he-has-learned-the-lessons-of-history/ https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/dailymail-oswald-mosley It mirrors, no pun intended, recent revelations to Musk and Putin.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-lindsey-graham-putin-ukraine-tweet-b2196626.html https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-ambassador-elon-musk-russia-crimea-twitter-poll-response-2022-10?r=US&IR=T https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-welcomes-elon-musk-proposal-ukraine-settlement-denounced-by-kyiv-2022-10-04/ Godwins law has no bearing on this. It is what happened, granted it has been simplified for snark. Cardinal Chang (talk) 20:07, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The "british aristo-fascism" is not unsubstantiated, but actually a call back to a October 2020 WIGO on the fascist sympathies of british aristocracy Tuxer (talk) 22:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * And just because I find the An Advocate's statement of "The claim that the Russian invasion is "genocidal" is another baseless point." somewhat strange and denialist. Here's Foreign Affairs on Genocide by Russia https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/why-russias-war-ukraine-genocide, Politico opinion piece https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/27/putin-genocidal-war-ukraine-00047941 and even the definition of genocide https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml . What do you think Putin with his Kievian Rus Polity obsession is doing in the Ukraine? Cardinal Chang (talk) 11:44, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

America killed an 8 year old American citizen
Just finished reading the Snowden article. Fucking disgusting. What a disgrace. If this country really was serious about the rule of law, it'd prosecute both Obama and Trump for crimes against humanity. Vee (talk) 07:31, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * So you think that any collateral damage is actionable? Wouldn't that turn USA entirely isolationist? FairDinkum (talk) 04:47, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think calling it "collateral damage" is a dehumanizing term. I also don't think the drone program is morally or legally justified (it's state sanctioned extrajudicial assassination against an enemy we have not legally declared war upon and that we can change the definition of who counts whenever we want) nor is it all that effective. If anything, the murders of the children were just a propaganda coup for the terrorists. Actions like these are what DAESH uses as a recruitment tool. We're doing the terrorists' work for them. What do you think the point of terrorism is? To cause an overreaction from the targeted government. Everything we have done since 9/11 has been detrimental to the cause of "fighting" terror. Iraq, the Patriot Act, the violation of Pakistani sovereignty by assassinating Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil without permission, the drone program and its resultant "collateral damage", the huge increase of Islamophobia in the West... All of this is a propaganda coup for the Islamists. Vee (talk) 05:21, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I disagree with certain decisions to strike when civilians were in harm's way, but taking out Bin Laden, Baghdadi, Zawahiri, and the others was great. As for Pakistan, if they didn't want somebody to clean up their backyard for them, they should've done it themselves. I'm usually all for respecting other countries, but Bin Laden was a special case and everyone knew it. 05:48, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Either way, what we've been doing is a direct propaganda coup for the Islamists. That and it's honestly kind of inconsistent that people like Bush walk free while people like Slobodan Milosevic rotted in prison. They were both guilty of massive crimes against humanity. The only difference being one was the leader of the global superpower (read: empire) and the other wasn't. Vee (talk) 05:54, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Seems the Rebecca Watson entry is getting downvote bombed
The chuds are out in force today. Vee (talk) 01:47, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally, I tend to downvote anything that's "argument via YouTube". If that makes me a chud, cool, I guess.AcidTrial (talk) 16:21, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Youtube isn't an inherently bad source. It's just like any other platform out there, full of cranks and not-cranks. Vee (talk) 17:15, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I was a little irritated that the first time a Watson video was shared, it was just the video title; I thought it was an article to read and was thrown off by the video. I didn't downvote the entry but I generally prefer reading stuff compared to watching and listening. 19:05, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Change Blurb?
'Quality articles by bloggers, submitted by the RW community' it describes this page on our frontpage.

However, many of articles linked are not blogs. While I get the name is perhaps a legacy of an earlier era and so can't be changed, perhaps we could change the blurb to highlight this? (Perhaps something like 'Quality analysis articles, submitted by the RW community'? KarmaPolice (talk) 17:36, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd support "quality blogs and analysis" 17:40, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd say the latter bit is the important bit - that the page is for the articles which fit RW's mission (loosely) but are not as time-limited as the main WIGO. At least, that's how I've been treating it with my submissions. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree, I'd hardly call the source of most of the articles to be "blogs". I'd change the name and everything if I could.-Ryan1257 (talk) 17:45, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Zubayda
The article posted is from 2016. 13:47, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
 * TBF I could've posted a much more recent Youtube video on him, but the wiki for some reason looks down on that. Also if I'm not mistaken WIGOB reflects interesting content, not necessarily current content. This isn't WIGOW. Vee (talk) 13:57, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you rewrite the entry to clarify that it isn’t present-tense? 17:24, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Done. Vee (talk) 17:28, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks < 18:21, 25 December 2022 (UTC)