RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive411

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, (new)(back)

Is there a scientific explanation for a "Dark night of the soul"?

Just some mystic woo but I heard about it a lot.--Back2theroots34 (talk) 07:21, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The link takes me to something written by someone who believes in the literal existence of gods and souls. As there is no good evidence that either of these magical constructs actually exists, you will have a hard time getting anywhere with any explanation - let alone a "scientific" one.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:25, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

So it's exclusively a spiritual concept with no studies done of it?--73.42.183.211 (talk) 09:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

It's difficult to use the scientific method to study things which apparently don't exist. I'm sure social scientists have studied the beliefs about these things - but that's not the same as studying the the things.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 09:17, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

People do think (and act as if) there is an 'individual autonomous entity' sitting inside their own and other peoples' heads (or other bodily location): this is generally designated 'the soul' or similar term. Anna Livia (talk) 10:01, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

from the quote given in the link from someone having a kind of mental health crisis - 'doctors say it is part of the PTSD'. kind of answers the OPs question right of the bat. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:53, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The Dark Night of the Soul would seem to be a strictly Catholic belief. It's not something Protestants ever mention because for example, John 3:16 and Name it and claim it. ^{— Unsigned, by: Bongolian / talk / contribs}

It's been hijacked by the new age community, especially the part that really likes Buddhism--2600:387:C:6C36:0:0:0:4 (talk) 21:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

So some group which believes in things that apparently don't exist has taken over some ideas from another group which believes in things which apparently don't exist. How confusing!Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:21, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Pronouns

When I have to refer to a gender fluid person and I do not know that individuals pronoun for the day, which pronoun should I use? Highboi (talk) 17:32, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

While you are probably trolling, "they" is fine. CorruptUser 17:49, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

"They" or "Thy" is acceptable generally but if someone ask you to call them by a specific pronoun, be respectful and do so. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 21:01, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

There is never any need to use pronouns if one is uncertain about proper usage. No one is insulted if you use their name instead of a pronoun. If you don't know a person's name, all sorts of circumlocutions are available, and you cannot expect to know the correct one at a moments notice. But if you do know it, no sense saving it for an apology.UncleKrampus (talk) 22:11, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I like the 'If I have to...' part of the question. It's got that passive air of dislike, like wanting to pull on some rubber gloves before dealing with it while keeping the offending object at arm's length.

What little stats I've seen show the majority of Anglo NBs prefer 'they' and the largest minority are their bio gender marker. To be honest, I think only a real techy NB would get pissed if presented with 'they' (and well they'd be techy anyway). I also find it interesting how the old binary trans gender pronoun manufactroversy has evolved into a new front.

Thing is, in general terms 'they' is a good habit for all to get into. There's always been some folks who you weren't completely sure 'which one' they were and you'd fuss a little inside which way to bet. Now you really can take the third option. These days, anyone not obviously either end of the spectrum gets 'they' from me. Now some folks (like some binary trans early in transition) *might* take offence to this, but my reply is this; would you really like this topic to be one of the first we have? KarmaPolice (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

This is one single anecdotal experience, but for me I have a GF friend who'll say something like "it's a he day today." Just a small clarification so that we know. Jake Holmes^{yell at me} 13:21, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't really see much difficulty with this. "You" has always ok depending on how you define "always" been gender neutral in English. So has "we". That only leaves "he/she". "They" has actually been an acceptable alternative for "he/she" for a long time - certainly long before the gender neutrality became part of the culture wars. So in any case of doubt use "they".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

This, basically. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:21, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

The Coronavirus WIGO has reached the planned mothball date.

I updated the the banner template for RationalWiki:What is going on with the coronavirus? to make it present tense and clearly direct people to use the main WIGO for new coronavirus posts from today. Also added a hidden warning to the WIGO just above the "==March 2022==" to warn against creating new sections for April 2022.
For those who are wondering, the split off from the main WIGO happened on 17 March, 2020. It was active for 745 days or 2 years and 15 days.--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 22:34, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I updated the WIGO page and removed from WIGO:NAV. --RWRW (talk) 01:11, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

It's still linked in the 'Featured Content' part of the main page. Is this intentional? KarmaPolice (talk) 14:50, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

No, I just missed it when I was de-linking it from other pages. --RWRW (talk) 00:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Yay. I was helpful!. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:56, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Holocaust denialism in fiction

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Strain trilogy which deals with a virus that turns people into vampires. The sentient virus eventually takes over the world, enslaves the human species and turns society into a Nazi-like totalitarian police state (one of the vampires was a Nazi SS officer while human).

Anyways when the vampire plague is exterminated and human society rebuilds, there are people who downplay the severity of the plague, take credit for ending the plague and outright denialism. Example: some people at the end of the story claim that the New World Order somehow created a drug to place all humanity into some sort of trance and caused people to imagine it.

Say a sentient plague took over the world and enslaved humanity, I bet that once all was said and done- people would deny that it ever happened.

It makes me wonder how anybody could deny that mass murder such as the real life Holocaust, American Indian Genocide(s), the Holomdor took place or the current genocide taking place in China? Hell, even regular denialism of established scientific knowledge bugs me. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 23:31, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Just as a philosophical note, we shouldn't be surprised by the existence of these kinds of denialism. We all tell little lies, often to make ourselves feel better. The kind of stories we call denialisms are, at the end of the day, just really big lies, often I suppose, to make ourselves feel better about some terrible reality. Today, at this very moment, millions of Russians are telling themselves that their army is fighting Nazis in Ukraine and not murdering thousands of people there. Ariel31459 (talk) 23:57, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

One of the more 'innocent' issues is - I think - a kind of mental 'overflow error'. The size, intensity etc of such things are too large to be comprehended, *therefore* they cannot be true (normally, you'd end up with minimisation, rather than denial). It's the main reason the Allies didn't go public in 1943 about the Holocaust, and was one of the reasons cited to defend Pius XII's silence on the subject.

One thing I've come to realise is that a lot of people are pretty ignorant of the details, even if they are aware of the 'general outline'. One of the reoccuring themes in Maus (for example) was the narrator's own relative ignorance, and he good as grew up in the aftermath of it. Plus, history teaching for most folks seriously sucks. It's easier to deny/minimise something you don't know a lot about. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Not everything gets denied. I think it is a more modern trend. The bubonic plague wasn't denied in the medieval period as far as I can find, but when it hit the United States in the 1900s it was initially denied because only Chinese railroad workers were effected and the large companies didn't want it to slow down production. Sounds familiar? Capitalism tends to deny problems that disproportionately effect the poor if acknowledging it would hurt their bottom line. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 20:43, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

However, perhaps before 1900 and certaintly before 1850 most common people didn't really know what was going on outside of their own immediate affairs because to the lack of mass media and a lack of literacy and poor educational levels in general. So there was less to 'deny' because you needed to be informed of the fact first before denying it. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Anyone else seeing "common law sheriffs"?

Sounds a lot like the next iteration of the sovereign citizen/freemen on the land nonsense - have come to attention here in li'; ol' En Zed a couple of times recently - eg https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300557520/man-who-threatened-to-kill-pm-dragged-into-dock-by-police-after-refusal-to-move and https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300555020/the-selfproclaimed-sheriffs-who-want-to-arrest-the-authorities Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 11:41, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Welp, sure looks like a somewhat aggravated version of the usual SovCit drivel to me. The sheriff thing isn't a part of the spiel here in the US, though, at least I've never heard of it. And frankly, it reads as scary. I mean, it reads as the recipe for a shooting-- possibly a major one-- with the added problem of the perpetrator claiming that s/he's the actual legal force in the matter. Kencolt (talk) 04:31, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Looks like there is a US link, thence to Australia, and from them over the ditch to us - https://richardsonpost.com/howellwoltz/25408/sheriffs-and-common-law-courts-are-saving-us/ Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 11:41, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm slightly worried that if you shove in the title above into the search facility with a G, the top results are from https://commonlaw.earth . I cannot be arsed to look at it; how cranky is it? KarmaPolice (talk) 16:37, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

"Create a secure online voting system based on the blockchain, so that voters can vote anywhere, any time, giving us a more flexible and stronger democracy." i'm gonna say very. 12.226.124.130 (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't sound hugely cranky by itself. 'Put simply, Common Law, or the Law of the Land, has been used to govern and keep the peace in communities ever since mankind gathered together for their mutual protection.' (from the front page) clearly is. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:32, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah - the site is Australian, and states that "the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1901 is our supreme common law" - despite that Act not mentioning common law at al, and specifically mentioning that laws made by Parliament are binding on "courts, judges, and people of every State and every part of the Commonwealth.... ". Sadly a pretty typical nut-job mis- or even non-reading of statute. FYI for those non-Aussies here that is the Act that transformed the several seperate colonies of Australia into a single nation. It does mention New Zealand too - we had the option.... we made the better choice! ;) Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 21:59, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Memes and their ever changing subtext terrify me

Apparently the clown emoji is alt-right now? Is pepe the frog still alt right, or has it been "reclaimed"? I look at Twitter only like once every month and the etiquette seems to change every time. Between work and hobbies, I ain't got time to keep up with this shit. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 05:20, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

The clown combined with the globe. It's not quite restricted to the alt-right, but basically the idea is that the world has gone batshit insane over the past few years and everything with COVID has been complete theatre. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now? God knows, anything goes. CorruptUser 06:22, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

They are used as dog whistles but that doesn’t mean that they are deprived of innocent use in other contexts, it’s just a reliable indication you are probably talking to a nazi if it is used in conjunction with some other red flags depending on context. If someone posts the clown and globe in say a post in support of BLM, or a news article celebrating a queer celebrity — you can probably guess what the intention is. The fact that people get so confused by the use of dog whistles makes me genuinely confused how such individuals don’t seem to struggle grasping the meaning of indexicals. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 08:24, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

it does annoy me that when nazis-in-all-but-name appropriate innocent stuff and we all collectively just let them. like some racist fucknuts do the ok sign and suddenly its now theirs? thats all seems to take. and we help them by codifying them into endless glossaries AMassiveGay (talk) 14:50, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I blame the media and social media since a false consensus can easily be made if a small, but organized group of people on twitter say "this now means something", people react negatively to it as expected, but end up driving its popularity, then the media sees it and takes the troll's word for it.Ryan1257 (talk) 19:43, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Memes don't mean shit.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:19, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@AMassiveGay I would argue again that it's completely contextual. Like some rando signing okay when he asked how is doing probably shouldn't be assumed to be a nazi, but when someone does it in their profile picture under a "kekistan" flag maybe reconsider that possibility. It shouldn't be hard to tell, and I don't know if it's really fair to the rest of us to say that we "let them" appropriate such symbols because it's not as if they are asking everyone's permission first. They are trying to covertly signal to one another, we can't really stop them from developing their own codes and phrases. If you want your codes to be covert you have to make them innocuous. This doesn't mean that everyone else is not allowed to use these terms within their original meaning. That being said it's also important to recognize that certain memes and dogwhisltes aren't necessarily taken from innocuous phrases and symbols in mainstream culture. These folks sometimes coin phrases and memes of their own, and in that case the origins of said meme is already racist. Like the whole kekistan meme was partially started to mock refugees by having people pretend to be refugees of a fictional country to which progressives are trolled in having to "accept the culture of kekistanians" regardless how offensive it may seem. The fact the flag is just a nazi flag in green probably doesn't help, but the initial intention was always to mock refugees and multiculturalism. The intent being satirical in attempt to illustrate the incompatibility of the cultures of Syrian refugees with the west, though they recognized the fascist undertones to this. So when pressed they would often claim the meme was made just to "troll" progressives into finding nazi associations they deny were real in the first place. I mean the entire farse sort of fell apart once Charlottesville happened and many nazi's were waiving kekistan flags alongside the red equivalent with the swastika - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:27, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@OnlySortaDumb AMG seems to be complaining about the habit of doing away with that context and codifying symbols as racist in-and-of-themselves, rather than merely being standins for actual racist symbols and language. If that makes sense. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:49, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

One of the reasons that they come up with all these symbols is because if you know and call them out on it, you look unhinged to people who don't know. And then the alt-right guys get to look like the reasonable ones and others lower their guards. Fun. (Plus people might innocently repeat memes from toxic sources, so you have to be careful about that as well.) Vomitorium (talk) 00:14, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

this is very much true - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC).

Wikipedia's balance problems

I noted earlier that Wikipedia has widespread balance fallacy problems because of overarching NPOV, particularly on pages that are not frequently visited. I more-or-less confirmed that fixing this would entail engaging extensively with WP bureaucracy, something I'm not interested in doing because my initial inquiries were not encouraging. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a way to accomplish the task of fixing the pseudo-NPOV bias without drawing suspicion. It is possible to use some of the WP templates to indicate bias in pages that are seemingly neutrally written but that avoid any controversy. Just editing by adding appropriate templates does not seem to trigger the 'bad faith' filter. Bongolian (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Drive by templating is discouraged on Wikipedia, monstly because, well, it doesn't actually improve the encyclopedia in any meaningful way. If you are templating pages but not actually improving them, I doubt the templates will last long before being removed. 138.207.198.74 (talk) 16:01, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Except that I'm probing pages that get edited anywhere from once a month to once a year. The templates are improvements compared to what's there already, which is basically promtionalism in the guise of NPOV. Bongolian (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

If you're not familiar with Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, there are ways to counter NPOV bias. --Annanoon (talk) 08:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Number of articles on RW

Can someone write the 7500th viable page? Cannot think of anything suitable myself at the moment (and, besides, I have done several 'round/decorative numbered pages elsewhere in the wikiverse). And when will RW reach 7777 articles? Anna Livia (talk) 10:22, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

It's now on 7,501. I have one idea for a new page; that on mass liar / fantasist Carl Beech (aka Nick of 'credible and true' fame). Done a quick check; we have 3 mentions of him in other RW pages and feel if the likes of 'Michelle Remembers' gets on here, think the one of many chins should do too. Plus, WP does not have a page on him, and utterly coincidently this means RW shall get (I suspect) high billing on search engines beginning with G. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:26, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

It was 7499 when I posted - and some pages do appear and disappear (promptly or otherwise).

I mentioned 'Treasure Hunts above (now on SB Archives 410) which might be a suitable overview article - links to existing RW articles or summaries of 'too marginal or historical' (the Amber Room, the buried treasure train etc) if anyone wants to pursue the concept. Anna Livia (talk) 12:42, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

For my part, I finished a French translation of this article, if that counts. LongStylus (talk) 01:01, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about gender idenity.

What exactly is "gender idenity"? The Wikipedia definition is "Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it.". I was always told that gender and sex was two different things. And I am not sure how gender identity and gender stereotyping are too different things. HotNogs (talk) 04:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Gender identity is not the same as stereotyping for starters. For starters: what is your gender identity? Why do you believe it? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 04:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't understand gender identity at all, so I can't answer that question. HotNogs (talk) 04:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

What I don't understand is how gender identity and gender stereotyping is different. Because at the end there is nothing "inside" of us that is male and female, as far as I understand it. HotNogs (talk) 05:02, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Gender Identity has to do with someone's psychological sense of self as to how they relate to the social constructs of male, female, man, woman, being non-binary etc. For example, Chris does not feel a strong sense of having a gender identity and so identifies as being agender. Gender roles are the socially constructed expectations and duties associated with a gender identity provided by a culture, such as the common expectation that women ought to be caregivers. Stereotypes are commonly held oversimplified ideas or misconceptions about a person or group, so gender stereotypes ultimately relate to oversimplified ideas regarding how people of a certain gender think and behave. Having a gender identity is arguably no more or less "inside" of you, than being a scholar, or having a short temperament; regardless, that does not make it any less real or any less a part of who you are. Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

So how do transgender people know that they are trans? Any why is one gender is always associated with one sex (Like the penis is associated with the man gender)? Because from what I can understand gender identity without "gender roles" is absolutely nothing. If I, as a male, started being the most female stereotypical person in the planet (hair, clothes, roles etc) but say that I am still a man, how can I prove to them that my gender identity is still a man? HotNogs (talk) 06:43, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

(Edited) There was a lot of progress made in women's rights in the 70's. There's also a lot of stupid stuff that almost no one uses, e.g., "Womyn" and "Mz". So too with Trans rights. There'll be progress, we'll all agree that some of the stuff being advocated for is actually just dumb, and then we will all move on to the next fight, probably about legalizing polygamy or something stupid like that. As for you, if you're an effeminate man and comfortable in your own skin as a man who likes "girly" things, you shouldn't be ashamed to be an effeminate man and anyone pressuring you to become Trans can just fuck off. If being physically male is truly making your miserable, speak to a psychiatrist and see what the best solution is. Preferably a non-surgical solution; we tend to be too quick to surgery IMHO, but for some it could be the best option. CorruptUser 07:04, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this has to do with my previous question, but OK. HotNogs (talk) 07:02, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh, you edited what you wrote... OK, but I still don't understand is how you can "feel" that your a man (gender identity). I don't feel like I am a man inside a man body no more than I feel like I am a "brown-eye person" trapped inside of a "blue-eyed" person, you know what I mean? My body is just that, a body. If I was born a woman, I wouldn't feel any different. How can someone have a gender identity any more than a "hair colour identity", a "eye colour identity" or a "skin colour identity"? HotNogs (talk) 07:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Getting epic deja vu here. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

HotNogs, you may be 'unsure of how this has to do with your question' because you're basically asking someone(s) to sit down and teach you this whole subject from the start. I think I can speak for everyone here that while there are places online for this, this is not one of them. We generally lack the time, inclination and for some, expertise to do it. This is something where wikipedia etc aren't a lot of help, because it's too academic for the zero-knowledge person to get much out of (much of their economics stuff is similar). I only skim-read this, but this page seems to be a good start for understanding (if it is good, perhaps we could sticky it somewhere?). Read it, think about it, and *then* ask specific questions about it. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@KarmaPolice Sorry, about writing unsure of how this has to do with your question it was because CorruptUser didn't finish writing his post. In the link you posted, I have already seen it. It states that gender identity is "is our internal experience and naming of our gender." How can someone be "internally ̶m̶a̶l̶e̶ man". How come "gender identity" exist but not "hair colour identity", "eye colour identity" or a "skin colour identity"? HotNogs (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@HotNogs Either you aren't listening or you're acting in bad faith. No one is "internally male". The category "male" refers to physical characteristics, not the internal sense of self and its relation to that of others. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:56, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie Sorry for incorrect terminology. I have fixed it. HotNogs (talk) 12:08, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@HotNogs You changed the wording, but not the intent. You're still focused on physical characteristics an not social constructs and the mind's relation to them. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:15, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie I don't get it. Isn't like, the definition of transgender is "Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth"? HotNogs (talk) 12:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

So even if I changed the word from male to man, its still interconnected anyway. HotNogs (talk) 12:23, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@HotNogs Your earlier post conflated physical characteristics (eye color, skin color, sexual characteristics) with gender, a psychological and social concept, and equivocated between them. You are now trying to salvage that post with another post engaging in further equivocation. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

You may have seen it, but it appears that you've not read it to the point where comprehension happens. This is one of those topics where you're gonna need to read the whole article, not simply find a sentence then complain it doesn't make sense by itself.

On to your point; on a very basic level, everyone has an 'internal' and 'external' self. The internal is what you feel 'is you', the external is what others actually see. A simple example of this can be the classic 'midlife crisis man' who thinks he's 'distinguished' and 'charming' while others see a creepy-acting older bloke with bad hair and a flabby gut.

Therefore, the internal/external views will either totally line up, be utterly out of whack or somewhere in-between (which I think most of us are at). The thing is, we'd all like our externals to match our internals, and many of us will go to rather long lengths to do this. Another example of this is in clothing; we all go to a lot of effort etc to find clothes that 'are us' and/or to portray an image we'd like others to see.

'Hair colour identity' is an interesting point. For it's one of those things which is usually not 'a thing' at all, but occasionally *is*. I am, naturally thinking of redheads. Enough is made by society about their differing appearance that yes, it becomes part of their 'identity' (loved/loathed/accepted). The lesson here being; whatever attribute is 'made an issue' by general society shall become part of people's identities - I mean, just ask left-handers. Much more an 'issue' in say, the 1950s than now, but still enough that them sinister ones feel it's 'part of them' and get cranky when 'suggested' they do it the 'normal' way or something.

As for 'skin colour identity'... well, there is a debate to be had along how much racial identity is borne by culture, geographic factors, ancestory and so on. And what is a 'race' in the first place. For like gender, it's not clear-cut either. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Gender has observable characteristics. The observable include: external genitals and presence/absence of breasts, internal sexual organs, chromosome characteristics (XX, XY, XXY, etc.), and hormone levels. Some people are visibly or not visibly hermaphroditic/intersex, having mixed-looking external characteristics or internal/external mismatch. People also have an internal concept (not observable) of their own gender that may correspond to one or more of their observable characteristics. xenogender is pseudoscience because it corresponds to no observable gender characteristic (hence failing the burden of proof by the claimant, and thereby being unfalsifiable)). Bongolian (talk) 19:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bongolian Those "observable characteristics" are largely sexual characteristics, not gender. Gender is a social construct used to classify and categorize an abstract set of psychological phenomena. That is to say, non-physical. You might as well try to give physical examples of colors. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Further, no one in this thread is defending or endorsing the idea of Xenogenders. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, your definition of observable traits leaves out identifying clothing, hairstyle, makeup, and perhaps behavior, all which varies by culture of course. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 22:34, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I was wrong. Bongolian (talk) 05:28, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Btw a lot of base level questions have been already posed and answered here. Might be wise to take a look before you do any more following up, HotNogs. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 22:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie I'm extremely ignorant on the subject so I just do my best to respect everyone when it comes to gender and sexuality. But from a more quantitative approach, isn't there any psychological differences between male and female? One might think that 3 billions of evolution resulted in some differences between the average male and female behavior. Am I wrong? GeeJayK (talk) 23:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps, but also the human time span isn't long at all. Only hundreds of thousands of years. What do you think "male" and "female" behavior entails in? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 23:28, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

For instance, I believe males might be perhaps, on average, more aggressive than females. Now, sociological variables can explain most of it? Sure, but can genetics also explain it to some extent? That's my question. GeeJayK (talk) 23:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

it is possible to to look at physical characteristics - your biology - completely removed from any cultural or psychological influence, but it is not possible to remove the physical from the cultural or psychological. it is influencing things from the moment we are born and our mothers are presented with us with 'congratulations its a ...'. we will be treated differently from that moment on based on physical properties, the colour of your baby clothes, the toys you will be given, the name we are given, effecting how we are seen by others and how we see ourselves. differing rates of developments for boys and girls, onset of puberty and the physical changes and the hormones produced further influencing and reinforcing what we see and do, what others see in us and do to us and so forth and continue to do so as we mature into our prime, reach middle age, menopause, old age and death. for some physical characteristics are an essential part of our genders, for some this may mean surgeries and hrt, for others thats not required, but it will always be a factor one way or another. a physical trait is never the sole factor, it will be one of many impacting and influencing every other factor. there is no line that can seperate out things and say 'this is about gender and this is not' that is universal to all, and you cannot look at one part without considering the whole AMassiveGay (talk) 00:01, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GeeJayK To some degree yes, but if I remember correctly the nature vs nurture debate is still ongoing in the realm of psychology. But this only tangentially affects "gender" as a category, and is several steps removed from defining "gender identity". The main issue I'm having is that people are getting hung up on the idea that things we can't directly observe exist. Which is bizarre, as such things exist in the physical sciences as well, with sub-atomic particles and certain light waves being the most obvious examples. But to get back to your question, yes, the phenomena we label as "gender" does indeed interact with the things we put under the category of "sex", but these are not the same. For another analogy, imagine conflating the physical hardware of your computer with the software and programs running on it. That's the sort of mistake being made. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:04, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@AMassiveGay I very much beg to differ. You can absolutely distinguish hardware and software. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

you can look at the hardware without the software, the software does not exist without the hardware. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@AMassiveGay But software is a generalizable blueprint? You can run the same software on different architectures. Sure you cannot run it "by itself" (but I would argue the hardware also doesn't do anything meaningful without the software), but a practice in my school when learning coding was to write programs by hand on pen and paper and operate them using nothing more than a notebook, a pencil, and some elbow grease. Now firmware on the otherhand is hardware specific and useless without the base hardware. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 00:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the metaphor is getting a bit muddled. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Because people think of gender as "something I am inside of which other people should be aware," it is ultimately undefinable as a general concept that holds up to scientific analysis. No one but you knows what you are really like inside, we only know what you look, sound, smell, feel, taste like. We count ourselves as wise when we take you for who you appear to be and as virtuous when we accept you for who you say you are. We are all somewhat different. Some people think of gender as a way to create a typology, but it isn't useful outside a therapist's office. It is wrong to believe that the way other people do or think about things will be of use to you because they ostensibly have the same gender. Genders are a philosophical construct that sometimes proves useful, but results can vary. I don't want to go to calling gender science factitious, but it is close.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

A lot of base level cis-sexism and queerphobia in this thread. I would want to point out if it hasn't already that knowing your gender identity isn't really that much distinct from knowing when one has synesthesia, or having a particular sexual orientation. There may be some basic neural correlations or biological associations with such constructs but ultimately the overall picture may be a complex interaction of various factors relating to hormones, socialization, neuroplasticity, culture, genetics etc. with no simple causal factor or simple model able to fully account for the phenomena studied. In the mean time we have to put a base level of trust in people's experiences of themselves mindful of neuropsychological limitations (i.e. cognitive bias). If you are willing to dismiss gender identity as "unfalsifiable" then it would be inconsistent not to do so for any self-report on psychological phenomena from when people report "being bisexual" or "feeling depressed". A lot of confusion regarding gender I think would be better served if one were to seriously look at the relevant literature. In that case I would highly recommend Joan Roughgarden's "Evolution's Rainbow" for the perspective of a evolutionary biologist, Julia Serrano's "Whipping Girl" for a trans-feminist perspective, "Line Drawings" by Cressida Heyes for a Wittgensteinian perspective, and additionally look into Judith Butler's theory of gender as performatives from a uniquely post-modern or queer theorist perspective. It could be argued that "gender" itself is reducible to self-declaration and performative acts (to which any gender identity by consequence would be "valid"), and even though yes sex is physical, and those physical traits "objectively" exist that shouldn't be an excuse to uncritically accept constructs of "male" and "female" as sexual categorizations devoid of social construction. At the end of the day I think this boils down to the ethics of bodily autonomy and self-determination, and what extent if any are we willing to suppress that. Personally I think we should be highly suspect of anyone who is for that suppression if like myself one thinks of themselves as a feminist. Also this comment is in response to some general arguments made in this thread, not to the poster immediately above me. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@OnlySortaDumb You put it better than I ever could. Thanks. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:44, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Since the op initially asked about gender, rather than transgender specifically (though it's clear to all that was what they were barking at) I just wanna knowing what gender you are, and actually being that gender is no guarantee that you are happy with how you manifest or express it. Plenty of men and women are uncomfortable with themselves for not measuring up to some ideal of what a man or woman is 'meant' to be. They don't have the bodies mass media says they should have, or they don't have some personality trait that 'real' men or women are supposed to have, don't like the things they are meant to like, or they have all that but some crisis revealed their frailties to world they no longer measure up, or other men and women insisting they are not real men or women and cripples their confidence despite not even wanting to be what a real man or woman is supposed to be.

As much as people constantly framing questions of gender around what it is to be trans, many people should first ask what it means to be the gender they themselves are AMassiveGay (talk) 11:53, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not the OP but I can understand what he is getting at here. He is basically saying how can someone say they are transgender if gender is basically just stereotypes and that gender identity is literally just "internalised gender expression". I mean if gender expression was abolished tomorrow and everybody acted exactly the same gender wise (no gendered clothing/hobbies/actions etc), would they be such thing as gender identity? Of course not. Its like saying there is a difference between hair colour, hair colour expression and hair colour identity. Its sounds silly, (hair colour is just the physical thing, nothing more) so what would they be any difference between sex, gender expression and gender identity? Anyway, thats my two cents. CrazyNonLove (talk) 12:07, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

You are saying if something that will not and probably never will happen happens then there would not any gender identity? That's a bullshit argument and there would be gender identity, it would just all be the same one. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:39, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

🤨 Do you believe that there will still be gender identity in a gender equal world? Could you explain why? Why does sex, gender expression and gender identity exist but not hair colour, hair colour expression and hair colour identity? If gender identity exist then hair colour identity, race identity, species identity would also exist. Basically they would be nothing rock-solid in physical space because everything would be self-identification. CrazyNonLove (talk) 12:54, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

even for a troll you not very bright are you. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@AMassiveGay That's actually a good point. Discussions of gender are generally centered around trans issues rather than the concept more broadly, when it would be more productive to discuss the concept in other context as well. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:51, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

at the very least it will keep some folk occupied before they start with dumb fuck questions like 'why is there no hair colour identity?' thats either flat out trolling or they are so ill imformed that we cant do much for them here. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Gay, 'why is there no hair colour identity' might look like a dumb question and it may be from a bad faith asker, but they make a point. 'Dumb questions' as a rule have pretty simple answers to refute it and as a rule social progessives never answer the above, instead shutting down the debate. Ergo; the bad faith asker then trots back saying 'see, it's all stupid! I asked and they simply told me to piss off!'.

In this instance, I *do* have a simple reply for the question. We have no 'hair colour identity' because it's (generally speaking) not an aspect of people we have 'made an issue' of (much). There's never really been a movement to only employ blondes in X occupation, there's never been moves to formally equate shade with intelligence and there's never been any form of apartheid based on a 'straw test' (like the paper bag test, but for hair).

But even so, there *has* been some elements of 'hair bias' in history. Afro hair falling prey to (white-designed) dress codes, very dark hair being seen in the USA as evidence of Native/Latino ancestory, the Nazis favouring the blonde-haired 'Ayran' and so on. And there's been many an instance where folks have gone to a lot of effort to change their hair colour/texture/etc, not out of personal desire but to change the reaction it produces in others - like for example, the millions of people who resort to the bottle than rather admit their grey hairs.

That is the scenario which NonLove presents as a thought experiment - 'What if we stopped giving a rat's ass about gender identities and labels tomorrow?'. That clearly won't happen in our lifetimes but it quite possibly may do one day. Basically, the arising of a purely 'post-gender' society. My theory is that by that stage sex/gender would have become completely divorced and the latter fade into nothingless because the majority of people appear to our eyes to be either variants of nonbinary or androgynous. That everyone is an individual, and taken on those merits.

When it comes down to it, so much 'matters' in this world only because others say it matters. The second folks quit believing that X important, the whole thing falls apart and vanishes into the mysts of history. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

i bet you are a ginger arent you.

its dumb question when framed as it was with no attempt to define what it might mean as an identity and ignoring all the preceding discussion. if they were to have made a case for such an identity there might have been some merit to respond as it would entail pointing out how it might influence sense of self and how others view them. a similar exercise could be applied to gender or anything else one could decide to hang an identity on.

i am for all intensive purpses albino - there are whole communities of such folk on line and real life. - i could have chosen to describe an identity around being considerably blonder than you. but they were trolling, trying to reduce complex and subjective gender identity to some arbitrary trait to dismiss it by association with what in their mind is a ridiculous thing. i respect their right to identify as a godawful prick, but they can do one AMassiveGay (talk) 15:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the grossly overgeneralising lecture Karma. "Liberals" is such a ridiculously broad category there are few meaningful generalisations you can even make about them. Your "liberal's don't x" statement is as realistically meaningful as "conservatives don't bother to researching nothing". Some liberals will take the time to explain why "hair identity" is not a valid analogy when they:

• Believe it is a goodfaith question
• Haven't already explained this hundreds of times before
• Have the energy to bother
• Believe saying so will make any difference
• Believe there is a good cost/benefit (the time wasted thoughtfully typing something out and engaging with a person vs. the likelihood it will make any difference based on their previous experience...especially online). You missed the additional facts that hair identity isn't comparable because, at least amongst already non-marginalised people, there is virtually no marginalisation for people because of their hair colour except some occasional school ground teasing for gingers and a slight bias towards attraction to one hair colour or another in some cultures...and also because I would really like someone to explain to me what the different characteristics of "blonde hair" identity vs. "brown hair" identity are apart from a few office humour cliches. For the record I am blonde/ginger and I dyed my hair black for 10 years, mostly because I liked the way it looked and also because I started getting a LOT more attention after doing so. The idea of "identity" never crossed my mind until this conversation. In fact, the only time anyone seems to think about "hair identity" is a traditionalist possibly hateful reaction towards "gender identity". ShabiDOO 16:07, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

another reason for being a dumb question is hair, rather than the basis of its own identity, is very often a discrete part of a greater identity. aside what might be considered more gendered haircuts, say bangs vs short back and sides, but there are all manner of haircuts declaring membership of dozens of different subcultures. skinheads spring to mind, which as identity has much variance to what it means, and quite apart from having a skinhead rather than being a skinhead, encompassing fashion, politics, and simple practicality. anything that for someoone is important and central enough to them to be considered who they are, is never just going to one single trait or quirk of personality, it will always be the sum of many parts filled with nuance. i dont believe any questions that push for a answer or make comparisons to some singular thing are in good faith at all, no matter how naive or oblivious any asking might try to appear. they already know the answer to their own question. gender is just this one simple thing thats not complicated or heartfelt, just shallow and frivolous. they frame it with such a dumb question because gender is dumb, trans is just dumb and whatever might be fundemental to someones being is just silly so they ask a silly question. the more i think about what said i earlier about considering ones own gender the more i think it essential to even beginning to be consider the gender of another. you may not still understand what another persons gender truely means for someone, but if you can look at yourself and see the complexities of your own picture of yourself, you can at least recognise that everyone else is similarly complex. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:46, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the question about hair has some value in that it highlights the arbitrary nature of social constructs. Something Judith Butler argues in regards to sex is the arbitrary significance that is place on breasts, body hair, genitals etc., She uses this to argue that sex is also socially constructed, and it's not something unique to gender. Similar arguments come up in regards to the social construction of race. Gender abolition sometimes is used as a position by TERF's in bad faith to moralize and stigmatize the existence of trans people; which is always performatively contradictory when they insist the "reality" of gender must be enforced, in addition to a enforced segregation of gender on the basis/conflation with sex under their essentialist framework. I have met trans and non-binary people who openly endorse gender abolition, with the premise that people still be able to induce changes to their bodily appearance and sexual characteristics as they see fit. A big source of gender dysphoria comes in with the insistence that people are a certain gender by the folks surrounding them, and so a world without gender is a world without misgendering -- something that some trans and non-binary people see as appealing. Of course there is the other side of the coin to which gender is seen as a interpretation of one's "intrinsic inclinations" to which the abolition of gender would just lead inevitably to the construction of new gender categories to account for people's internal sense of self. Similar analogy could be made about sexual orientation which is again argued to be a social construct but not wholly a cultural artefact. That would be something reflected in Julia Serano's Intrinsic Inclinations Model -Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

No, not ginger. And I *do* accept the questioner was – on balance of probabilities – trolling. However, I stand by my point; if it is 'a dumb question', there should be a simple(ish) answer to refute it (which I think I have developed, and I shall deploy again as/when needed). Not simply told 'stop being stupid' or some kind of brush-off. I'm sorry, but I never buy the 'these truths are self-evident' BS, be it from a cultist, a politician or just some rando. I want to know *why*.

Anyway, Shabi, I agree that 'liberal' is a 'ridiculously broad category' which is why I didn't use it (I said 'progressive'). Plus, I'm in BritLand and 'liberal' doesn't have that connotation. But all know the truth; there are folks (apparently) 'on our side' who *are* intolerant, officious jerkwads who are some of the worst advertisements for social progressivism and shall 'for the good of the cause' attack everyone and anything which crosses their paths.

What's more, you're picking a hole in my argument which I already sealed; 'We have no 'hair colour identity' because it's not an aspect of people we have 'made an issue' of'. If you actually *read* my point, you'll see that we, in fact agree (on the main). Thus, it is a potted answer to the 'what about hair colour identity' line which can be brought out as/when needed. A low-effort method of showing the lurkers which exist on all pages that no, there *is* an answer to it.

OnlySort gets the points I was trying to make, and gets my view to boot; though I am more of the thought that instead of it becoming 'hundreds of genders' to salami-slice all the differing features, a post-gender society will simply accept everyone as an individual and leave it at that (though this would have to go in-hand with sexuality becoming an non-issue too). KarmaPolice (talk) 20:53, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

In some cultures there are recognised 'gender crossings' (eg the Albanian dedicated virgins and Indian hijra): where do they fit into the discussions? Anna Livia (talk) 14:35, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

@Anna Livia they are just another viable gender identity/construct that exists in other cultures. They are included on rationalwiki's page on Non-binary gender. I think the anthropological term for such identities are cultural co-genders. I know in sociology it's common to categorize various cultures with the number of genders that are cultural recognized as "n-genders cultures". Its the fact that many cultures make this distinction between one's reproductive organs and gender identity, and with varying recognition to gender being spectral or continual that scientists by and large in both the social sciences and medical sciences recognize gender as something cultural and distinct from sex. I don't really understand the question though, they fit in rather seamlessly really. This is why some academics make the claim that TERF's are in effect racist as they insist that European cultural conceptions of gender that enforce a strict binary based in presumed biological essence is the only correct conception -- in essence believing only a select few white people's understanding of gender as being the only valid one. This belief was also a big part to why the catholic church thought it was permissible to suppress the culture of various native American tribes due to their fluid cultural conceptions of gender and cultural acceptance of same-sex interaction (of course the degree to which this was the case varies from tribe to tribe). You really can't divorce this topic from colonialism. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Much of the trouble here is related to some linguistic muddling. An identity is a correspondence between something of interest and something perceptible that indicates the presence of that thing of interest. The process by which the thing of interest is recognized from the perception is identification. For example, consider a street with a sign saying "Main Street". The thing of interest is the particular street itself, and the sign is a perceptible indicator that that specific street is the one known as "Main Street". The identity of a street is useful for navigation, and so societies expend effort into maintaining such means of identification, and in naming streets in the first place.

Identities are important in social contexts for various purposes, many of which relate to referencing established standards of behavior by which people may conduct interactions without having to build from scratch every time. For example, a barista is commonly identifiable by certain standards of dress and a certain location at a coffee bar. So with the identitfying information conveyed by those visible signs, people know that that person can supply coffee in exchange for money, and is probably willing to do so if approached at the bar. Uniformed police officers are so identified for various purposes relating to their job, and this is generally regarded as important enough that there are laws regarding who may identify as a police officer and under what circumstances. Identities related to various demographic memberships like age and sex are usually a significant facet of many social situations.

Many people use "identity" and related terms to refer to what is more accurately called "self concept", that is, one's conception of self. Social identities can be a part of that, but the substitution of "identity" for the more accurate term hinders communication and analysis via the conflation of external identification with internal notions of self and the implication that other factors of self-concept should be ignored. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

that really isnt whats happening here AMassiveGay (talk) 20:47, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I think the BoN post above deserves a long Wittgenstein style glare - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 23:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC).

The RZ94 Puppet State Project

It is my project to create articles on puppet states around the world. My current project is on Draft:South Ossetia aka "Soviet Union Leftover" --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 23:54, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

For the historical list can I mention Tannu Tuva (the back of the back of beyond, mainly noted for its fancy stamps, which are among the few worth more if used) and the oddity that was Neutral Moresnet.Anna Livia (talk) 09:35, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Add whatever as long as it is relevant to the "country". --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 23:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Busha attack

How far is Putin off in becoming the next Hitler? Like some of the things he already did, are things we can recall the Nazi's doing aswell. Sorry If I accidentally invoked Godwin's Law. Not my intention. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:711F:4C95:8584:AB0F (talk) 07:49, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Sometimes the only comparison is to Hitler.

Speaking of Putin I used to think he was an evil genius.

But given that he overestimated the power of his army, underestimated the Ukrainian resistance, underestimated the global response - and then ensured that that global response won't be rolled back anytime in the near future by committing multiple war crimes - he can only be regarded as an evil idiot.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:15, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Nah, Hitler was actually smarter; not that I condone what he did. Military-wise, the Nazis did better as they effectively took control of other countries and set up puppet states. Modern Russia on the other hand barely took control of Ukrainian territories with a few puppet states. Don't forget that the puppet states are barely stable. If you want to compare in the batshit crazy department, then Hitler and Putin are on the same tier. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 16:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

True, but Hitler attempting to invade the USSR is likely what cost him the war. Had Hitler not done that, he had a very good chance of winning. For that, he was an idiot.

Genghis Khan could be an evil genius, though. Andrew5 (talk) 19:53, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I mean, there's a major issue here. Everyone is assuming that A), Hitler and Putin are both examples of true autocrats (they aren't) and that B), they're operating as purely rational actors driven by perfect information. Russian high command consists of more than just Putin, and further, consists of humans. Frail, petty, imperfect, humans. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

“A plain, simple, muddled, fat-headed human being—we have them in the west you know?”:

Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 20:33, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Invading the USSR was the whole point of everything Hitler did. There was no winning scenario for the Nazis without their destined war against the Soviets. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 20:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

(EC) I don't know if that's strictly true. While invading Russia did not work out in the end, it's unclear that had Hitler not invaded, Stalin would've also left him alone. CorruptUser 20:32, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Quora seems to support my position, though. Had Stalin and Hitler been at peace, they could've focused on the West, and even without invading the Brits would've had a small victory. Andrew5 (talk) 21:49, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

"Quora seems to support my position, though."

I had almost forgotten you were an idiot. Also...as Duce said, you are still forgetting that "destroying Bolshevism" was Hitler's overriding obsession. Claiming the land east of him, exterminating Slavs and the supposed "Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy..." that is like, the point of Nazism.-Flandres (talk) 22:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, the Quora link actually didn't support Andrew's position very well. In Googling, I found a link to a book review by Michael Klare, of a book called "Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941" by Ian Kershaw, a British historian whose specialty is 20th century Germany, and Nazi Germany in particular. The impression I get from the review is that Germany knew that they were starting to become in a bit of a pickle on the "Western front" owing to increasing American support of the British war effort (as well as the Soviets later), even if war hadn't been officially declared yet. Yes, Hitler did seem to have an ideological priority of defeating communism as well, but that wasn't the only factor for the decision to invade. Saying that Germany would have won had they not invaded the Soviet Union does seem like... a stretch. Germany not only miscalculated Russia's strength, per the review Germany also miscalcuated America's impact in Europe, believing they would be too preoccupied with Japan on the Pacific front. The impression I get is that the botched Soviet invasion was more a "turning point" than a deciding factor, more like the beginning of Hitler starting to make serious strategic errors than a single pivotal event. I'm sure the Kershaw book (and I'm sure others) would have even better in-depth information for "what if" speculation than a Nation magazine review could provide, let alone a Quora post. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 22:43, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

WIGO Climate change?

Hey y'all I've been thinking about it, and maybe when since we ditched WIGO Covid-19 we should swap it for "WIGO Climate change" or something of the sort, Because tbh things are looking dire and it seems there is news weekly at least that people on this site may want to share. PhoxyDude (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Just post in in the regular WIGO. Vomitorium (talk) 22:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Depends on how narrowly it's defined. For instance, where would a weather disaster count on the list? How disastrous? Andrew5 (talk) 01:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Natural disasters that are weather related are definitely encompassable by this, as climate change is exacerbating freak weather. this article was kind of the straw that broke the camels back for me to ask about this, because like i have tons of articles that would probably clog WIGO World a little too much. PhoxyDude (talk) 01:55, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

It might be a good idea if it's narrowly focussed on science and weather and biology. But so many topics overlap between climate change and other topics: economics, power generation, travel, food, denialism, etc, that you could end up emptying the other WIGOs. --Annanoon (talk) 09:02, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

it does not look to me wigo is being inundated with wigos about climate change. if there is a worthy story to post, then wigo it. if there something on weekly basis that were to posted in the wigo i dont feel this would be flood of posts on the theme. posting everything climate change related, is just not required. hows many stories do we really need blaming climate change for freak weather or telling us that ice caps are a bit smaller and getting smaller still than than they were there last time we were told this? how many of us here are going to be interested in detailing climate change minutiae? if there was much demand for it, then we'd see it reflected in wigo by now and we would all see the need for a dedicated wigo. im not seeing the need. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:18, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Bidens remarks about Putin, Opinions?

Hello everyone. I was wondering what you guys think of Biden calling Putin a war criminal and calling for Putin to be tried in front of the ICC. I have to say it leaves a sour taste in my mouth for an U.S. President to call for an investigation and trial for war crimes when the U.S. has itself a less than stellar record in this regard if one looks at how the U.S. treats investigations aimed at itself. This is not supposed to be a whataboutism but I think Bidens actions do undermine the ICC and play very much into the hands of the Kremlin propaganda machine who will exploit exactly this hypocrisy. I also feel that Biden is trying to paint himself as a "strong" leader that doesn't mince words since his approval ratings are so bad and the strongman images carries some political weight in the U.S. NastyNugget (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Putin is a war criminal. He authorized the slaughter of civilians not fighting in the war. I agree with Biden on his remarks about Putin. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 15:26, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Multiple national leaders have accused Putin of war crimes, so why the focus on Biden? Just a quick Google revealed that Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau, Mario Draghi, Emmanuel Macron, and Olaf Scholz have all made similar accusations, some more recently but in some cases (Boris Johnson for instance) even before Biden did. Also the US Senate unanimously agrees with Biden. Putin's well known for fighting dirty and committing war crimes with his invasions, it's just Putin's Ukraine invasion gathered a higher profile than others in the past (see Chechnya). I'm sure Kremlin propagandists will propaganda but so? 72.184.174.199 (talk) 16:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Just because the US has a poor track record for war crimes doesn't mean it's a bad thing to call out Russia for committing war crimes even if it is hypocritical. Some war crimes going unpunished doesn't justify even more of them! Vomitorium (talk) 16:29, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Vomitorium beat me to it. Previous US presidents (including in this century) are guilty of war crime on multiple continents. If the atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped today they would undoubtedly be considered horrific war crimes. All of this is irrelevant to Putin's war-crimery...which is undeniable at this point. Massacring civilians to achieve some further goal (terrorise, demoralise, attempt to end a war early) is a war crime. When western countries commit war crimes they are often (though not always) ignored/excused. This is bad. However calling out actual war crimes and prosecuting them...is ALWAYS a good thing, regardless of the unfair hypocricy. ShabiDOO 16:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The initial post smacks of severe "whataboutism". The obvious war criminal here is Putin. Criticizing Biden or the US or Uncle Tom Cobley is pure smokescreen.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 18:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

To be clear: I agree that Putin is a war criminal and I did not claim that the U.S. track record makes it okay for Russia to do what they do. I focus on Biden, as I mentioned before, because the U.S has a bad track record and he happens to be the President. Afaik (I might be mistaken though) none of the aforementioned leaders (or rather countries) have blocked the work of ICC investigators or used it so politically whenever they feel like it serves their purpose. Biden calling for a trial in front of the ICC then undermines, imho, the legitimacy of the court and will make it look like a political court rather than one that has purely humanitarian ideals, which is what I would like it to be (if that´s even possible). It´s not even that I disagree with Biden to call Putin a war criminal, it´s that I fear that calling on a judicial organ to put somebody on trial, when your own country itself regularly questions its legitimacy will have adverse effects on the legitimacy and efficacy of the court in this and future investigations. As I said, I also think this will play in to the hands of the Kremlin who after all propagate the narrative that the West is ganging up on and humiliating Russia and it will allow them to reach more people outside of Russia who see the hypocrisy of the U.S. concerning the ICC (the kernel of truth inside the propaganda lie, the perfect obfuscation). You guys are right though that war crimes should always be called out. It does still leave a sour taste in my mouth though. The ICC could use Bidens remarks however to gently remind him that the court is investigating Russia for the same reasons they would investigate anybody else and that remarks as those said by Biden should coincide with a more broad cooperation in the future. Again, just to be clear, I in no way agree or condone they way Russia is waging this war and I also agree that Putin is a war criminal. Anyway, thank you for your input. NastyNugget (talk) 19:04, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The big difference is that the US press has an actual civic duty to report American war crimes, e.g., the Pentagon Papers, the Abu Grahb and Guantanamo scandals. Russia actively murders journalists who suggest there are problems. While the US public could be "evil", history has yet to provide a serious instance where the people allowing free speech have committed worse crimes relative to those who cover things up. And the US has set a pretty high bar when you include things like forced sterilization, slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide. CorruptUser 19:46, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A free press is certainly necessary for a functioning democracy. But it doesn't guarantee that people won't believe whatever they want to. For instance, in the US - and depending on the poll you read - between 25% and 40% of Americans believe Trump won the election.

If this level of misinformation can exist in a society with a free press, it's clear that in a society like Russia a society without any free press at all the population isn't going to know anything like the truth.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Today in school we learned about Genghis Khan. Putin isn't going to kill as many people but also isn't going to advance societies there. Andrew5 (talk) 19:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Genghis didn't have nuclear weapons. Ganghis may have killed whole percentages of the world population, but Putin could do the same in a matter of minutes. CorruptUser 20:27, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

ghengis khan has been dead for a thousand years. its irrelevant how many he killed. the death toll from atrocities committed by one murderous fucknut does not the make atrocities of another any less awful because less peoplke were killed. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:10, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there is a whole epidemic of whataboutisn. But "what about Genghis Khan" could only have come from, well, you know who. If it had been anybody else I would have assumed it was a joke.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 12:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The Khans have a special place in Russian/Ukrainian history. One of the legacies of the Golden Horde were the Tartars of Crimea, who for centuries basically acted as human traffickers, castrating men and kidnapping women from all of Eastern Europe to be sold to the Ottomans. In that curious case where the genocidal maniacs had the moral high ground, the Russians murdered the shit out of the Tartars, and sneer at the Europeans further west that they only built what they built because Russia did their dirty work. So it makes sense that Russia would compare themselves to the Mongols. CorruptUser 17:15, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

They get very touchy about the old expression too, scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tatar underneath. It wasn't as far off as they'd care to admit; as an obvious one their beloved balalaika is derived from the dombra of Central Asia, and they almost certainly got Jew's harps from the hated Mongols. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:39, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Is the Genghis Khan reference a Godwin's Law variant

Can Roman von Ungern-Sternberg be brought into the discussion? Or Cao Cao's 'I would rather betray the world than have the world betray me?' Anna Livia (talk) 18:59, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

This article does make at least a reference between Genghis and putin. I couldn't read it as I don't have WSJ access.Andrew5 (talk) 22:50, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

so an article yuou cant actually read because its paywalled to justify a post of mind numbing vacuity? maybe the article has something interesting to say about putin or genghis khan, you still wont have. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:34, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Amazon: the company that acts as a totalitarian dictatorship

https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-discussed-banning-words?utm_campaign=trueanthem_manual&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2KijoxLiC6qapRQKwgBWTznKvExFLkzwc3NfUtnSl9suqNZAG9jFwMZpw

Banning words? Did Jeff Bozo take lessons from North Korea or Eritrea? Maybe Joseph Stalin or Mussolini? Amazon is one fucked up company. Here is the perfect term for this: Human rights abuses. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 00:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Rationalzombie94 The parodies are becoming the real world. :[ They wanted to ban the word bathroom, because they are so offended anyone would piss on company time they want to censor the mere existence of it. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 14:54, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It's like something out of 1984 Urinetown. Vomitorium (talk) 16:47, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

"Diversity" is on there BC they don't want things like "diversity hire" being used to refer to new hires. CorruptUser 17:08, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 23:26, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I hate being right

So... I noticed that Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter was just over 1/11th of Twitter, or enough for one full board member. Added that comment to Musk's page... and just now it was announced that Musk will be on the board. Blegh.

Also, we probably need to clean up his page. It seems like an angry attack on him. No, he isn't threatening my family. Please stop asking. CorruptUser 00:48, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm ready for a fundraising campaign by JK Rowling to get them their own seat too, and then Twitter can complete its metamorphosis into some kind of fucked-up toxicity butterfly. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Twitter will always a cesspool, but if Elon Musk has any business sense, he'd look at Gab and Parler (who are too toxic to attract advertising) as well as the decline of Facebook and recognize that opening a platform to hate speech, violent threats, snake oil bullshit, and election fraud musings (the type of thing mused as "conservative speech" by some of the more noxious peanut gallery out there) is bad for business. These types of things are toxic to advertisers (as is other content in the terms of service well beyond the culture war, as the 2010s Youtube advertiser scandals showed). And, as Facebook shows, such seemingly toxic to typical users too. In other words, the cesspool could get worse, and tank the business along with it.

Now, I'm personally not exactly sure if Musk has a whole lot of business sense these days. At least, from where I stand, Musk needs to focus a helluv a lot more on Six Sigma than shitposting, lest he become this generation's Jack Welch. We'll see. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 18:11, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Parler tried to compete with Twitter, it didn't fail so much as it never took off. Can you show me an example of a social media company dying as a result of allowing "hate speech" to remain? Because I don't think that's why people left MySpace; people left because Facebook didn't require Grandma to learn HTML. CorruptUser 18:20, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Um, Facebook would be the example. Less "hate speech" here per se and more prioritizing polarizing, excessively ideological content, as well as misinformation, scams, lax privacy, and it's noxious role its played in politics (both in America and abroad). Facebook widely has a "toxic" reputation these days in the United States, especially among the youth, and that has now been shown to impact the bottom line. Heck, Zuckerberg renamed the company in part because of this lousy reputation. In say the 2010s, Facebook had *way* less toxicity, but this was in the days where mere Buzzfeed clickbait and Farmville shit was all you had to worry about, where you had more control over your news feed (chronological order over their "engagement based rankings" based on who knows what bullshit they came up with, what a concept!) and you were less bombarded by scammy ads. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 19:18, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Musk is not smart. I do not expect him to act rationally. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The guy was writing video games at age 12. I'd say he is "smart", just not "wise". CorruptUser 20:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds like bullshit. Unless he was making asset flips, that I'd believe. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:07, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Social media now coming under more serious threat of govt legislation/moderation, which chances are shall be 'worse' for them (ie costs) than if they did it themselves. What's more, a decade ago, social media simply wasn't really taken by the 'Old Men' to be important when it came to the ability to mould public opinion rather than say newspapers or the radio.

And amongst the business community the view of Musk is decidedly mixed; while they accept/respect his clear talents, they are concerned about the long-term viability of most of his businesses (inc Tesla) and some of his antics (professionally) have caused disquiet. More neutrally, the simple fact he's personally spread so thin worries - esp as he tries to show himself being 'hands on'. There's feelings that if only he focused personally on 1/2 companies and quit some of the 'celeb stuff' he truly may be able to, for example make Tesla the new Ford (it's not too late, but the window is closing fast). KarmaPolice (talk) 21:23, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Not to mention that in getting onto the board of Twitter, he's sprinting in the opposite direction. Vomitorium (talk) 21:29, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Assuming you answered the poll honestly... (thought experiment)

...our sun is actually white. Look at it when it's noontime, it's white. Plain as day, literally. If you go into space, it's blazingly white. It only appears yellow when it's closer to the horizon. If you disagree, that's why I did that silly poll. Something can be literally blindingly obvious, but we still find it difficult to accept, because once we've learned something, we have to fight ourselves to unlearn it. Because the very idea that we are wrong is painful to us.

It's also a demonstration of why being the first to send a message has so much importance. If two people have equally compelling arguments, but one gets there first, the second person has to unteach the people who were already convinced by the first person, and so far fewer people will believe the second argument. If the first person has a somewhat less compelling argument, this advantage is still so great that the second person may still lose out. All because we are too foolish to look outside. CorruptUser 04:14, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

"Look at it when it's noontime" … "Something can be literally blindingly obvious…": Sungazing. Bongolian (talk) 07:05, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Here is a spectrograph of the sun's radiation. In space the sun is blue/violet, and in atmosphere it is slightly blue (violet gets cut out by the atmosphere). Now here is a spectrograph of human eye sensitivity. The human eye is less sensitive in the blue/violet spectrum and so the sun *appears* white. The sun in the sky, while blueish, is simply not blueish enough to overcome the human eye's poor blue light perception. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 12:23, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I've not been staring much at the sun at midday for - well - obvious reasons. But the thread and MirrorIrorriM's link made me think. Is there really such a thing as pure "white light"? I mean it must be the sum of all the rest of the spectrum, mustn't it? On the other hand - what else could you call it?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

If you take a flashlight and add a green filter, another with a blue filter, and another with a red filter, and aim them together, the RGB makes white again. That's why you have RGB on a stage or your computer monitor, for instance. If you were to take the secondary colors (cyan, yellow, magenta or CYM) and mix the light together you'd also get white; these secondary colors can't be added together to make the primaries though, but they can subtract, which is how CYM printer ink makes all colors. The way the eye works, the more stimulus a color receptor receives, the more signals it sends to your think-bladder, seeing "White" just means each receptor is signaling the same amount. From what I understand, there is a finite amount of signal that can be sent at once, so once your eye is maxed out in all 3 receptors, adding more of any one color won't change it away from "blindingly white". Thus for the Sun, you need a filter, but doing so reveals the sun to be ever so slightly a yellowish shade of white, but far, far closer to white than yellow.

To reiterate my original point, consider how hard it is to accept "the sun is White" as a fact. Then consider how hard it is to change someone's mind on something just as core to their view of existence as the color of the sun on a bright summer day. CorruptUser 21:11, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

id imagine the sun is a whole host of colours existing on the parts of the spectrum we cannot see, with that filtered the through the atmosphere. what it presents as on a 'clear' day to the naked is hardly definitive. its likely varies throughout the day even. there are few folk through quirk of nature able to see ultra violet and the sun well no doubt be most definitely a different shade to what you or i may insist the sun most definitely is. all that can be said is the sun appears to you as a particular shade and colour, at a particular time, on a particular day that can be counted as clear in your neck of the wood. a red rose is only red to those that can perceive red. to a dog it may be shade of grey, to an insect a tapestry of ultraviolets we will never see without filters artificially producing an approximation using colours that we can see. but the rose is the colour red to us. the sun is the colour white to you. colour only exists if we can perceive it. i live in london. there is no sun to perceive. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:59, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bob M According to physics there is no such thing as "white light". Light is photons, and in the visible spectrum there are only shades of red, transitioning through orange to yellow, transitioning to green, transitioning to blue, transitioning and ending in violet. Other colors, such as browns, whites, grays, black, or other combinations not on the spectrum scale do not exist if you zoom in far enough. What we perceive as these colors are merely the eye's lack of resolution and inability to resolve individual photons resolving them as a mix of the colors of the original individual photons. Now, color mixtures are of course still very useful, but they are mixtures, not pure "pigments" if you will. The color we perceive is not true color, merely an imperfect biological interpretation of it.

tldr: "pure" white light doesn't exist, neither does "pure" brown. They are mixtures of other light. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 22:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes. I know. My secondary question was - given that there is really no such thing as "white" light - what else can we call it?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:19, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bob M I would go ahead and still call it white light. It is unambiguous. There is a word we use in my field for light which is actually a pure color, and it is "monochromatic". Light is so rarely pure that it actually being so is more of a special case than it being a mixture like white light. So while I was arguing that the sun is blue, it is certainly not monochromatic and I would accept someone arguing that it is "still pretty fricken white". Probably the most common example of a monochromatic light people encounter is lasers, which are nominally a pure single wavelength. LEDs can also be very pure. Anything which glows from heat is going to be be a super blended spectrum (fire, glowing hot metal, incandescent light bulbs, the sun, etc.) and are about as far from monochromatic as you can get. Monochromatic light actually has some really interesting properties, such as if you shine it on a piece of glass and lay that glass on a surface, you will get reflection bands in the light which can very precisely tell you the surface roughness of a piece of metal; but it has to be monochromatic, use just any old "Red light" and you won't get the bands, if the red light is actually a mixture. They also make something called "monochromatic" white lights, but those are essentially just monochromes of blue, red, and green precisely balanced to make a human perceive them as white. Because there are so few different wavelengths though, it can still work for the fancy glass experiment I described above and has the added benefit of working for color blind people. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 13:26, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

We have a "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound" situation here. The sun has a particular spectrum of emitted light, and characterizing that is all well and good. But that's not the question. The question is about color. And while color can be expressed in terms of spectral characteristics, it can also be expressed in terms of human perception. And human perception of color is not just a matter of the spectral characteristics of an object, but also those of its surroundings. So while an atmosphere-filtered 5500K blackbody on its own looks rather white to human eyes, a spot of 5500K blackbody surrounded by the distinctly blue sky looks distinctly yellow to human eyes due to the contrast. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 14:44, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

That wasn't the question though. The question was what color the star Sol is. Human perception of color is merely approximation of the specific phenomenon of the wavelength of light. I just cut out the middle-man (heh) and answer the question objectively from a raw physics standpoint. If they wanted to ask what color people perceive the sun as in the sky, they should have asked that question. It is pedantic, yes, and I normally wouldn't have objected at all; but in this case the OP used it as a stepping stone to accuse others of being misinformed or wrong, completely missing that the question they asked has multiple answers which are all objectively correct in context (context they failed to provide in their question). I felt that "If you are going to try to scold people for being wrong, you better not be wrong yourself" and so posted based on that feeling. I thought it showed that the OP didn't think the complexity of their question through, yet wanted to accuse others of doing that very sin. It was accidental hypocrisy and I think it is a valuable teaching moment not to get to consumed in your own argument and forget that there can be multiple correct answers to even a very basic question based on people's personal life experiences and perspectives. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 17:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I feel like someone said the Earth is a "sphere", someone else clarified that the Earth is an "oblate spheroid" due to the polar and equatorial radii being different, and you are further clarifying that the Earth is something else because those mountainous bumps make it something else entirely.

Yes, there are indeed an infinite combinations of different light on the visible spectrum that will result in "white". "Sunlight" is not the same "light from an incandescent bulb" for reasons other than the color, materials which bend certain wavelengths will result in different colors with different types of "white" light. But the sun at high noon would still be perceived by humans as a form of "white", assuming you didn't stare too long at it, and in space in "pure" form it is still "white", yet it's common knowledge the sun is "yellow" when it's clearly not. CorruptUser 18:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@CorruptUser Which human? You? Why high noon? Why pick a time when your eyes will be damaged looking at it from input overload? Is that not the time when we should trust the data coming from our eyes the least? The only natural time you can safely look at the sun on earth is dawn and sunset, when it is clearly not white to me. Why assert that human perception makes something objectively true? From that mindset strawberry ice-cream is the best and everyone who disagrees with me is objectively wrong and misinformed or a liar; just go outside and taste other ice cream yourself, they all suck by comparison! Your perception is a glitchy minefield of hallucinations, optical illusions, and poor resolution; it isn't even consistent with the peers of your species! I assert that it is useless in this context to determining an objective answer to the question, and you have no right to scold anyone on how they should "perceive" things, when you fail to even specify the context of which you desire they perceive it! Your question was actually nothing more than "what color does Cory see the sky as when vey walk outside vir bedroom at 11:30 AM where vey live under clear sky weather conditions", and you try to pretend it is anything more than that. If you tried to publish a white paper this way on the misperceptions people have of the color of the sun based on this polling data, frankly, it would be rejected. >:c

In conclusion: yeah, the sun looks pretty "white". MirrorIrorriM (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

If you could see the sun from space using some incredible glasses that didn't keep your eyes from burning yet didn't affect the colour at all...it should be as close to white as anything else you would consider white. From Earth, you would see it as various colours depending on multiple factors including the angle from which it passes the atmosphere and atmospheric conditions (including cloud cover). It's probably more complicated than this. I could be wrong about this, but after reading up on it using multiple sources, this seems like a fair conclusion. ShabiDOO 21:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I don't think it's obvious that 'the color of the Sun' is objective. I would say that color is a perceptual property, something about which it is either impossible or very difficult to be mistaken (under good lighting conditions, and without suffering from some perceptual disorder), and that it is something of a misnomer to talk about the color of something. Obviously, spectral data is objective, and can be obtained by robust methods, but it at best provides a proxy for color. Generally, when we speak about the color of something, we mean the color it (is widely agreed to) appear to have under some kind of ideal lighting conditions (e.g. outside on a clear day). If we're standing in a dark room, and I ask you what the color of this thing is, and you say 'black', you could be wrong, and wrong because 'this thing' would look orange (say) with better lighting. This would be true even if, in the dark room, the (extremely) low level of light reflecting off the thing were spectrally indistinguishable from the light reflecting under better conditions, except for the reduced intensity. I don't know that good lighting conditions are achievable for viewing the Sun (I imagine that if I showed you 'this thing' in a room with absurdly bright white lights shining, you might say it's white because that's how it looks in such a room, but you'd still be wrong if it were, in fact, orange). Standing outside at midday is probably a relatively good match for ideal conditions; I'm not sure how one could decide whether 'in space with intensity-modulating glasses' is better, in the context of how the colors of things are usually decided.

I imagine that if I had twice as many varieties of cone cells, rather a lot of things would have different colors, but their spectral properties would be the same. If I could induce the development of such cone cells in everybody else, we would speak of things as having different colors, but again, the spectral properties would remain the same. That's just the way the word color is used. For that reason, I am skeptical of citing spectra and wavelengths to establish the color of the Sun. But it's an oversimplification to say that it then reduces to a matter of opinion akin to 'the best ice cream flavor'. If you said 'the Sun is black', you would be wrong, and not just because your view would be unpopular. Probably, that has something to do with the structure of the eye and brain, and their interaction with light; the mechanisms of human color perception. Maybe there's some small variation in the (perceived) color of the Sun (among people with typical eyes), but nothing that extreme, and if you said 'the Sun is black', it would be evidence that you don't know what the word 'black' means, or perhaps what the Sun is.

Maybe something like 'the Sun is white, because it gives off light of such-and-such variety, and of thus-and-such intensity, and the typical human eye has so-and-so structure, and interacts with the brain in thus-and-so way to produce that perception, under the conditions under which the colors of things are typically evaluated, with the Sun surrounded in the visual field by its usual attendants (i.e. the blue sky)'. Or maybe, all we can actually get is 'the color of the Sun under such-and-such conditions', and 'the color of the Sun' is, in general, undefined.Omicron (talk) 00:50, 7 April 2022 (UTC) yootoobAMassiveGay (talk) 10:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Don't Say Gay vs Ok Groomer

Well, the war of the words is heating up. In response to all the accusations that the Florida bill is really "Don't Say Gay" (and that actually does seem to be the intention of the poorly worded bill; somehow I don't think gendered words like "mother" or "husband" will run afoul of the law), the response now is "OK Groomer". Much like Let's Go Brandon, somehow I think OKG is going to be around for quite a while. Fun times. CorruptUser 19:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I propose calling this whole "preventing kids from learning anything about sex so they don't get groomed" thing the Duggar method. Vomitorium (talk) 19:59, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Had to google the Josh Duggar thing to remind myself of all the deets, but I just gotta say, having the story broken by "In Touch Weekly" is just too perfect. CorruptUser 20:04, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

This change in language does a couple of especially sinister things. First it implies that anything not 'cis-hetero' is somehow deviant. It also implies that people in relationships beyond 'cis-hetero' of any capacity are somehow deviant. It also equates an adults preference of sexual partners to child molestation. Also makes it pretty easy to not compromise at all with opponents of the bill, because you can't compromise with someone so evil they would be ok with molesting children. It's disgusting accusation, and not one that can easily be written off as partisan name calling.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:18, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I think if you don't teach your kids anything about sex you are setting them to be groomed!! :( Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:43, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I think the basic premise is thus;

If you avoid exposing children to LGBT things until they are older, they will grow up believing that Cis-Het is the norm. You can create a society where people are tolerant of LGBT and possibly accepting of them to a relative degree, but then again, not completely. Adults will grow up a bit off-put by gay sex even if they accept that what other people do behind closed doors, they themselves would never try it unless they really were attracted to the person, in much the same way someone who had never grown up eating frog legs would be a bit turned off by the idea of eating frog legs.

If you expose kids to LGBT ideas from a young age, there is no reason for them to see homosexuality as anything more unusual than having blue eyes, nor viewing Transitioning as more bizarre than getting braces. There would be no inherent revulsion towards gay sex, otherwise straight-(ish) young adults might experiment with the same gender even if they aren't attracted, if they're lonely, "a hole's a hole" as they say even if there is not much feeling there. CorruptUser 23:34, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Take the gay and trans stuff out of it for a moment. How does a child know if they're being sexually abused if they have no reference point for sexual activities at all? Yeah... This is going to be like the bathroom bills... ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 23:37, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure a kid is going to know if they're being abused even if they do have a reference point. That's what's so insidious about abuse, and why child abuse survivors are often permanently fucked up in ways I can't even begin to comprehend. CorruptUser 23:44, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@CorruptUser I mean, it gives them something more than fuck all. That aside, my main point here is that this bill and others like it are likely to help the sexual predation of children, even as the bill's proponents use such predation as a rhetorical cudgel against their opponents. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 23:57, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure how good this list of ways to prevent abuse actually is, but were Floridians being taught those things in schools before this DSG came into effect? Because if so, the law needs a carve out if it overlaps that sort of thing. At the same time, I don't see how anything on that list pertains to learning about sexuality or gender identity directly. CorruptUser 00:30, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@CorruptUser "...but were Floridians being taught those things in schools before this DSG came into effect?" Cory. It's Florida. You're lucky incest isn't legal there. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:33, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

It's only illegal if you get caught. CorruptUser 00:34, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

this wont prevent kids hearing about all things sexuality and gender, they'll hear what their parents tell them and what the other kids tell them, and they'll learn all manner of hateful nonsense, with no way of correcting misconceptions before bullshit has solidified in their minds, no one to tell them lgbt folk are not freaks and omonsters, and no one to tell lgbt kids they are not freaks and monsters. plenty of people will be telling them that though and we wouldnt want any one contradicting that lovely message would we. i read one of the provisions of the bill that thankfully got dropped was a requirement to out kids to their parents if it were discovered they were lgbt. its not a dont say gay bill its adont treat lgbt people as human beings bill. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:54, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

This is Florida, so half of the state or more was in that situation already. Sex education is pretty dismal overall in this state, although typically there was enough leeway where at least areas that are a little more liberal can avoid the "abstinence only" trap that infests the Bible belt area high schools. Moral panic outrage porn plays well here. The north panhandle part (which is as Dixie South as it comes) and certain retired sections (Naples and The Villages) certainly lap that shit up, but even the Terri Schiavo shitstorm occurred in the relatively "purple" Tampa area.

The stupid thing is, you'd think that states would have better things to do then babble about teh gay (and yep, because Republicans have no ideas other than rile up the Puritans, this bill is spreading like herpes to other Republican legislatures). Florida for instance is probably the state with the most to lose from climate change, and the whole "zero income tax!" selling point becomes a bit less appealing the first time you get a Florida home insurance bill (ah, hurricanes!). Sadly, DeSantis has his eyes on the national stage, where unfortunately the only qualification for a modern Republican is Fox News shitposting. Actually doing something practical and more local centric is out of the question for him these days. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 02:46, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The only way for Dems to end this is to get ahead of it with their own bills that say "don't teach toddlers sex, but DO teach existence of non-standard relationships". It doesn't matter if teachers putting condoms on bananas in front of kindergarteners isn't a real problem, the Republicans just need to convince the public that the Dems are the "Banana-ConDemocrat Party".CorruptUser 04:25, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Nah, we're in the shitposting era of politics (not exactly different then before but now with more crass and speed!) Reasonable people knew that toddlers weren't being taught gay sex (or any sex) mechanics in the first place... the only pornography you will find in a kindergarten classroom is maybe Song of Solomon in some of the fundie Christian charter kindergartens (my assumptions is, like many fundies, they have Bibles everywhere as tokens of identity without actually reading much of it). But politics at the "Don't Say Gay" / "OK Groomer" level is not about reason, and that's where we are at these days.

At any rate, the liberal shitpost meme has already come out. Ignoring the "from a teacher" premise (that's probably bullshit), the point of the shitpost is solid: at a fundamental text level, the bill actually prohibits discussion of all gender identity and sexual orientation due to its vagueness. That includes cisgender straight identity / orientation, and for all I know probably even the vague friend-stuff that you actually find in young children's media (question: how would "Don't Say Gay" affect Bert and Ernie?). Probably this shit will eventually get struck down in the courts due to vagueness, but the bill has accomplished its political purpose: rile up homophobes and transphobes and 'phobes in general who have more outrage than common sense. (With the side effect of Disney somehow becoming a conservative pariah due to Disney's lukewarmish opposition to the "Don't Say Gay" bill. Florida Republicans shitting on the biggest employer of Florida? I'll ready the popcorn...) 72.184.174.199 (talk) 14:11, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Reactionary legislation isn't necessary. Instead ever single person that shows support these sort of regulations need to explain how it's ok to continue using gendered terms to refer to teachers or students. And they should have to clearly articulate the difference between gender and sex. It's very fun to watch conservatives squirm trying to define what a 'woman' is, that somehow doesn't exclude trans people without a bunch of exceptions.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Not really, many conservatives agree intersex people exist and are neither male nor female. The debate is whether a person with the body that is 100% female can actually be a male, or whether a surgically/hormonally altered male body becomes female or just resembles female. Note that the bible actually does mention the existence of far more than 2 genders, mostly around intersex people. It is possible to "transition" genders, in that castrated men are no longer "male".

Me, I'm more "meh", I'm "male" but I'm not so attached to my gender where, if I could extend my life through inserting my brain into a donor-body, I'd insist on my new body being male, though I will admit I'm not sure if I'd change/keep my sexuality. So I don't think I have a "male" brain, but I don't think my brain is gender-neutral nor would I be non-binary. I'm also a futurist who plans to embrace cybernetics, so again, gender? Not really going to be an issue. CorruptUser 22:30, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I shall play Russian oligarchs the world's smallest violin

https://news.yahoo.com/seize-day-russian-yachts-no-151843066.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Russian yachts and superyachts have been captured by both Germany and Italy. Practically no European country will allow Russian boats and private jects safe harbor. Oligarchs are losing assets quickly. I like the big international "fuck you" Russia is getting. --Non-Binary EAS Creator (talk) 16:11, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I really dislike how we keep conflating the Russian leadership with "Russia" as a concept. The average Russian isn't on board for this invasion, was not consulted, and did not give their approval. Further, this sort of phrasing promotes the notion that the rulers of a country truly speak for that country, rather than merely being rulers who are inclined to speak in their own interests. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

That is true, though after decades of intensifying propaganda, it has become increasingly difficult to understand what average Russians think. Every Russian oligarch is complicit: they were responsible for bringing Putin to power, they benefited financially from his reign, they were complicit in corrupting foreign governments, and they are proxy holders of Putin's wealth. Bongolian (talk) 18:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Russian do as they are told - "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationalism" might be the 3 pillars of their collective thought processes. There have always been those who didn't hold with that, and perhaps the dissenters are increasing in numbers.... but they are probably irrelevant without an all consuming disaster (such as WW1), combined with a coherent vision from a strong leader (Lenin) to move the masses to action. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 20:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie I was strictly talking about the oligarchs. I am sure that the title implied that. --Non-Binary EAS Creator (talk) 19:38, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rationalzombie94 I was mainly responding to the last sentence, but fair enough. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:01, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Got to ask how you determine what the "Average" Russian is thinking about the invasion - AFAIK vast numbers of them have no info apart from what the Govt is telling them, and probably have an up swelling in their chests about restoring Russian pride and honor. Lots of articles across the wires about how those who can are getting out of the country - sadly an age old tradition in Russia dating back forever - think "White" Russian emigres almost exactly 100 years ago! But I expect the vast majority cannot get out and are trapped in a vacuum of information. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 23:54, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

As it happens, I've actually seen the world's smallest violin, it's on display at a Ripley's Believe It Or Not in Atlantic City (I wasn't tin Atlantic City of my own volition, but I made the best of it). If I could get it on loan I'd happy play them a tune on it. No comment on average Russians. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:01, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

And so the current state of political discourse is cheering as governments sieze private assets without legal process due to class-based notions of guilt. Surely this will turn out better than those times it was tried in the past, right? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 10:48, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Pardon me, are you talking about Western governments seizing Russian oligarch superyachts? Or a deranged Putin-led Russian government attempting to seize an entire country without legal process? From my perspective, it seems like we are in a, shall we say, "proto-war" phase, entirely due to the fault of the later. Consequently, I'm not sure where this "class-based notions of guilt" even comes into play. Have you been listening to way too much of Lord Haw-HawTucker Carlson for your own good? 72.184.174.199 (talk) 11:48, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh Pro-Putin troll, you really think I give a flying fuck about how corrupt rich people feel. They are slaughtering innocent people. May I remind you that they launched heavy artillery into a hospital with pregnant women and infants? Cutting off humanitarian supplies to civilians? --Non-Binary EAS Creator (talk) 15:49, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

192 isn't a troll. Also, let's not be naive. States aren't doing this because they suddenly became humanitarian, they're doing this because the open invasion of Ukraine threatens the balance of power. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:17, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

-Flandres (talk) 17:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Putin has retaliated by seizing all aircraft located in Russia that are leased from Western companies - amounting to over 500 airliners. This will keep internal air travel going inside Russia - but those aircraft can never leave the country now lest they be seized right back, and will be bereft of spare parts and technical updates. This will not be any sort of immediate safety issue - but give it 12 months and longer and they'll start being grounded even by the Russian aviation authorities, and cannibalized to keep fewer and fewer in service. Also eventually expect to hear about a thriving black market for parts and technical information. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 23:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Though by some accounts it looks like the US has the record for most fatalities, with Russia at number two.[2] This does not take into account substantial improvement in air safety in the US over the years covered (1945-), nor does it take into account air mileage or number of passengers flown. Russia flew 11% of the passengers as the US did in 2019,[3] so their domestic airline safety record on a per passenger basis is fairly bad already.[4] The crushing sanctions will make matters worse. Bongolian (talk) 18:16, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

A couple of decades ago I did a comparison of the safety performance of the local airline industry vs the CIS (Commonwealth Independant States....former USSR) and Sub-saharan Africa, all using data reported to ICAO. The CIS fatality rate per flight was about 6 times the local one, SS Africa about 50 times IIRC. The conclusion reached was that CIS represented a minimally effective safety regulation, and SS-Africa represented complete lack of safety regulation. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 20:29, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

It's partially poor regulation, it's partially because people can bribe their way into getting a pilot's license, but the big problem is that the SS Africa is using planes that were cobbled together from 3 other planes and held together with duck tape and prayers; we here at RatWik might be to blame since they obviously haven't been doing enough praying. CorruptUser 20:46, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

To address .192’s genuine question about the potential issues with seizing assets of individual Russian oligarchs, I simply have to disagree with the designation of these actions as ”governments sieze private assets without legal process due to class-based notions of guilt”.

Western governments are not just grabbing the property of any wealthy Russian willy nilly, but have made a series of targeted sanctions against named individuals that have well documented, close ties to Putin and his regime. This is not the first time such sanctions have been applied and they are a far cry from, say, Putin’s threats to nationalise the property of any company that doesn’t toe his line (e.g. by withdrawing temporarily from Russia).

These individual oligarchs are not merely being sanctioned because they are rich (and Russian), but due to their personal involvement with and support for Putin’s regime. Otherwise, there would be no need for a personalised list and the sanctions could merely name a general class of “Russian rich people”. Also, their assets are generally being frozen, rather than seized, btw. ScepticWombat (talk) 08:15, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

In regarding the seized aircraft; I strongly suspect that the modern ones at least have killswitches (of some form) which can be activated to stop them flying – I've heard rumours that some new cars have this too. But doubt it's beyond the ken of Russian engineers to rip out the 'frozen' bits and replace with Chinese clones (whether legal or not).

But as for freezing oligarch wealth... there is a *very* good reason for doing this – the removal of a weapon from Putin's armoury. That put bluntly, between Putin and the oligarchs they control enough 'private' wealth that if they moved as a group (ie they're rounded up and told to obey or else) could cause quite severe national/global economic damage. They could crash markets, trash companies and topple banks. Even if they didn't do this 'nuclear option' all that wealth would still be *very* valuable to bribe people, bust sanctions, fund assassins, buy arms etc.

I would argue that when it comes down to it, *any* oligarch still within Russia should be at least watched like a hawk and have all major actions/transactions forbidden. And we should be be open to the reasons why to them – that we believe they're acting under Kremlin coercion.

I suspect there's still laws on the books in most jurisdictions which allow something like this to happen. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:25, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Technically as I understand it (and somewhat contrary to some lay media reports and what 192 BoN thought), in the cases so far, the assets being described in media reports such as oligarch yachts are not "confiscated", but instead are "frozen" directly due to the sanctions. For now, they are not completely taken away. The oligarchs still own the assets, they just can't do anything with them at the moment (same with all other assets frozen by sanctions suck as bank accounts). Asset forfeiture laws (meaning the state can confiscate assets proven in court to be derived from criminal activity and meet whatever conditions the law requires) exist in most countries, of course, in various forms... and this is the framework that will probably be utilized should the various nations chose to try and take the assets permanently. But the full process hasn't happened yet, and will take some time to unfold in the courts. As I understand it, even from the asset recovery framework's perspective, this is a bit of uncharted legal territory, and the oligarchs are probably pretty good at playing the Panama Papers style shell company deflection game. But a few legislators in a few countries are trying to "fast-track" asset forfeiture with legislation specifically targeting the Russian oligarchs. So the full end game will take some time to play out. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 17:45, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

You understand correct. When it comes down to it, said frozen assets are more likely to end up being seized by creditors after oligarchs default on loans etc than by the state. Even if war broke out, there are systems where the 'enemy assets' aren't confiscated, but instead placed in the control of a neutral administrator who looks after it to the best of their ability. However, this isn't much of a problem in this case as generally speaking, most oligarchs weren't interested in the purchase of actual functional businesses in the West. And even more importantly, the oligarchs basically got quite a head-start (esp from the UK, the #1 home for laundered wealth) and much of it vanished to safer climes (I'm hearing lots about Arab banks) before the freeze orders came in.

Personally, I do think most nations will avoid actually confiscating oligarch wealth unless their 'owner' is actively, willingly helping Putin. After all, we are trying to drive a wedge between Putin and the oligarchs, and thus we *need* to hold out on a hook the promise of them getting it back. But I don't think many 'respectable' accountants, lawyers etc shall be willing to participate in the shell games etc to stop the freezes etc. They might earn a butt-load from doing it, but the risk they'll get indicted/ostracised etc shall be judged ultimately too high. KarmaPolice (talk) 07:55, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

"are you talking about Western governments seizing Russian oligarch superyachts? Or..." The one being cheered in this thread. Putin being badong doesn't make it right to do anything at all in the name of opposing him and his interests or associates.

"I'm not sure where this "class-based notions of guilt" even comes into play" The property being seized nominally belongs to some company or other under the control of some Russian oligarch or other. Not the Russian government, and the countries doing the siezing aren't at war with Russia anyway. Instead, there is a class of people, "Russian oligarchs" who are presented as collectively guilty of vague wrongdoing, and so any assets under their control are regarded as forfeit if they can be seized. As expressed in the section title, opening post, and Biden's State of the Union speech. And the next post:

"They are slaughtering innocent people. May I remind you that they launched heavy artillery" So now "they" includes not only oligarchs but actual Russian soldiers, and since any guilt is obviously shared, only trolls could possibly take issue with punitive measures based on this heinous collective guilt. Which obviously justifies anything regardless of whether actual laws apply.

"well documented, close ties to Putin and his regime. " "due to their personal involvement with and support for Putin’s regime" Which is not illegal.

"Also, their assets are generally being frozen, rather than seized, btw."

seize

verb

to take possession of by force or at will: to seize enemy ships

to take possession or control of as if by suddenly laying hold

Media reports (see the one that opened this topic) and popular discussion use "sieze", which is also an accurate description of what is going on. The siezed assets are no longer in the possession of their nominal owners.

"They could crash markets, trash companies and topple banks." Ah. So to prevent this, Western powers have to crash markets, trash companies, and topple banks.

"I suspect there's still laws on the books in most jurisdictions which allow something like this to happen." "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." I realize that rights are passe these days, but you might consider that if governments feel comfortable about doing away with the rights of the rich and powerful, whether your own situation is really as secure as you are accustomed to. After all, they didn't come for the kulaks until after they had come for the bourgeoisie. Precedent matters.

"But a few legislators in a few countries are trying to "fast-track" asset forfeiture" Which negates the preceding paragraph of text protesting that this is not actually what's going on. This territory is legally uncharted because it's largely being done without regard to law, meaning that the law provides loose guidance at best for how this will turn out. But it doesn't look good. At the very least, it shows the world that Western governments and companies should not be relied upon to keep their word in business dealings.

"After all, we are trying to drive a wedge between Putin and the oligarchs" It looks to me like "we", or more precisely Western governments and corporations, are trying to goad Russia into giving casus belli for a war that would eliminate one of the few powers outside their camp. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 13:12, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@192․168․1․42 It's a bit late to worry about casus belli against Ukraine. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:51, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Ukraine isn't a member of NATO or other defense alliance with the countries seizing assets. Russia invading Ukraine doesn't give NATO an excuse to destroy Russia. Consider that this is apparently a high enough priority to justify destroying the economic hegemony of the US Dollar. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 18:21, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

putin has even less reason to destroy ukraine, but their he is doing his best. hes brought this on russia and he can step back any time he likes

To put it most cynically and selfishly; the 'NATO bloc' gains nothing and loses much if Ukraine falls. What's more, Russia has chosen *us* as his adversary. He did this some time ago, we just didn't want to admit it. What's the other option? Pretend that Putin is just 'misunderstood' and this shall be his 'last territorial demand' or some crap? KarmaPolice (talk) 15:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

"but their he is doing his best." You know that Russia has nuclear weapons and a much larger military than has been brought to bear so far, right? And that Russia is not indiscriminately attacking civilians (as e.g. the Allies did in WWII)? Are you unaware of the speech Putin gave just before the invasion stating its goals?

"the 'NATO bloc' gains nothing and loses much if Ukraine falls" It gains or loses a geopolitical piece that may or may not return to being a Russia-leaning buffer state. Not insignificant, but not something that was in NATO's ledger until recently. Also, who is "*us*"? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 09:21, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I just noticed the above theatre of the absurd monologue. Russia has a bigger military than has been introduced to serious demolition in Ukraine. The weaknesses of the Russian army are apparent to the world. The oligarchs have depleted the Russian military capability by stealing everything unsecured with an armed guard. Those dipshits don't scare anyone. Yes they have nuclear weapons, though I doubt those have been properly maintained either. The thing about oligarchs is they don't want to live in Russia, they just want to steal there. Finally, don't reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble and claim you haven't attacked civilian populations. свобода для України і хрен тобі дуже UncleKrampus (talk) 22:54, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The point being that Russia is obviously not trying to "destroy" Ukraine. Doing so would make a huge mess on their border that would cause trouble for decades. Similarly, outright conquest could easily turn into another Afghanistan situation (which Putin was around for). And neither of those were among the stated goals at the start of the invasion. Such stated goals are obviously not the whole picture, but is it really so surprising that Russia is not seriously pursuing major military actions of a much larger scale than the stated goals?

"Finally, don't reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble and claim you haven't attacked civilian populations." I didn't. I said that Russia is not indiscriminately attacking civilians. Actual indiscriminate attacks on civlians and reducing cities to rubble looks more like this, and to conflate the two like that not only takes actual strategic attacks lightly, it ignores what is actually going on in the current war in favor of hyperbolic narratives. Civilians dying in wars is nothing new. Quite a few died in the recent US wars, after all. It particularly tends to happen when military forces are mixed in among civilian areas, which is a policy decision. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 18:49, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, so much crap to cover!

The point being that Russia is obviously not trying to "destroy" Ukraine

Perhaps not, but Putin clearly does not give a crap about collateral damage. Also, trashing Ukraine so much that it takes a generation to repair is a 'viable' military strategy. Lastly, 'If I can't have it, nobody can!'

Doing so would make a huge mess on their border that would cause trouble for decades.

When you're 69, you don't need to worry about 'decades'. Plus, who says Putin either knows and/or cares about that? Just shoot more people!

Similarly, outright conquest could easily turn into another Afghanistan situation (which Putin was around for).

He was in E. Germany and thus wouldn't have heard about the truth of it. Plus, who says he doesn't think it could have been won if the Soviets had simply dropped enough cluster bombs?

And neither of those were among the stated goals at the start of the invasion.

Hint: Putin LIED!

Such stated goals are obviously not the whole picture, but is it really so surprising that Russia is not seriously pursuing major military actions of a much larger scale than the stated goals?

All the evidence suggests that the Russians were rather more a paper tiger than we all thought. Now the Ukranian's rather phlegmatic determination to resist makes sense - they were more aware of the real capabilities of the Russians.

"Finally, don't reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble and claim you haven't attacked civilian populations." I didn't. I said that Russia is not indiscriminately attacking civilians.

'Indiscriminate: Failing to make or recognize distinctions' (so sayeth my dictionary). No, Russia is doing this. Unless you're referring to Russian discriminate attacking of civilians, which also appears to be happening by a few units.

Actual indiscriminate attacks on civlians and reducing cities to rubble looks more like this,

No. Dresden was different; a deliberate tactic to incinerate whole cities. The apex of the 'area bombing' tactics developed by the RAF. Quite different from the destruction of a settlement in a fight for it.

It particularly tends to happen when military forces are mixed in among civilian areas, which is a policy decision.

What, it's the Ukranians fault they're defending their own cities? Are you suggesting they should let the Russians capture them 'so they are not damaged'? Hell, why don't they simply surrender to stop any chance of death and destruction?

In short, you're either a complete moron or a Kremlin apologist. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

"Perhaps not" Then that's that. That was the point I took issue with there.

"When you're 69, you don't need to worry about 'decades'. Plus, who says Putin either knows and/or cares about that?" So, the proposition is that Putin wants big, long-term goals related to Ukraine "falling" and Russian power, but due to his age isn't concerned with big, long-term goals? Like trying to conquer Ukraine likely producing a mess that wouldn't pay off until after Putin is dead?

"He was in E. Germany and thus wouldn't have heard about the truth of it." So, you imagine that Putin is unaware that that Soviet adventure ended in Soviet withdrawal after condiderable expense?

"Hint: Putin LIED!" So, Putin secretly wants Ukraine to be a highly-militarized NATO member? Are you even aware of what he said?

"Now the Ukranian's rather phlegmatic determination to resist makes sense" The administration does seem quite determined to resist to the last Ukranian. Which is not very comparable to Russia devoting ~1/15 of their military personnel to the invasion.

"'Indiscriminate: Failing to make or recognize distinctions' (so sayeth my dictionary). No, Russia is doing this." Well, is Russia a paper tiger struggling with Ukranian resistance, or is its military so flush with resources that it does not care whether its munitions reach actual opponents? Ukranian military forces have long been distributed among civilian areas (remember the incident where Ukranian forces set up in schools?), and this has resulted in Russian attacks hitting civilian areas with actual or suspected Ukranian forces. Indiscriminate attacks are, again, things like the Allied firebombing of cities in WWII. Yes, those were different. Why do you think I mentioned that different practice as a contrast to current Russian actions? Modern Russia has considerably more firepower at its disposal than the Allies did, and its current actions involve considerably more restraint.

"What, it's the Ukranians fault they're defending their own cities?" They don't have to station artillery among apartment complexes, or use schools as staging areas.

"Hell, why don't they simply surrender to stop any chance of death and destruction?" Because Russia wants regime change in Ukraine, and the current regime doesn't. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 21:48, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Is 4chan safe to visit?

Is 4chan safe to visit or should I use something like Tor for safety? Im not sure if I should visit that site due to safety reasons. Tyb (talk) 09:23, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by "safe"? Are you asking if the users will track your IP and/or dox you? Are you asking if 4chan's content is safe for human consumption? Are you asking if the site will infect your computer with malware? What do you mean by "safe to visit"? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:45, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

I'd suggest 'All of the above'. Scream!! (talk) 11:50, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

^As he said Tyb (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

In terms of technology and security, it's mostly safe to visit with an up-to-date browser. As for the site's content, you can safely leave once you've seen at least one anon hatefully obsess over trans women, because that's basically 99% of the entire site's content, regardless of the board. I used to be active on /g/ a lot, but I left after the whole Linux CoC manufactroversy; /mu/ is fighting back against it, but very weakly. Rockford the Roe ^{boop my snoot}_{praise Oscar Wilde} 13:35, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

As an old-time /b/tard I feel I should tell you to avoid 4chan at all costs. Probliknaut (talk) 14:48, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, if you mean in a general sense, no. Avoid 4chan for it is garbage. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:18, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

I visited 4chan by mistake. My computer became possessed with an evil spirit and and started sneaking out at night to take drugs and rob banks. So, no, it's very unsafe.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:08, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

You can remedy all of that with a visit to 7chan, promise. Probliknaut (talk) 00:25, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

4 is an unlucky number in Chinese and other East Asian cultures. So no, it's unsafe. However, 8 is a lucky number in Chinese, so go to 8chan instead and it'll bring you good luck. _{Just kidding, both 4chan and 8chan suck.} LongStylus (talk) 06:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

What are some things that I can do to protect myself? Tyb (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Buy a dog and curtains for your windows. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 07:47, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

If you feel that visiting any internet site poses some particular risk then there is an exceptionally simple and really safe solution: don't visit the site. In any event, I would suspect that the bigger risk from 4chan would be to your mental health rather than to your computer's integrity, but I'm only really speaking about the site from its reputation.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:59, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I used to browse /tv/, /a/ and /lit/ a lot between 2009 and 2017. Just like the rest of the site these boards suffered a lot with the /pol/ invasions, but /tv/ was completely colonized and people there don't care if the movie is good; they care if the cast is 100% white or not. /a/ is still decent AFAIK, but I lost most of my interest in anime after finishing college (I still re-watch some stuff once in a while, but I just don't have time to spend a lot of stuff anymore). /lit/ was always awful, they literally read books because they want to fit in and be praised by strangers on the Internet, and their whole obsession with "genre vs literaly fiction" only makes the board even worse. I also used to browse a few generals on /mu/, especially /metal/ and /classical/, I think they are still decent too. I'm not sure what you mean by "safe". You're not going to get arrested or doxed, unless you're really stupid, but 4chan is dead, it had some merits in the past, even though bigotry always existed you could still have some good discussions on some subjects. Not anymore, now they only care about politics, and even then there are better places to browse if you want to talk about it. GeeJayK (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I browsed 4chan's /b/ when I was about 15 years of age, and I mostly just browsed /ic/ and /v/ between the ages of 16 and 17. I deeply regret it. As for safety keep in mind that browsing 4chan does run the risk of exposing yourself to potentially traumatic materials; the sort of the stuff that gives Facebook moderators PTSD. This is includes real autopsy photos, gore, and the occasional child porn (which will quickly get removed so even though it is a risk you may never come across it). Most of these things are confined to "pink" boards which are coloured such to signify they are not safe for work. Blue boards are considered safe for work. That being said shady links do occasionally get posted, as well as some scams that may pose a risk to your internet security -- so keep your wits about you. Also just suspect general toxicity no matter what board you browse. The entire websites subculture is deeply bigoted. /pol/ is also just full of neo-nazi's."Safe" in this context is really dependent on what you are willing to tolerate. I do think it sort of reflects on you ethically how wiling you are to be exposed to this kind of stuff though. 4chan definitely crosses legal and ethical lines with the sort of stuff that gets posted, and moderators/janitors on the site aren't exactly the most effective. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:06, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

More practically/seriously, check your computer and browser have got all the latest security patches, anti-virus software is running and up-to-date, go to chrome://settings/security (or similar for other browsers) and ensure everything is turned up to maximum. Browsing in an anonymous window isn't a bad idea. You could also use a virtual machine (or piece of shit spare computer/tablet/phone) and delete everything afterwards. --Annanoon (talk) 08:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Technically, I'm not aware of 4Chan having anything malicious, other than a little bit of ad / tracking stuff (I highly recommend the browser extension uBlock Origin to handle ads and tracking and whatnot, which can get annoying on some sites). As other people are saying, it's the content of the site that is Not Safe For Life. In the 2000s, there was at least a playful whimsical nature to some of the trolling. Unfortunately, from my perspective, this went away roughly around the time 4Chan became the center of Gamergate. The "politically incorrect" of old (like, say, the Patriotic Nigras) turned into the new "politically incorrect" like, er, QAnon. More mean spirited, conspiratorial, and stupid overall. From just a random sampling that style of mean-spirited bigoted shitpost seems to have infected most of the other boards, unfortunately. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 14:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

4chan is a long-running popular commercial site. You shouldn't worry about malware, but you may consider an adblocker. And don't follow links people post unless you know what they're to or are confident in dealing with actual online threats. You also shouldn't give personally identifiable information, though most people would be unlikely to care about some random stranger unless you provoke someone. Something to be aware of is that 4chan is one of the Internet's premier honeypots, and it's constantly monitored by government agents from a variety of organizations. Everything posted is saved for future reference, and you're not anonymous from law enforcement (though Five Eyes is unlikely to track you through Tor without a reason to). There is actual illegal content posted from time to time, but if you're not posting it yourself, it's not likely to affect you. There is a psychological risk from parts of the site, however, and there have been reports of government agents tasked with monitoring them requiring counseling. The nominally worksafe "blue boards" on 4channel should generally present less risk in this regard, but that still leaves the question of why you would go there. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 08:57, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Tax Day (rant)

How much do you owe? You're the government, you already track every source of income I have. Why don't you just save me the $200 filing fee with Turbotax or a tax prep dood, and just send me the bill. Heck, just send me the bill, pocket the $100 into a slush fund, and the both of us will come out ahead. Why do we all have to waste time, wrack our nerves, for something that could be done simply by the IRS? Forget free healthcare, how about free taxcare? Because that's how other countries do it. There's what, 50m households who file taxes? That's $5B you could make each year in tax revenue with people cheering you for it. CorruptUser 04:23, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Because TurboTax lobbies (read: bribes) congress to make filing taxes as intentionally annoying as possible. It justifies their existence and makes them a multibillion dollar company providing a false service. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 04:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

If you don't qualify for the free filing, the government probably doesn't track every source of income (or tax-relevant money-moving) you have (auditing is a separate business that requires the personal attention of an agent). And for most people who work for money, "Tax Day" is "Tax Return Day" where taxes deducted from each paycheck over the year in question are compared to the actual amount owed as based on end-of-year finances. Since tax rates are progressive, this generally can't be predicted in advance with perfect accuracy, though if it's set up right, you don't have to file a return. A quick perusal of the situation in other countries suggests broadly similar setups, with non-filing only for people with simple finances. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 08:34, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

In these parts (New Zealand) we have PAYE - Pay as you earn. If your salary/wage is your only income then any refund/tax to pay is automatically calculated and paid or sent to you as a "Tax to pay notice" by June - they are pretty rare. Apart from 7 years when I was a landlord I haven't filled in a form for over 30 years (and in those 7 years my accountant did it for me anyway!). I have had 1 "scare" - but an email to Inland Revenue actually sorted it immediately. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-tax-returns-dont-need-be-painful/586369/

I've never had to personally do a tax return (UK has PAYE too), though I've done a few self-assesments for others now and then. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Spain has a sort of PAYE thing in which your employer and other income provider retains part of your income and tells the government. At the end of the tax period you then get either a bill or a refund. But if your affairs are a little more complicated then it's quite complicated tax return time. (At least that's how the Spanish system works in my experience - but I live in the Basque Country which has its own income tax system, so others may experience it differently.)Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:51, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Or you simply get a statement; ie all the income tax etc was already paid from source. Anyway, I was under the impression one of the reasons the American system was so difficult was because it was utterly riddled with various exemptions, deductables and so on. I'd say this is due to many layers of pork-barrelling; all little sops for various little group interests. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:42, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Made a video with an interesting concept

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpBhPJmVMgs

This video is an emergency alert involving a phenomenon that causes people to switch gender. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Nasty State v Nanny State

The Economist changed the rules on sharing content, but I'll include the pay-walled link,[5] but the basic summary is that moral panics create bad policy, that many times is still on the books (The example's the writer notes were in the UK, but there are parallels to the US and France.) But the inverse, named 'ethical spasm' tend to be short lived temporary policies, before public pressure recedes, and restrictive policies return. The specific situation for this article is the draconian immigration laws Conservative UK government has implemented, is making it difficult to accept refugees from Ukraine. But that's what voters wanted, until they see it's effects first hand. This particular quote at the end of the piece I found disturbingly accurate:

Nanny for me, but not for thee There are two explanations why ethical spasms rarely last. The charitable one comes down to ignorance. For most people in Britain, the state is kind. People come into contact with the parts of it that are still just about adequately funded, such as schools and the health-care system. Meanwhile the state pension, a benefit that most people enjoy eventually, has become more generous.

The state is predominantly nasty only to an unfortunate minority. The bulk of Britons are born there and so have little contact with the immigration system. Dealings with police are limited to asking for directions, rather than being thrown headfirst into a van. Most people have jobs and no experience of a harsh benefits system. Once a topic passes out of the public’s eye, it is forgotten.

Another explanation is less forgiving, but more likely. Voters would rather have a nasty state than a nanny state. The two most popular governments of the past few decades—Labour under Tony Blair and the Conservatives under Boris Johnson—have had an authoritarian bent. Hammering protesters and cracking down on asylum-seekers has been a potent mix.

Cruelty is a choice, not a state of nature. But it is a choice voters seem to prefer. A more generous welfare system would result in higher taxes, which Britons are loth to pay for anything other than health care. Politicians with a bias towards kicking people out are more attractive than those who want to let people in. Bluntly, the state is nasty because voters have asked for it to be. The welcome mat has been rolled out for Ukrainians fleeing war. But it will be rolled up again soon enough.

This describes the exact political circumstances of basically all of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and South Korea.RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:20, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I think a huge part of the welcome mat for Ukrainians is the sex ratio. If it was mostly men fleeing, I don't think we'd have let the Ukrainians in. CorruptUser 16:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

it got fuck all to do with that. they are welcomed because we made a big show of standing up to the russians only for them to invade and force us to do something. and in the uk we have still put loads of obstacles in their way thanks to the 'hostile environment' policy/culture at the home office. this coupled with fucking disgrace of the windrush scandal its directly responsible for is a national disgrace AMassiveGay (talk) 18:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

There's something in the piece. Many middle-class white Brits have the 'privilege' of having public services etc work semi-reasonably well and thus naively believe all services is like that. But then, when Something Bad happens, the trap-door opens and you're swimming in the septic tank and getting to know what reality for us oiks is *really* like. And a lot of folks are really not that far off this either; a bout of unemployment, a long-term health condition, a bit of trouble and so on can tip you into 'we don't give a shit' / 'there's no resources' litany from those *supposed* to help.

But I disagree with the 'cruelty' aspect. Cruelty is the net result of the politics of the overcrowded lifeboat. We've been told for thirty years plus that basically, 'we cannot afford' anything more than we already have (which is barely enough for the best of times). Thus, you see a new person getting into the lifeboat and you think 'less for me'. For people who already have little. To quote Maus: 'put a dozen men in a room with no food, then you'll see who is your friend'. Result; stronger Us/Them feelings. And when folks have complained about this, our ruling class has refused to retort or worse, attacked the complainer. And this is a line stoked by Austerity, which then led to Brexit.

They don't 'want' a Nasty State. They feel they *need* it because of the feelings that any moment the lifeboat is about to sink. And right-wingers are feeding this because it gets them elected. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

There is significant variation in how much most citizens are willing to pay in taxes to fund social programs across Europe, some countries where high taxes are only moderately controversial but fund very generous programs that have clear advantages for all vs. countries with a slightly more "fuck you get a third job, trickle down economic bent" but still having far more generous social programs than most American states. The UK is verging towards the latter, especially post-Brexit though the two Nations (Scotland and N. Ireland) are less so. Most countries vacillate depending on the governments in power, but I think it is an exaggeration to say the preference for the nasty state is the state of affairs throughout the Western World. It is far more complex than that. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have high taxes which aren't terribly controversial along with generous social programs (nanny state according to this dichotomy) but less than ideal attitudes towards immigration and specific forms of protest (nasty state according to this dichotomy). This is the same to a lesser extent in Belgium and Luxembourg. I don't believe that this dichotomy is particularly useful because, unfortunately, things are always too complex. Even "generous programs" is complex because even in insanely generous Norway there are still groups left out and taxes need not be high because of their resources and very well managed policies/economy. In general, having multiple parties forming coalition governments tend to result in more sustainable social programs and long-term wise policies and less extreme vacillation and from what I have observed (though don't have the data to back this up) less extreme moral panic. This dichotomy is even less reasonable when viewing countries like Poland where there is no shortage of a particular brand of nasty but no shortage of nanny either. A people can be both concerned for and generous of people with extra needs while being disinterred in many marginalised groups and their fight for equality. ShabiDOO 19:23, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I remember reading on Classic Cracked.com an article about the Syrian refugees in the early days, and it went into some detail of the government programs that Syrians were receiving. The top comment was from a disabled broke guy who commented that he was told year after year there was never any more money for him, he got injured on the job, yet the government was finding money for the refugees and he was concerned that somehow he was going to get even less. Yeah, I understand that lifeboat mentality entirely, and it's not limited to foreigners. There's a lot of middle class people who do the "responsible" thing and struggle to feed/clothe the two kids waited until marriage before having, and are furious that their taxes might go up because someone on the other side of town gave birth to a seventh kid. CorruptUser 19:47, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

The problem with “lifeboat politics” is that they are based mostly in a false malthusian premise. There really isn’t that much of a limitation, and many of the scarcities built into the system are artificially imposed. No matter the perception of dramatic economic scarcity is enough to fuel anxieties that in turn result in greater in-group/out-group effects. This could be alleviated with a dramatic re-distribution of wealth and resources. It’s not as if everyone can’t get housed and fed due to a lack of physical resources. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:54, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

That scarcity narrative is an effective tool, wielded effectively by politicians seeking to deny services of one stripe or another. But no one bats an eye spending billions to support the military industry complex.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Immigrants also provide labor, often more valuable labor than some of the locals. It's a bit weird to say that immigrants use social services, when those are services; the value provided by 10 immigrants is greater than, say, the 2 extra teachers/nurses/police/etc needed to support them, the price of services isn't always in tune with how valuable they are. Raw resources, such as oil, metals, fertilizers, those are indeed finite, but it's not as if staying in Guatemala the person isn't going to consume them anyway, and generally, they provide more value through labor than those resources are worth. It's... complicatedCorruptUser 23:27, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

None of that cuts anywhere in the lifeboat. There's only so many jobs, services etc to go around. That's how we ended up with stuff like Brexit; the 'lifeboaters' cannot visualise anything getting better more than stealing another's shoes or perhaps getting an occasional extra serving of gruel. Behold, the legacy of Third Way; fatalism, depression, fear, atomisation and biased nostalgia for the pre-neoliberal era. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:02, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

There's also a huge swath of the population that harbors resentment against Muslims in particular, due to things like the Rotherham Sex Gang. The short version is, well, it was literally something out of a Ukipper propaganda pamphlet. Muslims gangs kidnapped a bunch of young non-Muslim girls, forced them into prostitution, all while the police and politicians covered it up specifically to avoid offending anyone. But the thing about Xenophobia is that it's not a precision instrument; there's never been a Xenophobe who only hates just a single specific subset of people. CorruptUser 22:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

It goes back further. Try at least the early 2000s. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I think 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, etc could've been handwaved away with a bunch of bullshit about the result of constant foreign intervention in Islamic countries, but Rotherham seems more like immigration. CorruptUser 00:02, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Whenever I hear somebody cite Rotheram et al, I laugh at them and say that's a load of crap.

Those folks chose their targets well - mainly white teenagers (mainly girls) not from the working class, but the *underclass*. Broken homes, unstable lives, In Care, drug/alcohol/mental health issues, severe poverty etc. The main protection was not staff fears of being called racist, it was class bias (lack of resources to investigate #2). Many an alarm bell was raised over the decades and often they were simply ignored; one that particulary stuck in my head was one victim who was living in a children's home at the time had her abuse ignored by staff because basically, they said she was a slut and thus, it was clearly all consentual. Our plucky 'Kipper working class didn't blow the whistle; in fact they generally didn't think much better of the abused group than the abusers did. In fact, the B-Firsters amongst them might have even thought on seeing these kids with their abusers that they weren't much better than the 'dirty [redacted]' they were hanging around with and thus, to some extent 'deserved it'.

'Deserved it' happens a lot in Blighty. All my personal experiences tells me 'adultification' isn't just a race thing, but a class thing too. And a lot of the abused would have fallen into this trap. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

the rotherham were not kidnapped either as far i know. groomed and sexually exploited not kidnapped. its not much of a distinction for what still is a disgusting crime, but there it is. its preobabvly what allowed the police to turen a blind eye for so long, pegging the victims as just some slags. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Rotherham was more than "hey, vulnerable girl, want some money to party with rich people?" where the girl freely joined a group of predators, the gangs often did outright kidnap then rape, beat and/or intentionally drug her, and threatened to murder her if she said anything. She was targeted because neither her family, the police, nor social services were there to tell the rapists to sod off.

EDIT; also, here is the Graniaud article, if you care to read what happened to some of them. CorruptUser 17:41, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

the article talks of grooming, nothing about kidnap. no medias at the time talked of kidnap only (it doesnt make it any less horrific what those girls went through) of grooming. whats described by that article is what grooming looks like. and its really irrelevent to what ever point was being made, beyond a correction of a falsehoodAMassiveGay (talk) 17:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

If I remember the facts from the time, there were instances of youths being ferried about to other locations for abuse and/or used as a prostitute. This, if I remember my English law right, counts as 'kidnap'. In fact, simply holding a person against their will for a few hours in a room across the street also counts. Therefore, the reports were technically correct but to the layperson could give a bit of the wrong impression. But I stand by my point that it was more a class thing than a race thing going on. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@CorruptUser Might want to look into who made the biggest stink about that scandal, and who they conveniently ignored. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:10, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Gay, CorruptUser 18:14, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

A couple of years before the Rotherham grooming case, the biggest child exploitation case concerned... Jimmy Savile. Not exactly Muslim, pretty much similarly hideous, and with a nice bit o' cover-up to boot. I won't speak for the UK, but generally in the US, if you see a certain "ethnic identity pattern" in crime stories being shared in US social communities, usually with references to stereotypes like the Black brute, from my standpoint it is often less the crime driving the outrage than pure racism. So I'm not sure why there was a detour towards Rotherham in this thread. Maybe there's some racists who will use Rotherham as an excuse for their racism. That doesn't tell me much, other than racists may selectively report (duh). It also kind of makes The Economist's point, that there may be a moral panic fueled by a wee bit of xenophobia driving Britain's current cruel immigration policy. Certainly (sarcasm) that never happens in the United States. (Ha! Much worse in the US, I think.) No one, as far as I know, is dumping on everyone from Yorkshire due to Mr. Savile, because it's pretty obvious that Mr. Savile's actions are his own alone. Using Rotherham to dump on all Muslims would be similar balderdash. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 18:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Damn, now you've gone and told him how he's being dumb. How will he learn now? Or more realistically ignore facts that don't line up with his preconceived notions so he can "win" arguments online... Tragic. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I *can* speak for the UK here. Rotheram etc was/is citied by racists as example of why Muslims were the 'other' within British society. Even much more measured folks cited it as an example of the general failure of multiculturalism/intergation in pre-9/11 UK where to be honest, we (as in officials etc) rather looked the other way regarding ghettoisation/ethnic enclaves and even informally allowing an element of self-policing by 'community leaders' (quite a few turned up to be either too tolerant of extremism/fundimentalism, apologists of or in a few cases, the actual radicalisers). So it wasn't about immigration per se, for the vast majority of culprits were from a much older migrant wave (60s/70s) or the offpring of. In fact, most of our nativism was prompted by mass migration from the EU, which - as anyone shall point out - are mainly also white, Christian and culturally somewhat similar to 'the natives'.

A major part of the Rotheram case was that several whistleblowers, reports in the early 00s kept on saying the same damn thing and 'the leadership' refused to act on it. In fact, there were repeated episodes which was nothing more than obvious cultivation of wilful ignorance on the topic, and then minimisation of the issues. Basically, all the crappiness of British management rolled into one thing. I remember hearing the 'organisational failures' and nodding all the way, getting exactly how this happened - for I'd seen similar in other depts/orgs (though not as serious a result, or all together) in my time.

With Savile... it was also emblematic of an issue of 'old celebs getting away with shit'. In a way, it was our *organic* #MeToo situation, for once Savile's crimes were dug up, we started seeing loads more shallow graves hiding in plain sight. And like Harris, some ended up being brought down by it. It also directly led to the Carl Beech affair (which I've started writing a draft page for) of which much of the reason he got away with his fantasist lies was because Savile etc had made everyone open-minded to the point of foolishness.

Just noticed. There's no RW page on Savile? That's gotta be fixed. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:46, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Presidential elections in France

Is there going to be a page about this aswell, like in 2017. Love the snark in that article. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6188:75E7:BF44:9CC7 (talk) 20:03, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Someone has to be knowledgeable enough about French politics to create it. It looks like the main contributors to the 2017 page are no longer around. Bongolian (talk) 01:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The clear support for Mélenchon, a guy that thinks Venezuela is a model and used to support Putin, and the rehash of his conspiracy theory, persecution complex "the media is against him", is kinda problematic on the page too. 77.204.145.69 (talk) 08:39, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

pages on specific elections dont work. once the election is over everyone loses interest and no one bothers to even update the page with the eventual winner like with the above example. i note no one ever makes the suggestion after it is all done and dusted AMassiveGay (talk) 17:18, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

What in the world is this guy on?

This has to be a Poe, please tell me it's a knowing joke and not some nutter failing to grasp the basics tenets of what they fear http://cancelthiscompany.com/index.html Cardinal Chang (talk) 22:50, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Smells like a MAGA. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6188:75E7:BF44:9CC7 (talk) 22:51, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Walmart is left-wing? Ok. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6188:75E7:BF44:9CC7 (talk) 22:52, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

It gets better. BLM is Marxist, Hahahaha. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6188:75E7:BF44:9CC7 (talk) 23:00, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for another post, but I just saw this dribble. He claims that this site is "A very irrational far left-wing comedy site.", and recommends Conservapedia & JustTheFacts instead. Oh, And Urbandictionary is "run by 'woke' leftists" aswell, lol. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:6188:75E7:BF44:9CC7 (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

There's a lot of weird shit about this site. The hatred of the conservative Utah company Overstock.com for a mere BLM corporate-support gesture after George Floyd is particularly juicy, given that the current CEO ran for the Republican governor of Utah at one point, and their previous CEO is a batshit insane insurrectionist Trumper, who bragged about supposedly boinking Russian spies and caused Overstock's stock to tumble 36% in 2019 when he started babbling about the "Deep State").

But on the "webshite" page, Bogleheads.org struck me as a completely WTF oddity for someone to declare as "woke". That's a forum dedicated to passive investing Vanguard style, with no political content whatsoever outside of this scope. Sounds like this person tried to insert a MAGA rant on some sleepy threads on portfolio allocation, diversification, and retirement planning, was slapped down by the mods, and got pissed off that they couldn't be a MAGA asshole everywhere in the universe.

At any rate, Poe or not, it looks like this site is pretty low impact even in MAGA land. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 00:45, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, inasmuch as the message boils down to "Boycott everything on Earth except for a small amount of crap"... Kencolt (talk) 00:57, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

—cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 02:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The domain registration was via Epik, so that makes Poe less likely. Bongolian (talk) 02:17, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Detroit, NY & San Francisco are Marxist cities. That's a thing, apparently. Also, here's the list of "Good" companies. 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:B942:32E8:1BF8:7543 (talk) 14:50, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Why are you all giving me Christmas presents in April? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Because we forgot to give you something for Christmas, so we're giving it for Easter? 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:B942:32E8:1BF8:7543 (talk) 15:52, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Besides, we have to get what we can when we can get it. Since, apparently, we're not really supposed to get anything anywhere. Kencolt (talk) 16:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Americans should budget an extra $5,200 this year to cover rising prices, Bloomberg economists estimate

Jesus Christ, is this real? What happens when I can barely afford things as they are? 2001:8003:DDAA:5A00:78EC:3196:609F:12A (talk) 07:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

GC is an evil godless commie who doesn't think critically

Just remember that. It's very important lol. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Is @UKempireanalyser a sock of @UShistoryanalyzer? Bongolian (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Bongolian Too early to tell. Besides, USHA isn't the only dogmatic moron on the planet. Unfortunately... ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

While I my username was based off him, there is a strong contrast between my political opinions and his. UKempireanalyser (talk) 20:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Aesthetically maybe. They're still made of the same stuff. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:18, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Side note, @UKempireanalyser if you don't stop trying to evade the vandal bin I'll just block your account for a Pi duration. It's not like the wiki would lose anything of value. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:22, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks for telling us that you were working for pay. Essay deleted. We don't tolerate paid articles here. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

What was the paid article about? I'm vaguely curious. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:50, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@KarmaPolice It was basically arguing the Hong Kong protests were a western astroturf. Which is really dumb. Not because the CIA and/or MI6 wouldn't fund them, they would. But because something being funded by a foreign power does not de facto make it astroturfed. China and Russia have sent money to various causes to build influence, same as the US, UK, and EU. Like, this is the problem with tankies and campists, they can only think in terms of "good guy"/"bad guy" binary narratives, rather than seriously assessing the actual complexities of our world. Also GenZedong are a bunch of idiots. Just in a general sense. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:12, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Seriously, just because a group is being funded by a foreign power does not mean there aren't actual grievances. This is so basic that it actually shocks me that I have to keep explaining it to people. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:22, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

It also strips any and all agency from non Westerners, since the assumption is that any anti-government movement has to be invented by the West. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 01:28, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. We do "not even allow them to be evil", as it were. I forget who said that, but it's a good quote. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:30, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

The onset of warmer weather is observed with an increase in people diving into swimming pools. The insistence of RationalWiki goons, by contrast, is a steep dive into a new level of hilarious insanity. The importation of Karajou-esque antics to RW moderation leads to a one-upping of Conservapedian cesspool stupidity levels, so I observe. Ushit the dipshit ^{(I shit, Ushit...)} 05:16, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Geez, you'll defend absolutely any troll, won't you? Vomitorium (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It seems that Ushit is a tankie now. Plutocow (talk) 06:07, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Plutocow A campist, to be technical. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

What if we could detect everything in utero?

Something that's been bugging me for a while. OB/GYN medicine improves every year. There was a time before amniocentesis, before ultrasound, before natal surgery was a thing. Yet they all exist today. We now detect (and quite often abort) Downs Syndrome, and we generally don't bat an eye at it. Imagine we could detect everything about a fetus in utero. How would this fundamentally alter society? We can't detect "will child grow up to be doctor", but we could check "expected height is 6'1, predisposed to Oppositional Defiant Disorder", that sort of thing. But assuming that LGBT begins in the womb too, that also is something that, hypothetically could be detected at some point, and further hypothetically, altered. Would significant segments of society "correct" homosexuality in utero? Would legislation need to be put in place to prevent such procedures? If a fetus was detected to be Trans, if the options were on the table, would the best course of action to be to transition the fetus in utero, to change the fetus to be cis, or to wait until after the child is born to see what the child decides?

It's an ugly set of questions. But they will need to be answered at some point. It's also an old question for any SciFi nerds; SciFi was always ahead of the rest of society when discussing LGBT issues, Asimov actually advocated for encouraging homosexuality in the 1960s. So it's hardly the first time this question has been asked. CorruptUser 17:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

As sex-selective abortion already occurs (despite the awful consequences) in some "traditional" societies due to "traditional" gender role bullshit, if "LGBT" was somehow detectable, unfortunately I imagine certain more "traditional" type societies, at least the homophobic ones, *would* do the abortion thing. Apparently this concern is noted in this paywalled article commenting on the ethics of genetic research on same-sex sexual behavior (quoted here outside the article, and I wish I could see more). People are aware of the echoes of eugenics (and the awful consequences of that) with this subject, I think.

That being said, all current research indicates that sexual orientation / preference is *very* complicated and certainly not determined by any single gene the way Down's Syndrome is (scientists haven't even figured out the "genetics vs. prenatal environment" debate on what contributes to sexual orientation, and recall that sexuality is a spectrum, not a fixed dot). I doubt any "in utero gay test" is possible any time soon, at least coming from established medicine. (The huckster side of "medicine", that's perhaps another story...) 72.184.174.199 (talk) 20:18, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

That would be a very difficult question to answer. I would not know where to begin. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 20:20, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

"If you have sex with your wife while she's pregnant, that gets your baby more used to penis. If you fetus is male it'll be gay, if female it'll be a slut." There, the new Alex Jones conspiracy theory for you. CorruptUser 20:41, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

On that day we will have to find novel terms for eugenics to distinguish between the various editorial policies which emerge, because there will be no society which doesn’t embrace that new reality in some form and isn’t also left behind (it might even be considered wrong to roll the dice on unfettered traditional recombination if the technology becomes ubiquitous). Who knows how far off it is – polygenic conditions in particular look monstrously difficult but may be possible to channel even imperfectly – but it’s gonna happen. Puberty for the human species as a whole, maybe the precursor to our divergence? Genetically autonomous cyborgs wandering the stars? Whatever we choose, I hope at least some of us see the wisdom in retaining heterogeneity, we'll never be rid of the Red Queen. Artificius (talk) 22:21, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Eugenics is a related issue. The Red Queen hypothesis implies we should avoid the clonal Uber-frauen/menschen, that a recessive "defective" gene isn't in itself something that should necessarily be excised from the gene pool. Sickle-cell is the classic example of this; deadly if you have both recessive genes, but if you have 1 gene you are malaria-resistant thus it's actually a genetic advantage in some regions. CorruptUser 22:44, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Pretty sure if we could do this the birthrate would be much, much lower...--Back2theroots34 (talk) 03:37, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, just go watch "Gattaca" you whippersnappers!!! It's not like the movie is that old! --Bertrc (talk) 19:46, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

What’s the Preferred Process of Moving a Draft to a Main-space Page?

Is there some preferred policy about when something ought to be moved out of the draftspace to the mainspace on this site? Does it need mod approval? Does it need to be voted upon? I am not sure what the norms are here. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

No approval necessary, it's not like you need mod approval to create a new page. Just note that once in mainspace, if it's a 3 sentence unsourced stub that just sits there rotting, it could be subject to a Article for Deletion vote. CorruptUser 22:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

should the draft page be deleted though? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC).

Yes, the draft space article should be deleted without redirect. If there's a draft talk page, that should be moved simultaneously to mainspace. Bongolian (talk) 03:24, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

French Presidential Elections

So, Macron is facing Le Pén again. Most critics think Macron will win it. Thoughts? 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:E58E:168:15F2:3CC (talk) 08:45, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I would say the odds are extremely low (though not impossible) that Le Pen would win. If Le Pen did, it would be more shocking and more seismic than Trump winning in America. Never say never, but I wouldn't event bet a eurocent on it and I wouldn't give the kind of attention to this that the media is. ShabiDOO 10:07, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Why would you say the odds are extremely low? I haven't been following this election in France very closely, but when I look at the polls they are showing LaPen within five points and trending in a good direction for her. That'd be a goddamn nightmare scenario for sure, even if Macron is a dishrag. If someone gave me odds of 1 chance in 7 of her winning I'd bet twenty bucks. Most of the globe is trending her way, as I'm sure you have all noticed. 138.207.198.74 (talk) 23:09, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Dunno how many French citizens peruse this board, or how many supported a candidate other than Macron or Le Pen, but I hope French voters take more seriously the danger of these right-wing movements. The damage Trump did to American institutions and national discourse cannot yet be quantified, Brexit has done irreparable harm to the UK. Le Pen would make all of that look like a minor inconvenience.RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

there is no doubt there are those in the uk who would welcome le pen as pres of france. particularly if it leads to a french brexit. brexit only really works for the uk if the eu implodes and breaks apart. le pen could well see that becoming a reality AMassiveGay (talk) 16:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

That was one of many polls and the only one I have seen that puts her within the Margin of error, others have Macron with a 10% lead. It is early days and as with previous elections with the FN as a contender, they start off well and slip. Again, I did not say impossible, but I wouldn't even bet a eurocent on it. Media coverage of European elections try hard to make them more interesting than many are, sensationalise drab issues and make competitions seem closer than they are. Let's simply see what happens ShabiDOO 17:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

with a straight choice between one or the other, i would not be too certain of anything, and when there is a over a week of campaigning from them both. i would not be certain enough to not be at least apprehensive when the results are being announced. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

The amount of voters, especially on the left, that may choose to stay home is concerning. Macron isn't doing himself any favors either by trying to attract right wing voters instead of consolidating the left.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This is the trend we see worldwide. Neoliberalism tries to appease the far right and fails, fails, fails. Jim Crow Joe in the USA. Promises made, promises broken. It's a recipe for global disaster and I don't see a way around it. Fucking bleak. 138.207.198.74 (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I would be Jack’s complete lack of surprise if Macron tries to bully/ignore/take the left vote for granted in the second round, since that would be completely in line with him generally being the French version of “moderate” (New) Democrat/Labour politicians like the Clintons, Obama, Biden, Blair, Starmer etc.

They all seem to be of the firm opinion that you should never even try promise the “leftists” anything of substance (and preferably not promise them anything at all) and then be appalled, shocked and scandalised when “leftist” voters either vote against them or simply abstain.

Apparently, there is an ingrained notion (to the point of it being gospel) among this “moderates” crowd that the way you should go about gaining “leftist” votes is by belittling, scolding and/or ignoring this spectrum of the electorate, whereas “rightists”, sorry “conservatives”, should always be appeased through compromises or simply by abandoning anything the “moderates” actually campaigned for, because that is the way you do “proper”, “bipartisan” and “professional” politics. These “moderates” also seem to be really into TINA style narratives in a big way; and curiously these are always based on ideas hatched on the right. ScepticWombat (talk) 19:14, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Here in the US at least, the center-left/center-right coalition (Democratic Party) have this playbook where they achieve NONE of their promises (this time having both chambers and the presidency, shit), and then blame the voters. Oh well. Parties only learn through electoral pain, and this November is going to be a whole new world of hurt for the fools.15:43, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, and if Macron should lose in the second round, I have a pretty good guess as to where the blame will be placed (hint: Bernie bros, 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election etc.). ScepticWombat (talk) 19:19, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Young vs Old; Clean Energy Wars

This morning, The Guardian posted this article about the age demographics of clean energy proponents, and how young people (specifically from Montana in this case) are the ones leading the charge for clean energy.

For the record, I am just as much in favor of clean energy/the move away from fossil fuels as anybody else is on this website. The benefits of clean energy are literally endless and go well beyond even the simple fact of them being better for the environment. That being said, I have NEVER been a fan of these stupid articles that put this much emphasis on "young" people. Why? It's far too divisive, whether intentionally or not (I gravitate towards the latter), and might even been the reason why some (i.e baby boomers) actually tend to gravitate away from clean energy the way some of them do. This might even be what fuels (no pun intended) this backwards movement that's been going on to argue that fossil fuels are actually BETTER than clean energy, like this bullshit video from Prager U arguing for the use of fossil fuels, for example.

If you want the world to move away from clean energy, and again, nobody does more than me, people have really got to stop this. Maybe if we just stopped pitting age demographics against each other, we might be in a better place. Everybody has a reason to love clean energy regardless of their age. Keep in mind to, I'm 24 going on 25 and am (just barely) part of Gen Z. So I'm probably in a better position to discuss this than others.

On a side note: why do people think wind farms are ugly? Are you kidding me? About three years ago, I was driving through west Texas on my way to Denver, and we have huge wind farms out there in the middle of these very green patches of land. It looks incredible. Wind farms are NOT ugly. Aaronmichael5 15:06, 13 April, 2022 (UTC).

Yes, I think they look really cool.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Older people have more personal experience with the scientific consensus being wrong (In the 1930s-40s, physicians and nurses joined celebrities and sports stars to promote cigarettes. The USDA nutrition guidelines being in error in the past due to the ag industry having undue influence, etc.). So that can spawn skepticism about global warming. Ralstone (talk) 15:29, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Speaking as an "older person" I take incredible offense to this. Yes, older people have more experience of the scientific consensus being wrong - but that is because we have more experience of almost everything.

From my almost 70 years I can say I have a hell of a lot more experience of the scientific consensus being absolutely right. And where it has been wrong it has been able to correct itself.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:44, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

You're reasoning forwards like, "How does this thing look? I guess it's pretty elegant". That is not the way to empathize with conservatives. They start at "Those fuckers want this and that makes it bad" and wend with "it must be bad in every way I can come up with." And that works, as far as winning arguments goes. You're entertaining that clearly spurious argument as if it's legitimate, even if you don't believe it. (ec)It works even better on Ralstone, apparently. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 15:31, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

(ignoring new account probable troll) The article was "young people vs. Republicans and entrenched industry", not "young people vs. old people". Republicans have traditionally been the political party representing inefficient dinosaur monopolies (I've seen this pattern on industries ranging from cable television to automobile dealerships to health care to craft beer). So I don't think it's really a boomers vs. Gen Z thing if you look beneath the surface. (Though I agree that the Guardian article is probably designed to tickle stupid "culture wars" in this regard.)

I actually question whether the framing in the Guardian article is even accurate at all in Montana's case. Montana's not a major oil and gas producer from what I gather, and renewable energy accounts for half of Montana's power already (mostly hydropower). Generally, even in conservative political states, if there's money to be made from renewables, renewable production will happen in spite of the bullshit politics. Montana does produce a decent amount of coal, but that's a dying industry in the US whether coal miners like it or not, as electricity production shifts away from coal to renewables, natural gas, etc., in the United States at least. The Guardian hints at political shenanigans to help prop up coal, oil, and gas, but I'd love to see more sources before concluding much given that the Guardian article is kind of weak.

At any rate, the action in the above article seems to be linked to here aka Our Children's Trust, a nonprofit lawsuit muckracker which seems to be advancing an angle in courts that, while not completely incorrect (given the dangers of climate change and the clinging-on to outdated fuels some Republicans are encouraging) probably won't do much as the framework being used (mitigating climate change under the public trust doctrine) seems kind of a weak argument to me. 72.184.174.199 (talk) 15:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

there is bias in the fact its from the guardian own campaign to combat climate change. its going to take a particular line on the issues

the article is highlighting a youth climate movement in montana and the specific suit they are involved. i cannot comment on legal merits of the case, but there is lot of background and context provided to get the idea of whatspurred them on with egregious examples of the political self interest they are railing against that hampers efforts to combat climate change, via legislative obstacles. montana's energy breakdown is detailed (and sources provided) and setbacks and pitfalls to their efforts are mentioned. a case is made and it is supported. the nitpicking that very much misses the point of article and the point of the lawsuit and its scope. the lawsuit in question is not being presented anything more than other another battle in a long drawn out war against climate change and its enablers. it is a historic case in the scope of the article, ie climate change and montana, and the article is open about its promotion of its cause. the actual legal issues - i cannot comment on, and ymmv with its politics. but criticisms, im sure there are plenty of valid avenues of attack, thus far directed its way does not reflect what the article is and or says. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:17, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

.

Talks of considering the war in Ukraine as genocide

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/genocide-legal-threshold-crossed-ukraine-080400851.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

According to some experts on genocide, they say that the beginnings of genocide are taking place such as burning books on Ukrainian history and culture. I am personally hesitant on going with the "genocide" label but there is strong indications of ethnic cleansing. Would you consider it genocide, cultural genocide or ethnic cleansing? --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 21:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I would not consider the war itself to be a genocide, no. Now, have actions been undertaken by Russia during the war that may in fact be a genocide? Very possibly. Though it should be noted that even where this is being called such, the intentionality and theorized motivations vary. Russia could be using genocide as a tactic to pacify opposition in Ukraine. It could be the result of poorly disciplined troops. It could be ideologically motivated. We currently cannot tell for sure. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Russia, China, The Us are not signatories of the International Court of Criminal Justice. Nor is Ukraine, so while what is happening in the war is horrific, and it's easy to label Putin's actions as war crimes and/or genocide, short of military response, Putin has nothing to worry about, unfortunately. Cardinal Chang (talk) 23:00, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of genocide, I thought about this. Pro-Putin nuts will always cite the Azov Battalion and Right Sector as reasons to invade Ukraine yet ignore that Putin happily caters to all political extremists, as long as it furthers his ability to gain a power foothold, which includes Neo-Nazis. At least, for now, those loony battalions set aside differences with people they hate to defend their country (no I do not justify their ideology). --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 23:56, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Eugene Finkel, an expert on genocide, was reluctant to call Russia's invasion an genocide until recently when the official intent became quite clear. An article by Timofei Sergeytsev and published by government-controlled Ria news agency. The article among other things said that the Ukrainian elite "need to be liquidated, its re-education is impossible". [7] Bongolian (talk) 02:04, 10 April 2022 (UTC) A translation and links to the original Sergeytsev article are here:[8] Bongolian (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The UN definition of genocide includes attempting to destroy a "national.... group". Given that Putin's rhetoric that Ukraine has no right to exist as a country and his stated intent to remove Ukraine from the map, I think y'all need to revist your ideas that "it isnt' really" genocide! Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 02:55, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

A nation is very similar to an ethnic group, and does not mean the same as "country" or "state", though the effectiveness of nation-states in recent history has muddled the terms in common usage. Genocide is specifically the destruction of some group of people through whatever means, and removing a country from the map does not constitute genocide on its own. For example, the removal of the Confederate States of America from the map was not a genocide. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 08:16, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

What we are seeing is self-evidently the worst series of war crimes against European civilian populations since the time of the Nazis. According to Putin's own words he doesn't think Ukraine as a nation and - by extension Ukrainians as a people - should exist. My inclination would be to call it attempted genocide.

But the most important thing is that we are seeing mass rape, mass murder and unprovoked attacks attacks on civilian populations. Labelling, or not labelling it, "genocide" doesn't make it better or worse.

If (by some miracle) the criminals responsible get hauled before some sort of new Nuremberg then their existing crimes will be enough to get them locked up forever. The genocide charge will get them forever+1.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 11:49, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

”What we are seeing is self-evidently the worst series of war crimes against European civilian populations since the time of the Nazis” — Eeehh…, Srebrenica etc., anyone? Or are the Balkans suddenly not European or doesn’t this count for being (sort of) a civil war?

I’m not saying that the Russians aren’t committing war crimes (it seems pretty convincing to me that they are), and whether these technically amount to crimes against humanity and/or genocide does not change their seriousness. Nevertheless, I’m kind of stumped that so many media outlets are so emphatic in placing them as the worst since 1945, given the well documented and comparatively recent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, especially given that so many convictions of these crimes have been handed down by the ICTY. ScepticWombat (talk) 19:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

As soon as Rich Lowry says something isn't true, that's when I start believing it is.[9] Besides the photo, video and audio evidence.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:39, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Butcher of Syria enters the arena

https://news.yahoo.com/russia-appoints-general-cruel-history-192944985.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

A Russian general nicknamed the "Butcher of Syria" will be overseeing the Ukraine Invasion. This guy has a terrible human rights record such as bombing fleeing civilian populations and gassing people with poison gas. So be ready for more crimes against humanity. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 21:54, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Just more of the same. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:01, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Clarification on Privacy Article

Hi, lurker and now poster. I’m woefully uninformed when it comes to internet privacy, so please forgive my ignorance if I’m not asking the right questions in the right place. Regarding the article on Tor, It lists the specifics the NSA monitors when looking through internet data. Specifically it talks about using search engines to look for terms relating to privacy software. But one of the articles linked to makes the claim that just by visiting the site, you get put on a list. Was this an exaggeration I’m too stupid to get or are the US security practices really this tight?

NeedsAHug (talk) 00:19, 13 April 2022 (UTC)NeedsAHug

I wouldn't put it past them, but i wouldn't worry about it either as per the "if you have nothing to hide" argument and there wasnt any other reason for them to watch you specifically.--Spoony (talk) 03:02, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

The "if you have nothing to hide argument" is dogcrap. But no, unless you use certain keywords the NSA isn't going to spy on you specifically. They do have a limited budget after all. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:01, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Would it be wrong to assume that the monitoring of search engines applies to the search bar of the wiki?NeedsAHug (talk) 01:47, 14 April 2022 (UTC)NeedsAHug

@NeedsAHug It would indeed be wrong. Mass surveillance isn't watching you all the time. Hell, it isn't monitoring every site all the time. Basically the NSA, FBI, or whatever have bot programs trawl the web for certain keywords and phrases, which then report to a human who either flags it for further monitoring or dismisses it. Outside of the occasional abuse of this tech you don't really have much to worry about. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

It's dogcrap and they shouldn't be doing it but for the sake of my sanity I assume the average Joe doesn't have anything to worry about.--Spoony (talk) 12:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but they do. Intimate messages? Medical information? Passwords? All things to hide. All things you should hide. Everyone has something to hide, no matter how banal. And that's of course without going into the deeper debate of just letting the state have access to everything. Cough PRC cough... ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

The answer is that investigations into actual NSA behavior revealed long ago that people used the broad scope data collection to spy on people they knew. So the more accurate saying is "If you have nothing to hide, and no one in the government has an axe to grind with you personally, and there's no profit motive in exploiting your secrets, then you have nothing to fear" ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 13:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Add "and you arent at risk of being stalked, and you never say anything on social media that could possibly offend anyone at some point in the future" to that list. I mean, surely no one here has made any enemies for being a part of a website dedicated to documenting nutjobs, no one has ever dared to harass a self-proclaimed atheist. Nope. 107.167.109.92 (talk) 16:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

just appearing on some government list somewhere some how has consequences AMassiveGay (talk) 20:28, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Glaring problem with the James Buchanan article

Manner of citing lead quote implies Buchanan was a Know Nothing, contradicting actual history of Pennsylvania anti-Catholic Know Nothings under Simon Cameron strongly opposing Buchanan. [10] And the "conservative wingnuttery" category is substantiated by absolute zilch. Ushit the dipshit ^{(I shit, Ushit...)} 01:37, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I think that I clarified the intent of the inclusion of that quote. Bongolian (talk) 02:14, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I suppose your edit does constitute an improvement in the clarification of the context. However, the time of Lincoln's statement of the quote, specified in your cited source, preceded the beginning of Buchanan's presidency by two years. Buchanan in 1855 was Minister to the UK under Pierce, not president. Ushit the dipshit ^{(I shit, Ushit...)} 02:55, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

The quote could be removed. I don't think it adds much. Bongolian (talk) 04:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

It's what Lincoln was implying, and isn't misrepresenting the intent of the quote. Historically, basically no one important self-identified as a know-nothing(because of the obvious derogatory meaning). When Lincoln tarred Buchanan as their ally it's not really any different than Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote about "the white moderate" in letters from a Birmingham jail. I think Lincoln also wasn't wrong to make the allegation. Doughfaces suck shit. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 13:46, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

we are in the process of purging the "political extremism/insanity" categories, but that has been stalled for the past month or so. i suppose the bot that usually cleans things up en masse on this wiki hasn't been programmed to removed the categories from every article, and no one wants to waste time manually deleting these categories from hundreds of articles. G Man (talk) 23:14, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Is a nuclear holocaust imminent?

World War 3? Nuclear war with Russia? Who would have predicted a war between Russia and Ukraine even six months ago? Crazy stuff. 2001:8003:DDAA:5A00:7823:E32D:D7B5:5EDE (talk) 06:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Probably not. Everyone (almost) universally doesn't like Putin and if he started such an event I doubt it would be as chaotic as people think it would be. Putin cares more about his legacy than his reputation sure, but imagine the repercussions. I find it hard to imagine Ukraine being the first launcher, if at all. I don't actually believe everyone would just launch nukes in a panic in response to one.--Back2theroots34 (talk) 06:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Nukes are for intimidation. And Putin isn't crazy. Ruthless, paranoid, and at this point pretty blatantly not as smart as everyone thought he was, but not crazy. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:29, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

the danger is not a deliberate nuclear attack but the no less terrifying launching an attack by accident or in response to a false alarm. the height of the cold war saw complete annihilation of us all narrowly averted on a weekly basis it seem. lets hope things cool down pretty soon AMassiveGay (talk) 12:25, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I'd say the threat is that we sleepwalk into it because of Putin's tendency to *always* 'raise the stakes' when cornered and expect the other side to blink. It's already rumoured he's used chemical weapons in Ukraine, the next barrier will be general use, then tactical nukes. Where do you go from there? By that point, NATO will already be effectively at war with Russia, perhaps to the point our forces are digging in a defensive line from the Baltic to Black. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:00, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Not every week, but once a decade there was a near-apocalypse. There was one case of a computer glitch showing a Russian tech that 5 missiles were headed his way. He said "wtf, why would a first strike be ONLY 5 missiles?" and didn't bother reporting it, crisis averted. Vasily Arkhipov is probably the greatest story. During the Turkey Missile Crisis (fuck you JFK), the US dropped dummy depth charges on Vasily's sub. Vasily was under orders to launch a tactical nuke in the event a war broke out, which they believed to have happened due to the charges and radio silence, but there needed to be a vote. The Captain, the political officer, and the fleet cmdr (Vasily) all needed to agree. Vasily was the only one who voted no, preferring death, because he believed there was a possibility that it was just a local shooting match and not full-blown war and there was the possibility it would lead to a chain event that DID cause the nuclear apocalypse. He surfaced, survived, and nuclear war was averted. CorruptUser 15:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Not imminent, agree with @KarmaPolice though, it could be more a series of massive miscalculations.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:47, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

If Putin ordered the launch of nuclear weapons, the likely target would be the United States due to the fact that he thinks we are the evil of the world. The specific targets would likely be west coast cities. Now the US would respond by reducing Russia into a parking lot. Not worth it. --Gender Fluid Beer (talk) 16:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Not NYC/DC/Boston? CorruptUser 16:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

A direct attack is unlikely. Putin isn't suicidal, US has many nuclear armed allies that would strike Russia in retaliation. A tactical nuclear weapon is more likely, and that would be used in the Ukrainian theatre rather than attack a third country.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

At a Yale University lecture given in 2018 by the French-born Russian-American journalist Vladimir Posner, he pointed out that several times during the Cold War, there were instances where the US or Russia mistakenly thought a nuclear launch had been initiated by the other side, but they contacted each other and they resolved things because there was some level of trust. Posner said that this trust has now evaporated. So the odds of a nuclear war have increased, but they are still very low due to the principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Nuclear bomb armed stealth planes and hypersonic missiles have also increased the likelihood of nuclear war. Concabella (talk) 17:25, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

The true risk - I believe - comes at the point Putin believes he's screwed either way. If NATO truly 'looks' like it's about to invade Russia (ie full embargos, mobilisations, fortified Eastern flank etc), Russian resources are running low and the domestic scene is cracking apart (and thus, his position is threatened), he might resort to the only thing he knows; up the stakes, gamble it all on the last, nuclear card.

How would this work? The 1978 'Third World War' book painted such a scenario; that the Soviets, bogged down in a war in Germany and with riots in the rear, decide to blackmail the West into backing down. One single nuclear launch as a show of force, incinerating one city. Then the demand that the West back down lest more cities share it's fate.

If Putin *still* believes we are still ultimately soft cowards (like the fictional Politburo did), he might just think we'll cave if staring into the nuclear abyss. And if we end up there... well, I hope the book continues to be right; Putin and Co gets a sudden case of severe lead poisoning by senior officers who realise the plan is utterly nuts and shall destroy the Motherland. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:50, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Putin is a nationalist. He will not risk many Russian cities being burnt to a crisp unless he believes the West has attacked Russia with nuclear weapons. Putin is not a madman like Hitler who wanted a scorched earth policy as far as Germany. Concabella (talk) 18:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Well that was a complete non-sequitur. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

No it is not a non-sequitur .... it is something that we really do not know, and brushing it off with a wave of the hand is wishful thinking. He could easily use a "tactical" nuke on a city like Kharkiv, or one of the smaller ones of "only" 100-200k people and punt up "whadayagonnadonow?" Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Aloysius the Gaul "Putin is a nationalist, ergo he would not shoot first" is not only a non-sequitur, it's almost a textbook example. Being a nationalist does not make one a pacifist, nor encourage one to avoiding firing the first shot. So yes, actually, the conclusion does not in fact follow from the premise. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:01, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Going to agree with GC's conclusion, but it's not a non-sequitur; Putin being a nationalist would be mild evidence he would shoot first. CorruptUser 21:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@CorruptUser You'd need more context to be able to make that claim. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@GrammarCommieUh yeah - sorry - getting my sequitur's mixed up - you are right it is a non-one - I meant the same thing - being a nationalist is irrelevant to also being a madman.Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:20, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It is highly unlikely that Putin would fire a nuclear weapon at the United States. The response would be obviously be devastating - as would the counter-response from Russia.

But what Putin might do is use battlefield nukes in his war in Ukraine if he felt he was really losing. Battlefield nukes (AKA tactical nuclear weapons) are much much less powerful than the city-destroying monsters that we all know and love. If he were to do this then the west would be somewhat wrong-footed as they (we) could obviously not respond with the strategic weapons.

I'd like to be clear that I don't think this is going to happen - I'm just saying that if Putin goes nuclear then this would be a more likely route than an attack on the US.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Fat Man had a yield of 21 KT, the conventional blast that hit Beirut was 2.7 KT, tactical nukes can vary from .02 KT to 100 KT. They can absolutely devastate a city, and the fallout can be anywhere from "you got an extra tooth xray" to "you are now lasagna". CorruptUser 19:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Bob M Honestly, I don't think he'd even do that. I think in that scenario he'd use thermobaric weapons. (Which the Russian army has already done.) ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I also don't think he'd do that. Which is why I was careful to explicitly make that point in my post.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 13:20, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Russia has already used thermobaric weapons, likely has used phosphorus weapons, almost certainly will use some version of chemical weapon. The tactical warhead option I think is very much on the board. Imagine a situation where Russian forces continue to take heavy losses, and Ukrainian forces start taking back territory, to the point where Russian defeat seems imminent. Russia's nuclear posture advocates the use of nuclear weapons if the state is threatened. Recognizing the breakaway republics or Crimea could be lost, would align with using a tactical weapon to stop the advance of conventional troops.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:03, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

'...He will not risk many Russian cities being burnt to a crisp...'

Putin doesn't give a toss about the Russian people. He never has. They are agents of his will, the stones in which the Third Russian Empire shall be built from, which shall be his legacy to the Motherland, awarding him immortality, like Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. If he concludes that Volgagrad, Omsk and Smolensk need to vanish under mushroom clouds to cement the dominance of this new empire, I think he will accept it as an 'acceptable price'.

However, I don't think he'll enter this tunnel lightly. Like I said, I think this shall be the endgame where the front is crumbling, the rear is revolting and his throne shaking. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

maybe he does not care about the russian people, but he is a russian nationalist of sorted and does care about 'russia' or what he sees as russia and its poeple and his notion of 'prestige'. if 'he concludes...need to vasnish...he will accept as an acceptable price'. but why would he conclude this? if i conclude nukes to be necessary for something not quite explained, you might conclude the same given the right criteria. any 'win' he might envisage or prestige he can hold on to is long lost if tactical nukes have been deployed, if used in ukraine its because russian and seperatists forces have been completely routed and with a threat to invade russia. if used in russia, then they are being invaded. their usage would be an admission of failure. putin is not some maniacally cackling supervillain. hes going to need more than some imagined notion of immortality, or for any third russian empire to appear. you imagine his plans much more grandiose than i imagine he does himself. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:33, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure he doesn't give a toss for the Russian people. I'm actually being a little generous in thinking he cares about Russia as a concept.

Would Putin calmly/logically come to the conclusion I painted? No way.

However, could a stressed, tired (and possibly ill) micromanaging Putin, fearful of ending up like Ceausescu or Milosevic, hiding in a bunker, seeing his 'life's work' falling to pieces and with seething paranoia think that one final gamble - the atomic card - he might be able to snatch victory from the cowardly, decadent West? I *could* see that.

In this situation, could he talk himself into believing that the loss of 'a few' Russian cities be a price worth paying for this win? I think he could, if he felt his enemies 'got as bad (or worse) as he did'.

Why do I see this as a possible ending? Because I am 90% sure Putin already sees Russia as being in a war with the USA. He might become convinced that the only way he can win is to incinerate a Ukranian city a week until Biden stops backing Kyiv and 'orders them' to surrender to him.

When in doubt, raise the stakes and stare your opponent out. It's what he's been doing since 2000. Men knocking 70 rarely change habits. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:50, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Putin will do an analysis over the potential benefits of doing something (holding onto power and maintaining his interests and those who keep him in power) vs. the potential losses of doing something (the world being angry at him and the seemingly small chance of losing power). Obviously being in power, even with a fairly shitty economy, can net him mansions, big hidden bank accounts, important contacts and a future for his family. He has worked it out that the invasion and increasing escalations are worth it. It may even be that in his calculations, using chemical weapons would be worth it (or even WMDs). Putin doesn't give a shit about Russia or Russians, in fact would likely bomb Moscow to the ground and put half of Russia in Goulags if it meant maintaining his interests. If he cared about Russia, he wouldn't have invaded nor driven Russians into a lower standard of living, stomped on their few remaining rights and driven away a huge portion of Russias talent/capital. As with ANY leader, he cares foremost about his own interests. Don't think it is that much different in the West. The only thing keeping Western leaders from doing this shit is that the likelihood of failing (at least at the moment) is so high. ShabiDOO 14:34, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I somewhat disagree.

Putin needs 'a win'. A real one, not a manufactured one for the masses. His political stock has taken a beating; his 'analysis' of Ukraine so far has been awful and generally speaking, so has the military progress.

If he doesn't get this 'big win', his chances of long-term survival isn't great. Not just has Putin staked much of his political capital on this, but the losses Russia is being made to bear to get this objective too. In a victory, the heavy loss of men, materiel and money can be glossed over, not if it was a stalemate. Even more so if/when it becomes clear that the 'conflict with the USA/NATO' will continue.

This - I argue - is the dangerous point. Putin's bet too much on this. He cannot *afford* to walk away from the table. An more importantly, nor can 'we'. Not now. We've put too much political capital on the line too. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:32, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I just don't agree with that @KarmaPolice. Putin has total control over the media, communications and economy right now. The elite in Russia are rushing to his side. While the war may not be as popular with Russians as polls indicate, his logic behind it is. Already you can see the propaganda machine twisting this to eventually justify a mass casualty event. The sinking of the flagship of the Russian navy might change that calculus a little, but I think he is more than willing to cut his losses after dropping a tactical nuke.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

No, Putin doesn't have 'total control' over things. He currently has control *over* the people who controls the people who do the things. His 'efficiency' is dependent on the orders down the chain flowing correctly and information flowing up in return. There are strong signs that at least at the start, Putin has been somewhat shielded from 'bad news' and worse, has attacked the bearers of said people. Also, while the elite are *in public* 'rushing to his side' that means nothing to what they are actually thinking/planning. I completely throw out any opinion polling; not only they utterly unreliable, but the views of the masses don't mean anything, for they have no power to influence anything.

What's more, greed and the divvying-out of spoils is a major glue for the elite to Putin, and then the 'servant class' to the elite. Important; as it's this group which actually makes stuff work. What's going to be in short supply in the future? Spoils. They're kind of rank which knows the delights of Western consumer goods and European holidays but can't afford them on a weekly basis. How can you run a kleptocracy without fresh spoils to dole out?

The other main glue is patriotism. This is a bit dangerous, for it means their loyalty is to Russia, and most shall be smart enough to realise that Putin is not Russia. If they become certain that not only the actions are being done 'for Putin' but it's actively hurting Russia, their 'resistance' shall increase.

There could very well end up with a situation where the immediate elite remains loyal to Putin, but their control of the 'servant class' has become disfunctional. It's like when you have military coups led not by the 'elite' Generals and Brigadiers but the mid-ranking Colonels and Majors - often the folks who are picked for professional ability (not political reliability) and actually have direct, active commands. KarmaPolice (talk) 04:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Putin wants to go to history as another Stalin or Peter the Great. Unless someone goes nuclear against Russia, Russia will not retaliate and I think (and hope) Putin and his underlyings know that -It's very bad for business and reputation to rule over a nuked wasteland-, and even if such regard while everyone would be FUBAR, Russia could suffer most and the rest of the world less if their nukes are as well maintained as the rest of its army.

The use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine seems more likely, with reports from CIA -I hate those sites that report everything related to the war, without separating the propaganda of everything else- claiming Putin may use them if things go pear-shaped in the Donbass. While they have much less yield than a strategic one, it would open a big can of worms and I doubt it would be good for Russia's reputation even among its allies. Panzerfaust (talk) 08:55, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if tactical use happened, whether it might cause Putin to be overthrown/assassinated, or at least say, a coup attempt/rebellion against him. Even if the masses had no idea what was happening, the elites/servants would (to differing levels) and decide he is become a liability for the Motherland, not an asset. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:03, 15 April 2022 (UTC)