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Is Plastic Recyclable or Not?[edit]

I always try to make sure I dispose of my trash and recycleables in the proper manner, but articles like these suggest that there is little point to recycling plastic. Is this just because the trash management is bad, or is it actually because plastic simply cannot be recycled effectively as a rule? Does this mean that the only real option is to simply minimize the purchase of goods in plastic containers and go for others (such as aluminum or glass) instead? MirrorIrorriM (talk) 17:11, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that yes, most plastic these days is either landfilled or burned in waste-to-energy plants.
Paper / cardboard, in contrast, is *very* recyclable. So is metal or glass, though the US system for doing such is kind of broken.
Having said that, there are certain types of plastics which also have successful recyclable programs -- namely, PET (RICWikipedia code 1) and HDPE (RIC code 2). (Again, the US system is kind of broken for this too, but not Europe.) So from an environmental standpoint, I think you are "sort of okay" with these particular plastics, depending on where you are. BobJohnson (talk) 17:47, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
The sorting process is the biggest hurdle. Just follow what your local coordinators tell you to do, if they say 1s and 2s only, don’t try to slip 5s and such in. If they say 1s - 7s, that’s pretty much everything. 5% is better than 0%. 2607:FB90:D107:B2B:B501:88C4:2C04:A261 (talk) 20:51, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
what with xmas results in lot packaging in the trash and/or recycling, i was amazed (i think this is still true) to find that polystyrene isnt recyclable. so much air in it that its not cost effective to squash it down apparently. it amazes because its really bulky and it just feels wrong not to recycle. you have to break it down to even fit in the trash. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:27, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
The State of California sued "ExxonMobil for Deceiving the Public on Recyclability of Plastic Products" earlier this year. ExxonMobil is a major producer of the precursors of commercial plastics. Based on ExxonMobil's deceptive past practices with regard to climate change, it's likely that they had a similar strategy for plastic, as the lawsuit alleges. Plastics other than #1 and #2 are almost never recyclable and the amount of plastic recycled in the US is only 8%.[1] Bongolian (talk) 21:34, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Polystyrene is in fact compostable by mealworms (Tenebrio molitor)[2] but the ability to scale this up to the necessary industrial scale is likely to prove elusive.[3] Bongolian (talk) 21:45, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
There is a grocery chain where I live that collects polystyrene along with plastic bags (in separate bins). I looked further into this, turns out they send it to a company that turns it into insulation. What I’m curious about is this company (unrelated to the grocery chain). Supposedly they hoard the plastics for long periods of time until they can find a manufacturer to take it for next to nothing. 2607:FB90:D107:B2B:BC62:D693:84E8:5A98 (talk) 17:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
The OP's question became my 'hyperfixation' some four years back and I have a pretty good memory to boot - so forgive the coming infodump minus sources - they shall be there if you look on a friendly search engine, I promise you! [Disclaimer: UK POV, so some of my details might be a bit wonky for you pesky foreigners].
There is a reason genuine green movements say 'reduce, reuse, recycle' - with 'recycle' on the last stage of the list. Even if they can recycle 100% of item in question it still consumes resources to actually do the recycling [collection, cleaning, sorting, reprocessing etc] which means it is quite possible that the end product is in fact more expensive than 'virgin' sources for that resource [which is why there keeps on being scandals of recycling being 'exported' to the Global South for non-existent 'reprocessing']. There is also the question of where those 'extra resources' are coming from - is it truly good for the planet in cumulative terms if this chain consumes a load of extra oil [petrol/diesel engines for shipping], water [cleaning] and coal/gas [electricity for processing]? It's a variant of the 'coal power plant to make and power a LED light bulb' dilemma - that an old incandescent might ultimately prove 'greener' [ie a total lower ecological cost] if made 'cleanly' and powered by nuclear/renewables.
Economics has a strong factor in what can and can't 'be recycled'. Take for example, old CDs/DVDS/CD-Roms/etc. The truth is that they can from a technical POV be recycled. But as a rule they are not; because the materials used require special processing and almost nobody regards it as economic to set up production lines for it. This issue also confronts us with other materials such as microfibre textiles, tetrapaks, Pyrex glass and polystyrene - that if the dedicated faculties exist they could be recycled but they often don't. Lastly, we need to remember that sometimes your authority does have facilities to handle certain types but don't offer a 'kerbside service' - for example I can recycle type 3/5 plastics but as a rule they demand I lug them to the local tip.
The next issue is that not all recycling is equal. Sometimes, things can be genuinely recycled [a product's quality can be preserved] but the vast majority of recycling is 'downcycling'. This is when a product can only be recycled into something 'worse' - for example, high-end printer/book paper becomes low-end exercise books, which then becomes newsprint, ending up as toilet paper which is the end of it [this is what I mentally refer to as 'recycling entropy']. This is often why we see boasts about things being say '50% recycled content' - ie they are adding a proportion of virgin/high quality resource to the mix to up the quality enough for use at this 'level' [though it is also possible to start out with poor-quality virgin, stuff which again requires more 'inputs' to up the quality, for example a load of milling and bleach to paper]. Metal and glass are magical in this respect as they can be indefinitely recycled, while plastics only get a few 'steps' before unusability.
But on to plastic. If I recall right, it's all about 'heat history' - each time it's reheated and reformed [ie recycled] the chemical bonds degrade, making it weaker and more brittle - so it is a classic 'downcycler', like paper. What's more, like blocks of plasticine as a kid, the moment a coloured bit hits the vat of clear plastic it becomes tainted forever. Therefore, if you see 'clear' PET/HDPE about it's either virgin or 'first-stage' downcycled - and the reason a lot of plastic gets stained black [it hides all sins]. So no, your plastic drink bottle will not, can not come back as another drinks bottle. That's important to remember. But you can't afford to be smug; for example that 'cardboard' packaging instead of plastic in the shop might in fact turn out to be plastic coated and ends up in general waste because both sides disowns it as 'contaminated'.
'I know the ecological costs, but I re-use my plastics!' is a common refrain. I should know - I used to say it too [and slightly more importantly, actually did]. Justified it that while yeah, that plastic bottle was bad resource-wise at least if I used it say, 50 times first my 'per use' cost would be fairly low. Except there's a growing body of evidence which suggests re-using single use for foodstuffs is bad for us, and perhaps simply keeping it around in general terms is bad too. The day I read about microplastics was the day I went to the kitchen and binned the family of Lucozade bottles etc, and as my rigid plastic stuff starts to show wear [Tupperwares, shake shakers, utensils etc] I ditch them for non-plastic versions. On the other hand, there are times where plastics help things. For example, it helps reduce food wastage [plastic-bagged foods contain CO2 which retard spoilage, clever packaging can reduce damage in transit and plastic bagged frozen fruit/veg might in fact be better for the planet than fresh] while there's other situation where alternatives simply aren't that viable [PPE and medical waste].
Ultimately, the OP hits the golden rule - that when it comes to plastic, recycling is merely the 'least worst' option once you already possess it. That avoiding it is in fact the best option, and if you can't avoid to at least pick ones which the 'resource cost per use' is lower [for example, a long-life refillable plastic bottle over a single-use]. Your own lifestyle and local availability conditions are also factors to recall - that during this hyperfixation I started to look around for non-plastic bottled milk and after realising a) glass milk bottles seem to be extinct, b) a 'refill service' does not exist where I am and c) tinned milk is for crackheads and wars this led me to UHT tetrapaks which proved affordable, reasonable and locally recyclable. Sure, tetras are hardly the best option, but they're the best I can realistically have at this point.
I have a relative who is very 'recycling is a trick to get free labour from us for big companies to patch their shit systems and to then extract more cash out of us' hard green type. I have many objections to their views but on this one I can't deny, I have a sneaking suspicion they might be onto something here... KarmaPolice (talk) 01:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
regarding glass milk bottles - i noticed a house in the next street over from me had a couple of bottles on their door step. havent seen that for years. do milk men still exist i wonder? probably amazon or something. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:11, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
There's a few left - I know someone who still has them. Though they also do fresh bread, eggs, newspapers, fruit/veg etc [which helps because they're infirm and live in a village with fuck all in it]. but it's very patchy. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────to answer op's question: the short answer is yes. the longer answer is that it's complicated. plastic recycling is possible, but highly inefficient. it demands a lot of time, energy, and resources, and at the end of the day, it isn't really that much better for the environment than making new virgin plastic. as a matter of fact, in most cases, it's cheaper. the real solution to plastic waste is dramatically reducing the consumption of single-use plastic. you can't recycle your way out of a pollution crisis (though recycling can serve to be a stopgap that limits the amount of waste bound for landfills and oceans). The G (talk) 03:15, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all for your responses. My takeaway is that I should keep recycling, but more importantly should cut back as much as possible on buying goods that come in plastic containers. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 23:36, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Jimmy Carter dead at 100[edit]

Per WaPo.𝔖𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞 𝔄𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔬𝔩𝔬𝔤𝔦𝔠𝔞 (𝔮𝔲𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔦𝔰) (𝔰𝔠𝔯𝔦𝔭𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔞) 21:22, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

RIP Jimmy. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 22:06, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
I'll miss him. I'm a Georgia boy myself. He's to be missed. Kencolt (talk) 23:08, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
I know this will be an extremely unpopular opinion but if hell exists, Jimmy is burning in it currently for his actions (or inaction) relating to the East Timor Genocide, Cambodia, and many, many more examples that I am probably forgetting. A somebody. (talk) 23:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
If there is a dimension of eternal torture nothing you said would merit being sent there because eternal torture is a disproportionate response to any crime by virtue of being eternal.-Flandres (talk) 23:45, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
I find it a bit odd to single out Carter in relation to the genocide in East Timor, since the invasion happened well before he took office. At most he can be blamed for not trying to push Suharto more firmly, but then again, what would the odds of that happening have been and would it have been likely to have made a difference (or to get the necessary backing from Congress)? Not to mention the rather dubious US history of trying to meddle in Indonesian affairs that would make such efforts a pretty uphill struggle, especially given that the invasion and occupation had already happened and no one on the international stage were particularly keen to start a war with Indonesia to kick them out.
Similarly, I don’t see his Latin American policy as particularly bad - especially compared with those of both his predecessor(s) and his immediate successor. To expect a Cold War US President to take a sort of “live and let live” approach to the various leftist groups and parties in Latin America would be frankly unrealistic. Not to mention that some of these were not particularly savoury themselves. It’s also worth noting that his policy on Panama in particular was certainly not a given and the return of the Panama Canal is rightly mentioned in the obituaries as one of his achievements, although negotiations had started prior to Carter’s arrival in the White House.
Cambodia is arguably the one case where there is something to say against Carter, at least when it comes to the timing (and that’s ignoring the important preconditions set by the policies of Nixon). Then again, it’s hardly likely that his administration could’ve stopped the genocide, even if it had wanted to (it would’ve required boots on the ground and no way those could’ve been American ones so close in time and place to Vietnam - and like in East Timor I don’t see any other countries being likely to volunteer for a “humanitarian invasion” either).
However, I do consider it a mistake or at least a poor choice of Carter’s that he promoted and empowered a hardline cold warrior hawk like Brzezinski who came up with the “Afghanistan as Soviet’s Vietnam” policy as a response to the Soviet invasion that would subsequently blossom under Reagan.
My main problem with Carter’s presidency, by contrast, is that he was basically the first Democratic POTUS to start the processes that would become manifest in the Clinton era and beyond, namely turning his back on the kind of economic interventionism that had characterised the Democrats since FDR and instead turned to austerity to battle stagflation. Then again, this was an era in which such “revisionist” ideas were beginning to pop up in several Western centre-left parties, although they were still being hotly contested.
And this has to be seen against Carter’s positive work, such as trying to change the energy consumption patterns in the US and to create a Middle Eastern peace process at a time when the last major Arab-Israeli war was in very recent memory indeed. I’d also chalk Carter’s imaginative emphasis on human rights as they were formally set out in the Eastern Bloc in general and the USSR in particular as a positive as it allowed their dissidents to challenge the communist regimes on their own terms by citing their own supposed ideals (here, Brzezinski might actually have played a positive role). ScepticWombat (talk) 01:14, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
'Austerity to battle inflation' was also forced on the UK in 1978 under the Labour Callahan Govt, so it's not new. Plus, it partly worked - but as Keynes pointed out back in the 30s, it did so by creating a recession. It is interesting to note that Biden's actions in '22/'23 regarding the inflation spike was somewhat different [while the causes were somewhat similar aka an energy/commodity price spike], which suggests old Joe had learned something from Carter. KarmaPolice (talk) 03:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Didn't the Carter administration help curtail, even completely block, support and aid for some of the worst of the often US backed (in the name of "anti-communism") Latin American dictators? Like Augusto Pinochet, Ernesto Geisel,Wikipedia Anastasio Somoza Debayle,Wikipedia and Jorge Rafael Videla?Wikipedia I'm trying to see what the problems were with Carter's Latin American policy here, so [citation needed] please. BobJohnson (talk) 02:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Didn't he also do an arms embargo to Greece and Turkey for somewhat similar reasons? Anyway, I think he deserves a salute as being one of the most personally upstanding figures who occupied the White House in the modern era. He was at times also pretty foresighted - it's difficult to watch his 'malaise speech' in full and wonder 'what could have been' if America had [somehow] been galvanised into putting some of Carter's ideas into action. And they were successful. Now draw a line from that period.... can you see Trump as President in this alt-present? I can't. KarmaPolice (talk) 03:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes, follow the line of criminal GOP presidents: Nixon 1968 campaign (secret negotiations with North Vietnam, violation of Logan Act), Nixon 1972 campaign (Watergate crimes), Reagan 1980 campaign (negotiating with Iran over hostages, violation of Logan Act), G. W. Bush (lying to the US & UN to make war on Iraq, a war of aggression). Why, they almost make Ford, and the other Bush look like saints. Bongolian (talk) 05:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
That makes the assumption Reagan would win '80 by default. My 'what if' is that if Reagan got blocked, some of the 'greed is fucking gorgeous' and 'who dies with the most toys wins' mentality of the 80s wouldn't have been [as Carter's point was pretty hard against that shit]. Without the 80s Neo-Gilded Age, we don't have Trump becoming the 'billionaire tycoon cosplayer' [or more correctly, he wouldn't have become so big]. KarmaPolice (talk) 07:19, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Nothing Carter did was really beyond the pale for US presidents, however I do think it's important not to look over or relativize the awful things he did or was complicit in, since everyone who's ever been POTUS has had their hands stained red at least to some degree. One thing you can reasonably place blame for on Carter for is how he signed off on the violent crushing of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 by the South Korean military dictatorship. I also don't really buy the "the only thing Carter really could have done in Indonesia was push Suharto a little bit harder" narrative, not when he stepped up military aid to Suharto for the duration of his presidency, while knowing full well there was a genocide going on in East Timor. There's also the fact he pardoned a guy who molested kids. This pardon escaped major media scrutiny at the time because it occurred just hours before the Iranian embassy hostages were finally freed. Carthage (talk) 09:17, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
There is a question of how much Carter was directly 'responsible' for, or even really aware of. Official America is an octopus with a too-small brain; tentacles often flail about in conflict with other tentacles, one tentacle can 'go rogue' at times while other times outside interests can hijack a tentacle or two for it's own needs. Factor in the fact that there's quite a bit of stuff that the President doesn't control [ie the bits Congress does] it makes it even harder to get all the tentacles pointing in the same direction on anything. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Carter pardoned Yarrow due to pressure from the anti-war left of the party, e.g. folks such as George McGovern.Wikipedia Also remember that "times were different then"; Yarrow only got three months (later modified to time served) for the molestation. It obviously doesn't "smell right" now, but from my perspective, some of Biden's pardons (especially his blanket pardons that happened to pardon a few nasty folks along the way) "smell worse" if you think from a contemporary perspective.
At any rate, I don't think Carter's presidency was that great, but at the same time he probably had one of the greatest post-presidencies that I can think of. Even with his presidency, my "anecdotal observation" is that the overall evaluation of Carter's presidency has risen over time, probably in part because neoconservatives were so fond of over-trashing him back in the day. His presidency wasn't top tier, but Carter clearly is not the worst president ever by any means. At the same time, I think the "shine" of Ronald Reagan has tarnished over time, and there's less tendency of historians to lump Reagan with the "tier 2" presidents these days, like they used to. (Top presidents typically include George Washington, FDR, and Lincoln; tier 2 is reserved for folks like Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and Teddy Roosevelt). There's a direct line from Reagan to Donald Trump (whose first term is ranked near the bottom by almost everyone, and bets are good the same will happen again). So I think there's a good chance that historical opinion of Reagan's presidency could slide even further as the failures of neoconservatism / neoliberalism and the Southern Strategy become clearer in hindsight. BobJohnson (talk) 18:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Carter also spent his post-presidency being an advocate for Palestinian human rights, and in 2006 he was ostracized for writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in opposition to Israeli policies. The book is now considered to have been quite prescient, even if a bit flawed. The Carter Foundation was also quick to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023, citing the former president's words from 2002: "We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children." 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 20:02, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Then again, he unironically took an "on the one hand on the other" approach to Salman Rushdie. That a bunch of Muslim fundies got butthurt over The Satanic Verses was apparently somehow a problem with our society, or something. I'll only take his musings on the region with enough salt to knock out the entire world's slug population. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
So if we weigh his deeds against a feather, he's still one of the good ones in my book. When you create a world of influence and silence opinions, that's actually a great middling. i wouldn't take a grain of that salt from you but he got actually ruined because the best he could do was diplomacy in the middle east. That's what he got voted out over, and the next 30 years was false retribution and sloppy control. Torrent (talk) 06:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This New Years Eve, get a sober ride if you drink alcohol or smoke pot.[edit]

Just a PSA from the Trans Zombie Queen. --Trans Fem Agenda 13:46, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

It's cheaper to drink at home. Impiricism (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
Tastier bar snacks too. However, some folks' homes may not have the capacity/facilities/comfort/privacy rating of an establishment [esp if you're young and/or living with others]. It's one of the reasons pubs became popular in the 19th century UK [and similar variants through Europe]: most working class urban homes were too small/uncomfortable for simply 'hanging out' in after work [let alone entertain] so your local pub's saloon bar was effectively a communal front room [a la 'where everyone knows your name'].
There is also the little issue that some people will still need to travel, unless you're advocating we all drink alone... KarmaPolice (talk) 19:19, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
And don't forget Jorg Haider.Anna Livia (talk) 20:19, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
Not gonna be easy finding someone who's sober this New Years Eve, unless you want to get into a car with a MAGA. Not to mention there is a certain document named after this upcoming year that the next administration totally doesn't have anything to do with.. — Unsigned, by: 2001:67c:2628:647:11::19a / talk / contribs
On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. Carthage (talk) 04:47, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Do you have aphasia? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:56, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Cracked vs. Anti-Trans Arguments[edit]

Where's the article on transphobic arguments against trans integration? I just read a Cracked article that brilliantly takes them down. Probably worth a citation or two. ABigBoxOfSand (talk) 15:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Damn, I haven't visited Cracked in like 7 years. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 18:17, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
Me neither. I doubt if their coverage of the subject is too insightful, but I haven't read the link, though I did save it somewhere. From a skim it just looks like an extended comparison between this and historical sexism/racism. All well and good until you meet someone who's unabashedly sexist/racist. I have been thinking these kinds of comparisons may be too shallow to convince anybody, and if anything the original social justice movements have failed to an extent to convey their insights effectively to later generations, so they take opposition to sexism and racism for granted. Which leaves it less well guarded. Chillpilled (talk) 13:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I should've stopped going to Cracked the moment they made the comments section unusable. But no, had to stay a few years later, even after they got rid of things like seeing which comments you made, etc... CorruptUser 04:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

What the FUCK is going on today in New Orleans dude[edit]

First, at 3AM CST today, someone rammed a truck into a crowd and started opening fire, and now, just a bit ago, someone blew up a Cybertruck in front of Trump's Las Vegas hotel. What is going ON today??? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 23:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Terrorist attack. Similar to Madgeberg... CorruptUser 03:55, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
I wouldn't say it's the exact same. The Magdeberg attack was not the work of a full citizen. That Texan even went to Afghanistan "for us"! Domestic terrorism. ☣🍆☣ (talk) 00:02, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
One thing's for sure: as always, this political violence is being committed by the right.Shazam (talk) 00:20, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
The early indication is that the perpetrator of the New Orleans attack was of Islam faith (but born in Texas) and claimed inspiration by ISIS (but was possibly having domestic / mental health / financial issues). The Las Vegas attack perpetrator was an active duty master sergeant in the US army who allegedly supported Donald Trump (maybe); possibly it was a suicide attempt above all, for all we know, but details are much murkier on this event at this time. I hesitate to put either of these events in the "left-right" political spectrum until we know more. BobJohnson (talk) 01:41, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Quick question[edit]

I've been wondering if my signature is too edgy for this Wiki. You know, I thought of my name and found it as funny as it was descriptive, and only then did I think of this signature, which elaborates on the first joke. I don't wanna be perceived as a troll here, so I'll change it if you deem it necessary. ☣🍆☣ (talk) 21:39, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

There is a guy here who literally named himself after Mussolini. I think you're fine. Carthage (talk) 21:52, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
Hey now, I didn't name myself after Mussolini. I named myself after a joke from my high school history teacher. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 01:46, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Biohazard penis?
It's not edgy, it's just sad. CorruptUser 14:07, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
A lot of women I've met have said the same thing after they've seen my weapon of mass destruction. Impiricism (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't hate it. Good lord, give me reprieve that isn't this, but I don't hate it. you absolute dork... I did laugh...
Torrent (talk) 08:24, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

What makes us feel (as in emotions)?[edit]

A while ago I read something (and don't know if mentioned it here) about how "things don't make you feel" meaning that the thing itself has no emotional properties and that it's just the thoughts and beliefs in you that are what create the emotions. Or as someone else I asked put it, the thing triggers an emotion inside you, it doesn't make you feel because the thing itself has no emotional properties it's beaming to you.

On some sense I can sorta see that but then the same person I got that from said that since it comes from you then you can create whatever emotion that you want at will, and that imagination is an example of this. Though IMO imagination is usually using something that makes you feel certain way to elicit that emotion. There was also something about how it's agreements we make to feel a certain way about things and that we can adjust these to make new agreements to shape our lives however we want to. The whole exercise was about developing personal power for yourself.

The problem I had with that is that emotions are the reason we do anything, I'm reminded of Hume mentioning that reason should only be a slave to the passions. What is better or worse or "Correct" to do is based on what it is you want, there is no objective sense of that. As far as I can tell we don't really control how we feel about things or how something will affect us. This is sorta related to free will I guess, which I have found has less and less evidence for the more neuroscience advances. So I'm wondering how exactly do you make these choices without being ruled by emotion? You can't just step outside yourself a la some impassive observer and make the right choice, and to think so IMO is hubris. So the advice I heard was about telling yourself things don't make you feel so that you aren't giving away your power to external forces and keeping more for yourself, but what motivates you to do that is based on factors outside of your control and awareness too. It doesn't add up to me.

They used the analogy of being allergic to something since the thing itself is neutral and your body is the one having a reaction to it. But that doesn't seem to back their case because you don't control allergies, so while the body is overreacting there is clearly something in the thing you are reacting to.

I'm sorry if I'm all over the place. I never really gave much thought to my emotions and how they work beyond the "you have to feel them and work through them". So I guess I don't know if I've gotten bad information (I'll be honest it really was just some dude with a website who was trained by the guy who wrote The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz) or not. My head is kinda scrambled right now and stuck on the "things don't make you feel" and has been repeatedly shutting down emotional reactions to things. I also have the notion that if it's not the "thing" doing it then there isn't a reason to feel anything about it, and that any feelings I have about it are "Fake". I wish I could cite the source but it's too long to post here and there is no direct link.47.5.66.54 (talk) 05:32, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

emotions can be a powerful motivating force. anger at injustices that we see might spur us into action into righting wrongs, stopping some very bad things, do what is needed to save lives. in such cases you havent been blinded your emotion, it doesnt mean you are ruled by your emotion nor does it mean any decisions made as result were made without any rational thought. you have just been primed over time that somethings you see see or hear about will ilicit a particular reaction. say health insurance denying people live saving treatments, bankrupting the sick needing to pay for med bills etc. dispassionately and rationally one can see these things as bad things. what amount of time and effort are you going to fix these objectively bad things? what amount of inconvenience? why on these problems and not some other bad thing? maybe nothing. maybe give it no fault at all. what if you it makes you real angry that this shit goes on? do you throw your tv out the window in impotent rage? if you did, then you might say you are ruled by emotions. what if it made you angry enough to contact your local mp? do a bit of research and contact a pressure group? donate some money, some time, get involved some way? you would have been spurred into action by an emotional response but you havent been overwhelmed by rage unthinkingly reacting with something dumb and pointless and ineffectual. no, your brain registered some unconscious markers that rang a little angry bell in your head to alert you this is something making you angry. to tell you this is something that might require some action. it might just mean you take someone of the xmas card list. it might need immediate drastic action to protect a loved one from a violent criminal and disipates rapidly once the immediate danger out the way. or might get real angry and that anger sticks around because its something that need some thought and planning and effort over a long period to handle. your reason figures out what needs doing but its emotion that fires you up and keeps you going. we not robots, we dont work on pure logic. but we can think and reason still. emotions might influence us in ways we dont realise or we might overeact to some things, we might not always be able to manage them as best we can but they are a thing, they serve a purpose. if our emotional response are damaging to us we can work to manage them better or learn to figure out why we feeling particular emotions at particular time. we cannot shut them off completely. having no emotion at all is like a symptom of depression and other mental health issues. human beings have evolved to process the world around us and how to interact with it in many different ways. some degree of reasoning skills is one way we do this. emotional responses is another method. we need them both. we all probably use them imperfectly AMassiveGay (talk) 14:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Okay, I'll do it, probably broadly complex cooperative modes of social evolution, Duh Doi! But I also get it as the following question. Why do I feel different? How.come I can't scam the world? There are a million physical and behavioral expressions of dogs. We are very comfortable saying this. Dogs have evolved alongside humans, and are more genetically variable than Wolves, but generally you can have a sweetie pie dog or vicious loner under any proper nurture. Humans are also wildly physically genetically expressive. Lucky for us, we mature more slowly and 15 years is not end of life. Our emotions are tied to, what, our amygdala alone? I think a more holistic understanding of the brain is kinda years behind for textbooks. But, difference between you being a big adult baby who says everything has to come from psychopathic emotional tantrum (I have met two real adults that fit this description) or sociopathic forfeiture of humanity is the huge broad window so many people make it into and have to live in. The point is, can you recognize how others feel, can you recognize that not even circumstance is a choice? How much of your life would you have to be trained to ignore or be insulated from those truths to be the kind of human who doesn't care if somebody is suffering for your gain? It's all very complicated, but in my opinion it's more likely training, nurture before nature. Which leaves asking questions about emotions in a very strange limbo. Who actually answers those questions? As much advice as you can get, as much perspective as you can hold, I still think emotion is the first reaction, and it's an individual responsibility to understand it, as an individual can, and it's a natural endeavor to seek outsider human experiences. until you find yourself, it is tough to accept a single mode of existense, especially if you have empathy. Torrent (talk) 08:54, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
This Don Miguel Ruiz guy sounds alot like Machina, if you think about it... Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 12:57, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I read the Ruiz guy's book once but didn't really find it convincing, also kinda read like how to have confirmation bias and to be close minded. I think one part of it was that since no one has the whole picture of what's going on you can decide yourself, which seems...wonky.47.5.66.54 (talk) 07:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Go on? Torrent (talk) 05:08, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

About the MAGA civil war[edit]

Yes, it's not quite there yet, but much of the fanbase seems angry at the Messiah for the first time due to the H1B thing - and on Vivek as well for spitting facts. Never imagined they'd actually turn on him or a loyalist... what happens now? MeowPurr 13:11, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Have to wait until Trump's into his third termWikipedia maybe. Impiricism (talk) 15:43, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
We'll see if the lesson sticks. The lesson being: Trump, and most of the Republicans onboard the MAGA train... for all their racism and masochism posturing that attracts the rubes... is really all about the billionaire ruling class first. It should have been obvious before, if you ignored the sturm und drang smokescreens of Trump term 1. I guess it wasn't. BobJohnson (talk) 18:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Eh, people arguing is how democracy is supposed to work.
Plus, the incorrigible asshats are revealing themselves... CorruptUser 21:56, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Reading recent stuff about Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea's recently impeached president who has been previously described as the country's Donald Trump... perhaps it is a glimpse into a potential future of America? Impiricism (talk) 02:53, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

the cracks started to appear as early as november when scott lost his bid to be the next senate leader. however, we'll just have to see how it ultimately pans out. The G (talk) 16:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

For those who have played Mario & Luigi: Brothership[edit]


New Year[edit]

New Year.

There won't be a happy in front of that. Not while the ultra-right named their open plan to turn America into a fascist dictatorship after this year. But you can be confident that 2025 will be a much better year than 2026, and 2026 will be better than 2027 and so on. — Unsigned, by: 2001:67c:2628:647:11::19a / talk / contribs

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. Carthage (talk) 04:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
It stinks like pessimism in here. 'Happy New Year' isn't a prediction, it's a profession. Even if it's hard, lemme give you a big smooch on the top of your big ole sad head. It'd be easy to do because you're hanging it so low. Since I dunno who originated the topic.... Happy New Year, EVERYBODY. You can have one night to enjoy the fact you personally survived a trip around the sun, I don't care if it's arbitrary. Tomorrow will come and nothing will have actually changed, everybody understands that. I used to walk to bars on this night, but now I don't really have a bar in walking distance, so I'm celebrating at home. The people at the bars were always Trumpers anyway. Anyone who wants a new years smooch, I'm giving em out and you get one from me, mwah, sent over a million ones and zeroes to you. Torrent (talk) 06:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
The thing with Project 2025 is that always was a Heritage Foundation think-tank fever dream, not an official Trump decree (though plenty of Heritage folks are involved with the Trump administration, to be fair). It's nuts that these Dominionist idiots think like that, but for now, I think the biggest long term impact of these Religious Right folks is repelling a large chunk of people from the American Christian church. Yay, political religious weirdos, for leading more and more people into the atheism / agnostic camp!
At the moment, I think Trump is more listening to the "tech bros" (like Elon Musk) and less to the religious nuts, even if the latter don't know it yet. Already I get a "People's Front of Judea" sort of chaos from the American populist right. And the inauguration hasn't even happened yet! So, what me worry? I've got popcorn. BobJohnson (talk) 18:21, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
On hush, the world isn't ending. You survived his last presidency, you'll survive him again. CorruptUser 04:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
'It can't happen here'... KarmaPolice (talk) 12:23, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
He was literally the President already. Going off of empirical evidence, one could argue Kamala was the one more likely to be a dictator. CorruptUser 22:31, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Finally showing your wingnut side, Cory? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
(EC) I'm pretty sure you why this is bad reasoning, Cory. Orbán was Hungary's PM between 1998 and 2002. Netanyahu also held the office in the 1990s. The fact that Trump didn't become a dictator (as he said he wanted to be)[4] is mostly because American institutions are still strong enough to prevent him to be one. Anyway, the fact that the sun has risen every day throughout recorded history doesn't mean that it will rise again tomorrow, so I'd say that from a methodological perspective this is flawed even as "empirical" evidence. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 22:51, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
okay, I am gonna try to relate to this, I never said there isn't a tipping point, I fully get that 'The Day' could transpire any calendar day or year. And that's the false idea of the tipping point. It's impossible to know which day is 'the day.'. I think you're appealing to method, and I fully agree. I did take a minute to enjoy the new year celebration with everybody, but it's not like my sense of self has changed. it can be cloudy reasoning, or honest pessimism, but saying there's no method of reasoning that promises the Sun will rise tomorrow, come on. That's pedantic at best, you know that in your life the sun will rise tomorrow. I do believe there is a subversive element to Republican politics that is worse than what we're already getting, but it is so contingent on useful idiots that it won't last another 4 years. 06:00, 4 January 2025 (UTC) Torrent (talk) 07:19, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

So are Nintendo franchises a banned topic now?[edit]

Title. Genuine questions — Unsigned, by: 77.111.245.11 / talk / contribs

No, but we had to deal with a user called Lulzfan last year who took some of their franchises a bit too serious and wanted to gas conservatives. He also saw political messages with several of their games. I would not be surprised if he actually believed that stupid "theory" from Matthew Patrick that Mario is a Socialist (maybe he thinks Luigi is a Green activist, because he wears green, lol)... Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 00:07, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Robert Fico, Slovak PM[edit]

He seemingly did an 'Agatha Christie vanishing act' - can this be made 'on-mission'? (Some Communist-era East European leaders of various sorts were abducted on occasion - but 'a slightly different situation.') Anna Livia (talk) 10:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Ukraine has just halted the supply of Russian gas to Europe[edit]

I wonder if this was actually a good move. Sure, Russia's economy is already about to overheat and they need Europe's money, but I feel like pissing off some of your allies in a continent where political extremists on both sides of the spectrum are uniting against your cause seems like an act of desperation. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 19:10, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

It ended because a pre-war agreement between Ukraine and Russia had expired. It is difficult to see Russia negotiating in good faith about anything at this point, particularly with Ukraine. Europe had plenty of warning that this could happen. It seems that the two of the countries most affected by this in Europe, Slovakia and Hungary, have been the most sympathetic to Russia. Bongolian (talk) 20:12, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Most of Europe a) 'knew this was coming' and b) have been making preparations for this day. The BBC itself pointed out on the cut-off date Europe's dependence on Russian gas has gone from 35% of our total to about 10% - partly because we've been getting in more LNG from the Gulf [not sure if we're importing from the USA yet] and throwing up as much solar/wind plants as we realistically can. Russia too have been preparing for this too - by constructing a 'super-pipeline' from Siberia to China [as of today it appears to be complete, but not functional yet, apparently China is really squeezing the Russians on price to the extent they're complaining].
Most European countries have natural gas reserves of between 20 and 60 days. If the continent is going to go into '25 with about a 10% shortfall in supply, this means on average they've got more than enough on-hand to 'top up' from reserves into spring and if things get desperate we can start to turn off some of the most gas-heavy industries to stretch supplies. But in short; this will hurt Russia much more than us, partly because we took most of the pain back in '22. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
This is good to hear. But do you know how things are going in the propaganda front? Since parties like UKIP and Reform UK have so many Putin sycophants among their militants, I suspect that they might use this move to decry Ukraine. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 11:27, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
A thought that I've been mulling over in my head is that the just reaction for Russia's current annexation attempt of Ukraine would be for sympathetic countries to "put boots on the ground" as support. Could escalate to an all-out war with many people dying? For Ukraine it already is an all-out war with many people dying; the fact that countries appear okay to let Russia try to take what they want as long as they don't have to get directly involved is unethical. Additionally, should Russia succeed it would invigorate future potential conquest. But Russia is threatening nukes? Let them, and see the country and its people back down else commit themselves to total perdition. Impiricism (talk) 18:52, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Apparently, Moldova had been stockpiling natural gas for this winter in preparation for this possibility. Russian-occupied Moldova (Transnistria) on the other hand had not been. Industries in Transnistria have now shut down.[5] Bongolian (talk) 19:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
1. It's hard to gauge 'European opinion' on the War because you're asking 40-odd countries their view, not simply one. However, from what I would guess the main ally of Putin here right now is not the fanbois [of left or right] but of despondency and apathy. That the people who do wish to support Ukraine do not see an 'endgame' while the latter simply do not care enough about the thing to actually make any sacrifices. The first issue is that we have never had an 'honest talk' about what Russia actually intends and what we genuinely need to do to help Ukraine 'win', and nor have we talked about what 'win' looks like [example; I foresaw that we had entered into a WW1-style attritional war in late '22 and therefore, the 'endgame' was to bleed Russia white and for that we needed to give Ukraine colossal amounts of missiles/artillery which meant we needed to massively ramp up production in the way the USA pumped weapons into the UK during WW2. But guess what Europe didn't do? Put our industries onto a war footing to do this.] Why haven't Europe gone into a 'war economy mode'? Because that would result in either some 'trimming' of our welfare state budgets and/or raising taxes and generally speaking there isn't a political will to do this.
How far Farage and his ilk can move to suck off Putin is directly dependent on the baseline in their relative countries of being pro/anti-Russian. One of the interesting things was that the two governments which basically 'led NATO to support Kyiv' was the British and Poles - both countries at that point ruled by right-populists who had a lot of ideological overlap with Putin. But they supported Kyiv because their country's Overton Window is centred on 'mildly anti-Russian' as default and Putin's actions reminded us of Hitler which is a nerve which runs right into our spines. On the other hand, we had a centrist France and Germany almost desperately trying to placate the Russians, because the former has a long history of positive interactions and the latter basically bet the house on their 'Sunshine policy' and had a decent % of pro-Russians in the old DDR.
2. To 'put boots on the ground' would result in a war between NATO and Russia. There is no appetite in Europe for such a war, we do not have the capacity to fight such a war [see above re: war economies]. There is a very good chance that Washington has vetoed any talk of 'boots on ground' because if a NATO/Russia war breaks out, there's a very good chance China will intervene on the Russian side. And nobody wants WW3. Channelling the ghost of Kissinger; I would guess the 'plan' is to arm Ukraine enough to make Putin 'buy' every settlement with a hill of Russian bodies and a mountain of destroyed kit that by the time his war machine staggers to a standstill on what ends up the new Ukraine/Russia border that they're too weak to pose a threat to NATO.
3. Russia has been threatening nukes since the start. However, there is only one country he has threatened to incinerate [at least two dozen times on my counting] apart from Ukraine. The UK. Why? Because the American nuclear umbrella does not cover the British because we've got our own. To threaten to nuke Rome, Madrid, Oslo, Warsaw etc would be - in NATO terms - a threat of nuclear attack from the Russians to the Americans. And Putin is bad, not mad. However, he can afford to threaten the Brits with atomic fires because there's not much more we can do to hurt him that we're not already doing [unless we nuked him. Which I think Sir Humphrey would class as 'an overreaction']. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:49, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
The three points still do not excuse the immorality of nations and governments refusing to intervene with direct support. At the root of the arguments given is simply the message "we won't do anything for the countless lives being ruined because it is politically and economically inconvenient". If even a single country announced intentions to throw industrial might and military force against Russia within Ukraine, things would end fast one way or another. Same thing with Gaza; in an ideal world a power like the US would condemn the genocide Israel is performing and deploy forces to defend the Palestinian people.
Now I know that this world is far from ideal and honestly is actually awful, but still the only way to get closer to a better world is by committing to do the right thing regardless of fallout. Striving to stop the systematic murder of men, women, and children in Ukraine and Gaza should be obvious. If the fallout is two-thirds of the world getting killed in some global nuclear escalation then perhaps that is indeed the price needing to be paid, and if so I would much rather have it be done sooner rather than later. It's all so frustrating and exhausting really. Impiricism (talk) 18:32, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
So, er, you think omnicide is the solution to genocide and imperialism? Er... BobJohnson (talk) 18:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I guess I am advocating for nuclear Armageddon, yeah. Mankind isn't special or something is it? I would assume not with how much destruction members of the species already visit upon each other. Impiricism (talk) 20:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
There's this movie called Threads. You should watch it.-Flandres (talk) 21:03, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I’ll propose a polemic and perhaps (depending on your point of view) sort of combination Pollyanna and cynical Eurocentric view of the Russo-Ukrainian War: NATO has already won the war. Why? Because no matter what happens, then:
  1. NATO’s eastern borders have been strengthened by the formal inclusion of Finland and Sweden, which makes the defence of the Baltic states far less of a strategic headache than previously.
  2. Unlike what seemed to be a prevalent notion (and probably the Moscow interpretation too), NATO and specifically the European part of it hasn’t fragmented and has provided enough support to sustain Ukraine’s war effort until now. Yes, more could’ve been done, but it was not obvious that there would be any willingness to go this far.
  3. Russia cannot fight another Ukraine style war, even if Putin somehow were to want to do so and has to fundamentally rethink its national defence/war strategy. Until the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia could field a very manpower heavy reserve due to its vast stockpile of Soviet equipment, which was also a cheap and easy way to buy foreign support in the Third World (as donations from these stocks was a very cheap way to prop up friendly regimes). While these stocks are not entirely empty (yet), they are severely depleted and thus Russia has to fundamentally rethink its entire national defence/war strategy, because there is simply no longer the necessary quantity or quality of mothballed equipment to either equip Russian reserves or to donate as military aid to allies. And there is no chance Russia will be able to rebuild anything like them.
  4. The carefully constructed image of Russia’s armed forces as very close to (if not exceeding) US/NATO standards when it came to both technology and fighting prowess has been utterly demolished. While there has perhaps been an over optimistic swing to the other extreme (that Russian forces are by and large incompetent), it’s worth remembering the kind of “scary bogeyman” image the “Russian bear” used to have in terms of its supposed military capabilities.
  5. Russia has not exactly been able to cow its “near abroad” into falling into line and even if it manages to gain territories, these will be those that already been looking to Moscow (and often populated by the Russian diaspora), whereas Ukraine as a whole is now lost to Russia (even if Moscow was to conquer it, they’ll just get a lot of angry people pissing inside their bigger tent), Belarus is only in the Russian camp as long as Putin can prop up Lukashenko and pro Russian parties gaining power (e.g. in Georgia) tends to spawn a lot of local unrest.
In short, from a rather parochial, West European perspective the “Eastern frontier” has been shored up. Russia has expended its Soviet inheritance in Ukraine and will likely at most end up as a very unpopular conqueror of Eastern Ukraine. Simultaneously, Russia has alienated a lot of the people in its “near abroad” who now view Russian intentions view suspicion and as a country that’s only able to gain influence through direct military force and is not even particularly good at doing so.
It’s worth remembering that pre 2022, Russia could to some extent directly influence Kiev, something it’s very unlikely to be able to for the foreseeable future (even once the fighting ends) and the amount of Ukrainian territory Moscow has managed to gain so far doesn’t vastly outstrip its prewar de facto puppet regimes in Eastern Ukraine.
Thus, the main territorial gain is having Lukashenko finally fall explicitly and unequivocally into Putin’s camp (unlike Lukashenko’s earlier attempts at playing to both Moscow and Brussels). But as Lukashenko has been leaning more and more in Putin’s direction for years, that’s hardly a clear win (especially not considering the costs). ScepticWombat (talk) 21:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
@Flandres I don't quite see what Threads has to do with this. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 23:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
What does a movie about nuclear holocaust have to do with someone talking about nuclear holocaust? Are you serious?-Flandres (talk) 23:56, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I mean, I understand that it's about nuclear holocaust so it makes sense to bring up during this conversation, I just don't quite get why exactly you were bringing it up in response to Impiricism. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:10, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Since Threads tried to depict the aftermath of a nuclear war realistically, it can be instructive to the people who handle the subject in a cavalier way like Impiricism did.-Flandres (talk) 02:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
"The effects of a nuclear holocaust would be very terrible, so we're going to avoid it by abandoning people to the less terrible effects of conventional war and genocide." Shit like that is why things will never improve. Impiricism (talk) 02:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Serious.gif-Flandres (talk) 04:10, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
@Impiricism 'The west has fallen billions must die' ass message. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 23:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm gonna be the controversial guy here and say that nuclear war is bad and nuclear powers have the responsibility to do all in their power to avoid it. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 05:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
According to their profile, they're a socialist and concerned about the environment. Advocating for a nuclear armageddon contradicts BOTH those userboxes. Unless, they think the world would be like in the Fallout games, WHICH IT WOULDN'T! Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 00:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Life tends to have contradictions. The fact that users on this Wiki are apparently okay letting countless people get murdered or their lives ruined because "they aren't our people" does make me view our species with disgust. The reasoning that one nation isn't worth global catastrophe can easily be flipped to be the aggressor's (Russia's) view if other countries did fully rally behind Ukraine with direct support. But I suppose we'll have to instead settle for and assuage any guilt with chessboard answers about how, by abandoning Ukraine's people, we're really making the future more secure. Impiricism (talk) 21:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
That little spiel would have been a lot more meaningful coming from someone who doesn't champion nuclear war.-Flandres (talk) 04:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
If you define 'politically and economically inconvenient' to mean 'Russian air force bombing our cities', 'Russian sabotage teams destroying our key infrastructure', 'Russian troops executing/raping our civilians' and 'Russian hackers crashing our systems' then I think Europe has a good fucking reason to be wary! Do you even know how bad our continent looked at the end of the last mass war fought on our soil? Truth is, even if we'd started rearming like mad in '22 it wouldn't be until '27 which our expanded forces met the minimum level of competency [people/kit] and possibly not as long until '32 that we could realistically fight a Ukraine-stylee war with a decent chance of victory [it would take this long not simply to build the kit up, but also to re-train our militaries to fight such a war again and build up the support infrastructure in the rear, like civil defence, arms factories, hospital spaces etc]. Even American forces are relatively unprepared - because since 9/11 the military was very orientated away from 'old fashioned wars' like Ukraine and has in fact not fought such a war since Korea.
I agree with Wombat's analysis - though I'll add one more.
6. The war has caused a Russian 'youth drain' and 'brain drain' as the young and educated flee for other lands [or on occasion, go into hiding within Russia]. Perhaps a little surprising for outsiders, but Russia still has relatively easy means for people to leave - this is part of Putin's 'fit in or fuck off' policies - ie if you don't like it here, leave. Much easier than having lots of pissed-off people stuck within Russia, I assume. This will make her ongoing demographic and skill challenges worse.
The general thing folks need to recall that even before '22, Russia was a declining power. Her population was shrinking, her economy was deindustrialising, her SoL was declining, her science/tech levels lagging and her infrastructure was deteriorating. And I'm not talking from 1985 levels here - I'm also talking from 2005 levels [guess what; klepto regimes aren't good at development?]. The war has exacerbated this decline in almost all fronts - even while some heavy industry has picked up in their rustbelt it's severely hampered by the lack of precision tools [embargoes] and decent extra labour [cemeteries] to expand significantly.
And I think this is in fact moderating NATO response. It's not fears of nukes [I think Xi has told Putin 'No, or else.' in a very firm voice] but fears of Russia becoming so weakened she is no longer able to maintain territorial integrity within her borders. I mean, they must hate talking to the Czar but at least he is the Czar and if he orders something, chances are it will be done. A somewhat distant second is fears Russia's loss of power projection in her 'sphere of influence' might cause the Chinese to take them over - for example Cuba/Venezuela. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:04, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
What does 'SoL' mean? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 15:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Standard of Living. Russia's ratings even pre-22 were way out of whack due to huge economic inequality. 185.104.136.29 (talk) 20:04, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Update, from the Kyiv Post, "End of Ukraine gas transit has no effect on EU energy market stability, European Commission says".[6] Bongolian (talk) 07:08, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Scientific article I'm skeptical towards[edit]

This is the article in question; The fact that as far as I know, this hasn't been mentioned in the news, the fact that it isn't yet peer-reviewed, and the fact that, if true, this would validate some conspiracy theories all have me skeptical, but I want to see what you guys think. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:29, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think you're going to get a science-based evaluation by anyone on RW; the article is rather technical, requiring someone with a background in epidemiology to evaluate it. The key points are: 1) not yet peer reviewed, apparently not yet submitted to a journal either 2) Ram Duriseti is may be ex-Stanford University, despite what the first page says. He sued Stanford in 2023 for wrongful termination because he claimed that he was terminated for opposing mask and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.[7][8] Bongolian (talk) 02:23, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The article is bullshit. The authors use a lot of unfounded assumptions and do a lot of handwaving to cover up for the transparent bullshitting. This might get into a junk journal, but it would never pass the sniff test to get published anywhere reputable.Umichcynic (talk) 02:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Kevin Bardosh, judging by his Twitter account,[9] is a social scientist who has been vocally against COVID-19 lockdown policies from the beginning. Per Google Scholar,[10] he has gotten some of this published in a respectable source (BMJ Global Health). Some of his more recent tweets however [11][12] (by the way, fuck you Elon Musk for fucking Twitter feed sort order) seem to indicate that he is at least "following" more questionable figures, ranging from folks with contrary views (though probably not pseudoscience -- Alina ChanWikipedia and the "lab leak" theory) to WTF fringe (Martin Kulldorff, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, natch).
In addition to two of the six being know COVID-19 lockdown opponents / possible cranks, two of the people who wrote this paper are "independent research". Ya, credentialism, but at the same time the Internet has been awesome at producing "Internet sleuths" that proclaim that know everything, but don't. The possibility of PIDOOMA with such is high.
At any rate, there are multiple strongly cited peer reviewed papers that suggest that the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine is fine for young men. Time will tell if this preprint paper passes the "sniff test" and changes this, but I really doubt it. I am not an epidemiologist, but I am very skeptical of supposed scientific papers that forcefully advocate stances like this one does -- "there is an urgent need to reassess whether the following current blanket CDC recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination advance public health" and other similar statements. Scientific papers just don't typically work like this -- compare this to the FDA article this paper criticizes [13], which is in a peer-reviewed journal and approaches the data more from a benefit / risk analysis perspective. Yes, the FDA article helped shape policy, but even there, it isn't pushing policy as hard as the pre-print PDF is, and there is more acknowledgement of limitations. Furthermore, the preprint paper justification largely seems to rely on "herd immunity" arguments; this seems to align this paper with the Great Barrington Declaration which, as I understand it, most scientists feel is nonsense.
My "gut feeling" is that the pre-print article had a conclusion in mind and worked the numbers to support it. BobJohnson (talk) 03:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't trust clicking this link. Torrent (talk) 07:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The first link is fine if that's what you're talking about. It's just to ResearchGate,Wikipedia which is a place where researchers can post their papers and connect with each other. It's not directly connected to the authors. Bongolian (talk) 16:29, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't trust clicking this link. It's an auto-Captcha plugin and nothing in it is worth time. Malicious at worst, please do not bother unless you are properly outfitted. Torrent (talk) 08:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
It's just ResearchGate. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 17:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Here's an archived copy of the page that eliminated the Captcha.[14] Bongolian (talk) 18:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Ken shit[edit]


Justin becomes Justout[edit]

I give Pollyver till 2035 until his own Prime Ministerial expiry date. It'll follow a similar pattern to Harper, Chretien, and Mulroney. Just like these guys, He will only last 10 years. For about 6 years He'll be super popular & touted as the greatest thing to happen to Canada since the discovery of Maple Syrup. Then in the last four years his approval rating will drop like a rock. Then when he sees the writing on the wall, He will announce his retirement, & the Conservatives will appoint someone to keep the seat warm until the liberals sweep the floor. (It's how we got our first and only female PM. She was only there for 4 months.) Yet people & pundits are proclaiming the "end of the liberal party forever." I guess human memory is shorter than that of a Goldfish. No, Poilievre is not Canada's "Trump." He's not going to be a dictator. He's not going to "Axe the Tax" either because Governments have never cut taxes unless it's for the rich (and businesses just pass off the Carbon Tax to the consumer anyway.) — Unsigned, by: 2001:67c:2628:647:11::1b9 / talk / contribs

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. Carthage (talk) 05:05, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree that Poilievre is not "Canada's Trump", but nonetheless I find it *extremely* concerning that he is engaging in much of the same strategy and rhetoric of American fascists; perhaps most notably his open friendliness with extremists, or at least until such extremists joke about raping his wife... or then again maybe not. Indeed, even Trump's national security advisor pick Mike Waltz publicly endorses Poilievre for Canada's next Prime Minister. And yet despite it all, Canadians are likely going to be voting him in next election. It's insanity. Impiricism (talk) 19:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
We are trapped in a two-party system whereas we can only conceive ourselves as having either a liberal or a conservative leadership. The problem with Poilievre is the same as most conservatives. They want to slash public funding, decrease taxes, and cozy on up to more publically acceptable reactionary tendencies. It is just the bar for what is "publically acceptable" as far as reactionary tendencies go is very different in Canada when compared to the US. Trudeau carries a huge burden of fault in this. The liberals lost a lot of public trust under his leadership. The man was as milquetoast as a milquetoast liberal can get, but it hasn't taken much to convince the more conservative populace that his policy proposals have been wrong-headed and "extremist". The very little that Canada is doing to combat climate change is likely to be reversed by Poilievre, at the bare minimum he hopes to slash the carbon tax -- whish is again a pretty weak policy in terms of effective climate action but we are not even open to that apparently. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:27, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Fucked up how despite having several parties represented in the House of Commons (and many more registered and eligible parties), Canada is just as two-party in its Prime Minister choices as the United States. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Not really, as a lot of multiparty systems [or 'two and half' like the Canadian or British] will usually whittle down the 'possible future PMs' in an upcoming election to 2/3 realistic options [ie the leaders of parties that are either possibly capable of becoming a majority outright or being a big bloc within a coalition]. But in parliamentary systems, you're voting for your local candidate [as a person] and a party manifesto more than the 'future PM' - as seen by the fact mid-term 'switches' are common and they're not beholden to instantly 'have another election'. Though the 'future PM' question is an important one, which often leads to minor party leaders being pestered on who'd they'd get into bed with and what their price would be. Which I can bet in Canada shall involve the Conservatives warning of a 'coalition of chaos', possibly warning about how a vote for Liberal might end up with the breakup of Canada itself [due to cutting a deal with Bloc Quebecois]. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:33, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Am I stupid or is this just nonsense?[edit]

https://medium.com/counterarts/why-the-feedback-loops-need-circuit-breakers-531d1ab0fe0f

So...kinda odd question but I just want to make sure I get this because I struggle sometimes between understanding what is nonsense and what might have a point, but for this...i don't think there is one? It's just all over the place. The comments don't clear it up, they just claim it's insightful.47.5.66.54 (talk) 05:31, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Over-long, stream-of-consciousness pointless blogging.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Alright. Mr. Driveby Newest Account will take a crack at it. To wit: We are all subject to the forces of social conformity. Some few break free of this by being visionary outsiders who prove the wisdom of the crowds wrong. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a better answer to this dilemma for more than just an occasional outsider? I suspect there is an answer. But I don't have one.
It's poorly written stream-of-consciousness.Cinoview (talk) 02:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Deep. Carthage (talk) 11:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
So, I gave that site a peek. And I can say this without any self-doubt whatsoever.
I have no idea what the fuck I just read. Kencolt (talk) 13:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I unfortunately like to give people a chance but unfortunately that didn’t lead anywhere with this dude. He has this notion of time that he thinks people use but don’t and just keeps asking “what if” but never actually gets pasts that point. It’s pretty dull conversation, take a look:

So is it possible one is effect and the other is cause? In our tactile, object oriented view, presumably the noun is cause and the verb is effect, but what if it is the other way around. We do seem to spend our lives running in circles, looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As you say, you can't see any point in my observations. That's the problem with treating time as anything more than just a measure and effect of activity, like temperature. That our sequential thought process naturally latches onto, thinking/hoping it is some deeper dimension, going toward some future ideal. We miss a lot, chasing after our various gods.

This was after I was talking about e=mc2 which states that matter and energy at interchangeable but to do so requires massive pressure. He mentions in the comments being kicked from science and philosophy boards and I can see why.107.77.196.56 (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

He also thinks time isn’t a dimension because of the law of conservation of matter and energy.2600:387:1:803:0:0:0:96 (talk) 20:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Irony-laden gem[edit]

I was looking around the web for retcon and Christianity because the term "retroactive continuity" apparently has a theological origin. I found this bizarre-looking Christian site,[15] which apparently is at least partly written by a human named Maisha Johnson, whereas all the images seem to be AI-generated. There don't seem to be any pre-2025 archives of the site, so who knows if it ever had non-AI images. The title of this allegedly-human written article, "Christian Historical Revisionism: Rediscovering the Truth of the Past". Oops. The main image this page misspelled "Unveiling", and has a circle of 8 vague but weirdly shaped humanioids (12 disciples minus 4?). Another image shows Jesus boozing it up with 6 men and 3 women with a grape dinner. Elsewhere on the site, there's an article titled, "Artists can defend orthodoxy in their creative works by aligning their artistic expression with biblical truth."[16] Bongolian (talk) 03:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

My first impression of this site is that it's hilarious. It gave me an instant pop-up offering me a "free prayer bundle" Value "47 dollars"! Who wouldn't be convinced by an offer like that!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Although I am far from religious, and not a theologian in any sense, I do believe that any prayer you can assign a monetary value to isn't a prayer at all. Kencolt (talk) 13:44, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
I think the original zero price they are asking for the "prayer bundle" is a good reflection of its real value. I'm just wondering if those who take up the initial "free offer" are subsequently asked to pay the full 47 dollars for a renewal of the "prayer bundle" a month or so later. I had a look around the website and couldn't find anything though. But I would be amazed if that wasn't the con the were running.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
What's strange is the address on the site points to a bunch of condos in Bristol UK.
I'm also pretty sure that this was slapped together, at least partially or maybe even almost fully driven by AI. The curious non-answer here [17] for question 7 "What are some UK Christian nationalist groups and their goals?" is a bit of a tell to me. (I mean, why even ask this? There aren't any that I can think of or even Google, although a poke around this wiki revealed a few extremely irrelevant parties like Christian Peoples Alliance.) The "dry writing style" is another. Of what this purpose this site serves, I don't know. (Resume padding? I found this site linked on a LinkedIn.) BobJohnson (talk) 16:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Yay, someone finally linked the RW page I overhauled! KarmaPolice (talk) 16:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Televangelism was built upon the profits/prophets of pay-to-pray. Bongolian (talk) 18:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

The treatment of right-leaning academics[edit]

Dear people of "RationalWiki", I recently stumbled over an article you have compiled on the historian Keith Windshuttle. I attended some of his public lectures way back, and can assure you that he was and is no simpleton to easily disregard. This article, however, was not so bad in comparison. I clicked on some of your links after that and found many pages concerning living academic figures with perfectly valid credentials and affiliations that nonetheless get treated like they are mere pseudoscientists! What this class of articles has in common, is especially that they are about right-leaning scholars. Since some of these personages are not too famous outside of their narrow research fields, your articles on them could have a serious impact on their scientific careers! I ask that you please try and be careful not to damage or destroy people's reputation just because they have non-standard political views. Even very bad politics are not really the same as the pseudoscience most of this site seems to be about. I would consider this to be more in the spirit of RATIONALity, but I do not mean to offend! Apologies for the length of my request, Anonymous onlooker — Unsigned, by: MalAdeptus / talk / contribs

"But I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!" Drink! Plutocow (talk) 21:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
The general consensus I've seen of Keith Windschuttle Googling (never mind the RW stub) is that he's a politicized racist quack, and indeed, on his Wikipedia page alone,Wikipedia one can note:
A) His perhaps most notable job was the editor of Quadrant,Wikipedia which is more of a highbrow conservative political magazine than anything else;
B) Since 2000, his book focus has been on being an apologist for colonialism and other misdeeds towards Aboriginals (e.g. arguing that the Stolen GenerationsWikipedia is a myth, in spite of all evidence)...
C) Except for a book defending the controversial case of Cardinal George PellWikipedia in a manner that one would expect from a conservative pundit of that sort.
In short, I think Windschuttle has already traded any academic credentials in order to become a right-wing pundit quack. Pretty easy to demonstrate that. So... thank you very much for your very bad sealioning attempt, try again sometime. BobJohnson (talk) 21:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
D) Windshuttle was last published by a mainstream press in 1988. Since then he's gone with small conservative presses or his own [vanity?] press. A quick look on views of the latter's production [not his works] are that they're politically biased shit.
E) You can have people 'who are no simpletons' still be pseudohistorians. In fact, quite often you need to have some intelligence and 'skill in the art' to successfully spout convincing shit while wearing the hallowed tweed. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:45, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Bold of OP to assume we are people! hiss - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Unrelated to the argument at hand, but I find it funny how formally this person speaks, reinds me of this meme. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:10, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Reading the first response to my request, I grant that Windschuttle was not the perfect example to give for my larger concern. He was just how I found this webpage. At the same time, calling him a "racist" and a mere "pundit" is still troubling given the very real "Australian history wars" within which he, in fact, was a respected academic voice.

More generally then: How does one go about correcting or removing gross mischaracterizations where present? Do I have to announce my intention or progress in the forum here, or are any good faith attempts permitted? Maybe I should contact the author and ask for the specific article to be deleted or rewritten where good judgement would demand it?

Kindly, an anonymous onlooker — Unsigned, by: MalAdeptus / talk / contribs

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 14:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't believe Windshuttle is 'a respected voice' in the field of Australian history. The very fact that his WP page is somewhat negative [a land where you have to ref up to your arsehole] and what academic reviews I skim-read suggest he's not much more than a re-heated pedlar of old colonialist tropes [Oz being effectively 'empty land', the aboriginals being too stupid/lazy to learn how to do anything, there being zero coercion for them to integrate etc] which is analogous to the cranks who in the UK push that colonialism was 'a net positive' for said colonies [so give us reparations for that!] or the 'slavery taught the Blacks useful skills and civilised ways of being so was okay-ish in the long run' spouted in the USA.
If you believe an mainspace article should be corrected/improved/expanded- then do it. Take a look at the various guides and hints which are on the Welcome thing I've just dumped on your talkpage. The one thing I will say outright now - any non-asinine claims do need to be backed up by something otherwise you may find it being reverted. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:09, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Note that Rationalwiki, unlike Wikipedia, is also not a "neutral point of view" wiki either (though it isn't as political per se as some would make it out to be). To continue with Windschuttle, the Australian history wars,Wikipedia as even Wikipedia outright states, are really more of a populist culture war than a sober historical argument. Due to colonialism's ties to authoritarianism, of which a critical examination of such is part of the mission of this Wiki, I would say that someone like Windschuttle -- who seems to have spent a fair amount of time as a populist seeking to whitewash Australia's colonial history as part of the above -- would not be looked on favorably per the mission. If your viewpoint from the get-go is that we're treating "right-leaning" people like this poorly, this honestly might not be the Wiki for you. BobJohnson (talk) 17:25, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Or for a TL/DR version - 'we dump on Windshuttle because he's a cranky colonialism apologist not because he might be "right-leaning".' KarmaPolice (talk) 17:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Adding onto this: We dunk on right-wingers more than we do leftists because there are more right-wing cranks than there are leftist ones (And their crankery is also more prominent) TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 18:26, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Rightist crankery is more likely to overlap with anti-science attitudes at this moment. That hasn't always been the case. (See our article on Lysenkoism for a historical example.) Carthage (talk) 18:29, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
There are some examples in the near present as well. As a case in point somewhat related to Windschuttle, we have articles on "both sides" of a populist American debate 5 years ago on how to frame slavery within American history, a "debate" which also turned into culture war brouhaha. This being the "left"-framed 1619 Project and the "right"-framed 1776 Report. Both were poorly received by the academic historian community, as I understand it, though the later was criticized (IMHO rightly) more than the former. This reflects in the articles: although RW is more critical of the 1776 Report, the 1619 Project article is not a glowing endorsement either. BobJohnson (talk) 21:53, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Ok, the somewhat arbitrary Windschuttle example is officially withdrawn for the time being.

Thank you for clarifying your internal policies to me. I will try correcting some other, PARTICULARLY skewed passages and provide an expansive "edit summary" where I can. "Anti-science" is one thing, but scienfic considerations with a political backdrop are another.

To be frank, user "Carthage sock", it is very hard to be openly right-leaning in some non-trivial regard while remaining employed at a Western research university "at this moment". Much of this is about structural variables, about path dependency at this point. Rationality does surely demand to take this in mind.

I do not mean to say that RationalWiki needs to ever position itself IN FAVOR of such borderline figures, but I'll try finding especially troublesome construals here and making these a bit more forgiving where allowable. I am very open to discussing such changes, but it is surely immoral to have articles on here that present the very least charitable construal of some, say, desperate early-career researcher and have them be their first Google search result. There seem to be many such cases as far as I can tell.

I found my "talk page" just now, and could respond if there are any concerns. I hope you don't mind me being this straightforward. Thanks again. Signing my comment this time, MalAdeptus (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

If you have a specific example of an error then you should bring it up. Also you don't actually need to bring every example here - every article has a talk page too.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The term 'right-leaning' is often used by hard-right types to try to make themselves sound more moderate [and as such, acceptable]. No, MAGA fanbois, Nigel Farage, the AfD and Victor Orban are not 'right-leaning'.
Generally speaking, no it is not 'hard' to be 'right-leaning' in Western academia right now. Most of 'cancel culture', 'woke indoctrination in academia' and all that are majority culture wars bollocks. A lot of topics are not even political. My quick look at UK stats show 'political leaning' of educators is not that 'skewed left' than their own wider cohort [that being highly educated persons] when taken via voting in the recent GE. Even when they've got full tenure, there's always been effective limits on academic 'freedom of speech' - just like any occupation. Directly denouncing a major donor to your establishment, for example was unlikely to be allowed to stand for long - right or left 'leaning', be it 2025 or 1925. And it's all right-wing persecution complex; the idea that it's just our plucky 'right-leaning' academics being cancelled, having to self-censor. And it never, ever happens to anyone who could be considered 'left-leaning'. Most of the 'right-leaning' academic victims were on the whole obstinate so-and-sos, frequently wanting to be a martyr 'to woke' and then making a living touring right-wing astroturf orgs where they whine. There are occasions where the administration has engaged in molehill-climbing [mistaking a FB group of 50 whiners to be 'a major group'] and caving to their excessive demands but this is what you get from making unis businesses and they get very scared of anything which could 'damage the brand'.
I'm not going to say there isn't some problematic articles here. But if your intention is to go around 'filing down' of negative/problematic descriptors which other editors have either 'shown their homework on' and/or could be considered 'fair comment' then I can foresee you hitting the rails rather quickly. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:03, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your thoughtful response. It really comes down to how we define things. Yes, I WAS very willing to subsume individuals that hold individuate "hard-right" viewpoints of some sort or other under "right-leaning". There are MANY outspoken leftists in key positions of Western academia.
In the worst such cases, it's the length of these articles that astounds me the most. The pragmatic reaction a passer-by would have in some of these cases, is that such a person must be the most notorious sexist, transphobe, racist, et cetera, in existence. And, in reality, the sources often do not seem to justify such overwhelming detail. They might have simply written a blog post or two some number of years ago. Twitter or Reddit are even cited sometimes.
There WAS certainly McCarthyism in the past, but it was only a brief moment and nothing compared to the decade-spanning dominance the left has held over parts of the humanities. It was very rare even in those days that active communists permanently lost their footing in American academia where qualified.
I agree that one issue is the business aspect. Another issue is that higher education, up to and including explicit research credentials like PHDs, has been utterly massified.
Be that as it may, if you have right-wing viewpoints apart from the Koch-funded (and also very pro-immigration) kraken that is latter-day libertarianism, this can be a massive threat to one's career. Please don't try furthering this culture!
I am nonetheless a true believer in an olden ideal of the university. A solid heuristic for this encyclopedia could be to strive for MAXIMAL charitability regarding those that hold GENUINE academic credentials IN THE FIELD they have generated controversy in. Especially if these people are alive and otherwise low-profile enough to have their article here be their first Google search result. I am ultimately making a moral case here, and this may well be an issue. Just tell me when and where I might have gone too far!
Kindly, MalAdeptus (talk) 14:17, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
You might find our article on credentialism interesting. But again, specific comments on specific articles are preferable to generalisations.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:31, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Ok, I will get started eventually. I am making a list.
I just invoked the credentials as a useful heuristic. Admittedly, not so much for proponents of fringe diets and such, but surely in the case of politicized subject matter. MalAdeptus (talk) 17:10, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
If a RW biog has 'considerable length', it is pretty unlikely to be based on 'a blog post or two'. Social media [esp Twitter] is admissible as RW evidence if it actually belongs to the subject - it often gets referenced because the page is quite literally quoting them back at them. What's more, someone who has the 'occasional lapse' and does/says something stupid/offensive/wrong [as we all do now and then] is pretty unlikely to have pissed off a RW contributor to the point where they actually went to the lengths to create said page. There is the greasy lawyer issue too; that if calling a living person 'a crank', 'a fascist' or similar you need to show your working-out to a higher standards than other mainspace pages. Lastly, 'notability'; if it was a page on some 'desperate early-career researcher' who did that lapse or two I don't think the page would survive for long because nobody cares.
On saying 'There are MANY outspoken leftists in key positions of Western academia' there arises the question - what is 'leftist'? To do that, you need to first define the centre. Part of the problem is that a lot of folks who whine about 'librul professors' and all that is a) they forget the fields which have notably 'more conservative' faculty [economics, hard sciences, mathematics, computing, engineering, law etc], b) their 'centre' is around Pat Buchanan and c) 'being outspoken' [at least in their areas of expertise] is kinda the whole point of academics - that they share their knowledge with folks outside of the campus. But the thing is, the right politicians don't mind about people 'being outspoken'... as long as the outspokenness is in their favour. If they truly didn't give a shit about academics at all, they wouldn't keep on dipping their hands into the sanitised bucket of 'friendly academics' which astroturfs like the Heritage Foundation and the IEA keep ready when they feel the need for a bit of tweedy backup, similar to the 'climate skeptic' bodies which have some experts for hire on speedial.
Being an academic [or even a scientist or journalist] is currently a mildly 'left-wing' thing in America right now mainly on the basis what passes as 'right-wing' has gone utterly nuts. It is openly anti-education, strongly anti-intellectual, believes reality can be changed to suit their preconceptions, is contemptuous of expertise and despite their claims otherwise, really don't like concepts such as scepticism, rational enquiry or simple facts. Trump and Co have all but got a loud-hailer, driven up to every institute and campus in America and bellowed 'Why the fuck don't you all just go and shoot yourselves, you wussy empty mouths!'
I can't say I support the idea of 'maximal charitability' on such people because the most charitable conclusion you could ever reach would be a variant of the Courtier's Reply on every single thing, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of RW. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:58, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Posting a list would not be your most efficient way of proceeding. Let's imagine that you find ten things you are unhappy about and you post them all at once here. In order to respond individuals would need to respond to ten different articles. Not only that, but multiple different individuals would respond with multiple different responses and probably you would not get any particular focus on the point you are interested in getting across. There is also the problem that posting a whole series of similar points simultaneously would look a lot like a Gish gallop.
That is why articles have talk pages. To allow you to raise your specific concerns about a specific article.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
@Bob M Who is Pat Bachmann (I can't find anything about someone with that name which would fit the context), and can you elaborate on the fields with notably more conservative faculty? I'm curious. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:06, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
@TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan I think you are confusing me with KarmaPolice.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
FUCK. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 23:53, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Pat Buchanan. Sorry, crappy autocorrect in action! KarmaPolice (talk) 09:35, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
@KarmaPolice I see. What about the other part? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 23:53, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
What, on differing zones of political outlook amongst academics of different disciplines? The fields they are in and/or the reasons why it is so? KarmaPolice (talk) 18:12, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
@KarmaPolice Yep. Mainly the reasons why it is so. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Truth is: we don't know. Or more correctly; we know it stems from the 'political outlook' of students of the fields in question [as the students of today are the lecturers of tomorrow] but we don't know why for the question of how those students end up studying what they do. The best guess I've seen on that is it's all about 'value systems' - that people skewing 'right' are much more likely to have a utilitarian 'education as an asset' POV and therefore are discouraged to study stuff like literature, the arts, social sciences etc because a) it doesn't have obvious career paths and/or b) those paths are low pay/status and/or c) 'those things are hobbies'. Making folks have to pay for said education is clearly going to jack up this opportunity cost even further. Political ideology and stereotypes can play a part, too; that a rightist teen is unlikely to decide to study, say sociology because of all the attacks on it being 'full of woke Marxist cranks' just like a deeply religious teen is unlikely to pick philosophy on the grounds 'it contradicts Scripture and is therefore wrong/useless'. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Since college is used for careers, this 2015 infograph of the "Democrat" and "Republican" careers, based on campaign contributions may help a touch. My "armchair hypothesis", using this as an (imperfect) proxy for liberal and conservative in America, would be:
A) Careers that require empathetic people skills lean liberal.
B) Careers that require more assertive / rules-of-order people skills, or entrepreneurship, lean conservative.
C) Careers that focus on outdoor / rural work tend to lean conservative. (Manual labor overall is *very* mixed though; maybe other factors, such as workers' backgrounds, play a bigger factor here?)
D) Careers that require creative thinking lean liberal.
E) Careers that require higher education tend to lean liberal, though there are plenty of exceptions.
F) Careers that cater to wealthy clientele tend to lean conservative, though there are exceptions.
Don't take this as anything but an "off-the-cuff armchair analysis", it's also pretty easy to find exceptions, but it's just some "patterns" that come to mind. I also couldn't find a *real* study which had any detail. Also, using "Republican" and "Democrat" donations as a proxy for left-right divide has obvious flaws, but "that's all I've got". BobJohnson (talk) 00:02, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

HAARP[edit]

we get a namecheck a yootoob AMassiveGay (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

quite alot as it happensAMassiveGay (talk) 23:51, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
You can add them to RationalWiki:Mentions#Popular sources if you're so inclined. Bongolian (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
What's the time stamp? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:26, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
34:45, 56:18, 57:52
Note, in light of request to be srs: this guy fuckin' loves our articles' f-bombs. BobJohnson (talk) 01:33, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Might watch this later, I like this type of video. It's the type of thing I have memories watching on my phone in bed. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:55, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

How would you go about debunking the claim that Islam is uniquely violent as a religion?[edit]

It was brought up in my previous thread (the one about thereligionofpeace.com), and now I'm curious; I already know that pointing out that the bible is also very violent (Not as much as the Qur'an in terms of percentage, however, but still very violent) does the trick, but I do feel as if it could be debunked more thoroughly than that. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 18:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an entire article about pacifistic currents in Islam.Wikipedia So we can already see that Islam has a history of non-violent activism. There is also a school of thought in Islam, called quietism,Wikipedia that advocates for withdrawal from politics, which is the, to quote Wikipedia, "exact opposite of political Islam." I would also challenge anyone to point out any unique qualities of Islam, that to our Western sensibilities we deem negative, that can't be found in other religions. As an aside, statements that have the qualifier "unique" attached to them are very questionable. Carthage (talk) 18:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Any form of cultural distinctions, markings, and rituals -- whether it be a religion or something else (skin color, different language, eats different food, whatever) has been used to create Others and thus has been used to justify violence. This doesn't even getting into counting political and territorial concerns!
I really doubt one could prove that "Islam is uniquely violent", considering that pretty much all religions I can think of have some violence associated with them (as well as, to be fair, pacifism as well). Islam plays a unique boogeyman in current Western culture because:
A) That whole Israel / Palestine thing, le sigh.
B) Colonialism and its after-effects has impacted multiple countries where Islam happens to be the dominant religion.
C) Oil politics has also impacted multiple countries where Islam happens to be the dominant religion.
D) Combine the above and enough people are pissed off at the West to the point where so-called "Islamic terrorism" is the top foreign-derived violence in many Western countries.
Keep in mind, though, that the motivation for such terrorism is usually *not* Islam in itself; "terrorists" instead use Islam as part of a "package" to "protest" some of the above political concerns (violently, unfortunately). If I called populist domestic right-wing terrorism "Internet terrorism" due to the frequent use of domestic terrorists picking up bullshit online and warping it to their means, it would be the same mistake.
E) It also hasn't helped that a lot of Islam is stuck in fundamentalism mode, which can run against the grain of secular Western culture. Even if such is perhaps "mostly harmless" in a lot of cases, this just gives more Other for the angry to be angry about. Particularly in certain European countries where Islam immigrants are significant and thus the face of the Other Immigrant Boogeyman. (Note: American Christian fundamentalism is not that dissimilar to the Islamic one, and there still is a beef between the two, showing it's not just the religion at play.) BobJohnson (talk) 18:51, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
The idea that Islam is uniquely violent usually relies on double standards. If you bring up the obvious competetor, Christianity, you will get a whole bunch of apologetics explaining how almost no violent person/group which happened to be Christian was sincerely motivated by religion-the mere fact the are violent often suffices to prove they were fake Christians and thus Christianity cannot be blamed for their actions. On the other hand, Islamic militants have a whole suite of motivating factors in addition to their interpretation of Islamic theology condensed to "they're Muslims, it's their way." You'll get a thousand reasons why the crusades had nothing to do with religion beyond branding while October 7th proves Muslims are all savages who deserve whatever Israel does to them, we should either expel them from the west or restrict their rights, anyone who says otherwise is a purple haired gender freak college student with brain damage.-Flandres (talk) 19:11, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
To argue against the claim, one only needs a single counter-example, and Christianity is the most obvious case, though there are others. There are two separate threads to this claim that should probably be disentangled: Is Islam's holy book uniquely violent? Is Islam uniquely violent as expressed in history (including recent). For the first thread, we have "But that was the Old Testament" about Christian apologetics for the Old Testament not mattering much to Christians or for claiming that the New Testament is not also violent. For the second thread there are plenty of instances of Christian-inspired violence: the Holy Wars that rocked Europe for centuries following the Protestant Reformation, the most recent of which was The Troubles. There is also the era of European colonization, which was largely a mixture of genocide and forced religious conversion. Bongolian (talk) 20:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
The Troubles has the surface look of being a religious conflict, but it isn't really - it is a ethno-nationalist one. It's just that to define yourself as 'Prod' or 'Catholic' is much cleaner than 'descendents of the English/Scottish colonialists in the 'final stronghold' of an Ireland which they ruled for their own benefit' vs 'the descendents of the mainly lower-class and disenfranchised Irish 'natives' who desire to have the last bit of their country returned to them'.
The place was, and still is a very segregated land. What part of town you lived in, what school your kids went to, where you worked and even where you shopped would be defined by identity. Imagine an America where you had 'librul' and 'MAGA' groceries which stocked differing lines which you'd not see in the other. Where you could get outed by something as little as 'which way your TV antenna was pointing' or what type of crisps/chips you bought. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:37, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think even "ethno-nationalist" captures the full-scope of the Troubles. The Troubles was a religious conflict, and an ethnonationalist one, but it was also an anti-colonial conflict. It was the direct legacy of the partitioning of Ireland after the Irish War of Independence, which was obviously an anti-colonial conflict as well. As an aside, the Troubles ended in 1998 (although there are still flareups of violence every now and then). The Yugoslav Wars were another conflict that could be labeled a "holy war," and they ended later (in 2001). And the Balkans remain a very divided and tense land (with cold tensions turning hot occasionally). Carthage (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
No. It wasn't a religious conflict because most of the folks active on both sides were not actually religious. Most of the IRA/SF guys were not, for example - and the shit which kicked off the modern round of The Troubles [60s/70s] was not religious in origin, but politico-economic - to whit, the continuing dominance of the Protestant 'Ulster Brits' running the place as a one-party state for their own benefit which then blossomed into a full-scale scrap after the Republicans became convinced [with some reason] that the UK forces sent in was to back up said old elite [when they first 'went in', the Catholic Irish welcomed them with tea and cake, believing the solders were there to protect them from the quasi-official Protestant militias like the B-Specials]. Ian Paisley is perhaps an outsized example [in both ways] of the exception but even then he was much more motivated by old-school anti-Catholicism than anything else. But why the anti-Catholicism? Because that meant [in his head] Irish, 'Home Rule', the end of his group's dominance over Ulster. Similar can be said about the Fundie Americans - that a lot of them are not actually religious but being a 'born again Christian' has become a part of their identity.
And to be part of your identity, it then pre-defines certain answers you give to other things. To declare yourself 'a Catholic' in Derry or Armagh was not really a declaration that you believed in the precepts of the Roman Catholic Church, it was an announcement that you identified your culture/ID to be Irish. This cut the other way - to Id as a Protestant was to announce yourself to be culturally 'British' [or more correctly, a peculiar sub-type of Brit which is narrowly an Ulsterman/woman exclusively] with similar pre-defining features. This means NI folks get a slight headfuck when in either the Republic or UK, on realising that your religious ID doesn't stop you from being a 'patriotic Brit' or 'firm Irishman/woman' and even more importantly, the realisation that 'mixed relationships' were almost a completely non-issue.
The Troubles did not 'end' with Good Friday either. The majority of the underlying causes still remain, 'on ice'. NI politics, society and to some extent economics still remains bitterly segregated. The main reason it hasn't really flared up into actual full-scale violence again is that there's enough 'cool heads' on both sides who remember 'the bad old days' and kinda like for it to not return any time soon. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
You're not exactly preaching anything new to me. The reason I say that religion is intertwined with ethnonationalism in the Troubles is just the same reason you describe above: religion as an ethnic identity. They intersect. And the period of active conflict popularly called the Troubles ended with Good Friday, despite the fact that the material situation remains otherwise the same. You're splitting hairs here. Carthage (talk) 13:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
'Hairsplitting' is sometimes important. Religion didn't create the identities in NI - I am pretty sure The Troubles would have happened even if 'both sides' had been of the same religious denomination. Therefore, it's not a conflict which is 'religious' per se. And while technically yes, the conflict has ended I don't like to say it like that because it leads to the assumption in many people's heads that 'it's all fine now' in the place. Which I can assure you it clearly is not. 17:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
That was kind of implied by "though there are still flareups of violence every now and then". Carthage (talk) 23:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Also, for the purposes of classifying a conflict, it doesn't matter what could have happened, merely what did happen. And the battle lines of the Troubles were drawn on (ethno)religious sand. Carthage (talk) 18:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
Uniquely? Hardly.
But it is moreso than the average. It's also a core part of the Islamic faith that can't ever actually be removed; whereas Jesus was a Human/God Sacrifice and Moses was a Liberator (though both were violent and Moses did lead battles), Mohammed was at his core a Warlord. And what is one of the central beliefs of Islam? That Mo' wasn't merely a product of his time, or the least awful person in a brutal period, or that he was a flawed person who managed to drag the region kicking and screaming from the 4th century into the 12th, but rather, he was the best person who ever lived or ever will live, with no flaws whatsoever. So the conquest, pedophilia, slavery, slave-trading, and incest? Those were all good, and to outlaw such is to insult the man. Worse still, is the core belief that Mo' was the final prophet; no later person was ever allowed to say "no, actually, God says that those Bad Things are Bad". CorruptUser 01:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
And yet those Islamic pacifists I just mentioned got on by just fine. You act like people don't pick and choose which parts of their religion to ignore and to follow. Islam is also hardly a monolith. Carthage (talk) 07:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Contrary to what many would think, in practice religious texts tend to be heavily ignored and largely cherry-picked to suit one's goals. In Western space it's easy to observe American Christian fundies doing this, but from my observation what they do is actually pretty typical in the rest of the world; religion is more used as an identity above everything else. Buddhism, for instance, literally has ahimsaWikipedia (non-violence towards all) as a core principle. This has not stopped violent extremist "Buddhist" ethnic nationalist groups from forming in places when conflict occurs (Bodu Bala SenaWikipedia and other Islamophobic "saffron fascists" in Sri Lanka being a noted example of such). BobJohnson (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
I actually agree with Cory on this one. All religions have caused massive amounts of bloodshed, but Islamic-motivated bloodshed is just a much more current problem. You'll notice that the most recent example of Christian butchery that's being mentioned—the Troubles—ended in 1998. Whereas I'm pretty sure most of us could rattle off at least five Islamic-motivated instances of mass murder right off the top of our heads. To put it another way, the "Twenty-first century" section of our "massacres in the name of a peaceful faith" article features one religion a lot more than the others... Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 22:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
That's largely because people are much more willing to blame Islam as a motivator for such acts than other religions, even when there are a lot of secular factors at play. For instance, no one blames all the drug cartel-related violence in Latin America on Christianity despite it being by far the most common religion there. Granted, there are a lot more openly theocratic Muslim states, so they do bring a lot of the blame on themselves. Plutocow (talk) 22:18, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
The mass-murdering Islamist groups themselves are also quite a bit more willing to describe themselves as religiously-motivated, which I'm sure is a part of it. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 22:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
There's a pretty significant overlap between "countries that have fragile governments" (as seen by the "Fragile State Index") and "Islam dominant countries". I will entertain the possible that Islam might be a contributing factor in some ways, mainly because state actors like Saudi Arabia aggressively exported their fundie state religion, some of which eventually intertwined nationalist reactionary strains that ended up being convenient ideology for violent insurgents and terrorists. I will certainly agree that Islamic inspired terrorism tops the religious-motivated terrorism category at present. But I don't know how you untangle the heavy colonialism damage in the Middle East and Africa and all the other geopolitics out to figure out what role Islam really plays.
Interestingly, a few Christian African countries also are pretty unstable and from there you got Christian-inspired terrorist groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda / Congo. Most Christian countries in the world are relatively stable in comparison. However, if the situation changes, I certainly can see "Christian terrorism" developing as a response. The United States, for instance, is a rather stable country, but nonetheless has a history of organized Christian / racial terrorism with the Ku Klux Klan. The undercurrents of this have not gone away, and I certainly can see such swelling should real instability actually develop there. BobJohnson (talk) 22:55, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
Yeah yeah, everyone picks and chooses what to follow, but that's not contradicting my point.
To pick and choose with Buddhism or Christianity in a manner which promotes pacifism doesn't require that you ignore the central character. CorruptUser 03:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
How can one be certain that certain parties here aren't cherry-picking? One party here has characterized Muhammad as a warlord, which is true, but lacks context. In fact, Islamic pacifists will cite Muhammad's use of nonviolent resistance before his eviction from Mecca as a legitimization for their pacifism. And the Jesus of the Gospels isn't militant, sure, but the Jesus of Revelation is characterized as a vindictive avenger. As an aside, why we are willing to grant complexity to the causes of Buddhist and Christian violence but not Muslim? There's a double standard there. Carthage (talk) 04:14, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Just so we're clear, you're saying that in order to cherrypick Christianity to be pacifist, you have to ignore the story of Armageddon, but to cherrypick Islam you need to ignore virtually half of Muhammed's adult life, a number of proclamations he made during that time, and the Islamic version of Armageddon? CorruptUser 04:46, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
You'd also have to ignore the entire Old Testament, a good portion of Acts, and some of Jesus's own sayings "I have come not to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34) Plutocow (talk) 05:34, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
To be fair with both Jesus and Muhammad, it's not like dogmatic pacificism is always a good thing. It was Hitler, not Britain, that wanted peace during WWII. The concept of just war is a central one in the Christian philosophy, and I assume it is also part of the Islamic worldview. A better argument is claiming that some Muslims groups, seem to have, in general, abused this concept more far more often than Christians in the last few centuries, but it's also possible that the reason for this is a institutional one, not a cultural one. Personally, I think that at least some groups of the religious right want to transform the Western world in a Christian version of Iran. They just can't because they lack institutional support for this, although it's also possible that the support among the general population for a theocracy in Muslim countries is much, much higher. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 10:57, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Do we know that, though? The Muslim world is a very big place, and theocracies by their very nature tend to be authoritarian. The 2022 protests against the rule of the mullahs were massive. That in and of itself indicates some level of popular discontent with the Iranian regime. You should be careful not to conflate complacency with content. There is a difference. I would also ask what the context is for those Muslim groups abusing the context of just war, and what evidence you have that they have done so more than Christian groups over the "past few centuries." To my knowledge, the rise of Islamist sentiment in the Muslim world directly correlates to the defeats of secular nationalist and socialist movements during the period of decolonization. Armed Islamist militias like Hamas and Hezbollah claim some form of legitimacy by coaching their violence in an anti-colonial lens. Even Osama bin Laden justified 9/11 with secular grievances. Why are we willing to assign complexity to the causes of Christian and Buddhist violence but not Muslim? It's also worth repeating that Islam is not a monolith, and many, if not most, of the victims of extremist Islamist groups and regimes tend to be other Muslims. Carthage (talk) 11:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure about which part of my post you're questioning. If you're talking about the support for theocracies being higher in at least in some parts of the Muslim world, I think that the word "possible" implies that this is just my perception and I can be wrong. Regarding Muslims abusing the concept of just war more often, I think that our article Massacres in the name of a peaceful faith provides enough evidence for this claim, unless they weren't using the just war theory (or their own twisted interpretation of jihad) as their reasoning to commit these crimes, which is also possible. I also think that I was clear in my post that I wasn't treating Islam as a monolith and moderate groups exist when I said for instance that I was talking about "some Muslims groups", not about Islam in general. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 12:07, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
That could also simply be sampling bias. I don't see the Rohingya genocide on that list, as an example. Carthage (talk) 12:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you think that's the case, all you have to do is to add recent cases of other religions committing atrocities. I'm not aware of anything as huge as the 14 October 2017 Mogadishu bombingsWikipedia or the Crocus City Hall attackWikipedia happening in the Christian world in the last years, though the Rohingya genocide is definitely an important omission on the list. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 12:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

There's also the possibility that at least some of these attacks have secular motivations that are being glossed over. For example, the Mogadishu bombings was, at least in part, motivated for revenge over a botched raid by US special forces on the perpetrator's home village ([18]). I also think focusing on body count alone as a metric is kind of arbitrary, as these attacks tend to be incredibly opportunistic and the output can be very circumstantial. Carthage (talk) 12:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Extremism is hardly ever caused by one single factor. The perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootingsWikipedia while not being, at least as far as I know, a Christian radical (so not a perfect example), mentioned both environmentalism and the replacement theory as causes for what he did. Yes, the Mogadishu bombings might have many causes, but that doesn't mean that religious extremism wasn't one of them. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 12:59, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm just saying that to reduce extremist incidents to one factor alone is reductionist, and this reductionist claim is then used to support a talking point ("Islam is uniquely violent as a religion") that has been cited as a justification for Islamophobic policy and violence. Carthage (talk) 13:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Good post! TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 15:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
The issue is what is useful for power pushing. MEET MORE MUSLIMS full stop. Pakistani Muslims are not the same as Indonesian Muslims, but both in my experience are absolute sweethearts. The Indonesian Muslims actually had some experience with full on atheism in southeast Asia and were not put off by it at all. Not escaping anything, just also people. So attributing culture to religion is really short sighted. Picking and choosing religious justification is something else entirely. Pakistan and India do not get along. I really don't think it's because of the population difference of Hindi and Islam, but that's a useful story. Torrent (talk) 07:32, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The bloodlust In Israel and surrounding states is uniquely impassable ideas about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but mostly a really damnable idea in Christian prophecy keeps our support for armed, violent conflict. The desire for Armageddon for a fucking justification and magic proof of prophecised holy war shawls fanatical Christians who think the Bible is more than just a bunch of morality stories. It's DUMB to ATTEMPT to fulfill prophecy, because they don't even read their own book, I mean, come on, everybody should know that. if our souls and bones gonna rise, it won't be because anyone wages Holy war over Judea in the name of Armageddon, God will abandon you for doing silly shit like worshipping Armageddon before God. Get your head out of your ass. Islam is not what you are worried about unless you really think the war around the red sea MUST be principled by religious authority and divine right to the land, and that's why Jesus died in the first place ya maniacs. Torrent (talk) 07:57, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
'The bloodlust In Israel and surrounding states is uniquely impassable ideas about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam' did you skip a few word or make a typo or something? That part is hard to understand. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:54, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
@Torrent TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 16:38, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
I guess I skipped 'the support for bloodlust...' From a n American midwestern protestant/catholic perspective. Did you need that much? Torrent (talk) 06:48, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Jean-Marie Le Pen died today[edit]

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who confessed to have done torturing during the Algerian war and founded the far-right National Rally with former Waffen-SS, died today on the 7th of January 2025. New world (talk) 15:01, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Note:I am obviously not celebrating the death of another person, but Jean-Marie Le Pen has had an important impact on French politics, as the founder of the National Front/Rally, and the one who came to the second round in 2002. New world (talk) 15:08, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong about celebrating Le Pen's death. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 15:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Some people, the world is better off without. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 16:50, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Good. ☣🍆☣ (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
He only lived this long because Satan didn't want him. CorruptUser 20:07, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

e^(i*pi)+1=0[edit]

I have no idea what it means (I’m pretty sure no one else does, either) and it is the most profound thing that I have ever seen in my life Donglepuss (talk) 23:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Seems pretty nicheWikipedia. Impiricism (talk) 00:45, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
e is Euler's Number, which is the sum of all numbers the infinite series 1/n! (assuming n is an integer), Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and i is the square root of -1. Personally doesn't seem all that complicated to me, TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 02:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a page on it: Euler's identity.Wikipedia Bongolian (talk) 07:11, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
I'd love to know why people think this is profound. Of all the mathematics in the world people choose this? If anything, it's more cute than profound. Namako (talk) 19:43, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
It does show up in actual engineering applications. My most recent instance of running into it was when calculating the mismatch uncertainty of RF connectors. Since the signal reflections caused by mismatched cable connectors are a complex property, it is useful to use Euler's identity to get back to real numbers, albiet only in the special case when the phase of your reflection is an integer multiple of Pi. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 05:23, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Policy on venting?[edit]

What's the policy on venting in RW? There's an user (Throwaway187) on Talk:Roko's Basilisk who's apparently very distressed about Roko's Basilisk actually being a thing and wrote a short message about it. Another new user (ExtremeAtheist) deleted the message and then put the "unwelcome" template on the Throwaway187's talk page, who put the message back on again and asked the reason for removal on ExtremeAtheist's talk page. I'm still new as a sysop, so I'm not sure what should be done. Should the message stay? Should the user be marked as a troll? Am I overthinking this? I don't want to mess anything up as a sysop. — LunaAHHHHH 22:30, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Unless an obvious troll / spam comment, talk page comments typically should not be reverted. I didn't think that comment was obviously a troll, but it was a little weird to link a random comment in a D&D DM community thread (of all things) that somehow turned into existential fear of way-too-theoretical LessWrong nonsense, so "not sure here". BobJohnson (talk) 23:03, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
The user did say they have some "pretty extreme OCD" and can't afford therapy on ExtremeAtheist's talk page, so I think the behavior would make sense assuming that to be true. Not really something that can be checked, though. — LunaAHHHHH 23:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
RationalWiki is not, nor should it be, a substitute for therapy. People can vent, but sometimes that can go too far and become inappropriate for this space. Just a general note. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 01:47, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
There is no solution here. ask if you have questions because nobody sits on a cyst and survives, it is fine to have questions, but assholes abound, it's okay to not take the answers. We're doing the best we can, and it's not me vs you, I promise, me incluled, authority is not a lot better than repetition to cold ends, I fucking hate dumb authority, but we don't really need the OCD. The absolute empathy is the first part, the agreement that we're on this ship is the second, and the third, iunno, is how you read it. Really . But we all have to live here. I'm not afraid of that, is it a problem if you're going to vent? Should we be afraid since it's going to happen? I think everyone who knows what they are talking about may go ahead. If I'm allowed to vent, so must anyone. I mean, you can dismantle and remove my venting, I'm fine with that. But it must be allowed. Torrent (talk) 12:11, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Venting is only a problem with it becomes disruptive. That was the reason why we banned Machina from the Bar. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 12:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
I was wondering why I haven't seen Machina. You know I legitimately like that guy, right? Weird Buddhism aside, I'd take him as a neighbor over many I've had. Absolute bummer. Torrent (talk) 12:40, 12 January 2025 (UTC)and
crap, it was solipsism, wasn't it? Torrent (talk) 12:57, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Solipsism and some homophobic remarks, like saying that gay men are incapable of love.[19] He wan't a bad person, the main problem was that he was incapable of learning from his mistakes. In this sense, he was a lot like another that we banned (you know who). GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 13:02, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
But every two or three weeks an IP drops by who asks suspiciously Machina-type questions.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:10, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
would it be more difficult to ban VPN IPs or just punch the bag? Machina clearly needs communit, he is annoyingly obstinate about backwards lines of thinking, but obstinate defense is kind of an attitude here, can we all agree on that much? I do my best to not, and believe me I find it obnoxious, but... I just don't believe in a final solution. My mans gonna be asking leading questions that he doesn't care about the answer to until he doesn't or dies. And if he's reading this, you absolute piece of shit, you could not dream me up and be so scared of or stupid about homosexuality. Let that shit go and stop being weird about that shit. If solipsim/homosexuality co-exist, then you invented it. But, wild news, homosexuality exists outside of your experience. The thing that will confirm solipsism is bullshit is unshared trauma. Nobody shares the same trauma as Machina, because Machina doesn't want to separate control from experience. But he kinda needs to, which isn't our fault or responsibility, but give him a break. If he eats shit over his bad takes on the site constantly, refuses to do introspection, and asks unuseful questions to recenter his own opinions at least he's someone to aspire to never end up being. I think he'd get tired of being the heel in the face of a kinder way than feeding it to him, you know? If not, no love lost. Still love the guy in his little world where somebody has to love him, I just wish he'd come out of it and love anybody else. I could use a little reciprocation, Machina, I ain't tryna fuck ya man. Gay people can't love? Dawg, that's a self report, either you can't love or you're terrified of gay love. But give this guy some grace, he's not good at it. [20] the first step is breaking down the word 'love' which took me years of practice. It's a loaded word, everybody learns and starts with a different meaning. Torrent (talk) 09:23, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Being said, I do not have the responsibility of patrolling this site. I have previously turned down a mod nomination and will forever. Again, obnoxious behaviour is not any one here's fault and it's not anyone's responsibility to entertain it. Nobody here must fix anyone's bad take. I'm not disagreeing with the decision, but I am venting some grief that I won't see that guy again. He had never expressed those wild takes on homosexuality to me before, that's untenable, I'ma not gay but I understand that shit is harmful. I am venting about the relationship with Machina I had on this site. Solipsism, what a wild way to be scared of the world. Torrent (talk) 09:51, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

How will we fight the right-wing following Trump's election?[edit]

I mean, with Social Media platforms loosening their fact-checking measures in order to appease Trump, republicans having a full majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives (Though 3 are expected to drop out soon at least), and the Supreme Court, as well as frankly incompetent people being placed in positions of power because they are loyal to Trump, it does seem kind of hopeless right now, and trying to educate others about these types of topics can only go so far (Trump still won despite our best efforts to inform others about Project 2025 and his connections to it), so what should we do going forward? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 16:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I think the most worrying sign [of which you allude to] is that from the looks of it, Corp America has 'decided to kiss Trump's ring'. This is a stark difference from '16, when quite a lot of them were ambivalent or even vaguely hostile. Why are they doing this? Because they genuinely suspect if they don't Trump will take their revenge on them. Read between the lines; America's CEOs are hedging their bets for a vengeful Trump dictatorship. They're not stupid and they think if they do this, Trump will at least leave the moneybags alone [or make even more].
What does this mean in 'real life'? Well, chances are the press are going to be pretty self-muzzled, while social media shall become more awash with right-wing shite. There is also a very realistic possibility that as Trump tries to torch things like LGBT/green/immigration protections Corp America moves in lockstep so not to piss them off. So two important aspects [I think] would be along the lines of 'supporting media which does spread the truth' [such as donating/paying subscriptions, passing news along to others to read etc] and being willing/able to fight every single crap decision down the line. And I am talking in person. Protest. Petition. Organise. Provide kit/cash. Join up with others who feel the same way. And be prepared for the fight of your lives. Because it is.
Do not go quietly into the night, just like the fuckwits at the Heritage Foundation hope you all will. Don't be a wussy rollover, like the MAGA-hats think you all are. Prove to them what I've said for a long time - that they don't have a monopoly on such views as 'don't tread on me' and 'give me liberty or give me death'. Come on, I said you would... don't make me a liar! KarmaPolice (talk) 17:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
I can't really protest, petition and organize given how I'm Brazilian and not american, but I will be trying my best to fight in other ways, and in the 2026 Election next year I will be doing my part and voting to help prevent a Bolsonarist from getting power again. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 17:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
In your case, I would say 'stay home and fight your own Trump and MAGA'. One thing which I think we foreign devils could do to help is by making the relevant RW pages better [and more of them] and being a lot more diligent in posting articles in the relevant WIGOs esp if American media becomes increasingly timid. You could also help [if you can afford it] by donating some cash for grassroots support groups etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:00, 8 January 2025 (UTC)


Out of curiosity, Ken - why do you do this? I mean, your crappy surface quote mining, the vaguely-connected Gish Gallops, your hobbyhorses, the sometimes thundering levels of ignorance, the blinkered 'Team Right is winning again, we am the greetest!' crowing and the general inability to actually hold a genuine discussion with anyone? I mean from what I can tell, you've been doing this for at least 15 years now with the same 'tried and failed' style. Has your words actually convinced anyone, ever? How thick is your hide to soak up all the mockery of your idiocy and ignorance without any self-reflection on it? Just to think how much time you've wasted in 'debating' people with nil to minus effect on them [or posting your 'essays'] when you could have used that time more productively by I dunno, studying the topics more deeply so you don't proverbially shit yourself in front of people? Or is this all just about you? That you need to do this stuff to try to convince yourself that you're 'on the winning [and therefore right] team'? KarmaPolice (talk) 12:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
You realize the reason he keeps coming back is because people keep feeding him, right? Carthage (talk) 15:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
I think they'd come back even if we could somehow utterly shadowban them. I think they'd come back to an empty room to lecture the walls. And it's not like they're going to actually answer my question, is it? KarmaPolice (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Why the hell has he been doing this for 15 years, I'm pretty sure RationalWiki hasn't focused on Conservapedia for most of that time; Will Ken ever move on? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 17:11, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Ken actually is a sad reflection of the reactionary right wing; a lot of the motivation of this whole group really is all about cheerleading from an "us vs. them", "liberal tears", "trolling liberals" perspective. Everything right about the world is Team Right and everything wrong with the word is the fault of the libs for some reason. And obviously, with sports-style Cheerleading and Hot Air, you get obsessions with "winning". What has changed since the Thanks, ObamaWikipedia days? Hell, what has changed since well before then?
Now, the politics of reactionaries is pretty obvious, in that the ruling class uses these rubes' fascination with "enemies" they've built up in their heads to distract people from oligarchy style politics. Thus, while I think more of this group worried about the "loose cannon" aspects of Trump 1.0, you're seeing a pretty solid pro-Trump billionaire alignment for Trump 2.0. My guess is they see Trump less as "dementia Hitler" and more "shitposter troll" who will generate lots of press cover with his insane babble for pro-oligarchy politics behind the scenes. (If this inference is correct, methinks it is quite the gamble -- didn't exactly work out for Vladimir Putin's Russia, did it? But Trump 1.0 was kind of like that.)
A lot of reactionaries thus essentially fuck themselves as a result, at least economically. My guess is that over the next few years, if you don't know about things like, say, "Roth IRA", there is a good chance one will probably take a financial hit from this administration (due to the economic fallout from IMHO a very probable tariff war ala 2018). Should such happen, one has to guess that many of the reactionaries will blame the tariff-induced higher prices on DEI or woke or something similar and get that little hate dopamine hit to cope. So it goes. BobJohnson (talk) 17:50, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
To a certain extent Ken is right. People are losing faith in traditional media and we are entering a post-truth world. Jo Rogan spreads conspiracy theories. Elon musk via twitter sends more MAGA nonsense. Facebook has announced they will no longer engage in fact-checking.
This lie-filled world is perfect for Trump and MAGA. No wonder he's happy.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:52, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Nah, probably not. One thing I've noticed about that side of things is that so many of these folks are never happy, even when they are in charge. There is always anger at something, it seems. A sad motif for life from my perspective, but a lot seem to embrace perpetual anger these days. It sure has made social media a lot of money. BobJohnson (talk) 21:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Does anyone else think the reactionary right is kind of overreaching itself? Carthage (talk) 05:44, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
The problem is probably ideology in America. Libertarianism is so tied to conservatism that it makes no sense. Libertarianism in America is close to Anarchism, which is stupid because socialism is considered close to state control. And the actual argument is Taxes. American Libertarians think taxes are theft. Americans that advocate for socialism believe taxes can help us all be self sufficient. I can understand the aphorism 'If you're not a liberal when you are young, you don't have a heart. If you are not a conservative when you are old, you don't have a brain.' But, what a bullshit mantra. the idea that liberal and conservative is a binary is so dumb. You don't have to grow out of 'live and let live' or 'a stitch in time saves nine.' You have to fundamentally understand nothing about libertarianism and socialism to say 'I got mine' and expect to be done with taxes. Torrent (talk) 07:48, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
According to the average American open mall shopper in my city back in like september during a local news poll(I don't have a link), when asked to fill in 'The economy is...' On a white board most chose to write 'sucks'. So 'the economy is sucks', that's not a reasonable sentence. some did write 'bad' or 'complicated' which I can respect. But that's what they know to say about the economy, how they are empowered to speak. Because that's the best they were taught. Until there are actual trusted sources of information, anyone left of the Republicans are ratfucked Torrent (talk) 08:15, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
There's more than one "reactionary right", and they seem to all think that the modest win last November was the Biggest Mandate Ever. Massive infighting seems to be a feature of state Republican trifectas these days; I expect the same at the federal level this time around. Yes, I think there already is overreach attempts, in multiple contradictory directions. BobJohnson (talk) 14:35, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Maybe we have a new slogan: "Trump is sucks!"Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:39, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
They don't realize that their beloved populists will hurt everyone who isn't part of the 1%, not just the people they don't like. Poor fools. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 21:21, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
How much the ultra-rich/CEO class 'sees no threat from Trump' and how much they're actually scared of vengeance I suppose we'll never know - but it merely confirms what I've known for a long time; that unless it's about their own moneybags, 'capital' is a very unreliable ally against fascism. I did wonder that they might have learned something about how their Chinese and Russian compatriots have fared under the Emperor's boot when it starts to squeeze but I think they've proved Orwell's quip right - that while the businessman might be astute/thoughtful when it comes down to business, anything else he can't see past the end of his nose.
I doubt whether 'mainstream media' has really lost so much credibility as the Kenbots of this world crow about. 'Following the news' has always had a bit of a 'chattering classes' element to it; that vast swathes of the wider population have not paid much attention to it or have chosen to not pay attention to it because 'it is irrelevant/depressing/boring'. Disinformation isn't new either; from the Daily Mail and yellow journalism in the 1900s, Father Coughlin via talk radio in the 30s, Fox News in the 80s and finally websites like Drudge Report in the 90s. 'Alternative news' sources have also existed almost as long as 'the mainstream has'; for example the communist Morning Star was founded in 1930.
What has changed, I think is the costs of production/consumption has collapsed. That in previous eras, there were more 'gatekeepers' and higher costs to produce crap to peddle and costs to consume it too. Now; a friendly rich fucker can from their loose change fund a plethora of social media bots following right-wing online ranters with actually decent production values and I can lap up this shit for free at all times using my smartphone. This gives the impression that 'the world has shifted right' partly because 'the populist left' [ie not the centrist 'libruls'] don't have a clutch of sugar daddies like Kock/Thiel etc to subsidise 'alternative news' and similar. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
It was funny when the KenBot mentioned Joe Rogan as "proof" that the world has gone more MAGA. He certainly has shifted "right" over the years (as he's gotten more money and COVID-19 became a sore conspiracy-theory-laden point with him), but the Joe Rogan Experience really isn't a political podcast. It's more of a "bros shooting the shit" thing as far as I know; at least, the transcriptions I've read even of late suggest such. There's a lot of comedians, actors, and athletes on there (mostly guys, natch). Some kooks and charlatans, of course, always has been. A few political figures too -- mostly populist right wing these days, unfortunately. Unfortunately these days I also see less representatives from the world of science, sigh. "Net chatter" also indicates that some former JRE fans are nostalgic for when there was barely any politics at all. At any rate... Joe Rogan really isn't a heavy MAGA bot in my book. To name two topics where he runs "against the MAGA grain", he's staunchly pro-choice and strongly supports gay marriage. Ya, recent guests included The Zuck and Mel Gibson, but they also included RaekwonWikipedia of Wu Tang Clan fame. So... BobJohnson (talk) 18:15, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that Rogan only really supported Trump because of his populist kind of speech. If someone like Bernie was running on the Democrat ticket, Rogan would probably have supported him instead (I think he already did that, actually?), since both of them are pretty populists in the sense of "trying to fix the issues America has" instead of simply affirming that "the economy is all great" like the Dems seemed to do in this election. — LunaAHHHHH 18:26, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
KenBot thinking Rogan is MAGA is the end result of footballification of politics; that everyone is either 'Team Us' or 'Team Them' and then said teams are monolithic blocs clustered around the captain in which their teammates take turns in sucking off [a horrible vision but unfortunately needed in this case for illustrative purposes]. This is why - for example - KenBot keeps on pestering me about the 'growth of the hard right' in Europe, because they believe I am on Team Them and therefore will be sad/depressed/angry/triggered by said news. The fact that I have been for over twenty years now critical from a 'left populist' POV of these tepid Third Way managerial types who have repeatedly rammed into political bollards and then stated 'it's the electorate who are wrong' is apparently lost on them.
This overly-simple POV translates to Rogan; as they are also critical of 'Third Way managerialism' and anti 'American Progressivism' KenBot thinks 'MAGA-hat!'. I know a few of what you'd call Rogan's target audience; and I can say they generally are not enamoured with Trump or their national variants ['Trump? A real man? A fat old pasty guy who wears tons of makeup/hairspray, speaks in a whiny tone constantly about woe is me and has tantrums?' to paraphrase one I was speaking to over Xmas]. They are more enamoured towards the likes of the Boor [who if nothing else, you can say 'understands tech better' and 'is genuinely successful'], but even they have noticed of late how fucked-up he's become. Most importantly, I can have generally civil political conversations with these folks - to the point I think I could talk them into voting for a left-populist party if it existed in their locality.
A sign, if anything else - that 'your enemy's enemy is not your friend'. Sometimes, you're enemy's enemy is another enemy. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:38, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Nazi twitter[edit]

at this point anyone still on twitter is aiding and abetting a fascist and fascism as well as a billionaire interfering with the politics of other nations to the detriment of all. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:44, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm a year and a half ahead of you! Zuckerberg is following in Musk's tracks though. Chillpilled (talk) 01:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Musk's mask alignment (liberal mask, Nazi brain) had already begun slipping in 2021 when he openly defied California's shut-down mandate at his Tesla factory during the worst of the COVID pandemic.[23] "By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term, if I could. Best President in my lifetime, hands down." — Get Out[24] Bongolian (talk) 06:10, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Humans are lazy beings. We will long stick with a 'suboptimal' solution past the level of reasonableness, because the status quo has a strength in itself. This means there has to be a threshold of 'pissed off' to make people change. More interestingly [and much less documented] is the numbers of folks 'quiet quitting' the platform; the amount of folks who are technically 'still on X' but shall admit they no longer really check stuff on there anymore is [at least from my anecdotal evidence] rising. This declining level of 'engagement' [to use the marketing jargon] shall make ad revenue for X decline even further.
I personally predict X will shed a lot of users/engagement in this coming year, as the Boor is directly part of the Trump administration [and thus shall get tainted by association]. I also predict that Threads is going to decline too, as a decent % of their userbase wanted the relatively sanitised zone and Threads now is clearly going to get a influx of fwee speech shitheads who'll smear shit on the walls and the only response is a 'community note' saying 'I believe this is shit'. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:00, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes, Bluesky and Mastodon will probably become dominant. Nobody wants to live under a self-appointed sun king like Musk. Kadashova (talk) 11:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with Karma and Kadashova. Call it wishful thinking on my part, but I think a lot of the corporate kowtowing towards Trumpists will backfire. Not only is there precedent suggesting that going full MAGA repels users and advertisers, but I'd argue that making concessions to appease Trump and his allies out of fear of retaliation creates a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy because it signals that they could be pushed to make more concessions in the future. Gabaghoul 🥩 19:38, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
To reinforce your point, 25% of Americans are avoiding consuming any Tesla products because of that company's ties to everyone's least favorite oligarch lolcow Elon Musk: [25] Carthage (talk) 19:54, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I think I've seen several reports that Tesla sales are declining in Europe as well (as Tesla's fleet is starting to get long in the tooth, and competition has improved tremendously). And this is before the last several months where Musk leaned into supporting European reactionaries. It's one thing to go full-on Trumpism; it's another to support arsehole hooligans that very few people (even reactionaries) like. The CEO's persona isn't usually a really big driving factor in what car you purchase, but Musk's reactionary turn is very public and very brash. (And strange, too, considering that I would not think reactionaries are the biggest customers of electric vehicles.) We'll see what happens, I suppose... but that's the odd thing about some of these capitulations to Trump. Sure, it'd make sense if your product's audience and/or corporate internals already leaned towards Trumpism. It makes no sense to me if it doesn't, you risk losing customers and even employee talent. The Washington Post is finding that out right now...
The interesting thing is that Musk is also repelling the "OG MAGA" of late with his embrace of importing foreign tech talent. (Steve Bannon has spent the last couple weeks ranting about him, it seems.) As I see it, a lot of the Silicon Valley "web 2.0" tech leadership seems to be in this strange tech-fascist mode, which isn't quite the fascism of Trumpism/ruscism/etc., but wants to play along with the fascists anyways. (Not an unusual thing in business history, of course.) Musk is just more open about it than other tech CEOs; the Zuck's capitulations don't surprise me in the least. BobJohnson (talk) 20:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with Gaba, esp when you tape their view above with BobJ's point of the KenBots of the world in another above topic: that so many of these folks are never happy, even when they are in charge. There is always anger at something, it seems. You give them what they want, and it is not enough. It is never enough. Yesterday scrap DEI policies, today ban mention of global warming because it is 'woke', tomorrow scrap contraception and same-gender partner support in medical insurance, next week it's supporting the abolition of Dr King Day... just how fucking far does the surrender need to be before the CEO class thinks 'wait, think we've gone too far?' History has that answer; normally, the point they realise they no longer have agency or at least, 'the point where we've fucked things up'.
The important difference than in the past is that these days most of Corp America is in fact owned by pension funds and sovereign wealths and similar rather than individual rich men; even the Boor only owns 13% of Tesla [through various shenanigans this is 25% of voting shares and he rolled the pitch in advance meaning he has almost veto control of the company] which means a) they are generally nonpolitical [save loving capitalism] and b) in the respect of pensions, can be lobbied [which is why if you're in a pension scheme, it's worth finding out how/where they are investing your money] as well as feel the pinch through consumer boycotts etc. I think it's also important to note that [from what I can tell] most of the companies so far 'bowing the knee' to kiss the Orange hand are the ones which never really scored that good in the realms of pay/conditions of staff, medical support, labour relations, environmental stuff etc in the first place so a lot of this is more 'shithead dropping the thin pretence of not being a shithead' than anything else. So I leave you all with this question; perhaps this development is a good thing. It means the American bourgeois progressive is now seeing who their real friends are, and guess what, it's not Corp America.
On the techno-fascists; I call them the 'Dark Technocracy'; that their overlap with ruscism is the mutual belief in an authoritarian, hierarchical society of a neo-feudalistic model. I think most folks here know that I consider the technocracy the anti-democratic/meritocratic threat for the next 50 years or so, while Trumpism is even more socially retrograde. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:53, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I propose we change climate change to global warming[edit]

Global warming is actually happening, Climate Change was an intentional reduction of urgency started by Frank Lutz. I get it's easier to call it climate change, but it has always been and still is Global Warming, and we'd be complicit to call it by a name that it is not. I get this is a plea that won't be answered, because it is too late to change the overall perception or understanding. But. Climate Change is and always has been Global Warming. At least, if you talk about it, say Global Warming and don't let anyone tell you it's not. Torrent (talk) 09:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Climate change is more accurate - because the changes are not always 'warming'. For example, the breakdown in the Gulf Stream is most likely going to make the winters in the UK/France/Benlux/Norway colder [because we'll get lots more icy winds from the Arctic]. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Furthermore global warming has always been taking place - that's why the Earth is not as cold as the Moon. The actual problem is climate change. Our article on climate change mentions this.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
You're about 25 years out of date, Torrent.
I have heard some people advocate that the preferred term be "climate crisis" or "climate emergency", as they feel that the term "climate change" is too mild. BobJohnson (talk) 15:11, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Apropos of that it would be a good idea to finally change "Category:Global warming" to "Category:Climate change". Bongolian (talk) 19:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to change.
If we are on terminology there is also the term: "anthropogenic global warming". This is really accurate - but unfortunately sounds too dry. I would actually go for "climate crisis" as mentioned by the other Bob - but that might sound too alarmist (if it is actually possible to be too alarmist about the issue).Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:36, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I have a general question much like this. Should we try to have similar titles to the corresponding wikipedia articles? I really like to standardise things. In this case, "Climate change" is the established WP title. Kadashova (talk) 15:00, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Why would we want to do that?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:07, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
We don't keep our titles in sync with Wikipedia as an end in itself. However, there's often good reasons for using the title Wikipedia uses. WP tries to match the most common usage, and sometimes we change titles for the same reason. WP also often favors a short title instead of a longer one, and that's good style IMO. Sometimes we have a different focus and angle in covering a topic to the point that a different title makes sense, but usually not even when we cover things quite differently. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:27, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
i think anthropogenic global warming (agw) is a good fit because on average, global temperatures are still rising at a faster rate than normal thanks to human activity. it also shuts down the idea that "they changed it to 'climate change' when they saw it wasn't actually getting warmer." The G (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Psychologist Guy (now Oldman4)[edit]

It seems a 5000 word article is being spammed around about Psychologist Guy - unsubstantiated claims is he is Oliver Smith (a banned editor from 2020). This claim does not make much sense since Psychologist Guy is a Wikipedian since around 2017 with around 100,000 edits and seems to have different interests, writing style and identity. However this claim is now all over Twitter with a Substack article. Thoughts? 64.74.161.245 (talk) 02:53, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

They accused him of being Johns, which I find maybe plausible based on my vague recollection of his editing style though wouldn't outright agree with it without being able to pore over it all. However they accuse Johns of being Smith as they have for a long while, this I don't think I believe. Chillpilled (talk) 13:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Jonathan Kane and Anatoly Karlin are running that website. The "Ghost" is a reference to Abd Lomax. 45.32.189.205 (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I've had a read, and now I think it's actually the kind of evidence which could make an ATIM go somewhere. I hadn't expected that. There's a tl;dr factor though, it's the details that make it worth considering and it's a lot of text before you have that picture. (The rename history of the accounts, including the latest renaming, is also included, though that part was never controversial.)
Short summary of some of the contents. Not to base your conclusions on, but what I think motivates a read. Smith's history, I wouldn't vouch for all of the background stuff being accurate but there's some stuff in there including evidence that Smith is well-practiced creating online alter egos differing in style etc. while leaving some clues. Also, Smith has a long-term abuse history on Wikipedia with many sockpuppets, not only many ones here on RW. Both on WP and here, Psychologist Guy has the same history of claiming to exchange some messages with Smith and doing some similar editing, in kind of a "Smith lite" style relative to Smith's message. The article claims that the claimed back stories of the WP and RW accounts don't add up, attributing this to them originally being two separate personas which were hastily merged with a rename. It also points to various clues concerning IPs and VPN use, and timing relative to Smith's activities. Smith also has a history of feigning having a brother and getting out of a ban on WP with that (and bragging about it later), so if he's Psychologist Guy, it wouldn't be the first time he's split his online persona to ban evade successfully. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
For the record, I'll note the sock suspicion was disproven, before this gets archived. With quite definite evidence from a video meeting as noted in the coop case. This makes for an example of how with a circumstantial case (with a bunch of clues suggestive but not definite all lining up), likely is not certain and unlikely is not impossible. Unfortunately, I'm sure people in the past have been banned on flimsier evidence. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 21:36, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Does the brain reload old memories to make sense of things on waking up?[edit]

It's related to a string of claims I found on this post: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/78860/88743

But when I googled it I didn't find anything to back this claim. Nothing suggesting the brain reboots like that anyway.

The research I found that seemed in the ballpark on says that part of the brain resets and it's the hippocampus which is responsible for learning: https://www.earth.com/news/sleep-reboots-the-brain-making-room-for-new-memories/

Which I don't think is the same thing. The larger thread was about the continuity of a self but the posters understanding of neuroscience seems questionable. Though after reading this I'm afraid it might be more true than I think, I just don't really know: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mental-mishaps/201906/waking-lost-and-confused

I figured I'd post here because I'm not an expert and hopefully folks can help me out.47.5.66.54 (talk) 04:40, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I doubt anyone here is an expert either. Plus ultimately the question boils down to "What is the mind and consciousness really?"Wikipedia Which still isn't conclusively known.
I think the stackexchange link, despite not providing evidence, is generally correct (minus the whole Nirvana thing at the start) from a materialist viewpoint; I would add to it that perhaps the self is the instance of information tied to specific instances of atoms... If that makes any sense. "CyberPunk" science fiction tends to ruminate on such a viewpoint being true and the implications, if you want more things to read. Impiricism (talk) 06:02, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think anything can answer that question. I dunno if it's A commercial that is still running because I only really see commercials when I'm watching football games with my family, but there is one that features an AI best friend, one to speak to in the quiet hours when you're alone, and one question featured was 'I keep dreaming my fingers are spaghetti' and the response is 'noodles in dreams relate to creativity'. Dreams are personal. Dream analysis is funky bunk pseudoscience. I have dreams, they sometimes seem predictive in retrospect, but it's not like I go into a day thinking 'I had a dream about' let's say skateboarding, which is not a part of my current life, and then that day hear or see explicit skateboarding which would be unusual, but analogues have happened, only to say I must be seeing the future. I can't be sure I'm not recreating a really malleable part of my dream. I used to have wild dreams about driving and being unable to control the car, driving off cliffs. I drove highway 1 in California one time after splitting shifts for 26 hours to get there and getting probably 2 hours of sleep. Horrifying, beautiful, and frustrating as other drivers came up my ass. I wasn't crawling but if there was more than two cars tailing me, I used the pull off to let them pass. Better for everyone but man, how am I supposed to whip a 90's Corolla I'm not familiar driving on a curvy descent so far above an ocean I've never seen before (Which I've still never 'seen' the pacific, because it was foggy at sea level and cloudy abpve) . There is only one street I know of that is as tough to drive with confidence where I learned to drive, it's two lane and deep ditches on either side and a little over a half mile long, not a full on cliff face, and it's not hard to cook 60mph downhill, but you see another car, you have to assume they are crossing the center line. I can still have dreams where I'm worried about my car launching off a cliff. I didn't have driving dreams much before, but now when I have them they make sense to me. I really enjoyed that vacation and the time spent with the people I went with but that was a new experience that really had me nervous thinking 'If I fuck up we all die'. So that imagery is going to last longer. Doesn't affect my sleep anymore, lucky me. Torrent (talk) 09:14, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Just going to also add that the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent resource, IMO, for getting stuff explained in more layman's terms. IEP consciousness page. Impiricism (talk) 12:30, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I guess my question might be what does it all mean? I think that IEP link might be a bit dated because consciousness being a brain thing is pretty much a fact from the evidence we have so far, there isn't really a binding problem. That's often trotted out along with qualia to try to bulwark against the mountain of evidence showing we are the brain. But I digress, my point is that what exactly are the implications? Because from the Psychology Today link we need that continuity to function, if you've met anyone with dementia or Alzheimer's you'll see how you can't really leave them alone. My grandmother has it and she can't be left alone. That same link also shows that this "loading" is more to do with just remembering what happened yesterday, but as we know who we are is more than just yesterday. It gets even more complicated when you see that our brains don't actually shut off when we sleep, so whether continuity is interrupted or not is unclear. So even by just materialism I don't know if the stackexchange link is right, because people on there generally deny that you are the brain.
But more than that what exactly would it mean? Do we just abandon that self like the poster says? What about social interactions? Are those a lie because it's just recycling the past? Personal likes and dislikes? Would those be reliable because we are shaped by everything that happens to us, it's not like you can just let all that go. Is it a delusion? I feel like that's a misinterpretation of the facts. That's sorta what I mean by it being complicated and what exactly are the implications of this? I also don't think the stackexchange user fully understanding just how much of his life depends on the continuity of memory and self and thinks it just means the self is a "delusion".47.5.66.54 (talk) 19:41, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Hi Machina.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:17, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess the short answer to my long one is just trying to understand what that means for me and my life and for society at large and how it applies. I know memory plays a huge role in how we function day to day, though the part about the self has me losing some sleep.47.5.66.54 (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, one more edit. Upon further reflection and research I couldn't really find the modern neuroscience that backs what that poster is saying. If anything it sounds more like a wild interpretation of the Psychology Today article, and even that might be pushing it. So it's not really true from a materialism point of view.47.5.66.54 (talk) 04:32, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

So do you need an answer, do you want an answer, do you not actually care or do you have an answer? Dementia is painful to be near to and I can't promise you or myself it won't happen to us. I can't tell you a million things that should probably concern us. it's okay to be terrified, it's human. https://youtu.be/BcQ-8R2fiZg?feature=shared I don't suggest many mil plus sub youtubers, but this guy is legit. The only advice is, since it's now, let your granmda enjoy her lucid or semi-lucid moments. I heard from am uncle when my Grandpa died he told all his kids in the room that they were going to slaughter him, but also kinda told each one what their job was. He was zooted in hospice, ravaged by cancer and kept at peace by morphine, but I think he was being a country dad in his last moments, even if 'and you're gonna drain the blood' were his exact last words. Torrent (talk) 11:02, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Is Defaul Mode Network still used today to describe the brain?[edit]

I've heard mixed results but the general sense I got was that most neuroscientists and leaders in the field don't use that term anymore because it turns out the data behind it is pretty shaky since there doesn't seem to be a "default" state of the brain to measure it with, especially given modern technology. I know it's often used by spiritual types to refer to the self and things like that but from what I read they're clinging to a model that is no longer valid.47.5.66.54 (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Are you running your cyberbrain in autistic mode? IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 20:10, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Hi Machina.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 13:57, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Help with Wikipedia[edit]


I am neither spooked by or terrifired of the 'Free Luigi' meme[edit]

Violence is always not it. But i believe there are versions of violence. Your home may be violently ripped down by a fire, flood, or I'm more familiar with Tornadoes. Your health can be ripped apart by any number of accidents. Insurance collects. money from everybody in case the bad thing happens(see: taxes) therefore when the bad thing happens insurance must pay. That's a contract. But there is a second contract, which requires any shareholder investment in a public traded private business to be protected from less than profitable decisions. Endless growth forever. [26] fraud charges can't survive against insurance companies while they are required to make decisions that must benefit investors monetarily. Endless growth forever. what the fuck are insurance companies charging anyonE for. Just a gamble that if they pay in, when the bad shit happens it's too specific that it can't be challenged or they can't spend as much on a lawyer as the company can? What is wild is, all these people who think state healthcare ruins healthcare don't get that the exact same doctors would be working. Profit motive is exploitation, something as passive as insurance with a profit motive is wild. The goal is to deliver less than what we all pay for. Otherwise the money doesn't make money. But the point is everybody pays in case it happens to you. And you might pay more in order to be treated better in any case, but in any case you will get less than what you pay in to private publicly traded insurance.Torrent (talk) 10:04, 20 January 2025 (UTC)R

Meta proposal, serious: in regards of sarcasm[edit]

The goal of RationalWiki is to explain rationally – using logic, and to call out fallacies. Allthough this goal is noble, satire is overused and is often used in place of an logically sound argument (using it in addition to an argument effectively supports it or creates a second argument). I understand that this is RationalWiki's tradition, and the result of the interaction with Conservapedia. RationalWiki is against fallacies, opposed to Conservapedia – satire aligns with Conservapedia's values but not RationalWiki's – so it should not be (ab)used in its pages.

Complete removal of sarcasm could be hard for RationalWiki editors, due to emotional connections and tradition, therefore I propose a compromise:

  • sarcasm should not be overused (de iure already, not de facto);
  • pages consisting mostly of sarcasm SHOULD be placed in Joke namespace and MUST be tagged;
  • sections consisting mostly of sarcasm MUST be tagged;
  • sarcasm MUST be tagged (unless the whole page is tagged);
  • the preciding points exclude Userspace;
  • Articles in the Joke namespace (or tagged as joke) SHOULD contain sarcasm;
  • a namespace for Project and Project-like joke pages MAY be created;
  • Articles and Project and Project-like pages SHOULD NOT focus on sarcasm (unless the whole page is tagged);
  • sarcasm in Userspace SHOULD be tagged
  • sarcasm MUST NOT be used as an argument, to support an argument, or generally to prove a point, including in Userspace
  • sarcasm SHOULD be tagged by superscripted « /s » or « [joke] » depending on community decision – one of the options MUST be chosen.

This does not technically count but also propose that:

  • links pointing to the unknown MUST NOT be used.

The proposal is negotable.

I agree to edits to this proposal, but request for the major edits to be listed in a list.


Kabanamu (talk) 20:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I have put some links on your userpage which will help you to understand how the site is run. It is possible that you might wish to read and fully understand them and then spend some time contributing to the wiki before suggesting that we start to negotiate with you about the changes you feel are necessary. Also please remember to sign your posts.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:13, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't say these changes are neccessary, I provide a controversial suggestion from a newcomer's perspective. I don't think I will change my mind about this issue, but I believe the consensus should decide :=)
"2: Snarky Point of View: Humor (humour, humeur) is an important part of what differentiates a RationalWiki article from an article at Wikipedia or other encyclopedia-style sites; the archetypal Wikipedia article being dry as the Sahara Desert. Snark can include sarcasm, irony, satire, absurdist commentary, subversive humour, and witty asides. These can make the wiki fun to edit and fun to read.
However! Dear editor, you are probably not as funny as you think you are. RationalWiki is not Uncyclopedia and especially not Encyclopedia Dramatica. Be funny, and not just stupid. Avoid overused jokes, obscure in-jokes, anything childish, and anything hateful. The snark must support our site missions (as outlined above), not obstruct them. Snark should never get in the way of analysis, and snark cannot substitute for analysis. And for the love of goat — take extra care with articles on living people (see below). (RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article?#SPOV - suggest changing that of course as part of process) — Unsigned, by: Kabanamu / talk / contribs
Troll Carthage (talk) 21:11, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 21:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
We've already been deprecating some of the sarcasm here, particularly the strike-out humor. As for putting up a joke alert in superscripts, basically ruins the joke. Also, the gold and silver brainstar articles tend to be more straightforward. Jonathan Swift did not write "just kidding" at the end of A Modest Proposal. If you have to explain the humor, then it's not funny. We sometimes follow the Category:Silver-level articles motto, "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Bongolian (talk) 01:25, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
It really looks a lot like tone policing to me.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:38, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Let's look at this modest proposal from a purely pragmatic POV for a moment. What would it actually entail?
- The manual reviewing of every RW mainspace article.
- The insertion of 'joke warnings' every time such a thing appears.
- The removal of any sarcasm/humour when it's used to further an argument.
Does RW have the organisational brains to successfully guide such a project? Does RW have the personnel to carry out said project? Does RW have the inclination to carry out said project? I think the answer is 'Nope' on all fronts. Therefore my 'counteroffer' is to refer you to the response in Arkell V. Pressdram.
On a more general note; we need to remember that a lot of RWs targets have large, fragile egos. That often their hate for us is not just because we debunk them, but we are insufficiently reverential towards them. Even the maligned strikeout text plays a part here - for example, a credentialist crank can have their 'Dr'/'PhD' etc struckout because they bought them from a diploma mill. And some of the stuff we cover is simply too fucked-up you can't provide any coverage with a straight face. Lastly, where does satire stop and 'straight reporting' start? If applied strictly, I suspect our mainspace would end up dull and pedantic, like WP so often is. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
If we were to actually consider the proposals seriously then I agree that they would be utterly impractical while simultaneously being massively counterproductive.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:47, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Tagging all sarcasm with a "« /s » or « [joke] »" is one of the dumbest fucking ideas I've ever heard, and it would be annoying to pretty much every possible reader. Explaining a joke is the fastest way to ruin it, and it just insults the reader's intelligence. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 15:19, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Some people will append their posts with "/s" as a tone indicator in chatrooms, and I think that usage is valid. Some people are sarcasm-blind, and tone indicators can help with communicating meaning. However, there's a difference between appending "/s" to a chat message and basically neutering this site's snark policy. Carthage (talk) 15:49, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

You're asking us to fundamentally change one of our three pillars, "snarky point of view". This is not a modest proposal. A modest proposal would be to ask that we be "thoughtful" about our snark. This is not a bad one. Some pages could use a rethinking of snark in general. Otherwise, no. Snark/sarcasm isn't going away. Rationalwiki is NOT a website of pure, cold, boring, forensic facts. It is not a logicified wikipedia. Snarky point of view is an essential part of the website. You are being far too ambitious. Perhaps, you could start, by finding a few pages that are hyper sarcastic, give us the links and propose how you would change them (by still respecting the snarky point of view) but improving them. ShabiDOO 07:51, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

ive never been a massive fan of the snark but i know its not going away. and honestly its not that the snark exists that irritates me its that its poorly done at times to the detriment of what ever point was attempting to be made. the stuff that jumps out at me as especially egregious replace actual facts and or reasoned argument entirely and assumes the reader to know exactly what the was thinking and be so completely onboard with it that why even bother with facts and context and or if the point being made is even valid at all. articles that attract more of the lets just say true believers that suffer the most from this. Articles should, in my view, be created first and foremost be concerned with the factual and reasoned explanation of the subject and its issues. you can add your zingers and your snark in after you got that down. if you are relying too much on sarcasm and your snark is doing all the heavy lifting in making your points, then you are just preaching to the choir, if that even. satire requires enough understanding of what is being satirised for it to work. this is a website that looks at some of the more fringe subjects or subjects filled with controversy and misinformation. people coming to our articles to are often doing so because they dont that understanding. i bet this place is where they learned some of this stuff even existed in the first place.. keep your sarky point of view if you dont like dry regurgitation of facts. but we still got to present the facts. AMassiveGay (talk) 01:28, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with this generally, and I would guess most of the post-2015 RW mainspace product does this. I personally aim to write like Private Eye; concise, [perhaps] witty, often trenchant but above all, knowledgeable. I try to not use sarcasm or wit if it relies on prior knowledge or in-jokes which a significant % of folks won't get. The one thing I don't like is when somebody makes an ironic/sarcastic comment and literally links to the RW irony page or similar. I favour making links to in a way 'explain the joke' so the reader - if so inclined - can find out about something related. KarmaPolice (talk) 23:05, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Beyond preference, would this help solidify protections of the site legally under parody law? Because that whole 'out flanked by he who must not be named lawyers' is definitely not something I want to see this site do. Torrent (talk) 05:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Scribunto is available[edit]

Hey, just letting everyone know that we have Scribunto on the webservers; this should help with updating some of our more ancient Wikipedia templates. In particular, I've ported over the Template:Cite web template, as well as the underlying Module:Citation/CS1 module and it's attached files. (This template in particular now uses Scribunto for rendering.)

Do note that we do not have the relevant JSON parsing extensions installed, so if you're porting over Wikipedia templates, you should take care to inline any code that defers to that. I think this mostly will just concern our use of citation templates however. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:03, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I mentioned it in 2023, but there was no discussion then. I also imported some modules earlier but put off updating the cite templates as the old seemed to work well enough and it seemed more work. Thanks for getting that one done. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Sometimes all it takes is someone having an issue with it to get someone moving and do the necessary changes :). -- Techpriest (talk) 22:14, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
One thing remained, a bunch of tracking categories for errors etc. This can be copy-pasted for each to create any further ones: {{hiddencat}} {{wpl|{{subst:FULLPAGENAME}}}} [[Category:Maintenance categories]]
--ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:34, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Erm, can someone explain in 'Tech Stupid' what the hell this is about? KarmaPolice (talk) 22:51, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I don’t know what any of that meant either lol. I asked Techpriest to fix Template:Cite web and she came through brilliantly! Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 23:06, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Not sure what's simple enough, here's an attempt. You know templates, used all over the wiki and on Wikipedia too. On Wikipedia they grew more complex over the years, then they changed how they're made in response to that, rewriting them. Nowadays there's also modules, read up on thatWikipedia if you're curious, otherwise just think of them as the thingies which modern templates can use, much like pages can use templates. So the news is that a template we once copied from Wikipedia when it was written differently has been updated -- and the new version uses a bunch of modules. And that this generally works.

Our wiki long ago copied other Wikipedia templates too, and ours are generally 1-2 decades older than Wikipedia's current versions. Updating them means, often, copying a bunch of modules too, unlike the old versions that didn't use/need them. There's a bunch more to update eventually. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 23:20, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

My "zero tech executive summary" would be "the template engine has been updated" to something quite a bit more powerful, and brings us closer to the "template engine" Wikipedia uses. Or something like that. :)
If you like to look at code (I do! Ya, NERD!, I know :) ) you can check that web citation template. Most of the logic is held in this module, which is basically a big Lua script. This makes the template code very simple; not much more than calling the script. BobJohnson (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I'll note that if you're more comfortable with the old templating engine (I am, but I also don't like LUA lol; it's not a very good language), you can still use that one for templates that aren't moved over. I don't think we have any goals to say, move the sidebar templates over. -- Techpriest (talk) 23:47, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I've now updated the other "Cite (whatever)" templates too, as they use the same stuff which "Cite web" does. Now they should all work more like on Wikipedia today. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 00:55, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Was this necessary? I keep coming across citations that now have errors where none were before. Carthage (talk) 23:01, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
What kind of errors? Examples? --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 23:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
As an example, this citation here is now deemed ill-formatted because it contains italics in the publisher section. Carthage (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
So it works but includes a notice complaining about "bad values" at the end of each such ref. Maybe that's too pedantic with the publisher. It however also caught a typo in the date set, which I think is good. Edited.
It may be possible to disable excessive warnings (Techpriest disabled another one earlier), But for some things it may be just as well to have them.
Also, WP developed their pedantic cite templates to work with their bots as well, we don't use bots for that yet but it could potentially be done, as there's hidden tracking categories pages are added to when a ref in it is flagged with an issue. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 23:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I do that stuff manually anyway. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:16, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I apologize for being a relic from two or more uses back. i learn from context. Feel free to smoke me out, ot looks like I won't ever get it exactly rightTorrent (talk) 05:53, 22 January 2025 (UTC)