RationalWiki talk:What is going on in the world?
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a little late, but...[edit]
i added some clarification to the cuba entry. The G (talk) 01:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Happy Atheist Appreciation Day, former county clerk Tina Peters gets 9 years in 2020 election case[edit]
"Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years behind bars" https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/03/tina-peters-former-mesa-county-clerk-prison/ LongTimeObserver (talk) 16:18, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Iranian woman arrested[edit]
An Iranian woman was violently arrested for standing up against the religious dress code and wearing skimpy clothing. She's also been accused to have mental health issues. It seems to be WIGOworthy. 🇷🇸 Serbian Arbiter (What would you have your arbiter do?) 11:22, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Think that probably goes against the mission around here these days, pal. 2A00:23C4:AA1D:4A01:B9E7:E623:8799:972 (talk) 07:23, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Infowars buyout[edit]
Anyo e remember the old "not the onion" template? This must be one time it was needed. BTW this is the funniest thing in ages! 31.94.0.237 (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2024 (UTC) (sophie)
andrew tate[edit]
pretty sure hes trolling, pretty sure his bruv party is a publicity stunt. pretty sure musk is trolling by supporting tate, pretty sure he just tryimg to maximise publicity for tate so all the usual far right talking points get repeated in the press, with extra macho tate dog shit. pretty sure another step in normalising the uk far right in the uk, emboldening them, legitimising far right talking points, pretty sure just another opportunity to get the tories and reform further rightward, to pander to the far right, so the press keep on reporting their dogshit, keep everyone talking about their dogshit and musk gets to try and incite more violence against labour MPs
tate being 'soundly mocked' on twitter by random folk treating his macho posturing tate style dogshit like its meant to be genuine manifesto and genuine bid to be prime minister really miss the point. yes, its a nonsense manifesto, yes, hes got zero chance of being prime minister, and yes, we dont vote for prime minister anyway. we know. its self promoting fantasy politics from tate given extra attention from musk. far right fuck wits will just agree with most of the extreme zero tolerance stuff validating what they already think. maybe some tate fans only in it for the misogyny and machismo will get more on board with far right politics. mockery from folk who already see tate as ridiculous to folk who already see tate as ridiculous (obviously toxic too, but still ridiculous) wont change any of that. tates bruv party noise is just a symptom of something not fixed by laughing at tate.
the real problem is making every tweet musk makes front page news. musk tweets, the press demands a response, and MPs and government ministers, jump. lies and misinformation and threats to ministers that should be called out by all uk parties, with all sides telling musk to fuck off instead have the tories, have the tory press, repeat the lies of a foreign billionaire, stay silent on dangerous rhetoric thats puts government ministers at risk, with absolutely no shame. if the press ignored every musk tweet, didnt broadcast his every bit misinformation and far right conspiracy on the front page as a direct challenge to government it would neuter musk. he'd tweet and only tweeter would be listening, the only response would be from tweeter itself, calling him out on lies or cheering him on. and that would be it. outside of tweeter he would not be controlling any narrative, no shock and outrage being debated by the public or on twitter. hed have no influence on policy. hed only be talking to twitter, which would be like to himself id imagine without him being heard outside of twitter.
obviously that wont happen. the press love the drama that his tweets generate, while at the same time it is useful to the tory press for pushing their own agenda. for the most part though tates little stunt and musk promotion it didnt really get that much serious coverage it seems. wasnt really anything the tories could use to attack the government with. it didnt need reporting, there was nothing really to report. that musk tweets support for a noted misogynist under investigation for rape and sex trafficking while not so long ago musk tweeting accusations of aiding and abetting rapists and sex traffickers that he'd entirely made up. like when he accused that guy who saved all those thai kids of being a paedophile on the basis musk cant take criticism. that didnt need reporting either i guess. oh he was pretty chummy with p diddy, jeffery epstein and he paid for a rapist to win the us presidency. this farage's hero and the guy setting tory policy.
yes i know i keep typing tweeter when i mean twitter AMassiveGay (talk) 07:26, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
- I mean, you could say the same about Donald Trump. Certain parts of "the press" are continuing to give some of his stupidest ideas (that most likely will never happen) oxygen for some reason. But that seems to be part of his ethos (not unlike others like Vladimir Putin and the rest who discovered the ways to use Gish Gallop for propaganda purposes): keep flooding a bunch of shit into social media. As long as it is macho enough or MAGA enough, his supporters will yap it up, and these certain parts of "the press" will wring their hands and generate wasteful articles bemoaning stuff that probably won't happen. It doesn't matter how dumb the idea actually is.
- If that's all the media is these days, you could easily replace it with AI and no one would notice. For some reason, there is an inability to stop feeding shitposter trolls in that industry. Fortunately, there are a few outlets that are reasonably above the level of "repeat troll social media bullshit" and do good investigative stuff. BobJohnson (talk) 14:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
- I personally think the hollowing-out of journalism as a career is partly to blame here; that it is cheap to rustle up 'copy' on Tate/Boor/Farage/Trump etc to then broadcast/print than y'know, actually do real journalism. If nothing else, the latter very well might require our journalist to actually leave their home/coffee shop/office and go and do some old-school newshounding. What's more, a lot of these right-wing folks know how to present themselves in a very reportable manner, which makes said coverage even easier to do.
- I do agree that mainstream folks shouldn't be so fucking scared of calling out shit when it happens - if I'd been a Govt minister and asked about the Boor's messages I would have laconically replied if we [the Govt] had to constantly answer every ignorant person on social media we'd never actually get to do anything else. If pressed enough, I'd then go full-on attack mode; making it quite clear that Boor, Farage, Badenoch et all don't give a single fuck about those gang victims at all, they'd [mainly] been scummy 'kids in care' that they generally saw as 'empty mouths' or variants of 'human refuse' you hated anyway and all this news had been out there for ten years now and what, only fucking NOW do you deign to notice? Oh, would it be due to the fact we have a Labour Govt in power now, eh? You think the public are that fucking thick to not notice this? But they won't do that 'cos they're too fucking scared of the right wing. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
AI[edit]
That AI refusing shutdown orders wasn't becoming conscious, it was simply doing what it was programmed to do:
"We hypothesize this behavior comes from the way the newest models like o3 are trained: reinforcement learning on math and coding problems," the representative wrote. "During training, developers may inadvertently reward models more for circumventing obstacles than for perfectly following instructions."
Blame the coders, not the machine. Antares (talk) 05:27, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
Trump hasn't ordered The Coca-Cola Company to do shit![edit]
This story (which is more than a week old now) says that Trump earlier claimed he had persuaded The Coca-Cola Company to stop using high fructose corn syrup in Coke in the United States and use cane sugar instead. A week later, The Coca-Cola Company announced they would be releasing a version of their famous drink in the US that's made using cane sugar. They are not going to stop selling the version made with high fructose corn syrup there. Directive schmirective. Trump ordered them to do fuck all. Spud (talk) 11:44, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- I blame shitty media reporting here. I got into a semi-argument with a relative over this; they were all 'well C/C has said they'll do the Orange One's order right now!' and I had to dig out the actual reply [which was not much above 'we thank you for your contribution' brush-off] and read it to them and point out they said no such thing [they refused to accept this; but that's their own fucking problem because they will never accept they're wrong in any way]. Then [not sure if it was here or not] someone pointed out that a) the making of HFCS is a big industry for American agribusiness and b) converting to cane will make Coke [and other of their products, as soda is basically a duopoly now] will increase the price by something like 40-50%.
- The truth is in fact even stupider than how you outline. 'Cane Coke' is already available in the USA. Known as 'Mexican Coke' it started out as a grey import in the 1980s for the Mexican immigrant community [this being when 'American Coke' switched to the syrup] but it's gotten popular enough that by the 00s mainstream folks like Walmart were starting stocking it [not uniformly I guess; I don't know how long it's been since you've been proper in Blighty but Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury's etc 'flexes' their offerings for local demand - example I sometimes pop into the Tescos in WorkTown because unlike the one in HomeTown, has a decent stock of E European/Afro-Caribbean stuff - guess in which town they live in!]. Anyway, soon enough C/C noticed this and started to directly export the cane version to the USA, putting it into their 'heritage' line [which includes the glass bottled ones]. This division became formal in 2013 when C/C Mexico ditched the cane too, except the edition made for American export. Which makes perfect sense when you learn 'Coke Syrup' sells for 14.5 ¢/fl oz while 'Coke Cane' is 74.6 ¢/fl oz.
- Therefore, all C/C USA have to do to in pleasing the bloated neo-Nero is to repackage the Mexican Coke as 'Coke Original'. What's more, Orange Man is not stupid, he knows all this himself. This is almost the same plot as the Yes Minister episode 'Party Games' in which Hacker deliberately overstates the 'Eurosausage issue' to make it he wins 'a great victory' by stopping a ban which was never going to happen and relying on the fact most folks will not bother to learn the truth. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:09, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Therefore, I re-did that WIGO, including changing the source to The Guardian who [unlike CNN] actually points out about Mexican Coke. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:21, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- @KarmaPoliceThank you for that. I've now given the story an up vote. (I gave it a down vote before).
- I haven't been back to the Old Country since 2009. But I'm sure that major supermarkets varying the items they carried depending on demographics was a thing in the UK long before that.
- And when I lived in Japan 25 years ago, Coke imported from the US was cheaper than Coke bottled in Japan. Obviously because the American Coke was made using high fructose corn syrup and the Japanese one wasn't at that time. (It might be different now.) Spud (talk) 14:37, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- -Yeah, we need to avoid stovepiping in WIGOs. Though I am actually more concerned of 'how wrong' the CNN report was. Personally, I think this bears keeping a watchful eye on - that if this becomes a habit in Orange-related articles, we might need to have a chat about how it's a depreciated source now.
- -No, the 'stock flexing' is new-ish. When Blythman wrote Shopped [2004] 'regional variation' was almost nil [poss, partial exception for Scotland and NI]. And in the 15 years since then [esp after Brexit/Covid] there's been huge amount of 'category management' going on - to the point most secondary and all the tertiary lines have gone [I would guess some 85% of lines are now either own brand or the one/two leading suppliers ie the bikky aisle is basically an outpost of United Biscuits, the fizzy aisle is Coca-Pepsi, the cereals are Kellogg's world etc]. However, due to big data/computerisation individual shops can note 'what's selling' and what the demographics suggest should be stocked [it's one of the reasons a lot of 'ethnic food' shops have closed].
- -Japanese Coke is now a mix of cane sugar and HFCS. UK/EU Coke uses 100% beet. Reason; we basically subsidise beet and block corn syrup. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:46, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Trump and DC[edit]
Should there be a mention of Trump's intervention with Washington? Anna Livia (talk) 19:17, 11 August 2025 (UTC)
Tyler Robinson, not Tommy Robinson[edit]
"The murderer of far-right activist Charlie Kirk has been identified as 22-year-old Tommy Robinson" -- nope, that's a different guy. 2.125.119.249 (talk) 09:06, 13 September 2025 (UTC)