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Collapse of the Assad regime in Syria

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/08/syria-bashar-al-assad-damascus-rebels-latest-updates-live

Looks like a government collapses. What is next? --Trans Fem Agenda 12:51, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

While the collapse has been less 'sudden' than outsiders think [here's a Foreign Policy thinkpiece from July which shows how the regime was clearly crumbling and it's economy has been falling to bits for years] I suspect it was still too sudden for the opposition forces to really start thinking of the 'post Assad regime'. There's two complicating factors; the fact the opposition was not in anyway a 'unified front' [unlike say, the Afghan Taliban] where senior members can simply have govt posts distributed to them and the looks that part of said collapse was due to significant defections from the ruling regime.

In short; classic power vacuum. We have a rag-tag of Sunni opposition groups with no guiding ideology past 'get rid of Baathists', a load of defected Baathists who are hoping to retain as much power as realistically possible to stop revenge/justice, the 'sectarian' forces of Alawites, Druze and Christian fearing future pogroms [esp as a lot (esp Alawites) are heavily tainted by being part of the Assad regime], a load of very well-armed Kurds which have no real interest of being in this 'Syria' thing [which Turkey also hates like poison], a few 'technocratic' types who'd like to simply 'get shit running again' and a plethora of organised crime groups who will fight to either coopt, defang or destroy anyone who resists their control of whatever they fucking want. What else? Oh, remains of ISIS still wandering the desert [literally] and a load of prison camps filled with those cargos of poison which might end up being 'opened'.

The only 'good' thing in this case is that due to lack of Western resources, bandwidth and in Trump's case, actually giving a shit about the situation that a neocon/lib 'installing of democracy' is very unlikely to happen. Which sounds cuntish, but let's remember this shit does not work. Perhaps the most realistic 'best case' is that within days, we see a troika of major faction leaders form, install a somewhat 'rough and ready' power structure and then successfully rope in the majority of the minor 'acceptable' factions in a kind of modern feudal system. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Al-Julani has made a remarkable rhetorical transformation these last few years. Let's see how sincere it was.-Flandres (talk) 16:42, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

It wouldn't surprise me if the Kurds went for a separate Kurdish state. That was the de facto position before the fall of Assad anyway. On the other hand, Erdoğan would have a fit. ^{— Unsigned, by: Bob M / talk / contribs}

There's rumours that Assad is either a) dead or b) in the UAE. It seems only two 'trackable' planes left govt-controlled areas yesterday - an civilian Airbus going to Sharjah and a military Il-76 which seemed to be heading towards the Russian naval base on the coast, but then veered eastwards, began to lose height and then vanished from the long-range radar. It could have been shot down [the Syrian military had this capability so rebels could have got their mitts on it] but it's also possible they turned the transponders off and were going to make a run over northern Iraq into Iran.

At last report, Assad has taken "asylum" in Russia. This makes sense. If nothing else, it would look bad--even for Putin-- to abandon the man they have supported for years to the vagaries of revolutionary "justice", which could mean anything from exile (already done?) to a firing squad. Kencolt (talk) 19:28, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Totally irrelevant, I know. But I have a bit of a morbid curiosity to topic of the 'end of dictators'. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Why does Syria matter? I'll be honest and say all I know of the country I learned in the last hour skimming RationalWiki and other pages about the place... doesn't seem to be any "good guys" at all in civil war that was occurring... so why the need for any foreign intervention? Innocents are dying, yes; and more would likely, and have died, with interventions. Is Syria so important for economics or the nonsense "balance of power" chess game that politicians play? The country is in ruins from the prolonged fighting anyways apparently. If a nation bordering Syria wants to get involved for their own security, I could understand that reasoning... though it could be argued how positive doing so would be compared to going after domestic organizations that are involved and profiting off the situation. Countries like Canada and the US, truly why does Syria matter? Better to let the country have some time to fix itself, one way or another. Impiricism (talk) 18:34, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Realpolitik time.

1/ Syria has a butt-load of advanced military kit we wouldn't like to see fall into the wrong hands.

2/ It's believed Syria has chemical/biological weapons we really wouldn't like to see go walkies.

3/ We don't want another massive Syrian refugee wave hitting Europe.

4/ We don't want a prolonged power vacuum because it may lead to the restoring of 'peak ISIS' [remember when they got powerful enough they basically 'marched on Baghdad', the Iraqi Govt shat itself, armed anyone who would resist and thank fuck, actually did?]

5/ The fall of Assad cuts of a main supply-line to Hezbollah and we'd prefer it not to be restored.

6/ If we can get a mildly anti Iranian/Russian regime in Damascus this means those Russian bases are gone and weakens their power/status in-region.

7/ If we can get a mildly anti Israeli regime in Damascus this means outright war is unlikely [the other option being 'rabidly anti-Israel'.

8/ It's probably best that Syria does not become an obvious puppet/vassal of Turkey.

KarmaPolice (talk) 19:08, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

There are other points - some associated with what you have said. On (2) the reason that it is believed that the regime had chemical weapons is because it used them various times against it's own people. On (3) it is entirely possible that we will see a wave of Syrian leaving Europe and returning to Syria. That's that's going to depend on how the other points play out but it would only be a good thing it it happened.

It's also important because it demonstrates the current weakness of Syria's erstwhile supporters- Hezbollah, Iran and Russia.

I would argue that the secular groups fighting to get rid of Assad and the Kurds who fought against both ISIS and Assad (before Trump left them in the lurch) are the closest thing to "good guys" in the conflict.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:29, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Do a foreign intervention to get rid of "weapons of mass destruction"... that sounds familiar; how did a backwater third-world country get such advanced weaponry in the first place again? For the other reasons listed, they are literally the bullshit "balance of powers" chess game mentioned. I know that a nation is likely putting itself at a disadvantage not playing such games when other unscrupulous entities will play... it does not make it any better though. The reasons are bullshit but I know that they're valid too... I just wish the world and people were different where those reasons would not exist. Impiricism (talk) 01:06, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Adding to the significance, the two bases that Russia has in Syria, one air and one naval, are Russia's only two military bases that are not located in a former Soviet state. The likelihood that Russia could retain either of those bases at this point is slim given that the leader of the strongest rebel group (HTS) has spoken against future foreign intervention in Syria. The loss of those bases would seem to significantly weaken Russia's global reach, particularly in Africa. Turkey would also benefit from the return of most of the 4-million Syrian refugees to Syria, and this is probably why Turkey was backing HTS despite, along with the US and Russia, labeling HTS as a terrorist group, and despite recently trying to negotiate their return with Assad. Israel also participated to some extent in Assad's downfall with regular bombings of the Syrian militia in Syria, probably adding to the existing demoralization. Why did the Syrian military collapse so quickly? Syrian military officers were reportedly being paid as little as the equivalent of $10/month! Russia has to be rethinking who they can cooperate with in future: it doesn't look like Israel or Turkey are possibilities in the near future. Three (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian Army) of four (Houthis in Yemen) of Iran's proxy armies are now greatly weakened or eliminated. It must be causing rethinking the wisdom of these decisions. There were more moderate politicians in Iran who questioned their wisdom in the past. The cost of supplying Hezbollah was very high for Iran over the years, particularly for a country under sanctions. Iranians have often complained about the cost of living, which is directly related to the sanctions and the adventurism. Bongolian (talk) 03:21, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Turkey's designs for Syria are just as self-interested as Iran's are/were. Turkey massacres Kurdish populations in Syria, Turkey has used Syrian mercenaries to conduct war crimes in Artsakh, and has engaged in forced deportations of Syrian refugees. If I was a Syrian Kurd, I would be very nervous right now. And while it is indisputably a good thing that Assad is gone, the group that has replaced him are literally just "not Al-Qaeda." We should be careful not to engage in whitewashing here. Carthage (talk) 08:16, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Israel is stealing more land in Syria. They just can't help themselves, can they? Carthage (talk) 08:08, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Just a note on the notion that pre civil war Syria was ”a backwater third-world country”. Syria was a fairly well educated society (as seen by a lot of the resourceful refugees who tended to have better chances of getting to Europe and often quickly found work).

Damascus used to be seen as one of the cultural and educational centres in the Arab world and the Ba’ath Party tended to look for inspiration to the USSR and its penchant for solid technical/engineering education, as it would both allow the training of industrial engineers more broadly and specifically those needed for a domestic arms industry.

You don’t have to be some industrial superpower to produce the kind of chemical weapons Syria was pursuing. As long as you have even a moderately sophisticated chemical industry and decide to dedicate state resources to it, getting chemical weapons is a lot easier than going nuclear.

As Syria had worked on its chemical weapons programme for literally decades (since daddy Assad took over in the 1970s) and had decided to arm itself to the teeth for yet another possible rematch with Israel (realising what that would mean in terms of crossing the US), it’s not a huge mystery that a state with a fairly well educated pre war population of more than 20 million (or at least enough of its workforce having the necessary qualifications), along with its own petrochemical industry and able to rely on oil exports for hard currency could and would field such weapons.

Indeed, you could argue that the large Syrian stockpile of chemical weapons was a move analogous to the massive stockpile of conventional weapons and extensive fortification programme in communist Albania when that country ended up being run by a dictator (Enver Hoxha) who had alienated the major surrounding powers. While Syria was never as isolated as Albania or had pissed off all of the major powers as much, it did end up not being that closely allied to any of them either and with a dictator (the elder Assad) who was keen on not being too reliant on foreign support, either. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I also would like to caution against the kind of chauvinist thinking that leads to the sentence "how can this backwater third world nation construct chemical weapons," as if the Global South and the people in it are inferior in capability to the Global North. It's that kind of thinking that led to the US getting its ass kicked in Afghanistan and Vietnam. Carthage (talk) 19:01, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's exactly that, more like thinking that Syria has a level of industrial, scientific and technical development of say, Mali. I remember seeing similar in the runup to the Ukraine War, where a lot of Western [often American] commentators etc 'failed' to notice that while clearly outgunned and outnumbered, no Ukraine did have her own metal/bodies/brains and a decent indigenous military production capacity to support it in an 'Industrial Era' war. And as Wombat points out, no Syria was not Mali - perhaps pre-War only a little behind Ukraine. What's more, making chemical weapons isn't that hard; the science and engineering isn't 'secret' and almost all the tech needed is dual-use [so countries can import it without too many eyebrows]. The most difficult bit is turning the poisons into viable delivery systems and kitting out your own people with decent anti-chem kit, which is the sort of shit Western spies are always watching out for [we knew Russia wasn't going to use chem/bio in combat in Ukraine because to this date they've not broken out the NBC respirators etc for their troops... yet] but in this case 95% of the work was done in advance because Soviet military doctrine stressed NBC fighting and so Syria [like Iraq] had the kit etc already lying about. Case in point; ISIS is believed to have manufactured/used mustard gas by '15 and after they conquered Mosul in '17 they started to ramp up production of chorine and if I remember right, was attempting to develop missile delivery systems. Plus, Hoxha's Albania did have chemical weapons; after the regime's fall thousands of drums of mustard gas and means to use it in battle were discovered.

Anyway, Assad's 'fall' was somewhat on the cards for some time. Syria's economic development has been fairly poor since the 90s and got worse after Saddam fell because it meant Assad couldn't make money off sanctions-busting [a common tactic was to import cut-rate Iraqi oil and use it domestically, so they could then export more Syrian oil at market rates]. By 2015 the Syrian 'economic base' wasn't big enough to support a military strong enough to defeat the rebels, and Russian/Iranian support was pivotal because it gave extra capabilities beyond what they could actually 'afford'. But now Russia and Iran are hurting, and don't have the means to be so generous [Russia appears to have almost exhausted their Soviet-era weapons piles which might explain why we're seeing sixty year old tanks and seventy year old APCs with infantry using century-plus old rifles. if we go back any further we're going to be seeing cavalry and prop fighter planes] while the Syrian economic capacity is a lot smaller due to over a decade of war. This was translated in Syria by actions such as removal of fuel/food subsidies to the population and a partial demobilisation. What kind of regime cuts shit which buys them public support and actual forces during a civil war [admittedly one which had gotten rather stale and cold]? One which no longer has the economic base to support it. The economic stats don't lie: electricity production [from 2010] -80%, gas -60%, oil -90%, wheat -70%, olive oil -75%, cattle -30%, sheep/goats -40%, chicken -65%, water facilities -65%, cotton -85%, soybeans -99%, sunflowers -100%, industrial output -30%. To some extent Syria by 2024 had become 'a backwater third-world country'. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:09, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Even Mali is a "backwater" only by valuation. If we consider the Global North to be the global core, and the Global South to be the periphery, then yes, Mali and Syria are "third-world backwaters." I am not disputing that global inequities in development exist; I'm questioning the valuation that leads to labels like "third-world backwaters" being thrown around uncritically. Wombat did a good job of refuting the notion that Syria's status as a member of the global south must have meant it was always a failed state, or just about, but it's still worth questioning the valuation that leads to lines of logic like "how can this third-world shithole possess such marvels of chemical engineering. It had to have been provided by somebody else." Carthage (talk) 10:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

i think part of the reason brics is forming is because of this patronizing rhetoric about so-called "third world" countries. sure, the "global south" (itself not a term without its controversies) isn't a monolith, but they aren't uncivilized savages or anything like that. (for example, see brazil, arguably a major player in scientific research that gave the world an aviation pioneer.) i mean, look at how many students pursuing advanced degrees in the first world/global north are international students. assad himself is an ophthalmologist by profession who was educated in england as well as in his native syria. The G (talk) 20:16, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, most folks are ignorant. They don't even understand the accurate position of their own country (or what sustains it/they arrived at it), let alone other lands. If they think of other lands, the 'internal image' is either obsolete/biased/incorrect. Reporting bias is an issue; I mean there has precious 'positive' to report from 'the Muslim world' for example for decades - Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq? The first three are clearly 'basketcases' and the forth not much better. Even the 'rich Gulf states' stereotype has some basis in fact - that folks understand that they pay Western professionals etc very well mainly that their own lands are relatively incapable of producing their own (though in this case, it's by choice).

I have little belief BRICS will go far - it's at best a 'negative alliance' of NotPoor nations which are pissed at the US/Euro stranglehold on international orgs etc. China has nil interest in making a bloc which doesn't have them in charge, most nations aren't interested in exchanging one boss for another and how the fuck can it work when China and India are firm rivals? Nah, it's just a talking shop. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:19, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

as an american who holds brazilian citizenship, i don't see brics replacing the dollar anytime soon, either. in fact, speaking as a casual observer with no strong opinions, i think brics is a protest of what they view as western chauvinism (a view not entirely without its merits) at least, and an economic alliance or partnership (albeit a loose one) at most. The G (talk) 05:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Doctors and tyrants

Engineers and woo, meet doctors and dictators. Carthage (talk) 10:35, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Thinking about how surgeons and that are able to hold things together when assisting with nightmare injuries or illnesses, I've always thought that they must have some type of detachment from the people they're seeing (i.e it's just a piece of meat with maggots in it, definitely not a living person's gangrenous arm). Impiricism (talk) 15:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Hm. That does sound like something we could write an article on if we can find more sources to confirm that it's an actual trend and not some weird coincidence. LeCapraGrande (talk) 22:32, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I was recently in India on a work trip, and my much younger coworker and I were talking (through a translator) to a man who had 25 year old burns on both legs that never properly healed; our job was to ask what people could do to help him. When he showed them, scarred and sloughing off flaps of skin all over, we had opposite reactions. She's never seen anything like this, and was so upset she had to leave (which was fine, there's a reason we were together); I have seen a few gory things before, and I figured if he'd been the one with his legs burned raw for 25 years, I could stand there and talk to him for a couple minutes. As hard as it was to see, I was so much better off than he was that I owed it to him to stay there and hear him out. At the end, though I couldn't do anything right then and there, he thanked me and said it meant a lot that we were the first people who'd ever bothered to just ask him how someone could make his life better, that made it worth having done it. Takes a certain personality and mentality, for sure. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:31, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

In more general terms, I'm reminded of a comment from a reporter over the British doctor's strike earlier this year - 'negotiating with doctor's unions is terrible. They're full of doctors, who are hugely arrogant. I suspect it's due to them having to make life-death decisions over people every day'. Part of this could be a 'piece of meat' mentality caused by case-hardening but I also suspect there's a [mild] case of 'institutionalised narcissism' going on, partly because doctors need to make said judgement calls all the time and you can't do this if you're constantly riddled with doubt. From what I can tell, a lot of medical establishments [esp traditionally] are very hierarchical and frankly authoritarian - patients don't question staff, nurses don't question doctors, doctors don't question the dept heads etc. Like military people, this might indoctrinate a 'respect chain 'o command' mentality which ends up being in dictatorial regimes.

Lastly, we need to be a little wary in thinking all our doctor-tyrants wanted to be doctors. Some of the 'third world' examples might have become doctors because it was one of the very few chances of getting an advanced, Western education for free, and/or that they saw the 'respect' being given to the white coat. For a long time, a 'medical degree' was one of the few you could actually get from a university [the other one being 'theology', with the resultant effect of lots of not-very-religious imams/priests/etc taking positions of worldly power]. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘this would make a great blog entry. The G (talk) 03:35, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

i just added it to blogs. The G (talk) 04:27, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Writing Advice

I wanted to ask if anyone on the wiki has writing advice. I don't know if the wiki has some artists among scientists and academics, but if there are some then what would be good tips to writing a good story? I'm 25 and starting from almost scratch. Does anyone have advice for fiction and/or creative writing? And for academics, does anyone have advice to improve academic writing? Especially from someone who never learned what paraphrasing was in college and only used direct quotes. I'd like to do better with my writing. ModeratelyR3 (talk) 00:23, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Practice at writing is important. Beginning fiction writers can find local writers' groups helpful for critiquing each others work in a group setting. I have heard from a reliable source that Walter Mosley's book "This Year You Write Your Novel" is very helpful. For science writing, practice is also important: read quality popular science, such as Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/) or Scientific American. Another way to practice if you can get a chance is proof-reading scientists' writing before it gets published. Bongolian (talk) 08:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

'When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films".' - Quentin Tarantino.

So read. Lots. Fiction, non-fiction, fictionalised non-fiction. Essays, journalism, novels. Familiarise yourself with 'the classics' as well as modern bestsellers. Do critical reading; as in you properly sit down and engage in the text - noting how the writer has assembled the tale they're presenting to you as well as the tale itself. Sit down, dig out your favourite novels and write reviews on them. The fact nobody will [most likely] ever read the reviews is irrelevant; they're exercises in both writing analysis [the text] and your own writing skills [the review]. Do similar with some of your most hated novels also - to set down what is wrong with the damn thing. After awhile, you'll start to be able to intelligently critique what you've read - what 'works' and what doesn't and so on. Over time, extend yourself from reviews to essays/short stories, slowly working your way up.

Pure academic writing is somewhat different, as it's geared around the concise and accurate transmission of information [while 'soft' nonfiction aims to also entertain somewhat]. It's very similar to 'technical writing' such as instruction manuals, except the 'assumed knowledge' level is a lot higher. Academic writing has a reputation of a turgid, prolix and polysyllabic style which is partly justified - half the time it's simply that your 'knowledge level' is simply too low to understand, while the other half is the fact the author(s) weren't really taught how to write in their uni course [I think this is partly why computer game stories are poor when compared to other mediums; game-maker courses focus on the 'sciency' nuts/bolts but not the 'creative' storytelling side. I know folks in the industry, and their 'creative training' was basically zero]. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:48, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

There will be plenty of groups in 'the usual social media' - with different levels of friendliness and ranging from 'fairly vanilla' to 'grimdark and dead dove', and particular areas of interest. Possibly also explore fanfic (check the listing of fanfic terminology).

The chief points are to write as well as you can, do not annoy the readers or the characters, and 'your taste is not my taste, and that's OK.' Anna Livia (talk) 18:43, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

This is why I said 'read lots and review them'. Because when it comes down to people saying whether a work is 'good' or 'bad' is often only done on the criteria of 'I liked it' or not - for example, almost all the praise for Atlas Shrugged is from folks who sign up for Rand's fucked-up philosophy while others who cite the Bible are either Christians or those giving it 'the respect it deserves' as the keystone of a global religion. Yet, from an objective POV, both are poor works - as in 'the technical skill of the writers is poor'. On the other way, you can read a work where the 'story' left you cold but you could appreciate the technical skill displayed by the author. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:09, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I always wondered about the issues with Rand. I have been debating about reading any of her work. I was a bit turned off by the summary of Atlas Shrugged but I thought The Fountainhead sounded like an interesting story. It sounds like an artist going against a system to innovate his expression of creation; which I always thought was a leftist theme. I still also think that individualism is not always bad but do agree that it can be toxic. Though I hope that isn't a balance fallacy. I also think that collectivism can lead to toxic outcomes as well but also now see some of the benefits of collectivism in a society. And finally, I am curious about the criticism of technical quality in the Bible. What technical criticisms do you see that I overlooked? Also, I never read the whole bible only parts of it, and I am an agnostic. ModeratelyR3 (talk) 01:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Probably one of the more interesting contemporary reviews of Atlas Shrugged came from Whittaker Chambers in the National Review. I say "interesting" because there's a shade of similarity in their backgrounds -- Rand disliked communism because the Bolshevik Revolution seriously fucked her bourgeois Russian family up; Chambers originally was an American commie spy, but reversed his viewpoint and became fully conservative after Stalin's murderous bullshittery. Rand's writing issues are described within that review, which could be summarized as: A) two-dimensional black-and-white writing; B) too long-winded; C) too preachy.

Rand succeeded in spite of her poor writing simply because she wrote a polemic for bourgeois assholes who think they know everything, and there's plenty of people like that out there. Basically, you can throw a lot of "good writing rules" out the window when it comes to politics / religious / cult / grift shit, in addition to other categories such as exploitation or pulp. "Marketing" and "audience targeting" is far more important for these categories. BobJohnson (talk) 03:03, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Rand's also been criticised due to poor characterisation and plots that don't really make sense; the bits of Shrugged I tried to read more than anything else told me that Rand didn't seem to really get how either companies or people actually functioned - from the idea that an 'exec strike' would instantly cause everything to stop because they're so damn productive [and the lower ranks can't do anything without their constant guidance] or the fact Rearden is a dickwad straight out of a Horatio Alger story which unless he completely worked alone all the way is stealing at least partial credit for his new alloy from the sci/tech folks in his employ who helped it possible [it's like Bill Gates claiming every MS product until 2014 was his work and his alone, when reality states the last project he personally worked on in a 'coal-face' capacity was the BASIC interpreter in 1983 and the last product he had any supervisory input on was Windows XP in 2001]. Fountainhead is a bit better [from the synopsis at least] but not by much; it goes from 'inexplicable' to merely 'unlikely' events-chain - in this respect, The Simpsons episode 'Pokey Mom' regarding the prison artist 'Jack Crowley' is perhaps a better story about 'keeping true to your art' than Fountainhead. It is, if nothing else a lot quicker to consume. If you genuinely wish to think about the merits of individualism/collectivism you'd be a lot better-served actually reading say, nonfiction studies of that issue. But again, why do you seem to think that 'being creative' is a leftist thing?

The Bible sucks as a text to read because it's a random cobbling together of loads of different texts, by different people, in different styles, with a welter of contradictions and with varying purposes. Just think - as a rule, we do not have a professional class of 'literature explainers', do we? Most folks can fathom the plot from a Dickens novel or the meanings from Ayn Rand without professional support, as long as their reading level was high enough. But no; when it comes to scripture, we need someone to explain to us what each bit means. This shows if nothing else, it is very poorly written from a technical POV. It's the only text which I've encountered in my life where it's regularly encouraged for you to read a commentary alongside the main text - even the 'Student Guides' for texts are much more merely 'memory aids' along with not that subtle hints on what the exam questions might be. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:01, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Personal Questions about Self

I know that this is the second time I used the Saloon for advice, but I wanted to ask everyone something about identity and experience. I am a 25-year-old from Texas who graduated from UNT. I wanted to know if this is a detrimental factor to my character rather than something positive or interesting. Basically, after reading the Texas page and also noticing creationist scientists came from Texas and even UNT. It made me wonder whether I need to move somewhere like New York or Massachusetts with a better education ranking or if UNT is still a respectable university to learn at (especially since it is closest to me). I also have sentimentality for Texas as I have lived here all my life and believe there are good things about its culture that aren't always rooted in racism, intolerance, bigotry, or ignorance. It feels like I am going through a quarter-life crisis about my identity. And want to know if someone from the Lone Star state could stand on the same level of understanding, empathy, intelligence, and creativity as someone from The Big Apple. ModeratelyR3 (talk) 19:16, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Don't let the classists get you down. Carthage (talk) 19:49, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

There is no obvious 'red flags'; it's not a diploma mill, a fundie outfit, some 'weirdo' experimental place and/or an overpriced daycare for the rich to park their stupid spawn at. There has been folks who have graduated more 'tainted' places [think say, ex-Mormons who went to Brigham Young] where they've gone on 'to live it down', even if they'd studied theology. So some unpleasants went to the same place as you - that can be said for any place. UNT has 448,000 living alumni [as of 2020]. I'm sure there's going to be few murderers, fraudsters, drug dealers and sex offenders in there somewhere too.

Don't sweat it. In ten years, most folks won't give a real damn where you went - because it's the shit you've done since which matters. Nobody's asked me where I went to school for years and very rarely what Uni I went to. At most, you'll have future employers looking it up to see 'how good' it is [which will usually be by judging it's rankings] and leave it at that [which means you're more likely going to be dinged for it 'being an average uni' than any personal associations. The only shit which is really 'on your permanent record' are major convictions, registration as a sex offender, personal bankruptcy and being a wanted criminal - everything else shall fade to nothingless eventually. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:12, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

To give one example, Rice University is a university with a very good reputation nationally, located in Houston Texas.

My thoughts on college: pick a set to target based on what career you want to have, as well some consideration for what the job prospects are within the surrounding area. You wouldn't want to stay in Texas for instance if you are aiming to be, say, a NYC Wall Street Big Finance career type. But if you are aiming for, say, some technical job at a Texas energy firm, a Texas university would fit. Sure it's possible to get recruited out of state, especially if there are no jobs in what you are good at in the area (one of my wife's family now works in Los Angeles because Louisiana is a shithole for comp sci jobs). But a lot of job recruitment is local, especially for a more "regional" university like UNT. It helps to have places to intern and network etc. BobJohnson (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I'll also say that sometimes you can have a case where while the establishment is not generally thought that well of, a particular degree/section of it is. For example, here in Blightly the 'University of Hertfordshire' is derided as being one of the worst in country [last year #84th out of 130] and with traditionally very low entry requirements but it's Nursing degree is very well-thought of. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:30, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

be proud of where you are from if you want to. im sure there is plenty to be proud of. texan culture and character, a texan lifestyle certainly distinct enough and uniquely texan enough to be an attractive place for many. similarly new york has its own thing going on and thats deeply attractive to lots of people too. seem like very different places very different vibes. someone attracted to life one place might be repelled by life in the other place. it must stuck to live in the one place while yearning for the other. if you stuck in new york and you hate everything about the city and dream of rodeos and coweboys and wide open spaces, you probably more fucked than being texan and pining for the big apple. being a state, a massive one at that, there are big cities to move to. wont be the same as ny, but a whole lot closer to a cosmopolitan metropolis vibe than you would be trying to recreate life on the range in new york city.

i shouldnt feel inferior to folk from new york either. all big cities have an allure that draws people to them, draws all attention locally, nationally, and places like new york, globally. its not that they have a greater levels 'understanding, empathy, intelligence, and creativity'. its that for anyone wirth these traits, big cities usually present more opportunities to shine. they are not unique to big cities or new york specifically. and never forget while ny gave us the creativity of, for example, lou reed it also gave us donald trump. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:23, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I read the question as more as OP wondering whether their attendance of said Uni would be a 'CV stain' ie something crap which would later impede professional progress. That perhaps they need to some post-grad work at a 'better' Uni to improve employability. I'm very ill suited to give anything more than very very general advice and would personally suggest they either reach out to either someone already established in the career they'd like and/or ask for advice from a lecturer at their Uni which they respect/have built up some personal rapport with for advice. I wouldn't suggest careers advisor/centres because the consensus I've heard both sides of the Pond is that they suck hugely. KarmaPolice (talk)

You generally do not need to consider "culture", as far as pure employment goes, if you aren't going to some crackpot school / diploma mill. A "school" like Liberty University is only useful if you want employment in the fundie system. Something like UNT is fine. Of course, whether or not you fit in with / like the culture can play a role in the decision process... but it is sort of separate. I'm not a big fan of Texas "as a whole" personally... but that is my opinion and mine alone. If you like Texas culture, great! Obviously there are "pockets for everyone" in practically every state, too, it's not like the whole state is all Fundie Hicksville or some other lame stereotype. (I mean, despite my overall opinion, I did like Austin... though I haven't been back in years and have heard rumors that it's not as delightfully quirky as it used to be.)

There are a few caveats to this, though. The "racism, intolerance, bigotry, or ignorance" may matter if you are going into a field by the politics of such. For example, elements of women's health are affected by the fundies' medically ignorant obsession with abortion, so if that is your career path, I would think avoiding fundie states (Texas included) would be a priority. Different states have different economic models and that may play a factor. Texas has no state income tax and is more affordable than many places, but has New England-level property taxes and some other "gotchas". If you plan on having kids, the mediocre level of Texas public education could also be a factor (though US education varies wildly by town or even district, the big Dominionism private-Jesus school push in Texas by a few Jesus freak oil CEOs would worry me personally). Long-term, Texas is... not the best positioned state for the effects of climate change.

In other words, I don't think one needs to worry about "CV stain"... that is not an issue. But factors like the above might. Or might not. "It's all up to you" in the end. BobJohnson (talk) 04:29, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I've read all of the responses and thank everyone for their feedback. It also helped me remember a couple of details I forgot to mention in the main post. I never thought of my state as a tainted place. I've always loved Texas and still think it's a great state that could stand against others like New York Massachusetts. I do know that our history has problems but I would like to think we have some positive elements. RW has opened my eyes up a bit though. For instance, I did learn about the Mexican-American War but still see The Battle of the Alamo as a historic and heroic last stand. But I do know part of the reason for the war as a whole (something that wasn't abolished until 1865). My goals in life are to be a writer and game developer, and I have questioned whether I can do that because it feels like my life has taken a massive realization. I recently found myself on Breadtube and it's made me question a lot. And I have found myself becoming more left-leaning. But also uncertain as to whether I have a story as a 25-year-old straight, white, middle-class male who lived in Texas all his life. Or if I am destined to be a "lit-bro" or outdated writer or creator. And I did want to go back to UNT because it's the closest college to me and I always found it nice. And I am still learning things about life I should have learned at 18. I'm growing up pretty slowly but making progress. I thought UNT would be a good college to do a Master's degree, earn Academic Certificates or even to learn in general. I didn't know if moving to a more left-leaning state was required to be a good writer or person. Because I still think Texas has a great setting with potential for fiction, stories, and video games; and I can rehabilitate its image, small towns, and rural landscapes as something good and not bad. I mean the small towns and metros and some of the cities and rural landscapes are the settings I grew up in. The experiences that could serve as my inspiration. I don't, however, have a deep theme like race, gender, or sexuality so I worry my stories will be bland or boring or quickly outdated. Finally, I wanted to ask whether any evangelical/religious/ college could be a decent school. I have a relative who went to Letourneau but then transferred to UNT to be closer to family; though their degree was in a scientific field. Yet they miss the school because they made friends there (it was their first year). Anyway, that's my response. If this clears anything up or makes sense or doesn't at all, please let me know.ModeratelyR3 (talk) 14:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

it's important to be familiar with your state. I was born in Kansas, my family moved from wichita a to a trailer park outside of Lawrence, to a tiny house in a really good neighborhood in Shawnee Mission, and I did meet a couple kids from first nations as an American kid, and a black family back at the trailer. I think it is important to know what makes you an American kid, but also to grow into an American adult. Race is a stupid qualifier. Religion is also a dumb way to value the people who you rely on. I drove through rural Kansas one time to help a friend get some clay. I was born in the state, but woof. I am still in the Midwest but it blows my mind how many vehicles rock a 'thin blue line' 'punisher' mashup decal, it's truly awful and has been for a long time. Liking the Punisher and the police at the same time is insane. Torrent (talk) 09:13, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure where the OP is trying to get at here. I mean, first off being 'creative' isn't a 'leftwing activity'. Creatives live to be creative; that while some have a political POV which guides them [or more often, beliefs which both guide them and led to their political ideology] but there's plenty of those who are in a strict sense of the term are fairly apolitical. The main thing which makes them appear 'leftwing' in current American society right now is because the authoritarian cult which is Trump has effectively submerged which is now counted as 'the right'. And regardless to their political leanings, 'creatives' in general suck at being orthodox partisans and they're even less attracted to movements/ideologies which consider their creative output as nothing more than 'propaganda'. It's why closed societies suck at creative output; why the likes of the Soviet Union praised 'proletarian literature' over the 'dissident' literature which we still appreciate today, Nazi Germany banished/killed genuine artists while paying millions for softcore 'Aryan Art' for big galleries which almost nobody wants now and why fundie Christian films are truly terrible - they don't need to be 'good' on a creative level, because the work is judged as good/bad on the ideology of the message alone.

The second bit seems to be a bit of a complaint of 'young-ish person doesn't have much life experience to write about'. Firstly, I doubt you have no experiences to write about - I mean I am neither born c1999, straight, growing up middle-class or having lived in Texas [or anywhere] for all my life so you've clearly have had experiences/stories which I have not [and vice-versa]. In fact, your very usage of the term 'middle class' kinda demands explanation - what is 'middle class'? How old were you when you realised there were 'rungs of society', how old were you when you started to accurately gauge your folks' position on it? How did you act when you realised you were in a situation where you were around folks who were 'outside' of your group? [See, that's a story in itself]. Next, there's the gonzo method - ie 'consciously go out and create/observe experiences'. Lastly, there's gaining experiences second-hand; from chatting to folks who are NotYou to simply 'fly on walling' - ie observing/listening to folks out in public. The cadences and topics of folks on the train, the barista-customer interaction, the shopping baskets at the supermarket. But c'mon, there's lot of creative stuff which doesn't require 'personal experience'. I mean, how the hell did Tolkien write Lord of the Rings? Can't be from 'personal experiences', can it? Stories don't need to be all about race, gender, or sexuality either - I mean, part of my guilty pleasures is I actually enjoy watching Columbo and Murder She Wrote. I notice that those don't really cover those topics. Where the hell did you reach the conclusion that creatives have to cover those topics and nothing else? If it was from a real creative teacher at your Uni, I want names so I can go and slap them with with a trout and ask what the fuck were they thinking.

Lastly, but not least - a lot of paid writing etc is 'creating to order' so personal experience or even interest is irrelevant. Your interest in the topic is your pay packet. Therefore, you go out and use your 'professional skills' to do a decent job on the task regardless to what you feel personally about it. 'It's business, not personal'. You've bought time over my body, mind and skillsets - not emotional investment. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:30, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Mirror life

Have come across this - possible future RW relevance. (Possible influences from Real Life - thalidomide where one form was used in the test and the mixed forms in the tablets, with the mirror-form causing the problems [I know this is a simplification]). Anna Livia (talk) 23:31, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Would infection per se be an issue with mirror bacteria? Our immune systems can't attack them, but equally they can't attack us. I always thought the main issue with mirror life would be the lack of predators - the second any get into the environment, they reproduce without limit, consuming everything else. Christopher (talk) 00:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I just spent like... an hour trying to get an understanding of the "mirror life" the article mentions.

So the chemicals that make up all biological molecules appear to have a specific arrangement... but they could be rearranged in a mirror position with the molecule still technically being the same? A visual image. Did I get that right?

The article initially linked seems more sensationalist than anything reading other sources. Still going to stay up late thinking of doomsday scenarios for a highly-complex and mostly theoretical thing that I only have a layman's understanding of. Impiricism (talk) 02:40, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Will the Deadly Mirror Molecules kill us before Uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence does us in? Or will they both be beaten by the equally likely Zombie Apocalypse?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

The 'other-handed' chemicals can actually be created - but the transition to 'actual living entities' would not be likely in the near future (for all the obvious reasons). A possible topic for monitoring.

What was the sf story involving a weird form of (water-) ice I have come across as a passing mention (as another possible apocalyptic event)? Anna Livia (talk) 12:16, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut? Carthage (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Possibly - I only read references to the story.

Any other examples of where one form of a chiral chemical has one effect and the other form different effects? (I know enough to ask the right sort of questions.) Anna Livia (talk) 21:32, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

My brother mentioned that there were chemicals that behave differently (in particular, become much more toxic) in different chiralities many years ago. He called them 'isomorphic isomers', but he might have been misquoting. A more correct term seems to be enantiomers. Polyproxyphene is the wiki example. It has different effects as a drug in each form.

Sheri S Tepper's "Grass" also involves this idea (...spoiler warning?) Namako (talk) 22:42, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

@Anna Livia There are numerous examples of enantiomer pairs with different biological activity. The classic example is thalidomide, formerly prescribed for morning sickness. One enantiomer has therapeutic effects, whereas the other is teratogenic. Administering only one enantiomer does not avoid teratogenic effects, though, as the enantiomers interconvert within the body. Carvone is another popular example; the enantiomers have very different smells. Since the body is a chiral environment, though, it’s very common for enantiomers to have different effects, and there is substantial pharmaceutical (and academic) interest in enantioselective (or “asymmetric”) synthesis and catalysis as a result. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 04:30, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I mention thalidomide in my first comment - it being the most well known such chemical (I have read variously that it is used therapeutically for certain diseases.) It is a long jump from the creation of 'mirror chemicals' to 'mirror life' (which is likely to face problems in consuming 'ordinary organic material'). Anna Livia (talk) 11:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I did find a fairly elementary article on this. It goes through types of isomers and has a fun enantiomer at the end that doesn't stay in a single chirality at room temperature. Unfortunately the 'bible' on organic stereoisomers is nearly £200. Namako (talk) 14:21, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

@Anna Livia Ah, I missed that; sorry to tell you what you already know! There are some other examples of drugs with notable differences listed here, toward the bottom. It is a large jump to mirror life, and a mirror bacterium probably would have trouble digesting natural proteins and carbohydrates. An autotrophic mirror might be more concerning, especially if it could survive in the body. We’d know how to produce antibiotics for it, but a lot would still hinge on the immune system’s responsiveness. I find it difficult to believe the immune system would have no reaction at all, though a reduced response is credible. The problem would then be just bacterial overgrowth sucking up nutrients and producing toxic waste products, with the immune system failing to adequately keep them in check. I don’t know enough about autotrophic bacterial metabolism to say how credible it is that any bacteria could do this without digesting ordinary foodstuffs, though. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 15:38, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I want to say something that is weird but honest. I scalded my hand with just under boiling water I have suffered 2nd degree burns, in a way I wanted my family to notice but that's not how injury works. I'm 72 hours into a big bad scalding, probably a second degree burn, not a doctor, but I am letting The blisters weep. Funny thing is, I was working on a bone broth, for protein and collagen, and now I've got a Second degree burn that needs protein and collagen. I am taking care of it, Torrent (talk) 09:55, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Water Fluoridation / RFK Jr.'s fruity nuttiness

Will we need to brush our teeth more often if flouride is removed from the water supply? Vital Forces (talk) 01:07, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Dentists, like doctors, do take a variant of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes "First, do no harm." Consequently, dentists (particularly in association) should advocate for fluoridation of water. Fluoridation nowadays, due to fluoridated toothpaste, primarily protects people with poor dental hygiene and/or lack adequate access to dental care. By advocating for water fluoridation, dental associations are protecting future patients. Bongolian (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

To respond to the dumb hidden comment above - it's equally "surprising" that doctors and medical institutions recommend vaccinations - given that they would make more money from treating hordes of sick unvaccinated people. You could make the same argument about any kind of effective preventative medicine.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:51, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

My shithead of a father was of this ilk. Used to think/say that teachers 'encouraging reading' was because they got backhanders from 'the bookshop' and sending kids home with books to read was 'lazy teachers' trying to get him to do shit that was their job. The man quite literally couldn't accept that anyone, ever had any motivations for anything past their narrow self-interest and wasn't constantly trying to fuck you over (though this was partly psychological projection because he was a lazy, selfish cunt who would fuck you over the moment he thought he could). But onto fluoride.

I've done a little looking and flouride's effectiveness may not be as big as it used to be - to whit, the studies came from the 70s where fluoride toothpaste wasn't that common (http source). Kids/people are also drinking a lot less water than they used to, which lessens even further it's effect. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:40, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

"Any accusation made by reactionaries is a confession." Carthage (talk) 15:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

If you already have proper tooth care it's not necessary to change anything individually. It's mainly put in the water to prevent dental problems in impoverished children. Chillpilled (talk) 17:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect. Fluoride helps all teeth retain strength and cavity resistance - so it benefits adults too. It's just that it's benefit is maximised in children, similar to the fact calcium uptake is always welcome but particularly for people with growing bones. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:26, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

The problem here is the source of the recent revival of this topic is more into good ol' John Birch Society style batshit insane conspiracies. Water fluoridation (set at a proper level) is harmless at worst and helpful to the impoverished at best. It is also very cheap to do. Now, yes, there are some valid concerns about setting the correct level of fluoride in water (since people today are more exposed to other things with fluoride compared to 50 years ago). But RFK Jr. types tend to go off the deep end and ascribe a wide variety of ills to water fluoridation that make no sense.

Such is what I expect even on subjects of which RFK Jr. is actually correct about, such as tackling the excessive amount of ultra-processing and chemical additives in food. The US is far more over-permissive about this than other national food regulators and some tightening up surely would be welcome. What I expect, though, is that RFK Jr. will take all that political capital and shoot it down a whackdoodle conspiracy hole. Most of the populace, as well as the governing types and the regulators themselves, will then ignore the batshit insane advice and carry on as usual. Essentially, that's what is largely happening right now in Florida on several subjects with Joseph Ladapo, a batshit insane conspiracy-theory laden anti-vaccination movement member who somehow got the nod to be the surgeon general of Ron DeSantis. BobJohnson (talk) 18:33, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

You'll likely find fluoride is in your toothpaste. Chillpilled (talk) 22:48, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

What I understand is that mild excessive fluorine only causes cosmetic ills, which is gonna be judged as much more a 'minus/bad' in a country is a obsessed with porcelain perfection (which is why I've never heard about it in the UK). So it is general stupid 'natural is best' chemphobia (ignoring the fact there's places with natural fluoride).

But yeah, it is sad that RFK has some views I'd support (going after ultra-processed foods) and I'd actually cheer him on if his 'Make America healthy again' meant he started gunning for poor labelling, shit school foods, incidences of malnutrition, going after excess salt/HFCS, access to fitness activities etc - but you just know that is the stuff which the ghouls will kill off. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:07, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

A lot of people live in food deserts. One likely avenue by which these ghouls will "help" is by attempting to restrict food stamps coverage to shit like fresh fruit only. Good luck getting fresh fruit in a food desert. Carthage (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Why? The ghouls are the ones which got tomato ketchup defined as 'fruit'! They not gonna stop SNAP payments for ultra processed shit! KarmaPolice (talk) 19:35, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Ultra Processed Foods are the new scare. While high-fat, high-salt, low-fiber food is obviously unhealthy - it's unhealthy for these reasons. Not necessary because it's "ultra-processed".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

True - there are some UPFs which can be considered 'good for you'. Most 'Quorn' meat fakeries, nutrition-enriched breads and plain protein/fibre powders, off the top of my head. I'm old enough to remember the big debate whether tinned/frozen fruit/veg 'counted' or not. But my rule of thumb is that UPFs are probably 'bad' unless proven otherwise (note I said ultra-processed shit). KarmaPolice (talk) 21:18, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

One problem is that the term results in "generic lists of bad foods" and these lists can miss wide variety of preparation technique. To take one example, "crisps" are usually thrown in the "ultra-processed" category. But crisps certainly can be made at home, and the product of a home-cook (typical recipe: wash potatoes, slice potatoes thinly, maybe blanch them and/or rinse them of excess starch, pan-fry them or home-deep fry them, and seasons with some salt and simple dried seasoning) is well away from something like a Pringle, where the potatoes are pulverized, dehydrated, mixed with shit like wheat starch and various flours, cut into "perfect" potato chip shapes, flash-fried, and then seasoned with a wide variety of stuff, including some outright lab chemicals for flavor or taste.

Crisps will never be the healthiest thing, but the homemade crisp certainly isn't "ultra-processed". Actually, such might not even be too terrible health wise if you stay away from deep-frying and avoid excessive salt; there ain't nothing wrong with a potato. Where a Pringle certainly is "ultra-processed" and there isn't much you can do to make it not unhealthy (except "don't buy it"). It's a bit of a flippant example, but it goes to show (as BobM said) that it's *what* is in the food (chemical garbage), or what it *lacks* (nutrition), that is the problem. Not the food itself per se. (And this is exactly where RFK Jr is going to go all wrong -- already he's questionably targeting seed oils as The Sin of All Things. Er, no.). BobJohnson (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

'Homemade' anything (if it's somewhat approaching scratch) normally exits the UPF category because as a rule we're not into applying various items etc designed to make the thing look better, have a longer shelf-life and/or reduce unit cost in our own homes. Even more importantly, a lot of UPFs are nutritionally shit because 'piles of flavoured carbs' is the cheapest game in town - which coupled with their long shelf-lives often end up being the sorts heavily sold in corner shops and grocers which cater to poor people (as Carthage points out above).

Now I think of it, it very well may be that RFK is 'the best' in the Trump cabinet morally - that while half-bats, I suspect he means well. KarmaPolice (talk) 03:23, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

This is nuts. Steve Jobs only ate fruit and died from cancer in his 50s. Ultra processed foods are what my grandparents, a couple of whom are still alive today in their late 90s continue to subsist on. You want an Oscar Mayer ham sandwich on white with a squirt of mayo and a side of Lay's? Boy do I have the hostess for you, you can even pick one. The two that died from fast cancer were both WWII vets who were probably exposed to a lot more uranium radiation than the US wants to talk about. I don't think it's ultra processed foods. Overeating caused by a lack of nutritional value, maybe I can see, but I don't think it's salts or nitrates or preservatives shortening lives, you can have a hot dog. My great grandpa was 102 when he passed. I think genetics play a large role. Lucky me, there's no history of Alzheimer's or dementia in my family. Torrent (talk) 08:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘It's incorrect to completely dismiss the highly-processed food relationship to poor health. Regarding claims you make/allude to, Torrent: 1) High salt intake is associated with high blood pressure, which can lead to kidney disease, heart disease and stroke.[1][2] 2) Alzheimers/dementia is not entirely cause by genetics.[3] 3) Steve Jobs died from abandoning medicine, not from fruit. 4) Highly-processed foods tend to be low in fiber. A low-fiber diet increases the risk of constipation, which itself can cause heart attacks.[4] Bongolian (talk) 08:32, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

good to know that sh***ing on the daily means my heart won't crap out? I mentioned overeating because of a nutritional defecit, i'm not advocating against eating veggies, I'm saying processed foods are not killing you. steamed frozen Broccoli and Brussels sprouts make up a lot of my sides. Torrent (talk) 08:47, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

A nutritionally healthy diet has enough 'give' in it to admit the occasional fast-food burger, slice of cake, frozen pizza or glass (or two) of beer - but the point is occasional. The little bit of cake is a treat, not because 'it is 2pm'. It's also possible to find/make 'less bad' variants of these (though it usually more expensive); there's a premade supermarket pizza I like which is stuffed with lean-ish protein and loads of veggies.

With the 'eating fruit' thing - no, you will die in short order if you eat only fruit. Every now and then there's a sad case where parents basically killed their little kids on it. Why? because of nutritional deficiencies. The rule of thumb is that the more restrictive your diet is, the more careful you need to be to ensure your diet is balanced - such as vegans and iron/b12. Jobs died because because he abandoned modern medicine, but unless he cheated and had 'refeeds' from his fruitarian diet (or supplemented to hell and/reports were bollocks) chances are he was plagued with minor ailments because his body was shit at healing due to mild malnutrition. (I personally think a lot more than imagined are mildly malnourished, but isn't noticeable because they don't have visible/obvious symptoms).

One of the keys for fibre is that (like protein) it helps satiety - ie the 'feel full' message to get you quit eating. Carbs simply don't cut this; which causes excess calorie consumption. Which is one of the reasons poor people are fatter now - protein is more expensive and so they see a lot less of it. Remember the bit where I pointed out a lot of UPFs are 'piles of cheap carbs'? Even more importantly, UPFs are designed to be 'moreish' so you buy more of it.

If your grandparents are in their 90s, that means they would have been reared in a world before 'the modern American diet' fully arrived. Even more importantly, they would have better ideas what 'individual portions' should really look like (this is another issue: not just overeating because 'it is there' but also folks who grew up poor and subconsciously 'feel guilty' towards 'wasting food'). Lastly I will point out the 'skinnyfat' concept - where folks can look thin ('healthy') but their internals are more akin to being fat ('unhealthy').

Poor diets are a well-known factor in both limiting life expectancy and health expectancy in the advanced world. We can't do much with the genetic hand we've been dealt and accidents always happen, but now as we've (generally) eliminated infectious diseases we're left with 'lifestyle' issues - poor diet, too much booze/drugs, lack of exercise, obesity, stress, smoking etc. So in this case, it's you who are nuts, Torrent. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

As I said before - the question is what is in the food - not weather it ultraprocessed or not.

Consider this healthy breakfast. High-fiber low-sugar cereal with soy milk (or any other plant-based milk). Wholegrain toast with low-calorie spread. Some yoghurt with all the good bifidus. Some coffee with the same milk. All the foods listed here would (or could) be called ultraprocessed.

On the other hand there are indescribably unhealthy ultraprocessed foods too. But they are unhealthy because of the massive amounts of fat, sugar, salt they contain - not necessarily because they are ultraprocessed.

To consider it another way. Let's imagine that your diet consisted completely of fried eggs and chips with loads of salt. This would certainly not be ultraprocessed (depending on the oil) - and it certainly wouldn't be healthy either.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:24, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

True, something I've also pointed out. However, in general terms the Venn circles of 'UPFs' and 'nutritionally shit' are rather tight. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Yogurt is actually an interesting food here because most people indeed stereotype it in the very healthy category. However:

A) Most flavored yogurt will rather prominently list sugar as one of the top ingredients. Oops.

B) A lot of flavored yogurt will contain the mysterious "natural flavors" moniker. Possibly fine, but from an American perspective: we're not as strict on testing chemicals (with more leeway due to a "generally recognized as safe" loophole), and the US is slower to re-evaluate chemicals in case new data comes in that may show problems (the case of erythrosine comes to mind here). Perhaps all those "natural flavors" are safe, but the data lacks.

C) Most yogurt here will sneak in a few thickening agents, such as "modified food starch" and pectin, even in the unflavored varieties. These are used as thickeners and to stabilize the yogurt. Now, something like pectin's been around for a couple of centuries, so you can be more certain about that additive. Modified food starch is newer; so far it's tested as safe, but Google's search AI seems to think that the long term data is not clear at this point.

Many lists of ultra-processed foods will actually put only flavored yogurt in the "ultra processed" category, as point (C) is pretty minor. BobJohnson (talk) 17:18, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

My opinion is the that "down with ultra processed food" brigade have been seduced by some version of the appeal to nature.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Not always from my view... an older largely equivalent term for "ultra-processed food" was junk food. Such stuff has been known to be bad for a while. Of course, some will probably overdo it and over-apply it to far too much or overfocus on certain thingss.

The challenge with this food always has been this: whether you call it ultra-processed or junk, such is also very very shelf stable and (usually) quite cheap. So from my perspective, saying "junk food bad" doesn't help much -- that's been known for decades now. The issue is making more nutritious food more affordable and more available. BobJohnson (talk) 18:39, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

We may be going in circles here. Some mass-produced food is bad. And it has a long history. Some mass- produced food is not bad. But it all gets swept up into the same basket. I also think the movement has some of its roots in Food Babe nuttiness.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:16, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

'Mass produced' and 'ultra processed' are two different things. And the coining of the latter term allowed stuff like say, Pop-Tarts to be hived off from the merely 'processed' (and mass produced) like cheese. 'UPF' is a fair shorthand but it needs to be remembered it is just shorthand and to avoid map/territory issues, similar to the fact we need to remember there is no such 'race' called 'multiracial'.

The critical issue here is that there's a segment of the population who see 'getting rid of UPFs' as a silver bullet health-wise, which it clearly isn't. That not only is there times a 'UPF' either neutral or even positive (folic fortification for example) but there are also 'normal' foods which are not always 'good for you'. But I also believe that a govt 'crackdown' on UPFs could be cut right - for example, removing the health halo from nutritionally shit yoghurts, fruit juices and breakfast cereals while allowing those UPFs which are 'nutritionally dense' to continue. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:52, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

UPF would probably make a good RW article.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:13, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

RFK's Fruity Nuttiness would be a cereal I'd buy. What would the slogan be? 'I'm not really qualified to tell you what's in it, but yum' Torrent (talk) 05:26, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Legalese and The Death of Honest Advertising

So, the whole thing is, A guy ordered boneless chicken wings, got a chicken bone stuck in his throat, accused the restaurant of serving him chicken wings with bones, and the Ohio Supreme court said 'Those ain't wings, it's chicken breast, you're a stupid consumer.'. More, they said common sense dictates that if it's chicken, it may contain bones while simultaneously saying boneless has nothing more than an advertising purpose. Chicken matters, but because 'wings' doesn't then 'boneless' doesn't, because 'Chicken fingers' is a dish and nobody thinks chickens have fingers. An article I disagree with lays it out like it isn't stupid. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/08/court-decision-concerning-boneless-chicken-wings-ignites

Chicken shouldn't matter much, then. I understand America is represented as an overly litigious country, but I mean, A chicken bone in boneless chicken wings. That's not a slam dunk unless you make some wild connections. Chicken is chicken, I been to a Mexican restaurant and found a bunch of bones in a burrito. Guess what, it was 15 year olds in the back. Chew your food, obviously, but I don't like this 'you can call anything boneless wings and as long as it ain't got wings, there can be bones' line of legal argument. What a trash conclusion.

Who knew https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cAV8bdsnDDc Torrent (talk) 06:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there's ever been an 'era of honest advertising', more a simple fact that SCOTUS has become a lot more pro-corp since, say the 80s - along with starved/defanged orgs like the FDA, USDA etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The Ohio Supreme Court is not the same entity as the Supreme Court of the United States. Carthage (talk) 12:46, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Heh. However, lower courts are bound by SCOTUS rulings. Plus, like the previous working out who ended up on bench in the first place - US judges all too-often end up being tight with corp interests to an extent we'd never allow here in Blighty. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. It's just, in this case: this is a matter of Ohio law, not federal law. Otherwise you're entirely correct. And it's quite probable that SCOTUS would cite the Ohio case as precedent in the future. Carthage (talk) 14:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't really think there is such a thing as honest advertisement at all. Capitalism is capitalism, consumerism is consumerism. Kadashova (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it's possible - as in, adverts which are informative and fundamentally truthful. A lot of 'business to business' adverts are of this type. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:40, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I guess it would have been more correct to call it 'a new legal syntactical justification for broader use of terms outside of inherent meaning without consequence when providing consumers goods/services that they, as consumers, must be inherently more responsible for the contents of by virtue of purchasing, but only when they are the end consumer, putting the onus on every consumer to accept all risk, the contract being singularly the purchase of said item and not any potential of the good/service to cause harm within the reasonable use of said good/service (i.e. eating the chicken)' which still I'm sure isn't correct, but I'm not speaking in legalese. I'm saying I really don't like state supreme court level definitions of adjectives as throwaway words in advertising. I'm not saying it's new, everyone knows you can't flush any cleaning product advertised as 'flushable' down the toilet. Or if because 'stainless steel' can get stains, but if cleaned properly you could call it 'antimicrobial stainless steel' since if you clean the stains, you're inherently cleaning. If it were 'harmless flushable' then 'harmless' gets a pass, because flushing something that sticks up your pipes isn't exactly 'harm' as there is precedent that you don't flush the stuff unless you expect and are ready to deal with blockages inherent to flushing 'flushable' items, and so harmless has nothing to do with your dog croaking after drinking out the toilet bowl. Harmless never meant anything was safe regardless of any chemical that might be in the product, you big dumb idiot, train your dog to not drink out the toilet. I'm just giving the worst marketers ideas at this point. The point is, it's bad precedent, especially during a deregulation push. Like, everybody agreed when China didn't regulate their products it was net bad and watch out for products from China because you don't know what's in em. But now that's all forgotten and the attitude towards the cost of doing business is startup capital alone and that afterwards business must not incur any cost, even in the face of lax or unethical business practices. Torrent (talk) 07:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

A trans character as the main character of a novel (I need opinions on my work)

Here is an excerpt from the prologue-

“”On a cool July afternoon in 2013, the world would begin to change. This change had nothing to do with geopolitics or civil unrest; none of the sort. Nobody expected it at all. Nobody saw it coming but civilization would be brought to shambles. Nobody knew what misery that they would suffer. Nobody knew that the recently deceased would come back to life. These reanimated corpses were not like the undead from the movies and TV shows. These reanimated corpses were not the dumb shamblers. They were smart and cunning; they could run, jump and climb. World militaries had been quickly overwhelmed. Governments quickly collapsed. People were left to fend for themselves in a world overrun. A ten year old Sasha Angelovski sat in her bed, quietly contemplating her plans for when she grew up. Sasha’s parents were just so cruel to her. If it wasn’t the verbal abuse, it was the physical abuse. She was so close to ending her life. The pain was just too much. When nobody was looking she would slash her own throat. It might have been a sin against God but Sasha was sure that she would be forgiven. Sasha looked out the window and she saw something strange; a group of people surrounding the neighbor Greg Petrov. The poor man screamed for help but nobody would help him. One of the people grabbed his arm and sunk their teeth into them. He screamed in agony. Soon the group of people tackled him down. Greg screamed for a minute before he stopped. Seconds later Greg got back up and joined the group of people. Sasha screamed in horror. Soon after Sasha heard gunshots and more screams. She was terrified. What was going on? The next thing Sasha heard was her parents arguing. “Here is the thing, I am a cop. I am supposed to enforce the law” said Dmitry Angelovski. “The situation outside is too dangerous! You have to protect your family including that brat we have” shouted Marka Angelovski. More gunshots could be heard. Dmitry told his wife, “I have to help out. I took an oath to protect the city. So I will be going to the police station. Keep the doors locked and do not answer the door”. Marka sighed, “Come back alive. I don’t feel like losing my husband”. The door was shut as Dmitry left. Marka locked the door. Sasha reluctantly went downstairs to see her stepmother crying. Instead of providing comfort Sasha just went to the kitchen and grabbed a sandwich. She saw no point in comforting that woman. All that would happen is a beating. Sasha had enough beatings in her life. However another beating would occur. Marka came into the kitchen and saw Sasha eating a sandwich. For some reason that caused anger to erupt in Marka. Sasha was grabbed by the front of her shirt and thrown to the floor. She begged her stepmom not to hit her. Those pleas fell on deaf ear. Sasha was kicked in the gut repeatedly. Then she threw the poor kid against the wall. Marka shouted, “Why can’t you be like a normal boy?! You are a boy and will like it”! Sasha cried out in pain. Marka grabbed a pair of scissors and tackled Sasha. Marka cut Sasha’s long hair. Sasha begged her to stop but she was absolutely determined to cause suffering. The one thing that connected Sasha to womanhood was now gone. Marka just laughed and laughed as she said, “You will always be a boy. I just needed to give you a helping hand”. Sasha just cried on the floor. She just wanted to die. What person would be that cruel? Quickly Sasha’s concern went from her torment to a shattering window. Marka screamed, “Get out of my house”! An unfamiliar raspy voice replied, “Shut up meat. You are my lunch”. Sasha heard Marka scream followed by a tearing sound. Next came a chewing sound and a loud thump. Then a guy walked into the kitchen; blood was soaked through his shirt and was spread across the mouth. Sasha ran to the back door and opened it up. There was no way she would stick around. Sasha ran out the door and closed it behind her. In the backyard she heard many gunshots and screams. She ran to the front yard and climbed over the fence and onto the sidewalk. Fear was the only thing keeping Sasha going. Despite wanting to die Sasha felt a spark of survival. Where she would go was an up in the air question. Sevastopol was a big city though so there were plenty of places to go. Walking down the street Sasha saw several cars crash. Then an air raid siren came on; it sounded throughout the entire city. Screams were now persistent. Sasha needed to find some place that would be safe but that seemed like a tall order. She ran down the street looking for somewhere to hide.

In the prologue my main character is a trans kid. --Trans Fem Agenda 12:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, this doesn't really grab me. There's no real buildup to what's really going down, you just know from the first paragraph it's a zombie apocalypse story. Something like Highschool of the Dead, The Walking Dead or Dead Set all have a period where the protagonist is gradually putting together what's going on. Show, don't tell, essentially. I'd also like to know how zombies could overwhelm militaries worldwide. They have contingency plans for pretty much every scenario, so unless something major changed, I just find that unrealistic. Ever read World War Z? It goes into how militaries dealt with the outbreak. (The bits about Israel and Palestine haven't really aged well!) Ever seen ManlyBadassHero's playthrough of It's Just A Prank? It also has a Slavic setting and a sense of buildup and impending dread. I'm also not sure how competent a 10 year old will be in survival skills. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 20:29, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I second the assessment that “show don’t tell is a massive problem here.” Instead of seeing for myself how things play out, a lot of this, especially the first two paragraphs, read more like a book report than a book. The dialogue is also stilted and unnatural. A lot of the sentences are the same short length and structure, and the narration doesn’t flow as smoothly as it should. Keep at it though. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄^{Ask about our holiday specials!} 21:55, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

My zombies are sentient and can use weapons. I plan to explain the fall of human civilization later. --Trans Fem Agenda 21:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

@IntrepidSkeptic Here is the time skip in chapter 1-

“” Rain fell over the Crimean Human Zone. A mood of misery prevailed among the population. This mood was not because of poverty that the people lived in. No, it was something much worse. It was something very painful and invasive. The event coming up was Tax Day. Everyone hated it but the people refused to rise up against it. Sasha Angelvski was working at the local bakery in downtown Sevastopol. Her mood was bad. She loathed Tax Day. It was a painful violation of her body, However she had a little joy in life- baking desserts. It was something that made life worth living. She loved her job as a pastry chef. If her cooking could make people happy then it was worth it. Putting a batch of cookies in the oven Sasha heard her coworker Andre Gonzales singing a song. It was some older song from the 1980’s. She knew that singing was Andre’s way of coping with his life. Sasha didn’t mind it. He was a good singer. That was one thing Sasha liked about him. He was also a good friend; much like a big brother you could rely on. Andre always had Sasha’s back no matter what. Andre walked up to Sasha and asked, “So sister, any plans for after work”? Sasha replied, “No I don’t”. Andre then asked, “Want to grab a drink at the bar”? Knowing that Tax Day was coming Sasha could use some liquor. Getting hammered sounded like a great idea. “Sure I will join you for a drink. I am in the mood to get shit faced”. The bell of the door rang as it was opened. Sasha said, “Welcome to Sevastopol Bakery. How may I help you”? The guy who walked in said, “I would like a jelly donut”. Sasha turned and she saw an old man. She recognized him; he saved her life in the initial apocalypse. Sasha was cornered by flesh eaters with no hope of survival. Then came a guy armed with a shotgun. He killed the group of flesh eaters that surrounded her. Sasha owed that man her life. She was eternally grateful. Sasha said to the old man, “Not a problem Father Adamovich”. She grabbed a fresh jelly donut and put it in a paper bag. Father Adamovich asked her, “How have you been holding up Sasha”? She responded, “I am nervous about Tax Day. Every year I worry that I will die when they tax us”. Father Adamovich looked nervous as well. Sasha empathized with that. Nobody liked Tax Day. Handing Father Adamovich the baggie, Sasha said, “Enjoy your food”. The priest smiled and took off. Andre asked Sasha, “Who was that”? Sasha replied, “He saved my life when I was a kid. He is a good man who looks out for his community”. Andre said sadly, “There are not many people like that anymore. At least there is some good around”. After the priest left, someone else came in. This person stank like a corpse. Sasha was about to talk but she froze when she saw him; it was one of the flesh eaters. The flesh eater was missing part of its face. It wore a uniform similar to the Nazis. Its demeanor was threatening. There was nothing good about this encounter. The flesh eater said in a raspy voice, “I would like the daily special”. Sasha wanted to gag; she knew what the creature meant. She told the flesh eater, “Just give me a minute and I will have your order”.

--Trans Fem Agenda 13:08, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The assessment that you should "show, not tell" once again sticks here. Let's use this passage as an example.

"Sasha Angelvski was working at the local bakery in downtown Sevastopol. Her mood was bad. She loathed Tax Day. It was a painful violation of her body, However she had a little joy in life- baking desserts. It was something that made life worth living. She loved her job as a pastry chef. If her cooking could make people happy then it was worth it."

Instead, try something like this reorganized passage:

"Sasha walked down the sidewalk, the sky was a dreary grey, and it had just rained. She walked down the humid path, but stopped for a second to check her phone. Her top notification was a notification about the date: today was Tax Day. She slouched in her stride suddenly, disheveled by the news. She raised her head again and caught sight of her workplace a little while away: The bakery. She righted herself, smiling a little, and straightened her nametag, almost as if she was taking pride of her new task in mind; leading the kitchen."

This kind of writing is more engaging and reveals information naturally. I'm aware it is still sort of clunky but you get the gist. Could do better if I had more than twenty minutes. Alastor (talk) 18:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind if I used that. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hW3YwAF0_MuyJaEX7x7fRWWncRFfwRpg_K_c9_wVBjg/edit?usp=sharing --Trans Fem Agenda 22:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Have you looked into 'fanfic and similar topics' where there will probably be coverage to suit your interests. (Take note of any tags and other warnings.) Anna Livia (talk) 10:26, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

My plan is to have my character be a reluctant hero who leads an army against the zombie hoards. --Trans Fem Agenda 12:36, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Holidays with a Trumper Family

I put this on the talk page, but I don't think I'm writing about one person. I understand you came here for advice, and that's not exactly the way to talk to the people here. This site's 'advice' is more 'Declarative statements' to get ripped apart. I disagree with any advice to cut ties with your family, even it is probably impossible to share certain beliefs. It's okay to listen, and try to understand, and totally disagree. It is not important to disagree so vehemently as to ruin a holiday. I would encourage you try to find what is comfortable for you, whether it's arguing, steaming silently, or walking away this year and make a decision for next year. Nobody can tell you how your family will react if you say you disagree with them politically. Maybe politics will barely be brought up. Give them another chance this year, just don't let them use you as a punching bag. Torrent (talk) 05:51, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Masaru Emoto

Is he still relevant? I notice from his page he's long dead, but I suspect his weird ideas aren't. Anyway I ask because I was cleaning up and found that I own a copy of 「水は答えを知っている」(water knows the answers) (I probably picked it up in a collection of second hand books, but some poor schmuck paid JPY1600 for this new!) and he's off on a weird adventure within the first page. I was wondering if it's worth taking notes to update his page.

On a flip through, the chapters are typical Japanese new age nonsense (water is the entrance to another dimension!), but the photographic plates, while a little dated-looking, like the dude could have used some free DOF stacking tools if he'd been working just a few years later, are interesting on their own. Namako (talk) 16:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Despite being weirdly kooky, he achieved some level of fame in his life earning the lately dubious distinction of being on the New York Times best seller list for one of his books, The Hidden Messages in Water. Bongolian (talk) 06:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that might be this book? I've noticed there is some English text on the front, embossed (almost invisibly in my light) into the beautiful cover. It's just a translation from the Japanese, but the subtitle is "the hidden messages in water crystals". Wikipedia doesn't help on this one, but this book is from 2001, so it doesn't mention the bestseller or any translations anywhere. The only other option from his...interesting...bibliography at the end is 「水からの伝言」(1999), which is definitely a title which could not have any other meanings.

His, uh, school (company?) seems to be going strong. The store is especially exciting. 5G protection doohickeys, including what look like those radioactive credit card things, weird machines of dubious purpose, luck enhancing super water, it's got it all!

Now I'm in the rabbit hole I guess I'll take some notes and update the page, though probably after Christmas. Namako (talk) 12:23, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Squirrels Eating Mice

Apparently it's happening in the one park in California. Research is ongoing on the effects and why. A Youtube video linked in the comments is of a guy detailing instances of predation by animals that typically are herbivorous, with the basic reasoning of resource scarcity and "eat or starve". I found it interesting, but also disturbing; I won't be able to look at squirrels quite the same way again. Impiricism (talk) 02:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Especially in mammals, general herbivores still eat animals. Elephants eat birds nests. Rodents love bones. It's not new, but it is exciting, and you should never trust a human acclimated squirrel. I have lived at an apartment complex where squirrels were fed, and those little fuckers get pushy. Torrent (talk) 06:07, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Google Search stats for RationalWiki, December explosion of visits

Previously: RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive464#Google Search stats for RationalWiki as of early October

Big news in terms of traffic from Google Search. We're above 460K visits the last 28 days now, and it's mostly due to a spike lasting a few days, taking us far above the nowadays-usual level hovering around 180K visits. Back in October, there was a smaller spike that temporarily then-doubled our visits, as lots of people searched for "silicon tree" and related terms. Now it's instead our generally most-visited article, Project Blue Beam, which has received a big blast of visits beyond the usual.

Maybe something to do with the topic went viral on some social media? That's my guess. In any case, lots of people suddenly became interested, bringing 135K visits in one day at the peak day to our article, while the norm is 5-6K visits per day to that article.

Other recent "growing content" in the search stats include: Anna de Buisseret, Project Blue Book, Ray Peat, and Köfels impact event. But all else is dwarfed by Project Blue Beam, including our main page.

Keep in mind, it's always possible that something will become all the rage all of a sudden, even if shortly, sending hundreds of thousands of people searching for this or that conspiracy or other missional topic and looking at RW links. Conspiracy stuff and pages on cranks is at the center of what people search for bringing them to RW. Especially more on newer conspiracy stuff may be key to keeping RW interesting to the broader public ahead -- I think we fell behind on new such during the COVID years, missing out that way. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 06:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Any chance of getting something like a 'top 20' or something like we did last time? Plus, 180k p/m is a reasonable increase; I remember the spell over the summer we were like scraping 50k... KarmaPolice (talk) 10:08, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, basically, according to a Newsweek [8], Alex Jones and Roseanne Barr amplified the Project Blue Beam conspiracy in relation to the mysterious "drone" rumor mill that is going on in the Northeast US right now.

(Once that event settles down, that too probably would be a great article. Whatever the initial root cause, judging from the Reddits, it seems like every conspiracy nut is now busy posting ordinary flying machines at night and turning it into ALIENS!!! or something.) BobJohnson (talk) 15:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if that's part of the reason for all the frequent trolling in the last few weeks. Or is this a common occurence? -- LunaAHHHHH 16:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Trolling often comes in waves, and when there's a wave of it, often it's just been one person who keeps coming back evading blocks. But it could explain extra activity after Dec 10. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Well. That top 20 certainly seems to support the "Something went viral" analysis. Namely, project blue beam. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 14:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Top 20

As @KarmaPolice requested, a fresh top 20 list. I'll do like last time, so here's top 20 search terms first.

1. project blue beam
2. rationalwiki
3. what is project blue beam
4. silicon tree
5. rational wiki
6. blue beam project
7. red room
8. giant silicon tree
9. darryl anka
10. darryl anka wikipedia
11. silicon trees wikipedia
12. project blue bean
13. bashar - wikipedia
14. gregg braden wikipedia
15. giant silicone tree
16. dave farina
17. dr eric berg wikipedia
18. project blue beam wiki
19. last thursdayism
20. professor dave

For the pages people end up at:

1. Project Blue Beam
2. Main Page (Main Page in URL)
3. Ancient giant silicon-based tree hypothesis
4. Darryl Anka
5. Professor Dave
6. Main Page (no page in URL)
7. Red room
8. Eric Berg
9. Ray Peat
10. Biblical scientific errors
11. Last Thursdayism
12. National Sunday law
13. List of actions prohibited by the Bible
14. Examples of God personally killing people
15. Gregg Braden
16. Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
17. Edward Dutton
18. Wedge of Aiud
19. Shoe0nHead
20. Valentina Gomez

--ApooftGnegiol (talk) 19:24, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks.

1/ Could somebody explain to me the differences between 2 and 6 in layperson?

2/ Is there any more details on this? I mean, do we know as a % of total Google hits the top 20 are?

3/ Is this stats from all versions of Google, not just .com? [WP dashboard for example divides .co.uk, .ca etc].

4/ Is there any way we can learn how much of total hits Google directed-hits represent?

5/ Using this info, perhaps it's an idea to add a new bit under 'random featured article' - perhaps announcing our three most recent brainstar articles?

KarmaPolice (talk) 18:57, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

1/ Probably the difference between https://rationalwiki.org and https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page Nowhere Man (talk) 19:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, yes. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

2/ There's 'clicks' and 'impressions' (i.e. merely appearing in results) for each item. Over 3 months, it looks like this. (The top 20 lists above also take 3 months into account.) For Project Blue Beam, it's at 377,824 and 1,735,385 right now (while the top search term for it is at 304,098 and 1,206,714). For comparison the main rationalwiki.org URL has 28,190 and 58,271. Then (22,406, 173,593), and (21,129, 233,151), and (7,978, 69,833) for the pages after, for the top 5.

3/ It's global stats, but there's also a tab for stats on countries, again showing 'clicks' and 'impressions' for each.

4/ We'd need accurate stats for hits for starters, to compare. We don't currently have proper stats on RW itself.

5/ Maybe. Further discussion welcome, we can see what people are interested in maintaining.

Also, RW Techs as well as other established RW members who're interested, apart from asking me, you could get access to have a look yourself. It would require your Google account email only, and you'd get a view without the fuller permissions to turn knobs. You can email me if interested. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

some help arguing please

i wanted to find soemthing to help me disprove this guy’s claim that gay men are more likely to be sexual predators/pedophiles than cis white males and i can’t find anything solid to refute that. they say, and ‘quote’

21% of all sexual predators are gay.

5.5% of the American population are gay.

per capita, more gay people are to be sexual predators/rapists.

How do i dismantle this? please? Alastor (talk) 19:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

pulls out napkin, pen and calculator.

Hmm... 5.5% of Americans are gay'? A '21 Gallup poll says 5.8% of Americans outed themselves as having at least some non-hetro orientation, and another 7.5% refused to answer. So it's possible that the non-straight % is up to 7-8% of the total population.

The '21% of all sexual predators are gay' I suspect comes from the work of Dr. Gene Abel, who in 1987 produced this figure from what appears to be a meta-study. Let's actually hear what he really said;

"…[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual and most of these men were married and had children of their own."

Note that Abel didn't study [or at least not in this bit] the statistics of the sexual orientation of those who abused girls. The British NSPCC report from 2024 gives a better picture; 3.5% of men and 11.5% of women reported some form of sexual abuse as a minor. Now, British and American societies are 'similar enough' to allow me to say they're comparable.

So, out of a randomised sample group of 2000 adult Britons [50/50 sex mix] 150 report being abused as a child - 115 women and 35 men [I'm gonna leave trans folks out of this because they're such a small % of the adult population]. Therefore, if 21% of the males were abused by a gay man, this means 7-8 in our group of abused folks.

Therefore, 4.6 - 5.3% of the abusers of children are gay men. My stats are too sparse to properly draw conclusions [and I frankly don't care enough to dig them out] but it does hint that the level of child abuser is much more equalised in society orientation-wise than the old 'gays are paedos' panic from the Boys Beware era. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:12, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

This is clearly a case of ^{[citation needed]}. It's actually difficult to find data. To add, there's one study from 1992 [9] that suggests a slightly higher propensity (the numbers in this study were 5% of the population were "androphiles" and about 9% of pedophiles were homosexual). It's just one study though, and that difference isn't especially great to make the sort of sweeping conclusions a lot of yer fundamentalist / moral panic type sites make. (The most common error being to conflate male adult to male child pedophilia as homosexual... it is not; from what I gather, much of this lot actually see themselves as heterosexual in everything else!)

For those who like to make sweeping generalizations and oh noes PANIC ON THE GAYS!, keep in mind that female pedophiles, by stereotype, simply "doesn't exist" (and therefore I am actually having trouble finding studies with the answer to "what percentage of pedophiles are female", other than this link from Australia, which states that 93.9% of child abusers are men.) The data may be poor quality, but I nonetheless suspect that the per capita gap between homosexual pedophiles and heterosexual pedophiles is quite a bit lower than the per capita gap between male and female pedophiles. So... oh noes moral panic on all men, I guess? (I think this does actually happen to some extent...)

Incidentally, the same study suggested that about half of CSA came from either parents/caregivers or other known adults, with another significant chunk coming from known adolescents. Not quite the categories you can easily throw moral panics over, but people will try. BobJohnson (talk) 21:28, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I've looked a little into the 'female paedophile' issue. From what I can tell, the vast majority of 'female paedophiles' [at least in places like the UK] were women who ended up in illegal relationships with a single child [nearly always someone in their mid/late teens] - while the wide majority of male paedophiles go on abusing different children over decades. That the woman maintains interest in the victim even after they're above the age of consent, while most male paedos don't. There's also the issue that I suspect it will go unreported for several reasons - I remember one survivor's tale where he said part of the reason he didn't report her was not just he felt 'nobody would believe me' but also the fact they were attractive, he believed he loved her and she used the 'well you enjoyed it' gaslighting when he did try to question it.

In another angle, it's quite possible that 'unwanted advances' are more likely to be reported as 'sexual predation' if it's done by the 'wrong' gender. That - for example - if a straight guy got a rather 'strong pass' from a girl he'd simply say no and leave it at that but if it had been a guy doing the very same he'd call it 'predatory behaviour'. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:10, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Request: Mātauranga Māori

Good morning/afternoon,

I would like to request than an article be made on Mātauranga Māori, the supposed traditional knowledge of New Zealand's indigenous people. The reason is because, as someone living here, there is a debate about putting it in the science curriculum. Although there is a paradigm shift towards the value of indigenous knowledge in mainstream science lately, the problem with Mātauranga Māori is that it is being taught as a supposed alternative to "western" science and promoted as if it is of equal value. Furthermore, just like right-wing American-style creationism, it alludes to "gods" and other forms of spirituality. I myself am a former young-Earth creationist which is why I am concerned, especially with a leaked curriculum draft (not final) from last year that had more emphasis on MM than actual empirical science. some examples are provided below:

• 1
• 2, example of it being based on myth rather than evidence
• 3
• 4, really now

I think it is quite clear how Mātauranga Māori is really a pseudoscience. Any thoughts?

Joseph D. Pelobello/Daniel William "Danny" Wilson 19:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Most "traditional knowledge" of certain sorts would be considered protoscience actually.

I am actually having difficulty finding good sources on this topic that would help me determine exactly what people New Zealand government officials are trying to do, and is it really an issue, or just some a few folks way out in left field who are trying to put some noble savage woo in science curriculum drafts and getting swatted down, or something. Whyevolutionistrue.com is essentially Jerry Coyne's blog and Coyne fits neatly into the New Atheism tendency of becoming crankier over time. If there's better sources documenting some true crankery going on in the New Zealand government on this issue, sure it might be worth an article.

Personal opinion: I would keep any mentions of protoscience out of any traditional science curriculum, period. It nonetheless is sometimes worth examining traditional cultures and seeing that, hey, maybe they might know something that scientists don't know. There's an entire field called "ethnopharmacology" devoted to re-examining traditional medicine, for instance... because while there is a lot of bullshit in protoscience, every so often those folks hit on something that traditional Western science completely missed. (Tu Youyou won a Nobel for actually doing this, for instance.) BobJohnson (talk) 22:13, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Body ritual among the Nacirema? 'We do these seemingly random things because 'it appeases the spirits' while it turns out there is some scientific logic to this'. Similar could be said about drinking beer was better than water in Ye Olden Days - because amongst other things the beer would involve boiling water and then repeatedly filtering/draining it before consumption. These actions started fermentation and then to filter out all the dead yeast etc [which they understood] but also helped remove pathogens and water-borne contaminants [which they didn't really]. Some of the old Jewish dietary laws etc can also be seen as this; for example the prohibitions of eating predators or animals you've found dead of non-violent causes. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:47, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

As a minor point, since this comes up a lot, one common misconception about prohibitions on pork is they had something to do with trichinosis; given that the earliest knowledge of trichinosis comes from 1835, and at that point they still had absolutely no idea what caused it despite it being an infectious agent that even ancient people could have identified (seeing as they'd described other types of roundworms), that's hardly likely. It was more likely a cultural identifier, food taboos of that sort are well documented in the ancient world (e.g. Athenians ate a lot less meat out of a sense of superiority to Boeotians). Obviously some food taboos have to do with health issues, it's just that one which probably doesn't. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:26, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I partly suspected it was over the fact that pigs seem to eat anything and everything, and thus might consume 'bad things' [like dead stuff]. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:33, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This topic has been discussed here before. Here's some sources that lean into the "Mauri Matauranga has scientific aspects to it" angle: [10] [11]

Specifically, to quote the second source listed: "Hitherto mostly ignored or disregarded by the science community because it seemed to be myth and legend, fantastic and implausible, mātauranga Māori includes knowledge generated using techniques consistent with the scientific method, but explained according to a Māori world view. Acknowledging this extends the history of scientific endeavour back to when Māori arrived in Aotearoa and Te Wai Pounamu, many centuries ago."

Personally, I think that if one is gonna argue that mātauranga Māori is protoscience, you should also include the work of Renaissance or 17th century scientists as protoscience too. Newton believed in aether, and Kepler was motivated by numerological sentiment. People seem to be making no distinction between methodology and interpretation of results here. Carthage (talk) 03:04, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

It is not pseudoscience nor protoscience: it's just outdated knowledge. It is not their fault, knowledge becomes outdated very fast. Darwin is outdated, even Einstein is outdated in some aspects. That's the reason I removed the pseudoscience category from our James Ussher article. Newton and Kepler were using the best methodology available to them. Using the Mātauranga Māori methods today is akin to use praxeology to support conclusions in social sciences: It was once ok to use similar methods centuries ago (and it's indeed better than anything). But praxeolofy is not suited for modern research and it's interesting mostly for those who are into history of science and history of thought. Personally, I don't mind having a couple of lessons on their knowledge, but I think it's more suited to history lessons. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:39, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I do believe that's the point of including it in the Aotearoa curriculum. Plus, Mātauranga Māori is useful for Maori studies, as was pointed out in that old thread I linked above. Dawkins, Coyne, and co are deliberately conflating methodology with culture more broadly. Mātauranga Māori includes "techniques consistent with the scientific method," but that gets consistently glossed over by people like Dawkins and Coyne, who pretend that people advocating for acknowledging that the history of science in Aeotearoa predates colonization, and that Maori contributions to science are subject to colonial erasure, are really just woomeisters. Carthage (talk) 11:58, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

It would certainly be useful from a cultural perspective, and if it actually followed the scientific method as it is currently understood then it would simply be "science". In the same way that an "alternative medicine" technique would actually be "medicine" if it followed medial protocols. But the very fact that Mātauranga wants to put its own name on what it does suggests that it's not "science" as we understand it.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 12:50, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Request for help

RE: Metric system

Need help for someone to write the US and Canada paras of this article. There's also a hole which a 'Metrication in the United States' page would sit. I'm trying to push this article into Brainstar quality. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:02, 21 December 2024 (UTC)