Random technical wiki fact #4
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RationalWiki to do list
Contents: New article suggestions - Recent suggestions – Cover story nominees – Articles requiring attention – Article writing resources - Technical
If you are really bored, you can help RationalWiki by writing stuff for us.
If you are really really bored, you can visit articles for deletion and see what needs pruning.
You can also help expand articles.
This is a place where:
- You can add topics that you think might be good article subjects.
- You can draw people's attention to articles which you think are mission-critical and/or need work.
- You can find articles that are nearing front page status and bask in the reflected glory of getting "your" article on the main page.
- You can find bits of random wikicruft that fitted nowhere else.
If you find yourself creating a stub-level article just to remove a link from the list, consider whether you should be doing it at all.
Make a new page
Resources
Here are lists of resources that may aid in article writing.
Quality control[edit]
Good sources for research[edit]
New article suggestions
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How to add new entries:
- Expand each of the year subsections and Ctrl-F or Cmd-F to see if your suggestion already exists.
- If no one has suggested it, yet, add your entry under Put article suggestions here (if you like focused editing) or at the top of the most recent year under Recent (if you don't mind doing tons of scrolling).
- Considering searching for and linking to related existing RationalWiki articles as well as the Wikipedia entry on your suggested topic in order to help stimulate interest.
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Put article suggestions here[edit]
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If you click the [Edit] link next to "Put article suggestions here" and edit in this section here, the editor window won't show the full list of recent suggests and new articles, so you won't have to scroll as much to preview your changes. You can move your suggestion down to the Recent list when you're done, or another editor will move it for you.
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   | 3 | Commission on Human Rights (Philippines) : Human rights board whose mandate is ostensibly to protect the dignity and civil rights of everyone regardless of age, sex or creed. They have come under Duterte's crosshairs because why would he be letting opposition run rampant anyway? However, their drive towards dignity and civil rights for all has also led to at least some genuine criticism like when Apollo Quiboloy's mugshots were censored by the local police under the CHR's mandate. |
| 2 | Power (social and political): It's a regular part of nearly every aspect of human life and is the main driving force behind much of the news, yet we don't have an overall article on the general concept of political and sociological power and the effects it has on humanity. |
| 10 | Hachette v. Internet Archive: since they’ve lost the appeal I think this more than fits the site mission. With how much this is not a good thing. |
| 12 | Superman curse: Series of misfortunes that befell the cast and crew of various Superman media throughout the years. |
| 21 | Dave Chappelle: I'm not sure if he has been suggested yet, but for the past 5 years he's kinda gone off the edge with his netflix specials. |
| 18 | Tech Bros: I mostly got the idea after thinking of how much i think tony blair has become one. But I think it could apply to everyone (Mush, Bezos etc) and I think it fits the site's mission perfectly. Update: I'm hoping this will be a category. But I can't figure out how to put up a category vote here. |
| 12 | SAG-AFTRA labor strikes: Series of labour strikes by members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) in 2023 to the present, initiated over concerns about the use of deepfakes and large language models potentially replacing human creative labour (and studios greedily exploiting it at the expense of those whom they replicated) and the usual contractual disputes between them and Hollywood studios. |
| 6 | Grezzo 2: Total conversion mod for Doom II by a bored Italian edgelord, who went all out making the WAD as utterly offensive as possible by mocking both Italian celebrities and the whole Roman Catholic institution if not Christianity in general. Considering the cultural taboo of taking the piss out of the Church in the author's native country, this attracted a lot of controversy both in Italy and overseas to the point that it is banned on Twitch. |
| 2 | CREDO Mobile: Progressive-leaning mobile virtual network operator, started off as Working Assets Wireless in 1985. The company's shift towards progressive advocacy apparently led to the inception of its wingnut counterpart Patriot Mobile. |
| 5 | Can't believe there's no Steven Gundry page here. Lindy West recounts a story in The Witches are Coming about when she attended a Gwyneth Paltrow Goop event how Gundry told the crowd of gullible women they shouldn't eat plants native to North America, like corn and potatoes, because humans aren't native to North America; "they're only native to Africa, Europe, and Asia." |
| 21 | Rumble: BitChute clone with a few exceptions. It has less ads, but more fundie shit. It was founded 2013, 4 years before BitChute and it doesn't look like it was made with Microsoft Publisher. While not entirely filled with right-wing content, as apolitical channels like Lofi Girl appear there after all, it has been extremely popular with conservatives and the alt-right. |
| 22 | Imane Khelif, a female Algerian amateur boxer who participated in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. She's been the target of misinformation and a harassment campaign by conservatives that falsely accused her of being a trans woman or a man due to supposedly having high levels of testosterone in her system. |
| 8 | Kim Dotcom, German-Finnish IT specialist and entrepreneur. Had an extensive criminal record in his native Germany for hacking and gained further notoriety for Megaupload, a file-sharing service seized by US authorities in 2012 amid accusations of copyright infringement; in the years following his arrest Dotcom styled himself as a conspiracy theorist, crying persecution from the US government and Hollywood for stifling his business, and went full vatnik when he expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. |
| 4 | Lance Wallnau: The face of the NAR on the Internet who hosts his own show, and a major threat to both US national security as well as global security. Currently only mentioned on pages related to the NAR. |
| 16 | Yasuke, Japanese historical figure of African descent who by some accounts is considered the first Black samurai. He recently became the subject of a shitstorm by reactionaries who negatively reacted to Ubisoft's depiction of him as one of the playable protagonists in Assassin's Creed: Shadows, which brought up discussions over his life and subsequent career in Japan, of which very little reliable information is known. |
| 8 | Kaspersky Lab, Russian cybersecurity provider and antivirus firm. Was recently sanctioned by the US especially in light of the Ukraine invasion, where the Department of Commerce ordered a ban on the sale and support for Kaspersky products in the States, especially given Eugene Kaspersky's connections with the Kremlin. |
| 15 | Order of the Nine Angles. Currently, this is just a section on our Satanism article, but given the 764 scandal and the fact that they're actively targeting minors on social media, I'd argue that they deserve their own article. |
| 7 | Daniel Defense: Gun company founded by outspoken GOP supporters infamous for its AR-style assault rifles being implicated in school shootings such as the Uvalde elementary school massacre which led to the horrific deaths of several grade-school students. Known for its cavalier attitude towards gun control supporters and what amounts to peddling firearms to impressionable youths much like what Big Tobacco does to kids with Joe Camel and the like, and has been sued alongside Call of Duty series publisher Activision by relatives of those killed in the school attack. |
| 21 | Briahna Joy Gray, former staffer for Bernie Sanders. Has boosted misinformation concerning Israel's war in Gaza on Xitter. Recently fired from The Hill for rolling her eyes at an Israeli hostage. |
| 17 | "Dr" Dawn MichaelCreate draft counsellor and sex therapist who has moved on to COVID denial and has been retweeted by Donald Trump. Has no medical degrees, and according to her old website, she obtained her PhD from "IASHS". That is, the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, which was shut down by the California Department for Consumer Affairs for being a diploma mill! As a pseudo-medical huckster, Trump orbiter, and minor TV personality, she fits rationalwiki's remit perfectly. As the information about her qualifications (or lack thereof) is no longer readily available, a rationalwiki page with details and links could do at least some damage prevention for people who might be fooled by the two letters she puts in front of her name. |
| 42 | Afrocentrism - Currently it is a section under the Black supremacy article, but the topic is notable enough that it deserves its own topic. We have a fair share of articles on Black supremacists, so an article about this would not be odd. Afrocentrists usually claim that Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Europeans in general, Native Americans, Arabs, and more were actually Black. Afrocentrists are racist to White people by comparing them to Neanderthals and are racists to Native Americans by calling them "Five Dollar Indians". We have an article about Eurocentrism, so an article about Afrocentrism which debunks its claims would be needed. |
| 21 | Terrence Howard former Actor, now fringe crank, "1x1=2" pseudomath, also appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience to PIDOOMA a bunch of other bullshit including claiming he can "kill gravity" etc. |
| 31 | Asmongold: Gamer and YouTube/Twitch streamer who has also done sociopolitical commentary, typically of the right-wing variety. To be fair he did express his opposition to loot boxes due to them being a gateway to underage gambling, but he has been known to make a lot of anti-woke screeds such as this video questioning Epic Games' inclusivity guidelines, among other things. We have articles for shitheads like PewDiePie so why not Asmongold? |
| 18 | Hatred: Isometric shooter game developed by Poland-based Destructive Creations, who cited creeping political correctness as their impetus for releasing a mass murder simulator. Unsurprisingly attracted a legion of immature edgelords, especially considering the developers' alleged far-right leanings. |
| 7 | Alois Hudal: Austrian former bishop and neo-Nazi ass kisser; he helped form the ratlines i.e. the sort of Underground Railroad for fugitive Nazi officers. |
| 27 | Blackpill: Currently just redirects to the Manosphere glossary page. But this toxic ideology does warrant its own page for the sheer amount of conspiratorial thinking and pseudoscience it contains. |
| 35 | Brianna Wu: Once a primary target of the GamerGate crowd, since October 7, 2023, she has become a major zionist and has been making increasingly anti-progressivism takes. She may not have gone completely right-wing just yet, but it's certainly something to keep an eye on. She was infamously a target of transphobic hate and doxxing due to being a formerly stealth trans woman, but has since began expressing transmedicalist viewpoints and has gotten into conflict with other trans people. |
| 17 | Transnational repression: Dictatorships are sometimes so afraid of dissent that they try to hunt down dissidents as well as diaspora populations and communities well outside of their borders. |
| 27 | Anti-Christian Bigotry - This should be an article considering how Christians are treated in Muslim countries,India,Israel, Communist countries and even factions within Alt-right. Anti-Christian bigotry also partly inspired Armenian genocide and Christians were persecuted in Roman empire.Chrstians aren't persecuted in America but that doesn't excuse not talking about this topic |
| 11 | Chandra Wickramasinghe, student of Fred Hoyle, focused on proving panspermia, (choosing a far-fetched proposition and then choosing is not how you're meant to do science). Also links to dodgy tory MP Jamie Wallis whose dad seems to fund him. |
| 24 | Tommy Tallarico, "legendary video game composer" and pathological liar featured in an Hbomberguy exposé. His mother is very proud of him. |
| 55 | Operation Paperclip: After WWII, the Americans recruited several Nazi scientists to work on American projects to beat the Soviets — most notably Werner Von Braun, the Nazi scientist who fathered the Moon program. |
| 19 | An article on Plurality, a subculture of people who identify as having multiple personalities, and also works as a support community for those with Identity Disorders; more and more awareness about these people has been raised, and in my experience, are recognized and accepted in the Leftist Communities that I am in however most people who identify with Plurality are Fakers who make the DID community look bad |
| 12 | Voice of the Martyrs: A human rights activism group that claims to aid persecuted Christians around the world (to the point that their online domain is "persecution.com"). While they've done some legitimately noble things, this doesn't change the fact that they also have a very scummy underside, à la Salvation Army. Amongst other things, they covered up the allegations of child abuse against their USA branch's executive director (who committed suicide over the allegations) to the point that they fired Michael Wurmbrand, the son of VOM's founder, when he called for an independent investigation into the matter, and refused to accept his wishes to stop using his parents' images afterward. Not to mention, they cut off all support to their Nigerian branch after it turned out that the leader was responsible for committing numerous crimes, including child labor and rape. |
| 40 | Demiurge: A.K.A. Yaldabaoth. The Gnostic answer to the problem of evil — that jerk answering to the name of "YHWH" in the Old Testament was really a filthy, narcissistic, tyrannical impostor, and the material universe was never intended to be free of suffering in the first place. It's surprising that we don't have an article on this yet. |
| 36 | Might makes right: It gets mentioned as a talking point for multiple faulty arguments, many of which involve a god. Yet we somehow don't have an article on this particular aphorism. |
| 28 | Amala EkpunobiCreate draft - Pretty much discount Candace Owens. Another starlet from PragerU whose major claim of being brainwashed at an early age by the "far-left" and spouting several far-right talking points under the guise of reasonable discourse who would be right at home having a page on this website to tell people to steer clear. |
| 57 | Content farms — These sites and accounts regularly push false or misleading information with clickbait titles to fool people, usually minors, into clicking and then they reap the advertising revenue from it. Especially pervasive on YouTube due to the lack of moderation, but also present on search engines. Generative AI only makes this problem worse. |
| 52 | Dead Internet theory — An up-and-coming conspiracy theory that states the internet in general "died" in 2017, and has been hijacked by AI and algorithms created by the U.S. government to manipulate humans. |
| 17 | John Hughes — I know it seems like a silly suggestion that doesn't fit the site's mission at all. But check his personal life on the other wiki. For starters, he was close friends with Ben Stein & people think his films are pro-Reagan. |
| 26 | Profanity — I'm surprised we don't have a page on this yet, especially with its implications on free speech and how some public figures gleefully abuse it, like with Duterte giving Pope Francis his classic "your mom's a whore" epithet. |
| 16 | Peter Dutton: I'm from Australia & I can see how dangerous he is and I think he needs a page here. |
| 39 | Yulia Navalnaya: She is continuing her late husband Alexei Navalny's work and what he fought for. She NEEDS a page. |
| -21 | DutchBondFanCreate draft Youtuber with over 44 k subscribers. Batshit Insane on Twitter. Anti Woke, Pro Trump, Pro Putin, Pro Geert Wilders. Transphobic, Etc. Here's one of his many hateful hits. Where he thinks he's on the right side just because his grandfather was. https://twitter.com/DutchBondFan/status/1664142259300827136 Don't give him a license to kill. |
| -10 | An article on Breadtube; We already have articles on various figures within the community, so we might as well make one for the genre itself. |
| 64 | Dr. Seuss - We have an article on Horton Hears a Who! but not on the man himself whose extensive use of sociopolitical messages on his children's picture books attracted criticism and commentary. Some of Seuss's books were pulled from circulation due to racially insensitive themes, though it is worth noting that he wrote Horton as an apology to the Japanese whom he denounced and mocked during the war, especially when he saw the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
| 43 | Sweet Baby Inc. - AKA the targets behind GamerGate Part 2: Electric Boogaloo: The Legend of Curly's Gold. |
| 27 | Angel Studios - The Utah-based company responsible for unleashing Sound of Freedom to the world, though they've also taken on other conservative Christian content in hopes of turning them into the next big thing via crowdfunding. An entire article could be devoted to their antics as they make Pure Flix look sane by comparison. While they boast a creator-friendly platform, a couple of filmmakers have cried fowl on how that operates. Even the story of how they formed is legally suspect and rooted in Mormonism. |
| 17 | Genetically Modified Skeptic. Come on, we're the Atheist Wiki, but we still don't have an article for one of the figureheads of 2020s Atheist Youtube? Seriously? |
| 47 | Enshittification: This is a recurring trend with online platforms, social media, and more. Most of it is for squeezing out even more profits. |
| 11 | Digital ID, I figured this deserves a page. Blair is obsessed with forcing it on the world as he reckons it’s part of the “technology revolution” speaking of which. |
| 11 | Elsie Dinsmore, 19th-century American children's book series whose Christian themes found an audience within the fundie crowd in spite of its racist, sexist and more disturbingly, paedophilic subplots. The book series have also been adapted into doll form a la American Girl. |
| 47 | David Zaslav, Current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. Known for his deleting shows & movies that haven't been aired yet. Such as Batgirl (which off course The Fandom Menace loved him for). Has recently been revealed to have been collaborating with Chinese Propaganda Outlets. There is a current movement to get rid of him: #FireDavidZaslav that i support. |
| 51 | Charlie Chaplin, English comedian and later political activist, best known as The Tramp and Adenoid Hynkel. Given how we have an article about fellow McCarthyism victim John Lennon, I am surprised that we don't have a page on this guy yet. |
| 50 | The "Mother of all Short Squeezes" or MOASS Edit draft for short. It's an apocalyptic event where the price of gamestop stock will dramatically increase in price to "infinity". Believed mostly on reddit. Detailed in this video |
| 16 | Infestation: Origins, Thinly-veiled neo-Nazi dog whistle game themed after Steamboat Willie to cash in on Mickey Mouse's newfound freedom. Despite the developers' attempts at feigning ignorance over the references, the game was still clearly made with the intent to sow far-right sentiment. |
| 71 | Alexei Navalny, I'm actually shocked the man Putin fears the most doesn't have a page here. He should. |
| 77 | Esoteric Nazism, a small new religious movement that literally believes Adolf Hitler was a god or some such. A wide range of other very surreal beliefs may or may not include that there is or once was a secret utopian continent called Hyperborea where Aryans came from (who may have been giants... or aliens... or Amalekites... or something), that traditional European folklore is literally true (gnomes and shit — but is that just overlap with broader Western esotericism?), swastikas and runes are magical, Atlantis existed and maybe Aryans came from there actually, etc. Often ties into neopaganism and/or Hinduism. See also: Savitri Devi, Vril, Nazi UFOs, Faustian spirit, Occultism in Nazism, O9A, Thule Society, Julius Evola, Ahnenerbe, Robert Charroux, Woden's Folk, Axel Stoll, and Otto Rahn. Compare: Positive Christianity. |
New articles[edit]
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These former suggestions have been recently created and may still need plenty of work.
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Semaglutide (a.k.a. Ozempic or Wegovy) is a medication intended for diabetics, but is heavily used/promoted as a tool for weight loss, resulting in shortages for people who need it for diabetes. The long-term effects of using it as such remain unknown. It was also suggested it can slow ageing.
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Jaime Maussan, the journalist pretending to be an archaeologist who created the "1000-year old alien mummies" from Nazca, Peru. The mummies were presented before Mexican Congress on September 13, 2023 while they were holding a hearing on the existence of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). He was also involved in a number of other hoaxes including the "Metepec Creature", the "Roswell Slides", and the "demon fairy" photos that have circulated online.[6]
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Bill Barr, Donald Trump's attorney general. He enables Trump's authoritarian instincts by using his authority to protect the president and his allies, and punish real and perceived political opponents.
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Butch Hartman is a disgraced former cartoon creator who thinks that you can pray away autism, among other things. See also this twitter post. His connection to many fundamentalist Christian groups is also missional.
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Roblox, a video game platform which has >50% of US kids on it, surprisingly has on-mission points. Compliance with Chinese government censorship, firstly. Young'uns are now politically active at increasingly early ages, so political & religious groups of every stripe (believe me, anything you can think of) have evangelized there, from Roman Catholic masses & processions in the Philippines (done in lieu of in-person ceremonies no thanks to COVID-19) to even creationists (here is a group based on AiG). Wired discusses fascist recruitment, but only scratches the surface (NBC report on the same). This discusses one arrest involving an ISIS group. Multiple reports argue the platform's business model is based on child labor (and, this editor would add, something akin to a pyramid scheme). Many reports cover sexual predators "run amok" on Roblox. There are some more topics of potential coverage, but that's enough. We have GTA & even Ruben Sim, why not this?
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Stalinism A political philosophy espoused by Joseph Stalin, basically one of the original totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, along with Italian Fascism and Nazism. Currently just a redirect to Joseph Stalin
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Nicolás Maduro: 46th president and dictator of Venezuela since 2013.
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The Fandom Menace I’m surprised these scumbags don’t have a page already as both several ComicsGate members and Computing Forever are members of this hate group. IMO Cullen is the group’s most dangerous member. They mostly spread lies about Star Wars and formed after The Last Jedi, but they attack other franchises. Star Trek, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, cartoons. Basically gamergate and ComicsGate but encompassing all of need culture.
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Most wanted articles[edit]
| 156 | Transhumanist theoristsCreate draft, a catch-all of all the more popular nutters. (Especially Ronald Bailey, a Reasonoid who doesn't really understand liberal theory.) |
| 162 | Hurricane Sandy denialismCreate draft. Yes, this is a real thing, I kid you not. Hell, we have an article dedicated JUST to the hurricane. You know, the cocktail of conspiracy theories, global warming denialism, and just general Congressional vileness. |
| 167 | Hwang Woo-suk, Korean scientist who faked human stem cell cloning. His story also includes nationalism, fraud, and even trace amounts of misogyny. |
| 164 | Galen WinsorCreate draft, "the man who eats uranium"[7], gained popularity due to a 1986 video from his tour of US campuses during which he gave lectures on the safety rather than the dangers of nuclear power. During these lectures, he regularly ate uranium and claims to have regularly swam in the spent fuel pools during his tenure in the field of nuclear energy.[8]IMDb |
| 184 | Big TechEdit draft Suprised we don't already have an article on this, Big Tech is one of the right wing's favorite boogymen they always complain about it when their Bigotry and Misinformation is censored, this is due to a Persecution complex. |
| 183 | VTuber: Originally started in Japan around the end of 2016, but saw a massive outburst in the west at the beginning of 2020 due to the pandemic. Its influence is as big as that of big Youtubers and also attract a certain crowd. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there's the fact that many of them have bad sleep and eating habits, because they are required to stream alot for several hours (some of them stream for almost half a day) for their agencies (big players here being Hololive, Nijisanji & VShojo) (if they aren't indies). The fact that a bunch of Parasocial fuckers (this is a very serious problem in this sector) harass & dig into these people's private lives (Most notably /vt/ on 4chan & r/VirtualYoutubers) or act like a bunch of creepy incels. Then, There's the Taiwan controversy, which led to the people in question getting suspended for 3 weeks and harrassed by Chinese viewers, which resulted in one of the 2 eventually leaving on her own accord. On the other hand, some vtubers tend to lure certain crowds to their channels due to their own attitudes being similar to that of their audiences (those that claim to be introverted, are actually socially awkward and/or Edgelords). Most of the popular ones have had their own share of controversies. Such as stereotype opinions about how black people talk, denying the holocaust, one pulling a Pewdiepie & thanking someone for their "shekels" after receiving a superchat (she is a bit of a bother herself, but I don't think it's enough to give this one it's own page yet. She seems to have become friends with a vtuber that already has a parcer call, so she might start copying that behaviour.), trying to own the haters on 4chan's board /vt/ by doing exactly the same thing that they're doing hoping it wouldn't have a backlash (which it did) & leaking confidential information. Are there LGBTQ+ vtubers? Yes, there are. Are they being targeted by people, despite its community being all about "wholesomeness"? Well, what do you think yourself? |
| 170 | Anastasia Romanov, whose alleged escape from the massacre of her family at the hands of the Bolsheviks has inspired lots of storytelling and urban myths, despite her remains having been found alongside the rest of Tsar Nicholas's family. She has a particular penchant for starring alongside Grigori Rasputin, another common urban myth subject, in alternative-history stories. Speaking of Rasputin, why do we have an article on him and not Anastasia? Rumors of her survival persisted for several decades, and DNA testing was required to prove that she died with the rest of the Romanovs! |
| 173 | October Surprise This can apply to both the political term and the conspiracy theory that Reagan cheated and withheld American hostages in Iran until after he had beaten Jimmy Carter. |
| 165 | Sloot Digital Coding System, a woo-ish system of storing computer data. Its inventor, Jan Sloot, purported that his system could encode a feature-length film in just eight kilobytes, despite the apparent impossibility of storing reams of complex data in such a small package. Sloot died of a heart attack in 1999, which lent itself well to conspiracy theories especially as the source code was never recovered. |
| 165 | LK-99 was a proclaimed room-temperature superconductor invented by a team from Korea University in July of 2023. It is a gray–black, polycrystalline compound, identified as a copper-doped lead‒oxyapatite. The claim has since been refuted by the scientific community.[9] The method was particularly sensational because of the comparatively inexpensive copper and lead used in its production,[10] so DIY engineers are still trying their own methods to recreate it.[11] |
| 164 | Virginia Giuffre, The woman who brought Prince Andrew down. I thought of her as she has liked and retweeted QAnon Horseshit in her anti trafficking activism. This tweet being one of them Tweet Link Here |
| 174 | Groomer (slur). May deserve a separate article from Draft:Groomer to make it clear this hateful smear against LGBT people is distinct from the legitimate concept used by child-protection agencies. |
| 170 | The 2023 Ohio train derailment, where a derailed freight train resulted in the spill and fire of vinyl chloride and other chemicals which was removed with a controlled burn. Has become a massive subject of speculation on the causes of the accident, issues of railway safety and various claims and concerns of long-term environmental impact with possibly alarmist comparisons to Chernobyl. Also, the arrest of a reporter at a press confrence didn't help matters. |
| 161 | UrsuAdamsCreate draft ("Donnie" Adams), a Planet X-spinning YouTuber with a fixation on Neumayer Station. Recent hijinks include popularizing a fake picture of a "Heavy Mass Object" and accusing amateur astronomer Ian Musgrave of being a liar after Musgrave pointedoutthat the fake is actually 'shopped from one of his pictures. |
| 168 | Mississippi personhood amendmentCreate draft. Now that it's over and done with, I'm shocked nobody's done anything on it. Good thing the voters realized that zygotes don't give a shit about much. |
| 162 | Dr Brad HarrubCreate draft of Focus Press and YouTube. A Ph.D. 'scientist' who only seems to do Christian apologetics |
| 166 | Perhaps a page that helps with Refuting claims about the Russo-Ukrainian war that tankies keep regurgitating. Things like "Ukraine is run by nazis", "Zelenskyy is banning all the parties", "It's all NATO's fault", "It's all the CIA's fault", "It's all Western propaganda", etc., etc... |
| 162 | Powdered alcohol or Palcohol is the newest moral panic drug that has been banned in several states and was subject to a moral panic after the FDA determined the non-alcoholic ingredients were safe for consumption. It is mostly an ineffective way to get drunk, but that hasn't stop people from believing it will get you drunk instantly or that it can be used to smuggle alcohol into public places. [12] (Another Thunderf00t video) |
| 164 | Scaremongering "documentary" The Demographic WinterCreate draft. |
| 171 | Considering most of the guys at RationalWiki are a bunch of sex-deprived assholes, it's shocking we haven't written on Karen Stollznow, Kylie Sturgess, Catherine Deveny, Jennifer Ouellette, Rachael Dunlop, Susan Blackmore, Vicki Hyde, Iszi LawrenceCreate draft, Rebecca Watson, and the Skepchicks yet. Note: "Skepchick" re-directs to Rebecca Watson's page as of writing. |
| 170 | Edward BabinskiCreate draft - interesting-looking blogger who moved from fundamentalism to agnosticism.[14] and [15] might be useful. |
| 181 | PseudoengineeringCreate draft. As opposed to out-and-out pseudoscience, pseudoengineering is a method of engineering that uses sound scientific principles but poor engineering practices that can't be justified via cost or time excuses and are usually motivated by politics or pluralistic ignorance. The Strategic Defense Initiative is a prime example of pseudoengineering. |
| 173 | PowerLungCreate draft, Elevation Training Mask and similar knockoff products. Could all be in one article. Woo products claiming to exercise your lungs and diaphragm and simulate higher altitudes. Actually they are just expensive ways to breathe through a straw. |
| 162 | Medical Hypotheses - Controversial non-peer-reviewed journal taken over by quacks, mostly of the anti-vax and AIDS denialist stripes. |
| 177 | Universe - the Cosmology QuestCreate draft, apparently a documentary about scientists who think the Big Bang theory is wrong. This goes right with the anti-science part of our mission. You can watch it here. |
| 181 | Roberto DeMatteiCreate draft, President of Italian National Research Council and a complete wingnut: japanese tzunami is god's terrible yet benevolent voice, Roman Empire failed due to homosexuals and Eden is an historical reality. |
| 184 | Leslie KeaneCreate draft - Reporter who wrote a book on UFOs. Poses as a moderate, but is fundamentally a kook. |
| 164 | Prevent, the British government's anti-extremism strategy[19] founded under Tony Blair in 2003 but reviewed under David Cameron/Theresa May in 2011[20] and still active, initially founded primarily to combat radical Islamism, but also involved with countering the far right[21], and radical environmentalism[22]. There are concerns about freedom of speech.[23][24] |
| 185 | John Lenard WalsonCreate draft, a guy who claims that he has made pictures of (alien) spaceships in Earth orbit with his telescope[26] (possibly known as GRIDKEEPER (channel) on YouTube) |
| 196 | Military worship hysteriaCreate draft. Distinct though related to the military woo suggestion below. The tendency for society to be reluctant to criticize soldiers and military personnel because military. |
| 190 | David SewellCreate draft - mastermind behind PRATTs like this and this; author of books such as The Political Gene: How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics |
| 172 | Think we ought to have a page for Ivanka Trump? There seems to be a fair bit of material to rake her over the coals with, especially her recent epic fail at the G20 summit, trying to hobnob with world leaders who looked like, "WTF is she doing here?" |
| 174 | Hunting and Conservation; an article discussing how trophy hunting is being used to provide conservation in Africa by creating economic incentives for conservation over vast areas, including areas which may be unsuitable for alternative wildlife-based land uses such as photographic ecotourism. Arguments for and against should be used. |
| 168 | Eyewitness testimony: A common police procedure known for being unreliable but also known for having terrible methodology in regards to preventing contamination. An example of this is the police lineup, which pressures the witness into picking someone out of the lineup even when the perpetrator isn't present. Eyewitness identification and the accuracy thereof, especially in law enforcement (e.g. identity parades, picking out mugshots), is an interesting topic that has been widely studied. The failure of people to correctly identify suspects seems to go against common sense, and has relevance to other epistemological questions, as well as to wider issues in the criminal justice system. |
| 170 | Lost Ship of the Desert, a legend about a ship stranded in the Sonoran Desert (or sometimes Mojave Desert), generally said to be in southern California or possibly Mexico. Probably Spanish, maybe pirates, but also claimed to be Viking, or crewed by lost Israelites. There is a rumored treasure, and various wacky people are still hunting for it.[28][29][30][31][32][33] It's the intersection of several myths: Pre-Columbian contact theories, legends from the American West about lost gold mines[34], and entrepreneurs worldwide promoting rumored shipwrecks laden with unimaginable treasure. |
| 168 | Ketanji Brown Jackson: The first new justice to joint the Supreme Court during the Biden administration, and the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. |
| 163 | Applied Zoopharmacognosy - "Applied Zoopharmacognosy enables self-medicative behaviour in domesticated or captive animals by offering plant extracts that would contain the same, or similar constituents to those found in an animal’s natural environment. The practice encourages and allows an animal to guide its own health, since unlike their wild counterparts, captive and domesticated animals rarely have the opportunity to forage on medical plants. The extracts offered include a variety of essential oils, absolutes, plant extracts, macerated oils, tubers, clays, algae, seaweeds and minerals. Once the animal has selected its remedy, it will then guide the session by inhaling it, taking it orally, or by rubbing a part of its body into it." Basically animal abuse with woo. (Quote from http://www.ingraham.co.uk/.) |
| 205 | Patriot FrontEdit draft is an offshoot of the Nazi group Vanguard America, they formed because of a split after the events of the 2017 Unite the Right rally. 31 of these idiots were just caught in the back of a U-Haul truck outside a LQBTQ Pride month rally in Idaho, all dressed the same, some of them armed. They were arrested for attempting to start a riot, but someone has bailed all of them out.[35] Their names have been released by the sheriff's office here: [36] |
| 166 | Bongbong Marcos: Old Macoy's son and contender for the 2022 elections. His rise to prominence as a politician has polarised Filipinos especially in light of him and his family's tax evasion and their patriarch's notoriety as a dictator and plunderer. |
| 165 | Libel laws, with information on their abuse by woo-meisters, libel tourism, and science by lawsuit. Could possibly be merged with SLAPP suit. |
| 201 | AculifeCreate draft Help strengthen your health with the latest ancient technology! Aculife strengthens the immune system against Hypertension, Insomnia, Fatigue, Asthma, Ulcers, Hemorrhoids, High Blood Pressure, Rheumatism, Muscle Pain and many more common ailments. The Aculife is compact and lightweight enough to be taken virtually anywhere. You can even treat simple ailments like stiff aching backs, muscles and neck from travel or strenuous workouts. |
| 212 | Microbes on the ArkCreate draft Nothing on Noah and the amoeba? |
| 223 | Warranted conspiracy theoriesCreate draft both as a category (for things like the Reichstag fire, COINTEL Pro, Henry Knox's Sons of Liberty, etc.) and explaining how they differ from garden-variety conspiracy theories. Currently a not-very-useful redirect to conspiracy theory. Write a proper article if you want to mark this one "closed". |
| 182 | Grooming, in the sexual abuse sense. In particular, how anti-LGBT figures have co-opted and abused the term in the latest incarnation of "Think of the Children!" There is a draft here. |
| 201 | Russell Brand: One of the biggest cranks and conspiracy theorists on YT at the moment, peddles New Age bullshit like candy, surprised we don't have an article on him already. |
| 163 | SCIgen, the fake paper generator used to test scam conferences and predatory journals. |
| 171 | Monkeypox: The latest infectious disease panic, like a very mild version of smallpox, but with added monkey. It's dangerous for those with weak immune systems, but not a great threat to others, especially as it can only be passed by close body contact. There has been a certain amount of panic[40][41] but just give us the facts! |
| 168 | The Denisovans, as in the "Woman X" found in Siberia who may have inhabited the area throughout eastern Asia. |
| 164 | 5-HTP, a supplement commonly advertised as a treatment for everything from depression to migraines to OCD by increasing serum levels of serotonin. Regardless of whether it works for these maladies it can be dangerous to take without taking Carbidopa alongside to regulate it, because too much peripheral serotonin can damage the heart. |
| 164 | Eye color, specifically changing eye color that some claim correlates with their mood, weather, fatigue, or aging. I've also seen several versions of this eye color chart which does not accurately portray how Punnett squares really work[1] and could potentially lead some to falsely believe that infidelity has occurred. This could be its own article about eye colors or even just a new section added to the already existing eye article. |
| 164 | Solar Roadways is a crowdfunded, startup company which is trying to replace all asphalt pavements with solar panels which will power embedded LEDs that will melt snow and light up roads. This idea is entirely, scientifically flawed and unfeasible; Thunderf00t does a good job explaining why this idea isn't even efficient.[42][43] |
| 183 | Ferdinand Marcos needs no introduction. The best worst president the Philippines ever had. |
| 165 | Fight The New Drug, an organization dedicated to teaching the ills of pornography as well as treating addiction to porn using all the wrong methods. Full of Mormons and with some direct LDS Church support. |
| 183 | Gadsden flag: Used as a symbol of defiance and vigilance during the American Revolution, but has since been co-opted by libertarian and far-right groups to justify their agendas. |
| 167 | Robb Elementary School shooting (section in school shooting) Deadliest elementary school shooting since Sandy Hook. I am not surprised if this has attracted wingnut conspiracist nonsense using very much the same anti-gun control rhetoric like what happened ten years ago where "Sandy Hoax" crisis actors were purportedly used to 'stage' such a mass shooting. Not to mention the twisted and fallacious argument "iF ThE TeAcHeRs wErE ArMeD ThIs wOuLdN'T HaVe hApPeNeD" as espoused by some Republican legislators especially in Texas whose gun culture is up to cartoonish proportions. Currently a subsection in school shooting |
| 204 | Isaac Hayes, famed Southern soul musician who also played "Chef" on South Park until parting ways with the show after an episode making fun of Scientology of which Hayes was a member. It later turned that out Hayes didn't write his resignation letter and the signature was forged, but this didn't really come out until after his death. After leaving the show and leading up to his death, Hayes made very few public or private appearances and was described as acting strangely, so there are many who suspect foul play. Here is a rather thorough Reddit analysis of the events: [47] |
| 168 | Stevia currently has a one-line reference under Sweetener, but probably deserves more due to how common it is in food products currently. A traditional sweetener containing various sweet-tasting extracts that can be extracted easily just by boiling the leaves, stevia is incredibly marketable under the Naturalistic fallacy despite the fact that commercial stevia-based sweeteners are standardised extract concentrations made in labs. There is some fear it causes cancer (it doesn't unless you're eating a terrifying amount of it), some enthusiasm that it can help manage diabetic sugar cravings and people trying to lose weight (which, used sensibly as a substitute for sugar and not as a magical potion, it does), and a few weirdos convinced that it can cure cancer, cure depression, and provide infinite energy to earth from "cold fission". |
| 170 | Overtoun Bridge, the "dog suicide bridge"[48], a bridge in Scotland where lots of dogs reportedly commit suicide by jumping off the side. This has got press attention for a while, with some blaming supernatural influences and others suggesting bizarre canine-psychological factors. |
| 198 | Stochastic terrorism and/or Lone wolf — terms used to describe terrorist attacks carried out by an individual but inspired by extremist groups and public figures. It started with Daesh but has horseshoed over to the far right. |
| 182 | VeggieTales — a Christian indoctrination program disguised as a children's show. |
| 233 | Sweatshop, a workplace where people are employed for long hours with poor working conditions. This wiki currently only has a brief mention of sweatshops in the Globalization article, but there really needs to be an article about sweatshops, not just a paragraph. |
| 163 | Jackalopes are the elusive horned rabbits of the Wild West. They are often said to be a tall tale, although Shope papilloma is actually quite common among rabbits and may provide an explanation other than taxidermy. |
| 228 | Get A DripCreate draft/Drip barsCreate draft Get A Drip is a company that offers vitamin-filled IV drips in a clinic in the middle of a shopping centre. They have been in trouble for promising to treat infertility with a drip (it won't work), and doctors have pointed out that a one-time IV won't cure a chronic vitamin deficiency.[49][50] But the woo health press is all over them.[51][52] (I posted something in clogs before they got mainstream press in the UK.) The generic term for this kind of business is a drip bar, and has also received criticism in the US, with the general recommendation that you should just drink fluids.[53] |
| 186 | Filibuster in the United States Senate, Democratic Presidential candidates have talked about getting rid of it. There also seems to be a lot of confusion on what the filibuster actually is, and when there is confusion, deceitful malcontents will be there. |
| 185 | Oil pipeline — there are over 200,000 miles of these criss-crossing North America, some of which have attracted protests. On the one hand, people hate Big Oil™ and a big leak could be disastrous; on the other hand, petroleum pipelines are generally safer than transport by oil tanker. |
| 163 | uBeam: a physics-defying startup whose big idea is to transmit power by ultrasonic sound. If you do the numbers you'll see that this would require power levels that would not just deafen everyone in the vicinity, but be such that air starts going nonlinear. Site, breathless press [55][56][57] Any bored physicists in the house? |
| 164 | Brilliant Light Power, formerly Blacklight Power, another physics-defying startup that claims to be able to burn water by knocking hydrogen into a state below the ground state. Amazed writeup here, the crackpot paper it springs from. Noteworthy because it's soaked up millions in venture capital over a couple of decades for something that literally defies physics. Quantum physics is all wrong, energy from water, guy with an MD came up with it, $100M from investors despite every scientific authority from DoE secretary Nobel Prize winner to American Physics Society spokesman denouncing it, etc. That there is no RationalWiki article about it is less believable. See [58] |
| 231 | Voat Voat.co is the libertarian's answer to the recent censorship and bannings over at Reddit during the last few months. Instead of being all gestapo about free speech, it just lets people incite racial violence and other lovely things like that. It's home to such lovely rascals like "race realists", proud racists, Islamophobes (especially as of late), Nazis, Holocaust deniers, antisemites, and transphobics, among many, many other brands of moron. They did remove the actual child porn. The site itself is fairly alright, but the vocal community is anger-inducing. Have fun frothing from the mouth with rage studying these idiots in their natural habitat. |
| 170 | The Fort Hood shooting is now getting coverage because wingnuts believe Obama the FBI has a double standard for "not treating it as a terrorist act." |
| 180 | The Rockefellers/Rockefeller Foundation. They're as much a magnet for conspiracy whackjobs as the Rothschilds. One story, popular among paranoid anti-feminists, is that they started feminism so that women would eventually be allowed to have jobs and thus be taxable. |
| 177 | Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) by David Reuben — A sex guide from the late 60's which was a best seller in its time (inspired a Woody Allen movie of the same name). Relevant because the original edition portrays homosexuality as a disorder, advocates reparative therapy, somewhat flirts with the whole pink swastika idea, claims that all lesbians are prostitutes, and also recommends a Coca-Cola douche as a contraceptive (you can read about it all in the following link). I don't know too much about the 1999 revised edition, but based on Amazon reviews it's just as bad on the homophobia front. |
| 225 | Mary Elizabeth Croft author of How I Clobbered Every Bureaucratic Cash-Confiscatory Agency Known To Man and her "spiritual economics" (again, please don't touch this unless you have a good understanding of economics and/or (pseudo)law) |
| 174 | Lamaze, a natural childbirth technique. |
| 183 | Something along the lines of Found footage/Hidden Footage? It's a classic method that Paranormal believers and conspiracy nuts alike are prone to resorting to as an easy way to fool the more gullible on the Internet, whether it be a high-budget film or a grainy video inside a Freemason Lodge, and claiming said footage as proof for whatever crank belief/conspiracy theory they have. |
| 166 | The Army of Northern Virginia. "This is composed of about 820 military intelligence people. They're the primary intel source for the president. Because he doesn't have faith in the CIA or the FBI. And Q gets a lot of the information from the Army of Northern Virginia." ~ Gen. Paul E. Vallely |
| 196 | Montessori education is an education style focused on children's innate desire to learn. Its practices range from sensible to considerably less so. There are schools openly branding themselves with the concept all over the world, but the Wikipedia page is pretty slim. An editorialized well-sourced article here would be a great help to many parents, new and old, as well as their children. |
| 178 | Mass Formation Psychosis is a pseudoscientific theory about the COVID-19 pandemic that started gaining traction in January 2022. The primary driver of this bullshit is a German Belgian/Flemish professor named Matthias Desmet. (Maarten Boudry and psychologist Bram Vervliet have written about his crank ideas, for inspiration for sources.) |
| 223 | Ketamine: A moderately popular Dissociative drug becoming popular in recent years as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder. It's been responsible for cranks such as John C. Lilly and more casual users who become addicted to its purported "mystical" effects and have been known to commit suicide as a result of their newfound delusions. It's also really hard on your bladder for some reason. |
| 184 | Uplifting, the process of a sentient species enhancing the intelligence of another species with transhumanist sci-fi technologies. Eliezer Yudkowsky of Less Wrong writes on the topic. Many believers in UFOs are hoping that space aliens will eventually grant us such a boon. It would compliment the page for Cybernetic revolt and could discuss the Cyberman's burden to assimilate and upgrade others against their will. |
| 210 | Dr. Phil: Another O-spawn — some have even called him the male version of Oprah herself — he promotes yet more alternative bullshit. Also, may or may not have molested a patient. Has recently been on Fox News. |
| 217 | We should create an article on the subject of a surveillance state since it has become an ever growing reality with the passage of the PATRIOT ACT, various NSA programs, FBI biometrics database, the FBI spying on Occupy and BLM, Five Eyes program, Canada's spying bills, etc. |
| 330 | I don't know how RationalWiki typically deals with ongoing current events, but I think an article about the Russo-Ukrainian War, maybe in a liveblog-style article, would be pretty useful. |
| 423 | Doe v. Trump (2016) 1:16-cv-07673-RA ([63] [64] [65]) was the case of child rape filed against Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein for their underage sex parties at Epstein's residence in Manhattan in 1994, four of which were attended by Donald Trump.
Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein (2016) 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS ([66] [67]) was another case where the pair forcibly raped three 12 and 13 year old girls at underage sex parties at Epstein's Manhattan residence in 1994. The plaintiff's filings were "voluntarily" withdrawn after she had received death threats, and the charges were then dismissed.[68] [69] [70] [71] A draft has been created at Draft:Donald Trump child rape cases. |
| 297 | Jeff Bezos is the founder of Lexcorp Amazon. He is one of the richest men in the world. He briefly traveled to space, during which time he was one of the richest men off the world. |
| 312 | Carbon tax: A tax levied on the carbon content of fuels, used to discourage CO2 emissions. Despite its simplicity & efficacy, the proposal has been politically unpopular in many places, with attack campaigns pushed by Conservative groups & the fossil fuel industry. Tends to be much popular once in place. We currently have an article about the Australian carbon tax. |
| 222 | An actual article on Mass Surveillance; we currently just have Security theater, which isn't a very expansive discussion on the topic. Missional for explorations of authoritarianism. |
| 242 | First Amendment audits — another creepy right-wing/libertarian anti-government thing, involves going into libraries and other public buildings and hassling librarians to test if they'll protect your right to free speech if you stick a camera in their face and shout at them.[72] Initially in the US but a similar group, Auditing Britain, has been invading COVID testing centres.[73] |
| 351 | Matt GaetzCreate draft the Representative of Florida's 1st district, and a guy that can't tell whether or not he should be a RINO, or a Steve King wannabe. |
| 324 | Ghislaine Maxwell: Her trial starts today.[74] I definitely expected there to be an article here already. |
| 232 | Vril — holy shit, we don't have a page on this? |
| 201 | Leaky gut syndrome, a diagnosis purported by many woo-peddlers to be the cause of autoimmune disorders, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and autism. Mentioned in a paragraph in our article on Josh Axe, but since it's a widespread hypothesis in the alt-med world, is related to (if not exactly the same as) Andrew Wakefield's "autistic enterocolitis" bullshit, and is the rationale for the use of a number of supplements and fad diets to treat the aforementioned conditions — in a way that makes no sense whatsoever if you aren't aware of the leaky gut hypothesis — it deserves enough attention for its own article. While the ailment may or may not be real, the snake oil and "superfood" cures for it are all too commonplace. c.f. this article. |
| 195 | QAnon Anonymous is an investigative journalism podcast that analyzes and debunks conspiracy theories. It is hosted by Travis View who has written extensively for the Washington Post on the subject of QAnon. Travis View was later revealed to be a pseudonym whose real name was Logan Strain. |
| 194 | The importance of Yuri Bezmenov as a modern day quote mine can hardly be overstated. Originally a KGB officer, he defected to the West and subsequently became an anticommunist and a writer about subversion and propaganda. Everyone who has the displeasure of interacting with cranks of any stripe has probably been linked that one interview at least once. An analysis of what claims exactly he made and whether they have any actual relevance to the world today probably wouldn't hurt. (He is also prominently featured in the trailer for the next Call of Duty game.) |
| 210 | Q: Into the Storm is a documentary miniseries that recently premiered on HBO exploring the QAnon conspiracy theory and the people involved with it, including 8chan owners and administrators Jim Watkins and Ron Watkins. QAnon followers have already tied it into their "conspiracy".[76] |
| 210 | Palladium hydride is an odd one that can absorb 800~900x its volume in hydrogen.[5] There's a lot of woo behind it including claims that it can be used to make a room-temperature superconductor or even be useful for cold fusion allowing all those densely packed hydrogen atoms to be smashed together into helium. There are, of course, the usual claims that the price of palladium is being controlled and that the Illuminati are investing in it. I think it needs an article or even one on Palladium would be fine. |
| 285 | After the 2019 release of the Afghanistan Papers detailing that the feds had, as of then, been lying us for the past 18 years, maybe an article on them is appropriate? |
| 238 | Comicsgate is a campaign, similar to Gamergate, in opposition to perceived "forced diversity" and progressivism in the content of North American superhero comic books and the kinds of creators who work in the industry. The movement has been described as part of the alt-right movement, and as a harassment campaign, which targets women, people of color, and LGBT individuals in the comic book industry whose goal is to ‘combat SJW control of popular media’. Given their reminiscence of GamerGate in terms of tactics, their excessive focus on Marvel's new Iron Man Riri Williams, and how the group acted as a catalyst in the firing of Chuck Wendig, then this article should become a priority. |
| 286 | Amazon RainforestCreate draft As there has been a lot of misinformation about this in the media in recent years, it seems fitting. |
| 381 | This so-called COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis — with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying being some of its main proponents [77] [78] [79] — either as its own article or as a section in an existing COVID-19 article. Yes, RW talks about it a bit, but the hypothesis has been circulating outside of right-wing circles for some time. Indeed, while even the other wiki acknowledges that it basically edges towards conspiracy thinking, it hasn’t stopped others from reporting it as a supported lead to explain the origins of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, many have been speaking about it in the press as a working theory rather than what it is: a hypothesis, if not less than that. And while it may ultimately be true, the fact that it’s being advocated without any tangible credible evidence is concerning. This needs to be dealt with head-on at some point. |
| 227 | Thorium-based nuclear power: A lot of crap surrounding the thorium powered reactor in pop sci magazines, a lot of it debunked by thunderf00t. |
| 217 | The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is a self-declared "autonomous zone" and de facto intentional community and commune in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington that was established on June 8, 2020, after Capitol Hill's East Precinct building was abandoned by the Seattle Police Department (SPD). |
| 240 | Isaac Kappy was an American actor known for his roles in Thor, Terminator: Salvation, and Breaking Bad. He was also best friends with Seth Green until allegedly being approached by Seth about pedophilia in Hollywood and being asked to participate apparently referring to it as "chicken".[80][81] He claimed to fear for his life when he spoke out about this, but was later found suicided. He had also claimed that Marina Abramović, John Podesta, Dan Schneider, Jimmy Savile, and Tom Hanks are pedophiles, and further, Hanks has been accused of alluding to his murder in a tweet about "roadkill on Route 66" where Kappy's body was found. Removed Youtube video here. Archived here. |
| 198 | Huawei and ZTE, two popular smartphone manufacturers from China which made the headlines after being subject to accusations of spying and being a national security threat by the US government. Such claims have in turn been accused of being protectionism masked as security concerns. |
| 256 | Fake conferenceCreate draft or scam conferenceCreate draft — the sort where there's no real scientific conference, just a lot of people's money being taken. Will accept SCIgenned papers. |
| 399 | Something along the lines of race and police brutality in the United States – title flexible, obviously – is desperately needed. There are tons of major incidents that have received widespread coverage (Michael Brown and Eric Garner being probably the most prominent) that all follow the same pattern: cop shoots and kills black person in circumstances that didn't warrant violent action, then gets away with it. Cover the incidents, cover the statistics, cover right-wing media distortions of the incidents, cover protests, cover riots and maybe even online responses (#BlackLivesMatter). |
| 446 | Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is listed as the inventor of four 2019 U.S. Navy patents that have been described as "Star Trek technology".[82] The patent names include "High frequency gravitational wave generator", "Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor", "Electromagnetic ‘force field’ generator", and the one that initially caught my eye: US10144532B2 "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device". A patent prosecuted by a navy attorney, defended by a Navy CTO, and pushed through in an unusual way. There is a comment by a patent lawyer discussing the unusual nature of this here. There is some good analysis in it, and the comments after could explain all those UFO sightings as military craft tests.
"It is a well-known facet of quantum field theory that everything can be described in quantum mechanical terms. The complex interactions between a physical system and its surroundings (environment), disrupt the quantum mechanical nature of a system and render it classical under ordinary observation. This process is known as decoherence. However, it is argued that we can retard (delay) decoherence (and possibly even suppress it – namely decouple a physical system from the environment) by accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration of electrically charged matter under rapid acceleration transients. This may be the very condition to achieve a state of macroscopic quantum coherence, the idea being that we never let the system achieve thermodynamic equilibrium, by constantly delaying the onset of relaxation to equilibrium (hence the production of maximal entropy is delayed). The system may ‘violently’ react by generating ‘anomalous’ emergent phenomena, such as, but not limited to, inertial mass reduction." Implementations of these patents are possibly what was pictured in the AATIP UFO videos released by Tom DeLonge and recently confirmed by the US Navy found here. He recently released yet another controversial patent, this one titled "Plasma Compression Fusion Device" would be small enough to fit inside of a vehicle and produce energy on the gigawatt to terawatt scale.[83] |
| 352 | Dr. Mary's Monkey is a book with a surprisingly large following considering how absolutely nuts it is. It details an insane conspiracy theory where (if I'm remembering correctly) a cancer researcher was using a linear accelerator at the CIA's request to try and create a virus to inflict cancer (in order to kill Fidel Castro) and accidentally created AIDS as a result and that's why she was murdered. |
| 288 | Gun control in Nazi Germany - Whether as a separate article or as a sub-section in the article about gun control. It's commonly asserted that the Nazis took away everybody's guns and thus were able to begin committing genocide because they were disarmed. This flies in the face of that fact that the Nazis actually relaxed Germany's gun laws (albeit not for the Jews) after the populace were disarmed by allies after World War 1. A draft has been created at Draft:Gun control in Nazi Germany. |
| 305 | AATIP - a Pentagon program that basically searched for UFOs in early 2010s, cost 20 million, found nothing and was strongly backed by Harry Reid at the time. It hit the news very recently, so it might be nice to get an article on this while the usual suspects are still scrambling to shoehorn it into their theories. For eight years the project was headed by Luis Elizondo until his resignation. On September 18, 2019 the US Navy confirmed that the footage Tom DeLonge has collected from AATIP was in fact legitimate.[84] |
| 294 | Project 1794, a declassified 1950's Air Force project centered around the construction of a flying saucer whose details were disclosed in 2012. The extended delay between the end of the project and the release of these documents has led some to doubt their authenticity with claims that they were likely fabricated recently and "declassified" to explain UFO encounters retroactively. The documents' claim that Project 1794 was able to reach its goal of Mach 4 when it was the predecessor to the Avrocar project (which topped out around ~35mph) has also brought skepticism to their validity. The project was also named "1794", presumably after the 1794 silver dollar which became famous in 2010 when it broke the world record after being sold for nearly $8 million (the disc-shaped craft was silver and may have resembled the coin). |
| 235 | False rape accusations. While this is partially covered in the article on rape apology, it could use its own article, since it's the favourite canard of the "men's rights" movement and it seems to creep into any serious discussion about rape. A draft has been created here. The's a relevant Wikipedia article: False accusation of rape, with a lot of information and references. |
| 254 | NESARA (National Economic Security and Recovery Act), a economic reform proposal that later was appropriated as a conspiracy theory/scam by victims of the Omega Trust scam as the "National Economic Security and Reformation Act". (NESARA on Wikipedia.) We can also comment on the "feasibility" of the actual idea. |
| 238 | Gravitational waves have just recently been directly proven to exist, confirming an old postulate of Einstein's. May not be worthy of a separate article rather a subsection of the main Gravity article. What is really interesting to me here is the (hopefully impending) response by biblically motivated science deniers like Conservapedia to spin this into a narrative of "...and now let me tell y'all how this negates general relativity, physicists ideas for the origin of the universe and probably the whole scientific method altogether." |
| 232 | DARPA should have a whole host of conspiracy theories since it was responsible for the development of the internet, BRAIN Initiative, autonomous robots like PETMAN, etc. A draft has been created at Draft:DARPA. |
| 205 | Making a Murderer is a popular Netflix documentary series outlining the case of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey. The pair were charged with the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach, but there have been several inconsistencies in the investigation that hint at serious corruption within the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department. Avery had previously served 18 years for a wrongful conviction of sexual assault and attempted murder in 1985 and was to be compensated $36 million before these new charges arose. |
| 263 | GCHQ, we have NSA, but we need to do the other side of the pond's equally spy-y institution. Or they could be merged into one article. |
| 190 | Josef Papp or his Papp Engine which apparently used noble gases to generate electricity. It was demonstrated in front of Richard Feynman in 1966 but exploded, killing a spectator. Supporters claim it works like an internal combustion engine, except it uses sparks to produce explosions in noble gases. Since Papp's demo, there have been several attempts to exploit the alleged phenomenon, such as by PlasmERG.[85][86] There still seems some mystery around the 1968 demonstration, including claims that the explosion was deliberate, either to cover up Papp's deception or to protect the truth of limitless free energy. |
| 300 | Cryptocurrency: Currently [see what I did there?] just a redirect to Bitcoin. This should definitely be an article all of its own, between the conspiracy theories about it, the scams, and the miscellaneous other items. |
| 195 | The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization that is committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing and to reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. To date, the work of the Innocence Project has led to the freeing of 337 wrongfully convicted people, including 20 who spent time on death row. |
| 220 | The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially the People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson) was a criminal trial held at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in California. The former professional football star and actor O. J. Simpson was tried on two counts of murder after the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman, in June 1994. We can write an article discussing the case not just as a cultural phenomenon but also discuss the overwhelming amount of logical fallacies (emotional appeal, Chewbacca defense, prosecutor's fallacy), dishonesty tactics and evidence gathering mistakes that took place during the trial and/or behind the scenes, which all had great impact on law in America. We can also discuss the impact on race relations that took place at the time. Simpson, being an African American, had a strong appeal toward the black community because of his seemingly squeaky clean image, charismatic personality and his rags to riches story with the majority of them believing he was innocent and being persecuted for his race. Because of this, there was a height of fear in Los Angeles of another race riot worse than the 1992 Los Angeles riots if he was prosecuted. Best books to use as research for the article would be Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and Vincent Bugliosi's Outrage: The Five Reasons O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. |
| 280 | Rick SimpsonCreate draft, who believes that hemp oil cures cancer and every other ill.[87] "I haven't seen anything that the oil doesn't work on." A two-line stub was created and zapped as "so what" in 2013, but this is pretty missional if we can get some substance in. |
| 185 | Bill Weld Currently a redirect to the 2020 Republican Party presidential nomination article. He's an interesting candidate not only for his (comparatively) progressive views and the mere fact that he's the only candidate running against Trump in the RNC, but he was also previously a member of the Libertarian party and carries some of their support, so I think he deserves his own article. |
| 177 | ASEA, another classic example of a water woo pyramid scheme, they make bold health claims and use vague, nonscientific descriptions of free radicals and "Redox Signaling Molecules", sometimes even mixing it with real science.[22][23] I found this quote regarding the ingredients: "Recently, a company called ASEA, was able to take sodium, chloride, hydrogen and oxygen (salt water) molecules, separate them and recombine them to form oxidants (free radicals) and reductants (which neutralize oxidants)."[24] They also have a YouTube channel.[25] |
| 314 | Sherry ShrinerCreate draft is the cult leader of a group called Faction Four who believe in alien reptile demons. She was in the news recently because one of her followers shot and killed her boyfriend after a dispute within the cult led to their excommunication.[26][27] Another follower killed herself in 2013 after not receiving treatment for schizophrenia which they do not think exists.[28] Sherry Shriner blames a NATO hit squad for the death. There also is an ED article written up that may have some useful info, but probably needs to be taken with a bit more than a grain of salt.[29] |
| 358 | CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. CCA has been the subject of much controversy over the years, mostly related to apparent attempts to save money, such as hiring inadequate staff, extensive lobbying, and lack of proper cooperation with legal entities to avoid repercussions. CCA rebranded as CoreCivic amid the ongoing scrutiny of the private prison industry. |
| 257 | Operation GladioCreate draft We don't have a page about Gladio yet. Plus, it's one of the circlejerks from CTers claiming that the War on Terror, is actually "Gladio B". |
| 252 | The Crystal GridCreate draft: a woo-tastic website.[88]. Besides trying to build worldwide network of crystals, they've got a bogus cell phone radiation blocker.[89] |
| 212 | Electronic pickpocketing: I keep hearing ads for wallets designed to protect against this. Any legitimacy? (There is a possibility to skim contactless/NFC cards, but you sure as hell don't need to buy a $80 wallet when a fetching tinfoil hat does the same job. Feel free to repurpose that blog post. We need a good title for this article.) |
| 236 | International Monetary Fund. I think most people will know about this transnational organization, hated by both libertarians for pushing down the throat Keynesian ideas (Keynes had much to see with it in the post-war years) and leftists for the economic policies pushed by them in those countries that received their bailouts (ask Greece even if the European Central Bank and the European Comission pushed the same ideas, as well as some LatAm countries during the '70s) and some of whose presidents have been involved in scandals, even if unrelated to this organization (ask Rodrigo Rato, Strauss-Kahn, or Christine Lagarde) |
| 260 | ADIFOCreate draft (All DIrections Flying Object) is a Romanian company which has developed a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft resembling a flying saucer that is able to fly in all directions having the same aerodynamic characteristics in each direction. The aircraft has a unique configuration as a circular shape, and the fuselage is also the wing.[90] The aerodynamic body is axially-symmetric and is obtained by rotating a bidirectional Dolphin airfoil around the axis perpendicular on the middle of the chord line. An ADIFO platform was tested at low speeds in a wind tunnel providing high lift/drag ratio as well as a wide range of useful incidence angles, even over 60 degrees. The aerodynamic center is located near the middle of the chord line near the body gravity center. The aerodynamic load is distributed relatively evenly along the body surface and has no stagnation point. During transonic flight the body does not generate any shockwave on the surface, and no sonic boom is generated. There are low vibrations, low aerodynamic noise, and low heating at high speeds. In transonic flight the drag is drastically reduced compared to existing airfoils which ensures very high fuel-efficiency at transonic and supersonic speeds. Moreover, the center of pressure remains close to the center of symmetry, meaning no jump of pitching moment, and insignificant roll and yaw moments. Also, there are no lift fluctuations, so in conclusion this will mean a smooth transition from subsonic to supersonic flight! Video here |
| 191 | Apparently we don't have an article on Rosa Parks? There should be one if only to account for all the idiots whining that they're being just like her by breaking the law to promote their bigotry and stupidity. Would that be called the "Parks Gambit", similar to the Galileo Gambit? |
| 182 | Alexander Shulgin. Author of Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved and godfather of psychedelics. Missional to the degree that he made claims about the effects and usefulness of chemicals outside the pharmaceutical industry and currently accepted medical practice. |
| 164 | Zuma, the Pentagon satellite recently launched by SpaceX. Right now, it seems like it simply failed. However, that conclusions hurts not only the pride in US military and technology, but also the faith of myriad geeks in SpaceX and Elon Musk. This heady mix resulted in many theories that the failure was a false flag, it's working fine because it's stealth and it's actually meant to counter North Korean EMPs. |
| 255 | HmolpediaCreate draft — Supposedly there is a common trait among people of IQ over 200 (e.g. Goethe: 225), like the writer of this huge site and related tomes, which makes them understand some very complex phenomenon which is called human thermodynamics explaining everything, most importantly love and it relieves them of the pains of using excel spreadsheets to find the best mate out of 19 girlfriends; however Goethe’s testimonial is missing. |
| 240 | AIPAC. It's a lobbying group and pro-Israel, so it's basically a giant magnet for conspiracy theories. |
| 200 | The Kyshtym dwarf or Aleshenka / Alyoshenka was a small humanoid body found near Kyshtym, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia.[34] According to genetic experts at the Moscow Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, DNA analysis of the clothes Alyoshenka was wrapped in revealed evidence that his DNA was of unknown origin. It was also tested for radiation, but did not show high radiation levels.[35][36] |
| 226 | With protests against police brutality currently going on, I feel like an article discussing the movement towards defunding the police would be a good idea. It could include discussing its benefits and ramifications, debunking bogus arguments against it, and examining more extreme forms of it such as police abolishment. |
| 228 | The Socialist Rifle Association is an American socialist firearm organization that is dedicated to "providing working class people the information they need to be effectively armed for self and community defense" and advocating for Second Amendment gun rights. It was founded in 2013 to give leftist gun owners who are turned off by the NRA's rhetoric and politics a sense of community. |
| 182 | ACTA, or put an area for it in the SOPA article. |
| 186 | The Woozle effect, aka evidence by citation, where frequent citation elevates a lie or error into the the truth. Something similar is mentioned with respect to Wikipedia at Wikipedia#Circular_reporting, but the Woozle effect is also common in academia where lazy citation of papers can lead to the repetition of untruths. |
| 273 | The Great ResetCreate draft a proposal to utilize capitalism to rebuild the economy sustainably following COVID-19, and a subject of conspiracy theories about socialism and NWO bullshit. |
| 226 | Tom Hanks was accused of being a pedophile with no evidence by QAnon nutters[91] then became an honorary citizen of Greece. |
| 195 | Tila Tequila, not to be confused with actual tequila, is a model who came under extreme fire for saying some Nazi esque things. Because of this, she was banned from "Celebrity Big Brother" (although, if I'm honest, no one really wants to be in Big Brother). Fun fact: she's both LGBT and Asian, so her sympathy with white nationalists is kinda ironic. Oh, and she's a Flat Earther. (Note: a page on her was previously deleted: RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Tila Tequila.) |
| 168 | Bélmez Faces are a bunch of images on a concrete floor supposedly appearing out of no where. |
| 176 | Göbekli Tepe is a archeological site in Şanlıurfa (Turkey) it dates back to the neolithic age and it is unknown who has built it, how has it been built and why has it been built and this (of course) leads to nonsense. More specifically (ancient) alien nonsense. |
| 176 | Roanoke colony - which has two complementary aspects. Firstly there is the question of what happened to the mysterious lost colony, with various theories and contested "evidence" including the Dare Stones (now recognised as fakes) and other more recent finds[95][96]. But there's also the importance of Roanoke (and its newborn inhabitant Virginia Dare) for American white nationalism (most obviously VDARE but it extends way beyond it - the article Pocahontas mentions crazy theories that Pocahontas was descended from VD which relate to the whole system behind segregation); Andrew Lawler wrote a book on it[97]). |
| 171 | Whales and specifically whaling, which is the subject of some scientific debate (basically the Norwegians and Japanese claim it's incredibly important for science that they kill whales, but nobody else believes them). We have a section on Whaling in Japan (Japan#Whaling) and an article on Whale Wars, but no overview that discusses the science. There is also potential material about whale biology, whale evolution, the keeping of killer whales in parks, conservation, whether whales are more deserving than other animals, and the history of whaling, that may be relevant (see e.g. Oil#Whale oil, and compare Dolphin). |
| 186 | El Al: Israel's flag carrier, and a heavy target for some Anti-Zionist, sometimes Anti-semitic, and even Islamophobic conspiracy theories. |
| 240 | Super PAC. How is there not an article on these yet? |
| 172 | The ongoing Australian bushfire crisis and the conspiracy theories that have been spreading like wildfire in response to it. There are claims that environmentalists deliberately started the fires to build High Speed Rail lines, that it's part of the Agenda 21 conspiracy to kill everybody, that 200 people were arrested for arson that on further inspection is only 24 and with no evidence they had any political motive for doing so, and a bunch of other wacky theories. |
| 171 | Bisphenol A, also known as BPA. Harmful to developing fetuses? Causing widespread infertility in adults? Or just the latest public health scare? |
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These are previously suggested ideas for new articles. We also have a list of wanted pages that are currently red links on this wiki.
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Housekeeping
- Comment out older ideas if downvoted to death.
- Move ideas with over 150 votes to the Most wanted articles section.
- Move ideas that have been turned into articles to the New articles section.
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