wrog

wrog, 5 months ago

@annathepiper @rmd1023 @moira

crap, I have to start watching SNW again?

(I thought I was done when I heard that they did a musical episode, which normally you're supposed to have to wait 6 seasons for, and I'm like, "wait, they're running out of ideas this quickly? aaaaaa")

wrog, 5 months ago

@annathepiper @rmd1023 @moira

No. I'll watch it if I have to. I've just been generally annoyed at all of the stupid shit (doing severe violence to the canon for No Reason: rewrite of Balance of Terror made no sense. having Enterprise-style ships land on planets?retconning the Gorn? inventing completely new federation directives (forbidding genetic stuff? wtff) that make zero sense all so that they can point out how stupid they are. and oh sure let's make the transporter even MORE MAGICAL) ... especially annoying because I really like the casting and wanted the show to succeed, but bleah...

wrog, 5 months ago

@moira @annathepiper @rmd1023

The unbelievable part of Menagerie was NEVER about how Spock could do what he did.

It was about why, afterwards, Kirk, Star Fleet, or anyone else would EVER trust Spock with anything EVER AGAIN.

(You want to give him a one-time exemption from the Talos Death Penalty because he solved The Problem of Captain Pike and everybody agrees it's The Right Thing (*)?

Fine, do that.

But you're ALSO going to be revoking his security clearances and asking for his resignation fucking yesterday, because anybody who's demonstrated themselves capable of pulling that level of shit very badly needs to Not Be In Star Fleet Anymore.)

(*) actually, I'm still not convinced of this either, but that's another argument.

wrog, 5 months ago

@moira

(1) Kochs don't actually have a good track record of picking winners
(2) Haley has not been endearing herself to the MAGA folks (who basically hate the W-era republicans), so if Trump really does go down (dies, or gets convicted of something and this really does break the spell -- I have my doubts that'll do it -- they'll be staying home...

... not that this is something we should count on (she may find a way to pull it out, or Biden himself may die or fuck up really bad on something), but $$ can only do so much here (if it were up to the $$, Jeb would have won the 2016 primary)

wrog, 5 months ago

@moira

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/12/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-billionaire-2

LGM folks are pretty sure this is just Billionaires Denying Reality and trying to pretend that the GOP is still just a normal political party.

wrog, 5 months ago

@CultureDesk @JenLucPiquant @seanmcarroll @arstechnica

"...but scientifically suspect; "

Umm. How about:

They're all scientifically suspect because they have TIME TRAVEL.

wrog, 5 months ago

@CultureDesk

"gives lip service to GR"
≠
"scientifically plausible"

That is, just because you can posit a made-to-order universe and solve for it in GR doesn't make it real, and that's especially the case for solutions containing weird, impossible artifacts (e.g., Tippler's infinite, massive rotating cylinder, or exotic matter with negative or imaginary mass), and, so far as I know, that's the case for all known solutions containing closed timelike loops ..

the existence of such solutions more likely means that GR is under-constrained, never mind that we already KNOW that GR is not the whole story, that it will necessarily be WRONG in at least some out-of-bounds situations (because it doesn't account for quantum mechanics)

wrog, 5 months ago

@CultureDesk

and also closed timelike loops aren't really time travel in the sense people want, because a loop, by definition, is something you can't get into or out of

(I suppose you could posit a toroidal universe where the end wraps around to the beginning and put the Earth and all of human history inside of one big loop, but (1) that's not really useful for anything and (2) it would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which for most physicists would be a huge red flag.)

wrog, 5 months ago

@jimcarroll

Do I want to know what "OPP" is?

wrog, 6 months ago

@GW

Pieces like this are NOT helpful, the Russians absolutely love it when they get promoted, and I long ago lost patience with the idiots who think we need a revolution to burn everything down (revolutions almost never turn out the way you want).

I like to think Biden's putting pressure on Netenyahu, but we're pushing on a string there; and you can be damned sure Trump would be cheering him on.

Yes, I've always had issues with the former Senator (D-MBNA) who supported the Iraq war and authored the Bankruptcy Bill. Then again, in terms of getting progressive legislation passed, he's probably the best we've had since LBJ (and he's also forgiven the most student loan debt).

Ds and Rs are NOT the same.

Life is full of contradictions.

wrog, 6 months ago

@GW

If you actually believe that, then why bother? By your logic, all you're ever going to do is replace one set of socipaths with another.

wrog, 6 months ago

@moira
#monsterdon
#TheMagneticMonster

"THRILLING AND EROTIC REFUELLING"

Damn. Sort of annoyed that I'm missing this.

wrog, 6 months ago

@ColinTheMathmo

I'm still trying to figure out what a "streak" is.

I've done 4 or 5 in a row perfectly and it still says "Best streak: 2"

wrog, 6 months ago

@ColinTheMathmo

never used a hint but yeah, I've been solving them out of order and doing them in batches

wrog, 6 months ago

@moira #TheWaspWoman

this seems to be a common pattern.

It's almost like the denouement is something that was invented in 1975

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

And Richard Nixon was a Quaker.

wrog, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

@GW @Oozenet

Forming an organization of atheists is like forming an organization of People Who Don't Like Dogs. On non-dog-related topics you'll get as many distinct opinions as there are people in the room.

Also: an organization based on something that is not actually a big part of its members' lives is, oddly enough, not one its members are likely to want to devote time to (and hence unlikely to be successful).

wrog, 6 months ago

@GW @Oozenet

"Otherwise, it's simply conjecture."

Or not even that.

When you have a completely non-disprovable proposition -- when one can't even describe the sort of evidence it would take to show that the proposition isn't true, or the proposition can always be mutated to explain any given situation -- therefore is inherently untestable and therefore does not provide any useful information about how the world works (because you can conclude anything you want from it) -- then we're deep in the realm of metaphysics at best, or, sometimes, just logical incoherence.

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

"But it tries to say they don't exist."

No it doesn't.

There's a difference between saying "this doesn't exist" and "there's no evidence from which we can reason about this, therefore we have nothing to say and we're not going to waste our time."

Many UFO sightings get resolved as, "We really have no idea what happened here; maybe if we had camera views from different angles we could nail it down. But we don't; we can offer some guesses but that's about it. Sorry"

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

The problem with Fundamentalism (really I can only speak to American Christian fundamentalism -- I believe similar things are true in other religions but I have less direct knowledge) is that it's about "going back to basics" and holding to particular propositions AT ALL COSTS, e.g., that "the Bible is literally true", no matter how absurd.

This isn't about belief in an abstract god or afterlife or other strictly metaphysical propositions. This is about real-world propositions that can be measured and tested, whether concerning science or history where we, in fact, DO have MOUNTAINS of evidence,

1/n

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

e.g., radiological dating, astronomical observations, Egyptian records that make it pretty much impossible that anything like Exodus ever happened, archaeolgical evidence that the battles mentioned in Joshua as part of the "conquest of Caanan" were actually unrelated city destructions taking place over the course of 1000 years that almost certainly had nothing to do with each other, or that Jerusalem in the supposed time of David & Solomon was barely a village. Multiple contradictory accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus that make ZERO sense w.r.t. what we know about 1st century Jewish law as practiced by the Sanhedrin.

It's not just Genesis vs. Darwin, there's so much other easily debunked stuff.

2/n

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

... and none of it matters.

And it's not just that they respond with "La-la-la we're not listening".

It's that they construct organizations of PROFESSIONAL LIARS (e.g., the Institute for Creation Research, the American College of Pediatricians, ....) to promote their agenda, deliberately misquote scientists, manufacture evidence, arrange sham "debates", and do what they can to fuck up public education so that nobody's kids get exposed to ANY of the counter-evidence. They arrange for their own translations of the Bible (NIV) that "fix" problematic verses to make them say what they want them to say.

They see themselves in a battle with Satan to save people's souls and so ANY MEANS NECESSARY is justified.

3/n

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

Dawkins may be an asshole in any number of ways (racist, sexist, etc...) with perhaps other shortcomings as well (clings to outdated propositions in biology and is too quick to speak with authority on fields that are outside of his specialties),

but he is NOT a fundamentalist in the above sense.

perhaps there have been a few cases of him being a bit too quick to speak of "scientific fact", but you have to consider the context of prior scientists and science journalists erring too far in the OTHER direction and being WAY TOO cautious/nuanced

which the fundamentalists then exploited to great effect ("Evolution is only a theory"), casting doubt on matters that in the scientific community have been settled for 100+ years

4/4

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

" that erroneously calls itself Christiainty "

No True Scotsman, then...

" clearly full of powerseekers who will twist any truth to suit their own needs "

hate to say this (*) but

Christianity has been like that pretty much from the beginning (perhaps ALL the way from the beginning depending ...).

Half of the epistles are known forgeries (guy wants to win political argument, "finds" scripture to back it up, gets it accepted as canon). Successive gospel authors clearly wanted their version to completely replace the prior one; none of those authors ever expected to be published side-by-side in the same codex 50+ years later (also a political decision).

And then there's Constantine...

(*) ok, no I don't.

1/n

wrog, 6 months ago

@Oozenet @GW

And it's a fair bet similar shit was going on in ancient Judaism (cf. Daniel, another obvious forgery), even if the actual history is much less settled (still no idea when the Pentateuch was actually written).

I'm still not going to say All Religion is Bad; there is endless capacity out there to make silk purses out of sow's ears. The key is knowing how to cherry-pick.

(e.g., I have nothing but respect for the Quakers (*);

well ok, the passive-aggressive consensus stuff sometimes annoys the shit out of me, but it's pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.)

(*) technically still Christian as I understand it, which just shows how diverse Christianity has become.

(yes, writing Nixon off as a bad apple.))

2/n