One of the most interesting takeaways from the documentary Behind the Curve was that Flat-Earthers are surprisingly good at designing scientific experiments to test their theories. The problem is that they immediately reject the results of their own experiments when those results fail to support their hypothesis (which is always).
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Hey neighbour.
Gotta check the dark web for the real Freemasons website.
*secret handshake *metaphorical prose secret code
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Wait… Mason’s built lodges that can burn!!! WTF?
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Scientifantastic!
(Pie = Pi)
Last I read, the cop was off-duty (so his gun shouldn’t have been handy <edit: wrong!>). He confronted him but the suspect got away. This was at the third site. If it wasn’t for this observant cop, there wouldn’t have been such a timely arrest.
It’s been a strange week for Vancouver. There was a mass-stabbing in the same neighbourhood as the first fire. FYI, the cops didn’t kill the assailant. They may have saved his life as he was stabbing himself.
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Certainly the contents aren’t constructed 100% of stone.
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Flat earthers believe—wrongly—
That the last word is necessary is so disappointing.
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When I saw this comment, it had 42 likes. I’m sensing a Douglas Adams connection here…
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The cop was off duty and he was able to identify the individual and car, and had called for patrol vehicles to intercept. No need to kill the man.
Canadian police for decades weren’t allowed to carry a firearm off duty. The only civilians that are permitted to carry handguns in Canada are specific, trained security guards like armored car crews.
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Hmm. The jury selection should be interesting.
Will the defence challenge any juror who might be a mason?
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And see also Oh No Ross And Carrie’s in-depth embedding they did with that group. They spent time getting to know them as people and seeing what makes them tick. Empathetic and human, like all ONRAC investigations. Much better than the “hurr hurr look how stupid these people are” type of thing that most rationalist/skeptical podcasting is.
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There’s another way to look at that- all through the Trump era, traditional journalists didn’t call out the lies and falsehoods explicitly. They just said things like “President Trump believes there was election fraud” over and over. They didn’t feel the need to state how patently false that is. It’s obviously wrong, right? Nobody believes that?
However what happens is you get one side saying their lies loudly over and over, and the other side quietly repeating them but not refuting them. Thus there is no voice refuting them. Places like NPR finally caught on to this problem and now say “Trump stated that there was fraud and to be clear there was not” each time. It matters! If we don’t speak up for truth every time, the lies go unopposed and people fall for them. It matters that people with platforms are stating clearly that lies are lies.
So I’m happy to see that last word in the sentence. Don’t assume the truth is “obvious”.
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I kind of miss the days when people with kooky fringe beliefs were (or at least seemed to be?) mostly harmless cranks. Now it seems like every wacky belief and conspiracy theory is somehow tied in with antisemitism, white supremacy, homophobia, anti-intellectualism, or various other excuses to harm, hound or kill particular groups, no matter how far removed that seems from the original core belief.
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Off duty Detroit cops are required to carry a gun at all times.
Sorry, always for softly-softly manners but come on everyone,
there IS a limit beyond which you won’t get a respectful audience, just a plenitude of eyerolls and groans.
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Rolling your eyes at people does not help understand them, and if we don’t understand why increasing numbers of people believe deeply silly things, our species is in serious trouble. Trump was just the beginning.
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There you are right, your point about “increasing numbers” is indeed troubling. May it be that we, as a species, are vulnerable to our own creation, the TV/computer/phone screen? I sometimes wonder if we are on the verge of seeing a new pathology being described. I wish I had the right remedy…
Update: His gun was handy enough. At least it looks like it. Unless that’s his mobile in his hands.
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No, humanity has always been this way. We’re wired for sloppy thinking and it takes effort to improve that. Social media pours gasoline on everything, but didn’t create the problem. Go read 19th century newspaper editorials and letters to the editor to see that the crazy has always been there.
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