A man who is about to die - just did

[Johnny Yesno]

So you have a conspiracy theory about this conspiracy theory?

I certainly do.

[marquis_de_sad]

You miss biggy that much?

[Johnny Yesno]

You miss biggy that much?

Haha, no.

But I have noticed the torrent of paranoid crap that ends up in my YouTube suggestions and realised that the far right really understand how to push their messages. I don't use Facebook but I understand it's the same. You only have to look at India to see how paranoid messaging can act like a contagion.

[Famous Mortimer]

The real people we should be questioning are the Science Channel people who encouraged this moron to kill himself. Someone whose grasp on reality is as tenuous as this chap's evidently was does not need producers egging him on.

[Ferris]

Thank you for actually listening to me and starting a new thread instead of just necroposting like everyone else! Wow.

Didn't realize there was a preference. Will avoid bumping old threads in future.

[kngen]

This is probably the right thread to promote the amazing 1981 documentary The Devil At Your Heels about the attempts of hapless stuntman/daredevil Ken Carter to jump a mile-wide canyon with his rocket car. Convoluted, quixotic and filled with bathos, it's like a real-life Christopher Guest mockumentary. And make sure you stick with it till the end.

[marquis_de_sad]

But I have noticed the torrent of paranoid crap that ends up in my YouTube suggestions and realised that the far right really understand how to push their messages.

The second thing doesn't have to be true for the first thing to happen.

[Replies From View]

Apparently flat earthers believe in something called the "Pacman effect", whereby you are teleported to the opposite side when you reach the edge (surely more like an "Asteroids effect"). That explains everything.

This is so very confusing.  Presumably at the "edge" of the world they would see some kind of "wraparound" effect, but they would stop short at agreeing that this creates "a globe". 

[QDRPHNC]

I read a story in a comic once in which "BTW, the twat's built the rocket himself" was the penultimate frame before "Rest in peace".

It was one of Alan Moore's Future Shocks, I believe.

[QDRPHNC]

Never really understood the flat earth thing. What's the point of everyone pretending the planet is round? Who benefits?

[Shit Good Nose]

Never really understood the flat earth thing. What's the point of everyone pretending the planet is round? Who benefits?

Big gravity.

[bgmnts]

Never really understood the flat earth thing. What's the point of everyone pretending the planet is round? Who benefits?

SciManDan on youtube's raison d'etre is debunking flat earth bollocks. So maybe him?


Flat earth is genuinely a bit scary because we've known the earth was round since about the 6th Century BC. That level of scienctific rejection is a bit frightning.

[marquis_de_sad]

Never really understood the flat earth thing. What's the point of everyone pretending the planet is round? Who benefits?

Serious answer: NASA and the military industrial complex. Bollocks, obviously, but that's the explanation given.

[oy vey]

Serious answer: NASA and the military industrial complex. Bollocks, obviously, but that's the explanation given.

Still doesn't explain why a spherical Earth benefits any of that. Do they think NASA is pretending to launch shit into orbit meanwhile they do it on the cheap somehow because the Earth is in fact flat and therefore... aw for fuck sake there's no way to approach this except mental illness or chronic utter dumbness. The whole DSM thing is over-inflated but there has to be room for Basic Facts in the Face Disorder.

How about a Foucault's Pendulum Torture Device? Double's as a reality show on permanent stream. Strap the Flat Earther to the inside edge of a gladiator style arena at 2pm (stay with me). Set up a foucault pendulum swinging from an overhead dome ceiling. On its end is a large hammer shaped lead anvil swinging at bollock height. Set it at 12pm. Give the prick/bitch/whatever 2 hours to yield to logic or they'll be eating their balls/pancaked cunt/whatever needs to be rendered useless. Keep them coming in every 2 hours. Ad revenue goes to funding modernized education.

[batwings]

Some flat earthers think the globe model is a Satanic conspiracy to move our perspective away from mankind as a special creation at the center of a relatively small Universe to the current scientific paradigm of us residing on a small planet in an unremarkable part of one of countless, massive galaxies. It's the same anti-science attitude found in creationism.

[Bobtoo]

Hang on a minute. I can't find mention of anyone by the name of Shinty Gusset-Blunder. Is this a wind-up?

I think it must be, that woman is called Brittany Medina https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/tigers-in-the-united-states-outnumber-those-in-the-wild-feature/#/12-week-tiger-cub-in-living-room.jpg

It seems that there was a woman called Stacey Konwiser who described herself as a tiger whisperer, but she was mauled to death in 2016.

[Dex Sawash]

Did anyone look for Shitty Gusset-Blunder, may have been a typo

[TheBrownBottle]

I'm waiting to meet a flat-earther in real life so I can show them the GPS route and pics one of my workmates took a few years ago when he went sailing.  Around the world.

I actually had one in my house recently.  She's the daughter of my other half's friend.  Neither of knew she was a flat-earther.  She's in her mid-20s (to avoid the awkward sentence before, which could be read as her being a kid).

They were round having a cup of tea a few months back, when she took an interest in my telescope.  She started asking how it worked, and I was happy to talk about it. Likewise when she asked about the map of the night sky on my wall, and then she asked about how the stars move.  This got into me using a tennis ball like a primary school science teacher, explaining how the days work when she asked about that too.

It was at this point her mother explained that the daughter was going to a flat earth conference in California soon.  The daughter then started telling me now it all ACTUALLY works, and how it's all an optical illusion, and that images of the earth from space are CGI (despite space flight predating CGI by quite a number of years).  It's borderline frightening when you hear this stuff in the flesh; she had the belief of a religious zealot when explaining it.

As ludicrous as these nutters are, it's hard not to be reasonable and gentle with them when you're explaining to them where the science disagrees with them (at every turn in this instance).  She'd had a tough time in life and perhaps crazy conspiracy theories help her cope; pop-psychology but Christ knows how I'd be if I'd been through the same shit as her.  I want to make clear I only answered her questions as reasonably as I could; no haranguing took place, and I didn't try to convince her other than in answers to questions she'd asked.  Besides, I'm not exactly an expert; amateur astronomy as a hobby hardly makes someone a physicist. 

I can't help thinking that the Dawkins fans of the world would've spat in her face before calling a fucking idiot.  Can't see what that would achieve.

[Famous Mortimer]

I can't help thinking that the Dawkins fans of the world would've spat in her face before calling a fucking idiot.  Can't see what that would achieve.

Exactly the same as you did - nothing - but at least they'd have had the satisfaction of letting an idiot know what they really thought.

Sorry, I'm being a bit facetious, and I'm glad you're the sort of person who'd spend time explaining things to people, but to someone who thinks space is CGI, the only thing your detailed explanation achieved is that more of your time was wasted.

[TheBrownBottle]

I know you're right, but she's a sweet natured person, so I felt obliged to answer as best as I could.

Nowt would've been achieved, of course.  Her mum was at ours last week and told us she did go out to that conference. 

Edit:  the CGI thing is absolutely crackers.  I hadn't heard of that until she brought it up.  Just fucking barmy.

[oy vey]

I actually had one in my house recently.  She's the daughter of my other half's friend.  Neither of knew she was a flat-earther.  She's in her mid-20s (to avoid the awkward sentence before, which could be read as her being a kid).

They were round having a cup of tea a few months back, when she took an interest in my telescope.  She started asking how it worked, and I was happy to talk about it. Likewise when she asked about the map of the night sky on my wall, and then she asked about how the stars move.  This got into me using a tennis ball like a primary school science teacher, explaining how the days work when she asked about that too.

It was at this point her mother explained that the daughter was going to a flat earth conference in California soon.  The daughter then started telling me now it all ACTUALLY works, and how it's all an optical illusion, and that images of the earth from space are CGI (despite space flight predating CGI by quite a number of years).  It's borderline frightening when you hear this stuff in the flesh; she had the belief of a religious zealot when explaining it.

As ludicrous as these nutters are, it's hard not to be reasonable and gentle with them when you're explaining to them where the science disagrees with them (at every turn in this instance).  She'd had a tough time in life and perhaps crazy conspiracy theories help her cope; pop-psychology but Christ knows how I'd be if I'd been through the same shit as her.  I want to make clear I only answered her questions as reasonably as I could; no haranguing took place, and I didn't try to convince her other than in answers to questions she'd asked.  Besides, I'm not exactly an expert; amateur astronomy as a hobby hardly makes someone a physicist. 

I can't help thinking that the Dawkins fans of the world would've spat in her face before calling a fucking idiot.  Can't see what that would achieve.

Intelligent debate and gentle respectful education, sure I'm with you. Doing the orange orbiting an apple thing, shining torch, telescope on Jupiter + moons, writing up laws of gravity, showing how matter likes to clump into a sphere given half a chance, Faucault's pendulum, curvy picks of skyline out the window of an airplane.... fucking tons of evidence... if someone is open to that, great. My focus is on those dicks (and they exist in abundance) who you could fly into space and they would convince themselves you are hypnotizing them, or projecting CGI, etc. They would rather believe that there's an ongoing conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc. just because. They're fucked in the head, basically.

[TheBrownBottle]

Intelligent debate and gentle respectful education, sure I'm with you. Doing the orange orbiting an apple thing, shining torch, telescope on Jupiter + moons, writing up laws of gravity, showing how matter likes to clump into a sphere given half a chance, Faucault's pendulum, curvy picks of skyline out the window of an airplane.... fucking tons of evidence... if someone is open to that, great. My focus is on those dicks (and they exist in abundance) who you could fly into space and they would convince themselves you are hypnotizing them, or projecting CGI, etc. They would rather believe that there's an ongoing conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc. just because. They're fucked in the head, basically.

She seemed genuinely curious.  As if no-one has ever explained any of this to her before.

There appears to be no form of evidence that will convince them.  The evidence of their own eyes; scientific theory; photographic evidence; philosophical (Occam's Razor etc) evidence.

I don't doubt most them need help, nor that there is a lot of danger to people believing that there's a conspiracy running things.

Sympathy doesn't apply to silly cunts strapping themselves to kettle-powered rockets mind.  Well, maybe some sympathy - but not a great deal of it.

[oy vey]

I like your approach though. Good teaching. Asking questions as asked. Not as cunty as I would be. I have to work on that.

[Pinball]

They should have built a second rocket with a parachute attached to the outside, so that his enablers could be fired into the air next. This definitely contravenes health and safety legislation.

[Replies From View]

People brought up on CGI are a strange generation.  I sometimes wonder if there are people who watch nature documentaries and think the things on screen can't be real.  Kids brought up on increasingly realistic CGI creatures and environments must be increasingly numb to the true wonders of nature.

[bgmnts]

Kids brought up on increasingly realistic CGI creatures and environments must be increasingly numb to the true wonders of nature.

The carrier bag snagged on the branch of a tree on the river bank, tainted brown with pollution, with a solitary duck beaking it's arse as a fat cat eyes it up through the overturned trolley.

Majestic.

[Johnny Yesno]

The second thing doesn't have to be true for the first thing to happen.

It doesn't but it is.

The far right know politics is downstream of culture and they're doing all they can to insert their ideas into culture. Why do you think they are obsessed with the idea of what they incorrectly call 'cultural Marxism'?

[NoSleep]

This is so very confusing.  Presumably at the "edge" of the world they would see some kind of "wraparound" effect, but they would stop short at agreeing that this creates "a globe".

It's much easier explained as magic. Much harder to explain the Sun disappearing below the horizon, presuming that reports from other regions of the Earth that it's above the horizon at the same time can be trusted.

[BlodwynPig]

This is probably the right thread to promote the amazing 1981 documentary The Devil At Your Heels about the attempts of hapless stuntman/daredevil Ken Carter to jump a mile-wide canyon with his rocket car. Convoluted, quixotic and filled with bathos, it's like a real-life Christopher Guest mockumentary. And make sure you stick with it till the end.

Great stuff

https://youtu.be/JgIhGTpKTwM?t=4476

Love the brooding funk build up to this

https://youtu.be/JgIhGTpKTwM?t=4681

"ABORT ABORT!!"

*Trumpton Fire Engine "races" into action*

HA HA HA

Fucking hell, that ending - where the fuck are the paramedics - some guy in a brown suit manhandling a visibly broken man onto a soggy sand dune

[DistressedArea]

This is so very confusing.  Presumably at the "edge" of the world they would see some kind of "wraparound" effect, but they would stop short at agreeing that this creates "a globe".