Dumb Questions Thread

[MIE1992]

You might want to review the first post, and reimagine whatever it is you're asking through the lens of "things you don't know about and may be perceived as being a bit dim for asking" rather than "lol memez".

Gotcha, fair enough.

So for something more earnest, do you suppose there's really any broader solution to the rise of the manosphere, or could the "solution" vary with the individual? I'm skeptical of anyone who claims the former, especially people like Scott Galloway who notably does not have a degree in sociology nor psychology, but in marketing.

 

[AEKara38]

If there's ostensibly such thing as an Alpha Male, is there a level that can surpass that, otherwise known as Alpha Male 2? And then, is there a way to go even further beyond? When are Tate and his cronies going to fight Majin Buu, anyway?

(The joke is how manufactured all this "alpha male" crap is. Reminds me of kids doing make-believe on the playground.)

I don't currently feel you are catching me up. If my position at the top of the manosphere is threatened then I'll let you know.

 

[TexRex]

Why is the right so driven to propagate obvious falsehoods? Is it just mental illness or is there more to it than that?

In the hours following an attack on a San Diego mosque that resulted in the deaths of a security guard, two members of staff and the perpetrators (self-inflicted), conservatives frantically set upon branding the pepetrators as trans and trans-aligned.

The perpetrators were identified less than 24 hours after the incident, but that didn't stop Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) from affirming the narrative that officials were being secretive about the shooters because of their gender identity rather than because protocol dictates that the families of minor perpetrators are notified prior to public statement.

Early "reporting" appears to come from slopaganda purveyor Alexander Muse via an "anonymous" Twitter account amplified by none other than Elon Musk, seen here quoted by [Canadian] conservative commentator Lauren Chen. Chen was previously employed by right-wing media outlet BlazeTV and associated with Turning Point USA before the former fired her and the latter terminated any association and cleared her information from its website because a media company she co-founded, TENET Media, received funding from Russia to push pro-Russia views.

Does anyone want to give Rep. Mace, Musk-amplified Alexander Muse or Russia-funded Lauren Chen the benefit of the doubt?

 

[TexRex]

Why is the right so driven to propagate obvious falsehoods? Is it just mental illness or is there more to it than that?

Aaaaand a United States Senator.

"You can't make this up." Turns out you can! There is no photo ID requirement to enter the center. One just needs a ticket, and photo ID isn't required to get one of those, either. As it happens, asterisks frequently mark additional information and said information here is that regarding free admission for Illinois residents which does require proof of residency. Conservative media has made this distinction ad nauseam but Blackburn is...dim. She's lucky there's no minimim intelligence requirement for the United States Senate and one simply needs to convince enough voters to pick them.

 

[wfooshee]

Why is the right so driven to propagate obvious falsehoods? Is it just mental illness or is there more to it than that?

There is no more obvious falsehood than the left's claim that the SAVE act would make it impossible for women to vote, simply because their married name won't match their birth certificate. That is nothing but fear-mongering to try to make the populace actually believe they would be in that situation. Many states require ID to vote (not many blue ones, make of that what you will,) but none require proof of citizenship, merely an affidavit "under penalty of perjury" when you register to vote. The other falsehood claimed about the SAVE act is that you'd have to take a passport with you to vote, which would be a cumbersome expense for many as so many Americans do not have a passport.

The paperwork required to prove your citizenship when you register to vote is the same paperwork you need to get a state-issued ID or driver license under a married name: your birth certificate and your marriage certificate. How many women are out there driving without a license because they couldn't get one, because their name didn't match their birth certificate. As for needing a passport to vote, while a passport is valid for proof of citizenship to register (as is the combination of birth certificate and marriage certificate,) once registered, your voter ID card becomes your proof of citizenship at the poll! Under the SAVE act, you would have proven citizenship to register, so the fact that your name is on the roll is the proof they need.

Yes, voting in a federal election is already illegal for a non-citizen, but no proof of citizenship beyond a sworn lie is required by any county when registering to vote. RealID is not proof of citizenship, only proof of identity, as aliens can legally obtain a RealID.

 

[Mikey]

From the sounds of things SAVE would make it easier for partisan registrars to block or dissuade US citizens from being registered to vote, vastly out of proportion to the number of non-citizens and illegal immigrants who have been registered.

I don't know how many people can't drive but can currently vote, but in 2004 Arizona blocked one in three applicants in its three most populous counties in the first five months its Proposition 200 was active and Kansas barred 31,089 eligible citizens from being able to vote in 2013 despite only being able to prove 39 noncitizens in the state were registered to vote.

Source: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-w...e-conspiracy-theories-about-noncitizen-voting

To attest that there's a wave of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are voting as Musk has done is what sounds like fearmongering to me.

Four Things to Know about Noncitizen Voting

Heightened scrutiny has targeted the integrity of election processes, particularly regarding noncitizen participation in U.S. elections. We address four frequently asked questions concerning noncitizens voting in American elections.

bipartisanpolicy.org

This Project 2025 contributor seems more concerned about removing roadblocks to partisan state registration boards to deny legal citizens their voting rights than removing blocks between those citizens and their enfranchisement.

How Trump's Justice Department Will Achieve More Honest Elections - The Daily Signal

The key to what a new Trump administration can do to enhance the security of the election process is not to nationalize election operations, something the

www.dailysignal.com

 

[GBO Possum]

To attest that there's a wave of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are voting as Musk has done is what sounds like fearmongering to me.

Whatever the motive, this appears to solve a problem for which there is no evidence. But for politicians still clinging to the fiction that “the election was stolen,” it creates another pretext for casting doubt on the trustworthiness of the system.

 

[Mikey]

Whatever the motive, this appears to solve a problem for which there is no evidence. But for politicians still clinging to the fiction that “the election was stolen,” it creates another pretext for casting doubt on the trustworthiness of the system.

I don't know whether the US left claim that the SAVE act would make it impossible for women to vote or are merely pointing out examples of voter ID legislation impeding a sizeable minority of them in the past. To say that they have sounds like a strawman to me.

But if they did make such a claim, and if it's a falsehood, it seems nowhere near as obvious a one as Senator Blackburn's claim that photo ID is required to enter the Obama Center, which for some mysterious reason she's since deleted from X.

But what do you or I know? We're simply dumb foreigners.

 

[TexRex]

I guess this is kind of related to an earlier question of mine but it's just so bizarre that it stands on its own.

Why would one claim that the abortion pill contains the same chemicals that Nazis used to exterminate Jews?



I know the aim is to link enforcement of individual consent of which one disapproves to historical atrocity but it's just so historically and biologically illiterate. And of course the invocation of "the racist history of abortion" functions as an allegation of hypocrisy to the idiot base because nobody on Katie's side would have an abortion and everyone not on Katie's side cries racism but if they want to have an abortion that must mean they approve of its racist history and are therefore hypocrites.

But the core claim is just so ridiculously false and it trivializes atrocity.

 

[Liquid]

Even if there happens to be a coincidental common element, this is Hitler Ate Sugar levels of straw-clutching, association fallacy.

Wonder if Bobby Brainworm knows that dihydrogen monoxide is used in nuclear reactors yet we give it to our children??

 

[TexRex]

coincidental common element

Carbon, but I think that sort of defies coincidence.

 

[MIE1992]

Can the word "Martian" be applied in the context of calling someone a war-monger, or something like that? Y'know, since Mars was the Roman god of war.

EDIT: Would the white whale from Moby Dick make for a good red lantern? Or would Ahab be more appropriate? Maybe even both?

 

[Mikey]

Can the word "Martian" be applied in the context of calling someone a war-monger, or something like that? Y'know, since Mars was the Roman god of war.

EDIT: Would the white whale from Moby Dick make for a good red lantern? Or would Ahab be more appropriate? Maybe even both?

In that case we would use the word "martial" instead. Like martial arts. NB not to be confused with "marital".

EDIT: I have no idea. I read the comics but not the novel and think it would depend on how pissed they are in the US sense, not the UK one.

Unless you mean turning the whale into a literal red lantern. I think that's illegal these days.

 

[wfooshee]

This reminds me of all the Facebook posts people put up telling you to avoid some product because it contains something they perceive as horrible and dangerous. What the product contained was a compound whose molecules consist of various elements, some of which are indeed quite nasty. Completely ignoring the difference between some substance being part of a molecule and the substance actually being a standalone part of the product is ignorant, if I may be permitted to call it ignorance after using the work "ignoring..." I like to point out that table salt contains sodium and chlorine, both of which are not something anyone would like to ingest alone.

High school chemistry was a little bit important, folks!

 

[GBO Possum]

...because it contains something they perceive as horrible and dangerous

Water is dangerous because an atmosphere of pure Hydrogen or pure Oxygen will kill you quite quickly? 🤔

 

[Barra333]

This reminds me of all the Facebook posts people put up telling you to avoid some product because it contains something they perceive as horrible and dangerous. What the product contained was a compound whose molecules consist of various elements, some of which are indeed quite nasty. Completely ignoring the difference between some substance being part of a molecule and the substance actually being a standalone part of the product is ignorant, if I may be permitted to call it ignorance after using the work "ignoring..." I like to point out that table salt contains sodium and chlorine, both of which are not something anyone would like to ingest alone.

High school chemistry was a little bit important, folks!

Same with the "vaccines have Mercury in them!!" argument. Yes, they do, as a preservative. In a totally inert form that flushes straight through the system.

 

[wfooshee]

Same with the "vaccines have Mercury in them!!" argument. Yes, they do, as a preservative. In a totally inert form that flushes straight through the system.

That's exactly the one I was thinking of, but i drew a blank on it when typing my post!

 

[TexRex]

This reminds me of all the Facebook posts people put up telling you to avoid some product because it contains something they perceive as horrible and dangerous. What the product contained was a compound whose molecules consist of various elements, some of which are indeed quite nasty. Completely ignoring the difference between some substance being part of a molecule and the substance actually being a standalone part of the product is ignorant, if I may be permitted to call it ignorance after using the work "ignoring..." I like to point out that table salt contains sodium and chlorine, both of which are not something anyone would like to ingest alone.

High school chemistry was a little bit important, folks!

Yes that's very stupid but that's not really what's at play here. It's the association that's being weaponized rather than the composition. Mifepristone actually only contains "CHON" (specifically C²⁹H³⁵NO²), the fundamental building blocks of all life, and none of them are "nasty." Of course the Nazis used hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and carbon dioxide (CO²) to exterminate Jews and so obviously some combinations of those elements are nasty, but you also don't see midwits linking water consumption to Nazis. Actually that's mildly surprising (not really) given the data center hoopla.

That's not the only association with Nazis which activists have stressed, and it's likely the result of midwits playing a stupid game of telephone with the original one. See, connie rats are really fond of pointing out that Roussel Uclaf, the French pharmaceutical company responsible for synthesizing RU-486, known generically as mifepristone, is "linked" to the Nazis through German chemical conglomerate and major financial and strategic partner (it even provided Zyklon B, the commercial application of hydrogen cyanide, manufactured by one of the companies it owned) I.G. Farben. It actually wasn't long after the drug first went to market in 1988 that this connection was made (it's not meaningful, as one of the entities I.G. Farben was broken up into following the Nuremberg Trials acquired a majority share in the holding company which controlled Roussel Uclaf like thirty years later) and weaponized, even leading to guys in suits getting death threats.

This is all very funny coming from the side that screeches about anyone who doesn't agree with them calling them Nazis.

Anyway, Zacharia has obviously also made this connection and had to be corrected by the actual literal Auschwitz Memorial. Not a good look.



But again, why diminish atrocity with falsity? Oppose abortion on subjective moral grounds. Whatever. It's idiotic and denigrates the most foundational of individual rights, but at least it doesn't diminish atrocity.