#conspiracy vs. theory

[marril96]

Criminal Minds 17.05 | Conspiracy vs. Theory

[skaldish]

Look, I get people with higher privileges are more likely to be jackasses, but being straight, or cis, or white, etc. doesn't automatically make someone "problematic" because core identity is never the source of problematic behavior.

As soon as you've decided someone must be problematic because of a feature about their identity, you've lost. You've walked straight into Nazi logic.

There's only one point of measurement that matters when it comes to determining if someone's being problematic: Their behavior.

And then, before you decide that person's evil for behaving a certain way, you investigate why they're behaving the way they are, because malice isn't always the reason. Problematic behavior can also come from places such as ignorance, stress, or brainwashing.

I'm sorry, but we don't live in a world where people are categorically good or bad based on character tropes.

We just don't.

[stealthetrees]

God I wish conspiracy theorists were as much a problem in real life as on the internet. I wanna meet someone who doesn’t believe in the moon landing and tell them that no, actually, the moons not real it was blown up by a British guy named Tim.

[professional-court-jester]

i’m genuinely of the belief that the megamind sequel/tv show was meant to premiere on nickelodeon in like 2011 alongside their other spinoff shows, but then got shelved after the movie flopped financially and has been sitting around in some archive gathering dust until peacock decided to release it as “new content.”

like, can we just look at the visual evidence alone?

he fits right in with this lineup. peacock, i’m onto you

[anthroxlove]

What comes to mind when you think of Amber Heard? Liar? Survivor? Narcissist? Millions of us watched the celebrity trial of the century, Depp v Heard, in 2022. Amber Heard lost and Johnny Depp was vindicated. But what if Amber was actually the victim of an organised trolling campaign? What if the online hate against her was manufactured? Alexi Mostrous, the reporter who brought you Sweet Bobby and Hoaxed, investigates what happened to Amber and who might have been responsible. It’s a story about how our own thoughts and opinions can be moulded without us even realising.

[thestreamweaver]

Just remembered the "What If V2" series of the older marvel comics. Ororo and Logan's daughter Kendall/Torrent was soo cool!

Also (alongside Logan looking so comfortable), they have a very young son too, but he wasn't named.

What do you think his name is or should be? What kind of powers would he have?

I don't know this for sure... but I heard a theory that his name might have actually been (....wait for it....) Evan Munroe...

I don't know if this is actually true or just someone tossing flames, but if it was, then this would make a lot of sense

It seems kind of far-fetched to think this to many, myself included... but if you look at different places in the episodes of Evolution where Evan Daniels is, there are subtle hints. Like when he signed up for the skateboard competition...

Spoiler alert: he didn't sign on where the D's were...

Also how Ororo is specially connected to him (of course if he is her nephew then she'd be particularly interested in him just in general) it also looks like he and Logan got familiarized a lot in the show to......... of course that would happen with the whole teacher/ student thing, but I personally think there's more to it. I input it in the fanfics that I write.

Personally, I have a theory that Ororo and Logan were together before the series started and had a son together, then they were forced to split ways because of Weapon X. When he disappeared, she went to look for him and had to leave their son with her sister and brother in law. After it became clear that Logan was so debilitated mentally that he couldn't be the dad they all wanted and needed him to be at that time, she decided that it would be best for everyone involved to leave little Evan with his aunt and uncle, and they ended up raising him as their own. He found out the truth during the show, and that's one reason he acted out so much... they just hid it because you know how Marvel's handled that couple so far 😞

The only countering factors would be I don't think Ororo would abandon her child like that... but then again, she loves Logan more than anyone ever, so maybe her heart just couldn't take it 🤷🏼‍♀️

I could debate myself and others on the subject for days, hahaha 😅

But, back to the original question..... I don't know... it could be my theory, or it could be something else... I have a name for one of their kids in my fanfics. Their youngest son (so far 🤭) is Ayotunde. Which means "joy has come again" in Yoruba.

What would your preferred name for him be? Do you have a name idea?

[victoriousscarf]

At first I was honestly perturbed by the fact no one on social media was talking about the plane crash in Washington DC which was the worst since I believe 2006? Like a commercial passenger jet turned into a fireball over to Potomac River and killed 67 people as they were coming in for a landing and we're just not gonna acknowledge that happened?

And then I found someone talking about it and immediately spinning conspiracy theories and it was like oh. Yeah. Social media shouldn't have this one actually.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-2024

By: Center for Antisemitism Research

Published: Feb 29, 2024

Executive Summary

In the months since the October 7th, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel, the global Jewish community has witnessed an increase in antisemitic activity, unprecedented in recent years. For many in and around Jewish communities, this period has felt inherently different, a sentiment that has raised several critical questions about the current scope, nature, and implications of antisemitism.

To explore this, the ADL Center for Antisemitism Research has collected data since October 7th related to the scale and structure of the phenomenon of antisemitism in the United States and compared results to past findings.

This study of 4,143 Americans, fielded between January 5th and January 18th, 2024, (with a margin of error of approximately 1.5%) found the following trends:

Anti-Jewish trope beliefs continue to increase, and younger Americans are showing higher rates.

From 2022 to 2024, the average number of anti-Jewish tropes endorsed by Americans increased from 4.18 to 4.31 out of 14. Using the original 11 statements comprising the ADL Index, agreement with 6 or more anti-Jewish tropes increased from 20% of the U.S. population in 2022 to just under 24% in 2024.

In a reversal of past trends, younger Americans are more likely to endorse anti-Jewish tropes, with millennials agreeing with the greatest number of anti-Jewish tropes on average, at 5.4. They’re followed by Gen Z at 5, Gen X at 4.2, and Baby Boomers at 3.1.

In addition to individual attitudes, more than 42% of Americans either have friends/family who dislike Jews (23.2%) or find it socially acceptable for a close family member to support Hamas (27.2%).

Conspiratorial thinking and social dominance orientation are key predictors of anti-Jewish belief.

Belief in conspiracy theories continues to be one of the main correlates of antisemitic attitudes, with an overall average correlation of .378 with anti-Jewish trope belief. Respondents who fall in the upper quartile of conspiracy theory belief endorsed over twice as many anti-Jewish tropes, on average, as those with the least conspiracy theory belief.

Anti-Jewish belief also correlates heavily with social dominance orientation – the belief that there should be higher status groups and that they should suppress lower status groups. For example, respondents who at least somewhat agreed with the statement that some groups of people are inferior to other groups were 3.6 times more likely to fall in the top quartile of anti-Jewish trope belief compared to those who did not.

There was also a strong relationship with the belief that the problems in the world “come down to the oppressor vs the oppressed.” Those who at least somewhat agreed with this belief were 2.6 times more likely to fall in the top quartile of anti-Jewish trope belief compared to those who disagreed with the statement.

A significant percentage of Americans hold anti-Israel positions, but also support a Jewish state’s right to exist.

Significant percentages of Americans hold certain anti-Israel positions, such as 20.1% who expressed support for removing Israeli products from a local grocery store and 30.4% who said supporters of Israel control the media. Younger Americans take these positions at significantly higher rates.

However, support for an independent Jewish state remains high, with 88.8% saying Jews have the right to an independent country. This is true even among those who take other anti-Israel positions. For example, 83.8% of people who believe that Israelis intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible believe that there should be a Jewish state.

October 7th and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war has not resulted in major changes in the percentage of Americans who hold anti-Israel positions.

However, in just about every anti-Israel position assessed, increased polarization appears evident. The proportion of respondents strongly agreeing or strongly disagreeing with Israel-related policies grew from the summer of 2023 to the present, whereas the proportion of those who somewhat agreed or somewhat disagreed shrank.

Individuals who held negative attitudes toward Israel-related policies, Israeli people, and Israel-oriented conspiracy theories were significantly more likely to believe anti-Jewish tropes.

Respondents not comfortable buying products from Israel were 3.4 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.

Respondents who do not think Jews have the right to an independent country were 3.7 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.

Respondents who believe Israelis intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible were 4.6 times more likely to be among the most antisemitic Americans.

Respondents who believe Israeli operatives are secretly manipulating US national policy through AIPAC or other influence tools were 7.5 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.

Views of Hamas are also deeply concerning, with more than half of Gen Z expressing some degree of comfort being friends with a Hamas supporter.

[ Continued... ]

[tomorrowusa]

Today is Super Tuesday. It's more than just presidential primaries.

Last night Rachel Maddow spotlighted some of the wack Republican candidates and wove them together to describe how bizarrely extremist the GOP has become. This is NOT your grandmother's Republican Party which gave us sane people like Gerald Ford or George Pataki.

If you are not taking the threat seriously then you just haven't been paying attention.

Ms. Maddow goes on to say that it's up to us to stop a MAGA Republican takeover of the US. We cannot rely on some legal gimmick to stop Trump.

In the words of civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson: "Nobody will save us from us but us."

[marril96]

Criminal Minds 17.05 | Conspiracy vs. Theory

[critical-skeptic]

The Blame Game

It’s laughable to pretend that cultural fragility emerged spontaneously from any given generational cohort when the historical record shows the entire human race has been hypersensitive and dangerously reactionary since it first learned to bang rocks together. The current climate—replete with so-called “woke” social justice zealots, quack-MAGA conspiracy drones, and every other variant of cognitively stunted ideologue—exists not because humanity suddenly became frail, but because an expanding global population and relentless hyper-connectivity have transformed what were once pitifully small, laughable fringes into colossal, self-perpetuating mobs. You have only yourselves to blame for letting technological conveniences and endless content streams embolden the previously voiceless hordes, and for refusing to accept accountability for your own intellectual deficits.

The convenient excuse that some era—take your pick, the South Park-watching ’90s kids or the Family Guy-obsessed early millennials—must have toughened people up is a flaccid, nostalgia-driven delusion. The reality is that everyone has always been a delicate flower when poked in the right spot. The only difference now is the speed and scale at which these hysterical meltdowns are broadcast, archived, weaponized, and looped into infinite cultural feedback. The result: Both left-wing and right-wing “snowflakes” spend their days lobbing digital Molotov cocktails at each other, making sure the inferno of stupidity never burns out.

And if you’re determined to pin this on specific birth cohorts, then let’s not mince words: all generations share the blame. Generation Z and Generation A? A legion of perpetually offended infants who mistake hashtag activism for real achievement. Millennials? Overly sensitive edgelords and spoiled brats, produced by Gen Xers who were too busy sulking in their own post-boomer bitterness to teach resilience, and enabled by the indulgent older generations who pretended that showering them with worthless praise and passing them smartphones would somehow offset the Boomer-made crises scalding the planet. Boomers themselves, still clinging to life thanks to modern medicine and an utter refusal to exit the stage gracefully, persist in hoarding resources, vomit forth their antiquated value systems, and do their utmost to ensure that every ensuing generation is saddled with debt, polluted air, and an economic landscape as barren as their moral imagination.

None of these generational tribes is innocent. The global human population, expanded and interlinked like never before, continues to ignore science, deride empirical evidence, trash the environment, and generally behave like a lemming colony sprinting toward the nearest cliff. Meanwhile, reproductive habits remain locked in some medieval pattern of “breed first, think never,” further straining resources and exacerbating divisions. In short, everyone shoulders a portion of the blame—no generation or ideology gets to hide behind a tired historical reference or a cherished TV show. It’s time to own up to this grotesque collective failure instead of flinging blame and shrieking in self-righteous indignation.

[spiegelgestalt]

Something I really don't see discussed at all: why was drakes scorpion pushed to hell and high water in 2018? Because he lost to pusha t. If I may put on my conspiracy hat for one second:

I truly believe that there was an attempt to push (Ha!) drake out of hiphop in 2018. It started with Daytona and culminated in the rap battle between pusha and drake. But it was than cut short. Story of adidon was removed from YouTube and pusha was silenced. Because you know story of adidon sounds like a beginning of tracks (it's gonna be a surgical summer) but it remains the only one. And after that pusha never disses drake again. Pharell has to make an apology tour for pusha. And pusha states in an interview somewhere that rap battles aren't what they once was because now a ceo can just stop the consequences from happening. And that fits with the really aggressive marketing drake got in 2018

And this puts kendricks strategy in perspective. 1. He presented umg with an alternative to drake (himself) 2. He moved really really fast. Even if umg wanted to put a stop to it: meet the grahams and not like us are not even 24 hours apart and I doubt that umg knew about NLU beforehand and NLU went viral really fast. You couldn't step on it the way you could step on story of adidon. (and still there were rumors that umg stepped on that beef) mtg might have been the killshot but NLU made it stick!

And if you read the news coverage of that time a lot of them present a case of - well they both went to far and no one can tell who won etc. And a lot of people expected Drakes summer vibes to end the beef

And somewhere along the line umg made the decision to stop protecting drake. Because Drakes songs were not promoted at all.

[ytcomments-archive]

[whumpster-fire]

The funniest / stupidest thing about the whole fairy/walrus discourse going around is how many people seem to unironically believe in walruses. Like I've seen people going "Umm but fairies aren't real" implying that walruses are. Use your common sense, people. It's a marine mammal with goddamn elephant tusks, and unlike the horn on the real life Narwhal they just kind of stick out downward perpendicular to the direction of movement. Just think about how much hydrodynamic drag it would create. And they supposedly use these like ice picks: the problem with this should be obvious if you've ever accidentally bitten into a popsicle. There are numerous other inconsistencies with the lore, like how a walrus is supposedly a type of seal and not related to manatees which look very similar other than the tusks and are actually related to elephants. Possibly due to people confusing them with Elephant Seals which are a thing, but those have trunks, not tusks.

The thing is though that a fairy showing up at your door is at least somewhat consistent with established fairy lore, but the same thing can't be said for walrus lore (which is barely a thing: you're basically talking about a fake cryptid the Beatles made up in a nonsensical song lyric and the internet rediscovered in the mid 2000s because of those "I has a bucket" memes of seals). You might as well ask whether I'd be more surprised to see a dragon or the Jabberwock at my door.

[that-cunning-witch]

The "modern medicine is bad" post has circulated on my dash again and I'm just wondering... why is synthetic supposedly bad?

What about modern/synthetic medicine is not supposed to be in our bodies?

I'm sure the whole idea stems back to some white supremacist conspiracy theory, but until I figure it out, I will forever stew in confusion.

[marril96]

Criminal Minds 17.05 | Conspiracy vs. Theory