The homeless conspiracy thing is something I don't understand at all. That's one that my step-father is thoroughly on board with. He thinks all homeless people are secretly rich because they make so much money panhandling and are too lazy (easy money) to get a real job. He thinks they are all faking and are con artists. He hates them and it makes him angry. Donald Trump is not a con artist, however, all the bad things people say about him and his past and his present are all lies. He's impervious to logic about it.
I mean, even if every panhandler is secretly rich because it's so lucrative, is it that easy? I sure as shit don't stand outdoors 12 hours a day, rain or blazing heat to make a living. I guess it's easy compared to, like, construction or UPS deliveries maybe but it certainly doesn't seem easy. To say nothing of the psychological costs...
The conspiracy usually has it that they don't stand outside 12 hours a day, which is easy for people to believe because generally people won't go past those specific places more than once or twice a day. For all they know, the panhandlers are only at their spot at the specific times that they see them.
Sometimes you'll also get specific conspiracy details like them getting picked up by their family in some kind of fancy car.
.
It mirrors the whole "welfare queen" rationalization to justify not helping people (because they're probably scamming you!), but I suspect it's probably millenia old.
My favorite version is when they allege that the untold riches they make off with each day funds an elaborate panhandling organization, compete with with luxury car service to and from their secret gated hobo community.
The broad strokes are accurate in places, apart from the vast sums of money, the gated community being the underside of a bridge, and this is Florida, so they have to collaborate in shifts or they'd fucking die.
Well, there was, a few years ago, a big bust of a panhandling ring here in Minneapolis. I've spent a good 10 minutes looking for the articles, but I fear its one of those things that are so old it's basically gone from the internet.
I think that really solidified many opinions around here, in that literally all pandhandlers are all working together in some giant conspiracy to get all the money in cash without paying taxes.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
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Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
I'm pretty sure the police won't wait until they're out of public view to start pummeling you.
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
I'm pretty sure the police won't wait until they're out of public view to start pummeling you.
That's how you can tell the difference
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
Alternatively, the homeless are actually still human beings and can actually talk, meaning they can (and do!) engage in the all-time classic human move of telling each other "hey, these are the rules for the area" instead of resorting to homicide at the slightest chance.
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
Alternatively, the homeless are actually still human beings and can actually talk, meaning they can (and do!) engage in the all-time classic human move of telling each other "hey, these are the rules for the area" instead of resorting to homicide at the slightest chance.
Fair enough of course, I've only been privvy to when diplomacy falls through.
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Speaking criminal conspiracies. For a long time the existence of Mafia was heavily disputed. It's pretty crazy reading about the time before "mafia" was widely known in pop culture. Instead it was a theory prooted by kooks and dismissed as racism against Italian Americans.
edit- I meant to type "promoted" not "prooted" but I love the mouthfeel of prooted.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Speaking criminal conspiracies. For a long time the existence of Mafia was heavily disupted. It's pretty crazy reading about the time before "mafia" was widely known in pop culture. Instead it was a theory prooted by kooks and dismissed as racism against Italian Americans.
That doesn't surprise me in the slightest, though I had no idea about that either. Admitting the mafia exists would be admitting that Prohibition was obviously an enormous fuck-up that managed to generate an entire criminal organization, not just increase crime. The mafia also would've been paying people off or threatening them to keep quiet, and obviously any area where the mafia was strong would've had a strong oppressive influence on the locals. And that would've been long before police started actually researching crime to any great extent, so what would be an obvious criminal ring now would've looked like a bunch of random crime back then and could be dismissed according to whatever ethnicity was being hated in the area by the cops.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The Mafia back in the day was also incredibly good at keeping their mouths shut. When the police rolled in after the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, they found one person still barely alive and breathing, despite having been perforated with bullets like the rest. A cop asked who did this to him. The man said "no one shot me," and then died.
Sequim, WA is now openly recruiting for QAnon with tax money. The mayor and police chief are going on community radio to pitch for Q and the local newspaper won't even cover it.
The Mafia back in the day was also incredibly good at keeping their mouths shut. When the police rolled in after the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, they found one person still barely alive and breathing, despite having been perforated with bullets like the rest. A cop asked who did this to him. The man said "no one shot me," and then died.
The Mafia back in the day was also incredibly good at keeping their mouths shut. When the police rolled in after the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, they found one person still barely alive and breathing, despite having been perforated with bullets like the rest. A cop asked who did this to him. The man said "no one shot me," and then died.
Can we really rule out that this was a Polyphemus situation?
The "Rich beggar" conspiracy goes back quite a ways. There is a Sherlock Holmes story about a middle class wife spotting her husband in the window of a slum tavern, only for him to be missing when she entered the room. She hired Sherlock to find him and it turned out that he had dressed up as a beggar to study their lifestyle and been so astonished at how lucrative it was that he became one full time(dick move dude), using a room upstairs of the tavern to change into "beggar" grab.
There is also a subplot in the Three Musketeers Twenty Years later, where a beggar who has a spot outside Notre Dame is so rich that he can fund a rebellion against the government. People going to confession being so generous to the beggars outside that he has amassed quite a fortune(he is also on the run from Cardinal Mazzarin so he couldn't actually spend it).
So both Alexander Dumas Pere and Arthur Conan Doyle used the belief as plot point in their stories, which probably makes it a widespread one.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The obvious solution to me would be to make absolutely sure nobody needs to panhandle ever. That way you can never have these rascally "poor" people swindling the generous and, as an accidental bonus, make it so countless homeless aren't stuck living in sickness, misery, and poverty.
Maybe we could find the effort by throwing any embezzling politicians into prison for life and using the funds they stole for social programs. Instead of, y'know, doing fuck-all to them.
Eh, I've always figured that panhandlers have some kind of organization (which is why certain streetcorners always have somebody and others never do), but the idea that they're all wealthy leeches hiding all their ill-gotten gains is just... insane. There is the odd person that will exploit the kindness of others to panhandle when they have no actual need for it, but of course those are always the types used to paint the entire homeless population as able but lazy. But when you've got thousands of people in a city rotating through the same areas to sleep, of course they're going to talk and organize to some extent; homeless people are still fucking people so of course they're going to communicate when possible to make things better if they can.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
Alternatively, the homeless are actually still human beings and can actually talk, meaning they can (and do!) engage in the all-time classic human move of telling each other "hey, these are the rules for the area" instead of resorting to homicide at the slightest chance.
Yeah the high traffic spots are first come first serve here. You can visibly see a line of people waiting 30 feet away under a tree while someone works the island at an intersection. When he leaves, whoever was first in line then takes the spot until they need to leave.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
The "Rich beggar" conspiracy goes back quite a ways. There is a Sherlock Holmes story about a middle class wife spotting her husband in the window of a slum tavern, only for him to be missing when she entered the room. She hired Sherlock to find him and it turned out that he had dressed up as a beggar to study their lifestyle and been so astonished at how lucrative it was that he became one full time(dick move dude), using a room upstairs of the tavern to change into "beggar" grab.
There is also a subplot in the Three Musketeers Twenty Years later, where a beggar who has a spot outside Notre Dame is so rich that he can fund a rebellion against the government. People going to confession being so generous to the beggars outside that he has amassed quite a fortune(he is also on the run from Cardinal Mazzarin so he couldn't actually spend it).
So both Alexander Dumas Pere and Arthur Conan Doyle used the belief as plot point in their stories, which probably makes it a widespread one.
Stephen King's "IT" has this as a side character sub plot as well. almost exactly cribbed from the Sherlock Holmes story.
The "Rich beggar" conspiracy goes back quite a ways. There is a Sherlock Holmes story about a middle class wife spotting her husband in the window of a slum tavern, only for him to be missing when she entered the room. She hired Sherlock to find him and it turned out that he had dressed up as a beggar to study their lifestyle and been so astonished at how lucrative it was that he became one full time(dick move dude), using a room upstairs of the tavern to change into "beggar" grab.
There is also a subplot in the Three Musketeers Twenty Years later, where a beggar who has a spot outside Notre Dame is so rich that he can fund a rebellion against the government. People going to confession being so generous to the beggars outside that he has amassed quite a fortune(he is also on the run from Cardinal Mazzarin so he couldn't actually spend it).
So both Alexander Dumas Pere and Arthur Conan Doyle used the belief as plot point in their stories, which probably makes it a widespread one.
Stephen King's "IT" has this as a side character sub plot as well. almost exactly cribbed from the Sherlock Holmes story.
The Beggar's Guild in Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) is quite rich.
But that does not necessarily extend to individual members; the Guild has just accrued its cut over the years.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
The "Rich beggar" conspiracy goes back quite a ways. There is a Sherlock Holmes story about a middle class wife spotting her husband in the window of a slum tavern, only for him to be missing when she entered the room. She hired Sherlock to find him and it turned out that he had dressed up as a beggar to study their lifestyle and been so astonished at how lucrative it was that he became one full time(dick move dude), using a room upstairs of the tavern to change into "beggar" grab.
There is also a subplot in the Three Musketeers Twenty Years later, where a beggar who has a spot outside Notre Dame is so rich that he can fund a rebellion against the government. People going to confession being so generous to the beggars outside that he has amassed quite a fortune(he is also on the run from Cardinal Mazzarin so he couldn't actually spend it).
So both Alexander Dumas Pere and Arthur Conan Doyle used the belief as plot point in their stories, which probably makes it a widespread one.
Stephen King's "IT" has this as a side character sub plot as well. almost exactly cribbed from the Sherlock Holmes story.
The Beggar's Guild in Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) is quite rich.
But that does not necessarily extend to individual members; the Guild has just accrued its cut over the years.
I think part of that guild too is that they have to beg for everything. I remember in one of the early watch books they meet with the queen I think? and she asks if they have a mansion she could have. It makes it much harder for them to accrue items equivalent to their station, while the street level beggars don't have much trouble begging a nights sleep or some basic food. I wonder if any of the other books touch on the guilds in more detail.
In discworld part of what made the beggars guild so rich was not begging. IE you have a nice restaurant or something, you pay the guild a set amount, and they put out the word that your place is off limits. Since a good part of the social services for the homeless run through the beggars guild, no one really wants to get blacklisted by them, so the guild gets a chunk of change for doing nothing.
The theives guild worked the same way. If you had say a valuable shipment of goods passing through Ankh Morpork, you could go ahead and make a “pre-theft” percentage payment to the Guild, who would make sure any guild theives stayed away, and also help make sure that if any unlicensed theives stole from you they would help recover your property and bring them to justice (justice for unlicenced theives generally being that the guild would beat you to death and throw you on top of the Ankh).
The story apparently originates in La Stampa, one of the oldest newspapers in Italy and not a tabloid rag, but it still doesn't name the couple, which is always a red flag.
Anyway, it's a good story so it gets told anyway: two flat earthers from Venice sold their car and bought a boat to sail to the ice wall at the edge of the world, which they were convinced ran through Lampedusa, an island south of Sicily off the coast of Africa (the entire southern hemisphere being a globist hoax).
They managed to end up on Ustica, and island NORTH of Sicily, where they were stuck in COVID quarantine to protect the island's currently virus free population. They attempted (and failed) to escape quarantine twice before giving up, selling the boat, and taking the Ferry of Shame back to the mainland.
The story apparently originates in La Stampa, one of the oldest newspapers in Italy and not a tabloid rag, but it still doesn't name the couple, which is always a red flag.
Anyway, it's a good story so it gets told anyway: two flat earthers from Venice sold their car and bought a boat to sail to the ice wall at the edge of the world, which they were convinced ran through Lampedusa, an island south of Sicily off the coast of Africa (the entire southern hemisphere being a globist hoax).
They managed to end up on Ustica, and island NORTH of Sicily, where they were stuck in COVID quarantine to protect the island's currently virus free population. They attempted (and failed) to escape quarantine twice before giving up, selling the boat, and taking the Ferry of Shame back to the mainland.
That's just so lazy I have to applaud it. Getting to the middle of the Pacific or Antarctica is expensive, so they just decided the edge of the world had to be in a more economically friendly location.
I don't know, if I was looking for a massive wall of ice, right next to the Sahara desert feels like the most reasonable place to start.
That's why it's such a ingenious hiding place.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Per crazy coworker: the sun doesn't give you skin cancer, sunscreen gives you skin cancer
I'm really, really tempted to find that website that shows spurious correlations, email it to her, and see what crazy fucking bullshit she makes up to explain that the number of letters in the Scripps spelling bee correlates with the number of deaths due to venomous spider bites
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The story apparently originates in La Stampa, one of the oldest newspapers in Italy and not a tabloid rag, but it still doesn't name the couple, which is always a red flag.
Anyway, it's a good story so it gets told anyway: two flat earthers from Venice sold their car and bought a boat to sail to the ice wall at the edge of the world, which they were convinced ran through Lampedusa, an island south of Sicily off the coast of Africa (the entire southern hemisphere being a globist hoax).
They managed to end up on Ustica, and island NORTH of Sicily, where they were stuck in COVID quarantine to protect the island's currently virus free population. They attempted (and failed) to escape quarantine twice before giving up, selling the boat, and taking the Ferry of Shame back to the mainland.
True, or new quirky indie movie script?
I would absolutely accept a movie where they start out on this quest and actually encounter the ice wall and that the world is flat because the conspiracy fucked up and they fell through the cracks of manipulation. Then they spend the whole rest of the movie bouncing around with the grand conspiracy folks as they get shown all of the major insane bullshit flat earth morons make up, only to get eaten by lizard people in the end because the lizard people want everything outside the ice wall for themselves and everything inside the wall is actually crap.
Just go totally batshit with the thing, hold nothing back.
Per crazy coworker: the sun doesn't give you skin cancer, sunscreen gives you skin cancer
I'm really, really tempted to find that website that shows spurious correlations, email it to her, and see what crazy fucking bullshit she makes up to explain that the number of letters in the Scripps spelling bee correlates with the number of deaths due to venomous spider bites
This is a pretty common conspiracy.
Ignoring the cancer for a second, you should ask you coworker how she avoids sunburn.
It’s just so nuts, like what do they think causes the heat that causes your skin to burn? They surely admit that the sun burns you, do they just not believe in radiation? People have these reflexive unexamined nonsense thoughts that just become doctrine. What causes the heat damage then?
But then I remember homeopathy is an entire thing
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
It’s just so nuts, like what do they think causes the heat that causes your skin to burn? They surely admit that the sun burns you, do they just not believe in radiation? People have these reflexive unexamined nonsense thoughts that just become doctrine. What causes the heat damage then?
It’s just so nuts, like what do they think causes the heat that causes your skin to burn? They surely admit that the sun burns you, do they just not believe in radiation? People have these reflexive unexamined nonsense thoughts that just become doctrine. What causes the heat damage then?
But then I remember homeopathy is an entire thing
Hell I remember my dad complaining 30 years ago that he would get people refusing to have xrays taken because they were afraid of cancer, then go outside to smoke.
Yeah conflation of tan lotion with sunblock lotion would definitely have helped with that kind of idea
I think a lot of things come down to the way the human mind overestimates it’s own actions in terms of effect vs the effect of it’s inaction. Ie, for people, even sensible ones who know vaccination isn’t a conspiracy and is effective, there is still hesitancy to undertake an action like getting a shot, vs taking no action. Even though the risks are far higher of negative consequences for inaction, human beings will still look at rare cases of bad reactions to vaccinations and not want to “do damage” to their child, etc. Even if they know and accept the statistics that a child is much more at risk of worse outcomes without a shot, the decision to actively get the shot is still marked by a psychological hesitancy or at least a heightened anxiety
It’s a whole way our brains are wired to assess risk and to overestimate the importance of our actions in changing outcomes. When we get a shot, or put on lotion, our brains make a stronger connection to that event and then will try to link it to any negative outcomes, especially when it’s not a culturally ingrained action that we do without thinking. Whereas simply not getting a shot, or walking around in the sun, these aren’t focussed actions or moments, and so our minds feel like we were never really confronted with any danger
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
That's just so lazy I have to applaud it. Getting to the middle of the Pacific or Antarctica is expensive, so they just decided the edge of the world had to be in a more economically friendly location.
I'm also impressed at how half-assed and stupid their effort was. They didn't even make it as far as Sicily and somehow ended up in a quarantine that they tried to escape from. Either buy a boat that's already docked near the toe of the boot or sail down the west coast and then go due south once you hit the toe. And if you get to a small island that doesn't want you there, just pony up to have someone get you some gas and groceries and keep sailing.
At least the other group of flat-earthers had the gumption to buy and use that $40k laser gyroscope and the *cough* intellectual rigor *cough* to try and explain why it gave the readings it did.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
edited September 2020
Apparently cancer didn't exist until 1900, because vaccines
At that one I had to interject and confirm she said cancer didn't exist until 1900, and she repeated herself
At which point I started laughing and couldn't stop
Apparently cancer didn't exist until 1900, because vaccines
At that one I had to interject and confirm she said cancer didn't exist until 1900, and she repeated herself
At which point I started laughing and couldn't stop
It was A Problem
The Royal Ontario Museum recently shared an article about work with another institution to identify and explore evidence of cancer on a dinosaur.
Of course, if she’s one of those “earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to confuse us” types that’s probably not convincing.
But, uh, it definitely seems to have been a thing for a lot longer than a century and change.
Apparently cancer didn't exist until 1900, because vaccines
At that one I had to interject and confirm she said cancer didn't exist until 1900, and she repeated herself
At which point I started laughing and couldn't stop
It was A Problem
The Royal Ontario Museum recently shared an article about work with another institution to identify and explore evidence of cancer on a dinosaur.
Of course, if she’s one of those “earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to confuse us” types that’s probably not convincing.
But, uh, it definitely seems to have been a thing for a lot longer than a century and change.
Posts
Well, there was, a few years ago, a big bust of a panhandling ring here in Minneapolis. I've spent a good 10 minutes looking for the articles, but I fear its one of those things that are so old it's basically gone from the internet.
I think that really solidified many opinions around here, in that literally all pandhandlers are all working together in some giant conspiracy to get all the money in cash without paying taxes.
But the kind of person who believes there's a big rich panhandling organization is also the type that won't understand how bad the drug situation is in the US or how badly PTSD has screwed veterans or how utterly abandoned mentally ill individuals are. The could understand, but they refuse to. It's just so much easier to believe people are lazy and greedy than acknowledge our insurance and treatment systems are utterly trash, because the former makes the homeless criminals and the latter means that America is anything less than perfect.
The organization is that if someone doesn't like you panhandling somewhere they're liable to cave your head in with a rock the first time they catch you out of the public eye.
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I'm pretty sure the police won't wait until they're out of public view to start pummeling you.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That's how you can tell the difference
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Alternatively, the homeless are actually still human beings and can actually talk, meaning they can (and do!) engage in the all-time classic human move of telling each other "hey, these are the rules for the area" instead of resorting to homicide at the slightest chance.
Fair enough of course, I've only been privvy to when diplomacy falls through.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
edit- I meant to type "promoted" not "prooted" but I love the mouthfeel of prooted.
That doesn't surprise me in the slightest, though I had no idea about that either. Admitting the mafia exists would be admitting that Prohibition was obviously an enormous fuck-up that managed to generate an entire criminal organization, not just increase crime. The mafia also would've been paying people off or threatening them to keep quiet, and obviously any area where the mafia was strong would've had a strong oppressive influence on the locals. And that would've been long before police started actually researching crime to any great extent, so what would be an obvious criminal ring now would've looked like a bunch of random crime back then and could be dismissed according to whatever ethnicity was being hated in the area by the cops.
Anyway, back to conspiracy theories:
Sequim, WA is now openly recruiting for QAnon with tax money. The mayor and police chief are going on community radio to pitch for Q and the local newspaper won't even cover it.
Can we really rule out that this was a Polyphemus situation?
Conspiracy: Odysseus did it.
There is also a subplot in the Three Musketeers Twenty Years later, where a beggar who has a spot outside Notre Dame is so rich that he can fund a rebellion against the government. People going to confession being so generous to the beggars outside that he has amassed quite a fortune(he is also on the run from Cardinal Mazzarin so he couldn't actually spend it).
So both Alexander Dumas Pere and Arthur Conan Doyle used the belief as plot point in their stories, which probably makes it a widespread one.
Maybe we could find the effort by throwing any embezzling politicians into prison for life and using the funds they stole for social programs. Instead of, y'know, doing fuck-all to them.
Yeah the high traffic spots are first come first serve here. You can visibly see a line of people waiting 30 feet away under a tree while someone works the island at an intersection. When he leaves, whoever was first in line then takes the spot until they need to leave.
Stephen King's "IT" has this as a side character sub plot as well. almost exactly cribbed from the Sherlock Holmes story.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The Beggar's Guild in Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) is quite rich.
But that does not necessarily extend to individual members; the Guild has just accrued its cut over the years.
I think part of that guild too is that they have to beg for everything. I remember in one of the early watch books they meet with the queen I think? and she asks if they have a mansion she could have. It makes it much harder for them to accrue items equivalent to their station, while the street level beggars don't have much trouble begging a nights sleep or some basic food. I wonder if any of the other books touch on the guilds in more detail.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The theives guild worked the same way. If you had say a valuable shipment of goods passing through Ankh Morpork, you could go ahead and make a “pre-theft” percentage payment to the Guild, who would make sure any guild theives stayed away, and also help make sure that if any unlicensed theives stole from you they would help recover your property and bring them to justice (justice for unlicenced theives generally being that the guild would beat you to death and throw you on top of the Ankh).
https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/02/flat-earthers-quarantined-trying-to-find-end-world-13211644/
The story apparently originates in La Stampa, one of the oldest newspapers in Italy and not a tabloid rag, but it still doesn't name the couple, which is always a red flag.
Anyway, it's a good story so it gets told anyway: two flat earthers from Venice sold their car and bought a boat to sail to the ice wall at the edge of the world, which they were convinced ran through Lampedusa, an island south of Sicily off the coast of Africa (the entire southern hemisphere being a globist hoax).
They managed to end up on Ustica, and island NORTH of Sicily, where they were stuck in COVID quarantine to protect the island's currently virus free population. They attempted (and failed) to escape quarantine twice before giving up, selling the boat, and taking the Ferry of Shame back to the mainland.
True, or new quirky indie movie script?
That's why it's such a ingenious hiding place.
I'm really, really tempted to find that website that shows spurious correlations, email it to her, and see what crazy fucking bullshit she makes up to explain that the number of letters in the Scripps spelling bee correlates with the number of deaths due to venomous spider bites
I would absolutely accept a movie where they start out on this quest and actually encounter the ice wall and that the world is flat because the conspiracy fucked up and they fell through the cracks of manipulation. Then they spend the whole rest of the movie bouncing around with the grand conspiracy folks as they get shown all of the major insane bullshit flat earth morons make up, only to get eaten by lizard people in the end because the lizard people want everything outside the ice wall for themselves and everything inside the wall is actually crap.
Just go totally batshit with the thing, hold nothing back.
This is a pretty common conspiracy.
Ignoring the cancer for a second, you should ask you coworker how she avoids sunburn.
But then I remember homeopathy is an entire thing
This woman is Not Smart
Hell I remember my dad complaining 30 years ago that he would get people refusing to have xrays taken because they were afraid of cancer, then go outside to smoke.
People are dumb and poor at evaluating risk.
I think a lot of things come down to the way the human mind overestimates it’s own actions in terms of effect vs the effect of it’s inaction. Ie, for people, even sensible ones who know vaccination isn’t a conspiracy and is effective, there is still hesitancy to undertake an action like getting a shot, vs taking no action. Even though the risks are far higher of negative consequences for inaction, human beings will still look at rare cases of bad reactions to vaccinations and not want to “do damage” to their child, etc. Even if they know and accept the statistics that a child is much more at risk of worse outcomes without a shot, the decision to actively get the shot is still marked by a psychological hesitancy or at least a heightened anxiety
It’s a whole way our brains are wired to assess risk and to overestimate the importance of our actions in changing outcomes. When we get a shot, or put on lotion, our brains make a stronger connection to that event and then will try to link it to any negative outcomes, especially when it’s not a culturally ingrained action that we do without thinking. Whereas simply not getting a shot, or walking around in the sun, these aren’t focussed actions or moments, and so our minds feel like we were never really confronted with any danger
I'm also impressed at how half-assed and stupid their effort was. They didn't even make it as far as Sicily and somehow ended up in a quarantine that they tried to escape from. Either buy a boat that's already docked near the toe of the boot or sail down the west coast and then go due south once you hit the toe. And if you get to a small island that doesn't want you there, just pony up to have someone get you some gas and groceries and keep sailing.
At least the other group of flat-earthers had the gumption to buy and use that $40k laser gyroscope and the *cough* intellectual rigor *cough* to try and explain why it gave the readings it did.
At that one I had to interject and confirm she said cancer didn't exist until 1900, and she repeated herself
At which point I started laughing and couldn't stop
It was A Problem
The Royal Ontario Museum recently shared an article about work with another institution to identify and explore evidence of cancer on a dinosaur.
Of course, if she’s one of those “earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to confuse us” types that’s probably not convincing.
But, uh, it definitely seems to have been a thing for a lot longer than a century and change.
https://www.rom.on.ca/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/rare-malignant-cancer-diagnosed-in-a-dinosaur
This is just proof that dinosaurs used sunscreen and/or vaccines.
G
M
O
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Ben Collins is a Q expert
God we are completely fucked as a country
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Combining the addictive paranoia of true crime media (becoming real fucking problem) with a little good old fashioned satanic panic.
Cool...I thought we were at least past the second one.