Skwrl

I mean, if anything Trump had like a ton of opportunities to show up, be a leader, and really do a great job, didn't he? I mean, if it is a Deep State plot, he could have engaged a lot earlier, taken it seriously, helped make sure states were getting beds, respirators, supplies, etc., and actually engaged on the matter. He could have come out a hero. But that's not what he chose to do. If it is a Deep State plot, I'd say he's doing a pretty shitty job combatting it. But, unfortunately for Ron's nutty narrative, it's not.

I'm going to specifically ask someone a question here. I'm really curious which one of these Ron believes (both these two options are leading contenders on the Q discussion boards...): COVID19 is a secret plot by the white hats [controlled by Trump] to stop everything going on worldwide so mass arrests of the Satanists can (finally) happen. COVID19 is a plot by the Deep State to stop the white hats who were closing in on them... But fear not! They will ultimately lose because the 'Patriots are in control', of course. Some third theory... Or, you know, is it just a pandemic that this Administration has handled horribly? What do YOU think is going on with COVID19? If you're one of the Q people, you know you role is to prepare us for the Great Awakening. So what's going on, Ron? I just got to know.

It's an old trick used by charlatans who want to pretend that they're able to predict something. It's in a similar vein to Nostradamus - a bunch of mostly nonsense phrases that you can cobble together that can be interpreted in a bunch of ways; later on, you can look back and ascribe meaning to them in light of what actually happened and pretend you predicted. For example, imagine that one month ago, "Q" (on in this case, "S" - my super secret top clearance that nobody knows existed and totally not just a random letter I picked to make myself seem cool) wrote: Red beats Blue 1+1 = disaster Empty fish They're all non-sense, right? (They are because I just asked my daughter to come up with three non-sense phrases without any idea what I was writing about and she came up with those three.) Except later on, you apply your "future proves past" (one of their dumb catch phrases) decoder ring. Then you go back and use all sorts of crazy "logic" to try to ascribe meaning to them. Maybe 1+1 = disaster is "Kobe Bryant (1) and his daughter (1) died in a helicopter crash". (Ignoring, you know, the other folks on the crash.) Or maybe they'd say that Bernie won 1 primary and Buttigieg (I can never remember how to spell his name without looking it up) won 1 caucus. (Even though Pete didn't - the Qultists are notorious for getting actual facts wrong, too.) Maybe "empty fish" means (I just Googled "fish"), yesterday they just found the world's largest fish in an (empty) cave in India! Or maybe it means the fish markets in China are empty due to coronavirus. Maybe they'd say "red beats blue" means that the 49ers (from a blue state) lose to the Chiefs (from a Red state). Or whatever other meaning you want to ascribe to it. It's a classic psychological trick called "confirmation bias" - you see what you want to see. The trick is that you make it vague enough that it could mean anything. Then you can try to ascribe meaning to it. Sometimes, they'll ascribe actual history to one part, and then use that "actual history" to "prove" the rest. (It's not real proof, though, at least not in the English language sense.) So, in my example, you might say, "red beats blue means the Chiefs win, and they did, so therefore the 1+1 means that the Deep State killed Kobe Bryant. Of course! Even when you get it wrong, you can use one of their other arguments: "disinformation is necessary" (in other words, there *have* to be errors in the Q drops because... well, nobody can explain why). If it was a military mission, you wouldn't publish any details (they hang you for that!). If Ron can read the Q drops, so can Hillary. You wouldn't announce your actions. When Q *does* make predictions, they are either stuff from the headlines that any reasonable person would probably know (which for some gives the prediction more credibility, even though any idiot could say it) or they're hilariously wrong. Because Q's posts involve things that are either currently in the news or frequently in the news, there is a high probability that something will happen involving those things in the very near future. For example, there is a scandal within the Catholic Church every other month; if somebody predicts that there will be a scandal in the Catholic Church within the next month or two, there is an extremely high probability that this prediction will come true. That's not predictive, that's just obvious. But Q almost always gets it wrong. Hillary is in prison, arrested by the "white hats", her passport revoked, etc. was one of their earliest. I just Googled her and she seems to be floating around the country and the world just fine. (On that one, they sometimes say the person out there now is a paid actor or - my personal favorite because it shows how little they understand science - a clone.) Leaving one to wonder why they'd want the actor running around doing the exact same things that Hillary does... Martial law imposed with a long since past deadline is another. The predictions on the Nunes memo completely wrong. The list of their blown predictions spans multiple pages, which is why Q tries to be a little more cryptic these days, so they can mean anything. Here, I'll make my own Q drop. We can come back next month and talk about how I must be privy to some secret information: Rockets [red] glare The Old man falls down Follow the money Brave and boisterous Rocket man at the bank Come back in one month and you'll see how I predicted everything of importance in the next month. Maybe I'll get Ron posting about my posts when I get some of these write. Maybe *I* am the one, true Q.

Really? Even Fox News doesn’t agree with you. Fox News... Granted, that was for witnesses, not impeachment, but we’ll never know what the witnesses would have said, would we? I’m mean, except for John Bolton’s book. Makes you wonder how many Republicans might be actually turned off by Trump’s behavior and not actively want to support him. I know a few Trumpers that have definitely lost their excitement for him. Of course, they don’t want to *lose*, so they are backed into a corner where they have to come up with more and more sad ways to defend his absurd antics. Or they just stop talking about it.

Who's calling him Saint Mitt or are you making that up? And when did we call him Hitler personified or are you... Ahhh, fuck it, I know the answer to both of these... Christ, man, your partisan shit is weak. But I'll answer your question because you asked it and you didn't really want an answer. (And because you didn't really want an answer, I want to answer it.) First some context, I'm not a Democrat - I'm not affiliated - but he was the governor of my state for a while. I voted for him for Governor, he was way better than his Republican predecessor, Jane Swift, and more or less better than his Democratic challenger, Shannon O'Brien. Anyway, he did a OK job. He cut taxes state-wide, but a lot of that led to shifting the burden to the towns and cities, so a lot of them had to raise taxes. Is that good or bad? I dunno. Most people here don't know either. He came up with the universal health care that my state now has. It isn't perfect, but it's better than having a bunch of uninsured folks clogging up the emergency room (which is the most expensive version of care you can get). I'd rather be in that system than be poor an uninsured in something like Alabama. Of course, once that plan - originally from Bain Capital - got adopted by Obama, the Republican party couldn't have it... Which was weird because they proposed it... But that's another story. Anyway, I think he's mostly looked at as a B+ or maybe A- governor. In terms of running for Presidency, I don't think he ever had a chance given demographics, but whatever. I voted for him in my state's primary. Most people from my state basically shrugged their shoulders, though, when it didn't work out. So... I dunno. Flash forward to today. Clearly the guy had something on his conscience that made him think he ought to vote the way he did, instead of being a robot and voting the way he was told. Regardless of his position, I'd be OK with that, since I'm really OK with independent thought. That might bother you, though, since I get the vibe that you are one of those people who root for politics like they do sports teams, and without a whole lot of thought.

There's a name that I haven't heard in a long time. What a nut job she was. As I said back in 2011 (or whenever that was), the issue here is induced drag. Unless you add a rigid frame, your arms won't be able to hold the wing in this shape for flight. And once you add a rigid frame, it's not a wingsuit, it's... something else.

It wouldn’t be as fun without you.

Geez. No, sorry. Is that your best retort? Not quite an ad hominem, but still pretty meager. i mean, my points stand. First, you benefit from socialist policies such as airports and yet you denounce socialist policies. And fail to see the hypocrisy. Second (technically first in terms of order I raised them, but you weren’t paying attention anyway), you are partisan and refuse to acknowledge that your positions are more about “winning” than anything else).

Hey man, I'm just acknowledging that clearly Fox News and its followers has taught us all that government subsidies are the work of the Devil. Want public health care? Nah, you're a Satanist. Clearly, the only righteous path back - if you've received government funding - is to self-immolate. I'll pick up some marshmallows because I know Brent is gonna. I mean, he seems so consistent and true to his word.

Government subsidies?!? That's socialism! Isn't anyone who receives socialism supposed to set themselves on fire while humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic? (I hear they used to allow you to hum This Land is Your Land or Born in the USA while you were burning instead, but then they figured out those are socialist, too...)

The fact that you guys are still talking about Tony as the designer for Tonysuits further confirms that, these days, a lot of the comments and advice on this forum aren't as accurate as they could be. Tony hasn't been designing for a while. He's done and off sailing the waters of Florida, probably blowing through blunts like we only wish we could, happily ever after. Sailing off into the sunset. Him, him, etc. But he has a great crew - super energized and really excited about wingsuiting - who are carrying on the Tonysuit name. The new crew are coming up with new products in response to customer input, making consistent suits based on designs (no more of the "mad tinkerer in the shop" experimental suits) and are continuously evolving the brand. Definitely worth a look. As for the Hög, no I haven't tried it. But I did pick up a Pelican that I loved on the two jumps I put on it, but haven't had a chance to put in enough jumps to really give a full report. I heard both suits flew very, very well in the tunnel in Sweden, though, from a couple of the instructors there who played around with them. TL;DR - if your understanding of Tonysuits is "Tony makes suits", then you might want to take a look at the cool stuff they are rolling out. Some of it is really impressive. And full disclosure - no, I'm not affiliated with Tonysuits, nor do I get anything from them (other than compensation from them when they once in a while use my photos).

Riiiiiiiight. Because it only happens when it's the other guys. [eye roll.] Oh, wait! I have a time machine! Flash back to when it was 16 hours... No, wait, I messed that up: 16 days!... before the GOP caucus picked a winner. https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/santorum-declared-iowa-winner-071757 Kind of weak sauce, man. I bet you're one of those people that would have lambasted a prior Democratic President for the things Trump does on a daily basis, and you're too damn scared to admit that your entire motivation is partisan and not based in consistency. You just want "your side" to win; doesn't matter how. Did I win the bet?

Ron, your attempts to make Q relevant in this thread falls on the same deaf ears as my attempts to make fun of folks who follow Q in this thread. This thread has long since gone over to them squabbling. I guess that’s just how the SC Forum is.

But you still believe that there is a secret military operation led by President Trump to overthrow the pedophile Satanist conspiracy that secretly controls the world, and that a "Q" is sharing information about the operation in a cryptic way, right? Ron's either trying to dodge this by saying he follows "Q" (not "QAnon", since that's just the media calls it) or he's trying to distance himself from some of the other followers of Q that are referring to themselves collectively as "QAnon". Pretty bad faith (attempted) dodge, I'd say. Or, I suppose, he could have finally realized the whole Q fantasy for what it is: batshit crazy fantasy. But since he's still posting tags with what I call WubbaDubba (more accurately WWG1WGA, the Q "slogan") and "Patriots are in control" (newer slogan), I'm going with he's still drinking the Q KoolAid.

Hey, this is serious. To any Qanon believers, I want to take a moment to emphasize that drinking bleach is very, very bad, and you should not do it under any circumstances. I know I've had my differences with Qanon folks over the years, but let me, as a liberal, be frank with you. Do not drink bleach. The scientific elites are in agreement here, it's a bad idea. Liberals - from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi to AOC - all agree that it's a bad idea to drink bleach. I think you'll find most Hollywood celebrities also agree that drinking bleach is wrong. So don't do it, Q army. We, liberals, are telling you not to drink bleach. Please. Don't.

I had not; I was responding to your comment. Having said that, I think you're mixing a few things up. What you are calling "atheism" in your (alternate) definition is actually better described as physicalism, I think. You are then saying that this atheism/physicalism cannot be the basis of morality. I'm willing to completely agree that it's not the *basis* of morality; a moral code exists or doesn't without regard to it, and can be determined by a bunch of principles that are independent to theism/atheism (using your terms). They are different things, and serve different purposes. This is one perfectly reasonable way of making that conclusion. But not the only one. Ethics describe different possible answers, from utilitarianism (save five even if sacrifice means kill one) to deontological ethics (we have a rule that says don't kill people; therefore we should apply that rule, even if the consequence to do so is others dying). Theists (using your definition) don't come up with much different answers than atheists in these puzzles. So what's the different "basis"? I'll take it a step further: one could be a Theist (using your definition) and not have a moral code either. One could believe in a God or a transcendent or something beyond the physical and still not then conclude, "aha, I should do this or that..." If there is a transcendent reality, how do I know what it wants me to do? The one (atheism/theism) doesn't address the other (moral ethics). So, if "atheism" (using your terms) isn't the basis for morality, neither is "theism" (using your terms).

That's a fair point, too! It's sort of a flaw in the thought experiment. I wonder if there's a plausible one that would eliminate that part about it and still get to the same idea.

That's fair - do you mind if I ask a follow three follow up questions? Imagine it's not you pulling the lever, but instead as friend asking for advice about what he should do. Does that change your answer? Imagine instead someone else didn't pull the lever. Is that person morally "wrong"? Imagine instead of the example, there's no lever, but there's a fat man standing on a bridge over the tracks. You're standing on the bridge next to the fat man. If you do nothing, the five people die. But if you push the fat man, he'd fall to his death but it would derail the trolley. Given that you'd pull the lever, would you push him?

There's another thread going that led me to thinking about the Trolley Problem, a pretty fantastic thought experiment that deals with ethics and morality. I wanted to break out a discussion on it, since it would otherwise get lost in that thread. I'm curious not just how you'd answer it, and the reasons for your answer. Here's the problem: There is a run-away trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two (and only two) options: Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. The question: Are you morally obligated to do one or the other? If you're not morally obligated to do one or the other, are you morally permitted to do one or the other? Does the answer change between whether it's you doing the lever-pulling, or a friend or loved one who is asking you "what should I do?" Obviously, we don't deal with trolleys hurtling down the tracks in the real world, but it's a metaphor for fundamental moral questions about our actions.

But that’s just demonstrably false. The concept that you’re looking for is called moral philosophy, and it can exist with or without a belief in a deity or deities. There are libraries full of books on utilitarianism, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and so on that define ethics without reference to a deity or deities, other libraries full of books on how to determine what is moral (normative ethics) and other libraries full of books that apply those various theories in proscriptive ways (in other words, what is a person morally obligated to do in a particular situation and what are they morally mandated to do in that situation?) A moral code is not a faith or belief in a deity. They don’t really even overlap: You can have Christian utilitarians and atheist utilitarians, for example. In fact, I’d argue that in most cases, religion doesn’t actually answer a lot of moral questions. For example: the Trolley Problem - a great thought experiment in ethics. (Google it; it’s too much to write here.) What would the Christian answer to the Trolley Problem be? (It’s pretty clear that there isn’t one - or at least there is no uniform one, so your ethical code isn’t too clear.)

That's great news. But to be fair, it's not saying that the ocean is not becoming more acidic due to additional CO2 - in fact it specifically states that this is what's happening. It's also not saying that their environment isn't being altered. What it's specifically saying is that adding CO2 to water doesn't seem to impact coral reef fish behavior in tanks, specifically their sensing of predator and prey, activity levels, and lateralization (picking one side to float on). Good news for the coral reef fish themselves! But since it doesn't say anything about the rest of the ecosystem that they are in, we don't have the full picture at all. (For example, if the coral that they use as habitat and food all die due to CO2, the fact that the CO2 doesn't make the fishes' behavior wonky doesn't really say much.)

LOL. More nonsense from our resident Q-bot. Basically it's a bunch of Q buzzwords without meaning. Thanks for your insight, Ron.

Standard deviations from the median are a libby liberal plot?!?

Not sure I'd pat myself on the back on that one - Q is doing worse than people who believe in ghosts (31% of American adults) people who believe in in witches (22% of American adults). And unlike the guest they had on Jesse Watters' show, I can back my statistics up. There are more people who believe the sun goes around the Earth. If you accept that guest's number (which he provided no basis for), Q is beating Americans who believe in unicorns, though, which I guess is nice. Maybe you can change the logo to "Follow the White Unicorn" and you'd double your numbers. For what it's worth, every Qultist I read about in the wild bemoans the fact that the "movement" isn't catching on (maybe because it makes no sense...) See, e.g., here.

There’s a really interesting book from the 1950s called “When Prophecy Fails”. It goes into cult predictions and how, if certain other conditions are met, cult members actually tend to *double down* on the predictions - rather than back off or admit they were wrong - when given overwhelming evidence that the prophecy is false. A lot of it, the theory goes, is rooted in cognitive dissonance. So I guess my point is that I’m not surprised at all that Ron is still believing despite all the evidence. Can't let go now! According to the book, he’ll likely hold onto the belief for years, just not push it as much on “outsiders” like us, and might just replace it with a new theory about how Q was right all along and we just didn’t understand it (maybe the predictions will become metaphors, maybe the story will get “ret conn’ed”, or whatever). I guess we’ll see. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.