Thank you for posting the truth. It really hurts the heart to see all this disinformation being thrown around.
Except there’s only one turtle. I was assured “it’s turtles all the way down.”
Except there’s only one turtle.
The Great A’Tuin, swimming silently through the void 🐢 🐘🐘🐘🐘 💿
I was assured “it’s turtles all the way down.”
(Link is to a PBS Storied video exploring the origins and evolution of the phrase)
Obligatory “everyone should read Discworld” recommendation 🙃
Touché
The fact that this is a sea turtle and not like a Galapagos tortoise bothers me.
Why would it be a tortoise? What’s it going to walk on, no no no, it can only be a sea turtle, swimming in the great nothingness of the universe. None of that turtles all the way down bullshit.
Thank you! I was like, where are the supporting vertebrates?
So… a sea turtle with some half-life head-crabs riding on it?
Elephants
The opening credits of this will help you visualize it. It’s a Terry Pratchett’s Discworld reference.
Why was my first thought “Thanos Copter”?
No, sorry for the mixup. I don’t know who labeled this. The shadow here was from my massive dong.
If the earth is flat, how thick is it?
Are we walking across a massive dinner plate, or standing on the end of a bit of cosmic re-bar?
Centrifugal force moves the Earth’s mass outwards, so it’s thick at the edges and thin in the middle.
Hmm; so like a Frisbee? Do we live on top with the edges curling down, or on the bottom with the edges curling up? Maybe more like a pizza with really thick crust?
Can you see the edges if you stand in the middle?
No to seeing the edges from the middle, I’ve been to Kansas and couldn’t spot the edges.
As for the shape, my theory is more like a pizza with a thick crust. I haven’t been able to verify though, NASA keeps rejecting my proposals for investigating further.
Kansas is the center of the world? Interesting. You learn new things every day.
Haven’t been there myself, so I’ll take your word on that one.
Thinking back, this hasn’t really answered my original question: how thick is it?
It could be a disc, slowly getting wider and thinner. But it could be a long pole like object, growing fatter but shorter as it spins… Or anything in between.
I hope you and NASA can work out a way to get some photos. A good distanced shot should clear things up pretty quick, I’d think.
Hmm, sure sounds flat.
Sooo… pizza. Got it.
Wait, it rotates?
It’s at least as thick as humans have drilled down cause we can see that. Probably another layer of artificially pressurized lava under that.
Er, I mean I yam beliefer in globe earth fellow cuckold. Pray tell, where is the nearest shit-eating station so I may sate myself on our governments…truths?
What d’ya suppose is on the other side?
GOD
I don’t think flat earthers believe that earth is oriented like that.
And for that matter, I don’t think the majority of self proclaimed flat earthers actually believe earth is flat. I think they’re some kind of paid troll group or something.
There’s a lot that actually believe the earth is flat. A disturbing amount of people have seriously tried to convince me of it. Same crowd that believes in chemtrails, or the moon is fake, or believe in reptilians. I always think they’re joking at first about the flat earth, sometimes they are, but when they bring up the ice wall they’re serious.
There’s a lot that actually believe the earth is flat. A disturbing amount of people have seriously tried to convince me of it.
And who are these people? And who are you? When did this happen?
I still believe that flat earthers are a group of trolls being paid by some corporation or something to just clutter up online spaces with as much bullshit as possible to make people talking about real conspiracies that are actually happening look like lunatics.
“What? you think there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq? Do you think the earth is flat too?”
So you’re implying a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory.
First person I remember trying to convince me was about a decade ago, and there’s been plenty of others since then. All of them conservative and believing in a mix of other popular conspiracies from 5g control, to bigfoot, to reptilians controlling the planet. These are physical people in my life that not only believe, but passionately defend their theories. I really don’t think they’re getting paid by a corporation to tell me about the flat earth.
It’s weird that they all lean right though.
Fyi, “chem trails”, or “cloud seeding”, as it’s actually called, is very much real. When you search by it’s real name, you’ll find programs going back to the 60s. California, for example.
MANY conspiracy theories are based on a shred of truth. UFOs are mostly classified craft(the Blackbird was one, once known as the UFO “Aurora”).
Flat Earth was just a group that liked to jokingly entertain crazy ideas for shits and giggles that got coopted by people who took the satire seriously.
We’d do ourselves a great service if we stopped seeing every issue in broad strokes and saw the nuance and context behind it. You’re no better with your rant broadly denouncing a wide array of topics in mass.
Most people are talking about contrails, and I’ve been told that they’re full of boron as a means of population control, that it’s a new thing because “I don’t remember planes doing that when I was younger.” Cloud seeding is in the news a decent amount here and it’s definitely considered different from the contrails that most every plane leaves.
What’s your shred of truth behind reptilians?
What’s your shred of truth behind reptilians?
Oh, well that one’s just true. The only falsehood is that the lizard people are evil. They’re actually great and epic, and it’s the humans who are bad.
Reptilians: Notice I didn’t list that one? And how I said “most”? Thank you for demonstrating the lack of reading comprehension and context I was specifically pointing out. May others look at your comment as a perfect example of being dense and obtuse.
Ahh, you’re nothing but a contrarian troll. Hope your life and mental health improve so you don’t keep doing… this.
Also you never said “most”, you said “many” poor little thing, don’t even remember what you just typed. Bless your heart.
It appears that you’re in a lot of pain. I’m truly sorry.
I do wonder if it’s something like the Birds Aren’t Real organized conspiracy; but snowballed out of control.
I always assumed it was something like that. A thought experiment that someone who wasn’t “in the know,” stumbled upon, latched onto, and created an entire subculture.
I always assumed it was a 4chan troll gone wild.
As I understood it back in the old times…. The Flat Earth Society was a groups of logical rationalist who got together and for shits and giggles (as well as practicing rational debate) would pick an indefensible argument (eg. the earth is flat) and attempt to use rational arguments to support that indefensible claim.
Basically a rowdy drunk philosophers get together.
Edit: there is no proof of this, just something I read online in the early days of the internet.
but snowballed out of control.
I don’t think it “snowballed” out of control or whatever. I think that group is full of trolls that don’t believe what they say.
Each one of them is a black hole that eats all of your time while you try to debate them.
You have more faith in human intelligence than I do…
Human intelligence, but not morality.
People aren’t always stupid, many people are stupid, but some people are only pretending to be stupid to do evil things.
The proportion of flat earthers to people who talk about them is staggering. Post gets a downvote from me
Sounds like something someone trying to spread round earth propaganda and discredit the true flat earth would say.
pretty sure that there are actually people who do believe the earth is flat
but yeah AFAIK the model that most flat earthers use does not allow for either lunar nor solar eclipses , requiring a fourth object to cause the effect
The flat earthers you see posting on social media, going on TV, making videos are conmen that are well-aware that the Earth is round, just trying to exploit people and make money off of this. The others are either trolls or ignorant people that actually believe the conmen.
The others are either trolls or ignorant people that actually believe the conmen.
I think they’re all trolls that are part of some kind of agenda that will ultimately result in something like the ministry of truth from 1984, we almost got exactly that here in the US, they were going to call it “the board of misinformation”
And it turns out, as usual, the official narratives about many things the government and corporations were trying to control was all bullshit. And the people who got removed from social media for various reasons weren’t actually wrong about what they talked about.
Are there any flat-moon conspiracy theorists? I feel like there’s way more evidence that the moon is flat. We see the same side all the time. If it were round, wouldn’t we see different parts of it? We’re supposed to believe that it’s a spheroid orbiting us at the exact rotational speed required so that the same side is facing us all the time? Be serious.
We see the same side all the time.
Not completely same all the time:
You’re drunk, Moon. Go home.
Dang, that’s honestly really compelling proof that the moon is round. I’m trying to think of things that aren’t definitively proved by this 5 second gif and I can’t think of any. Flat Earthers can’t even claim it’s fake, they can do this test themselves in their backyard.
I once saw a website that claimed that the moon was a hologram. I guess it can still be that.
One of the theories was that the Moon was not always a hologram, but that it was destroyed (maybe in WW2?) and now the government keeps a projection of the moon to keep people from finding out.
Also all of the space exploration propaganda was faked. Here’s an amazing sentence that will never leave my mind: "Occam’s razor says the simplest explanation is most often the correct one. And what’s simpler: that the government spent millions of dollars, spent years doing research, with international collaborations on rocket science and astronomy, and then managed to get a manned rocket onto the moon… Or that it is all a conspiracy? ;) "
I’ve heard a similar theory, but he said that we project the hologram in order to hide what we’re actually doing on the lunar surface right now. Unfortunately, they never elaborated past that enticing conspiracy.
What if it’s slightly convex?
The wibbly wobbler.
All I can see is the moon is PacMan
I hate you. How do I unsee that now?
This made me briefly wonder if the flat earthers also think the sun revolves around the Earth, but then I remembered I don’t really care what they think. I wasted a not-insignificant portion of my late-20s and early-30s trying to reason with unreasonable people online. I’m done with that.
If anyone is curious where the real quacks hang out, check out evolutionfairytale.com. The forum is particularly juicy. If you are feeling particularly adventurous, try and join it and see how long it takes to get banned for “equivocating” (they love to accuse anyone advocating for real science of that one.)
Oh yes, the forum rules states in the first paragraph:
The primary goal of this forum is to provide a place for honest, educational, civil, and fun debate on the topic of origins.
The second paragraph contains a link to the “Evo Babbler Percher Alert” which is a page dedicated to accusing anyone advocating for evolution as being wrong no matter what they say.
Yeah sure, honest debate. You keep believing that.
Saw a commercial on TV for the Ark Museum and I was flabbergasted.
Yeah. The staggering amount of waste indoctrinating young children to be scientifically illiterate and unemployable just because some idiots want to believe in their fairy tales. massive sigh
Dude…I’m a New Englander…grew up in RI and moved to MA a few years ago.
I’m on my last of nine nights in Texas…2 in Houston, 3 in Austin, 2 in Dallas, and then 2 more in Houston. Drove (by EV) between all three.
I…kind of get it. Like, historically, the south had essentially only had slavers, the church, and oil barons, as their leaders. All three clearly have an agenda. Very little in the realm of esteemed intellectuals or prestigious universities that call the region “home” (compared to RI and MA who have several Ivy Leagues between them).
That’s centuries of ignorance to breed in. And I kind of get how it even continues these days. There’s a spot in Houston where there’s a “#1 Most Trusted News” billboard for The Epoch Times on the highway, about a mile and a half away from the Joel Osteen megachurch. They are continuing to be brainwashed by bad actors seeking to control them, and it remains effective due to still having little counterbalance. And Houston as a whole is a dystopian hell scape when it comes to the concrete jungle of a highway and the sheer number of billboard and signage. There was a stretch where I was seriously overstimulated by the sheer quantity of them in sight.
In fact, I wouldn’t doubt if the current economic disparity, combined with many communities and cities now being majority-minority and fueled by said bad actors, is largely responsible for the “return to the good ol’ days” style of conservative racism.
I’ve got some hope. I visited some amazing museums (honestly HMNS and the Perot are now some of the most impressive museums I’ve ever been to). This has been the most educational vacation we’ve ever been on - the aforementioned museums, plus Space Museum, the Vintage Toy Museum in Austin, some of the art displays around Austin (like this badass), and the Houston Zoo (and their historical posters in the educational building near the meerkats, that shows off how animal treatment at the zoo had evolved since it’s founding). Hell even though we had our kids with us, my wife still got a chance to experience Austin nightlife on her own, walking ~15 minutes (alone at night and feeling totally safe) to a gay bar. Even saw signs for drag shows/brunch (albeit in Austin and Deep Ennis).
And in all the driving between the cities, although it was mostly highway, I only spotted one property with Trump signage. I don’t think I saw a single bumper sticker or flag (or pseudo-maga like Thin Blue Line or Let’s go Brandon), which is even more than I can say about RI and MA.
Yeah, it sucks that there’s about a 75 mile stretch between Huntsville and Houston where you can’t find a CCS fast charger within spitting distance of the highway (there’s a Buc-ees but it only has Tesla Superchargers)…or that they are almost always in the most distant parking spots and completely uncovered (despite Texas’s quite intense weather). But at least the whole drive was doable without much stress.
And it sucks that Buc-ees and Road Ranger are both still using Styrofoam cups at their soda fountains. I honestly didn’t even think they still made those. No wonder they are so upset about paper straws… Those legitimately suck, even I, a liberal vegan yank, hate them. But they are still using Styrofoam.
But I’ve still got hope. And I’m a little infatuated with the idea of moving to Austin.
You know flat earth is kind of a very interesting microcosm of beliefs, specifically because of how it intersects with every other conspiracy theory, but tends to be low-yield in it’s implications. It’s absurd enough to be kind of a foundational belief, it’s absurd enough to be believed in jest, but it also doesn’t, by itself, imply a kind of fully-formed worldview. It’s like believing that the moon is made of cheese, or something, it doesn’t really mean anything, by itself, but it’s also probably one of the more insane things you could postulate. You get a lot of diversity in the flat earth movement because of that.
You get people who are dedicated to JAQing off, basically just trolls, right. Those ones usually rely on the classic arguments about camera lenses warping everything. Then you get people who believe in a kind of extreme libertarian conspiracy theory, old school style, like, the types that really hate NASA and maybe think that CERN is doing some crazy shit, and those types tend to be a step further, and think that the photos are just faked. Then, that group has some overlap with the group of extremist fundamentalist evangelicals, who basically believe in weird warped versions of what medieval peasants believed, about the firmament and shit like that. You also get a good amount of people who believe in wacky shit like an ice wall, or just a big dome or something. Lots of misunderstanding of basic physics shit, and “common sense” solutions.
It’s like an alternative version of science, for the ultra-skeptical, and for the totally faithless, but then we sort of double back to the problem of not having anything to believe, and then the empty space gets filled in by pure-vibes based science shit. Probably a lot of it has to do with people just starting out disagreeing with the aesthetics of science communication and then going from there, I’d imagine.
I dunno, it always kind of reminds me of those stan accounts on twitter that end up quitting after fixing their houses’ collective gas leaks. It makes me wonder if this is just a kind of, horrible social media locus where the mentally ill are confined to their kind of online mental asylums, except instead of guards and people who try to give them medication, you just have malicious bad faith actors who are trying to drag the population around, to their own benefit.
It makes me wonder if mental illness is, in some form, actually contagious, and can be transmitted like more conventional diseases. Overall, it kind of makes me think that the top-down structure of this whole internet thing doesn’t really make any sense, and should probably be governed in a more sensible way, because the libertarian-anarchist free speech for all idealist approach of the early internet seems like it’s just gonna lead to situations like that, where nutters hang around with each other and feed into each other’s illnesses, and kinda get to the point where nobody can really talk them out of it. But then maybe that’s all putting the cart before the horse, and realistically these people just need more intervention in their physical lives, and them shitposting is just kind of a side-effect. I dunno. Probably both approaches would be fine, I’d wager.
When I was in like grade 10ish in high school one of our teachers showed the class this meme or a similar one and one of the other kids went “wait, does that happen?” in a genuinely confused tone. Almost the entire class just stared laughing and the teacher had to explain that no, it doesn’t happen because the earth is not, in fact, flat.
