Debunking Humor...

Not sure where to post this, but I think this thread fits, for the sheer absurdity factor:
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

External Quote:

In an eighty-minute appearance today on The Good Trouble Show livestream with Matt Ford, UFO researcher and Stanford University professor Garry Nolan attacked what he calls "pseudo-skeptics" who disbelieve UFO claims and offered a bizarre set of conditions under which he would agree to let UFO skeptic Mick West interview him about flying saucers. (The video settings currently prevent embedding, so you will need to click the link.)

Among Nolan's conditions, which he appeared to be inventing on the fly:
  • All of the so-called "Guerilla Skeptics" must withdraw from Wikipedia, where they work to edit articles to limit misinformation and unsubstantiated claims.
  • West must disclose "who his funders are" because "they have a pretty decent budget."
  • West must pay $1 million or $2 million from his (imaginary) funders' resources to a UFO "whistleblowers' charity" (whatever that is).
  • West must publish a paper on any of his work related to UFOs in a tier-one academic journal with The Hill opinion columnist and ufology promoter Marik Von Rennenkampff to serve as coauthor (!).
 
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Not sure where to post this, but I think this thread fits, for the sheer absurdity factor:
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

External Quote:

Among Nolan's conditions, which he appeared to be inventing on the fly:
  • All of the so-called "Guerilla Skeptics" must withdraw from Wikipedia, where they work to edit articles to limit misinformation and unsubstantiated claims.
  • West must disclose "who his funders are" because "they have a pretty decent budget."
  • West must pay $1 million or $2 million from his (imaginary) funders' resources to a UFO "whistleblowers' charity" (whatever that is).
  • West must publish a paper on any of his work related to UFOs in a tier-one academic journal with The Hill opinion columnist and ufology promoter Marik Von Rennenkampff to serve as coauthor (!).
I know that Metabunk has a politeness policy, but my reaction to that list of conditions is that it's more than a little unhinged. Especially as it includes something that (even if Nolan's beliefs were all true) would be entirely beyond Mick's control, i.e. the withdrawl of "Guerilla Skeptics" from Wikipedia.
 
Especially as it includes something that (even if Nolan's beliefs were all true) would be entirely beyond Mick's control, i.e. the withdrawal of "Guerilla Skeptics" from Wikipedia.

Yeah, and I'm sure he could not buy Susan Gerbic, even with his massive shill millions :P
 
Furthermore:
External Quote:
Nolan frequently emphasized his belief that UFO skeptics are somehow funded by a bottomless well of money from a shadowy but unnamed group. Ford added that $2 million was "a drop in the bucket" compared to the overall budget of the organizations funding skeptics and debunkers.
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

I eagerly await my check. Tell me, are payments under the table considered by the IRA to be taxable income?
 
Furthermore:
External Quote:
Nolan frequently emphasized his belief that UFO skeptics are somehow funded by a bottomless well of money from a shadowy but unnamed group. Ford added that $2 million was "a drop in the bucket" compared to the overall budget of the organizations funding skeptics and debunkers.
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

I eagerly await my check. Tell me, are payments under the table considered by the IRA to be taxable income?
Mr. Capone says "yes."
 
I eagerly await my check. Tell me, are payments under the table considered by the IRA to be taxable income?
But does it come as a cut of a Scrooge McDuckian vault, or of a Smaug hoard of treasure. I think that affects its taxable status.
 
Furthermore:
External Quote:
Nolan frequently emphasized his belief that UFO skeptics are somehow funded by a bottomless well of money from a shadowy but unnamed group. Ford added that $2 million was "a drop in the bucket" compared to the overall budget of the organizations funding skeptics and debunkers.
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

I eagerly await my check. Tell me, are payments under the table considered by the IRA to be taxable income?

It depends on whether or not you meet Irish residency requirements I imagine.
 
Furthermore:
External Quote:
Nolan frequently emphasized his belief that UFO skeptics are somehow funded by a bottomless well of money from a shadowy but unnamed group. Ford added that $2 million was "a drop in the bucket" compared to the overall budget of the organizations funding skeptics and debunkers.
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

I eagerly await my check. Tell me, are payments under the table considered by the IRA to be taxable income?
Am I the only one who spots a heffalump in the room? Bigelow's a billionaire, isn't he? Which side is he funding? (And no, I don't mean politically, I mean UFO-wise.) Do the skeptics have anything equivalent?

Emphasis mine:
External Quote:
Bigelow was so certain [of an ET presence near earth], he indicated, because he had "spent millions and millions and millions" of dollars searching for UFO evidence. "I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject."

He's right. Since the early 1990s[1], Bigelow has bankrolled[2] a voluminous stream of pseudoscience on modern-day UFO lore—investigating everything from crop circles and cattle mutilations to alien abductions and UFO crashes. Indeed, if you name a UFO rabbit hole, it's a good bet the 79-year-old tycoon has flushed his riches down it.[3]
-- https://www.wired.com/story/inside-robert-bigelows-decades-long-obsession-with-ufos/

Links in that text:
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB935357220206970615 - content unknown, WSJ hate me
[2] - https://uploads.isaackoi.com/2023/02/pdfs-robert-bigelows-nids-batch-1-of.html - "PDFs - Robert Bigelow's NIDS - Batch 1 of research material added to archive", in turn linking to a stash of 91 docs here: https://files.afu.se/Downloads/?dir=./Documents/0 - UFO Researchers/NIDS/Website Material , some with very fringey titles.
[3] - https://www.wired.com/story/inside-robert-bigelows-decades-long-obsession-with-ufos/ - "Inside Robert Bigelow's Decades-Long Obsession With UFOs" which looks mostly fluff
 
I know that Metabunk has a politeness policy, but my reaction to that list of conditions is that it's more than a little ...

Dr Garry Nolan's reasoning mirrors that of a religious zealot who considers skeptics as an enemy of the faith. This flawed logic is essentially:

"Convert to my religion first, donate a substantial sum to it, and repent! We can debate it once I am convinced you share in my fundamentalist beliefs."

Google search suggestions below (for the English speaking world at least) provide an insight into the level of interest for different conversions.

1767652486540.png


Modern-era religions that have received the greatest interest for new converts include:

* Excel worshippers (the holy numerology)
* Smartphone worshippers (2nd coming of SIM)
* PDF worshippers (behold the glory of our format!)

Unfortunately, the religion of Disclosure has a long way to go.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if the <blank> entry in the Google list was claimed as evidence of religious suppression.
 
Not sure where to post this, but I think this thread fits, for the sheer absurdity factor:
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ions-for-a-potential-interview-with-mick-west

External Quote:

In an eighty-minute appearance today on The Good Trouble Show livestream with Matt Ford, UFO researcher and Stanford University professor Garry Nolan attacked what he calls "pseudo-skeptics" who disbelieve UFO claims and offered a bizarre set of conditions under which he would agree to let UFO skeptic Mick West interview him about flying saucers. (The video settings currently prevent embedding, so you will need to click the link.)

Among Nolan's conditions, which he appeared to be inventing on the fly:
  • All of the so-called "Guerilla Skeptics" must withdraw from Wikipedia, where they work to edit articles to limit misinformation and unsubstantiated claims.
  • West must disclose "who his funders are" because "they have a pretty decent budget."
  • West must pay $1 million or $2 million from his (imaginary) funders' resources to a UFO "whistleblowers' charity" (whatever that is).
  • West must publish a paper on any of his work related to UFOs in a tier-one academic journal with The Hill opinion columnist and ufology promoter Marik Von Rennenkampff to serve as coauthor (!).

Even stranger, starting at about 31:00 in Ford's video,he and Nolan relive Nolan's life through photos. Nolan at collage, Nolan in a UFO art piece, Nolan at a Nobel party, Nolan on cruises, and a young Nolan about to take off his pants to swim in San Francisco bay. I would assume he was about to take his pants off in the photo so he could put on a wet suit, because damn! The bay is cold. It was all very odd.
 
@derwoodii Unfortunately, I don't think time works like that ;)

Hear me out, I think I have a way around this - just don't upgrade to 2026 in the first place (OK, too late now, but you can use this in future years). Alas, you need to move to one of the poles, and you'll need to constantly be running away from the oncoming dawn at your longitude, but assuming you can keep it up, the pending day will never begin for you. You might think that jumping westards across the international date line once a day would set your calendar forward by a day, but that would be cancelled by the fact that you're continuously setting your clock back as you rotate - a matching 24 hours of backward clock-setting per day.

(Is this a new paradox/puzzle? I can't believe it is, but I don't remember seeing it before, and given that I hand around in puzzling groups, that seems a surprise.)
 
Hear me out, I think I have a way around this - just don't upgrade to 2026 in the first place (OK, too late now, but you can use this in future years). Alas, you need to move to one of the poles, and you'll need to constantly be running away from the oncoming dawn at your longitude, but assuming you can keep it up, the pending day will never begin for you. You might think that jumping westards across the international date line once a day would set your calendar forward by a day, but that would be cancelled by the fact that you're continuously setting your clock back as you rotate - a matching 24 hours of backward clock-setting per day.

(Is this a new paradox/puzzle? I can't believe it is, but I don't remember seeing it before, and given that I hand around in puzzling groups, that seems a surprise.)
There's some sort of dopey crime story that could revolve around (ha!) running around the pole to prevent ever having to reach a trial date, or the other way to get to the statute of limitations quicker...
 
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There's some sort of dopey crime story that could revolve around (ha!) running around the pole to prevent ever having to reah a trial date, or the other way to get to the statute of limitations quicker...
Why do I get the feeling one of those warped serial-killer jokes is behind all this?
 
Yeah, I see this guy, maybe a mob boss, who gets the bright idea and heads up to the pole to run around to before the warrant to arrest him is issued, making it invalid. But the warrant server chasing him is a real Inspector Jalvert type, dedicated entirely to bringing back his man, and sits himself down while his assistants constantly bring him new warrants, newly opened investigations of additional crimes, and our protagonist (though not in any sense our hero) is stuck constantly having to circle this way and that around the pole, to be in the wrong time for the current attempt to catch him, never able to wander more than a handful of meters from the pole lest he get too far away to change his date fast enough. I don;t have the ending yet, but it must have to do with the two of them being stuck there forever, but what does "forever" even mean in a situation where time has to be treated as optional and essentially meaningless? Maybe we end with our guy deciding to run around the poll into the past to reach the date before he was born,hoping that this might make him cease to exist and so get out of the trap he's fallen into... hmmm, there might be something there...

That's pretty much the sub-plot of Pirates of Penzance...
Good artists copy, great artists steal. Picasso is credited with that, but I bet he heard it somewhere and repeated it.
 
As a British person that left a horrible mental image, only slightly improved when I realised we're talking Americanese:

To me, pants are what you wear under your trousers or jeans.
Britain is simply too cold for nudism. [It's not.] It's called FKK in Germany, and we have beaches dedicated to it.

Last Christmas my mum bought me a t-shirt saying, "I'm a nudist."
I haven't worn it yet.
 
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Britain is simply too cold for nudism.
Dubrovnik is a nice warm place with a fully-nude beach, whereas the other beach behind our hotel was merely topless. I had brought only a one-piece suit, so I did consider the nude beach, but then I realized I was about to spend a couple of weeks in a bus with the rest of my tour group (not all of them strangers) and chickened out in favor of American prudery. :)
 
Dubrovnik is a nice warm place with a fully-nude beach, whereas the other beach behind our hotel was merely topless. I had brought only a one-piece suit, so I did consider the nude beach, but then I realized I was about to spend a couple of weeks in a bus with the rest of my tour group (not all of them strangers) and chickened out in favor of American prudery. :)
You could have fallen back on your scots roots, and worn nothing but a sporran?
 
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