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Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

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Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#311
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the seed oil thing is so funny to me because, like, yeah. also, no. it's actually true. they cause serious inflammation which aggravates serious downstream health problems. like, you shouldn't be eating seed oils in any large quantity that you would get from regularly eating deep fried foods oh but wait, eating foods with beef tallow and other saturated fats also causes health problems. except, those problems only sh…

I remember last year when fats were "good" and carbs were "bad", good times. I mean, it could all be a psy-op by the animal agriculture lobby to get people to eat even more meat and less veggies. brb frying broccoli and noodles

> I mean, it could all be a psy-op by the animal agriculture lobby to get people to eat even more meat and less veggies.

I don't think you're wrong tbh, since before there was a big psy-op by the grain agri lobby to portray fat in a bad light, pushing for low-fat (but often high sugar/carb) and vegetable oil alternatives.

I mean for all these ones there's a grain (ha!) of truth, but the absolutist "X is bad for you" is definitely wrong. The core of every diet opinion seems to be "nothing in excess" / "you need a balanced diet". But that's more difficult than "eat only X" or "avoid Y".

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"House Intelligence leaders" are not exempt from hysteria.

Indeed, that's an obvious appeal to authority fallacy, and "appears increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is behind some cases" is just weasel words; it's vague and meaningless but articles like this position it as pretty much factual.

Sure, they don't explicitly say it's a fact, but it's enough for many people to be "sold" on the idea that it's foreign adversaries.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#313
post #192

This was literally my first thought for the anomalous drones like 2 weeks ago, and it was immediately obvious that the entire NJ police department should not be incompetent enough to fall for something so obvious. The mayors and governor should not be dumb enough to stake their reputations on this when the null hypothesis of "mass hysteria" is easier and safer. Even back then, we knew the sightings do not appear on f…

Governor of Maryland posted a video of Orion's Belt claiming they were drones. A local news station posted a video of Venus claiming drones. There's a lot of baloney mixed in to this event.

It sounds like the kind of thing that happens to people that don't look up often enough. Damn kids with their smartphones!

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#314

In the context of the fact that, according to TFA, the pits were there all along: you'll really notice how pitted your current windshield is when you go get a new, crystal-clear one. The folks in TFA just skipped the "go get a new one" step, and for the first time took a really hard look at their windshield.

Some of the pictures in the article show several golf-ball-size holes in the windshield though. Not something that would go unnoticed. Was windshield glass not laminated in that era?

I'm only seeing the one picture with that kind of damage (the first one); the other one has circles drawn around the pitting to highlight them, indicative that they're pretty small to begin with.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Governor of Maryland posted a video of drones he saw hovering for 45 minutes, and he decried the lack of action and info from the feds. Something must be done! It was the constellation Orion and some other stars. He literally saw some stars and thought they were drones hovering near his house. Why shouldn’t I believe that they’re really this dumb?

Are you talking about Larry Hogan, who hasn't been governor for 23 months and has nothing at stake? You could have fact-checked that in less time than it took to write your post.

Yeah well, former governor Hogan could have fact-checked his video before posting it and didn’t, and only one of us is a public figure feeding idiotic hysteria.

My point stands. If this guy is that dumb then why should we think any of the rest are better?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like you don't know what the scientific method is? I take from that response that you just assume that the scientific method was important but don't know why. I will posit that is because it wasn't as important as you assume. > tend to be What number of exceptions would there need to be before you accepted that the entire premise was wrong?

I conclude you are just being argumentative.

How did you tell the difference between being right while facing an obstinate opponent, and being argumentative?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't come up with a scenario where a slave would improve their life by innovating the tools and objects they had available to them, or a scenario in which a master is not a one dimensional caricature, or a scenario where a slave is not a stupid pack animal that can only follow orders, then the burden is not on history to convince you otherwise.

History shows us that free men produce far more innovations than unfree ones.

* History is not written by unfree peoples

* You have not taken into account factors such as portions of population, different types of slavery or really anything at all

* Your original logic has been shown to be inherently flawed and you are still trying to argue by using evidence that turns out to be an assumption when examined

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. No thinking needed. A quick search turns this up: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/with-patents-or-wi...

It does indeed mention 3 inventions by slaves, and then a number of inventions by free men. For some perspective, here's an accounting of the number of patents by year: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.h...

The whole point is that such evidence would not exist in the first place, so 3 examples are actually statistically significant and indicate that there are a whole lot more than that.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#319

This was literally my first thought for the anomalous drones like 2 weeks ago, and it was immediately obvious that the entire NJ police department should not be incompetent enough to fall for something so obvious. The mayors and governor should not be dumb enough to stake their reputations on this when the null hypothesis of "mass hysteria" is easier and safer. Even back then, we knew the sightings do not appear on f…

"it can't be hysteria, look at these extreme ways people are reacting!"

Physical evidence or GTFO (the video with the NJ police is physical evidence that they have a drone with thermal imagery and of nothing else).

Here's a gift link to yesterday's New York Times story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/video/new-jersey-drones-p...

  The vast majority of the videos appeared to show planes or helicopters,
  moving across a part of the state that brims with airports. None of the
  videos analyzed by The Times conclusively showed drones, though in some
  cases that remains a plausible explanation.
None.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#320
post #274
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be splitting hairs. The delusion is that the pitting happened recently and wasn't there before.

It's an important hair to split when people are trying to use this as an example of a whole bunch of people just spontaneously believing something false. It's not that. It's actually a case of people spontaneously realizing something true, and if we're going to apply that to the drone story blindly, that changes it quite significantly. That's why the hair split. "Mass" does not imply "delusion"; that's a thought-term…

Ok I'll expand: The delusion was that people held the mistaken belief that their windshield was not pitted the day before they checked. They said: "The pitting happened overnight." Where they should have said: "I don't know when the pitting happened." That can reasonably be described as delusion. That idea, that pitting was a novel thing, was spread by media reports and had no basis.

Similarily, these days people hear about drones in the sky. They look up, see lights, and think the lights they see are drones. Their interpretation of the lights is coloured by media reports. Even if the lights were there last year! And some lights may absolutely be of drones too! Much like pitting was a real occurrence.

The pitting story reminds us that just because there are more reports, doesn't mean there is more of the thing. Because people's perception is selective. And that can lead into delusion.

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