1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: Today at 10:38:01 AM »

You love the con being pulled in Ukraine, don'tcha!?!?

What con is that then?

2

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: Today at 08:07:32 AM »

We lost no privilege about complaining about conmen.

I can certainly understand the aversion to truth and the necessity of framing the resistance to such in choosing the word, "endure."

Wait.
Are you saying with a straight face that Trump is not a conman?
ROFLcopter!

3

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 10, 2025, 09:28:58 AM »

It's not looking good for the narrative that Greenland wants nothing to do with Trump.

No-one has said that. They just don't want to be owned or ruled by the US. Do you know what "independence" even means? What do you think you're celebrating on 4th July?

4

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 08, 2025, 01:52:09 PM »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg9gvg3452o

Looking forward for future history classes teaching how World War III started because Trump invaded Greenland 

5

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 08, 2025, 11:32:06 AM »

Why does he want Canada and Greenland so badly?

Because of climate change.  The melting ice is making Arctic waterways open.  Which is strategic.

Hasn't he always denied climate change is even happening?
Trump may be many things but I've never really thought of him as strategic.

6

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 08, 2025, 09:23:25 AM »

That's been blatantly taken out of context. Raskin was talking about the possibility of passing legislation at the federal level that would prohibit someone like Trump from being on the ballot, which is no more than what the Supreme Court themselves said was the appropriate course of action. That last point deserves emphasis - the SC did not rule in Trump v. Anderson that Trump had a guaranteed right to run for president and nobody was allowed to stop him. They ruled that only Congress had the power to determine eligibility for federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, not the states. In any case, Raskin certainly wasn't saying that they were going to refuse to certify Trump's victory.

That is Tom's MO - to find someone saying a thing and taking it out of context and pretending it's the prevailing view of <insert group here>.
It's very dishonest.

In other news I see Trump refused to rule out actually invading Greenland. Sheesh!

7

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: January 07, 2025, 07:35:05 PM »

Fine. I just thought I'd mention it as you were complaining about it being a timelapse, for reasons I still don't entirely understand.

8

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: January 07, 2025, 04:29:12 PM »

A time-lapse? Really? Got a chance to put the whole thing to bed, and two people couldn't stay up to do the whole 24-hour thing live?

Gimme a break.

By the way, I just watched a video about this and they did film a 25 hour real-time video of the 24 hour sun which they are looking at making available.
The issues with that are the camera they used for it records video in 30 minutes chunks and the files are very big so putting them together into a single video has been a challenge.
That has now been done but they're now coming up against a couple of YouTube limitations - apparently videos can only be 12 hours long and file size has to be under 256Gb, which even half of it wouldn't be.
So they're just working round those things before making it available.
Honestly, I'm not sure I would bother watching it as I don't think it would add much to what I've always seen, but if you're sceptical of the timelapse for whatever reason then maybe you'd be interested in the real time version when it is released.

9

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 07, 2025, 12:21:25 PM »

Someone here (like me) said it "was possible," the election would not be certified.

Why would you think that?
I mean, I guess it's possible in the sense that almost anything is, but what would give you any doubt?
The result was clear, as it was last time. And unlike last time there wasn't a man-toddler whining about how he lost and pretending he hadn't.
So what would plausibly stop certification?

10

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 04, 2025, 10:32:24 PM »

The fact that you guys are focused on me rather than commenting on the event itself

There isn't really an event to comment on.

11

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 04, 2025, 07:23:41 AM »

Greenland's Prime Minister is on board with escaping from the Danish empire - https://www.yahoo.com/news/greenland-leader-wants-independence-denmark-183435953.html

But it doesn’t look like he’s interested in Greenland becoming part of the US empire.

The article says the exact opposite of what Tom seems to think it says. Reading comprehension has never been his forte

12

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 30, 2024, 10:14:21 AM »

I'm sorry, you have YEARS of actions here which speak SO MUCH louder than words.

I've been scathing of some of the RE drive-by idiots who come here occasionally too. There are individuals I don't like on both sides. As a "tribe" - I think FE (by which I don't just mean people on here) are misguided and largely ignorant of science. A lot of them are more to be pitied than scorned. And you'll note my tone on here has softened a lot since I first joined this board.

we've got an open-and-shut case of some YouTubers doing unsightly stuff.

I disagree. You described yourself at the beginning of this as "verging on hostile" towards it, you're not neutral or being objective.
Once again you are conflating someone disagreeing with you with them being dishonest. You do this a lot, you're so certain in your position you don't seem to be able to entertain the notion that there are other points of view. If I don't immediately come round to your position then I must be being dishonest - no, I just don't agree with you.

Partially because you're not capable of criticising a RE'er

A strange thing to write in response to a post in which I made my feelings about Professor Dave Explains pretty clear.
While we're here, I quite liked SciManDan in the beginning but he can also be a dick and his "debunks" are pretty lazy

and partially because you never read their crowdfunding pages.

Yes I have. I looked at them before responding above.
MCToon is correct - flatties HAVE claimed that. Maybe not all of them, but it's definitely been claimed. Again, that was the basis for choosing this as the experiment.
Critial Think is clearly talking about the "flat Earth proponents" who claimed the 24 hour sun an Antarctica doesn't happen.
GlobeyMcGlobeface - I agree he is massively overstating things if he thinks it will end FE debate, I already said that isn't going to happen. But he does say "try to", so I'd argue he's covered himself there and he says that's why the experiment was put together, which it was.
George Demitropoulos/Kosho - Not clear what your issue is there

They were consistent in their claims. If you're as independent as you claim, you will find no difficulty in acknowledging that.

I do acknowledge that. But their claims were they were going to go to Antarctica to do experiments including observing the 24 hour sun.
And that's exactly what they did. And, again, that experiment was chosen because some FE people agreed it would be a useful way of discriminating between their FE model and the globe one.

RE doesn't have a central authority, either.

It doesn't, but there is consensus about the shape of the earth, how many poles there are and that there is a 24 hour sun in Antarctica.

You are a thoroughly dishonest person. That's all there is to it.

I'm actually not. I refer the honourable gentleman to my comments above you conflating someone not immediately coming round to your point of view with them being dishonest. Your level of cynicism extends to not even believing me about why I chose my original username. Interestingly, you persist in that despite me explaining that your thesis - that it's a reference to that joke - makes zero sense as "around" can apply to a flat or globe earth and "the world" doesn't imply any particular shape.

No, you absolutely don't need to be an FE expert to argue for FE on the Internet.

I suppose that's true, but if you're going to set up a FE messageboard or YouTube channel then aren't you setting yourself up as a de-facto FE expert. You're claiming you know better than all mainstream scientists. With RE it's much clearer what an expert is - there's a clear education path, clear textbooks to look at and so on.

We reject nonsensical fringe arguments not based on their popularity or authoritative appeal, but on their merit.

I don't think the rejection of a 24 hour sun in Antarctica or that Antarctica is actually a wall around the edge of the flat earth is a fringe FE belief. That model is still claimed to be the most common one in your Wiki.

It's kinda sad that only one of us is interested in critically evaluating both models.

My issue is I don't regard both models as equally valid. I'm a bit of a Charlie Church but I'm also fairly scientifically literate. So I don't regard young earth creationism as equivalent to the more established scientific evidence of an old earth and evolution. I have my own thoughts on how to reconcile that with early Genesis which I won't go into here. But I don't regard young earth creationism as something worth looking in to seriously when there's such a huge amount of evidence showing it can't be true - there are ice cores which go back orders of magnitude longer than when some people claim the earth was created. And so on. New models come along when they are better than the old one and my observations of FE are that it's significantly worse than the globe earth one in terms of it's ability to explain and predict things.
That said, I have consistently given you props for EA and UA. I don't think they're right but I've always acknowledged they're much better explanations for observations than some of the utter horseshit you see on YouTube.

You can't exactly spend the better part of a decade here establishing your bad will and then expecting people to take you seriously. You need to either assume a new identity (I won't rat you out, I promise), or accept that it will take you multiple years of non-deplorable behaviour to redeem yourself. Until then, you're simply not worth anyone's engagement, so you won't see any engagement from anyone.

I think assuming a new identity would be futile, my posting style wouldn't really be different so I think it would be immediately obvious who it was. I appreciate the offer though. I would argue that my attitude has softened significantly since I first came here and that has led to better relations with other posters more recently. I would ask you to consider the thought that me disagreeing with you isn't dishonesty.

While we're here, and in an attempt to get things on a more cordial footing, if you were to design a "final experiment" then what would it be? I don't think it's possible to design one which would really end all debate but is there one which in your mind would help to distinguish between the two models?

13

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 27, 2024, 10:50:27 AM »

I've seen no evidence of any impropriety.

If only your standards were this low for the tribe you don't like...

I don't know what that means. And for the record I don't particularly like or dislike any "tribe", there are individuals on both sides I dislike. For example, I do like how Professor Dave Explains...explains, but he's a condescending dick and that makes him quite unlikeable.
I can't pretend to have looked into this in any detail. I don't know where the money came from to fund the 1 FE and 1 RE place which were prepaid. But me not knowing that isn't evidence of fraud, or evidence against it. I wouldn't even know how to investigate that. The crowdfunding places are clearer, so let's come on to that.

Other places have been crowdfunded but that isn't "stealing". If someone sets up a fundraiser for a holiday and people want to contribute then that's their business.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there.

If I set up a crowdfunding page and say "I'd like a lovely holiday please, could you pay for it kthxpls?" then I'd expect people to tell me to sod off. But if people did want to pay for me then...well, that's up to them, isn't it? That's what crowdfunding is, what's to agree with or disagree about there?

And I'm not gonna hide this - to me, that makes you morally reprehensible. I'm sure you're devastated by that.

I'm completely consolable.
But your assertion about my morality seems to be based on the idea that I think it's OK to scam people by lying about what I'm crowdfunding for - but I don't think that. To continue my example above, if I said I wanted one last holiday because I'm terminally ill and then it transpires I'm fine and just wanted a holiday then I'd agree, that would be morally reprehensible. So I guess the point of disagreement is whether people have been lied to.

They were selling this trip to a dedicated fandom with the promise of finally delivering the "smoking gun" that will, once and for all, shut up those evil Flat Earthers.

This is more or less true, but you're leaving out a fair bit of context which is that the experiment was chosen specifically because FE and RE disagreed about what the outcome would be. Now, YOU may not disagree about it but (all together now) you aren't the FE authority. Because as you tell me repeatedly, there isn't one. And I think that's part of the issue here. The FE "tribe" are not a single group with coherent beliefs. You view this as a scam because to you this is a a waste of time and money and you know what the outcome of the experiment will be anyway. But the FE people they were speaking to did NOT agree about the outcome of the experiment, Jeranism has already admitted the results were not what he was expecting.

your only response is one of victim-blaming: "Well, if they're happy being scammed, then what's the problem? If they didn't want to get scammed, they just wouldn't pay up!

Being scammed is in the eye of the beholder. Your claim is that people have been scammed. But for that to be true people would have had to be lied to about what was going to happen. If people had raised money for a trip to Antarctica and then gone to the Bahamas for an all expenses paid holiday then that would be a scam. Or if people had gone to Antarctica for the experience and to take photos of penguins and hadn't done the experiments they said they were going to do then that would be a scam. But none of that happened. They said they were crowdfunding to go to Antarctica and observe the 24 hour sun and that's exactly what they did. I think people were pretty clear about what they were contributing to. Where's the scam?
At worst, I'd agree that it was over-stated that this would end all FE debate, that was never going to happen. But, again, the experiment was chosen because RE and (some) FE people disagreed about the outcome. The fundamental issue is that there is no set of coherent FE beliefs - is a consequence of there being no FE Authority.

Extreme tl;dr version: if you wanna count these people as part of the FE camp, then I'm gonna start counting idiots who mix up velocity and acceleration as part of the RE camp.

We have had this conversation before so I'll just reply like I have before
It's a false equivalence. The shape of the earth is an established fact, most people are taught it and believe it and many don't really understand much science and don't need to in their daily lives. Most people believe a load of stuff without really understanding it or thinking about it too hard. To be a flat earther you must surely have looked in to the matter in some depth and are therefore a de facto FE expert.

You did know, from day 0, that no true ScotsFE'er would find the results of this experiment to be valuable, and that's because you know that we expected the same outcome as you. You might not understand why that is, but that doesn't necessitate flying a bunch of grifters to Antarctica.

I knew from day 0 that this would not end all RE/FE debate, but I didn't think it had no value as an experiment because I have seen some FE people - including on here - claiming that the 24 hour sun in Antarctica doesn't happen. I honestly don't know who the "true" FE people are. I've never been entirely convinced that you lot are serious about it. What I see is a lot of People's Front of Judea and Judean People's Front sects, all claiming that they are the "real" FE people and the others are grifters or controlled opposition etc. Again, you are not the FE Authority, why should I believe you when you say that others aren't the real ones?

Sorry, but you've firmly convinced me that that would be a waste of my time.

This is quite a common tactic of yours, to claim that you really do have a good explanation for <something>, pinky-promise, but I wouldn't be interested in hearing it. It's all a bit "I definitely have a girlfriend but she goes to a different school, you wouldn't know her". It's not really the way to convince me that you are serious about FE.

I have ploughed my way through the pages about the moon tilt illusion, the first one starts:
"If the light travels in straight lines and the Sun illuminates the Moon then it is expected that the Moon's illuminated portion should always point at the Sun. The Moon Tilt Illusion is a phenomenon in which the lit portion of the Moon unexpectedly points away from the Sun"

It's a strong start given that the Moon Tilt Illusion is an optical illusion. There's a clue in the name. When the illusion occurs the lit portion APPEARS to point away from the sun, but it actually doesn't. I have verified this to my own satisfaction.
The initial page is a very long explanation for why EA predicts a phenomenon which doesn't actually occur (again, illusion). The supplemental page is a box set of not understanding that the fact a straight line perpendicular to the terminator on the moon intersects the sun is proof that the illusion is just that, an optical illusion. Which actually shows that EA doesn't exist if you think about it, because it "predicts" something which doesn't actually occur, it merely appears to and it's trivial to demonstrate that.

You berate me for conversations going round and round but the above has been explained on multiple occasions and yet the same topics keep coming up:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=17742.msg234260#msg234260
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=19030.0

You have an opportunity to move these conversations on but you always say I wouldn't be interested in your explanations. And then you lament that the conversations go round and round. They only do so because you refuse to advance them, *shrug*

14

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Does light naturally travel in curved paths?

« on: December 24, 2024, 08:48:27 PM »

any point made about it only happening when one photon acts upon another or a photon acting upon itself, is fairly irrelevant.

It doesn’t only happen with one photon. That’s not what I said. It’s the fact it STILL happens with one photon at a time which is the weird thing, and that it stops happening if you observe which slit the photon goes through

Light travels in curved paths.

Incorrect. The interference pattern only happens because of the slits and the wave behaviour of light when going through small apertures.

15

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Does light naturally travel in curved paths?

« on: December 23, 2024, 08:55:35 AM »

If one photon is fired at the slits at a time it will will take one of the curved paths of light and make the wave pattern in sequential dots on the screen destination at the end.

You didn't need to provide a source for that, the double split experiment is a well known demonstration of quantum theory.
The really weird thing about it is if you put a sensor at one of the slits to detect which slit the photon is going through then the interference pattern disappears and they start acting like particles again. This is a weird, but well known phenomenon

The point is clearly that it is wrong that light travels in straight lines. Light travels in curved lines.

It travels in straight lines unless...
And the unlesses are well known. This is like you hearing Newton's first law of motion - that objects remain at rest or continue at a constant velocity unless acted on by a force - and then rolling a ball, noting it stops after a time and saying "haha, see?!". No, don't see - there was a force acting, friction.

As mentioned above, a single photon can travel on a curved path on its own without any known influence.

While not being an expert in quantum mechanics, I don't think that effect is because of the photon travelling on a curved path.
It's because of  the photon acting like a wave and going through both slits at the same time and interfering with itself.
As I said, it stops happening if you observe which slit it goes through.
A weird, but well understood effect in quantum theory.

Refraction is well understood too and Einsten's theory about light being affected by gravity has been verified experimentally during eclipses and gravitational lensing is used in astronomy.

None of this is the gotcha you seem to think it is.

16

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Does light naturally travel in curved paths?

« on: December 23, 2024, 12:01:30 AM »

it also appears to discredit the axiom that light travels in straight lines.

But that isn't an axiom. Or rather the exceptions to it - light's path being affected by things like diffraction, refraction or spacetime curvature are well known and understood. The concept of light bending "upwards" is a bit meaningless in mainstream science. What does "upwards" even mean? That word is only meaningful in relation to your position. "Up" in Australia is a different direction to "up" in the UK - in the globe earth model.
I'm not clear what your actual point is here.

17

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 22, 2024, 11:47:25 PM »

Nobody here could ever really explain things enough to satisfy you, AATW.
It is not that multiple people haven't tried.

The explanations are always so vague. The best/worst example being Celestial Gravitation. The Wiki page about it literally just says that it might be a thing.

The wiki diagram for EA is pretty compelling.

Do you mean the one at the top of this page?
https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration

I don't know if it's "compelling" - it's certainly clear. And sure, it's the best explanation for sunset on a FE I've seen, you can have that.
But it doesn't help that further down the page you have the moon tilt illusion "explained" by EA when
a) It's an optical illusion and easy to prove it is, I have done that myself and
b) The diagram shows the light bending downwards in a shape like a rainbow - that's the opposite of what EA hypotheses.

And then you have the "Approximation" section which has an equation which has no derivation shown and which contains an unknown constant. It's not a well formed theory it is, at best, a hypothesis. And it is one which does a decent job of explaining sunset but if it can also explain a 24 hour sun in Antarctica then I have yet to understand how.

18

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 22, 2024, 01:53:26 PM »

What makes you think that? As far as I can tell, the opposite happened - known FE grifters teamed up with known RE grifters to get a free holiday and steal a lot of money from fans

Some places were paid for. Which is what was stated from the start - not clear where that money came from, but I've seen no evidence of any impropriety. Other places have been crowdfunded but that isn't "stealing". If someone sets up a fundraiser for a holiday and people want to contribute then that's their business. Obviously in this case the reason wasn't just a holiday, it was to do certain experiments and those experiments have now been done. If people thought that those experiments were pointless then they didn't have to contribute. And if the trip didn't happen at all and people just ran off with the money then I'd agree that was fraudulent, but the trip did happen.

all in the name of an "experiment" that FE and RE agreed would produce a consistent outcome long in advance

This isn't true. The experiment was specifically picked because FE and RE did NOT agree on the outcome.
You and other people on here may not have disputed it but you aren't the FE authority - you've already said there isn't one. The FE people they were engaging with claimed there was no 24 hour sun in Antarctica, that's why that experiment was chosen. You may regard those FE people as grifters but...you said you're not the authority. Jeranism has already said he didn't expect the outcome - you may regard him as one of the grifters but he's been quoted on here before.

I don't know if A69 can, but I do  know you can - you've been here for these conversations, and your memory isn't THAT bad yet. In a critical failure scenario, you could have just scrolled up, which you inevitably would do... so, what gives?

I've never seen an explanation that I find satisfactory. You said something above about "the real effects of EA combined with internal reflection" but that's too vague for me to really understand what you think is goingon. There's Tom's diagram above which I don't begin to understand. In the bi-polar model the sun could orbit the north pole for 6 months and then the south pole for 6 months. That at least makes sense to me, but it would cause a load of other problems in terms of where the sun appears in different places. In the monopole model I don't understand how it could work. I'm happy to be educated if you have a detailed explanation.

19

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 17, 2024, 09:50:34 PM »

Bottom line is this.

The video proves nothing regarding the shape of the earth.

Can you explain how the 24 hour sun shown in that video would work on a flat earth?

20

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« on: December 17, 2024, 04:23:22 PM »

New Year's Eve celebrations are more noteworthy if you actually witness the entire thing, instead of retiring at 23:59:59, amirite?

What a weird comparison. In your scenario you are missing the main celebration at midnight. Nothing is being missed here.
This is an event which, by definition, takes place over 24 hours. A timelapse is a good and obvious way to show that just as slow-mo is a good way to show events which happen too quickly to be easily discerned. I'm not clear what your issue is here.