Funny Events of the "Woke" world

[Baffle]

When did you do your course and what sort of institution (e.g. ancient / redbrick / plate glass / post-92) if you don't mind me asking?

It was about 6 years ago, at Northumbria Uni. A large part of the problem was that it was a distance learning course that wasn't appropriate to distance learning (Surveying MSc - quite a few unis do offer this or similar as distance learning, but I chose Northumbria because I'm local). It could maybe be made appropriate, but it felt very much like a bolt-on to the on-campus equivalent that no one had thought much about beyond How can we increase these student numbers? (I couldn't do the on-campus one because I work full-time so I needed to do the one over two years).

Everything you say chimes pretty much with my experience (and yes, Northumbria do seem to be developing the campus a lot - all the time!)

 

[Hawki]

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations

www.theguardian.com

 

[Ag3ma]

It was about 6 years ago, at Northumbria Uni. A large part of the problem was that it was a distance learning course that wasn't appropriate to distance learning (Surveying MSc - quite a few unis do offer this or similar as distance learning, but I chose Northumbria because I'm local). It could maybe be made appropriate, but it felt very much like a bolt-on to the on-campus equivalent that no one had thought much about beyond How can we increase these student numbers? (I couldn't do the on-campus one because I work full-time so I needed to do the one over two years).

Everything you say chimes pretty much with my experience (and yes, Northumbria do seem to be developing the campus a lot - all the time!)

Yeah, I'm really sorry to hear the course was disappointing. Many of the post-92 institutions focus on providing skills to local students for the local economy. They generally meet that role effectively despite having a relatively poor reputation, and some of their courses are often very good - better than the more eminent universities - and more innovative because they are more dedicated to teaching and can't lazily rest on their built up reputation. Although the downside of constant hustle, development and stretched resources is that they are probably also more likely to have weak courses.

It's awful to be stuck on a bad course. Once I was seconded to help out on one towards the end of the academic year but it was never going to be more than damage limitation, and I find it painful as staff to see so many unhappy students. People who want to improve their skills - not just school leavers but mature students wanting to retrain or further develop in their existing area - deserve better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations

www.theguardian.com

So I guess muslims do believe in "all-American values"?

 

[Hawki]

Pride protests strain America's multicultural project

Earlier this month, the White House unfurled a Progress Pride flag flanked by two national flags. This prompted some to read the act as symbolising defeat of the Stars and Stripes by a new ruling ideology. Republican Senator Roger Marshall introduced a new bill to ban government buildings from...

unherd.com

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[Trunkage]

Unherd? The guys that thought Rand Paul and Greenwald were Russian propogandists?

 

[Thaluikhain]

But, they have an article about the new world war on free speech. They sound legit.

 

[Silvanus]

Unherd? The guys that thought Rand Paul and Greenwald were Russian propogandists?

Glenn Greenwald certainly isn't a "Russian propagandist" in the sense that he has no coordination or arrangement with the Russian government or media. But he does credulously accept and then peddle Russian propaganda lines, including war apologia, alongside the most odious elements of the American far-right conspiracy sphere (Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones et al).

 

[Ag3ma]

Glenn Greenwald certainly isn't a "Russian propagandist" in the sense that he has no coordination or arrangement with the Russian government or media. But he does credulously accept and then peddle Russian propaganda lines, including war apologia, alongside the most odious elements of the American far-right conspiracy sphere (Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones et al).

I think the issue with Glenn Greenwald is that he's convinced that the worst thing in the world is the USA's political, industrial and media system, which inclines him to take the side of anything that's against it, and hence also why he can find common ground with the conspiracy theorist right.

People following this thread might be reasonably well acquainted with that mindset.

 

[Gergar12]

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

No JFK didn't get owned by the Soviets. he humiliated Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis, and the Soviet unions lost their most capable leader ever. Phil is wrong.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982222001014

This estimates that the total biomass of wild mammals pre-civilisation (up to ~12,000 years ago) was 40 teragrams (Tg), and is now 7 Tg. It suggests the biomass of livestock alone these days is 100 Tg, so two-and-a-half times greater than the entire biomass of mammals in recent prehistory. Therefore, modern agriculture will be creating vastly more methane than was produced by wild animals in prehistory.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/tellusb.v38i3-4.15135

This estimates that the total production of methane by mammals is around 78 Tg/y, of which wild animals produce 2-6 Tg/y (say, 4 Tg/y). If we take the above estimate that there are about a sixth as many wild animals as prehistory, this would suggest in prehistory maybe ~24 Tg/y of methane. This is a third of the estimated livestock methane production today.

Of course, this paper also dates from 1986, and there's lots more livestock now than in 1986.

I'm finding it really hard to find numbers on animal populations and such. Even human population numbers hundreds of years ago has a wide range in estimation let alone animals. The best numbers for elephants seem to have them at 25 million in 1500 and that's only Africa, I can't really find anything for ople actually Asian estimates. I did find a Reddit thread about elephants and how much methane they emit vs cows and it's 8 times what a cow emits in a day. So just African elephants would be equivalent to 200 million cows.

I tried finding numbers for aurochs (cow ancestors) and the only thing I really found was a paper saying that they were far more abundant in China that we previously thought with no number estimations. I was trying to figure out wild cow population before they were domesticated basically and really couldn't find much. I guess American buffalo numbers are the most accurate for what wild cattle numbers would look like, and I guess they would vary greatly depending on land type and vegetation from region to region across the world.

There's a billion cows today but we'd have elephants at least emitting the methane of a fifth of the billion today of today's cows (not counting Asian elephants in that). Then ~50 million bison in the US and probably similar density numbers of ruminants across the world in similar regions. The idea that there's a lot more methane coming from animals today than yesterday just doesn't make much logical sense to me. And to act like this is some important thing to curb right now when there's the big elephant in the room of fossil fuel emissions just seems so weird. It's the whole 'let's get up in arms about this super minor thing because we don't want to actually do anything about the big thing' way of thinking that doesn't make any sense to me.

They succeeded in recreating a weaker approximation of a study's result by generating random numbers and applying an analytic formula to the results.

Your position is exactly as strong as that of the foolish second researcher in my hypothetical.



This is undoubtedly just a result of you finding a few researchers that agree with you, and then ignoring or dismissing all the rest because you've deemed them "bad studies" on the basis of minor procedural misunderstandings you've made.

What about the math that showed they did the study wrong? You never comment on that do you?

There's only like a few researchers that even care about Dunning-Kruger, where's the researchers that proved the debunkers wrong?

 

[Silvanus]

What about the math that showed they did the study wrong? You never comment on that do you?

Because we weren't talking about that. You can't just throw extra claims out and get indignant that I haven't addressed them, when I never set out to do so.

But sure, I'll be happy to move onto other flawed claims you've made if you're happy to stop insisting they replicated the original study with random numbers.

There's only like a few researchers that even care about Dunning-Kruger, where's the researchers that proved the debunkers wrong?

If the debunkers haven't sufficiently made their case to begin with, there's not really much need to prove them wrong.

Though, of course, even the 'debunkers' you've cited weren't making the argument that you've claimed-- Eric Gaze (of the 'random numbers' effort) has said that Dunning and Kruger's study successfully showed people believe they're above average, whereas you incorrectly described the position as believing oneself to be closer to the average.

 

[meiam]

I'm finding it really hard to find numbers on animal populations and such. Even human population numbers hundreds of years ago has a wide range in estimation let alone animals. The best numbers for elephants seem to have them at 25 million in 1500 and that's only Africa, I can't really find anything for ople actually Asian estimates. I did find a Reddit thread about elephants and how much methane they emit vs cows and it's 8 times what a cow emits in a day. So just African elephants would be equivalent to 200 million cows.

I tried finding numbers for aurochs (cow ancestors) and the only thing I really found was a paper saying that they were far more abundant in China that we previously thought with no number estimations. I was trying to figure out wild cow population before they were domesticated basically and really couldn't find much. I guess American buffalo numbers are the most accurate for what wild cattle numbers would look like, and I guess they would vary greatly depending on land type and vegetation from region to region across the world.

There's a billion cows today but we'd have elephants at least emitting the methane of a fifth of the billion today of today's cows (not counting Asian elephants in that). Then ~50 million bison in the US and probably similar density numbers of ruminants across the world in similar regions. The idea that there's a lot more methane coming from animals today than yesterday just doesn't make much logical sense to me. And to act like this is some important thing to curb right now when there's the big elephant in the room of fossil fuel emissions just seems so weird. It's the whole 'let's get up in arms about this super minor thing because we don't want to actually do anything about the big thing' way of thinking that doesn't make any sense to me.

None of your number go against the number shown by ag3ma, nor do they actually support your point. Also you're ignoring human, we displace animal and replace them with many more human, we then make ultra efficient agriculture to raise far more animal on top of that. We're more efficient at agriculture than nature because we use added chemical fertilizer and breed plant specialize in producing as much as possible while protecting them from disease and aggressively harvest plant at the best time. That increase in available food has to go somewhere, we don't juts burn it for shit and giggle, its used to feed human and livestock. Since the amount of agricultural product available far exceed what is produced naturally, then its not hard to understand that the number of living organism sustained by this exceed what existed naturally, and since we literally raise billions of cows/porc, its pretty obvious that there's far more in existence due to modern agriculture than nature.

 

[Ag3ma]

The idea that there's a lot more methane coming from animals today than yesterday just doesn't make much logical sense to me.

I don't think the problem is your "logical sense". The problem is that you started from the assumption that animal-based methane production hasn't gone up since prehistory, and you're reluctant to let that assumption go to the point you're trying to maths your way out of it without a solid factual base.

Incidentally, you may find this rather more reliable than a random Reddit user to estimate elephant methane production:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751731119003161

Admittedly, only one elephant measured to go into their data set, but it does demonstrate a reasonable relationship between body weight and methane emissions, with some species notably well below (e.g. horses, rabbits, kangaroos).

I'm finding it really hard to find numbers on animal populations and such.

Why? You demanded science and you got it. That's the thing with science: sometimes it tells us our assumptions were wrong.

See also: https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline. It's not peer-reviewed, but it's got good bona fides and is relatively well regarded. Again, it makes very clear just how huge the amount of mammalian livestock is today compared to prehistoric amounts of mammals.

 

[Hawki]

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/21/the-vexing-problem-of-furries/

https://archive.md/3MbJ4

As someone who identifies as a pigeon, this gives me paws.

 

[Trunkage]

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/21/the-vexing-problem-of-furries/

https://archive.md/3MbJ4

As someone who identifies as a pigeon, this gives me paws.

I mean, I meowed at my teachers. That more because of SuperTroopers

 

[Thaluikhain]

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/21/the-vexing-problem-of-furries/

You can clearly see that this is a case of social contagion promulgated by both peers and also by teachers who have been indoctrinated by gender activism to accept any child’s assumed identity.

Ah-huh.

 

[Gordon_4]

You can clearly see that this is a case of social contagion promulgated by both peers and also by teachers who have been indoctrinated by gender activism to accept any child’s assumed identity.

Ah-huh.

When I saw Jurassic Park when it was in cinemas and I was like, 8, I needed neither teachers nor peers nor society to act like a velociraptor. I did that kind of stupid shit all on my own.

 

[Hawki]

When I saw Jurassic Park when it was in cinemas and I was like, 8, I needed neither teachers nor peers nor society to act like a velociraptor. I did that kind of stupid shit all on my own.

I'm assuming you didn't identify as a velociraptor though.

 

[Gordon_4]

I'm assuming you didn't identify as a velociraptor though.

Probably got close to it, considering how much of a pain in the ass I was about it.