Random Politics & Religion #39: Guac Is Extra

Its fun to to watch them try to deny this.

U.S.—Trump recently shared a meme that showed him riding the "Hero Dog" into a space battle against several deadly threats from among the stars.

"AMERICAN HERO!" Trump tweeted when he posted the image, along with a winky face. The picture shows Trump fending off myriad threats, from Dune's gigantic sandworm and the Beast from beloved 1983 classic Krull to a Cylon Basestar and a Xenomorph.

Trump thought the image would be taken in a light-hearted manner, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

A red light began blaring in the offices of The New York Times as soon as the image was posted. "Looks like we've got a live one, boys," said one editor. "Err--I mean, non-gender-conforming persons. Let's fact-check this puppy." An army of fact-checkers then got to work, running the image through advanced fact-checking software. The Times recently had a huge supercomputer installed for this purpose, and they put it to work.

Sure enough, many of the pixels seemed not to line up quite right, plus fact-checkers discovered that several elements of the image were entirely fictional.

"The presence of a Cylon Basestar in the image casts doubt on its authenticity right away," said Bart Tucker, head fact-checker at The Washington Post. "We were also able to trace the image of the sandworm to the cover of Avalon Hill's 1979 board game Dune, so we can discredit that element of the space battle in any case."

Further historical research suggested that nearly every element of the picture was fake, from TIE fighters and the Death Star to the looming Borg Cube.

"This president is trying to mislead the people with this meme," said a CNN spokesperson. "We are only OK with politicians who mislead people with regards to the effects of their healthcare policies or their Native American heritage, not presidents who tell jokes and have fun."

Wanna hear an ever better conspiracy? "Trump-Russia Collusion". Sure glad you guys haven't been spreading that conspiracy around for years. Clearly, conspiracies are only for the Right.

You do realize this Vindman guy was kicked out of his inside thw White House detail BECAUSE he was an outed leaker right?

Right back to deflection huh? This is why I never bothered with tamping down on CJ, unless he was calling for violence.

Also, what you said about CJ makes no sense. You call Nausi out on every little thing he says, but CJ claims that there are millions of KKK members and you don't say a word because reasons?

Also, what you said about CJ makes no sense. You call Nausi out on every little thing he says, but CJ claims that there are millions of KKK members and you don't say a word because reasons?

I don't keep up with the KKK numbers. They could have a million people I have no idea.

Also, pretty much every time a new baseless conspiracy pops up and gets called out, which is pretty much every hour, you guys just justify it by crying Russia. Its time to come up with a new tactic. Like maybe stop allowing your side to spread conspiracies.

Also, what you said about CJ makes no sense. You call Nausi out on every little thing he says, but CJ claims that there are millions of KKK members and you don't say a word because reasons?

At least vic/rav/sav/jp will put more effort into their replies.

You're right. I should just let Trump-Russia collusion go. It was only several years of hyper saturation and endless accusations that we heard about every day that ended up going absolutely nowhere. But Nausi claiming something about a guy that you knew absolutely nothing about a few days ago is TOTALLY THE WORST THING EVER OMGZ.

Wait, who's jp?

Wanna hear an ever better conspiracy? "Trump-Russia Collusion". Sure glad you guys haven't been spreading that conspiracy around for years. Clearly, conspiracies are only for the Right.

Jeanpaul.

Interesting. A little birdy told me that Oz is still trying to talk at me directly. Does he not know how blocking works or does he need someone to educate him on that too?

Interesting. A little birdy told me that Oz is still trying to talk at me directly. Does he not know how blocking works or does he need someone to educate him on that too?

Looks like he doesn't seem to care that you blocked him. But how odd that a little birdy decided to go against your wishes and bring his dialogue to you anyway.

I wouldn't advise going around the system like that miss/mrs fowls, since mods here can misconstrue that as harassment if it's repetitive.

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Yeah, I'm sure the mods who are totally here all the time are super concerned with me being able to "go around the system" for a block that I placed.

And yes, I get PMs frequently about assorted topics. It's nice to have friends.

And Josi, I like you and all, but the centrist P&R policeman schtick is getting a little old. You weren't always like that, so I'm not sure why you suddenly decided to take on the role and pretend like you're someone else.

Reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment.

This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists—why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones.

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