The never-ending cult of victimization and faux-colonialist grievances.

"St-Pierre Plamondon sharply criticized Carney on Friday, accusing him of being part of a “long tradition of colonialism” dating back to Lord Durham. “This tradition is one of falsifying facts and history and constantly feeding us lies through federal institutions,” he said. “We will break with British colonialism and create our own country.”"
#Canada #Quebec #politics #separatists #PQ #cranks
https://www.thestar.com/politics/pq-leader-paul-st-pierre-plamondon-says-qc-referendum-campaign-is-already-underway/article_1f021897-1e35-572c-9d96-3d630c673874.html

"Weird Rich Man Is Weird"

When does he start drinking colloidal silver?

#RFKJr #Autism #Cranks #AntiVaxx #Eugenics #Circumcision #Tylenol

There's a load of people on YouTube saying that the Rapture is definitely happening tomorrow. They look really trustworthy too so it must be.

/S

#cranks #SwivelEyedLoons #rapture #WeAreAllDoomed

Lawyers who have no scientific background or skill set in research, would like you to know that the High Priests know more than scientists about science.

"The justices sided with the Trump administration, which argued that the research was unscientific, did not improve health, provided little return on investment, and went against the president’s efforts to root out initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)."
#fascism #authoritarianism #cranks #fools https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/21/supreme-court-nih-grants-diversity-equity-inclusion-trump/

A curious thing about being a mathematics person is that I (and lots of others) get unsolicited emails from people who believe they have solved some very difficult problem but have nobody to discuss or share it with, and they ask for my help, either in suggesting what they should do with their work or in actually giving feedback about. I never reply to these emails, because it is always the case that the writers seem quite delusional, so, frankly, I don't know what I would say to them.

Today, I got an email with this sentence: "I believe and have the basics of proof that 1,2 and 3 explain gravity and
the fundamental building blocks to our perceived 3 dimensional universe." Yes, they mean the integers, 1, 2, and 3.

The person sounds sincere: they even share some personal information (their age and where they live). But this claim is so outlandish, how could one possibly reply with anything useful and without prompting more difficult emails? I imagine that they may have sent this same email to many people. Maybe someone else will have a better idea of what to say (and, anyway, I don't know the first thing about gravity, really, and only a few things about 1, 2, and 3...)

It makes me feel bad that there are people so delusional. I was talking to my therapist about how problem-solving is so tied up with my sense of self-worth that I even use it as a coping mechanism: when I feel bad (anxious, scared), I often intentionally set a problem for myself to solve. It helps! So I can appreciate that thinking one has "explained gravity" could make one feel at least a little better about oneself.

Have you ever replied to such an email?

#math #maths #mathematics #cranks

Good look at a bad problem. The author is a friend from grad schol at the #University of #Colorado, where she was a faculty member when I was a grad student. She’s since gone on to bigger and better things, and I’ve gone on to … well, things.

Anyway. I’ve never been particularly worried about #Cylons, #Skynet, etc. Humans doing stupid human tricks, and using #AI to do them much faster, OTOH, yeah.

The internet community of anti-science #cranks is an example of #model #collapse happening at human speed. #Antivaxers, #creationists, #climate change #deniers et al. prey on people with legitimate questions about some particular aspect of the broad #consensus. Those people often go down an increasingly loony rabbit hole, and end up propagating the absurdity, sometimes adding their own bizarre spin which their new-found colleagues happily add to the ideology.

If this becomes part of the #academic ecosystem, with AI reviewers approving AI-generated #papers and no human checks on the process, the scholarly corpus will become hopelessly contaminated. I have no idea what to do about that.

https://theconversation.com/a-new-ai-scientist-can-write-science-papers-without-any-human-input-heres-why-thats-a-problem-237029