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#Conspiricism
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Abstract
A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than Democrats and liberals. However, the evidence for this proposition is mixed. Since conspiracy theory beliefs are associated with dangerous orientations and behaviors, it is imperative that social scientists better understand the connection between conspiracy theories and political orientations. Employing 20 surveys of Americans from 2012 to 2021 (total n = 37,776), as well as surveys of 20 additional countries spanning six continents (total n = 26,416), we undertake an expansive investigation of the asymmetry thesis. First, we examine the relationship between beliefs in 52 conspiracy theories and both partisanship and ideology in the U.S.; this analysis is buttressed by an examination of beliefs in 11 conspiracy theories across 20 more countries. In our second test, we hold constant the content of the conspiracy theories investigated—manipulating only the partisanship of the theorized villains—to decipher whether those on the left or right are more likely to accuse political out-groups of conspiring. Finally, we inspect correlations between political orientations and the general predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories over the span of a decade. In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the socio-political context in which those ideas are considered.
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Discussion and Conclusion
Are those on the political right (Republicans/conservatives) more prone to conspiracy theorizing than those on the left (Democrats/liberals)? The smattering of evidence across the literature provides conflicting answers to this question. We surmise that disagreement in the literature is substantially the product of limitations regarding both the operationalizations of conspiracy theorizing and the context––both temporal and socio-political––in which beliefs are assessed in previous work. Given the imperative of better understanding conspiracy theories and the people who believe them, we compiled a robust body of evidence for testing the asymmetry thesis. Across multiple surveys and measurement strategies, we found more evidence for partisan and ideological symmetry in conspiricism, however operationalized, than for asymmetry.
First, we found that the relationship between political orientations and beliefs in specific conspiracy theories varied considerably across 52 specific conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories containing partisan/ideological content or that have been endorsed by prominent partisan/ideological elites will find more support among those in one political camp or the other, while theories without such content or endorsements tend to be unrelated to partisanship and ideology in the U.S. We also observed considerable variability in the relationship between left–right ideology and 11 conspiracy theory beliefs across 20 additional countries spanning six continents; this variability suggests that the relationship between left–right ideology and conspiracy theory belief is also affected by the political context in which conspiracy theories are polled. To account for the potential impact of idiosyncratic factors associated with specific conspiracy theories, we next examined the relationship between beliefs in “content-controlled” conspiracy theories and political orientations. We found that both Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives engage in motivated conspiracy endorsement at similar rates, with Democrats/liberals occasionally exhibiting stronger motivations than Republicans/conservatives. Finally, we observed only inconsistent evidence for an asymmetric relationship between conspiracy thinking and either partisanship, symbolic ideology, or operational ideology across 18 polls administered between 2012 and 2021. Even though the average correlations across studies were positive, indicating a relationship with conservatism/Republicanism (owing mostly to data collected in 2016), they were negligible in magnitude and individual correlations varied in sign and statistical significance over time.
Equally important as our substantive conclusions is an exploration of why we reached them, which can shed light on existing inconsistencies in the literature. While the core inferences we make from our investigation may deviate from the conclusions of others, empirical patterns are not irreconcilable. Take, for example, the study conducted by van der Linden and colleagues (2021). They infer from a strong, positive correlation between beliefs that “climate change is a hoax” and conservatism that conservatives are inherently more conspiratorial than liberals. However, we demonstrate that such conclusions cannot be made using beliefs in a single conspiracy theory. As can be seen in Fig. 1, climate change conspiracy theories show one of the highest levels of asymmetry; therefore, exclusive examination of almost any other conspiracy theory would lead to a result less supportive of the asymmetry argument.
Van der Linden et al. (2021) also find a positive, albeit weak, correlation between conservatism and generalized conspiracy thinking. While this relationship is statistically significant, liberals still exhibit high levels of conspiracism. Indeed, even strong liberals score above the 50-point midpoint on their 101-point measure (between 60 and 65, on average), whereas strong conservatives typically score about 10 points higher (see Figs. 1b and 3b). In other words, liberals, like conservatives, are more conspiratorial than not. Moreover, van der Linden et al.’s data hail from 2016 and 2018––years in which we also observed relatively elevated levels of conspiracy thinking among conservatives. However, this was not the case in other years and samples we examined. This is exactly what we might expect of a disposition that is not inherently connected to partisanship and ideology, but which may be sporadically activated by political circumstances. We do not question the veracity of van der Linden et al.’s empirical findings or those of any other study with conclusions that disagree with ours; rather, we argue that differences largely stem from the inferences made from empirical relationships, which are frequently more general than the data allows.
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That we find little difference in conspiracy theorizing between the right and left among the mass public does not indicate that there are no differences between partisan elites on this score, nor does it imply that there will not be asymmetries in beliefs in specific conspiracy theories at any given point in time. Specific conspiracy theories can find more support among one partisan/ideological side than the other even though partisan/ideological motivated reasoning and conspiratorial predispositions operate, on balance, in a symmetric fashion. Likewise, the content of those theories and the way they are deployed, particularly by elites, can result in asymmetrical consequences, such as political violence and the undermining of democratic institutions. We encourage future work to integrate the conspiratorial rhetoric of elites with studies of mass beliefs and investigate elite conspiratorial rhetoric from actors including and beyond Donald Trump.
==
Similar to anti-vaxers. We've heard a lot of anti-vax rhetoric from the right over COVID vaccines, but the battle over MMR vaccines was largely on the left, with nutters like Jenny McCarthy and David Avocado at the top, and ultimately trickling down to anti-gluten, organic kale, "chemical-free" mothers conducting their goalpost-moving war on big words.
As with conspiracy theories, it depends on who's for it. If "they" are for it, "we" are against it. If "we" are for it, "they" are against it.
Back in April 2020, the Trump administration aimed to fast-track 100m vaccine doses by the end of the year, intending to shave off 8 months of development in a project called "Operation Warp Speed." Dems who were anti-vax when Trump was going to deliver it...
"Watch out...they are going to push it too early...this corrupt administration could give a crap about the safety of the American people"
... are now pro-vax today and will tell you so as an identity in their bio, while the Republicans who today still talk about them being "experimental" and preemptively deciding that nobody ever died of a heart condition before the vaccines, were cheering it on at the time as "far and away the most effective means of controlling the disease and allowing Americans to return to fully normal life."
What happened? Reality was reorganized along tribalist lines of contrariness, rather than truth.
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Disappointing tbh that Illiminatus didn't go in on a bit of conspiricizing the Livian family of Rome
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andrewpcannon · 3 years
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Conspiricism
There are certainly conspiracies in the world today. What of those who make conspiracy their religion? In this episode, James and Andrew consider conspiricism and the idolatry that has invaded the church. Share teachings you would like for us to address or public teachers you would like us to evaluate biblically at Christoa.com. If you would like to be a guest on the show, to either civilly…
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mango-lady · 2 years
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I really hate getting into race/gender politics these days. Class reductionist and proud tbh
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seaofghouls · 3 years
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DSMP FALLS! <1>
Ah! Summer break! A time for leisure, recreation, and taking her easy.
..Unless you're me.
A pair of triplets crash through a billboard with a go-kart. "AAAAAHHH!" Being followed by a monster of unimaginable horror. "It's getting closer!" One of the triplets cried. My name is Y/N. The boy to the right of me about to puke is my triplet brother, Tubbo, while the boy to my left screaming profanities is my other triplet brother, Tommy. You may be wondering what we're doing in this situation. "Look out!" Tubbo cried. "Agh!" Y/N screamed. "This monster is such a bitch!" Tommy cried. "Tommy!" Tubbo frowned. Rest assured, there's a perfectly logical explanation!
... Let's rewind. It all began when our parents decided we could use some fresh air. They shipped us up to Gravity Falls, Oregon, to stay with our great uncle in the woods. "This attic is amazing! Just look at all of my splinters!" Tubbo cried. "..And there's a fucking goat on my bed." Tommy sighed.
Tubbo walked up to the goat.
"Hey, new friend! Yes, you can keep chewing on my shirt!" Tubbo giggled. Y/N giggled as well. Tubbo and Tommy seemed to look on the bright side of things. I, however, was having a bit of a harder time getting used to our new surroundings. "Boo!" "Aagh!" Y/N jumped up from their spot from under a tree. An old man took off a mask and started laughing. And then there was our great uncle Schlatt. That guy. Our uncle had transformed his house into a tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. The real mystery is why anyone came. And guess who had to work there? Y/N sighed, sweeping the floor. Tubbo reached out to touch something in this gift shop before Schlatt slapped his hand away.
"No touching the merchandise!" He said. Tommy snickered and touched it anyway out of spite. It seemed like it was going to be the same routine all summer, until one fateful day.
"Alright, look alive folks! I need someone to go hang up these signs in the spooky part of the forest." Schlatt said. "Not it!" The triplets said at the same time. "Also not it." Ranboo said. "Nobody asked you, Ranboo." Schlatt said. "I know and I'm comfortable with that." Ranboo smiled. "Niki! I need you to put up these signs!" Schaltt said. "I would.. but I can't.. reach." She trailed off. "I'd fire all of you if I could." Schlatt sighed. "Okay, let's make it eeny, meeny, miny, you." Schlatt pointed at Y/N. "Yes!" Tommy and Tubbo exclaimed. "Awe what? Gruncle Schlatt, whenever I'm in those woods I feel like I'm being watched." Y/N said. "Oh, this again." He rolled his eyes. "I'm serious, something weird is going on! Just today, my mosquito bites spelled out beware!" Y/N said, showing schlatt their arm. "...That says bewarb." Schlatt said. "Look kid, the whole monsters in the forest thing is just a local legend. Drummed up by guys like me to sell merch to guys like that." Schlatt pointed at a guy distracted by a schlatt bobblehead. "So quit being so paranoid!" Schlatt said. ... "Ugh, Gruncle Schlatt. nobody ever believes what I say." Y/N groaned as they hammer signs in the forest. They hammer another tree but stop when they hear metal. "huh?" They hit it the hammer again in curiosity. Finding a secret door with a machine inside, they mess with the buttons for a bit before something opens up behind them. "What the.." Reaching into the hole, they find a dusty old journal. They brush it off and start reading. "Woah.. trust no one, huh?" Y/N mumbled. "Hello!" Tubbo exclaimed. "What are you reading, some nerd book?" Tommy asked. "Uh-uh, it's nothing!" Y/N exclaimed. "Uh-UH IT'S NOTHING!" Tommy mocked. "What, are you seriously not gonna show us?" Tubbo asked. "..Let's go somewhere more private," Y/N said. ... "It's amazing! Gruncle Schlatt said I was being paranoid, but apparently, Gravity Falls has this secret dark side!" Y/N exclaimed. "WOAH!" Tubbo exclaimed. "SHUT UP!" Tommy pushed Y/N with a grin on his face. "Get this! After a certain point, the pages just stop! Like the guy who was writing it mysteriously disappeared!" Y/N exclaimed.
The doorbell rang. "Who's that?" Y/N asked. "Welp, time to spill the beans! This guy's got a platonic date!" Tubbo grinned. "Platonic??" "Date??" Schlatt walked in as Tubbo came back in with someone. "Hey family, I want you to meet my new platonic boyfriend!" Tubbo exclaimed. "Sup." He said. "Hey." Y/N and Tommy said. "How's it hanging?" Schlatt finger gunned. "We met at the cemetery. He's really deep." Tubbo smiled. "..What's your name?" Y/N asked. "Normal.. Man!" He groaned out. "He means Norman." Tubbo giggled. "..Are you bleeding, Norman?" Tommy asked. "..It's jam." Norman said. Y/N stared at him in suspicion before Tubbo dragged Norman away. There was something with Norman that wasn't right. I decided to consult the journal. Y/N read the journal out loud. "Known for their pale skin and bad attitudes.. these creatures are often mistaken for.. TEENAGERS?!" Y/N exclaimed. "Beware Gravity Falls' nefarious ZOMBIES?!" Y/N gasped. "Zombies??" Tommy gasped. He was sitting there with Y/N. "Tommy, outside!" Y/N exclaimed. "Oh, no! Tubbo!" They both yelled. Norman lurched towards Tubbo, grabbed him, and put a flower crown on him. "Daisies?? You scallywag!" Tubbo gushed. "Is our brother dating a zombie or are we just going nuts?" Tommy muttered. "It's a dillema to be sure." Charlie said. "Agh!" Y/N jumped. "I couldn't help but overhear you guys talking to yourselves in this empty room." Charlie explained. "Charlie, you've seen Tubbo's platonic date, right? He's got to be zombie!" Y/N said. "Hm.. how many brains did you see the guy eat?" Charlie asked. "Zero.." Y/N sighed. "Look, dudes, I believe you. I'm seeing strange thing in this town all the time. Like, the mailman, I'm pretty sure that guy's a werewolf. But! You gotta have proof, or else people will think you're a major cukoo clock." Charlie said. "As always, big C, you're right." Tommy said. "My wisdom is both a wisdom and a curse." Charlie said. "Charlie! The toilets are clogged again!" Schlatt called out. "I am needed elsewhere." Charlie took off. Y/N and Tommy decided to work together to get some evidence. Throughout their studies, Norman certainly had strange behavior, but not enough to convict him of anything supernatural. "I'll talk to Tubbo, don't worry, sib!" Tommy said. "Alright." Y/N nodded. ... Tommy walked into the triplets' shared room. "Tubbo, we've got to talk about Norman." Tommy said. "I know! Isn't he great?? Look at this smooch mark he gave me!" Tubbo turned his head to show a large red area on his face. "Egh!" Tommy cried. "Hah! Gullible. It was just an accident with the leafblower. That was fun." Tubbo laughed. "No, listen, Tubbo! I'm trying to tell you that Norman is not what he seems! The journal that Y/N found!" Tommy insisted. "You think he might be a vampire?? That would be awesome!" Tubbo gasped. "Guess again, big T! A zombie he is!" Tommy said. "A zombie?? Not funny, Tommy!" Tubbo frowned. "I'm not joking! Y/N can agree, it all adds up! The bleeding, the limp, he never blinks! Have you noticed that??" Tommy exclaimed. "Maybe he's blinking when you're blinking." Tubbo suggested. "HE'S GOING TO EAT YOUR BRAINS, BIG T!" Tommy shook Tubbo. "Tommy! Listen to me. Norman and I are going on a date tonight and I'm going to be adorable! He's going to be dreamy! And I'm not going to let you and Y/N ruin it with another one of your crazy conspirices!" Tubbo kicked Tommy out. "Ah man.. what am I gonna do??" Tommy slumped against the door. Someone sat down next to him. "How'd it go, bro-bro?" Y/N asked. "He's refusing to listen.. He kicked me out." Tommy sighed. Y/N frowned. "Not surprising. Hopefully he'll come to that realization in his own." ... The two out of three triplets were sitting on the couch, looking over the footage. "I guess we don't have any actual evidence, huh?" Y/N sighed. "Yeah.. I guess we can be kinda paranoid sometimes-" Tommy stopped. In the footage clip, Norman's hand fell off and he put it back on. "WAIT WHAT?!" Tommy and Y/N exclaimed. They leaped off
the
couch in a hurry. "WE WERE RIGHT! HOLY SHIT!" Tommy exclaimed. Racing outside, the two tried to find their uncle. "GRUNCLE SCHLATT! GRUNCLE SCHLATT!" Y/N called out. Schlatt wasn't paying attention.
"Wait! Niki has the cart!" Tommy suggested. "Good eye, Tommy!" Y/N grinned. "Niki! Niki! We need the cart to save our brother from a zombie!" They ran up to her. "Try not to hit any pedestrains." She winked, giving them the keys. "Alright, Tommy! Let's go save our sister!" Y/N grinned. They backed up before Charlie stopped them. "Dudes! This is for the zombies." He handed them a shovel. "Thanks." Y/N grinned, "This is in case you see a pinata." He handed them a bat. "..Thanks?" Tommy said. "Better safe than sorry!" He called out. Tommy and Y/N sped off to find their brother. They heard screams and drove to the direction of the sound. "LET'S GO!" Y/N exclaimed. "Get his arm there, Steve!" Tubbo was struggling against several gnomes. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?!" Tommy exclaimed. "Tommy! Y/N! Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes! And they're total assholes!" Tubbo cried.
"Gnomes..? We were way off." Tommy mumbled. Y/N flipped open the journal. "Damn.. no weaknesses." They sighed. "Hey! Hey! Let go of my brother!" Y/N demanded. "This is all one big misunderstanding. Your brothers not in any danger! He's just marrying all one thousand of us and becoming our king for all of eternity!" The lead gnome explained. "Give him back right now, or else, prick!" Tommy demanded. "You think you can stop us, child? You have no idea what we're capable of!" The gnome went on a tangent before Tommy scooped him up with the shovel and tossed him to the side. Y/N used that chance to free Tubbo, dragging him back to the kart with Tommy. "GO GO GO!" Tubbo exclaimed. "I wouldn't worry about it. See their little fucking legs? Those pricks are tiny." Tommy smirked. Tommy stopped when they heard the noises of a creature. A giant gnome creature, to be exact. "Damn." Tubbo said. "MOVE! GO GO GO!" Y/N screeched. The giant creature chased them through the forest. Gnomes launched onto the kart. "Agh!" Tubbo exclaimed. "GET OFF MY FACE!" Y/N cried. "I got you, sib!" Tubbo punched the gnome, while also accidentally punching Y/N several times before the gnome let go, revealing new bruises on Y/N's face. "..Thanks bro.." They winced. "Look out!" Tubbo cried. They crashed into the back of the Mystery Shack. They were officially cornered. The triplets hugged each other in terror. "W-where's Gruncle Schlatt??" Y/N asked. "It's the end of the line, kids! Tubbo, marry us before we do something crazy!" The lead gnome ordered. "There's gotta be a fucking way out of this.." Tommy muttered. "I gotta do it." Tubbo decided. "What?!" The other two triplets exclaimed. "Tubbo, are you crazy?!" Y/N asked. "Trust me." Tubbo said. "..What??" Tommy gasped. "Trust me, just this once, guys." Tubbo said. The two hesitated and then nodded. "Alright, Jeff. I'll marry you." Tubbo stepped forward. "Hot dog!" The lead gnome climbed down to Tubbo. "You may now kiss the groom." Tubbo said after the lead gnome put a ring on his finger. "Well, I don't if I do!" The lead gnome grinned, puckering up. Tubbo took that chance to hit him with the leafblower that was left outside. "Agh!" The gnome screamed. "That's for lying to me! That's the breaking my heart! And that's for messing with my siblings!" Tubbo shot the gnome off into the forest and the rest of the gnomes scattered away. As the triplets walked back into the Mystery Shack, Tubbo stopped them. "Hey, Y/N, Tommy, I'm sorry. You two were really just trying to look out for me." Tubbo sighed. "Oh, don't be like that! You saved our asses back there!" Tommy smiled. "I guess I'm just sad that Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes." Tubbo sighed. "Hey, look on the bright side! Maybe the next one will be a vampire." Y/N giggled. "You're just saying that." Tubbo giggled, punching their shoulder. "..Awkward triplet hug?" Y/N suggested. "Awkward triplet hug." Tommy and Tubbo said together, the three of them in a hug. ... "Yeesh, you three get hit by a bus or something? Hahah!" Schlatt laughed. The triplets ignored him. "Hey, um,, I accidentally overstocked some items, why don't you three take something?" Schlatt said. "What's the catch?" Y/N raised an eyebrow. "The catch is do it before I change my mind, now go!" Schlatt said. The triplets grinned at each other. Tubbo picked out a grappling hook, Tommy picked out a music disc, and Y/N picked out a a hat with a bat symbol on it. ... This journal told me that there was no one you could trust. But when you go up against an army of gnomes with side by side with two people, you realize they probably got their back. "Tubbo, can you get the light?" Y/N asked. "You got it, sib!" Tubbo shot the grappling hook at the light. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" Tommy rolled his eyes. Tubbo and Y/N giggled. Our uncle told us there was nothing strange about this town, but who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked? -------
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Will: my children are fine-
Tessa: your children have raised the dead, burned down an ancient family manor, conspiricized against the Clave, been manipupated by a phsychopath's daughter, and been in almost as much danger as we have. Is that what you call fine?
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deniigi · 4 years
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Hi! I’m a big fan of your fics! I’ve been rereading inimitable and I noticed a reference to mcu!peter. Would you mind writing something where he meets team red/the spider verse team? On a side note, shelter order made me smile during this depressing time, so thank you for that!
Hi friend!
Sorry for the long wait for a response.
Being 100% real with you?
I don’t love MCU Peter. But! Because you asked nicely, I wrote a wee thing ❤
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There were seven of them.
S e v e n.
To say Peter was shocked was to say that whales lived in the sea.
There were two tall Spidermen and two short Spidermen, two bulky men in red suits that screamed DAREDEVIL even though Peter had never seen the man himself, and in the back, with two weapons strapped to his back, was a man he did know—although Mr. Stark had made him promise to steer clear of him.
Deadpool.
“Don’t worry guys, I’ve got this,” one of the taller Spidermen said, stepping away from the other six.
“Hello,” he said stiffly. “We come in peace--”
“To wreck your boy Rhino specifically,” a girl’s voice finished for him.
“What part of ‘I got this’ was unclear?” the first Spiderman barked back at her.
“The ‘got’ part,” the girl said.
“The ‘I’ part,” the black suit chipped in.
“Don’t you join them, Louis,” the first Spiderman warned the other tallest with a  knowing finger. “Think of the children.”
The last Spiderman shrugged his hands all the way up to his shoulders.
“I thought it was fairly clear,” he said.
“You’re the only one on this team that matters,” the first Spidey said.
“What’s happening?” the Daredevil in the redder suit asked the other.
“Spidey found another little Spidey,” the second guy said.
“What are they, fuckin’ ants?” the first asked.
“They could be ants,” Deadpool offered.
“We’re not ants,” the first Spiderman said. “Stop conspiricizing.”
“Conspiricizing?” the redder Daredevil repeated. “This is not a word.”
“T’isn’t,” Deadpool agreed. “Although it could be if we start a petition.”
“To what?” the redder Daredevil demanded kind of nastily.
“My pal Merriam.”
“The dictionary?” the Daredevil clarified.
“That’s what I said.”
“If I was going to petition the dictionary, I’d do it for ‘fuckface’ not ‘conspiricizing.’”
Peter’s eyebrows shot up before he could stop them.
“Redthew, you can’t say ‘fuck,’ look at the children,” Deadpool scolded.
“I would love to,” Daredevil replied.
“Can I help you with something?” Peter finally managed to say. “Are you, by chance, alien invaders? ‘Cause I’m just on a schedule here and I’ve done like three in the last two years, so if you wouldn’t mind, like, identifying yourself so I can mesh that with the stuff I got going on right now, that would be great.”
The others fell silent with wide mask eyes all the way around.
“He needs help,” the girl announced.
“Change of plans,” the first Spiderman said. “We’re helping fight aliens, guys. All in favor say ‘aye.’”
“Pass,” the redder Daredevil said confidently while everyone else said ‘aye.’
The team reared back to stare at him.
“I got a thing,” he said.
“Right now, DD?” the kid in the black suit said.
“Half an hour,” the Daredevil said. “I’m here to look handsome and be moral support, remember?”
“Well, then do one of them already,” the girl told him.
“Double D,” the first Spiderman said. “This baby Spidey is undergoing an intergalactic crisis.”
This wasn’t wrong. Peter appreciated the acknowledgement.
“Aren’t we all?” the Daredevil said. “Listen, I’ve got half an hour. That’s all I’ve got for fightin’ aliens. Then I’ve got a date with a judge--take it or leave it.”
The group groaned and argued all at the same time until eventually the first Spiderman waved his arms and told everyone else to pipe down, he was talking.
“Alright,” he said. “There are eight of us. We can do this in half an hour. Hey, Spiderkid. What’s your moniker?”
Peter realized the guy was referring to him. He pointed at his chest before realizing that the silence was just a waste of time.
“Oh, uh?” he said. “Spiderman?”
He got nothing.
“I’m callin’ him Buttercup,” Deadpool announced.
“Eyyy, Buttercup, I like it,” the first Spiderman said. “Alright, Buttercup, welcome on board. The team’s called Team Red, for obvious reasons. This isn’t our universe, clearly, and you are possibly a version of me or this guy--” he patted the head of the guy in the black suit next to him, “—but we are here to make your life exactly seven times easier. So go on then, lead the way. We’ve got your back.”
“Are you kidding?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” the busy Daredevil and Deadpool said at the same time.
“No,” the first Spiderman said, coming in close to stand next to him. He sunk fingers into the top of his mask and pulled it off to reveal a very familiar face.
Peter felt his eyes go huge. He stumbled back.
“You’re—” he said.
“You can call me ‘Tats,’” Tats said. “We’ll do the multiverse talk later. First we got aliens, no?”
Yeah…yeah first aliens. Then, whatever the hell this was.
“They’re giant waterbeetles,” Peter said.
Tats’s mask went back down.
“God, it’s endless,” the busy Daredevil said.
“Don’t worry, DD, we’ll get a giant raccoon for you to fight one day,” Tats said cheerfully. “Onward march.”
 ----
I’m so glad you enjoyed shelter order and thanks for stopping by to say so!!
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My talk at Republica online
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One of the best conferences I've attended is Re:publica in Berlin, which manages to both attract and criticize the tech industry. This year's conference is (obviously) online only, and I was honored to be asked to record a keynote for it.
https://re-publica.tv/de/session/collapse
My talk is called "The Collapse: How institutions, trust and truth are annihilated by monopoly and corruption." It's on May 7 at 8:25 Berlin time.
"The pandemic isn't the only disease that's annihilating our society: alongside of it, there is an epidemic of mistrust in institutions and a growth in conspiricism, a panic to save yourself and let everyone else fend on their own."
"Blaming Big Tech for the collapse in trust and commonly held truth is backwards: Big Tech's bigness is en effect, not a cause, of the corruption that made our institutions so untrustworthy."
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mitchipedia · 4 years
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Today on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic
Pluralistic: 02 May 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
++ The mistrust epidemic
The pandemic isn’t the only disease that’s annihilating our society: alongside of it, there is an epidemic of mistrust in institutions and a growth in conspiricism, a panic to save yourself and let everyone else fend on their own.
Blaming Big Tech for the collapse in trust and commonly held truth is backwards: Big Tech’s bigness is en effect, not a cause, of the corruption that made our institutions so untrustworthy.
++ Prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes
Coronavirus outbreaks are concentrated in three places: Prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes – industries that are built on treating people cruelly, like disposable components.
“Public health has always known the truth. The care of the most margnialized members of society is important for fighting infectious diseases.”…
… the GOP’s emphasis has been on shielding employers whose employers or customers die of coronavirus due to unsafe conditions. These industries are designed to run in unsafe ways and can’t conceive of operating safely.
++ Contact tracing apps could be worse than useless.
Too many false positives and false negatives. It’s like those security warnings you see on websites that are so noisy that everybody just clicks past them and ignores them.
An exposure-notification app that forgets to notify you when you’re at risk AND often notifies you when you are not at risk becomes a worse-than-useless frippery, as well an expensive boondoggle and distraction.
And security defects in those apps could literally increase a population’s exposure to terrorism, crime, election fraud and authoritarian governments.
However, contact tracing can be useful and safe, with the right precautions.
++ Ticketmaster sold a $500M stake to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who ordered the murder, torture and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
++ And a hopeful note from Kim Stanley Robinson.
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evilkakyoin · 4 years
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these fake ass bitches are conspiricizing
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myherowritings · 4 years
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I have a NN theory,,,,, Midoriya actually has been impregnated by aliens and for once Todoroki isn't just conspiricizing so now everyone has to listen to his crackheadedness and believe it. He'll have everyone walking around with tinfoil hats by the end of the day.
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when tododeku went to area 51...some wild things happened 😳 maybe todoroki is onto something 
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does this mean the emo conspiricers were right
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spacebrick3 · 6 years
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Experiment S-80 Part 5
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
Year 2, Day 27: 9.20.2383
TESTING ROOM 0201: Recording Of Remaining Functional Test Subjects S-80, S-84, S-85, S-87
“What the hell are we doing here?” Maryn asked, jogging over to him.
Evan glanced over at the glass, where the scientists were undoubtedly watching, then back to her. He shrugged. “They said something about…controlled interaction? I think? Making sure that we haven’t all turned into robots or something?”
“But why should they care?” she asked. “I mean, wouldn’t they want us to be their perfect little soldiers?”
He shrugged again. “Don’t know.”
“Actually, why aren’t we doing that?” Fostre asked, spinning around in his seat. “Wouldn’t it make this whole thing easier?”
“For once, would you just - Read - The - Goddamn - Files - before asking your stupid questions?” Jensky snapped back.
“Humor me.”
“Fine. We aren’t…hijacking their brains or anything because a) we don’t know how to, and b) that’s not the purpose of this experiment. We’re trying to make better soldiers. And better soldiers are better because they can make their own decisions on the fly, not because they’re blindly obedient.”
“I assume they’re listening to everything we say, right?”
Maryn nodded. “Yeah. Probably not a great time to discuss our personal lives, then. Or mine, at least. Since you don’t remember yours, that might be…difficult.”
Also probably not a good idea to discuss our escape plans, he added mentally. That raised the question of when would work, considering they were kept in separate rooms, but they could figure it out later. Right now they’d just have to act the part of the good little test subjects. “So what should we, uh, interact about, then?” he asked awkwardly.
She shifted her jaw. “I guess we could talk to, you know, other people. Hey - uh, 85 - person! Come talk to us!” she shouted, waving over the other subject. They were maybe average height, with chopped-off brown hair and nervous, darting eyes, who moved with a slight limp. 
“Um - hi, I guess,” they said after a moment. Evan noted that, for whatever reason, the wiring in their eye had been done with copper rather than silver. Interesting. “I don’t know. What do you want me to talk about?” ‘Oh yes, I hear the weather which I haven’t seen for over a year is nice, but I hear there might be rain on Friday. Is today Friday? I don’t know!”
“Wait - it’s fine - everything’s fine,” Maryn said, placing a hand on their shoulder. “Really. Now if you can just-“
“Fine?!” they shouted, jerking away. “What about this is fine?!”
She held her hands out in a pleading gesture. “Okay. Yes. You’re right. It’s not fine. But panicking isn’t going to help. So why don’t you tell us your name, maybe who you are if you can remember, and we can - work from there.”
Their eyes darted around once again, but finally they sighed. “Sure. Sure. Fine. Whatever. My name is, uh…” They hesitated. “Blue. I’m they. Now what?”
“You see this?” Sam said. “Are we sure we should be letting them talk like this? What if they start to - I don’t know, conspiricize?”
“Conspiricize? Is that a word you just said?” Hughes asked. “And yes, we have to let them.”
“Mmhmm.” He took another drink from the bottle next to the screen. Hughes hoped it was water and not alcohol. 
She sighed. “I know you have no social skills whatever, but surely you must see it. If we want to implant these in healthy, developed brains, we have to know that there’s no ill effects before or after. And surprise surprise, being able to interact with other people is important to that. Maybe you can get by without them, but a platoon of soldiers can’t.”
“But we don’t have to let them be together,” he objected. “We can just talk to them ourselves.”
“You’re right - if they talked to you, there’d be no risks of forming any type of sympathy. But that’s not the point. Most of this exercise isn’t for those three. They’re adults.” She jerked a thumb at the corner of the room, where the fourth subject was still crouched. “It’s for her.”
“What now?” Evan said. “Well, ‘Blue’ - I’m assuming that isn’t your real name - what do you want to do?”
“Me? I don’t - I don’t know.” 
“Well, I do,” Maryn said, crossing her arms. “There’s four of us here that are still going for testing. So we should go over and talk to the fourth. She’s what - S-80? I think?”
“Wait - I thought there were just three of us! There’s four?” Blue said, looking alarmed.
Maryn pinched the bridge of her nose, although the gesture didn’t work quite as well as it could have because she had to move some of the implants out of the way first. “Yes. If any of you were more observant than eels, then you should have seen 80 over…there.” She pointed to the corner.
Both of them turned to look at once, but she stopped them. “No!” she hissed. “I don’t think - you’re going to scare her!”
“Scare her?” Blue whispered back. “Isn’t this scary enough?”
“So you’re saying make it scarier? Do you really - do you really think that’s the best idea? Really?”
They backed down. “Fine, okay, fine. So what do you want to do then? Huh? I’m pretty sure if we want to talk to her, at least one of us is going to have to be damn well looking at her.”
“And it’s not going to be you,” she snapped back. “I’ll do it. You guys just - hang back or whatever. And don’t make it worse.”
While the two of them were arguing, Evan shot a surreptitious glance at the corner she had indicated. It took him a second to see her - the lighting was spotty at best, and having only one eye didn’t help. But she was there. Only the implants gave it away, really - the faint glimmer of light on metal. But now that he knew she was there, he could pick out the faint outlines of a grey jumpsuit, of dark skin and chopped-off curly black hair. And he inwardly cursed, too, because she couldn’t have been more than five.
She noticed him. True to what Maryn had said, her eye widened in fear and she tried to push herself farther back into the corner. Maryn noticed too. “Hell, Evan, I told you not to-“ She sighed in exasperation. “Fine. I am going over. Since you are apparently incapable of anything. Don’t-“ She pointed first at Blue, then at him. “-screw this up.”
They both nodded. She turned and made her way slowly over to the corner, holding her hands out to indicate she wasn’t holding anything. “Hello,” she said softly to the girl still huddled in the corner. “I’m Maryn. It’s - it’s nice to meet you. Do you have a name?”
There was silence. The girl was still pushed as far as she could get into the corner, and her one eye flickering around the room. He wondered if she even knew what they were saying. After a second, though, she shook her head. 
“Oh. That’s alright,” Maryn said, kneeling down to talk to her. “We’ll just have to figure one out for you. Would you like that?”
Another pause, then the girl nodded. She still hadn’t made a sound.
“Okay. Yeah. We can do that,” she said kindly. “Um…you’re S-80. S-80. S80. What about…Sadie? How do you feel about Sadie?”
She - Sadie, now - nodded. She hadn’t moved from her spot, but Evan thought that she might look a little bit less scared now. “Where are you from, Sadie?” Maryn asked. “Do you remember?”
Another shake of the head. “That’s alright,” she said. “Listen. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t quite know what’s going on. But it’s going to be alright. It’s going to be fine.”
“You - you…promise?” she asked. It was a small voice, unsteady and fearful, but it was there.
Maryn took her hand. “I promise,” she said.
Tagging @cogwrites, @lady-redshield-writes, @no-url-ideas-tho, @ratracechronicler, @ken-kenwrites, @ravenpuffwriter, @cirianne, @lonelylibrary, @endlesshourglass, @micastarsandmirrors - if you want to be added or removed, just let me know!
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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 years
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“In assessing the impact of covid-19, the philosophers in question have cited the extraordinary pages on the plague in Discipline and Punish, where Foucault describes the new forms of surveillance and regulation occasioned by the outbreak in the late-seventeenth century. The thinker who has taken the most clear-cut position on the pandemic is Giorgio Agamben, in a series of combative articles starting with ‘The invention of an epidemic’, published by il manifesto on 26 February 2020. In this piece, Agamben describes the emergency measures implemented in Italy to stop the spread of the virus as ‘frenetic, irrational and completely unfounded’. ‘The fear of the epidemic gives vent to panic’, he writes, ‘and in the name of security we accept measures that severely restrict freedom, justifying the state of exception.’ For Agamben, the coronavirus response demonstrates a ‘tendency to use the state of exception as a normal paradigm of government’—‘It is almost as if, with terrorism exhausted as the cause for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic offered the ideal pretext to uphold them beyond any limitation’. Agamben reasserted these ideas in two other texts that appeared on the website of the Italian publishing house Quodlibet in mid-March.
Now, Agamben is both wrong and right; or rather, drastically wrong and somewhat right. He is wrong because the basic facts contradict him. Even great thinkers can die of contagion—Hegel perished from cholera in 1831—and philosophers have a duty to revise their views when circumstances call for it: if coronavirus denialism was faintly possible in February, it is no longer reasonable in late March. However, Agamben is right that our rulers will use every opportunity to consolidate their power, especially in times of crisis. That coronavirus is being exploited to strengthen mass-surveillance infrastructure is no secret. The South Korean government has analysed the spread of infection by tracking the location of its citizens via their mobile phones—a policy that caused uproar when it exposed a number of extra-marital affairs. In Israel, Mossad will soon implement its own version of this tracker, while the Chinese government has doubled down on video surveillance and facial-recognition devices (not that the world’s intelligence agencies were waiting for the excuse of an epidemic to start digitally shadowing us). Many European governments are currently deciding whether to imitate South Korean and Chinese digital-monitoring programmes, with Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office rubber-stamping this measure in late March. Agamben is not the first to argue that one of the goals of social domination is to atomize the dominated; Guy Debord wrote in The Society of the Spectacle that the development of capitalist-commodity utopias would isolate us together in ‘perfect separation’.
*
By the end of this crisis, then, the surveillance powers of governments will have increased tenfold. But, contra Agamben, the contagion remains real, deadly and destructive despite this fact. That security services are likely to benefit from the pandemic does not justify a leap to paranoid conspiricism: the Bush Administration did not need to destroy the Twin Towers itself in order to pass the Patriot Act; Cheney and Rumsfeld could legitimize kidnapping and torture simply by seizing the opportunities that 9/11 presented.
I mention the World Trade Center attack because it reveals a second flaw in Agamben’s work, which explains all techniques of societal control using the model of state repression against an armed insurrectionary struggle. In the late 1970s and early 80s, several European countries imposed a state of exception allegedly to combat terrorism—a trend that directly affected Agamben’s generation and its offspring. But not all states of exception are the same. As Aristotle teaches, if all cats are mammals, not all mammals are cats. The state of exception imposed in the name of terrorism is similar to the policy designed to contain leprosy: that is, the division of society into two separate groups, with lepers/terrorists excluded from the community of healthy/law-abiding citizens. By contrast, the current state of exception reproduces, in principle, the one that Foucault theorizes for the plague, based on the control, immobilization and isolation of the entire population. Unlike the leprosy model, this regime makes no distinction between good and bad citizens. Everyone is potentially bad; all of us must be monitored and supervised. The panopticon encompasses the whole of society, not just the prison or the clinic.
It is true that we are witnessing a gigantic and unprecedented experiment in social discipline, with three billion people currently ordered to remain at home, most of whom have accepted these restrictions on their freedom, with little active resistance. Forty years ago, this would have been unthinkable. In many cases this experiment proceeds blindly and haphazardly, as with India, where Modi has instructed the entire country to stay at home, despite the presence of 120 million floating migrant workers who are often forced to live on the streets. In much of the world, confinement to the home is only conceivable for the wealthiest stratum, while for most it leads directly to joblessness and hunger. India is an extreme case, but a class-inflected response to the epidemic is visible in every country. This is a ‘white-collar quarantine’, as the New York Times has it. The privileged lock themselves in houses with fast internet and full fridges, while the rest continue to travel on crowded subways and work elbow-to-elbow in contaminated environments. The food industry, energy sector, transport services and telecommunications hubs must continue to operate, along with the production of vital medicine and hospital equipment. Physical separation is a luxury that many cannot afford, and rules for ‘social distancing’ are serving to widen the gulf between classes.
*
Which brings us to the main point that Agamben misses: domination is not one-dimensional. It is not just control and surveillance; it is also exploitation and extraction. (A bit of Marx, on top of Schmitt, would not hurt his analysis.) The serious damage that this epidemic threatens to inflict on capital explains politicians’ reluctance to enforce isolation and quarantine: Boris Johnson (initially) and Trump are the most striking examples: they resisted announcing a quarantine for as long as they could and wish to lift it as soon as possible, even at the cost of a few hundred thousand deaths. In this instance, the sluggish pace of public-health policy must be contrasted with the rapidity of the financial response. Naturally, the ‘generous’ budgetary measures partially reflect Wallenberg’s concerns: they aim to avoid major social upheaval by giving workers enough to live on for the time being. No capitalist wanted to be forced into this Keynesian position. But, as Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel remarked, ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste’. So, while meagre extensions are made to statutory sick pay, states have also taken extraordinary steps to shore up their financial sectors, or ‘foam the runway for the banks’, in the words of former us Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. So far, oecd governments have pledged more than $5 trillion, and that figure is set to rise.
Rulers are also taking advantage of the pandemic to push through policies that would cause outrage in normal times. Trump has given American industry a free pass to break pollution laws during the emergency, while Macron has dismantled one of the main achievements of the labour movement by extending the maximum working week to 60 hours. Yet, in a way, the pettiness of these legislative tricks—too localized and limited to rescue an ailing neoliberal order—shows that the pandemic has caught the ruling classes off guard: they have not yet grasped the recession that awaits us, and its capacity to upend economic orthodoxies. Just as Agamben views all emergencies as anti-terrorist, our rulers see this systemic crisis as a mere financial one: they respond to the pandemic as if it were a new 2008, imitating Bernanke and prescribing Friedmanite monetary expansion. Prisoners of monetarist orthodoxy, they do not understand that this time the demand shock will entail more than a simple liquidity crisis.
Soon enough, entire fortunes will be lost as capitalists watch their business ventures (airlines, construction companies, car factories, tourist circuits, film productions) go down the drain. But in this context, Friedman’s ‘helicopter drop of money’—the injection of astronomic amounts of liquidity into the economy—will initiate a large-scale destruction of capital, since this newly issued currency does not correspond to any real value. During wartime, both financial and material capital is demolished: infrastructures, factories, bridges, ports, stations, airports, buildings. But once the war is over a period of reconstruction begins, and it is this reconstruction that triggers an economic rebound. However, the current epidemic looks more like a neutrino bomb, which kills humans and leaves buildings, roads and factories intact (if empty). So, when the epidemic is over, there will be nothing to rebuild—and no consequent recovery.
After the quarantine is lifted, people will not simply return to buying cars and plane tickets on a pre-crisis scale. Many will lose their jobs, while those that keep them will struggle to find customers and clients in a cash-strapped economy. Meanwhile, someone will have to foot the bill for massive virus-related spending, especially once the ensuing debt pile saps investor confidence, at which point Wallenberg’s fear of social unrest may turn out to be justified: whatever shock treatment is dispensed after the crisis—when, in the name of economic necessity, the public is made to pay for this ‘generosity’—may indeed serve to push people into revolt. The epidemic will increase top-down control and surveillance; it will remake society as a laboratory for disciplinary techniques. But in this situation, the role of our rulers will be to ride the tiger: those who want to supervise and control us would prefer to do so by less expensive means. In the end, revoking quarantine will be easy. Restarting the economy will be more problematic.” - Marco D’Eramo, “The Philosopher’s Epidemic,” New Left Review. Vol. 122, March-April 2020. 
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lovelyamneris · 6 years
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I know I’m late to the party but Buzzfeed Unsolved!!!! It’s so creepy and spooky and I love conspirices and mysteries,,, why am I just starting this now?????
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gaeleatiamindeed · 4 years
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A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead & Nancy L. Rosenblum
A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead & Nancy L. Rosenblum #LoveAudiobooks @PrincetonUPress @AudioBooks_Comm #NonFiction
Russel Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum come to the blog with a book that explains the current assaults on the democratic principles and the foundations of democracy, narrated by Katherine Fenton in
A Lot of People Are Saying
I honestly didn’t go into this one expecting the many lessons and references to political and sociological theories and thoughts that are within, but those do help, in some…
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