Fria Tider fortsätter sitt korståg mot USA:s tillträdande president Donald Trump. Här citerar FT danska medier som hävdar att det amerikanska team som nyligen besökte Grönland (anförda av presidentens son och namne) "mutade" hemlösa till att spela Trump-anhängare!
Hemlösa grönlänningar mutades till att spela Trump-anhängare
There is a persistent rumor, even in the mainstream media, that the Danish king Frederik X changed the royal coat of arms of Denmark as a direct response to Donald Trump´s territorial designs on Greenland. Even Danish pundits are pushing the rumor.
There is just one problem: it doesn´t seem to be true. The changes in question were recommended by a royal commission already on January 20, 2024. They were officially announced on December 20, 2024. Trump´s demand on Greenland came two days later and wasn´t widely reported until December 23.
The changes in the Danish royal coat of arms didn´t take effect until January 1, 2025. This probably fuelled the speculations that the change was a deliberate snub to Trump. The king apparently *did* call for increased unity between the various parts of the Danish Commonwealth in a New Year statement, which (of course) could be interpreted as a snub against both Trump and the premier of Greenland (who demands full independence for the island).
Finally, note that Frederik became king on January 14, 2024. It´s therefore logical that he would update the royal coat of arms, which was heavily anachronistic. The three crowns could be seen both as a symbol of the medieval Kalmar Union and as a veiled claim on the Swedish throne. Since Sweden and Denmark haven´t been enemy nations for two centuries, the presence of the three crowns in the Danish royal coat of arms looks frankly weird. But sure, a heraldry nerd could point out that the Swedish usage of the three crowns is *also* anachronistic, since one of the crowns probably symbolized Norway originally!
:D
To sum up: when the three crowns (whatever they might mean) were removed, both the polar bear (Greenland) and the ram (the Faroe Islands) became more prominent. But Trump has made no demands on the Faroe Islands. So no, the change has nothing to do with Trump, but I can´t really blame the Danes for spreading the rumor...
Anjala-förbundets ättelägg Fria Tider är sura på Trump. Men observera att de citerar Richard Spencer, som röstade (eller låtsades rösta) på Kamala Harris i presidentvalet?!
Behold the new subsidy sink. Yes, it´s Carbon Capture & Removal...again! Sabine Hossenfelder has the recipes.
I suppose it was inevitable that some conspiracy theorists (or "Truthers" as bro Sheridan calls them) would start blaming the LA fires on...Project Bluebeam! Soon, they will start harping about HAARP, as well.
The fake alien invasion didn´t happen during the drone scare in the Garden State, so here we go again. Anything but acknowledging, you know, the climate crisis...
So I did my own armchair research a propos the previous blog post "Emerson´s Dogman". I admit I was...stunned.
In New Jersey, a black bear nicknamed Pedals could actually walk permanently on its hind legs, and quite fast too! It was an adaptation to the fact that one of its front paws had been damaged and rendered non-functional. There are also dogs who learned to walk bipedally for similar reasons. They, too, were quite fast.
Bears walking on their hind legs for longer or shorter distances are (surprise) the main suspects in many purported Bigfoot observations. One clip above shows two normal bears in a South Korean safari park standing and even walking bipedally a short distance. But if bears and dogs can walk upright under certain conditions, what about wolves? While there is no scientific evidence for factultative bipedalism among wolves, who´s to say that it´s intrinsically impossible?
Note that there isn´t any particular contradiction between this and the notion that most (perhaps 99%) of Dogman sightings are misidentifications, hallucinations or hoaxes. Obviously, unusual observations of animals will be sensationalized and later mythologized. And in the Internet age, people will end up "seeing" them pretty much everywhere.
The same logic applied to Bigfoot could yield some interesting results. Or speculations...
The Spartacist League loses it...again. I link to this for strictly information purposes.
Somehow, I can´t leave this topic alone. Once again: how can the *bad* guy from the Hindu epic Ramayana be worshipped by some Hindus?
Zen Buddhist Brad Warner has apparently been hassled by some Theravada fundamentalist (yawn) in the commentary. This is his response. Short form: the Pali Canon is unreliable, Buddhists shouldn´t slavishly follow scriptures anyway, and mind-to-mind transmission in more important. The School of the Elders won´t like this one! :D
This isn´t terribly important, but...I couldn´t help noticing that many atheists are guilty of exactly the same fallacies as the video above accuses religious people of indulging in. This is especially true of dogmatic atheist worldviews, such as Communism or (secular) libertarianism. But even regular atheists and so-called Skeptics can fall into the trap. And sometimes the video doesn´t even make sense...
So, on the fly, here are some examples (the numbering is like in the video).
18. The Texas sharp-shooter fallacy.
That is, cherry-picking. This has an obvious family likeness to the "No True Scotsman fallacy" (no 15).
Communists might cherry-pick full employment as a good and desirable trait of socialist societies. Skeptics might cherry-pick the few examples of scientists who admitted their errors and thanked their opponents for scientifically proving them wrong, while ignoring, say, the replication crisis, "publish or perish", academic politics, and so on. Libertarians might defend open borders by pointing to increased BNP, while ignoring rising crime rates, less trust in public institutions, or the fact that the governments subsidize migration.
17. The appeal to popularity.
Neither Communists nor libertarians have this, but its partially replaced by appeals to "human nature". Which (of course) is shared by all humans. Atheist sociobiologists can indulge in the same!
16. The appeal to authority.
This isn´t even a "fallacy", since a person who is right about something obviously must be an authority on that very topic. Duh! The real question is whether or not we are appealing to *actual*, *true* authority. Which can be very difficult for a layperson to discern.
That being said...yes, appeals to authority are extremely common among Communists, who quote Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as holy writ. Among libertarians, Randians ("Randroids") are an obvious example of a cult of personality.
Atheists in general often unthinkingly quote whatever secular thinker is fashionable at the moment (is it still that Harari guy?). They might assume that scientists actually are authorities on the topics they write papers about, a somewhat risky proposition given the replication crisis and rampant science fraud. Besides, there are always papers which say the exact opposite.
15. No True Scotsman Fallacy.
The Communist and libertarian worldviews practically depend on this for their survival. "Russia wasn´t real socialism" or "a really planned economy would have worked", says the Communist. "American capitalism isn´t real capitalism" or "a really free market economy will work", opines the libertarian.
Regular atheists can also fall into this trap, for instance by insisting that Stalin didn´t kill people because of his atheism, which is just another way of saying that he wasn´t a "true" atheist.
14. The appeal to faith.
Communists obviously do this: "We need faith in our Russian comrades". But so do other atheists! The notion that everything must have a materialist explanation is a kind of faith, and so is the Western Idea of Progress. The difference between these atheists and the religious is that the atheists don´t openly *call* it faith, but rather claim that they are discussing "facts" or "certainty".
13. The strawman fallacy.
Extremely common in general.
12. The false dichotomy.
The Communist and libertarian worldviews practically depend on a quasi-metaphysical dualism between good and evil. If you´re not with us, you´re against us! Skeptics can also end up here. "Warfare between science and religion" is one example, "the Richard Chamberlain school of atheism" is another. Implicitly, it´s often assumed that the only alternatives are (atheist) materialism and (Christian) theism.
11. The appeal to consequences.
This isn´t even a good argument to begin with. *Of course* you can appeal to consequences. The video says that the truth of a claim is independent of its consequences, but that only holds for a certain kind of truths. Does anyone seriously believe that social and political "truths" are independent of their consequences?
That being said, sure, Communists often appeal to consequences: "Comrade, your political position is objectively counter-revolutionary". Woke left-liberals do the same. (See also slippery slope fallacy.)
10. The argument from ignorance.
Since Communits claim to be all-knowing, they never appeal to ignorance. Libertarianism also seems to have an all-knowing quality. But note that lacktheists appeal to ignorance as a matter of course! Their agnostic ignorance of God becomes a de facto argument against his existence...
9. The ad hominem attack.
Communists do this as a matter of course. Another classic is Murray Rothbard´s obsession with who´s a lesbian. Skeptics use ad hominems frequently, too. For instance when accusing Graham Hancock (!) of being a racist.
8. The appeal to tradition.
Communists quoting 200 year old Marxist scriptures as proof of some obtruse point is a kind of "appeal to tradition", although it can also be seen as an appeal to authority. Libertarians and Skeptics probably don´t do this.
7. The wishful thinking fallacy.
Communists and libertarians essentially all the time. Their utopian worldviews are peak wishful thinking. Other examples are cornucopians, proponents of "renewable energy", trans-humanists, advocates of a manned mission to Mars...really, all utopians great and small.
6. Confirmation bias.
See also cherry-picking (no 18). Euro-Communists or Trotskyists reading Lenin is a good example. They can claim that Lenin wasn´t violent, stood for workers´ democracy, and so forth, based on a very selective reading of his Collected Works. Trotskyists reading their own teacher Trotsky is another example.
5. Slippery slope.
See also the appeal to consequences. Extremely common across the board. But note once again that the slippery slope isn´t entirely false!
4. The red herring.
That is, irrelevant information. In the video, "religion has helped millions of people" is given as an example, since this doesn´t prove that religion is "true", only that it´s useful. Skeptics do the same, however, but backwards: "religion destroys lives". But note (again) that the social consequences of a mythology does in a certain sense render it "true" or "false". If God-belief helps millions of lives, doesn´t that tell us something true about human psychology and community?
3. Circular reasoning.
The example given is "the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible". I don´t think there are any examples this blatant among atheists, but a famous dictum by Stalin may come close: "Marxism is all-powerful because it is true".
2. The god of the gaps fallacy.
Materialists replace this with something we could call "materialism of the gaps". We don´t know how X works, but we have faith that it must be materialist, cuz reason or something.
1. The false analogy.
The video mentions the tiresome "watchmaker argument". Atheist false analogies could include "humans are machines". I´m sure I could find other examples, but I´m too lazy to continue this conversation...
