Pegajace

Exactly, the same mindset that takes you to “The entire geophysical establishment is wrong/lying about the shape of the Earth, so I’ll listen to this Youtube crank who says it’s a disc instead” will also lead you to things like “The entire medical establishment is wrong/lying about the effectiveness of masks & vaccines, so I’ll listen to this podcast crank hawking horse dewormer instead.”

Insulting someone via stereotype doesn’t show that they’re wrong. You’ve added less to the discussion than the person you’re attempting to mock.

No, a conspiracy is when people get together and conspire, i.e. they develop a secret plan of action for nefarious purposes. In the strictest sense, the term “conspiracy theory” just means that you’re theorizing that some people have secretly planned to do something. If you theorize that some wrongdoers have developed or enacted a secret plan, and it later turns out your suspicion was correct, then by definition you had a true conspiracy theory.

Glad you live and work in a place where biking is a viable option, but it’s the complete opposite for me. It takes me 20 minutes to drive to work on a route that would take three hours by bike just because of the sheer distance, and there simply are no bus routes out to where I live. Not saying we should stop advocating for better mass transit and bike-friendly urban planning, but just bear in mind your situation is not representative of everyone else’s.

I just want the “hard-g because graphical” crowd to really commit to the bit and start insisting that JPEG be pronounced “jay-feg” because of “photographic.”