The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_de_Oliveira_Salazar

In 1968, Salazar suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Most sources maintain that it occurred when he fell from a chair in his summer house. In February 2009 though, there were anonymous witnesses who admitted, after some investigation into Salazar's best-kept secrets, that he had fallen in a bath instead of from a chair. Believing that the 79-year-old prime minister would die soon after the fall, President Américo Tomás dismissed Salazar and replaced him with Marcelo Caetano. Despite the injury, Salazar lived for a further two years. When he unexpectedly recovered lucidity, his intimates did not tell him he had been removed from power, instead allowing him to "rule" in privacy until his death in July 1970.

If accurate, this should be done with more dictators.

This would be a good plot for a Goodbye Lenin style comedy. 

[celedhring]

The science is that the risk of HIV for men having sex with men is astronomically higher than average.  Humans may have become more enlightened over the years, but HIV has not kept up.

I think that testing donated blood for patogens (including HIV) is standard protocol everywhere. Thus it seems pointless to exclude a whole class of potential donors out of HIV fears. Over here they just do a few screening questions (i.e. whether you have had unprotected sex) and that's it.

[Sheilbh]

The science is that the risk of HIV for men having sex with men is astronomically higher than average.  Humans may have become more enlightened over the years, but HIV has not kept up.

I think that testing donated blood for patogens (including HIV) is standard protocol everywhere. Thus it seems pointless to exclude a whole class of potential donors out of HIV fears. Over here they just do a few screening questions (i.e. whether you have had unprotected sex) and that's it.

Yeah. Plus in the UK (from when I tried ) it doesn't matter whether you used a condom or not - and there are no questions about, for example, whether you're in a monogamous relationship or PrEP.

[Iormlund]

Speaking of which, what's the alt-right take on the pandemic? Soros made it? Gleeful hardons at impending societal collapse?

I've seen lots of comments on Bill Gates being involved (as part of the NWO). The conspiracy here is that his repeated warnings in the past were a way to make us believe it is accidental. How that ties to Soros I don't know, but I'm sure it is out there.

[Tamas]

Speaking of which, what's the alt-right take on the pandemic? Soros made it? Gleeful hardons at impending societal collapse?

I've seen lots of comments on Bill Gates being involved (as part of the NWO). The conspiracy here is that his repeated warnings in the past were a way to make us believe it is accidental. How that ties to Soros I don't know, but I'm sure it is out there.

With so many possible scapegoats out there, it will take some time to the narrative to settle on one, but I am sure Trump will inform us once a conclusion has been reached.

[Syt]

On r/600Euro, a German subreddit kinda like our Facebook thread, someone shared a nutcase theory that countries are introducing mandatory mask wearing because not enough people are infected in Europe yet, and that the new masks come pre-infected from China.

[Sheilbh]

Jeremy Corbyn's brother Piers Corbyn isn't on the alt-right but is a conspiracist loon. From memory his take is "The Globalist totalitarian control narrative is:-
Fear - #Lockdown - Control - #SaveTheNHS (Isn't the NHS there to Save us?*) - Vaccinate (with chip implants) - TOTAL CONTROL - CUT world population to #SaveThePlanet"

He has said it's also all being used to prep us for the inevitable mass cull that 5G will bring on and George Soros is involved.

[Josquius]

Jeremy Corbyn's brother Piers Corbyn isn't on the alt-right but is a conspiracist loon. From memory his take is "The Globalist totalitarian control narrative is:-
Fear - #Lockdown - Control - #SaveTheNHS (Isn't the NHS there to Save us?*) - Vaccinate (with chip implants) - TOTAL CONTROL - CUT world population to #SaveThePlanet"

He has said it's also all being used to prep us for the inevitable mass cull that 5G will bring on and George Soros is involved.

Ah George Soros.
Grand unifier of far right and far left loons.

[Sheilbh]

I always think it must be so reassuring being a conspiracy theorist and thinking there's a cabal or plot behind all of this and that we're not just spinning in chaos, always just one wrong stop away from being hit by a bus or the wrong pangolin fucking the wrong bat.

[Tamas]

I always think it must be so reassuring being a conspiracy theorist and thinking there's a cabal or plot behind all of this and that we're not just spinning in chaos, always just one wrong stop away from being hit by a bus or the wrong pangolin fucking the wrong bat.

Yes I am pretty sure that's the psychological reason behind believing all this BS. Makes the world feel far safer.

[Iormlund]

...Vaccinate (with chip implants) ...

Ah, yes. I forgot this one. My dad started yammering about this a couple weeks ago. He's an electrical engineer.

[Josquius]

The strangest conspiracy nuts I've found are the local government ones. Even the most minor mundane stuff is a conspiracy to them.

A local FB group was blowing up the other week over the scandalous corrupt council (Labour of course) sneaking through an alteration to their plans for a new council building in all the Corona hysteria. How dare they add a roof terrace to the building. Doubtless just so they could have cocktail parties and spend all of our tax money!
And a  time when everyone is locked up at home with nothing to do is exactly the right time to bury news of course.
It really does explain a huge amount of the lower class Tory support of the last year.

[Savonarola]

That's not true. They changed it a few years back that you cannot have had sex for a year.

Good to know. Still seems excessive, but I don't know the science behind it (assuming there's science behind it).

Usually it's the maximum period of time for the disease to become symptomatic.  For travelers who have visited a Zika infested area, for instance, it's 120 days.  For travelers who have visited a malaria infested area it's a year.  (I don't remember chikungunya or dengue fever; they're not longer than a year and malaria was endemic everywhere I've been that had those epidemics.)

[Razgovory]

I just found out that James Lovelock is still alive and 100 years old.  He's a scientist who's theory of thermoregulation of the earth informed the PC game SimEarth. 

[grumbler]

I always think it must be so reassuring being a conspiracy theorist and thinking there's a cabal or plot behind all of this and that we're not just spinning in chaos, always just one wrong stop away from being hit by a bus or the wrong pangolin fucking the wrong bat.

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

- Marcus Cole