Edit: because it's unclear, I do not believe that women are more likely to be irrational than men.

American culture.

I'm talking to a woman on the dating apps and she's great except she is into things like crystals and tarot and so on. I don't know how deep she is in this. Like I don't think she does tarot readings for friends. I think it's just for fun.

But this is one of those things that I just have to let go. If you want to date women in America and you are a critical thinking sort of person you just have to put that "I would like to date somebody who is rational" wayyyy down on the list of preferences.

And I have a friend who thinks that geo-grounding might actually improve your health. I got irritated and asked her if the post that she shared was satire and she said I don't think so and I said well you should look into this grounding thing more.

To me, this all stems from a desire for the world to have some sort of hidden information (same with conspiracy theories). Like the world is so much more exciting if you can cure cancer by walking around barefoot more often.

But it's not real.

Recently I got excited because I heard that Buddhism has this concept called sammā dithi*, that can be summarized as if you want to reduce suffering you should strive to have an accurate view of how the world works. I thought that was pretty great. And then I asked how Buddhism sees things like astrology and so on. The answer was yeah it's pretty much tolerated and in fact they use it for certain things.

So Buddhism is no better than any other religion.

I would like to say that I would only associate with people that are good critical thinkers, but then I would have like two friends.

I think it's especially tough because I was raised without religion by someone who respected science and had little tolerance for woo woo garbage (because she had a family member that was heavily into that stuff and kind of scammed people with it).

So how do y'all manage to deal with the amount of nonsense beliefs in the world?

Edit: and don't get me started about the "Law of Attraction"

* probably misspelled

Apart from being a wild story, I thought it might be of interest to skeptics. Without spoiling everything, it involves forgery, accusations of plagiarism, and brings up questions about expertise, the extent to which authorities can be trusted, and likely mental illness.

BTW the Guardian has a popup that encourages you to support them, but it's not a paywall.

Were scientists of the time specifically working to test its hypotheses, and found them to be false? Or was it just debunked by default as we slowly learned how the brain really worked? But there's a lot of people who still believe in it today, although they usually call it "physiognomy" or "phenotype." How do they think it came to be discredited despite being fundamentally sound? Especially during a time when there was such a massive sociopolitical incentive to believe in it.

Hi everyone

I’m 19 years old, I’m from Brazil, and I’m writing this because I honestly don’t know where else to talk about this.

Before all of this, I was a happy person. I was cheerful, affectionate, friendly, and socially normal. I was baptized Catholic, but over time I became more of a deist. Religion wasn’t something that controlled my life. I wasn’t obsessed with politics, fear, or the end of the world.

That changed around 2020 - and by 2022, things completely spiraled.

Out of nowhere, I became deeply paranoid and mentally overwhelmed by Christian conspiracy theories, especially QAnon-style narratives, far-right content, and end-times prophecies. What scares me is how fast it happened. It really felt like a kind of mental hijacking.

It started at school. My sociology teacher, who also happened to be a neopentecostal evangelical pastor, began casually talking about the end times, Ragnarok, and societal collapse. Around the same time, a friend told me that the apocalypse would likely start between 2023 and 2025 — or, if not, then between 2026 and 2027 — because 2033–2034 would mark exactly 2000 years since Jesus’ death.

That idea got stuck in my head.

I went to YouTube looking for answers and immediately fell into a massive rabbit hole. I found countless evangelical channels claiming that we are already living in the final moments of human history. Many of them confidently say that by 2030 the world will end, Jesus will physically return, and only a very specific group of neopentecostal or Pentecostal evangelical Christians will be saved.

According to them, salvation is limited to those whose names are written in the “Book of Life.” Everyone else — including people from other religions, LGBTQ+ people, non-believers, or even Christians who “aren’t strict enough” — will be thrown into the lake of fire along with the Antichrist and the False Prophet. God will destroy the universe, and only the chosen will live in the New Jerusalem.

They constantly pressure people to repent, insisting that Satan is real, sin is everywhere, and that even questioning these ideas is rebellion against God — despite none of this being scientifically demonstrable.

They preach strict rules: no short clothes, no jeans, no tattoos or piercings, no pork, no homosexuality, no teenage dating, no real free will. Everything is forbidden. Everything is dangerous.

They also say we’re living in the greatest apostasy in history — that humanity is abandoning God, becoming more “sinful,” colder, more violent. They point to crime, family violence, and tragic events as proof that we are living “like the days before the Flood,” when Noah warned everyone and was mocked until catastrophe suddenly wiped out the world, killing everyone.

Even when historians and scientists show that a global flood like that never happened, they insist science is wrong and that science itself is an abomination against God.

They describe God as loving — but also furious, cruel, and ready to punish anyone who doesn’t obey perfectly. They even portray Jesus in a very literal, almost mythologized way, as if his physical appearance (tall, white, blond, blue-eyed) were historically proven fact.

I watched an overwhelming amount of content from Brazilian pastors, missionaries, YouTubers, and so-called prophets and visionaries. Many of them claimed their prophecies never failed — that everything they predicted “came true.” Even figures who were once more moderate before the covid pandemic shifted completely and started preaching that the end is imminent.

They also obsess over morality and sexuality, saying prostitution is becoming normalized, pointing to platforms like OnlyFans, claiming incest is widespread, and framing all of it as undeniable proof of collapse.

Geopolitics became another obsession. They say global tensions are spiraling toward World War III — pointing to conflicts involving Israel, Iran, Venezuela, and others. Now with USA threatening to invade iran by land by sending troops, and chechnya also threatening to aid iran if this happens, They claim billionaires are building bunkers, selling assets, and preparing for the ultimate collapse, it's no wonder that the release of Epstein-related files early this year is framed as proof that the world is secretly ruled by a satanic elite.

Also they bring up an old letter supposedly written by Albert Pike in 1871, claiming it predicted the first two world wars and now accurately predicts the third, beginning in the Middle East. They connect current conflicts to biblical prophecies like Gog and Magog.

They say an unprecedented global economic collapse is coming — worse than the Great Depression — leading to massive famine worse than anything in medieval history.

From there, it gets even darker.

They claim that organizations like the UN, WEF, and the Bilderberg Group are planning a massive EMP attack to shut down global electricity, followed by worldwide martial law. They say immigrants are already being secretly detained and placed into camps, that conservatives and white Christians will be targeted, enslaved by black or arab slave masters (yes, you read that right, they literally said that), executed, and buried in FEMA coffins.

They talk about a “New World Order,” depopulation, the Great Reset, Agenda 2030, the end of physical cash, biometric digital currency, fingerprint-based payments, global digital IDs, forced lab-grown food, insect-based diets, identical clothing, people being renamed as numbers, and even surveillance cameras inside private homes.

All of this, they say, leads to the rise of the Antichrist — a single global leader who unites all governments. People will worship him. The “mark of the beast” will be implanted, and anyone who refuses won’t be allowed to buy or sell and will be killed. Cities will become death traps, and only those who flee to rural areas or mountains will survive.

They encourage people to stockpile water, canned food, batteries, radios, and medications — especially ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. I saw countless testimonials claiming these drugs cured COVID and pulled people out of ICUs.

They predict another pandemic, supposedly 30 times deadlier, killing about 30% of world population. They say this will coincide with a seven-year peace treaty between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, involving the sacrifice of a red heifer and the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of The Rock to build the Third Temple — where the Antichrist will rule for the final three and a half years.

They deny climate change entirely, claiming disasters like earthquakes, floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes are artificially created by globalists using HAARP or satellite lasers. Fact-checkers and media outlets such as BBC, CNN, reuters and snopes are dismissed as controlled by figures like Soros or the Rothschilds.

On top of that, I became terrified of my own health. I constantly fear getting cancer or dying of a heart attack in my early 20s. They claim young people are suddenly dying because of covid vaccines, which they say contain aborted fetal cells, microchips, graphene, and long-term lethal effects — with a supposed 99% risk, because they were made too quickly.

They also obsess over “woke ideology,” claiming movies, games, and TV shows are used to corrupt children. They say character changes, LGBTQ+ representation, feminism, and racial diversity are deliberate psychological warfare. They point to Disney as proof and claim abortion rates are exploding as part of a moral collapse.

One of my deepest fears became “predictive programming” — the idea that elites know future events and reveal them in movies to make people subconsciously accept them. They cite films like White Noise (which predicted the ohio train crash in 2023), Leave the World Behind (which predicted famous recent blackout in the last years such as crowdstrike and the spain-portugal digital blackout last year), The Matrix (which predicted the perilous advance of technology), Black Mirror, The Simpsons (famous for predicting world events such as 9/11 attacks, trump elections win in 2016), 1984, Denver Airport paintings predicted the future, Sammy Hagar's song Crack in the World (which predicted that after 2025 the world will enter it's final stages of humanity) and the Georgia Guidestones goals such as 'maintaining world population beneath 500 million' as evidence that the future is already planned.

I became obsessed with supposed “fulfilled prophecies”:

– The moon having rust-like pigments (Joel 2:31)

– Sunspots interpreted as the sun going dark (Luke 21:25)

– The Euphrates River drying (Revelations 16:12)

– Rivers turning red (Revelations 16:4-3)

– Claims that days are getting shorter (Matthew 24:22)

– Numerology linking pandemics to the number 666 (for example, 2019 started the covid pandemic, and black death ended in 1353, thus, 2019-1353-666), and the word CORONA as a code where the alphabet is corresponding to its letter in ascending order (for example a = 1, b = 2), it would give the numbers 3, 15, 18, 15, 14, 1 will also give the number of the beast is correct if we multiply these numbers.

- Sahara desert being flooded (Isaiah 35:1)

At some point, I couldn’t tell coincidence from meaning anymore.

The psychological effects were devastating.

I developed severe anxiety, paranoia, and hypervigilance. Loud tranoises made me think the rapture had started. Car horns, crashes, or sudden sounds triggered panic. I felt like death was always around the corner.

Since last year I've been switching day for night, sleeping excessively, because I live far from my family. bc my friends are rarely available to do something cool, like going to a mall or a barbecue, etc.

I tried to warn my parents and friends, begging them to repent. I pushed so hard that they eventually stopped listening altogether. That isolation made everything worse.

My psychologist and occupational therapist are even suggesting I check into a CAPS (it's like a CHMC, but from my home country).

Due to the ongoing war on middle east and the recent news about the noah's ark being supposedly discovered officially, the economist covers releasing each november detailing the rothschild's agenda every year, and also the brazilian donald trump, flavio bolsonaro, winning the elections on my country, at my lowest point, I'm considering writing a goodbye letter and jumping from the top floor of my apartment building or shot at myself because I couldn’t imagine living through mass chaos, war, or global destruction at my age.

What finally made me start questioning all of this was realizing how much fear these channels rely on. Fear never ends. Dates shift. Prophecies change. Contradictions are explained away. Anyone who disagrees is labeled deceived or evil.

I also realized how trapped I became by algorithms. Once I searched these topics, they followed me everywhere.

Now, I’m trying to escape this mindset and reclaim my life. I want peace, not constant terror. I want to think clearly again.

If anyone here has gone through something similar — especially religious or apocalyptic conspiracy thinking — I would really appreciate advice on how to fully recover and let go of this fear-based worldview.

Thank you for reading.

Hi, I post here because no better idea about an appropriate sub.

So I have a strange and a bit unsettling thing happening in my apartment and I can't explain it.

In my kitchen spontaneous small explosions happen, midair or close to ceiling. It's a really bright flash with a loud bang. the few times it was in my view the flash source was no bigger than a basketball ball. For now there is no damage or trace left. Maybe a slight burnt odor, but nothing specific. Last strange thing, a few seconds before it happens I noticed several times a slight gargling sound coming from the place where the explosio will be, there is no appliances there, and none make this kind of noise. It always happens in a definite area but not exactly in the same place.

First time was something like 6 months ago, midair close to a wall. At the time it was strange and I tried to find the cause without success. Anyway after a few days I thought it was a once time thing, but it happened again two days ago, and now four times in a short while today (obviously when I'm not at home I have no idea).

There is a gas stove and boiler in the kitchen, but it occur on opposite side and there is no utility gas odor at all. additionally the explosion look different, usually when gas is present but doesn't fill a complete enclosed space it produce more of a rapide flame than a real explosion. here it's really a small and loud flash.

I thought about some kind of high voltage/static discharge but it's completely unlikely. There is no high voltage or constantly moving object anywhere near, it doesn't look like an electric discharge, no ozone odor or trace of charring anywhere.

The only idea I have would be an accumulation of hydrogen or methane from an unknown source igniting spontaneously. But it doesn't explain the gargling sound near explosion, it doesn't happen near kitchen sink or any other potential source of gas, and what would ignite it close to wall or ceiling, always to a similar size.

And obviously I'm concerned it could start a fire.

edit: obviously if someone has a suggestion or any original idea I'm all ears

edit2:

for everyone being alarmed and insisting that I call fire department, alarm the whole building and such kind of things. There is absolutely no sign it's an utility gas leak. I have already been in situation to have to call technician from gas company to check some kind of potential leak in the past, here most likely it won't help (and it didn't help in the past either because similarly it was an discontinuous problem and when the guy came there was nothing happening). same for fire department, there is no fire, not any sign of anything, no smell, nothing except for one second two times in six months until now (and now it's not happening anymore at all).

additionally it's 3am now here.

it's normal to be concerned by gas leak and potential explosions, but the gas piping are inspected regularly and there is absolutely no smell. which suggest another source, probably fermentation somewhere.

In a discussion in [r/civilwar](r/civilwar) about a YouTube content creator. Someone is claiming a satirical character the producer created is a straw man. The character starts by repeating a comment left on a video, or a common lost cause/confederate sympathizer talking point and the discussion goes from there.

I guess my question is what is your line between satire and a straw man.

(The videos are titled Checkmate Lincolnites if anyone is interested. Highly recommended!)

Edit: I understand what a straw man and satire are. Not asking for definitions.

I always thought OJ didn't act alone. The timeline was too tight for him to have successfully disposed of the Murder Weapon.

Across the first 3 nights of the recent lecture series in Nashville, Peter Thiel laid out a complete political theology framework diagnosing why modern tech and psychical progress has slowed down and how Silicon Valley capital views the administrative state.

Rathe than treating these lectures as pop-culture sensationalism, the series draws heavily on 19th and 20th century political theory (Vladimir Solovyov, Rene Girard, and Carl Schmitt) to construct a specific critique of modern governance:

Night 1: The Administrative Archetype - Defines the antichrist not as a fantasy monster but as Solovyov's hyper-moralistic, centralizing global administrator who freezes frontier tech progress in the name of risk suppression and safety.

https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/what-night-one-left-out

Night 2: Stagnation and the Katechon - Examines how regulatory safety regimes acquire infinite incentives to maintain institutional stasis, locking capital into software/data/bit because physical deployment is choked off by beuqacratic friction.

https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/the-counterfeit-church-and-the-epimethean

Night 3: Turnkey Surveillance and Financial Control - Analyzes the counter-response, how defense tech capital and financial surveillance networks position themselves as counterweights to administrative decay creating a new form of enclosure.

https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-consolidation-velocity

I wrote in-depth summaries of each night.

Curious to hear how folks here evaluate the trajectory. Is using political theology a genuine diagnostic for understanding modern regulatory stasis and defense tech expansion or is it an elaborate idealogical justification for techno feudal capital deployment?

Jay Van Bavel is professor of psychology at NYU.

Excerpt:

“I find myself in a third camp of people who harbour sincere concerns about the problems facing humanity, but worry that feelings of dread will immobilise people. Inaction is a sensible response if you are led to believe that we are past the point of no return, or that the scope of the problem is so immense that anything you do won’t make a difference.
The problem with doomerism isn’t necessarily that the risks are exaggerated, but that it may create a self-fulfilling prophecy – by engendering helplessness, rather than galvanising people.

“This aspect of human psychology has been well known for many years by experts on persuasion. When people hear messages designed to appeal to our fears, they can be moved to take action. But this only tends to work as a one-off, and only then when the messages convey a sense of efficacy – a belief that it’s still possible to make a difference. By contrast, if people are inundated with scary and overwhelming stories about the climate or AI, they tune out. Like the boy who cried wolf, those bearing these messages can quickly find themselves ignored.

“A big problem for us now, then, is that the modern information ecosystem tends to reinforce negativity. For decades, a core principle in the news business has been “if it bleeds, it leads”. This came from an understanding among journalists that humans are drawn to bad news. This principle now dominates what you see online.” Ibid.

I made a video about a familiar jump in wellness advice: an exercise helps someone, therefore the biological story attached to it must be correct. One that frustrates me personally: The overuse of "nervouse system" or Nervous system regulation" for regular everyday coping habits.

It seems like it just gets used cause it sells, but if everything is nervous system regulation it stops explaining anything.

I look at the science: f.e. A meta-analysis found an average benefit from breathing practices for reported stress, with risk-of-bias concerns: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27247-y . But a matched trial found no significant superiority for slow over normal-paced breathing on reported stress: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-49279-8 .

The video also covers the Polyvagal Theory dispute, including the 2026 critique and Porges's response. although not super in depth.

Curious about your opinions: Is it overused? Underused? Is there any harm in it, or just influencers being influencers?

I find it to be very frustrating as it borrows scientific language to make claims that are really just bro science, or some sort of pseudoscience. I think it harms the credibility of psychology and biology and makes people sound like they know what they're talking about when it really is rather complicated.

If you're interested. Here's the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9-HY3j11LA

Interested if anyone else here has some good recommendations for skeptical/critical thinking YouTube channels that are not "facts before feelings" or other right wing grifter slop. I really enjoy Sholto David, he used to be called "Addicted to Ignorance". Potholer54 is also great.

https://youtu.be/s2ul4tBMzbs?si=RigcMWUaJr5xgy7g

On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed. After his speech, he was being escorted by hotel staff and security through the kitchen of the hotel. While in the pantry, a man approached the group from the front and fired several shots at Kennedy. That man, Sirhan Sirhan, was detained by security and hotel staff, arrested, prosecuted, and given life in prison.

The official reports from the LA police and FBI investigations showed that the gun Sirhan fired was a .22 revolver with 8 shots. Therefore, the official reports all concluded that 8 shots were fired.

If we strip away everything about this murder and focus strictly on the event of a man in a crowded room being shot several times, the physical evidence simply does not add up that Sirhan Sirhan was the lone gunman. It’s literally physically impossible. I have extreme skepticism of the official report. I do not believe it requires any sort of supernatural or wacky thinking to recognize that the official report is simply not possible. I implore those who claim to be skeptically minded to come to their own conclusions after a thorough review of the evidence.

There have been numerous reports from investigators, journalists, interviews with witnesses, analysis of the only audio recording of the event, and clear patterns of a cover up to confiscate and suppress evidence, specifically photos taken during the shooting. This has all been documented and is widely available, including on mainstream news organizations.

* The Gun Sirhan used held 8 rounds. The official reports say 8 shots were fired.

* the bullets’ ballistics do not match the gun. There is no way that the gun in Sirhan’s hand fired the bullets. For example, here is the official X-Ray Autopsy report. It reads that a metallic object removed from RFK was “12 mm in transverse dimension, 7 mm in vertical dimension, and approximately 12 mm in anteroposterior dimension.” 12mm x 7mm x 12mm = 0.47”x0.28”x0.47”. That’s the size of a .47 caliber bullet, not a .22 caliber bullet.

* Multiple witnesses heard more than 8 shots.

* Multiple witnesses saw more than 1 gunman.

* An audio recording of the entire incident heard more than 8 shots. 13 shots are heard. Forensic scientists Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag. Their investigation led them to be reported by much of the mainstream media in 2008, including The Guardian, ABC News, & CNN.

* Philip Van Praag, under penalty of perjury, provided his evidence to the warden where Sirhan is imprisoned, [available here](https://justiceforrfk.com/documents/Sirhan-parole---gunshots-audio-recording-documents.pdf). He goes through his findings [here.](https://youtu.be/c2XhSG85S7Q)

* A witness got powder burns on his face in a way that does not make sense with Sirhan being the lone shooter.

* As indicated by powder burns on RFK, the fatal shot that hit RFK from the back of his right ear was good from approximately 1 inch away. Sirhan never got anywhere close to 1 inch away from RFK. All 4 witnessed who saw both Sirhan and RFK say Sirhan never got more than a few feet from him.

* RFK was shot from the back. None of the bullet wound trajectories in Kennedy make sense based on the “official narrative”. Sirhan approached RFK from the front.

* Multiple bullet holes were identified around the scene in the door frame and ceiling. Much of the physical evidence was destroyed. The state of California admitted that 2,400+ photos of that night were destroyed.

* Multiple witnesses heard, saw, and felt shots coming from other places than where Sirhan was openly firing from.

* Multiple witnesses saw a gunman shooting from atop a table, a location impossible for Sirhan to have been on given what happened during his apprehension.

* Multiple witnesses saw multiple gunmen running from the scene with unconcealed or poorly concealed guns.

* Witnesses who were being interviewed by the police did not have their interviews transcribed if their statements contradict the official narrative of a lone gunman.

* There are numerous other anomalies that contradict the official narrative not mentioned above but I’m trying to keep this post short.

This is all very well documented and compiled in the following sources:

* The TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” Season 2, Episode 19 aired May 16, 1990 covers much of what I listed above.

* The book “A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy” published in 2019 by investigator and author Lisa Pease, which included original witness interview tapes. Here’s a good presentation available on C-SPAN about her book. It covers much m ore than what I listed above.

* This site compiles the contradictory nature of the evidence vs the narrative. This website does not advocate, merely documents.

* This site has more of an agenda but also has a compilation of records.

I do not believe it is outlandish to assert that the LAPD and FBI would lie to the American people about what really happened that night. I do not believe it requires any sort of supernatural thinking to recognize that the official narrative simply does not add up.

Are you skeptical of the official lone gunman argument or in the face of all of this contradictory evidence do you remain affirmed that the official narrative is correct?

Ugh. ​It is baffling that in an age of accessible information, the "chemtrail" conspiracy theory still persists. Anyone who has ever stepped outside on a freezing winter morning and watched their own breath condense into a visible cloud has already witnessed the exact same physics that occur at 35,000 feet.

​Here is what is actually happening:

​The Chemistry of Combustion: Commercial jet engines burn hydrocarbon fuel (kerosene). The chemical reaction of burning hydrocarbons combines fuel with oxygen, producing carbon dioxide, thermal energy, and water vapor as primary exhaust byproducts.

​The Environment at Altitude: At cruising altitude (typically 30,000 to 40,000 feet), ambient air temperatures are brutally cold often around -40°C or lower.

​Condensation and Freezing: When hot, moisture-laden engine exhaust hits that freezing, low-pressure external air, the water vapor instantly condenses and freezes into microscopic ice crystals. This creates a contrail (short for condensation trail), which is functionally identical to the cloud of vapor you see when you exhale on a cold day.

​Why Do Some Contrails Linger? People often point to trails that spread out and persist as "proof" of chemical spraying. In reality, this depends entirely on the atmospheric humidity and wind shear at that specific altitude. If the upper atmosphere is already humid, the ice crystals can not evaporate quickly, causing them to spread out and form cirrus-like clouds. If the air is dry, they dissipate rapidly.

​It all comes down to basic eighth-grade physics and meteorology—no secret spraying required. Maybe it's time to brush up on thermodynamics before inventing a global conspiracy. I'm so tired of people saying commercial passenger jets are spraying chemicals into the air. Ugh.

PA Governor Race: incumbent Shapiro (D) vs Garrity (R)

Just got a view of Garrity’s new AI generated attack ad completely AI generated with full motion video and synchronized synthetic audio of Shapiro admitting to completely false actions and positions.

The ad has NO disclaimer or even attribution to the Garrity campaign until the very end.

No doubt some Dems will also do this but it takes a Republican to do the most heinous and deceitful version.

Be skeptical of all political advertising.

I decided to master Western astrology under the tutelage of these three legendary astrologers. After completing my studies, I have come to the conclusion that astrology is not real.

Astrology, I learned, is just a coping mechanism for hard times. People believe it because it feels comforting, gives them an identity, and offers community.

But when you really get down to it, it’s all pretty nonsensical. None of these astrologers were capable of answering any of my most foundational questions about why anyone believes this in the first place.

Why do we think “houses” exist, and why are we dividing them up in these arbitrary ways? Why do we think certain houses have certain “significations”? No one seems to have thought about this more deeply than “Well, sunrise is like a new beginning.” Is it?

That’s just one possible arbitrary interpretation. It’s equally valid to say that sunrise is the “end” of the night. Humans sleep at night, but other animals sleep during the day. Whether sunrise is a beginning or an end is not an objective fact about the universe.

I laughed out loud when these astrologers told me that the 10th house means “career” because high noon is the “most visible” part of the day, and your career is the “most visible” aspect of your person.

That’s very silly because “career” is an abstract, invisible concept. Your physical appearance is probably the “most visible” aspect of your person, but that’s supposedly the first house, when the sun has barely risen. It makes no sense, even if we take for granted that poetry clichés reveal the true secret nature of the cosmos. Speaking of which, why are we taking that for granted?

Same goes for planets. It’s laughable. The bright, white-colored planets are “good,” and dim, swarthy planets are “evil”? Seriously? We’re just arbitrarily saying the planets sit boy, girl, boy, girl all around the circle? Is that a fact? Mars represents war because it’s red? Really? This is the most arbitrary, juvenile mythology I could imagine, and yet this is the foundation of all astrological interpretation.

And where are we getting the zodiac personalities from? Many of you are probably blissfully unaware of this, but Western (tropical) astrology is totally divorced from the classic constellations, so we cannot invoke the crab pictograph to source meaning for Cancer, but these astrologers do that anyway. Why? Those pictographs don’t even correspond with the zodiac anymore since the stars have "drifted" from our perspective over the past 2,000 years.

Why did Western astrology shirk the stars and arbitrarily anchor itself to the seasons (in a seeming violation of the name “astrology”)? This is why Vedic astrology is the slightly less dumb version of astrology. At least they bother to actually consider the real positions of the stars. I think “seasonology” would be a much better term for what my teachers do.

Applying poetry clichés to the seasons is even dumber because half the planet experiences no seasons or inverted seasons. The magical laws of the universe don’t apply to people in Ecuador? Or what?

And why do we think birth charts matter? Why do we think this astrological magic determines your entire personality at the exact moment your umbilical cord is cut? Why doesn’t that relevant magic happen during the moment of conception? Or your first birthday? We know that human personalities are actually shaped over many years, not fully scripted at the moment of birth.

Of course, I say “magic” because, most damning of all, nobody can offer even an attempt at explaining what could be a “mechanism” for astrology. Even if you want to cowardly claim astrology is not “cause and effect” but merely “signs,” those signs still need a mechanism for existing. This is why Austin is my favorite of the three. He’s fully on board with it being magic in the wizard sense of the word, which is the bullet you really need to bite if you’re going to be an astrologer. You have to also think magic is real.

The brightest minds of astrology today have no answer to any of my questions. They just tell me it’s all based on an old book based on another older book based on texts that are lost to time. Everyone just takes all of this for granted, even though astrology today is the nonsensical result of a thousand-year game of telephone that began as an ancient farming religion.

Here’s a prediction I’ll make (without astrology). Astrologers will respond by ignoring every single question I have and instead just say, “Well, I don’t claim to be able to make sense of anything. I just do what I was taught, and it works for me!” But no, you’re deluding yourself. It doesn’t work for you or anyone. It may feel like it does, but put it to the test and you will fail. I include an interactive test you can play along with in my video. I give you birth charts of famous people with extremely distinct personas, and you guess who they are based on the birth charts. Try it for yourself!

I meticulously debunk all of these concepts and far more in this four-hour video, which I do believe is the single most thorough debunk of astrology on the internet.

And if you’re wondering, I’m a Cancer.

In 1954 a Glasgow cemetery filled with children hunting a vampire. Within a week the whole country knew what had made them do it, and nobody had checked.

Naming climate change as a ‘contentious issue’ risks treating settled science as a matter of political opinion. Humanists UK previously led a successful campaign to stop state schools in England presenting ‘intelligent design’ as a scientific alternative to evolution. Ofsted inspecting individual lessons for ‘bias’ could make teachers reluctant to teach anything a parent might object to, including LGBT+ issues. Section 28 was rarely if ever enforced, but for 15 years teachers avoided the subject altogether: the threat of inspection and referral is enough to do damage.