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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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No email address required.

Is Protonmail really the only email provider you can just sign up to without a cell phone number these days? I thought my dad was paranoid for suggesting establishing multiple online identities ten years ago, but now I'm really glad to have them.

I keep referring to this page and advising against extreme trust in protonmail.

Fortunately I'm not using it for protection against the black helicopter glowies, but just in case I someday am I'd love to hear your suggestions for that.

While the page you linked doesn't seem to be glaringly, egregiously wrong, the fact that the author expressly believes the moon landing was faked is... uh. Well, that's the sort of crackpottery that's undeniably wrong and not even slightly right, and honestly it just makes me go "please promote anything else than this ancient debate which has been debated to death". I do have to admit, this gives me pause to link to this site in the future, or believe anything this person says.

Here's an example. This is from the "How capitalism destroys everything" article which, besides pushing the fake moon landing crackpottery, is a modestly-above-average article detailing flaws with capitalism (the thesis in the title that those things are being "destroyed" by capitalism does not follow, however):

I don't get how can people be excited about this system, and mock the "leftists" who want something better. A system where the most evil person has it the best (NASA has spent $116.5 billion dollars (archive) on the fake moon landing; and since it was fake, most of this was pocketed), while the most moral person (the one who e.g gives stuff away for free, or fixes computers for free) - the worst. I think those people who love this situation have been brainwashed into associating the lack of money with laziness or stupidity, and the opposite with effort or smarts. But this is so easy to disprove; maybe the idea that their rich heroes are not really heroes - and that this world rewards evil - is just too hard for those people to take in. Assuming an average American worked 40 years, his earnings would be 67521 (archive) * 40 (presumed years of working) = 2700840 US dollars in a life. This is 43135 times less than what has been spent on the fake moon landing. The fake moon landing could have paid for 43135 people to never work. So the world has valued the fake moon landing at 43135 American lives, and that is supposed to be something to praise?

This point could've been made without claiming the moon landing is fake. It's still not a particularly good point (the assumption that the money could've simply been shifted elsewhere without causing any problems or second-order effects is... well that's simply not how any of this works) but it would've been better.

Here's another example. This is from the article (rightfully) shitting on Wikipedia (but perhaps for the wrong reasons), where they go even further and claim that "the moon landing is so easy to disprove" and "the chance that the moon landing was real is zero":

The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969.[4] There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013.

Same old, same old. Opinions as facts, no criticism, dismissal of alternatives with the "conspiracy theory" label. The thing that makes this one unique is that the moon landing is so easy to disprove. Like, a single Bart Sibrel video - for example this one (CF) or this one can do it in less than an hour. And then nothing remains of all the fluff they've included in this Ministry propaganda piece. Look, people - the chance that the moon landing was real is zero. Absolute zero. And there is no way the Wiki editors don't know they're bullshitting you, proving Wiki is evil to the core.

I'm the last one to defend the accuracy or reliability of Wikipedia, but they really should've picked a better example than the Apollo moon landings. To its credit the rest of the page makes the point that sentences are often unsourced, and when they are sourced it's from sources that are less than great. It's just that... the examples given are parapsychology, plasma cosmology, alternative medicine, and even the September 11 attacks (yes, it seems like this person is a 9/11 truther too) among others. There's very few examples on the page that are passable (I'm not qualified to evaluate the claims about COVID-19 vaccines and I don't know anything about coconut oil or the Hunza people; I think the white genocide point is confused because the fundamental mistake is using the word "genocide" to refer to something that sounds like the Holocaust but isn't and is only-sort-of the Holocaust in the most superficial way, but sure, I'm willing to give them that) and they could've picked so much better examples to point out the errors in Wikipedia (like the articles on cryonics or Kiwi Farms).

wow, that take on capitalism was aggressively bad. Fallacy after fallacy without actually engaging with capitalism. Even without the moon landing element.

Very much agreed. To me, the fundamental problem with any sort of critique of any wide, global-scale distributed system (such as capitalism, but also others) is that it's very easy to diagnose problems but very hard to come up with solutions. You can criticize and criticize all you want, I'm not listening unless you have something better to replace it. And most of the time, they don't.

Well I didn't know about any of that. But I only take InfoSec advice from hackers and paranoiacs, so that's like one half of a perfect endorsement.

There's a bunch of them. Worst case scenario you can set up your own email server. There's a meme going around saying it's literally impossible because you'll get blacklisted, but I've had no issues running a personal one.

There's a meme going around saying it's literally impossible because you'll get blacklisted,

Anyone half-way competent can set up their own service but "Anyone half-way competent" effectively excludes the 90% of those who need to set up their own service.

You can sign up for a new gmail account sans phone number on a new android tablet.

Or at least you could a while back (mid 2020).

Ah yes, I don't want to give away my phone number, so I'll register with my personal spying device, that probably has a SIM card in it anyway.

I don't think low end ($40-50) android tablets have hardware to connect to the mobile network.

I guess I could be wrong. Volume of cell phones made might make a default chip with that hardware cheaper than one without.

Tutanota, an encrypted email service…

https://tutanota.com/faq

…that I use for buying steroids er, I mean conducting hard-hitting journalism, which is definitely what these email services are for, and they are definitely not for drug dealing.

if for receiving, you can use disposable email

There's an obscure email hosting service available at mail.google.com that allows use sans phone number. Although it prompts you for one when signing up, you can click through and skip that step.

I've heard varying reports about that. I was able to make one several years ago, but there's been no skip option the last few times I've tested it (in response to other people having trouble). Yahoo also went from asking for a recovery email/cell to demanding a cell.

My IP's dynamic, so it's not like they have me blacklisted or whatever term google uses now.

FWIW in an incognito tab I was able to create an email address and account without a phone number just a few moments ago. Living in the USA. Perhaps try that and add it as an available account after creation?

Doesn't work in Europe, and I'd say don't even try pretending you're in the US via a VPN, because that's a quick way to a blacklist.

Curious if it's a country-based thing, or if you were explicitly whitelisted.

I just tried it in Europe, and it works without phone #

In retrospect, maybe asking all these random people if they wanted to buy my home-brew Viagra was a bad idea.

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