Dumb Shit on Wikipedia

[Molly White's Breast Milk]

And the Chinese Medicine page may as well be "why alternative medicine is stinky and stupid and why real science rulez!"

To be fair, Chinese "medicine" was created by Mao because he had all the doctors killed.

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

This isn't from Wikipedia, but it's still an absolutely bizarre editorial choice for an online encyclopedia: the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Tippu Tib does not once mention the word "slave." For those of you unfamiliar with the 19th century exploration of Africa, this is about as absurd as if the article on Robert E. Lee never mentioned slavery. Actually, it's worse - you could probably do a very short article on Lee saying he was a Confederate general and listing his military accomplishments, but Tippu was the king of a vast slave trading empire. It's the whole reason why he was important. He's a massively neglected, but deeply fascinating, figure in the Scramble for Africa whose actions had effects on central Africa with consequences that resound to the present day.

For once, Wikipedia is better (and, shockingly, less woke, in that it successfully identifies a black man as a slave trader and owner). Its article is of a similar length, but gives his slave trading activities the attention they deserve.) I have no idea what weird political decision made the Britannica chose to do this, but it just goes to show that your middle school teacher was right: don't trust encyclopedias.

The EB needs to go back to the famous 1910-11 eleventh edition. It was notable for being incredibly based and unrelenting in it's real talk, from being flagrant about race realism, to having humorously denigrating articles in the style of Johnson.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

To be fair, Chinese "medicine" was created by Mao because he had all the doctors killed.

That's just the modern version called Traditional Chinese Medicine (all capitalized), traditional Chinese medicine is a collection of regional traditional medicine traditions which are still mostly bullshit but for different reasons. Mao unified the standards and created a modern communist friendly version which is aggressively promoted by the CCP mostly to stamp out other traditions.

 

[Corpun]

This does actually make sense if you consider the concept of "race relations" to involve only the period where blacks and whites actually had race relations at all. I really don't think literally owning other people as property is "relations" in the normal sense.

This post-Reconstruction era of "race relations" was absolute shit. It was actually exacerbated by the Reconstructionist policy of deliberately installing black officials not on merit, but literally just to humiliate the defeated South even further. This was on top of the utterly corrupt horde of Northerners blatantly pillaging the South, taking bribes, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, and otherwise acting like a swarm of locusts.

Black people themselves were not exactly responsible for this shit. But they took the brunt of the revenge after the Hayes-Tilden election in 1876, which went to the House of Representatives for a decision. If you think Bush/Gore and Trump/Biden were ugly, you haven't seen shit. If this hadn't been resolved, it could have easily led to Civil War Part Deux. The result was Hayes "won," and was inaugurated, in return for the end of Reconstruction and the removal of federal troops from the South.

And the revenge was swift and brutal, with blacks in the South paying the price for the shit white Northerners had done.

ETA: and in case I'm not being clear, the established view of history where the North was the "good guys" because they "ended slavery," and the South was the "bad guys" because they fought to preserve it, there was definitely a period, from the end of so-called Reconstruction and decades afterwards, where black people were actually WORSE off than under slavery. It wasn't people saying "nigger." It wasn't hurts to the feels. It was lynchings, murders, outright massacres (like the Colfax massacre), just seriously bad shit.

My qualm witht he article is more from how they try to force everything from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Trail of Tears into one "Nadir" (which is of course some black guy picking a random Muslim word) as if they are all the same shit.

This isn't from Wikipedia, but it's still an absolutely bizarre editorial choice for an online encyclopedia: the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Tippu Tib does not once mention the word "slave." For those of you unfamiliar with the 19th century exploration of Africa, this is about as absurd as if the article on Robert E. Lee never mentioned slavery. Actually, it's worse - you could probably do a very short article on Lee saying he was a Confederate general and listing his military accomplishments, but Tippu was the king of a vast slave trading empire. It's the whole reason why he was important. He's a massively neglected, but deeply fascinating, figure in the Scramble for Africa whose actions had effects on central Africa with consequences that resound to the present day.

For once, Wikipedia is better (and, shockingly, less woke, in that it successfully identifies a black man as a slave trader and owner). Its article is of a similar length, but gives his slave trading activities the attention they deserve.) I have no idea what weird political decision made the Britannica chose to do this, but it just goes to show that your middle school teacher was right: don't trust encyclopedias.

The whitewashing of non-white slavery has been a thing for academics for a few decades now; I've seen some absolutely wild claims that Ottoman and other Muslim slavery (which continued into the 20th century - see the Arab delegation at the end of WWI - complete with slaves) was more humane, and even perhaps enlightened. Then of course, the figure you mention among others were the ones that helped start the mass slave trade into Europe and the new world - warriors captured in African wars and sold by their fellow blacks were the first source of slaves, raids inland only happening near the end of the transatlantic slave trade when demand could no longer be met.

I have seen people try and justify the Barbary raids kidnapping white women to sell into concubinage and the Blood Tax the Ottomans had as good things because only White slavery is bad apparently. It's absurd how hotly focused on roughly two centuries of slavery people can be they ignore the trade still active in parts of North Africa (Hell the UAE basically uses Indians as slave labor).

In a subversion of the genre, today I bring you dumb shit soon to be off wikipedia: Emma Portner, ex-wife of Ellen/Elliot Page, is having her article up for deletion.
View attachment 2015111
Eh, these people were absolute nobodies and who the fuck cares, good riddance, right?

Well, you see, once they completely scrubbed Ellen/Elliot's article to remove all traces of being a woman, the lesbian relationship got downgraded to a heterosexual relationship.

View attachment 2015110

Very encyclopedic.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

traditional Chinese medicine is a collection of regional traditional medicine traditions which are still mostly bullshit but for different reasons

One of those "guy travels world to see shit" tv shows here had a special on that stuff, it, basically, boils down to "dried animal X is remedy for Y", also donkey bouillon.

 

[Popoto]

That's just the modern version called Traditional Chinese Medicine (all capitalized), traditional Chinese medicine is a collection of regional traditional medicine traditions which are still mostly bullshit but for different reasons.

I do want to note TCM and East Asian herbal medicine is disgustingly good at one thing - endocrinology.

Actual TCM programs are the same as conventional western medical programs.

Yes, there is a portion where they learn about the qi and flow of heat/damp/wind but it is similar to the introductory medicine unit where you learn about the four humours, freudian and jungian psychology and that the hippocratic oath is a thing.

One of those "guy travels world to see shit" tv shows here had a special on that stuff, it, basically, boils down to "dried animal X is remedy for Y", also donkey bouillon.

It is a bit more complicated than that. For example, bear gallbladder/ bile is used for cholesterol lowering medication which is fair enough (In mammalia, harvestable gallbladders in animals are actually rare).

A lot of the stuff people make fun of like "rhino horn/tiger bone is used to make peepee go hard lol!" are used for rheumatism and arthritis, and anyone who took squalene supplements cant say shit.

Still other animals are used as a filtering mechanism - for example, rabbits are fed poisonous herbs and their poop collected to extract I forget what.

Ducks are fed sulfur (most naturally occuring sulfur componds are toxic to humans) then the duck meat is fed to the human.

Fundamentally it isn't that different from western medicine. We still pull insulin from pigs and oestrogen from horsepiss, and harvest horseshoe crabs for a testing agent.

Think sticking needles in people is bad? Lol please it is still less damaging than most forms of manipulation used in physiotherapy, and that chiropractor bullshit was an entirely western invention.

TCM is to western medicine as the Superstraight movement is to the LGBT alphabet soup. Is it not worth taking seriously? Well yeeeah, but you can't call one side retarded without having to admit some massive truths about the other.

 

[scathefire]

Why is it certain hot topic pages are blatantly not neutral? White Genocide uses a fucking Salon Source and a source form Harper that's literally just one guy's anecdotal experience with his white friend in SA during the white farmer landgrab. And the Chinese Medicine page may as well be "why alternative medicine is stinky and stupid and why real science rulez!"

Anything on Wikipedia about a topic that's political is going to be non-neutral, that's just a given at this point.

One of those "guy travels world to see shit" tv shows here had a special on that stuff, it, basically, boils down to "dried animal X is remedy for Y", also donkey bouillon.

I wouldn't mind TCM shit nearly as much if these people weren't contributing to the extinction of endangered animals for their unscientific bullshit. "I'm just gonna go around and kill as many wild tigers as I can, because then I can chop off their penises and sell them to retards." Now that makes me mad.

 

[Creep3r]

Why is it certain hot topic pages are blatantly not neutral? White Genocide uses a fucking Salon Source and a source form Harper that's literally just one guy's anecdotal experience with his white friend in SA during the white farmer landgrab. And the Chinese Medicine page may as well be "why alternative medicine is stinky and stupid and why real science rulez!"

As much as I hate TCM, Wikipedia really has no shame in regards to their biases, instead of simply pointing out that the real problem with TCM is all the fucking endangered animals that this shit kills rather than getting triggered by its nature as alternative medicine crap. At the end of the day, Wikipedia is supposed to have a policy on neutrality and that should go for every article, even shit we don't like or controversial stuff, yet these mongs never follow their own damn rules.

Anything on Wikipedia about a topic that's political is going to be non-neutral, that's just a given at this point.

I wouldn't mind TCM shit nearly as much if these people weren't contributing to the extinction of endangered animals for their unscientific bullshit. "I'm just gonna go around and kill as many wild tigers as I can, because then I can chop off their penises and sell them to retards." Now that makes me mad.

Pretty much this. I hate Wikipedia's obvious biases in regards to anything considered "political" (even their fucking media articles or those unrelated to politics are full of it), but its hard to be sympathetic to TCM of all things when that shit is responsible for the endangerment and extinction of who knows how many species. With it contributing to the death of thousands of pangolins because the Chinese think they're "earth dragons" that can cure erectile dysfunction. China is one of the biggest landmasses in the world and yet it has such a small range of biodiversity, and even bones are rare as fuck due to everything of an animal being grounded down into medicine powder, even dinosaur bones. So who knows how many amazing critters existed there before they got ground up so some bat-eating twat could get his peepee up.

 

[Toolbox]

TCM is to western medicine as the Superstraight movement is to the LGBT alphabet soup. Is it not worth taking seriously? Well yeeeah, but you can't call one side retarded without having to admit some massive truths about the other.

I don't believe actual medical researchers go to different countries illegally to en-masse kill animals without any limit just to use some small part of them to turn into meds.

 

[Large]

I don't believe actual medical researchers go to different countries illegally to en-masse kill animals without any limit just to use some small part of them to turn into meds.

((((((They)))))) don't want you to know.

 

[AnOminous]

I don't believe actual medical researchers go to different countries illegally to en-masse kill animals without any limit just to use some small part of them to turn into meds.

No, but absolute quacks buy them from poachers and don't care how the poachers get the rhinoceros horns or whatever.

 

[Corpun]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Emhoff

Apparently Kamala's stepdaughter is deserving of a Wiki article when she has done nothing of note. The fact her photo is such a piss poor image is telling of how recent this article is.

 

[DoubleD]

My editing interests include political extremism (particularly online) and groups in the manosphere.Once again on the subject of Wikipedia going out of its way to obey the rules of pronoun ettiquette. Someone brought to my attention that Keiynan Lonsdale uses "tree/treeself" pronouns, which I quickly googled to verify. The truth is not quite as ridiculous - just some crap he said in an interview about how we're all just trees, maaaan. (Archive)

View attachment 2014322

Wikipedia does not in fact use the tree-based pronouns to describe him. What it does do instead is to avoid using pronouns altogether (archive). And the above paragraph, alongside a vague allusion to his sexual identity, is quoted verbatim in the article.

The editor's comment ("perhaps this is a workable solution; rwd to both avoid using the wrong pronouns, and to avoid those who do not think Wikipedia should use neopronouns") would imply there has been at least some internal disagreement about whether or not to use non-standard pronouns.

Makes me wonder how long Rivers Solomon's fae/faer pronouns will last. For what it's worth, this version of Keiynan's article lasted 7 minutes before wikipedian Molly White implemented the no-pronoun solution as a compromise.

And for what it's worth, the editor in question is exactly the kind of person you'd expect her to be.

Also, I kinda buried the lead when I made this post, but White's user page proudly boasts of the articles she's heavily contributed too (or in some cases, started), half of which are exactly the sort of thing that Wikipedia would condemn in its opening paragraph as being 'far right', 'extremism,' etc.

Her page even says: "My editing interests include political extremism (particularly online) and groups in the manosphere."

It's nice to be able to put a name and face to these editing decisions.

 

[Popoto]

I don't believe actual medical researchers go to different countries illegally to en-masse kill animals without any limit just to use some small part of them to turn into meds.

Western medical lobbyists make the laws. It is apparently illegal to rape the oceans for shark fin soup, but not for squalene. Horseshoe crabs are illegal to catch until they're not.

We cause mass extinction in the Amazon rainforests for some bits of grass or other I cannot even remember what for, then memory hole the fuck out of it once it turned out to be irrelevant.

Do you think the pregnant horses we extract tranny pills out of are treated nicely? What about the snakes milked for botox? Back when animal rights terrorists raided laboratories for safety testing, shit brought out capuchin and macaque monkeys.

The inbred tiger populations in the US outnumber wild tiger populations in Asia, and it is so cute when people sprout memes like "that bitch Carole Baskin".

Conventional western medicine and conventional western animal cruelty laws are just as much a crock of shite as the Asian counterparts. But do go on about how the ivory trade is totally all Chinese.

 

[Large]

Do you think the pregnant horses we extract tranny pills out of are treated nicely? What about the snakes milked for botox?

What are you some fucking vegan?

 

[Toolbox]

Western medical lobbyists make the laws. It is apparently illegal to rape the oceans for shark fin soup, but not for squalene. Horseshoe crabs are illegal to catch until they're not.

We cause mass extinction in the Amazon rainforests for some bits of grass or other I cannot even remember what for, then memory hole the fuck out of it once it turned out to be irrelevant.

Do you think the pregnant horses we extract tranny pills out of are treated nicely? What about the snakes milked for botox? Back when animal rights terrorists raided laboratories for safety testing, shit brought out capuchin and macaque monkeys.

The inbred tiger populations in the US outnumber wild tiger populations in Asia, and it is so cute when people sprout memes like "that bitch Carole Baskin".

Conventional western medicine and conventional western animal cruelty laws are just as much a crock of shite as the Asian counterparts. But do go on about how the ivory trade is totally all Chinese.

All plants and animals produce squalene, it would be as simple as diversifying where the supply comes from. Yes, it's dumb that sharks are used at all, but it can both be synthesized and nabbed from many other living things. Horseshoe crabs, on the other hand, aren't killed from the blood extraction process, which I assume you are alluding to.

Never heard of the grass thing, but again that sounds like a case where the product at hand could be taken from somewhere else if enough thought was put into it.

Horses are not an endangered animal, nor are they killed from this process. It's dumb that they're used for this, and I wouldn't say it's particularly scientific. The whole joke around transitioning is basically just a massive medical "experiment" by quacks who want a quick buck. Snakes are not killed for extraction and are also typically bred for it. as it isn't very tough to breed most of the common venomous snakes.

Animal testing on monkeys is actually useful since they're so similar to us, but yes their treatment isn't good. All the same we're moving away from this kind of thing for a lot of testing that doesn't require an entire animal. But in the first place, most of these animals are captive bred. This isn't a case of taking animals out of the wild. Most of the time the only reason that's even done is for behavioral testing of wild animals, and usually not the more nefarious kind.

How is the inbreeding of a dying species somehow related to medical science? Most of the people doing that kind of thing are rescuers that aren't particularly interested in research, or private owners, as was the case for the tiger king and his zoo, and people like Carol. Not sure how this even applies to this argument.

No, our medical systems aren't the same. For the bad parts of western science can at least IMPROVE. "Traditional" medicine stays the same while populations increase, driving species to die regardless. And for the most part things that are taken from the wild can eventually be replaced with biosynthetic replicas, or the animals or plants can be captively bred.

 

[Popoto]

All plants and animals produce squalene, it would be as simple as diversifying where the supply comes from. Yes, it's dumb that sharks are used at all, but it can both be synthesized and nabbed from many other living things. Horseshoe crabs, on the other hand, aren't killed from the blood extraction process, which I assume you are alluding to.

Between 10-30% of the crabs do not survive the extraction process.

I don't care whether you maintain squalene can be extracted from other sources, fact is, it isn't.

Never heard of the grass thing, but again that sounds like a case where the product at hand could be taken from somewhere else if enough thought was put into it.

Again, the point is we don't.

Horses are not an endangered animal, nor are they killed from this process.

The mares rarely die, but the foals do. If you believe a constant cycle of pregnancy and abortion is beneficial to a horse's life, legit I don't know what to tell you.

It's dumb that they're used for this, and I wouldn't say it's particularly scientific. The whole joke around transitioning is basically just a massive medical "experiment" by quacks who want a quick buck.

I'll let you get back on that.

Snakes are not killed for extraction and are also typically bred for it. as it isn't very tough to breed most of the common venomous snakes.

Milking is extremely traumatic and most snakes do not survive the milking process.

Animal testing on monkeys is actually useful since they're so similar to us, but yes their treatment isn't good. All the same we're moving away from this kind of thing for a lot of testing that doesn't require an entire animal. But in the first place, most of these animals are captive bred. This isn't a case of taking animals out of the wild. Most of the time the only reason that's even done is for behavioral testing of wild animals, and usually not the more nefarious kind.

So because it's "useful" suddenly they aren't endangered? Do you seriously not see your double standards in this?

Where do you think those captive breeding populations of animals come from, and how do you think they prevent inbreeding? Was there a colony of capuchins native to Germany?

How is the inbreeding of a dying species somehow related to medical science? Most of the people doing that kind of thing are rescuers that aren't particularly interested in research, or private owners, as was the case for the tiger king and his zoo, and people like Carol. Not sure how this even applies to this argument.

The fact matters in that tigers are driven to extinction just the same, whether it is because "the Chinese use it to make their peepee hard" vs privately owned zoos.

No, our medical systems aren't the same. For the bad parts of western science can at least IMPROVE.

That is just your biased opinion that thinks western medicine hasn't done stupid shit and promptly memory holes it, which is why we have osteopathy and chiropractic medicine.

Note it is conventional western medicine trooning out people en masse. Do keep me apprised of those improvements.

"Traditional" medicine stays the same while populations increase, driving species to die regardless. And for the most part things that are taken from the wild can eventually be replaced with biosynthetic replicas, or the animals or plants can be captively bred.

And who says they aren't captively bred or substituted with artificial synthesis when possible? You, the authority on TCM?

Whether you like it or not, TCM is now a legitimate medical specialty taught in universities worldwide, and it hasn't been the "boil this illegal to catch animal to make you better" for at least 50 years.

Give it another 50 years and people will think "oh yeah it had a bit of a weird past like osteopathy and physiotherapy and chiropractic medicine"

I am not telling you to suck TCM cock. What I am telling you is to think more critically about the shit we do and not pass it off as harmless and totes legit just because we are the ones doing it.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Fundamentally it isn't that different from western medicine. We still pull insulin from pigs and oestrogen from horsepiss, and harvest horseshoe crabs for a testing agent.

Because that actually is proven to do stuff. Modern Western medicine is basically a "best of" medicine because they do plenty of drug studies before actually using it.

Here's the crucial difference between real medicine and TCM shit. TCM shit will at best have the actual chemicals a real drug does and many times will have minimal or none of that chemical. Real medicine uses many chemicals not found in nature. Real medicine is reviewed over and over by actual doctors because there is a lot of money in drug discovery and even more if Pharma don't have to worry about lawsuits over a shitty drug.

Since real medicine works (even if Big Pharma does plenty of evil shit themselves), the occasional bit of animal torture is justified. There's always a push to synthetic sources anyway.

Think sticking needles in people is bad? Lol please it is still less damaging than most forms of manipulation used in physiotherapy, and that chiropractor bullshit was an entirely western invention.

Chiropractic is mostly bullshit though, I mean the founder of it at one point wanted to get it declared a religion. Acupuncture is similarly mostly bullshit. It's mostly a placebo.

 

[Popoto]

Because that actually is proven to do stuff. Modern Western medicine is basically a "best of" medicine because they do plenty of drug studies before actually using it.

Who tells you that TCM doesn't ever test their shit, or that everything we do is 100% proven? The medical community certainly doesn't. That's why acupuncture has crawled its way into conventional physiotherapy and we have scandals like the thalidomide or breast cancer implants or the air humidifier plastic lung.

It is also why hospitals offer water births when it is uh, probably dangerous, we think? Lol no one actually tests this shit.

Here's the crucial difference between real medicine and TCM shit. TCM shit will at best have the actual chemicals a real drug does and many times will have minimal or none of that chemical. Real medicine uses many chemicals not found in nature. Real medicine is reviewed over and over by actual doctors because there is a lot of money in drug discovery and even more if Pharma don't have to worry about lawsuits over a shitty drug.

You are conflating homeopathy and naturopathy with TCM, and TCM compounded medicine are actually extremely potent. Your kind of arrogance cost lives during the Fen-Phen scandal.

Fen-Phen is a herb named "ma huang" in TCM, by the way. The scary chemical compound name of "phentermine" got coined when Pfizer pretended to discover something thats been around for centuries, and if you see its wikipedia article, the fact that this was a TCM herb has been fucking memory-holed.

Saying "real medicine" uses purely artificial compounds is some next level bullshit like "we don't grow coca plants or poppies". We do, ok?

There is not a lot of difference in "real medicine" and the "TCM bullshit." "Real medicine" has been cross pollinated with "TCM bullshit" for quite a while now, and you may have taken TCM therapies yourself, you just don't know it because it is repackaged like TENs.

It's nice that you have such faith in conventional biomedicine. In reality, a lot of medicine, particularly in psychiatry and pain management, is bullshit.

 

[scathefire]

Who tells you that TCM doesn't ever test their shit, or that everything we do is 100% proven? The medical community certainly doesn't. That's why acupuncture has crawled its way into conventional physiotherapy and we have scandals like the thalidomide or breast cancer implants or the air humidifier plastic lung.

It is also why hospitals offer water births when it is uh, probably dangerous, we think? Lol no one actually tests this shit.

You are conflating homeopathy and naturopathy with TCM, and TCM compounded medicine are actually extremely potent. Your kind of arrogance cost lives during the Fen-Phen scandal.

Fen-Phen is a herb named "ma huang" in TCM, by the way. The scary chemical compound name of "phentermine" got coined when Pfizer pretended to discover something thats been around for centuries, and if you see its wikipedia article, the fact that this was a TCM herb has been fucking memory-holed.

Saying "real medicine" uses purely artificial compounds is some next level bullshit like "we don't grow coca plants or poppies". We do, ok?

There is not a lot of difference in "real medicine" and the "TCM bullshit." "Real medicine" has been cross pollinated with "TCM bullshit" for quite a while now, and you may have taken TCM therapies yourself, you just don't know it because it is repackaged like TENs.

It's nice that you have such faith in conventional biomedicine. In reality, a lot of medicine, particularly in psychiatry and pain management, is bullshit.

Why are you so defensive of Traditional Chinese Medicine? Do you have a habit of snorting ground-up northern white rhinoceros horns or something?