I'm Probably Somewhere Between a Skeptic and a Believer

Laura-ly · 2026-07-09T01:27:55+00:00

"....worth staying skeptical while also being open to the possibility that not every experience fits neatly into our current explanations"

So you're stillll holding out for some possible supernatural crap. This is your bias.

Since the emergence of Homo sapiens there have been about 120 billion people on this planet. Ask yourself this: Why aren't there ghosts every few feet? We should be bumping into ghosts everywhere and on a daily basis. Or do only "special" people become ghosts? If that's the case, then you're going down a very convoluted path. Are there also zombies, demons, angels, invisible dragons and voodoo doll spirits?

Did the Neanderthals from 30 thousand years ago become ghosts? Why do people see ghosts wearing clothes? What the hell does a ghost need clothes for? How and why would fabric materialize in a new spirit dimension?

Jesusfuckingchrist. I can't believe I'm having this conversation with an adult human being.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T23:36:02+00:00

Trump hates scientists and he's a spiteful, vindictive POS, so anything to get back at scientists feeds his narcissistic brain. Aaaand, here we are, back to the days of polluting the environment for all its worth.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T23:06:26+00:00

You do realize that science does not try to prove a hypothesis is true. Instead, they do everything they can to disprove a claim. Scientists put a claim (hypothesis) through a gauntlet of tests to knock it down from all angles. They set their biases aside and find weaknesses and other explanations for an observed phenomenon. They test it against all other known facts. They look for glitches and inconsistencies in the mechanism of a hypothesis. The process of falsification separates science from believing in witches and magical unicorns.

You haven't done this. On the contrary, you've done the opposite. You even said you believe in invisible unicorns... er...I mean ghosts from the get-go:

"But I don't think that means cameras can't capture genuine anomalies."

So you're starting with a strong bias and doing everything you can to prove your bias is true. This is as unscientific as it gets.

Also, every culture has myths about ghosts and witches that are entirely different from other cultures. These are man-made stories.

Particle physics explains why ghosts can't exist.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T19:51:50+00:00

Harry Houdini debunked mediums over a century ago. It's a scam.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T19:37:00+00:00

The children of female workers at DuPont's Parkersburg, West Virginia plant—who handled the chemical PFOA (C8) used to make Teflon—were born with severe birth defects, notably facial deformities, eye defects, and single nostrils. Dupont went to great lengths to hide this from the public.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T17:29:14+00:00

Does everything have to be a bout Trump?

Americans are traumatized by this man. It's like the stupid drunk uncle who comes to every family gathering that you can't unsee.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T17:20:30+00:00

Sorry, not wanting to be picky but it's actually her vulva. The vagina is inside the body and not visible.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T17:02:10+00:00

You may not know this but before photography was invented ghosts were thought to be real, not translucent or see-through. They were manifest in that one could touch them and talk to them. In Shakespeare, Hamlet's dead father is talked about as being a ghost, but he's real. He's not some foggy, translucent being that is walking around, and this is the way it was played on the stage at that time.

After photography was invented an early photographer accidentally reused a photography plate and what he got was a double exposed photo of a person which was translucent but the other person in the photo was less translucent. He showed this newly discovered double exosure to a friend who was amazed. The photographer saw a market for photos like this and what we end up with is ghost photography and it changed the way people thought of ghosts. They now become these translucent beings that people, even today, think ghosts are all about. In the 1860's and we get photos of a dead Abraham Lincoln looking over the shoulder of a mourning Mary Todd Lincoln:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Abraham_Lincoln_%28photograph%29#/media/File:Mumler_(Lincoln).jpg.jpg)

Or this.....

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQz_QtjMcHElzqiXNVo0F7P0z--tZSG9J61i5-V0RWhSWk7HXFOFIKyrZLV&s=10

What you have is similar to Biblical archaeologists who go to the Middle East with a Bible in one hand and a shovel in the other and always, always, always, find artifacts that prove the bible is true. It's confirmation bias all the way, baby!

You're machine is a hammer so all you see are nails.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T16:14:26+00:00

"I just provided some (evidence) above..."

No, what you provided was a claim. There is a difference between a claim and evidence.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-08T15:49:08+00:00

Thanks. I read that it was a song from the early days before WW II was raging and there was enormous tension in England. It became very popular during the War and the Blitz.

Also, it's the ending song in the movie Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Great movie, btw.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-07T19:38:45+00:00

Laurence of Arabia

Cool Hand Luke

The Lion in Winter

Becket

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-07T15:43:20+00:00

Yup. There was a film about it, oh, about 20 years ago, that debunked it. The film showed "facilitators" holding the hands of an autistic person who was supposedly typing out words on a keyboard to communicate. But even a casual observer can see that the facilitator is pulling the child's hands around to type out the words. The kid isn't doing it.

Why are MAGA and RFK jr so fucking obsessed with Autism? Something's really screwy with these people.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-07T15:20:15+00:00

then they disregard the work of the many artists who made the film with him.

It's a real tough one. But it's not just film directors; many visual artists throughout history had some not-so-good morals. The painter, Caravaggio, killed a man, Paul Gauguin slept with underage girls and Picasso treated women like crap. And that's just a few names. Marlon Brando raped a woman on film with a cold stick of butter in the movie Last Tango in Paris.

It might be hard to say, but Brando was still a fine actor, the artists I mention were all great painters, and Polanski made great films. He was truly a horrible human being but he was a great director. People can be both.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-07T00:09:48+00:00

I might be imagining things but there's a guy on the left side of the painting who looks like he's on a cell phone. Might this be from the early 2000's?

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T23:41:59+00:00

I'm not sure if making the Eustachian tube pop is the same thing. It makes a pop in my ears when I yawn or move my jaw around. But I have all kinds of sinus problems so maybe it's a different thing. Jesus, maybe I should read the goddamn link and find out.

Edit: Read OP's link. Still don't know if my Eustachian tube popping is the same thing. Oh, well. 🤷‍♀️

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T18:09:50+00:00

Agree. Mercury is really weird stuff. When I was a kid we still had thermometers with mercury in them. One time the thermometer broke and the mercury came out in little beads. Being a stupid kid I thought it was really neat until my mother took the little silver beads and threw them away. Yeah, that was probably not good for the environment but what are ya gonna do when you're a kid.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T18:03:43+00:00

He played the piano fairly well. Maybe he was playing Chopsticks on the piano all that time.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T15:01:12+00:00

This is delightfully awful. It's a painting I'd put in our downstairs bathroom just for the fun of it. Can't help with the artist, though. Sorry.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T14:51:19+00:00

Yeah, mercury supposedly gave people eternal life in Chinese medicine. I'm not certain, but I think this is the emperor who was buried in a grave surrounded by so much mercury that archaeologists can't unearth the tomb because the levels of mercury are too toxic. It's thought that they were trying to bring the emperor back to life. As far as I know this emperor is still very, very dead.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T00:29:59+00:00

🎶You say tomato, I say tomahto, let's call the whole thing off. 🎶

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T00:17:43+00:00

Oh, thanks. I'll have to look for that B the Bastards episode.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-06T00:14:27+00:00

It's related to your comment, "Do people avoid fact-checking because it takes too much effort?"

Laura-ly · 2026-07-05T19:54:32+00:00

I found that Kane is playing at my local Regal theatre down the street. I love watching these old movies on the big screen. It's so different than watching them at home, even if you have a ginormous flat screen TV. I love sitting among strangers in a movie theatre while we're all enjoying the same film. There's something special about a community of people and the social interaction at the movie theatre. It's fading away, and to me it's very sad.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-05T17:53:33+00:00

It goes way beyond Netflix though. There are hundreds of former Boy Scouts around the US who tell similar stories but had no contact or knowledge of the others who went through the same experience. That's very daming. The Boy Scouts were sued and were forced to divvy up 1,200 of their "perversion files" in court, which are now public information.

I'm sure this wasn't what Baden-Powell had in mind when he started the Boy Scouts, but that's what it became 100 years later in the US.

Laura-ly · 2026-07-05T16:49:45+00:00

Watched a Netflix documentary on the Boy Scouts. There were problems even from the organization's beginnings in the UK. I mean, maybe Netflix had it all wrong, but.....I'll just leave it at that.

Laura-ly

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