It's always disappointing when a series makes a big deal about societal and structural problems in it's setting, making readers think it has interesting things to say about the subject, only to then resolve the problems by fighting The CEO of Racism, John Racist, so that all of society's problems would then get better because they promoted a new CEO.
This comic was published in 2010 and I remember going to a talk at Cal Tech presented by Dr. Lucy Jones (LA's favorite celebrity seismologist) in 2012ish where half of the audience question portion of the presentation was accusations that scientists were covering up earthquake predicting technology because we finally had somewhat effective earthquake warning systems as a result of faster data transmission technologies and the widespread adoption of cellphones.
One thing that fascinates me is conspiracy theories where there is no obvious competing narrative, merely an attack on the existing narrative.
Like, what's the conspiracy theory? That we have earthquake prediction technology, and we use it, but we pretend that we don't? Why?
9/11 was the first time I started to notice conspiracy theories that didn't seem to have an alternative narrative of the facts, simply a scatter shot assault on the existing narrative. The official White House stance on covid is another.
The conspiracy theory here is that the earthquakes are man-made. That’s the competing narrative. The person in the original tweet thinks it’s suspicious that there are warnings before there are visible signs of an earthquake, and is implying that earthquake was a planned event.
Why would you plan an earthquake? I guess I just end up on the second order questions of, "Why would you want to kill a bunch of people in an earthquake, that's a really inefficient way to kill people that involves a lot of logistical headaches."
And then a second's thought further is "If your goal is to kill a bunch of people in an earthquake why even send the warning out at all? Wouldn't it be better to pretend that Earthquakes are so unpredictable that sometimes we just don't know they're coming?"
Also, of course, "Earthquakes are manmade" and "We have earthquake prediction technology that we hide" are two totally different claims, more or less incompatible with each other.
Not only is deploying Earthquake Tech against your own people and also warning them about it while pretending you don't have Earthquake Tech a stupid and pointless thing to do, but if any major world power had earthquake-causing technology we'd know about it from the suspicious jump in earthquakes in battlefields and contested territories. The CIA would be rubblising major cities in the middle east on a twice-yearly basis to tank the economies of countries that won't give the USA good enough trade deals.
posted this to tiktok in 2021. it got millions of views and many people in the comments
1. thought i said "my cunt" 2. were very angry, claiming i don't actually have a vat of iodine (I guess it is betadine, which contains iodine but it not purely idoine. but shut up.) 3. were angry that i think iodine stings bc it doesn't sting them. 4. wanted to know why the buidling i'm in appears to be flooding (don't worry)
Not a single person pointed out that I misspelled it "Idodine."
The final punchline was tiktok ultimately deleting the entire video for "encouraging dangerous activities."
ms-demeanor
weevil-mastermind
coksi-likes-shrimps
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