User talk:ජපස

no trouts

...but I don't want the bludgeoning simply transferred to my talk. The editors at the article should treat that as any other edit request from someone with a COI. valereee (talk) 15:57, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Will do! Sorry about mistreating your talkpage. jps (talk) 17:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Not at all. It wasn't that I didn't want it on my talk in particular but that I didn't think it needed to be done anywhwere. I just think the editor needs to go do something else. The article needs a synopsis, but they don't seem to be able to live with a collaborative effort on it. valereee (talk) 18:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Cosmology for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Cosmology, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cosmology until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

:)

Special:Diff/1068491098. And comments welcome at its talk page if you detect obvious problems or omissions... —PaleoNeonate – 18:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Reminds me of stuff I had done years ago. I think it's buried somewhere in the history of the userpage. Cheers! jps (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice, I found it, —PaleoNeonate – 15:29, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

• AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
• The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

New message from Jo-Jo Eumerus

Hello, ජපස. You have new messages at Talk:TRAPPIST-1.
Message added 12:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Re: The Cosmic Serpent

I reverted your deletions from The Cosmic Serpent because your rationale for removing the material makes no sense. A crazy as Narby sounds, your edit makes it seem like you didn't even review what you were deleting, as the cited material you removed criticizes Narby. Further, the material adheres to various guidelines pertaining to synopses for non-fiction articles. You cited WP:REDFLAG which makes no sense for two reasons: one, the synopsis is written within the context of the author's stated claims, and two, biophysicist Jacques Dubochet debunks Narby's assertions within the same section, fulfilling the remit of REDFLAG. Again, it really sounds like you aren't reading what you are editing. Viriditas (talk) 11:49, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Am I in an alternate universe here? I would love to see Jacques Dubochet's debunking, but the reference link was to this cotton-mouthed review from the Guardian. It doesn't actually support the prose placed and, to the extent that it does, it is indeed a WP:REDFLAG as Jay Griffiths isn't exactly qualified to opine on whether shamans have scientific knowledge of molecular biology. It's possible that there were issues at some point back in the history of the article where reliable sources were removed, but Dubochet is nowhere mentioned in that source. I think the problem is that you assumed that the article was in a previous state. jps (talk) 11:59, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

You may want to consult how we write synopses for non-fiction articles. The stub as it is follows those rules. While you and I might agree that Narby has clearly fallen into a drug-induced state of pareidolia and patternicity, which is a very common psychological state in the psychedelic community, you must also agree that this altered state of consciousness is no different than a religious adherent who writes a crazy book about perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena, or a political conspiracy theorist who makes a crazy fake documentary film like 2000 Mules. Don't confuse the map with the territory. We can write about these works without also lending them credence, and we don't outright delete the material or the articles because they make crazy claims. I am unaware of any article about Narby on Wikipedia that asserts the veracity of his claims. Instead, the material asserts what he says and cites his detractors like Dubochet et al. Jay Griffiths has no bearing on this at all, and I'm confused why you keep bringing this up. I think it's perfectly acceptable to make it clear that Narby isn't adhering to established science, which was the purpose of Dubochet, which was removed. If more can be added, great. I think we may be talking past each other. Griffiths isn't being used to support Narby, it's been used to cite Narby. I think that's the part you are missing. Viriditas (talk) 12:11, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I'm confused That makes two of us. Consider your diff which kicked off this conversation. Can you see that you (re-)introduced two sources? One was Jay Griffiths and other was Narby's follow-up book. I also don't understand your distinction between "supporting Narby" and "citing Narby" vis-a-vis Jay Griffiths. jps (talk) 12:19, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

This is really simple and there should be no disagreement: you removed the entire synopsis section, including Griffiths, which summarizes Narby's book thesis (it is not used to cite Griffiths' personal opinion as you claim); and you removed Dubochet, who criticizes Narby's failure to test his theory. Let me repeat myself: you removed the statement "The book argue[s] that [the] modern scientific understandings of DNA have been known to indigenous people for thousands of years and learned by shamans through ritual." This is part of Narby's extraordinary claim. Griffiths is cited not for his opinion, but to source Narby. You also removed the material criticizing Narby: "Jacques Dubochet criticized Narby for not testing his hypothesis". And for another look, here is my original stub. Viriditas (talk) 12:28, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

You claim that Griffiths is reliable for a summary of Narby's thesis. I categorically disagree. This would be rather as if we took a shroudy's word for the synopsis of a book about a claim Roman Empire provenance for that mediaeval fake. It's just not a very reliable source for establishing what if anything is a worthy synopsis of the book. Further, do you admit that the source I removed was not to Dubochet?

Maybe you are concerned that the text in question was okay and that the sources could be improved. But we are under no obligation to keep text that is uncited or poorly supported at Wikipedia. If you have better sources, by all means let me know, but right now the article is being sourced to just about the most credulous that I can imagine. And, what's worse, I don't think we can use Narby as a source for Dubochet's criticism. Do you?

jps (talk) 12:32, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Further, do you admit that the source I removed was not to Dubochet? You clearly removed Dubochet in this diff. I can't respond to your other comments because they make no sense. Either there is a language barrier or you honestly don't understand anything I've said. I'm not attached to the articles in question, and I would seriously recommend redirecting them to their parent temporarily. However, you are doing an endrun around the current discussion and that's why I reverted. How about letting the discussion play out? Viriditas (talk) 12:39, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

One last time to see if you will get it: The citation on that text was to a book by Narby. It was not a source by Dubochet and I cannot for the life of me find the claimed citation (Dubochet 1997) that appears in Narby's book. So what Wikipedia is doing is quoting Narby quoting Dubochet for criticism. This is not how it's supposed to work. The rest of the argument that we shouldn't edit/improve articles while they are under AfD is one that I think is roundly rejected by deletion policy. jps (talk) 12:59, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Trying to figure out what is going on here, I think that the Dubochet criticism that Narby is quoting might be found in this French-language book: [1]. However, I cannot confirm that as I do not have the book and no libraries near me have it. Can you confirm this? If so, that would be a good source for criticism, but I would appreciate not relying on Narby's translation as, at a minimum, this would be a slight conflict of interest, I'd argue. jps (talk) 13:07, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I will ping @Odysseus1479: but he hasn’t been active since late 2021. Odysseus1479 has previously helped me find and translate French works for various articles. I will also attempt to look as well. Thanks for the tip. Viriditas (talk) 01:20, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! I imagine that if we can locate this work, it is liable to be very enlightening one way or another. jps (talk) 03:14, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking of me, @Viriditas! I’ll just say that my general laziness is punctuated by periods of low morale. Glad to help, anyway: although I’m not particularly good at finding things I’ll have a go at translating or summarizing whatever can be found. From a cursory survey following the above links I gather that the immediate issue is of our reporting criticism based on the subject’s own writing. I agree with jps that it’s a bad look, even where it’s not obviously a straw-man or otherwise self-serving account. (Presumably Narby would be describing Dubochet’s criticism by way of a preamble to his own rebuttal.)

Regarding DNA Before the Sovereign, it does look promising as the source. A few observations:

• I don’t suppose I can materially improve on a machine-translation of the blurb, but it’s more of a teaser than an abstract, anyway. The “debate” might be a collection of battling essays, a transcript of a moderated dialogue, or anything in between, and it’s unclear what role Kiefer actually plays as “arbitrator”: judge, framer/commentator, referee, facilitator or some combination thereof? (Not that that’s particularly relevant to what Dubochet says there.)
• “Not testing his hypothesis” is on the vague side for searchability, and the IA link doesn’t appear to host the Narby source any more, so I can’t tell how specific or detailed his description is there. The German edition of this book does appear to be searchable at Google Books, however, if you can recruit a German-speaker—then again snippet-views often fail to provide sufficient context to be properly understood, and the most likely search-terms may occur passim.

  P.S. The Ascent review cited at Intelligence in Nature contains what appears to be a quotation from Dubochet about CS: “blindly charging down the wrong path”. Translating that to German might score a hit. Then again it’s uncited, so for all we know it could be Narby’s description again.—04:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• I’m nowhere near either of the two libraries WorldCat shows, but it can be purchased (& shipped here) for only about US$15. It would also take some time & effort to read through—I’m a good order of magnitude slower reading French than English—but I expect that would be the best way to get a proper grasp of the debaters’ positions. OTOH it appears quite short, and from the German ToC I gather the scientific issues (as opposed to ethics & policy) are mostly covered in the first few chapters.

Those are my initial thoughts, anyway. Sorry for the delayed response.—Odysseus1479 04:43, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Input requested

Please see my comments at Talk:Sun#Formation_prose_structure concerning the FA prose in the formation subsection. Viriditas (talk) 23:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Dude, just wanted to thank you again for one of the best explanations I’ve ever read. Is it okay if I bug you now and then for future help? Viriditas (talk) 21:41, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course! No problem. jps (talk) 01:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Great. I was looking for information on triggered star formation (TSF), in the context of the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Wikipedia has nothing except for a few sentences. There’s a recent paper that mentions a bit about it. I realize we have a star formation article, but I don’t think TSF is the focus. There’s also many theories that can be folded into a general article on TSF. Viriditas (talk) 22:49, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It is outside my area of expertise to know whether a separate article on triggered star formation is worthwhile. Certainly a section in the star formation article makes sense, in my rough understanding. Maybe that's a good place to start and then spinout? jps (talk) 03:07, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Viriditas (talk) 04:22, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

So how to approach this? I respect the OpenStax team for doing a pretty good job of summarizing at an appropriate level the state-of-the-art understanding of astronomy. They just updated with 2e, so we could start by seeing the differences in emphasis or character between our star formation article and their chapter. jps (talk) 11:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I like this approach. In a related endeavor, I was reading off-Wiki about stellar jets and their role in star formation, only to find that Wikipedia’s treatment of the subject, which strangely appears in an article titled astrophysical jets, differs greatly with how others treat the subject. In a little bit of good news, I really enjoyed reading Barnard 68. It has engaging and informative prose that keeps the reader interested. Viriditas (talk) 01:10, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

In grad school you often have one or two classes on jets in your plasma and fluids class or something. I may even have had a hand in shoehorning a lot of stuff into the astrophysical jets articles some 15 years ago or so. In any case, most physical models for producing jets scale rather nicely, and so they're often all lumped into one like this. Compare accretion disk. jps (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Related question: I couldn’t help notice multiple off-wiki sources constantly talking about how "inefficient" stellar jets are, to the point that they were boggled by the lack of efficiency. Why is this such a concern? Does this imply that they are fundamentally missing something about how stellar jets function if they perceive a wasted or useless process? For analogy in another discipline, would this be like the previous understanding of "junk DNA" in biology as a placeholder for not understanding its function? Per your link to accretion disk, that article says, "Jets are an efficient way for the star-disk system to shed angular momentum without losing too much mass”, but that statement is not true for stellar jets at the beginning of the formation of a star. Per Openstax, "Studies of Orion and other star-forming regions show that star formation is not a very efficient process. In the region of the Orion Nebula, about 1% of the material in the cloud has been turned into stars. That is why we still see a substantial amount of gas and dust near the Trapezium stars. The leftover material is eventually heated, either by the radiation and winds from the hot stars that form or by explosions of the most massive stars". If memory serves, a lot of this material comes from stellar jets. Viriditas (talk) 02:07, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Most of the time discussion of efficiency is referring to the efficiency of star formation which is to say the efficiency of carrying angular momentum away from a system and the chances of creating a star. One of the big outstanding mysteries in astrophysical modeling is how you get from cloud to star. Under certain assumptions about the process you form way too many stars. Under other assumptions, it's basically impossible. Getting the efficiency of star formation just right would explain the number, size distribution, and distances between stars, for example. jps (talk) 12:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Got it. The models in the literature that I’m looking at say there should be more stars based on the numbers, but there aren’t, so the models aren’t accurately predicting star formation. Is this correct? Viriditas (talk) 21:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Seems to be. There are lots of "quenching" mechanisms that people invoke but so far no one knows what the right answer is. jps (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Would you consider becoming a New Page Reviewer?

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. () Hi ජපස, I've recently been looking for editors to invite to join the new page reviewing team, and after reviewing your editing history, I think you would be a good candidate. Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; the new page reviewing team needs help from experienced users like yourself. Would you please consider becoming a New Page Reviewer? Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision (if it looks daunting, don't worry, most pages are easy to review, and habits are quick to develop). If this looks like something that you can do, please consider joining us. If you choose to apply, you can drop an application over at WP:PERM/NPR. If you have questions, please feel free to drop a message on my talk page or at the reviewer's discussion board. Cheers, and hope to see you around, (t · c) buidhe 20:30, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

HB

What in the world is driving this? Even claiming that an in-depth investigation is an opinion piece. FTN? Doug Weller talk 16:03, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

I think this is largely fall out from the Guerrilla Skeptic Arbcom case. One side learned the wrong lessons from that. jps (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Dammit, I was named in that case, and I still dunno what you are on about!!. - Roxy the English speaking dog 18:44, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Not to get all philosophical or anything, but Wikipedia has cultivated a culture that looks at policies as though they are gifts from god. I understand why WP:BLP is as stringent as it is. There was a time when Wikipedia was a literal defamation engine. But we've moved well past that era and there are nuances that were not captured when the policy was being formulated which have come to the fore. There is a culture here that it's okay to basically be a WP:JERK here at Wikipedia as long as it is in the service of keeping BLP sourcing to a "high level". The problem is, the editorial judgement of what makes a source "high level" is always contextual. And here we are. jps (talk) 19:13, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite to talk[2] jps. Don't worry, I didn't think you were accusing me of being a member of GSoW, I accurately interpreted what you meant to say. I've explained my side of things as I see them on Roxy's page[3] and if you (and perhaps @Doug Weller:) would share your perspective I think that could be really helpful for all of us. Also open to any questions you still have about me or why I made certain edits. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:22, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I figured something like that had happened, but your actions were so brazen that it was really annoying for me to go through and try to undo so much of what you did (in part because bots helpfully ran after you). The effect of what you ended up doing was to shift a number of articles towards a state that basically removed major criticism. There is a party here at WP which would absolutely rejoice at this action and it isn't your group -- it's one that has been silently rubbing their hands together at the prospect of the regulars falling over themselves unable to handle the policies that had allowed for contextualization of fringe.

The problem really is that the obsession with declaring a certain source "reliable or not" as though it is a binary and not contextual as well as the generally laudable approach to be overly cautious with BLPs has driven us to be absolutely pedantic when it comes to how to write certain things here at Wikipedia. If I was going to write a textbook on UFOs (and I actually am doing that, truth be told), Colavito's work would feature as one of the better sources on the topic. This includes his blog which is flippant but accurate when it comes to this subject.

So that's what I see. The pendulum has swung a bit in an overcorrected direction of stringent sources. I'd be okay with that if it was accompanied by a removal of content that is dubiously sourced. But just removing Colavito from articles about wack-a-doodle ideas and not removing a lot of the ideas themselves just brings back awful memories of the bad old days. And the same patterns play out because while the motivations and interests have change, the software is basically as clunky and as conflict-inducing as it has ever been.

So no hard feelings, at all. I hope you can understand a bit where some of us old-timers are coming from here. And I am glad it didn't devolve into edit warring.

jps (talk) 00:24, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I actually am doing that I'll line up to purchase a copy. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 13:58, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

You won't have to if it works out! I'm writing it using grants and intend it to be OpenSource when it is finished. I guess a little WP-philosophy has rubbed off on me. jps (talk) 01:17, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I'd honestly forgotten that pseudoscience/skepticism was the "hottest" of the hot topics, next time I'l most certainly bring any skeptical source in question to RSN first so as not to trigger any old memories. We disagree on whether the ends justify the means in terms of using sources that don't meet our standards but I don't think we disagree on the rational response to any of the underlying topics. You do good work, next time just keep the WikiPTSD under control and start a conversation instead of going to 11 immediately. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, if we're swapping advice here (and I freely admit that I do tend to overreact because of WikiPTSD), a quick note in the thread that you intended to go through and remove all references to Colavito's blog would have been just as brazen but would not have caused me to go to 11. Discussion is always preferable to articlespace action when it comes to something like this, I think. I don't in principle object to removing that blog where there are other better sources or where it doesn't add anything. I guess if you pressed me, I wouldn't necessarily object if you thought it was a BLP matter and there were ways of minimizing the fringe advocacy of the subject. This probably requires some patience and care and a bit of WP:NODEADLINE sauce. jps (talk) 01:11, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

It never occurred to me that you might be. But I don't think you've done your due diligence on Colavito who has had positive reviews in a number of peer reviewed journals (and many mentions in books that are RS, but it's the journals that show his credibility. Doug Weller talk 07:42, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

The assumption that when someone calls a senator a "loon" that must be a fringe opinion is, perhaps, the jumping off point. Sometimes senators really are loons. I remember this one senator who pumped his fist in the air at a group of people that he later ran away from. Pretty loony. I remember this other senator who ran for president and had a famous campaign ad where he threw a rock into a pond as a political statement. jps (talk) 10:58, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, speaking of “the bad old days”, I can recall a similar cycle back in the mid-2000s with 1. intense coverage in popular media, TV, etc. featuring credentialed “experts” representing new “scientific” investigation of paranormal claims, 2. Wikipedia bombarded with new users who felt that, given these “new developments”, scientific proof of the paranormal would rapidly be be forthcoming and Wikipedia should get onboard, and 3. little, if any expert analysis or critique except for self published skeptics. But #1 declined steadily as the paranormal fad was replaced by new sensational popular interests, and #3 was mitigated as academics and science educators became more active in addressing pseudoscience in the media. However, this all took time…a number of years in fact…so it’s a bit disappointing to realize we’re only in the beginning of this new cycle with UFOs. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

You're telling me. And to have Avi Loeb leading the charge in a certain way is utterly disappointing. Well, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and we're really good at forgetting history. jps (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I see remarkable similarities to 2000s-era amateur ghostbusters pseudoscientific gadget craze, e.g. O.S.I.R.I.S. Off-road Scientific Investigation & Response Informatics System. However the mode of profiteering has certainly evolved since then. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:27, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Earth Similarity Index: ESI Table

I would like to bring back the ESI Table in Earth Similarity Index article for research purposes. Nicholas Herak (talk) 15:36, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I would recommend going through the [4] proposal channel if that's what you need. jps (talk) 20:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Incident at Administrator's Noticeboard

Hello, there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Specifically, we're trying to determine which laws dictate who can delete your comment on the Barbro Karlén talk page. Thank you. LightProof1995 (talk) 07:19, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

I just wanted to stop by and express my appreciation for your work keeping the woo on Wikipedia to an appropriate minimum. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 13:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

The feeling is mutual. Thanks for all you do too! jps (talk) 14:06, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey man, please calm down :)

Seriously, I appreciate your support at Talk:July–August 2022 United States floods#RfC about mentioning of climate change, but you're being a bit disruptive. Yes, some editors there have put forward very poor reasons, made obviously flawed statements, but I fear you might be getting close to the point where you might accidentally breach WP:NPA. I've explained there in a recent reply why I felt I needed to start that RfC, as the most neutral way to get attention to the issue. I know the whole thing became a discussion that is very frustrating to participate in, and even I resorted to some occasional cynicism, e.g. to deal with accusations that this was "off topic". But don't let this absurd discussion drag you into a useless fight! So let me give you some advice: Keep WP:COOL, spend some time away from the article and in other areas, and come back in a few days. It helps! (I know you are a much more senior editor than I am, but that won't stop me from giving you advice :P) I promise I will keep an eye on the page in the meantime :) -- LordPeterII (talk) 22:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate that you have your own way of dealing with things, but I am concerned that this dispute may be a stand-in for a bigger problem. I have no doubt that we will end up with a solution that will be amenable eventually, but in my experience these sorts of problems tend to spread insidiously if we pretend that the shell game is not rigged. What is happening here, it seems to me, is agenda-driven editors are more-or-less gaming the system. They probably don't even realize that they are doing it. I have no doubt that certain political corners of the US are in such a bubble that they think that any mention of climate change is a leftwing POV. Sadly, having gone down this road before, I think that the only way to really deal with this editorial issue is to identify people who approach the situation this way whether wittingly or unwittingly. It does not seem to be something that the normal modes of operation on Wikipedia is equipped to handle.

I will wait till the end of the weekend, but I have to say I am not optimistic.

jps (talk) 03:09, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Reliable Source Noticeboard Discussion In Progress

Hello. This is a friendly head's up that a discussion was started on the reliable source noticebaord to determine if the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration is a reliable source. You may be interested in participating in the discussion, so I wanted to let you know about it and say you may participate here. Have a good day! Elijahandskip (talk) 03:43, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

FYI

Regarding your edit here, and not that it matters much, but a quick analysis with Stellarium reveals for that date, time, and location that Jupiter was actually 9 degrees above the horizon. So thanks for removing those unsourced "facts." JoJo Anthrax (talk) 03:14, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

It is pretty amazing that this was allowed to slide. jps (talk) 03:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate your comment at my talk about my shepherding, but I also want very much to thank you for your contributions in that effort. Your input helped a lot, and it made all the difference. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I didn't do much, only forced the issue. But it seems that something a bit more stable and close to a Hegelian synthesis and Socratic mean has emerged. jps (talk) 11:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!!!

		The Death Barnstar
		Hello jps, Thank you for your contributions to Reincarnation. Excellent contributions to articles about death earn this wicked award. "Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure." -- Theodore Roosevelt LightProof1995 (talk) 16:41, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

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Happy holidays!

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, jps!

The other day, I was having a conversation with someone about holiday cards and social media. It occurred to me that, in the years since I left Facebook, the site I use most to communicate with people I like isn't actually a social media site at all. If you're receiving this, it's pretty likely I've talked with you more recently than I have my distant relatives and college friends on FB, at very least, and we may have even collaborated on something useful. So here's a holiday "card", Wikipedia friend. :) Hope the next couple weeks bring some fun and/or rest. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Rhodes UFO photographs/GA1

ජපස, if you meant to fail this GA nomination in your review, you didn't finish the job. At the moment, the review remains open and unresolved. The discussion at WT:GAN at the end of September does not appear to have affected the review one way or the other.

To complete the failure process, please see WP:GAN/I#FAIL for the remaining steps. If that is what you wish to do, I'm happy to help if anything is unclear.

If you have another solution in mind for this GAN review, please let me know your intentions, and I'll see what can be done. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:05, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if I have another solution or not. Discussion is ongoing. jps (talk) 00:02, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 13

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Gary Wilson (author), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Depression.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:03, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

What would J(PS) do?

Regarding your posts here and here, I favor inclusion criteria for both List of reported UFO sightings and UFO sightings in the United States such that the listed events/topics/things have their own, stand-alone enWiki article. That criterion should go far in improving the articles by excluding non-notable, stubby, some-guy-mentioned-something material. I am willing to do my part to keep the ball rolling, as you wrote, by starting the process, but I am uncertain how best to proceed. Would you recommend a full-blown RfC at one/both pages, or simple (yeah, right) Talk page discussions to achieve consensus? JoJo Anthrax (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I think that a WP:BOLD move would be better and just revamp the page. If it could be done in one fell-swoop so people would see what the result would look like, that would be best. Then, if there is pushback, RfC. But I have a feeling there won't be the pushback and, if there is, it won't be substantive. jps (talk) 18:09, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This also brings up the related issue of many UFO articles having misleading article names, Aurora, Texas, UFO incident being a prime example. Referring to reports of UFO sightings and claims of alien contact as "incidents" is a convention that books written by UFOlogists pioneered starting in the 50s. That many of our articles about UFOs follow this convention is no surprise, since most articles were created by UFO enthusiasts or editors deferring to what they believed was the relevant expert community for such things. Of course, there are a number of legitimate examples (like Roswell UFO Incident, etc.) where WP:COMMONNAME justifies the use of "incident", but there are too many others that need renaming IMO. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The word "encounter" is also commonly used in UFO article names, which also seems problematic. Do I assume correctly that boldly changing the titles (i.e., applying the JPS Model) is the best way forward? Or should a broader discussion be initiated, perhaps here? JoJo Anthrax (talk) 17:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I think a discussion doesn't need to be initiated until you encounter resistance. jps (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

User:Feoffer/sandbox History of UFO lore

Hi, Isn't this worth a deletion? Yann (talk) 19:31, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

It might be. Feel free to propose it. @Feoffer: to see what the intentions are. jps (talk) 22:10, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Yann: why delete that? I'm using it / working on it. How did you even find it? Is it being linked to from somewhere? I thought public-facing search engines omitted works in progress of this type. Feoffer (talk) 23:38, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I can think of a few ways it is discoverable through WP either through an internal search or through a contributions search, but I cannot speak for Yann. jps (talk) 01:06, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

There is a clear double standard here. You requested deletion of one of my subpage, while this has been here for more than 2 and half years. Yann (talk) 22:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

The double standard is baked in to Wikipedia: WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. As I said, feel free to nominate it. jps (talk) 22:55, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems like a valid Userspace draft, but it might be a good idea to tag it with {{Userspace draft}}. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 22:56, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

All the cool kids want to know

Regarding If I was going to write a textbook on UFOs (and I actually am doing that from here, is there any good news on that front? A year-long, off-continent sabbatical is coming up in a few months (not mine, my wife's) and I'm lining up things to read/explore/drink. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

We just had a meeting about it today. My colleague is actually taking a sabbatical next year to work on the text which is likely to be more broadly on Astrobiology and include UFOs as a single chapter. I can e-mail you a copy of the in-progress chapter if you'd like (though it does need updating). Direct attribution to Colavito hasn't made it into the text yet, I must admit. jps (talk) 19:18, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead and forward a copy to me via email. I will treat it as confidential correspondence. If you are open to editorial/grammatical feedback just give me the high sign. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 16:50, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Canvassing

Your notice of the Alderney UFO case on WP:FRINGE noticeboard constituted canvassing according to WP:CANVASS, specifically WP:INAPPNOTE. Your audience was chosen specifically as you believed they would support your point of view, and your message was not neutral. Please avoid this in future.

Boynamedsue (talk) 06:43, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

My notice was neutral and does not constitute canvassing. 07:10, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

ANI

Hello. I mentioned you in an ANI post regarding Boynamedsue's editing behavior at the AfD. Here is the ANI post: [5]. Regards, ---Steve Quinn (talk) 19:58, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Giant of Castelnau

Hi. I am wondering if "Giant of Castelnau" should be posted at FTN. The claims are outrageous. In fact looking at the discussion on this article's talk page, I'm thinking this is an AfD candidate. The sources are dated in the 1890's except for one 2017 paper, which discusses the mythology of giants over time. So, that paper does not specifically pertain to the topic. According to the talk page comments, there has been no discussion of this topic since the 1890's. So, what do you think? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

This is a good question. I do see one reliable source: [6], but the whole thing suffers from poor attestation, for sure. It dawns on me that Giant#Archeology_and_paleontology is not well-developed, and probably could stand some care and improvement with perhaps a spin-off article that explains that a) amateur and even some erstwhile professional "bone hunters" of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and through to the earlier parts of the twentieth century often made claims of giant human remains discovered -- none of which panned out and b) these claims form a corpus of an obscure if perhaps well-promoted group of "be amazed" types who are convinced that the evidence is all being covered up by "the establishment" as per usual. If we could get that section up to a spinoff, it probably would serve as an excellent merge target for things like this.

In the meantime, I think maybe stubifying the article may be a good first step. There are a lot of WP:PRIMARY sources and unreliable sources being used right now which need to be contextualized or removed.

jps (talk) 22:32, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi was going to write you a note about giantology. I like tracking down the obscure and just pretend the modern "be amazed" types don't exist, but if you ever think this is an unhelpful approach for an FTN topic just let me know. Anyway looked at Giant of Castelnau when i saw in the Afd but all i could find was an anthropology student[7] who says 6'5" to 6'7", looks like a cave bear, and plans to publish. Probably doesn't meet WP:PARITY. If the article is kept should probably mention Lapouge was measuring cephalic index of exhumed skulls at Castelnau-le-Lez. fiveby(zero) 00:04, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Fiveby: I'm glad you found this. This will help contextualize the primary sources and in fact conclude the story behind what Lapouge found. And it will put to rest erroneous 1890s' conclusions. And, this reliable source that is already affixed to the article [8] may also have some coverage. I'm going to try to find some place to download this article. As an aside, the student who contributed the above article mentioned something about publishing this research with her undergraduate faculty mentor. So that article may be somewhere out there if it got published. This is good. I don't think this happens very often with fringey topics. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The Historical Biology article just mentions in passing (skimmed the text online somewhere but can't find the link again) but here it is through WP:Library. Looks like a good source for Giant#Archeology_and_paleontology. fiveby(zero) 00:56, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks very much! ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

ජපස and Fiveby - Giant of Castelnau has now been stubified [9]. Feel free to take a look. We'll see if there is any resistance to this. And I am not sure what to do with the refs that are dated in the 1890s. Any suggestions? I would like to remove them, but I want to see if there is any push back first. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 13:11, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Your comment at ANI

I found that comment amusing so I changed my signature. If you don't like it let me know and I'll change it back. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 23:52, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I think we wear our badges of insults (perceived, actual, intended, or otherwise) with pride here because, hell, what else do we get out of volunteering for this project? Carry on wayward son. jps (talk) 02:53, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Rumors

Are you writing about me on a related off-site site? If so, why haven't you alerted me to this? I know that's not required but, come on, Wikipedian courtesy? And if not, apologies, but someone apparently has been since the Leary thing happened yesterday and is not willing to "accuse" me of things to my face on Wikipedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The rumors are true! Wikipedia has very strict outing rules that prevent me from commenting further. I take them seriously, that's why it is off-site. jps (talk) 01:35, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

You are welcome to join and discuss at the off-site location, but I have had people get pretty mad at me when I have extended such invitations. Still, you are welcome to join that community of misfit toys if you would like. jps (talk) 01:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Understood. Thanks for the invite. I know little about the site, and tend to stay on Wikipedia. Pretty slanted though, I've been sent a couple screen shots, and if stuff like that is what you folks think is a fair representation of whatever it is you are trying to represent, no thanks. For now anyway, maybe I'll drift over at some point. But this below the belt stuff seems very unfair and, of course, understandably turns me off to what you folks are doing over there. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:37, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

If you change your mind, you are welcome. jps (talk) 02:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:VANITY

Please read it before linking it again. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

It would have helped if you had said, "This redirect should no longer be used." More to the point, this is the first I'm reading of its deprecation. Why isn't there an edit filter? jps (talk) 22:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Grusch

I'm afraid you've bestowed me status I don't deserve, but no problem. The Grusch article is still in the huge and messy stage, so I'll just avert my eyes for the time being. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:45, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Please report to the draft office immediately for assignment to the front lines! jps (talk) 17:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

My platoon is cut off and surrounded. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:11, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

A Barnstar for you

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For your indefatigable, long-term efforts to promote encyclopaedic values at David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims and many, many other places. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 13:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Pioneer anomaly

Hello. I noticed you mentioned the Pioneer anomaly here (David Grusch talk page). I remember following that via our Wikipedia article. I started following it perhaps a year before it was solved. It was totally mind-blowing. What could it be?? Then it was satisfyingly solved. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 16:24, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

It's one of my favorite stories for why Ockham's Razor is so powerful. jps (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Beatrice Tinsley

Beatrice Tinsley isn't in the greatest of shape. I want to expand the material on her contributions to astronomy. There are three major parts missing from her professional work: the astronomers whose work she challenged (and possibly superseded, although their sister articles like the big crunch do not mention this), the work she promoted, and finally the work that eventually subsumed her own. I don't know how knowledgeable you are about her, but perhaps you have some advice for moving forward. I can do what I can do with the sources in the further reading section, but it would be nice to have some suggestions from someone in the field. For example, you could make some recommendations on concepts that the bio should mention, etc. Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Great project. Tinsley was an expert in galaxy evolution which was fairly nascent in her day. Her feud with Allan Sandage was over whether giant elliptical galaxies (n.b. OHMIGOD! How can this be a red link? I note our article on elliptical galaxies to where giant elliptical galaxy redirects is woefully underdeveloped -- maybe this is s a good place to start?) could be considered standard candles or not. Tinsley argued that they could not, and if Sandage had accepted that he wouldn't have gone down the rabbit hole that led to a conclusion that the deceleration parameter for the universe was positive.

Astronomers in their public facing moments and grant proposals tend to frame a lot of the debates like this in terms of cosmology because those questions are the "big ones", but really this was a question of calibration and detailed astrophysics -- still monumentally important for understanding reality but not the kind of big ticket items that get people to gasp in their seats. When a good standard candle was finally happened upon with Type Ia Supernovae, the accelerating universe was confirmed and we gave out the Nobel Prizes.

One thing that is worthy of note is that Allan Sandage was notorious for browbeating anyone who disagreed with him. He was an amazing observer and scientist who became convinced towards the end of his life that the Hubble Constant was much lower than what we now know it to be. His main interlocutor in this debate was Gérard de Vaucouleurs who took the high number. This is only tangentially related to the deceleration parameter question, but the lore in the astrophysics community back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s was that if you published anything that disagreed with Sandage you were liable to get a letter that was varying degrees of nasty towards your work. :) That Tinsley called out Sandage in a meeting in person was not only brave and unusual, it was kinda just desserts.

Anyway, I would focus on the galaxy observations and modeling. Tinsley was right: galaxies are dynamic objects that undergo considerable evolution over cosmic time. We now accept that as a matter of course.

jps (talk) 11:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, those are good pointers. I currently have two lectures queued up about elliptical galaxies to start. Viriditas (talk) 22:53, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Update: just spent a few hours listening to lectures and reviewing our articles. I'm more confused now then when I began. It appears that we know very little about elliptical galaxies. I feel like being in a perpetual state of confusion about the universe must be natural for people who study it. Viriditas (talk) 08:31, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry. What is wild is that some supposedly elliptical galaxies have rotation and disks! In any case, giant ellipticals are almost certainly the many smaller galaxies merging and being cannibalized. Dwarf ellipticals are a little more puzzling. Are they stripped bulges/cores of smaller galaxies? Are they somehow related to globular clusters? Or are they also hierarchically formed? Sorry, don't have clear answers for ya! jps (talk) 20:23, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Is it still true that they are unlikely to have planets due to all of this chaos, or has thinking changed on that over the years? Viriditas (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh gee, I'm not sure at all about that one. I think in general the stellar populations, metallicities, and densities of ellipticals would tend to favor fewer planets than bluer, metal-rich, un-dense counterparts. But when you've got a trillion stars, it would be folly to argue "no planets". jps (talk) 23:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I just downloaded an enormous treasure trove of information on Tinsely and her research. Due to my Homer Simpson-like brain, it's unlikely I will understand 1% of it, but I may have questions for you about it in the near future. Back to planets for a moment: do you think that looking for life or intelligence on exoplanets might be a lost cause, similar to how SETI has historically looked for radio waves? The reason I say this, is because science fiction writer Ian Banks in his Culture series makes an interesting point throughout the series, arguing that planets are quite rudimentary, parochial, and even quaint, as advanced civilizations would have moved far beyond them into artificial habitats. Do you think this idea might have influenced astronomers and others to look for irregular light fluctuations that one might find with an artificial megastructure, with Tabby's Star an example of this kind of search? In other words, what if searching for planets is a waste of time? Viriditas (talk) 08:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

do you think that looking for life or intelligence on exoplanets might be a lost cause, similar to how SETI has historically looked for radio waves? It is always a good idea to keep open the possibility that the answer to "Where are they?" is "Nowhere." By the same token, you are guaranteed to never find anything if you don't look. Attempts to assign values for a Bayesian prior on these questions, I think, are fraught. David Kipping, I think, explains that point the best. I do not begrudge the SETI folks at, for example, Breakthrough Listen their searches for signals. It's a high-risk/high-reward kind of endeavor that we humans cannot help but engage in. Moving beyond anything but the question of what a technosignature is and how we might decide we've actually seen one is something I'm not prepared to do. I thus get pretty uncomfortable when anyone makes any claims about how life (let alone intelligent life), if it exists beyond our little world, behaves generally out there in the Universe. I also think that science fiction has a somewhat outsized influence on the way SETI people and scientists generally have framed questions and looked for certain phenomena in astrophysics. I would argue that one particular episode of Star Trek: TNG is probably the main source of inspiration behind a minor fad in the scientific literature that tries to model Dyson spheres/Dyson swarms etc. Is this a good way to go about scientific advancement? Eh... I don't know. When you have one datapoint, it is hard to extrapolate. The fact is that in science, it is extremely unusual to see one thing that is never repeated again. The closest I can think of is the Oh-My-God particle consideration of which has yielded some interesting follow-up science though nothing that has yet matched the energy of that monster. Likely what is going on is that we don't actually know what to look for. Let's assume there are pieces of evidence permeating the cosmos pointing to an answer in the negative to the question "Are we alone?" -- my guess is that we are almost certainly still unclear about what is the easiest observation to convincingly make that case and we probably won't really understand how and why we are going about it in the wrong way until we actually make the discovery. For hundreds of years people correctly proposed that planets were probably orbiting most/all the other stars. It was within my lifetime that such observations were finally done to confirm that exoplanets exist and it turns out that the easiest ones to discover look nothing like our own. Which is not to say that no exoplanet system is like our own, and, in fact, our kind of system may very well be somewhat common -- but it's just harder to observe. I kinda like the analogy there.

So keep looking/listening, etc. I don't know what kind of weird "breakthrough" is liable to finally answer The Question in the affirmative. But I am not nearly confident enough to make any pronouncements about what it will be like prior to the discovery.

jps (talk) 12:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I came here to open another thread, and am caught up in reading this discussion. Quite intriguing stuff. I wanted to mention I have watched a bunch of David Kippling's Cool World videos. He is great. The questions he ponders along with discussing and showing the science involved in those questions opens things up for me. I enjoy all his videos. In one video he showed how causality is broken with the going back in time paradox, therefore going back in time is probably not possible. This was the first time I understood the importance of causality. Maybe I shouldn't admit that, but I'm not a physicist. So, from that I realized the causality is important to all kinds of physics. I just wanted to point to this example to show he well he is able to impart important physics and astrophysics concepts to physics and astronomy fan boys like me. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 13:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, I think he is much better than the shows made for the general public that oversimplify or over-analogize the science behind science. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 13:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Glad you like David's work! It takes all kinds, really. I've had conversations with David about his YouTube outreach and I think he is well-suited to the niche you are describing. PBS Spacetime maybe serves a somewhat similar role. But I also think we need decent "oversimplifications" and "over-generalizations" as well. The danger, of course, is that you might end up with some, err, problematic extrapolations promulgated as "good science", but I sometimes lament the "Umm... actually" ways in which commentators, critics, etc. go after each other. I guess the question is one of finding and promoting those who do a good job at the basics. Kipping, O'Dowd, Collier, etc. are not trying to be that, and that's fair -- they have their niches. Even the great Brady Haran has become so sophisticated as of late that I guess I need to look for the next, great popularizer of science. They're probably on TikTok. jps (talk) 13:42, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It's good you have such a balanced view, such as thinking decent oversimplifications, etc., are needed. And after watching some of the video you just posted, I can see the value of such presentations, and that they too fill a niche. That Gell-Mann Amnesia video is excellent, by the way. I'll try to find more of her videos. I think Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an excellent science communicator. In fact, I just started watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey for the first time. It is very good.

It seems he can quickly cover and understandably impart several topics or concepts in one episode. For instance, he analogized the history of universe up until the present day with a 12 month calendar, and this example worked for me. I have encountered similar 12 month analogies that didn't work for me with other presenters. And he utilizes the tree of life analogy effectively to show how all species on earth, past and present, are related by our DNA. I guess I already knew that one but his presentation somehow resonated with me. Then I am guessing that you know or know about Sean Carroll. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 14:57, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, Neil is great, but he sometimes runs afoul of certain Gell-Mann Amnesia issues similar to Kaku, but, I would argue, not as severe. Sean Carroll is a personal hero of mine even though I find his staunch advocacy for the Many worlds hypothesis to be a bit bewildering. jps (talk) 16:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I’m pretty sure I heard an AMA where Carroll said he wasn’t an advocate of many worlds. Did I mishear him? Or is your criticism focused more so on the fact that Carroll hosts many guests who defend it? Viriditas (talk) 06:40, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Carroll, unless he has recently changed his minds, is an advocate that Many Worlds is the best interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. See Something Deeply Hidden, for example. jps (talk) 20:05, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I see most of this is from 2019. There’s a quote on PBS News from that time that sounds like something I recently heard him say: "It's not so much that I'm a fan of many worlds, it's that I care about the foundations of Quantum Mechanics." Viriditas (talk) 20:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing the Kipping video. I've previously recommended him to other users. In this particular video that you shared, Kipping concludes that life is common, but intelligence is rare. I'm curious how this might connect with the currently trendy idea that "we are the first" intelligent species in the galaxy, because it sounds like there is a connection to both of these ideas, but Kipping doesn't address it. Viriditas (talk) 09:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Slightly different take, to be sure, but I think it aligns. You could send him an e-mail. I can't guarantee he'll respond, but he might! jps (talk) 20:05, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm more interested in your thoughts and opinions at the moment. What do you think of our article on the firstborn hypothesis? I can get behind the idea that humanity is the first form of intelligent life in the galaxy, but the universe? That doesn't make much sense to me. Viriditas (talk) 09:31, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I guess the article is fine. I can't imagine there is much to say about it except that any filters have to be in excess of the one in the realm of the one Jodie Foster argued (unintentionally?!) in Contact. jps (talk) 20:58, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. One thing I just noticed, Lex Fridman’s interview with Kipping has one of the highest view counts. The public is hungry for this kind of information. Viriditas (talk) 23:53, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Half Barnstar
	For the record, I value your opinion! I like being pushed on my ideas and engaging in good-faith discussion because it helps me better understand my own position and arguments. Thanks Curbon7 (talk) 21:51, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:NPA

Please avoid making personal attacks, as you did here[10]. Having failed to follow that guideline, please strike. Thanks! Adoring nanny (talk) 04:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

This account should be banned from Wikipedia, in my estimation. You are WP:NOTHERE. jps (talk) 13:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

You are welcome to your opinion. However, even if I were to be banned, WP:NPA would still apply. Are you refusing to strike? Note in particular that you said I am "willfully ignorant". Adoring nanny (talk) 19:01, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I am willing to go further. You deserve sanction, opprobrium, and if there was a way to enforce WP:RBI, I would do so against your account in a heartbeat. You should be drummed off this website. jps (talk) 13:59, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

And, with that, you are hereby banned from my talkpage, Adoring nanny. You are never to post here again unless it is required of you by policy. That is all! jps (talk) 14:00, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if either of you are interested, but the "Decoding the Gurus" has a series of excellent podcasts on this subject. They did a round table on the lab leak about three months or so ago, but their more recent interview with Jonathan Howard is somewhat lab leak-adjacent and worth listening to if you get a chance. Viriditas (talk) 10:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I have a hard time carving out time for podcasts, V. Cliffnotes versions would be appreciated, if you can! jps (talk) 14:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

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