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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:29PM
but the former are unfalsifiable
Well, actually, its more like geology. If you dig over there to the 10Myr strata you'll find a delicious crude oil salt dome with cap of natgas. Now sometimes they're wrong, but practically all the time they're right and eventually you admit you don't have to dig the entire freaking earth up to verify the model found every oil deposit, you just admit you have a working theoretical model that predicts where you'll find oil.
Or in this case, CP. If you build a model for finding weird CP or almost CP or abuse evidence or peculiar ultra high density of symbology and peculiar behavior, and the more you dig the more you find as long as you follow your model, then its a good model by the geologic criteria. And given decades or centuries of criminal justice investigation into these type of people, you can expect to find "grooming" and tada here's dozens of pix of Biden and really creeped out teen girls. At least they're (mostly?) post puberty females who already know how to handle teen boys their age so they can handle an old Biden. Of course you take a million group photos and you're gonna find a small number of rando creepy ones that mean nothing, but it sure was easy to find and there sure are a lot of them... Of course a teen girl looking creeped out next to an old man does not prove anything illegal ever happened, but it is interesting.
and ultimately, any information contradicting a conspiracy theory can be answered with
Sometimes for PR oriented theories, shaping public opinion is kinda the point not a bug. None the less that's an example of belief not a real model. You can't predict if you gained access to computers over there you'd find a folder full of "thats what they want you to think". You can't dig anything up with a belief, its pretty much the end of the conversation.
I'm just saying the cycle of "find weird stuff" "dig into the now usual suspects" is a rotating wheel thats gone around quite a few turns this time and it's still spining slowly. Just like prospecting for oil eventually every well comes up dry. There seems to be a hell of a lot of oil in this particular salt dome and I look forward to seeing more pumped out, its gonna be interesting.
Wonder what they'll find tomorrow? Recent past implies it'll continue to be interesting, whatever it is.