Turns out Mark Watney jokingly calling himself a space pirate¹, bragging about having colonised Mars, and the like, was one of the most realistic things in The Martian.

1. In the book. In the film he never lost communication with Earth after reactivating Pathfinder, so he had permission to commandeer the Ares IV MAV, and it wasn’t an act of piracy.

Barry Marshall. Discovered Helicobacter Pylori, drank it, and got a stomach ulcer and a Nobel price for his efforts.

I think the position to adopt is very clear:

1. You stand upright facing the nearest government building.
2. You extend your right arm horizontally in front of you.
3. You rest your left hand, palm down, on top of your right arm, next to your antecubital fossa (the opposite side of the elbow).
4. You make a fist with your right hand.
5. Without opening your fist, you extend your right hand’s middle finger straight up.
6. You decisively bend your right arm at the elbow, standing your forearm, fist, and middle finger straight up.

Thus you achieve the only reasonable position towards this nonsense.

It broke feudalism, too, and kickstarted the renaissance.

I’m responsible for the actions of the governments I vote for, and those of the governments I don’t rebel against. As are American citizens.

Many of the victims of racial oppression in the USA had no problem voting for Trump, or previous criminals who held offices in their government. I’m sure most of them happily voted for Obama, another mass murderer like the majority of US presidents in history.

Because as all Americans they share those rotten core values, and will happily vote for anyone who’ll act like a bully and harm the weak, ignoring that he’ll also hurt them.

There haven’t been any coups. No one has taken power by force (not since they genocided the native civilizations, at least). A vast majority of Americans have voted time and time again, for decades, for this shit, and will keep doing so if there are any elections after Taarump.

Egoism, racism, imperialism, murder, child abuse, and runaway untethered capitalism are core American values. Basic principles upon which their culture is built. Don’t compare them to actual victims. They reap what they sow.

Americans have been supporting this kind of shit for decades, they’re all complicit at this point.

Compliance with fascism is indistinguishable from fascism.

Convincing people your interpretation of reality exists is literally all that politics is.

What? No. No, no, you naive fool… many politicians, if not most, don’t believe most of what they’re selling, and don’t give a flying fuck about it.

They’ll sell whatever line the party they’re working for wants them to sell, and they’d just as happily sell the opposition party’s line if it paid better and they could switch without being called a turncoat.

Also, it’s not about convincing people about specific beliefs; most people are mostly already convinced of their worldviews and if they change them it won’t be because of some politician. It’s about convincing them, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the politician shares those beliefs, and will impose them on people who don’t if they vote for them.

despite being correct, science is also an interpretation of reality.

Again, no. Science (except for mathematics, but that’s it’s own thing) doesn’t and shouldn’t ever claim to be correct.

It’s the most accurate approximation we have so far of how nature works, but it’s constantly trying to achieve better approximations, and will happily throw away the old ones when it finds a better one.

It also should always make very clear that it’s an approximation or a description, not an interpretation. Science should always be objective, never subjective, and interpretations are by definition subjective.