The framework is simple - the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the Moon revolves around the Earth, at a far closer distance. And the Earth also revolves around itself at a far greater speed than either the solar or the lunar rotational period. So, at least as far as day and night are concerned, it's not them spinning around us to begin with.

In turn, here's a question for disk believers:

For starters, I'm using what we can call the "standard" disk model, with the North Pole at the center and Antarctica on the edges of the disk.

Now, in order to account for the fact that it's always daytime somewhere on Earth, the Sun should effectively never set, and would not only have to hover in a somewhat circular pattern, but also work like a spotlight, only lighting a particular part of an otherwise flat surface. But in addition, that light would have to curve, in order to provide for the appearance of sunrises and sunsets at ground level, instead of, well, a giant spotlight in the sky. Which is a kind of behavior that's never been observed from any light source, even in the most extreme cases of cosmic gravitational lensing.

But wait, here's the real problem - lunar phases. Particularly the full moon and lunar eclipses. On some days, both the Sun and the Moon are visible in the sky, and the light side of the Moon is always turned toward the Sun, making the case it's lit by the Sun, and with a lighting pattern consistent with the Moon itself being a sphere. Meaning, the only way for a full moon to exist, would be if the Sun is almost directly beneath the Moon. But at that point, it should also be plainly visible from the same spot on Earth as well.

And then there's lunar eclipses, which is when the Moon starts off brightly lit - again by the Sun that's nowhere to be seen at the time - and then suddenly gets shadowed by a mysterious object, before returning to a fully lit state shortly after.

So - how does it all work? In the globe model, lunar phases and eclipses are easy to explain and demonstrate with even the simplest pictures and tools. And so are sunsets and sunrises.

Similarly, in the ancient disk model - where people didn't have to account for daytime in faraway nations - lunar phases and even eclipses could be explained by the Sun being beneath the Earth, and thus lighting the Moon from beneath as well. Just as sunrises and sunsets would simply mean the Sun rising and diving beneath the Earth disk.

But nowadays, if we have to account for international (dare I say global) day and night cycles, the only model that can explain all the above with no inconsistencies is that of the Earth being a sphere revolving around itself, the Moon revolving around it, and both of them revolving around the Sun.

Tell me about it. It's like trying to discuss the subtleties behind the COVID pandemic - whether the virus was natural or engineered, whether it's harmless or deadly, how many strains there really are, etc. - with the guys going "viruses aren't real, ill health is caused by being a bad person". And I wish I was exaggerating here.

Now, let's see what the ruckus here is all about. Looking at the angles of the "corridor", it looks to be narrowing to a point barely a couple of yards inside. It might have formed naturally, for instance if there was outlying rock, and a boulder fell on it and chipped it off - there are similar right-angle rock formations on Earth, so that's not too unbelievable. And it would explain the smooth flat "pathway" just outside - this was where the original rock ended.

That said, the small rock "awning" just outside the entrance is unlikely to have survived a hit from above. The hit could have also come from the side, but I'm not sure if even the Martian sandstorms could carry a rock large and heavy enough to do this kind of damage.Although the rugged erosion on the surrounding rock looks exactly like the result of highly aggressive sandstorms, compared to the smooth formations known on Earth, like in the American West.

Bottom line - it can be natural, but the surrounding area would likely show similar phenomena - chipped-off rocks and flat "walls" or "floors" from where they used to be. A panoramic shot would be useful right about now.

Whatever it is, though, it's recent. Likely less than a decade old, judging by the stark difference in erosion compared to the rest of the rock. Which is probably a good reason to move the rover away from the place, because the kind of sandstorm that can create that sort of mayhem, would turn it to scrap in seconds.

Would you recognize a Ukrainian from a Russian if you saw them side by side? Or from any white European, for that matter?

Most likely, the Russian mercs set up the heavy gear - tanks, transports and such - while independent contractors officially working for Ukraine use the man-portable missiles and other small arms, and then either side drops an airstrike, just to make sure.

Now, there are a couple of weird pieces of the puzzle, such as the Chechens and the Azov idiots. I suspect they've been duped into a glow-op aiming to get rid of them in particular, since those are the kind of folks who can turn a perfectly good fake war into a real one.

And I think that's the overall bottom line here. In previous years, obsolete arms would be sold off to warlords in Africa and South America, Asia and the Middle East - where they did real damage, dooming millions of people to dictatorship, slavery, or worse. With a controlled conflict like this one, that can be avoided. And it's for the best - with Iran going nuclear, Brazil getting closer to superpower status, and China increasing its investments in Africa, these regions are no longer "safe" to ignore and treat as weapons dumps and drug farms, like in the Cold War. This engineered conflict, however crude and unconvincing it may be, is a suitable way to address the newly emerging status quo.

My thoughts exactly. Each of those pieces of hardware comes with a two-inch-thick manual, and unless you've also gone through the requisite month-long course for even basic familiarization, you're more likely to hurt your own troops than the enemy.

The whole op is an obsolete arms dump, just as the Russians are doing. As it turned out with the earlier batches, half the gear is corroded beyond use, but still dangerous to store and expensive to recycle. The solution - stage a conflict, clear out most of the civilians, and hire mercenaries to blast the crap out of the equipment until it's rendered inert. Then leave the local gypsies to process the remains. And in the meantime, laugh at both the "Slava Ukraini" and "Russia Stronk" nimrods online.

Coming from an Eastern block state, whenever I want to feel really awesome and amazing, I read western propaganda about what my side supposedly did during the Cold War. Like, Red Alert is positively tame compared to stuff like that.

So yeah, westerners beware, we got psychic satanists with flying saucers powered by the souls of aborted babies and Stalin's demonic will. They simply weren't shown at the parade the other day, due to... bad weather... or something.

Joking aside, Putin would indeed be a dead ringer for Yuri if he grew a mustache and goatee. And appeared in mainstream politics at roughly the same time as Red Alert II got released... Most likely a coincidence, of course.

I bet it is just a way to make an excuse for artificial faminehoax elites try to establish on the West on their way to NWO.

I think that's a major part, yes. To my understanding, most of the iconic farmland of Ukraine lies east of the Dneper river. If Russia gains permanent control of the area, and then shuts down grain exports to the west, the stage would be set for the great "famine"... which will be about as authentic as tits on a frog, but that's another matter.

Afterward, my bet is that western economies will start focusing more on agriculture, utilizing the throngs of migrants already present. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess at this point. I suspect a missing piece of the puzzle will be found in technology - some new type of power plant or some such. Something to reduce western dependence on Russian-enriched nuclear isotopes (which is rarely if ever mentioned alongside gas concerns, for some reason). But right now, that's just a hunch I have, nothing more substantial.

I think that in this case, that is, for flat-earth theory in general, the burden of proof lies on the side whose ideas of terrestrial geography aren't already programmed into every navigational system in the world. I'm afraid being the intrepid explorer is up to you at this point. Feel free to take a GPS on the trip.

The same site also shows the New York - London route as taking fifteen hours.

https://www.flightpedia.org/flights-from-new-york-to-london.html

So again, not exactly a major time difference with regard to the over twice the distance.

So wait, a flight from Luanda to Sao Paulo takes eight and a half hours, covering over twice the distance of the flight from New York to London, which takes seven and a half. I didn't know Luanda still flied the Concorde, because that's practically supersonic if calculated on the map above.

Would that be flights with one or more stops, where total time includes waiting? Because the overseas-only flight from Johannesburg to Sao Paulo takes only nine hours (though I'll give you that that's in Brazil). About as much, in fact as the flight from Johannesburg to Perth, Australia. And that one doesn't fly over India either.

So no, the above projection looks great for the North Hemisphere, but as soon as flights further South are accounted for, it appears they're moving in rather counter-intuitive arcs. The best example would be the Sydney-Santiago direct, which manages to span half the circumference of the "disc" in thirteen hours. Now, I realize both Australians and Chileans can make even a garbage truck fly with enough bubble gum and duct tape, but even they aren't that inventive.

Sure. Yet for some reason, flights from South Africa to Argentina don't take three times as long as those from New York to London, and don't pass over Brazil and West Africa to save on fuel costs.

I'm starting to think the whole flat earth meme got launched so that even Alex Jones could look credible and rational in comparison.

Volcanoes form above underground magma hotspots. Hotspots which move over time, so a single one can form several volcanoes, usually in a straight line. Most likely, the volcanoes you refer to - I'm guessing Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons - all erupted at different stages of a hotspot that has since been extinguished. For comparison, the Hawaiian islands of Kauai, Oahu, Maui and, well Hawaii, form a similar ridge, again in a straight line.

As for why Mars is such a hot topic - it has all the resources for a potential self-sustaining human colony. Its atmosphere is thin, but rich in CO2, which can be used for producing breathable air and growing of plants. It also has strong enough winds to produce power with only a few wind farms, compared to the massive solar panel fields you'd need otherwise. Its surface gravity is close to that of Earth, so a long-term stay wouldn't have as many adverse effects as on a Moon colony or a space station. Its temperature is within survivable limits, compared to the living hell of Venus or Mercury, or the absolute zero just about everywhere else.

All in all, it makes for a rather juicy colonization target, even with the currently six-month trip you'd need to get there.

Pretty much. The spiel will simply change from "we won because of mail-in ballots" to "we won because of objections to overturning Roe v. Wade". All it takes is for the Biden administration to promise drafting a federal suspension on abortion bans or some such.

My take is, it's what we might call "controlled demolition of military assets". Both sides - Russia and NATO/EU - pick a cozy little spot, find an excuse to send their obsolete gear there - Z-marked tanks and missiles for Russia, small arms and auxiliaries for the west. The crews of well-paid mercenaries clear the area when the cameras are off, then the gear gets blasted into pieces, for the enjoyment of the "Slava Ukraini" idiots online.And afterward, both sides write off the destroyed gear from their arsenals, and file in billion-dollar orders for the next generation of armament.

I must say, it could be worse. Even obsolete surplus military tech is still dangerous, and usually gets quietly sold off to warlords in various hotspots around the world - and they're not nearly as gentle and precise in handling their new toys. Destroying the gear now in a highly-publicized but otherwise fake war, means it won't get used in a real one that simply doesn't reach the front pages of the legacy media.

It's generally a sign that the community was never about a consistent theory on astronomy and cosmology, but rather general purpose rejection of conventional academic authority, in favor of whatever crap appeals to them at the time.

That message was present for certain websites long before the Ukraine conflict, mostly as a result of various licensing deals (or lack thereof). That said, a few European ISPs were more than eager to go beyond the official ban on barely a couple of Russian websites, but typically this results in a "server did not send any data" or similar messages.

I still find it hilarious that it takes about two clicks to bypass the ban on RT and Sputnik, while actual Russian state mouthpieces like Pravda and TASS aren't even blocked to begin with.

By the looks of it, it seems you managed to get even conspiracy buffs to balk in sudden skepticism. Well played, good sir!

The Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB), a Dutch subsidiary of the Russian Alfa Bank, has been declared bankrupt.

So, it's kinda like claiming McDonalds went bankrupt because their licensed subsidiaries closed up shop in Russia.

Y'know, in some cases, even the term "clickbait" is too prestigious and respectful.

I use a method that's overall slower and more cumbersome, but doesn't require registration or special software:

1. Pick a book, make sure you view it in one-page view.

2. Scroll down until you get to the second page, so the URL changes to something ending in "page/n#/mode/1up", where the "n#" or just "#" is the number of the page.

3. Hit the Page Info keyboard shortcut on your browser, select the media tab, find the URL to the page image, and drag it to another tab of your browser. Right click and select "Save image as" to download it. Usually, there are two images in the Page Info window, so you can download two pages at a time like that.

4. Close the Page Info window. Now change the number of the "#" in the page URL to one that's two digits higher, so you get the next two pages in view (instead of the "limited preview" you'd normally see by just scrolling down).

5. Repeat step 3. In my impression, you can download about 10% of the whole book per day, before you reach the actual preview limit for your IP, for that particular book. Wait 24 hours, continue downloading.

6. Once you have all the pages, zip them up in a single archive (they should already be in alphabetical order), rename the .zip file to .cbz and convert it to .pdf using Calibre or an online converter.

7. Enjoy the benefits of literature.

Now, I mostly use this method for hobby downloads, so again, it's not too fast or convenient for emergencies. However, it has been reliable so far, the only hiccup being the 24-hour waiting period between download sprees. Though I usually "solve" that by scheduling two books and downloading them on alternate days. Good hunting, stalkers.

Well, most of it is theater. For the particular aspect you noted - both Russia and Ukraine's "allies" in the EU and NATO are dumping their obsolete equipment in the country - the latest example being a 40+ year old missile cruiser in an age when submarines can do the same job, but safer and more covertly.

Basically, it works like this: The Russians line up a column of Z-marked tanks (the Z basically stands for "scrapped"), the crews get out when the cameras aren't running, a bunch of man-portable missiles are fired at the machines and an artillery or airstrike blasts them to pieces, finishing the job. Meanwhile, the "slava Ukraini" idiots cheer on social media looking at the footage... and both sides are spared the expense of storing or recycling this type of volatile and still dangerous equipment, and are now free to procure next-gen gear from the manufacturers.

Overall, it's not a bad way for countries to refresh their arsenals, and it sure beats using an actual war to do it.

Thank you for providing the link to the ban logs - I wasn't aware the sub had them. And in turn I have to admit, I do see a couple of accounts there that were vocally anti-Russian - but also rather aggressive and uncivil about it - before getting the boot just last week... as well as a couple of general purpose assholes that really should've just stayed in ConPro. So overall, I think in both cases they were booted for assholery rather than political reasons.

As for arguments, the spectrum here is fairly wide, even among the Russian posters I've talked with. My own stance, especially in light of some recent events, is that the conflict is an engineered prelude to a global economic restructuring, while also serving as a weapons dump for obsolete hardware - with both sides taking advantage of it. That said, there most likely are numerous casualties on the front lines, since not everyone has gotten the memo, but overall, it's a media spectacle more than anything else. And it might be for the best, if a couple of other event chains I'm monitoring turn out the way I suspect.

I've seen several accounts with well over a month of consistent and explicit "Russia bad" posts, so unless this mass banning has happened in just the past week, the claim doesn't seem to hold water.

And in general, the trend I'm noticing is that this sub is skeptical of the legacy media more than anything else, and since the media right now is fervently anti-Russian, this skepticism is seen as pro-Russian as a result. Though it's not just this sub, or even just this site - in just about every social network I've stumbled upon, skepticism of the mainstream narrative is reflexively taken as a pro-Russian stance. I some, I've actually seen a dozen "slava Ukraini" posts back to back, followed by complaints about Russian propaganda. So again, if that's the current standard for unbiased editorial policy, it's only natural that anything else would seem pro-Russian in comparison.

Russian is somewhat weird in that regard, since the word for Easter does indeed translate to Passover... but the word for Sunday translates as "resurrection" - as in, that of Jesus, the word coming from Church Slavonic.

Meanwhile, most of the other Slavic languages simply call Easter the Great Day. Yeah, I know it's generic, but it gets the job done and doesn't get tangled up in etymological quagmires connected to pagan customs.

Well if we're being thorough, I also notice a good chunk of the pro-Ukraine posts are made either by handshakes fresh off Reddit, or sleeper bots with several months of inactivity that suddenly got chatty in the past six weeks. Curious trend, isn't it?

Oh, the similarities don't stop there, at least in the examples I've researched. Namely, the Egyptian Pyramids at Giza, the Mayan Pyramids at Chichen Itza, and the Khmer Pyramid at Kol Ker. In addition to sun worship, I've found the key feature to be the veneration of water cycles.

The Pyramids at Giza, built around the template of the earlier Elephantine Island Pyramid, are ultimately aligned with the sunrise on the date when Sirius appears on the night sky - signifying the start of the annual Nile flood. It might not seem like much to us, but in the absence of modern fertilization techniques, the Nile's ability to revitalize the soil was considered nothing short of supernatural, and a sign of the gods' favor.

The Pyramids at Chichen Itza are tied to the annual water level cycle of the cenotes - underground water reservoirs that are the cornerstones of Mayan agriculture. Again, simple to explain in modern day, but to the ancients, their ability to refill themselves every year was all but magical.

The Pyramid at Kol Ker was actually part of a large temple complex near the Tonle Sap lake. It appears there was a substantial rice field irrigation system around the lake and the complex.

My theory is, these pyramids in particular were designed as a kind of ritual calendars or sun dials, meant to track celestial bodies as a way to tell the exact date of the year for annual flood events. Even without the religious trappings, matters of agriculture were literal life-or-death affairs to the ancients, so you can understand why they were so venerated, and why so many people were eager to work on their construction.