In August 2023, the world chess federation FIDE seemed to have suddenly imposed a temporary ban on trans women’s participation in women’s tournaments. The uproar seemed overblown to me and based on careless reading of the regulation, but after a minor change in that regulation, I’m not sure what the intention was either. An attempt to sort some things out.
It’s just a (board) game
Artificial intelligence is almost nowhere more tangible than in the world of board games, such as chess and go. What is behind it?
Chatting about conspiracy theories with an AI chatbot
Can a specially trained chatbot help dissuade people from believing in conspiracy theories? This intriguing question is explored in research published in Science, titled Durably Reducing Conspiracy Beliefs through Dialogues with AI. In the study, participants were asked to rate their belief in conspiracy theories on a scale of 0 to 100 before engaging in […]
George van Houts – The (un)serious Dutch conspiracy theorist
How Van Houts transformed from a comedian with a taste for absurd humour, through socially critical plays, into an all-round conspiracy thinker.
Rudy Reichstadt interviews Hélène Dumas on the denial of the Tutsi genocide
Interview on the genocide of the Tutsi, 30 years ago, and how its denial still lives on.
Plagiarism in that terrible BMJ Public Health article by Mostert et al
Much has already been written in blogs, newspapers and on X about the article “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates from January 2020 to December 2022” that appeared in BMJ Public Health on 3 June. One aspect has been somewhat underexposed, namely that what is supposed to pass for ‘original research’ is for quite a bit rather silly plagiarism.
R.I.P. Janet Ossebaard
Dutch crop circle expert Janet Ossebaard suddenly became internationally famous in 2020 with her conspiracy documentary Fall of the Cabal. Shortly afterward, she more or less disappeared from view herself, continuing to work on a sequel with her partner Cyntha Koeter at various locations in Europe.On 22 December 2023, news broke that Ossebaard’s body had […]
UFO symposium at KU Leuven was cancelled. The Curse of the Mummy?
A symposium on UFOs that was to be organised at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium has been cancelled. One of the organisers suspects that the fuss surrounding the Mexican alien mummies has something to do with it.
Mussolini’s UFO – Cabinet RS/33
In 1933, a UFO allegedly crashed in Italy which was covered up by the secret organisation RS/33. At the end of the war, the debris would have been seized by the Americans. Documents from the 1930s would be evidence, but their authenticity is questionable.
As for the possibility of open-heart surgery under hypnosis, we did what Mattias Desmet failed to do: call the expert
It is impossible to use hypnosedation during a sternotomy because it precludes spontaneous breathing. Performing an open-heart operation under hypnosis alone is therefore also impossible.