My favorite conspiracy theory is that Basque is the only real language, and that every other language on earth was made up by Benedictine monks to prop up the story of the Tower of Babel
Reddit’s /u/odin_the_wanderer described it as “the Timecube of linguistics,” and I think that’s a fantastic description of the unhinged ramblings I’ve just linked
Here's a more more direct route if you're one of Dread Roberts' crew... just posted it over on the @13thFloor to preserve the link in case any of the mods here were Humperdinck agents looking for volunteers to test the Pit of Despair.
One thing that helps more than just looking surprised: ask the kid for further details. If it is something you know, you can catch anything they got wrong and ask “is it really like that? i thought it was different!” (keeping your tone in mind is essential, too)
If it’s something you don’t know, they’ll be more than glad to explain. Which can get tiring, but hey, it’s a small price for getting them interested in learning and sharing their knowledge
This, especially asking them why they think it is that way or how they can test it. Get them thinking in terms of the scientific method instead of just repeating facts they heard somewhere else. edit: asking them to repeat random facts about a topic is still a great way to keep them interested and feeling good about their knowledge, but asking them “why” questions is really next-level and can be really interesting to see what they come up with
In the interests of being wholesome and helpful, I used a secure method to retrieve the contents of that URL without providing my own cookie info.
I accessed and extracted the .png image directly using a similar method, then dug through it with a hex editor. As best I can tell, there’s nothing particularly weird about the image itself or its metadata.
The HTML file pointing to the image contains a bunch of trackers from imgur. Google analytics, Facebook, scorecard research, etc. Those are certainly things to be concerned about, but I didn’t specifically notice anything unusual beyond the ordinary corporate-surveillance crudware (which was indeed written in JavaScript). None of these were in the image itself though.
Obviously it’s impossible to prove that anything is safe, and I only spent 10 minutes looking into this, so you should still follow the OP’s advice about not clicking on random links without thinking. However my quick analysis did not find anything particularly alarming.
A core memory of mine was learning a cool math trick in school and coming home to tell my dad about it. He very coldly told me he didn’t find the trick impressive because he already knows math. That was the last time I ever came home excited from school.
“A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?”
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