TheESP – Ep. #480 – People Are the Worst

Viktor Orbán is coming down hard on free speech and Romania seems to (maybe) avoid chaos after their second attempt on presidential elections. In TWISH we get into classical skepticism and have a look at the Plauen UFO incident. Then it’s time for the news, with a little bit of Word of the Week:

• INTERNATIONAL: Overshooting 1.5°C: even temporary warming above globally agreed temperature limit could have permanent consequences
• EU: Petition against conversion therapy meets threshold!
• INTERNATIONAL: Retraction Watch inquiry results in Elsevier removing a whole journal from Scopus
• GERMANY: Research identifying subgroups of homeopathy users based on their attitudes towards science
• NORWAY: Putin’s billionaire funds new political party
• EU: TikTok in trouble with the European Commission for not adhering to Digital Services Act
• IRELAND: Psychics are repeatedly insisting on ‘helping’ the police
• UK / INTERNATIONAL: The largest ever profiling effort of susceptibility to misinformation

Elon Musk gets his second Really Wrong Award after his AI machine Grok goes both racist conspiracy theorist and antisemitic last week.

Enjoy!

Segments:

0:00:27 Intro

0:00:50 Greetings

0:16:07 TWISH

0:24:06 News

0:51:09 Word of the Week

1:01:10 Really Wrong

1:05:47 Quote

1:07:48 Outro

1:09:11 Outtakes

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