A suspicious photo

This photo has been making its way around Facebook recently with descriptions like "The Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and in the background the silhouette of the moon. Photo taken from the international space station"

But there's never a source posted.  One should always find out if a photo has been presented as real by a reputable source before spending time defending it.  For example, this photo, is found on NASA's site and shows much less Earth curvature and a much smaller Moon.

Older copies turn up on social meda, but never have a source (except for other social media).  For example, here's one on Pinterest that links to Taringa, where there's no info about where it came from.

I also found a few articles, in both English and Spanish, containing this image. These sites look like the sort that have cheaply (or perhaps automatically) generated content.  Top photos of Earth from the International Space Station, The best photos of Earth from the International Space Station, Las mejores fotos de la Tierra desde la Estación Espacial Internacional all credit this photo to "NASA / DegreaseNeil"

This Reddit thread includes a comment that says that "DegreaseNeil" was a fan account in Twitter, the link there goes to a now-deleted account. But no links to either source.  But there's a hashtag #DegreaseNeil at Twitter that contains some more info.

In short, always insist on a link to a NASA website.

Simulated video is simulated

Flerfs are posting incredulously about a spacewalk video.  But the video has never been presented as anything but a simulation.

The edited video is on TikTok.  Here's a screenshot.

It wasn't hard to find an unedited version, it was broadcast during the spacewalk of Gemini 9 but was clearly identified in both audio and periodic captions as being a simulation.

Here's a screenshot from the video showing the simulation caption

And here's another, showing the same scene in the TikTok thumbnail

When this is pointed out to them, they reply along the lines of "all photos and videos from space are simulations" but don't even to provide any evidence of that. 

There is no hidden 666 in barcodes

 I found this image in a flat earth group

I deal with barcodes at my job, and while this particular code, UPC-A isn't one that we use there, I took a look at the UPC specification to see how accurate the claim is.

Let's start with what they almost got correct.  The areas in red are called guard patterns, so they get partial credit for "guard bars", and the blue area does encode the character six. 

However, spaces are also part of UPC patterns and symbols, and while the guard patterns at the edge consist only of a single-width bar, a single-width space, and another single-width bar, the center guard pattern also includes another single-width space on each side, and the character six is followed by a quadruple-width space.  So if the side guard patterns are 101, as they said, the center guard pattern is 01010 and that six is 1010000.

And that's only how a six looks on the right side of the barcode, all digits have a different encoding on the left or right side, if a six appears on the left side, it's a single-width space, a single-width bar, a single-width space, and a quadruple-width bar, or 0101111. Here's a barcode where all the characters are six (except for the last, which is a check-digit and is automatically computed) in which it's easy to see that sixes look different on the left side.

Sunset in Japan, sunrise in Florida

This gets constantly reposted by both flat-earthers and sane people, either as two separate images or a single one, with the text "I sent my parents a picture of the sunset in Japan. They sent me a picture 20 minutes later of the sunrise from Florida".  Sometimes it has "VIA 9GAG.COM" at the bottom.  Each side seems to be implying that it presents a problem to the other, but details are never included.

The name of the photographer, the exact locations and times are never included.  The copy I found on 9GAG is from 2014, but I found an earlier copy at JoyReactor from 2011, so the 9GAG copy is a repost, unless there's something wrong with the date at JoyReactor.

Here's an article from 2014 that attempts to explain the timing saying "Japan is 13 hours ahead of North America’s Eastern Standard Time. Looking at the flooded fields, we can assume the picture was taken in spring or summer, meaning a sunset of somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. That would correlate to a time around 5 or 6 in the morning in Florida, which allowed the photographer’s parents to send this snapshot back to him 20 minutes after he’d sent his photo."

I haven't checked that myself, and it's further complicated because Florida has Daylight Savings Time, but Japan doesn't.

"Fake" photo of InSight is a strawman

 I've seen flat-earthers more than once post a photo of the InSight Mars lander on which the shadows are inconsistent with the position of the Sun.  Here's the most recent one.  It's also the pinned tweet of @Eric_Dubay_FE It even has a URL at NASA.

But did NASA claim that this photo was taken on Mars?  Whenever there's no full link, we should be suspicious.  Before defending something, find its source.  Search engines can help, and in this case Google search by image found this on the cover of the NASA InSight Launch Press Kit

Notice the date at the bottom, May 2018.  That's the month that the lander launched.  Obviously the photo wasn't taken on Mars, where the mission wouldn't land until November of that year.

And here's another version of that image, clearly labeled as Artist's Concept of InSight Lander on Mars from 2017

Reviews of Level With Me (2023)

 Two parts, so far, by Planarwalk

SciManDan's in five parts

Live review of the whole film from DeadKennedyInSpace

For reviews of the other "Level" films, see Reviews of Level (2021) and Reviews of The Next Level (2022)

Globers blaming flat-Earth on the left

People who know that Earth is approximately spherical come from all over the political spectrum, flat-earthers, when they write about politics, tend to be extremely right wing, perhaps distrustful of all political views, but I can't ever remember seeing a leftist flerf.  Occasionally a comment appears blaming flat-earth on the left.  This isn't the first time, so I've decided to start to document them.

It was in a thread in Flat Earth Mockery and Ridicule that began by asking

A number of suggestions were made, my favorite was "an ignorance", but then there was a comment saying just 

When challenged, David replied "There’s only one side of the political aisle that denies reality with things like men can be women, men can get pregnant and that men can compete in women’s sports and it’s still fair or that the border is secure or that equity is the same as equality or education equals intelligence or that white supremacy is really a threat in America. We’re not the ones denying reality. The left has shown time and time again that they reject reality. So it only stands to reason that it would be the left (democrats) that would be the ones most likely to believe in the flat earth theory. Hell, they’ll fall for anything if CNN says it. 😆😆"

Could David have just been disagreeing with a post suggesting "a Trump rally"?  Or was he serious?

I found this interesting, because generally it's flat-earthers who bring up transgender issues in discussions of the shape of the Earth.  For example

source

The next one was posted together with the unexplained text "Shame on you, globers. Shame on you."  I commented that the connection may be  simply "obvious" to them and they see no need to explain it.

source (no longer works)

In Nanaimo Flat Earth, a flerf post about "a transgender star", whatever that is supposed to mean

source

And again, in Flat Earth Mockery and Ridicule

source

The poster when challenged by other globers, gave a rather flerfish response: "Stop lying and accept the truth".  On the other hand he has a history of posts in the group on the globe side, and in another comment said he was not a flerf.  But he didn't provide any examples of flerfs on the left.

Posts like this are much more typical 

Intercepted Cessna has nothing to do with Antarctica, either

An article from May 10, 2023 has the title Flat-Earthers Fly a Rogue Aircraft Over Antarctic and Get Intercepted.  It contains a TikTok (sorry, I couldn't get embedding it to work) showing a Cessna being turned back by fighter jets, but it didn't show where the airplane was flying.  The video is also in Ewaranon's What on Earth Happened (Original Series), part 2, Of Maps and Magicians at 20:46 - link.

The reporter who wrote the article, Cassandra Yorgey, did watch the TikTik and correctly wrote "The reason the chartered flight was surrounded was because they ignored air traffic control, not because you can’t fly over the antarctic. The same thing would happen in any airspace, not just Antarctica."

But were they flat-earthers flying to, let alone over, Antarctica?  No, they were making a TV segment (which aired on the Today Show) about what would happen if an aircraft got too close to Air Force One, the airplane carrying the US President,  on July 10, 2017.

Several comments on the TikTok included this video, and the poster then claimed he was merely demonstrating how closed airspace works. 

Related post: Intercepted fishing boat has nothing to do with Antarctica

Intercepted fishing boat has nothing to do with Antarctica

Flat-earthers like to use excerpts from this video, from a fishing channel, as "proof" that ships that approach Antarctica will be turned back.

The video begins with the location

Google Maps confirms that this latitude and longitude is indeed in the Bass Strait, located between the Australian mainland and Tasmania, Antarctica is about 3,000 km away.  In the video, the warship radios the fishing boat that they need to avoid a maritime exclusion area, nothing about Antarctica for which the crew isn't dressed, even if it's possible for so small a vessel to make the journey. 

One FE film that includes an excerpt of this clip is The Next Level, starting at 13:47 in the copy that I found on Facebook (I'm including a link, but I don't know if it's going to stay there).  It's also in Ewaranon's What on Earth Happened (Original Series), part 2, Of Maps and Magicians at 18:50 - link.

Here's a video by MC Toon that includes quite a number of flat-earthers lying about the Antarctica Treaty, it also covers the fishing boat at 13:25.

Related post: Intercepted Cessna has nothing to do with Antarctica, either

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