Creationists have been going on and on about a dinosaur living in the Congo, called mokele-mbembe (IFLScience also has articles on it, if you didn’t believe me when I said that site sucks). Answers in Genesis has defended the idea of a dinosaur lurking in the African swamps.
For believers in the prevailing evolutionary view that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, the idea that they might be alive today is hard to accept. This is despite the recent discovery of the living Wollemi pine tree, also believed, from fossils, to have been extinct since the ‘dinosaur age’.
Christians, however, should not be surprised, as the Bible teaches that God created the dinosaurs only thousands of years ago.
It’s bunk. Here’s a good article on the origin of the myth.
Mokele-mbembe is the Congo Basin’s bigfoot. Or that’s what it’s become, anyway — a cryptid. Nobody is sure when the myth originated, but it was born among the basin’s communities, who passed it down as an oral tradition. Locals tell me the myth was spiritual at first — a metaphor, perhaps, for humankind’s delicate relationship with the land. But today, nobody can say with certainty what exactly it meant because foreigners long ago twisted it well beyond recognition.
“Congolese people originally believed mokele-mbembe was a spiritual being, not a real dinosaur,” Oyange told me last year. “But that all changed when the white man came to Africa.” A confluence of European colonial expansion into Africa and the birth of paleontology gave rise to a version of mokele-mbembe that was a literal, flesh-and-blood, swamp-dwelling reptilian beast. Tales passed around by explorers, missionaries and colonial functionaries became warped by notions from Victorian literature and emerging science.
“Everything that we now regard as the mokele-mbembe canon is based on European explorers in the late 1800s and early 1900s,” Darren Naish, a British vertebrate paleontologist and author, told me.
It’s simply another example of the corrupting influence of colonialism. It’s origin doesn’t matter — the idea that there is a dinosaur living in the Congo has become a widely held idea. A guy named David Choe made a short “documentary” about searching for it, but it’s mainly self-indulgent babbling.
They don’t find a dinosaur. But it was good enough to get him an interview with Joe Rogan!
But no dinosaurs — no actual dinosaurs, anyway — are found. In fact, the film ends with a dejected Choe, in a lake, saying to the camera, “We might have to come back. We’ll see,” before he submerges himself into the murky water, prompting the credits to roll. If the film is judged on its success in searching for mokele-mbembe, it was a flop. But if it’s regarded as an exercise in grabbing attention, well, then it was a massive hit. It racked up over 1.7 million views on YouTube and even caught podcaster Joe Rogan’s notice. Several years later, in 2020, Choe appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he told of his multiple attempts to find mokele-mbembe. “When I saw your show,” Rogan tells Choe during the podcast episode, “I was like, ‘Look at this dude, this is crazy. He’s looking for a fucking brontosaurus in the middle of the Congo.’”
Yeah, no. An endorsement by Rogan tells you the whole story is garbage. It’s part of a Western/Christian trend of appropriating myths to distort them into support their dogma
. Talk to the locals, though, and you’ll learn otherwise.
Mayor visited the vine-engulfed temple in 2010. She told me her Cambodian guide, a former teacher, considered the carving a joke. “The amazing, overgrown ruins of Angkor Wat offer a perfect setting for outsiders to imagine a lost, primitive civilization that coexisted with prehistoric dinosaurs,” she said. In her view, just as the outside world has hijacked the story of mokele-mbembe, it has done the same with Angkor Wat — imposing interpretations that distort and even disrespect the original cultural significance.
She also pointed out how the dinosaurization of mokele-mbembe as an oral tradition paralleled how ancient petroglyphs and pictographs in the American West have been misinterpreted as dinosaurs, too. Creationists and young-Earthers argue that certain imagery etched into the rock slabs implies that the Indigenous paleo-Indians must have lived alongside dinosaurs.
The most notorious example, Mayor said, is the two rock art panels at Kachina Bridge in Utah’s Natural Bridges National Monument. Some — including creationists — claim that the imagery is a depiction of a sauropod and triceratops dinosaur.
“If our story is told to the world by the oppressor,” I remember Veronique telling me as she clucked her tongue, “then whose story really is it? Ours, or theirs?”
The joke is on the creationists, though. Even if they did find some derived saurischian descendant in the Congo, it wouldn’t refute evolution, and biologists would be scampering joyfully to Africa to study it.
So, just like their god, their dinosaur is missing, presumed imaginary.
Color me shocked! 😮
I’m sorry, but do any of these cryptozoology clowns—religious or otherwise—understand how breeding populations work? Bigfoot, Nessie, or Baby (Secret of a Lost Legend) here would have died out ages ago without numbers large enough to be noticeable.
FTFY
@2 Ask the same question to those who think human colonization of Mars will preserve the human species from Earthly disasters.
They actually think mokele-mbembe is a brontosaurus? Those are the biggest dinosaurs ever! There’s no way even ONE of those could stay hidden for any length of time, let alone enough (as Akira already said) to keep the species going for this long. This is at least as silly as the Loch Ness Monster.
That’s a typical straw man of contemporary dogmatically religious people. I’m not a “believer” in evolution and I don’t think it’s a “view”…aka an opinion. Even as a non-scientist, I find the preponderance of evidence from multiple lines of investigation compelling rather that total lack of evidence of anything in the Bible written ages ago. Plus, even if someone found a dinosaur somewhere (excluding birds, of course), that would not mean that dinosaurs did not exist 65 million years ago.
Could a single large animal, like the one imagined here, live in a remote area? Maybe, although highly unlikely. Could a population of these large animals live there undetected? No bloody way. So, is this lonely dinosaur then millions (or thousands, being gracious to the young-earth creationists) of years old?
These monster hunters never think things through, either we need a population of animals or the beastiemust be immortal. Or maybe, it doesn’t exist.
Likewise, Loch Ness hardly provides enough sustenance to the local tiny fish, no way it can support a breeding population of big critters.
Why just a dinosaur? It would be cooler if they found gorgonopsids, or other evolutionary uncles of mammals.
Can’t remember where, but somewhere I found an analysis of how a giant footprint atributed to mokele-mbembe evolved from a report about a hippo footprint where someone confused the measured circumference of the print with the diameter…
There are of course over 11,000 species of extant saurischians, several hundred of them in Congo. But they’re all theropods, not sauropods.
Even if they found a breeding population of dinos deep in the jungle somewhere, that doesn’t in any way disprove evolution. It’s like claiming that because someone just ate a piece of apple pie, they must own an apple tree. These things are not connected in the way they claim. Of course, they don’t understand the theory, so fundamental mistakes should not be surprising.
Seriously, coelacanth, anyone? (yeah, I know, they’d use that as another “disproof”…)
It has 1.7m views, plus you posted it here. Was it worth looking at?
A critter that large Could show up in satellite images. Everyone who has a phone could see. Oh oh yeah, nobody is purposefully imaging Africa as much as everywhere else.
or astronauts. On an episode of the now defunct Archy Fantasy podcast someone noticed a couple of different species of hallucinogenic plants growing at Native American rock painting site.
Morderd @10
If there is a hell, people who specify circumferences instead of diameters will toil in a machine shop where all the drawings are labeled with circumferences and all the drill bits and reamers are labeled with diameters and calculaters are forbidden.
I seem to recall that the “documentary” about finding Mokele-mbembe starred Patrick McGoohan…
When I were a nipper, sometime in the early ’60s, I was given a copy of Bernard Heuvelmans’ On the Track of Unknown Animals, which remained a favourite to read and re-read for years – I still have my copy, although not immediately to hand. Heuvelmans was a relatively sober writer, sceptical of some of the cryptozoids he wrote about (agnostic on mokélé-mbembé IIRC) and respectful of local informants, but I regret to report that not a single one of the mysterious beasts has surfaced in the intervening years.
KG @ 16
You are of my generation!
BTW all the cryptids I have heard about have turned out to be BS (we have some local such non-creatures in Scandinavia).
The coolest cryptid ever is the Mongolian death worm. Runner up is the Australian drop bear.
I’m quite sure that the bible doesn’t meant these things as being on the ark. Checkmate, creationists.
birgerjohansson @ #17 I have a suspicion that there are cryptids everywhere. When I was a kid in Florida there were stories of a humanoid “swamp monster”. There’s even a Skunk Ape in Wikipedia. Difficult to know if the adults really believed these stories or just used them to scare kids into staying away from the edges of the woods and water.
@6 robro
Somewhere, at some time, the idea started that “believe” means to accept on faith. It does not. Believe means to accept as true. so I certainly do believe evolution. I believe it based on evidence, not faith.
“For believers in the prevailing evolutionary view that. . .” followed by a baldfaced lie about the prevailing evolutionary view 🤣
(In the actual prevailing evolutionary view, of course, the clade of dinosaurs that didn’t go extinct 65M yeara ago are still all around us all the time: singing songs, becoming annual sacrifices for our Thanksgiving feasts, working with RFK Jr as part of one of his weird rich guy hobbies, etc, etc)
…but more patriotically and democratically, attacking the traitor-in-chief!
@ 23
What?You didn’t have a yacht or falconry club in your middle school?
New species. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/new-crayfish-species-discovered-in-wa-lake/
I liked this: …”A colleague from Japan, Nisikawa Usio — also an author on the study — shared that he’d come across an unusual crayfish “up the mountain from Spokane,” Larson told McClatchy News in a phone interview. Usio encouraged Larson, now an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to take a look. Larson did just that. He liked to hike and camp, and in his free time, he’d “drive over the mountains and look for this animal,” he said. He found it on the bank of a lake in Washington’s Okanogan-Omak area. When he saw it, he knew it was what he was looking for. To Larson, crayfish are fascinating, but “I think people can misjudge their diversity,” he said. There are hundreds of species globally, and they differ “in their habitat associations, how they interact with their food web (and) how abundant they might be,” Larson said.
At the end of the article, it lists the research team and I queried every name through retractionwatch.com and the last individual listed (Bronwyn Williams) was part of this:https://retractionwatch.com/2019/07/22/contamination-leech-data-lead-to-expression-of-concern/
I am not a scientist but I work with a few; I feel no need to be alarmed….or do I
I remember bawling over these false dinosaur images (like the alleged Paluxy “human” prints later confirmed to be poorly preserved dinosaur prints and the pseudo-plesiosaur skeleton a Japanese boat fished up in 1977 later confirmed to be a basking shark) that look so deceptively real that they appeared to be threatening the very knowledge and worldview on dinosaurs based on valid evidence as told in many a real dinosaurs book I grew up reading. And yet, they have been proven time and time again to be fakes made up by those racist creationists who blatantly distort indigenous made images depicting mythical and real, extant animals to further their made up young earth fantasies they falsely called “God’s Word.”
As to be shown in theaters on July 2nd — Jurassic World: Rebirth.
Calling the Wollemi Pine a “dinosaur tree” is another piece of BS. Its leaves resemble Agathis jurassica, a fossil from the late Jurassic Purlawaugh Formation in New South Wales. There are also fossil twigs with a similar popcorn-textured bark. Although they are probably closely related the Wollemi pine is given a different taxonomic name, Wollemia nobilis.
The eastern Australian Highlands are well known for a relict Antarctic beech flora preserved in the cooler tops of eastern mountain ranges. The Wollemi pine is another example fortuitously preserved in an isolated valley in mountains west of Sydney. As such it is endangered and is carefully protected in its natural setting despite now being a fairly common tree in nurseries and botanical gardens. Australia, particularly the east coast has undergone major geographic and climatic changes since the Jurassic so it is hardly a ‘dinosaur tree’. This was a meme conjured up to protect the area from developing a major natural gas reserve for Sydney. This could have been developed without risking the stand of pines but the pines were protected by enclosing the whole area in an extension to a nearby national park so any form of extractive industry is forbidden.
@28 garydargan
Well, when you put it that way, it sounds like the kind of smart politics I can get behind. Stopping extractive hydrocarbon projects anywhere is an unambiguous win for the environment.
Nort in the slightest. That just means they go to places where regulation is more laissez-faire.
Profitability is maximised when externalities are ignorable.
For example, there’s a reason new lithium deposits are not worth investing into and thus they’re done in such places; from the BBC:
Australia’s lithium mining boom hit by sagging prices
“”
Nort in the slightest. That just means they go to places where regulation is more laissez-faire.
Profitability is maximised when externalities are ignorable.
For example, there’s a reason new lithium deposits are not worth investing into and thus they’re done in such places; from the BBC:
Australia’s lithium mining boom hit by sagging prices
“Often called “white gold” and the key component in rechargeable batteries, the metal lithium is so light that it floats on water, but its price has sunk like a stone over the past year.
Due to a combination of falling sales of electric vehicles, and a world oversupply of lithium ore, the cost of the main lithium compound has fallen by more than three quarters since June 2023.
This decline has had a particularly hard impact on Australia, because it is the world’s largest producer of lithium ore, accounting for 52% of the global total last year.
Australia also has the second-largest reserves of the mineral after Chile, with the vast majority in Western Australia, and a smaller amount in the Northern Territory.
The sharp decline in lithium prices has led to mine shutdowns. Adelaide-based Core Lithium announced back in January that due to “weak market conditions” it was suspending mining at its Finniss site near Darwin, with the loss of 150 jobs.
Then in August, US firm Albemarle said it would be scaling back production at its Kemerton lithium processing plant, located some 170km (100 miles) south of Perth. This is expected to lead to more than 300 redundancies.”
We have the bunyip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyip
@8. birgerjohansson : “Likewise, Loch Ness hardly provides enough sustenance to the local tiny fish, no way it can support a breeding population of big critters.”
Well, in fairness from what I saw on Jeremy Wade’s River Monsters show specifically the Loch Ness episode here – River Monsters – Legend of Loch Ness (50 mins long)it could be well, perhaps, explained by natural wildlife albeit NOT living pleisiosaurs.
StevoR@33,
The “Loch Ness monster” nonsense was started by a faked photo in 1934.
There could be semiaquatic dinosaurs (such as loons) swimming in Loch Ness.
Now, a random thought.
I follow a lot of zoology and paleontology, and some cryptid discourse on Twitter (In addition to reading the blog Tetrapod Zoology by Darren Naish). It’s all in English – there doesn’t seem to be any Finnish cryptid discourse, or at least the algorithm hasn’t recommended any. I don’t read other languages, but I sometimes get related recommendations in Spanish, and I know there’s a lot of French cryptid literature. I can’t think of any Finnish cryptid literature that isn’t translated and dealing with foreign cryptids. I haven’t ever heard of any Finnish cryptids, aside from a few alleged lion sightings.
I get the impression that “cryptid” as a concept originated from modern zoology and paleontology specifically in the context of European colonial exploration. Certain West European cultures, that were heavily involved in global colonization, became understandably impressed with all the new animals – often large and charismatic – that were newly described, previously unknown to European science. Often, these animals were first reported to naturalists as unconfirmed hearsay, from either natives or early colonial settlers and officials. The reading public got used to the idea that any fantastic animal allegedly lurking in some remote backwood of an exotic country could very well be real, and subject to serious scientific study. Same for alleged sea monsters in the depths of oceans.
(Of course, Europeans had been making up stories of fantastic creatures living in faraway lands since before colonialism became a thing, but those stories were not originally meant to be taken too seriously. Same went for any folk monsters and evil spirits that were said to exist closer to home. Later, similar stories from the colonial natives became blended with accounts of real, undiscovered animals.)
Over time, as the world became more and better explored, there was a dearth of new exotic animals, or at least large animals that looked clearly distinct from known species. Then, the scinetific study of unconfirmed charismatic animals became increasingly a realm of wishful thinkers and pseudoscience grifters. It became distinct enough from “conventional” zoology that the terms cryptid and cryptozoology were eventually coined (originally in English, I understand).
Meanwhile, modern paleontology was revealing the story of life’s past. Some prehistoric animals, such as dinosaurs and plesiosaurs became instant pop culture hits. People were reluctant to accept that such charismatic animals had disappeared entirely. Fossil record was patchy, and “living fossils” were occasionally discovered in remote places, or known animals were sometimes found to be relatively unchanged ancient lineages. Often, fossils of modern or similar animals (such as elephants/mammoths) were discovered far from said animals’ modern or historically known distribution. It took a while for the science community to even accept that extinction is a thing, since it was often thought anything could be living out there somewhere.
I think the Loch Ness creature became famous in part because some early accounts associated it with the idea of a surviving plesiosaur or dinosaur, and in part because zoological discovery was already a well-accepted concept in English-speaking popular culture. Otherwise, there seems to be a relative lack of claimed European cryptids, at least any that are interesting enough to get international attention. In North America or Australia, common colonial English-speaking people often use the word cryptid broadly for any local folklore monster or fantasy creature (against the arguments of serious cryptozoology enthusiasts), and sometimes even apply the same for European folklore. Here in mainland Europe, my native impression is that local folktale creatures are usually called just folktale creatures, not “cryptids”.
The main type of European cryptids seem to be alleged sightings of big cats, which are probably often based on or inspired by real, escaped animals. I think in Finland this has also been less common through the recent history, because whenever people thought they saw some big predator-type animal in the thicket, they’d usually assume it was a bear or wolf, both animals plausible enough to not count as cryptid sightings.
lumipuna, I get results when I search.
e.g. https://finland.fi/life-society/finnish-mythical-creatures-still-lurk/
garydargan@28–
Beat me to it. The Wollemi Pine is not a so-called fossil species, which really only means that someone found living examples of a species known from the fossil record but thought to be extinct, the most iconic being the coelocanth.
All the existing Wollemi Pines are genetically identical due to a genetic bottleneck 10,000-26,000 years ago and we also know that its pollen is distinctly different from the fossil pollen of ancestors in its family, which is not surprising given the Araucariaceae conifers are ~200M years old. That is, the Wollemi Pine poses no difficulty for evolutionary theory while directly contradicting creationists’ Great Flood theory on both the dating of its bottleneck to before the creationists insist the universe even existed, and the inexplicability of its survival in a tiny pocket of New South Wales that supposedly spent weeks at an ocean depth of around 8,800 meters.
@ KG : “StevoR@33, The “Loch Ness monster” nonsense was started by a faked photo in 1934.”
Not quite. The photo was indeed a fake and did popularise the monster esp the identity as perhaps a Plesiosaur idea but there were earlier accounts :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster#Early_precursors
Albeit 1870 is still really pretty recent..
John Morales at 37,
Exactly as I said, those are explicitly described as “mythical creatures” from folklore and the word “cryptid” is not mentioned. The subheading about them “existing” in Finland is clearly made in jest. I know them all by name, though interpretations vary between different sources.
There’s a mention of Johanna Sinisalo’s novel (which I have read), which is available in many languages and won some international awards. It’s speculative fiction, set in an alternate reality where “trolls” exist and are convergently bipedal, highly intelligent felids. This has not been seriously proposed, and it’s not much similar to the common modern folk fantasy interpretation of trolls (IDK much about older folklore).
StevoR @33: Wade failed to demonstrate that Greenland sharks actually enter the lake (and that would be quite a feat, as they’re very sluggish swimmers and the River Ness has a strong current). And of course they’d have to do so without ever being seen, which seems improbable given how shallow the river is and how many people live along its banks. That was part of the seasonal rot of River Monsters, when the show started running out of species that legitimately could pose a threat to humans and started portraying things like lampreys as dangerous and also started to play up the animals as having supernatural powers.
Next GM project: cross-breed lungfish and pirhana.
If there are no real monsters we should create them. Like ambush predators that can get enough sustenance from eukalyptus leafs but eat meat when available. Ultimately I would want the critters from Tremors.
@ ^ birgerjohansson : Drop Bears!!
https://www.australianculture.org/drop-bears/
Akira MacKenzie@2 the problems of Sasquatch numbers, including the fact that no one has found a dead one, had led the more “imaginative” Sasquatch fans to the idea it might not be a simple primate. Instead it might be some sort of transdimensional creature, alien, or what have you.
@41, microraptor : Fair points. Okay. Yeah.
OTOH, there are large~ish fish and eels in Loch Ness FWIW.
As wiki notes* large Eels or a combo mix of genuine confusion of trees, etc and deliberate hoaxes and tall story telling cynically spurred on Scottish tourist boards and locals seems the most likely answer to the Nessie monster mystery.
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster#Eels
It’s plausible enough evidence for, shall we say, a de facto Loch Ness monster.
StevoR@39,
Thanks for that correction. Although I don’t think any of the earlier “sightings” have any credibility – apart from St. Columba’s, obviously, can’t doubt an anecdote from a hagiography ;-)
@ 44
Yeah, I heard about that bunch. The QAA Podcast just did a premium episode on one of those loons. Surprise! The “Forrest People” endorsed Trump!
lumipuna @40: “Exactly as I said, those are explicitly described as “mythical creatures” from [Finnish] folklore and the word “cryptid” is not mentioned. The subheading about them “existing” in Finland is clearly made in jest.”
Sure, but that’s also the case with the featured critter — from the OP:
“Mokele-mbembe is the Congo Basin’s bigfoot. Or that’s what it’s become, anyway — a cryptid. Nobody is sure when the myth originated, but it was born among the basin’s communities, who passed it down as an oral tradition. Locals tell me the myth was spiritual at first — a metaphor, perhaps, for humankind’s delicate relationship with the land. But today, nobody can say with certainty what exactly it meant because foreigners long ago twisted it well beyond recognition.”
(So is the bunyip)
The difference is that for Mokele-mbembe and Bunyip the word “cryptid” is often used, and this designation is even acknowledged by people (such as the quoted OP) who see no zoological credibility and consider them mere folklore (whether twisted beyond recognition or not).
I guess I was getting back to the point that the difference is colonial misinterpretation and appropriation (on where the cryptid designation is applied), as part of wider colonial exploration.
No worries, lumipuna.
(Did you mean exploitation rather than exploration? I think so)
—
BTW, regarding endorsement by Joe Rogan, Google tells me Neil deGrasse Tyson has been a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience multiple times, including episodes #919, #1347, #1658, and #1904.
(Dude has become a talking head)
@46. Defacto Trump voter and enabler beholder : “It’s plausible enough evidence for, shall we say, a de facto Loch Ness monster.”
Certainly more evidence for the Loch Ness monster being real than there ever was reason for thinking voting third party or consistently and solely attacking the ONLY ACTUAL ALTERNATIVE to Trump was doing anything other than helping Trump take power with all the horrendous deadly consequences that you were warned of and we are now witnessing. Go away beholder, you are dripping blood from your hands all over eveything.
@47. KG : I don’t think any of the earlier “sightings” have any credibility – apart from St. Columba’s, obviously, can’t doubt an anecdote from a hagiography ;-)
Well, of course! After all a
mythicalliteral Saint wouldn’t be a lie, er, lie would they? ;-)I’m not the first to mention this, but birds.
So there you go.
rietpluim, heh. How can you question their very scientific beliefs thus? ;)
[https://creation.com/hierarchical-clustering-in-dinosaur-baraminology-studies]
“Is Archaeopteryx a part of the same baramin as land-based dinosaurs?
A recent baraminology study places the bird species Archaeopteryx lithographica together with the terrestrial dromaeosaurid theropod Velociraptor mongoliensis. This despite the two species being created on Day 5 and Day 6 of Creation Week, respectively. This data set was entropy-filtered and re-analyzed, yet the same error persisted. To correct this, the distance matrix from the BDIST results of the filtered data sets were transformed into a proximity matrix and hierarchical clustering was applied to it. This way A. lithographica clustered away from theropod dinosaurs such as V. mongoliensis, together with other bird species such as Anchiornis huxleyi to form a bird cluster. Using two separate data sets, one or two tyrannosaurid clusters were predicted. One more theropod cluster, as well as a dromaeosaurid, troodontid, and oviraptor cluster, was predicted as well as the family Ornithomimidae. These clusters can be viewed as putative baramins.
[…]
Conclusion
Baraminology studies may sometimes give results that might intuitively seem incorrect. For example, in the previous analysis of three dinosaur data sets, Archaeopteryx lithografica was classified as a member of a terrestrial dinosaur baramin, when it has anatomy for flight. From the Bible, we know that birds were created on separate days than terrestrial dinosaurs, therefore they must belong to separate baramins. Feathers also provide a clear anatomical separation of Class Aves from Class Reptilia. Applying the extended entropy filter + the hierarchical clustering algorithm to the BDIST method corrected this. Furthermore, this method may be used as a possible tool in order to predict putative baramins more accurately.
“
Come now – surely you know that Birds Aren’t Real!
@50,
“The difference is that for Mokele-mbembe and Bunyip the word “cryptid” is often used”
Everyone knows that cryptids are just creatures in Fallout76:
“Kill a Cryptid is a daily challenge you can get in Fallout 76. For this, you need to find and kill one or a few of these animals.
Since you can pick and choose any of the creatures below, most players will pick an easy kill. Easy kills are the Grafton Monster and Snallygasters. You can find their locations and kill strategies below.”
@52 StevoR
This blood-covered, nation-destroying Trumboter defacto seems to be your favorite cryptid. Pics or it didn’t happen.
@ ^ Trump enabler & troll : Pics of what? You’ve admitted what you did and we can all read your old comments pre-election.
@KG #56
Wait, what?
It all makes sense now!
@59 StevoR
I dare you to accurately state what I did after stripping out all the unnecessary qualifiers and disingenuous weasel words. You can’t without admitting you’re wrong.
beholder @61: You counselled progressives to not vote for Harris, which was equivalent to counselling them to cede power to Trump. That accurate enough for you, you shit-besmirched weasel? Now kindly fuck off.
The Underpants Gnome Utopians;
1) Let Trump take over and wreak havoc.
2) ?
3) Utopia!
@62 Rob
False equivalence. Nice try, though.
Breeding populations? Phooey! Has nobody considered that Mokele-mbembes, bigfeet, chupacabras, yetis, Nessies, slendermen, and many others are all Highlanders? There can be only one of their species, and that that one is truly immortal!
beholder@63,
Where do you claim there is false equivalence? The only plausible outcomes of the election were a victory for Harris, or a victory for Trump. Advising people not to vote for Harris was therefore advising them to make it easier for Trump to win.
Well, we all know that ‘modern day xtian dinosaurs’ have all been appointed to cabinet positions by the magat in chief!
and
@65 KG wrote: he only plausible outcomes of the election were a victory for Harris, or a victory for Trump.
I reply: That is true. But, in a very limited sense. When you are given only two choices: vote for ‘crap’ or vote for ‘excrement’, we held our noses and voted for harris. BUT, the corrupt money-driven two-party system coupled with the electoral college, assures us we will NEVER have an ability to vote for a decent, honest person.
As other intelligent people have said, this country is circling the drain.
shermanj @66: Yes, it is a very limited sense. In the US, you vote for federal reps every two years. In some cases, that might mean voting for the lesser of two evils*. That leaves about 728 days every two years to work for change at the grass roots level, or higher. From what I’ve seen of your posts, you are doing that. Keep it up. Change is possible.
*Most people**, here at least, understand perfectly well that the lesser of two evils is still evil. But with a lower body count.
**Excluding douchebags like beholder, The Vicar, etc of course.
@61. beholder : ”I dare you to accurately state what I did after stripping out all the unnecessary qualifiers and disingenuous weasel words. You can’t without admitting you’re wrong.”
What an utterly disingenuous, bad faith, nonsensical comment!.Talk about projection on your part.
I’ve told you umpteen gazillion times already. I warned you as you were doing it pre-election as you ONLY attacked Kamala Harris and Biden and the Democratic party and ignored the alternative of Trump and his cult of blatant White Supremacist Fascists. I’ve pointed out since that all you have ever done here is criticise and attack and blame the actual – for America – left wing alternative rather than those Fascists you’ve dishonestly empowered pretending to be a progressive when you very clearly in practice are not.. You have admitted on this blog that you voted third party which means that you voted for Trump over Kamala Harris since the ONLY way to democratically defeat Trump was to vote for Kamala Harris.
When you could have stopped Fascists and bigots you stood with them and supported and helped them instead.
Now take your blood-stained hands and lies and get the fuck out of here you worthless piece of toxic waste.
@68 SteveGPT
You could have started and stopped there. That’s all I was asking about. Of course it’s easy to wind you up and you just keep on going…
Third party. Jill Stein. Not Trump. Repeat that sequence as needed until it sinks in to your seemingly impenetrable thought process — I know you’re capable of learning new things. Your de facto Trump voter cryptid is shambling around elsewhere.
[OT — but here we are]
beholder, your ostensible misbeholding is risible. Worse than Nelson’s blind eye.
[Third party. Jill Stein. Not Trump.] → [+1 vote to Trump compared to Harris].
Gotta love how you can’t even attempt to either face or dispute the actual claim at hand.
The claim is that agitating against the only credible alternative to Trump is effectively endorsing Trump, given that there is no other alternative after the maligned candidate. You know that, of course.
Basically, bleating that you did not endorse Trump overtly does not dispute the actual claim that you covertly endorsed him.
All you have, though. Stubborn mulish denialism of your fifth-columnism.
Remember your wankery about Gaza and how awful the Democrats were? Here we are, after the election.
Anyway, you have no credibility whatsoever regarding politics with me.
(You’re no cryptid, you’re one of those people)
@ StevoR
This thread is about a putative Congolese dinosaur.
You’ve had plenty of opportunity to express your fanatical hatred of people who have reservations about supporting genocide.
How about take it to endless thread or knock it off?
Ah, yes. The well-known and respected Kremlin asset and Putin dinner-guest. Stein has repeatedly repeated Kremlin justifications for the invasion of Ukraine. She is also a hypocrite, having large investments in funds which in turn invested in fossil fuels and arms maunfacturers. And she has presided over the decline of the US Green Party.
@71. Silentbob :
Oh for fucks sake. Why do you keep defending that Trump enabling troll?
Asked you before and as usual you refus etoanswer the inconvenient questions.
Yet again for your (lack of) attention Silentbob :
False Silentbob totally false.
I’m the one living in reality here whereas beholder, the former commenter Vicar here and it seems you too, Silentbob, are living in a delusional world where doing anything OTHER than unifying behind and voting for Kamala was someone not utterly counter-productive and treason to the leftwing of politics and virtually all progressive causes because doing anything other than supporting and voting for Kamala means helping Trump become a fascist dictator.
That was what beholder, Vicar and the purity disunity mob did. They in fact helped install Trump as tyrant and they be reminded and held accountable for that.
In reality the people responsible for Trump are, in this order :
= 1a) People wearing MAGA hats who would vote for Trump if he ran on a platform of kicking puppies.
= 1b) People wearing Stein / West / etc.. Third Party Spoiler hats who know that Trump would be catastrophic for the planet but are happy to throw everything and everyone else in the world under the bus due to their dislike of and refusal to do the ethically as well as politically correct thing and unify behind support and vote for Kamala Harris thus de facto supporting Trump.
= 1c) Those people who deliberately refused to vote therefore condemning the rest of our shared pale blue dot to Trump as the fascist dictator of the USA.
I have never stated that “People who refused to support Harris’s full throated support of genocide in Gaza.” are responsible and will add that that is a false premise because kamala Harris does NOT and made it clear that she did NOT support genocide in Gaza whilst OTOH, Trump and the Repugs have made it very clear that they did and do support the genocide in Gaza.
So , NO silentbob, it is NOT about my supposed “fanatical hatred of people who have reservations about supporting genocide”. which is just your bullshit opinion.
Reservations against genocide? Sure! Of course, genocide is something we should oppose – but putting someone who wants more and worse genocides in charge (which is what voting for Trump via Stein did) – of the world’s rogue superpower? No. That is WORSE not better! Duh!
That’s what beholder, Vicar, the other Purity Disunity willfully ignorant fools and Bothsiderists did.
Note that Trump has always supported genocide and, ofc, Mehdi Hasan has, as I’ve repeatedly linked here, noted here that Trump is the most “anti-Palestinian President in US History”
Beholder gave us endless attacks on the ONLY ALTERNATIVE to Trump pre-election aimed at discouraging people from doing the ONLY thing that could democratically stop him and then beholder & the rest of the Stein traitors to progressivism went and effectively voted for Trump foisting that disgusting despot on the rest of the planet with all the horrific and incalculably grim consequences that comes with it. Metaphorically beholder has blood on their hands and has done us all harm that is beyond estimating.
So. NO, Silentbob / beholder, I will not stop reminding you and others here of this truth. This needs saying.
Quoting for truth #51 AugustusVerger here :
Source : https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/27/is-anyone-still-unconvinced-that-he-is-absolutely-mad/#comment-2256146
Oh and see also what I asked you personally here :
Source : https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/29/universities-need-to-fight-back/#comment-2259782
(Plus scroll down esp to #57 – & 59.)
Which I don’t think I’ve ever seen you, Silentbob, actually properly answer.
Nor did I start this on this thread about the putative Congolese dinosaur – scroll up and see where the derailment started – with Trump voter and enabler beholder’s #46 here. Not me but them here.
For clarity and ease of reference with numbers added for that – Questions for Silentbob :
(1) Why do you keep defending known dishonest troll & de facto Trump voter & enabler beholder here?
(2) Do you think Beholder didn’t throw us all under that metaphorical tram / trolley in the last (both senses of word) UsoA election? They did.
(2a) What part of beholder NOT voting for Kamala meant they de facto, in effect, in practice in fucking reality* voted for Trump in effect don’t you understand?
(2b) What part of Beholder ONLY ever attacked the Democratic party and undermined and discouraged people from voting for them means they helped install Trump as dictator don’t you grok?
3) I think the “trolley problem” is hypothetical bullshit. Do you disagree & think it is actually valid & if so why?
(4) Which anti-trans trolls specifically do you claim have attacked you in every thread here? Rob Grigjanis (Thanks Rob Grigjanis here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/29/universities-need-to-fight-back/#comment-2260074 )
(5) Are you willing to leave John Morales alone and simply not reply or respond tohis comments here rather than obsessively attacking and trolling him?
There’s one more question here which will be answered not by Silentbob’s words but by whether he chooses to answer these or simply pretends to have not seen them and ignores them as he has done in past when facing inconvenient to him questioning. Guess we’ll all see the answer to that at least.
Tautologous for emphasis for the apparently hard of comprehending here.
@ ^ Silentbob’s refusal and / or inability to answer the questions posed above yet is noted. After giving him a few days to answer & having brought the above comment & its questions to his notice: