The Flat Earthers Life On The Edge Of Reality

When the question of whether the Earth is a ball or not becomes unignorable, a group of independent researchers collaborate on a way to find out the truth. Tim Ozman, CEO of Saturn-X, gets dragged into the middle of the controversy as a whistle blower and perhaps the only person with the tenacity to go all the way to the edge. The only thing stopping him? The Flat Earthers themselves, who prove to be a dysfunctional bunch. Paranoid, crazy, and yes, violent. Please share this book with Flat Earthers everywhere, especially those who have already gone over the edge and will not come back to the Globe.

“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.” —Science Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice. How? Why? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove. In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.

A satirical comedy featuring Christopher Columbus, a tech billionaire, and a global delusion. Mel Winterbourne is the founder of a small, single-issue charity in the obscure field of mapmaking. Its success in achieving modest aims attracts the attention of handsome tech billionaire Joey Talavera, who evicts Mel and hijacks her charity for his own ends: to convince the world that the earth is flat. Although his chances of doing so seem slim, Flat Earthery is an idea whose time has come. With the historical reputation of Christopher Columbus in free-fall, old-style 'globularism' becomes heretical for a new generation of angry, anti-Establishment free-thinkers. Teachers, politicians, and celebrities face ruin if they refuse to sign up to the new orthodoxy. For Mel, something must be done. Teaming up with a pariah tabloid journalist and a faded writer of gross-out movie comedies, she sets out to challenge Talavera and his deranged beliefs. Will history and the billionaire's own family origins be their unexpected ally? Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be much more relevant than you think.

Conspiracies theories are some of the most striking features in the American political landscape: the Kennedy assassination, aliens at Roswell, subversion by Masons, Jews, Catholics, or communists, and modern movements like Birtherism and Trutherism. But what do we really know about conspiracy theories? Do they share general causes? Are they becoming more common? More dangerous? Who is targeted and why? Who are the conspiracy theorists? How has technology affected conspiracy theorising? This book offers the first century-long view of these issues.

Is the Earth flat or spherical? There is only one way to find out the truth. Just go up there in the orbit of Earth, see it for yourself, and then come back to tell us the story. You may always rely on everything that others claim, officially or not, that the Earth is flat or spherical, but when all their statements and proofs remain inconclusive, since they did not go up there in the orbit of Earth to see it themselves, regardless of what they may claim, you have to keep searching. Yet when you study the current science with all its space missions and space records, even these remain inconclusive, as though space missions have never reached past the lower orbit of Earth themselves. Therefore, now we have additional important questions to ask, besides those regarding the true shape of Earth. Is there anything at all past the lower orbit of Earth? No, according to all space records, regardless of what science may claim. Because as long as you cannot go past the lower orbit of Earth as an individual or as an entire valid space mission to see everything yourself, and as long as the current science remains incapable to provide the necessary scientific evidence stating that the Earth is spherical and that our world spans past the lower orbit of Earth as we see in the sky, then everyone, the entire humanity remains incapable to prove that Earth is flat or spherical. Since just as all flatearthers and planoterrestrials out there struggle to prove that the Earth is flat, now you have the entire science, with its entire army of millions of employed scientists incapable to prove that Earth is spherical and that there is anything out there past the lower orbit of Earth. Because this unique circumstance questions not only the accurate shape of Earth, not only the pertinence and reliability of the current science, but it questions the meaning and nature of this entire world. And if you are only starting your search for truth right now, to see if Earth could be flat and not spherical, there is significantly more going on than contorted science and fake space missions, while you should research harder to find out truth. Because you cannot simply solve a mathematical equation here at the surface of Earth to find out its shape and nature, while you cannot rely on science to tell you the truth as it lies persistently, and now you have to figure out everything on your own. Yet there are still ways to tell if Earth is spherical of flat, by the laws of physics here at the surface of Earth matching space objects or flat surfaces, or matching rotating objects or stationary ones, as we will see shortly in the book. Yet you always have to be careful throughout your studies, because many times, created realities are made with the main intention to seem larger and therefore more credible, fooling you the entire time. While dreams and videogames do just the same. And therefore, now you have to consider these details just as well, along with much more. This book creates a comprehensive model of Earth and of the entire world, studying its shape, boundaries, characteristics, and social circumstances, using reasoning and accurate facts. This research of the true shape and nature of Earth is done from all perspectives: scientific, empiric, social, cognitive, existential, and spiritual.

Every reality is real. Somewhere. Jeff O'Brien has been to at least two of them. I think the title tells you all you really need to know. Get woke.

Contrary to popular belief, fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world was round. The idea of the world as a sphere had been widely accepted in scientific, philosophical and even religious circles from as early as the fourth century bc. Bizarrely, it was not until the supposedly more rational nineteenth century that the notion that the world might actually be flat really took hold. Even more bizarrely, it persists to this day. Based on a range of original sources, Garwood's history of flat-earth beliefs - from the Babylonians to the present day - raises issues central to the history and philosophy of science, its relationship with religion and the making of human knowledge about the natural world. Flat Earth is the first definitive study of one of history's most notorious and persistent ideas, and evokes all the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual turmoil of the modern age. 'Highly entertaining and often hilarious ... an enjoyable romp through the dottier history of scientific and religious eccentricity' Sunday Times 'This entertaining history of the Flat Earth movement is full of crazy characters and fascinating details' Daily Telegraph 'Wonderful ... an intriguing chronicle of 150 years of self- delusion' Financial Times

“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.” —Science Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice. How? Why? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove. In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.