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'Straya!

Skeptic Ginger said:
The spider bite within the sheets was confirmed by another news source and you are still doubling down? :confused:

I never said anything about rarity. I said a fact: When we arrived in Sydney (1978) there was a headline about a woman in Sydney who was just killed by a Sydney Funnel Web spider that was in her bed. I believe she had pulled the sheet back when it bit her but that detail might be an altered memory. Or not. We were in Australia from 1978 over into 1979.

I had never heard of Sydney Funnel Web spiders before then, we had just arrived in Sydney and there is no doubt it happened. Those are the kind of memories that stick with you.
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Is that your way of denying it happened? You couldn't find it on Google?

Did you find the account of each of the 13 deaths before 1981? Because Google has that information in numerous places. I just couldn't find the specifics of the 13.
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Wut. :boggled:

Not denying it at all. I simply can't find any more info about it. Can you?

Oh, and the stuff about the UK newspapers? It's because they have always portrayed Australia as being infested with all manner of dangerous creatures that will hunt you down in the night or drop on you in the daytime with big pointy teeth. Un-researched stories about yet another death-by-koala and so on. It's crap-level tabloid sensationalism so they can have a jolly good larf at the colonials. Good for a giggle here because it IS such crap.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Wut. :boggled:

Not denying it at all. I simply can't find any more info about it. Can you?

Oh, and the stuff about the UK newspapers? It's because they have always portrayed Australia as being infested with all manner of dangerous creatures that will hunt you down in the night or drop on you in the daytime with big pointy teeth. Un-researched stories about yet another death-by-koala and so on. It's crap-level tabloid sensationalism so they can have a jolly good larf at the colonials. Good for a giggle here because it IS such crap.
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I never said the Sun wasn't a tabloid. Is this also a tabloid? https://www.qt.com.au/news/i-felt-something-crawl-my-leg/3133325/

When you say, "Not even Google seems to remember" that sounds like you are saying if it happened it would be on Google.

Especially when combined with you never acknowledging the cherry picking.


So, it's settled then, SFWs do find their way into beds. And you have no reason not to believe my account, it wasn't some other species of spider.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yeah, honestly, the threat is vastly exaggerated. Hardly anyone dies from Australian wildlife. More people are killed by cows than by snakes.
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Speaking of not being that concerned, we stayed in Tasmania for a month including a bit of camping and a lot of hiking. Taz has 4 snake species (three land and a sea snake species), all venomous. We were wading across a pond when a snake swam across it the other way.

We thought it was super cool. The best thing about Oz is the wildlife.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I never said the Sun wasn't a tabloid. Is this also a tabloid? https://www.qt.com.au/news/i-felt-something-crawl-my-leg/3133325/
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Uh, yeah! :rolleyes: Circulation of under 20,000 per month, in a locality about the size of Pismo Beach. DEFINITELY a giant tabloid.

When you say, "Not even Google seems to remember" that sounds like you are saying if it happened it would be on Google.
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Correct. And if you want to pay a subscription, you can research newspapers online to find more about what happened with spider bites in Australia in 1978. One site has about 900 references, but I'm stuffed if I'm going to pay to look at all of them for this one thread.

So sincerely, where are you going with this?

Especially when combined with you never acknowledging the cherry picking.
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........what??? :confused:

So, it's settled then, SFWs do find their way into beds. And you have no reason not to believe my account, it wasn't some other species of spider.
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Ah, so you thought I was completely discounting your story! I see.

Truth of the matter is that the probability of a funnel-web spider ending up in your bed would be the same as an attack by a mountain lion in California. It's exceptionally rare but it DOES happen, therefore it is "newsworthy". And therefore the UK press likes to make a thing of it.

These stories of the change in weather here will not cause legions of spiders to suddenly appear in our back yards. It simply raises the probability that they will be found more often. Most Sydneyites go through their entire life digging up their gardens without ever seeing a funnelweb spider. People with pools are more likely to find them - they may get two or three in the filter this year instead of one.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
Uh, yeah! :rolleyes: Circulation of under 20,000 per month, in a locality about the size of Pismo Beach. DEFINITELY a giant tabloid.

Correct. And if you want to pay a subscription, you can research newspapers online to find more about what happened with spider bites in Australia in 1978. One site has about 900 references, but I'm stuffed if I'm going to pay to look at all of them for this one thread.

So sincerely, where are you going with this?

........what??? :confused:
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See post # 10

Ah, so you thought I was completely discounting your story! I see.
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Yes, you said so.

Post #4
Yeah, nah.

They live in holes in the ground and try to catch stuff that walks by, like bigger insects. They don't prowl. So why would they go anywhere, especially into someone's house?

More likely it was a Whitetail spider.
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So have you gone from that yet to, OK I believe you? Nope.

[snipped stuff not in dispute]
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Skeptic Ginger said:
See post # 10

Yes, you said so.

Post #4

So have you gone from that yet to, OK I believe you? Nope.
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Are you really getting huffed that skeptics don't trust your 30+ year old memory of a passing news story that you can not find much support for?

You know how it works around here, for general you and I:
You make a claim.
I say I doubt it.
You say here are some unreliable sources that say something similar may have happened at a different time.
I say that doesn't really support your claim.
You say yeah you're right, I may have been drinking Fosters at the time.
​
(That blank line above is intentional.)
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Yes, you said so.

Post #4

So have you gone from that yet to, OK I believe you? Nope.
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My profuse apologies. Let me explain.

One of the other things you should have remembered about Australians having visited is that we are VERY good at sarcasm, which is basically an ability to make amusing remarks in a deadpan way at another person's expense. This leads to the propensity for 'Strayans to lead their victims on with increasingly bizarre tales told as "truth" followed by an obvious revealing punchline. This can pass for amusing here.

It is the lack of ability by the victim to detect that they are indeed being mislead that is the amusing part. Gullibility. It's usually associated with their ignorance of the subject as well. Usually this ends in laughter when the victim realises they have been set up. Australians are used to this. It's how we behave daily. Perhaps even a default position. So we can spot this a mile (1.6kms) away.

Fortunately, sarcasm is part of the general skeptic's arsenal word wide, and in use right across this forum daily. So skeptics tend to be attuned to when they are being gamed. They know very quickly things are not as they appear. This is Sagan's Baloney Detector mechanism. I've seen you use it too.

More seriously, it is the lack of this Baloney detection mechanism that causes so much grief and anger socially and politically. Especially among TV evangelists, who milk their victims in an ongoing scam while continuing to spin them along and milk their wallets dry with increasingly bizarre tales. For Australians, this has always been a five-bell alarm that innocent and very gullible people are getting scammed and it continues to happen - no punch line! We remain gobsmacked these rip-off merchants haven't been tarred and feathered, stripped of their assets, and run out of town on a rail.

Anyway, back to spiders. This is a thread about 'Straya. I was being a little bit Aussie sarcastic. Next time I will put sarcasm tags around it. Or purple text. Or whatever it is that signifies sarcasm here. And I will buy you the first drink when we meet. Orright?
 
Dr. Keith said:
Are you really getting huffed that skeptics don't trust your 30+ year old memory of a passing news story that you can not find much support for?
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No, I'm annoyed the evidence I posted was ignored, just like you are ignoring it.

My memory
A tabloid story

That's cherry picking the evidence I posted leaving out what I posted in addition to those two things.
Dr. Keith said:
You know how it works around here, for general you and I:
You make a claim.
I say I doubt it.
You say here are some unreliable sources that say something similar may have happened at a different time.
I say that doesn't really support your claim.
You say yeah you're right, I may have been drinking Fosters at the time.
​
(That blank line above is intentional.)
Click to expand...
See, there you go, ignoring the sources I posted while cherry picking 2 pieces of evidence out.
And I'm not the only one who posted some of the evidence.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
My profuse apologies. Let me explain.

One of the other things you should have remembered about Australians having visited is that we are VERY good at sarcasm, which is basically an ability to make amusing remarks in a deadpan way at another person's expense. This leads to the propensity for 'Strayans to lead their victims on with increasingly bizarre tales told as "truth" followed by an obvious revealing punchline. This can pass for amusing here.

It is the lack of ability by the victim to detect that they are indeed being mislead that is the amusing part. Gullibility. It's usually associated with their ignorance of the subject as well. Usually this ends in laughter when the victim realises they have been set up. Australians are used to this. It's how we behave daily. Perhaps even a default position. So we can spot this a mile (1.6kms) away.

Fortunately, sarcasm is part of the general skeptic's arsenal word wide, and in use right across this forum daily. So skeptics tend to be attuned to when they are being gamed. They know very quickly things are not as they appear. This is Sagan's Baloney Detector mechanism. I've seen you use it too.

More seriously, it is the lack of this Baloney detection mechanism that causes so much grief and anger socially and politically. Especially among TV evangelists, who milk their victims in an ongoing scam while continuing to spin them along and milk their wallets dry with increasingly bizarre tales. For Australians, this has always been a five-bell alarm that innocent and very gullible people are getting scammed and it continues to happen - no punch line! We remain gobsmacked these rip-off merchants haven't been tarred and feathered, stripped of their assets, and run out of town on a rail.

Anyway, back to spiders. This is a thread about 'Straya. I was being a little bit Aussie sarcastic. Next time I will put sarcasm tags around it. Or purple text. Or whatever it is that signifies sarcasm here. And I will buy you the first drink when we meet. Orright?
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Now you're claiming it was sarcasm! :rolleyes:

No, you could have said that after your first post.

You were wrong. SFWs do sometimes get into people's beds.

You can't provide anything to counter the evidence I posted.

And now you want to get out of being wrong by claiming you didn't mean it.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Now you're claiming it was sarcasm! :rolleyes:

No, you could have said that after your first post.

You were wrong. SFWs do sometimes get into people's beds.

You can't provide anything to counter the evidence I posted.

And now you want to get out of being wrong by claiming you didn't mean it.
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[THIS IS SARCASM-->]Yep, sure. Whatever you like. It isn't going to make any difference in the great scheme of things, really. [<--THAT WAS SARCASM]
 
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