Editor's note

It is the year 2024. I review this page with a vague discomfort, and want to make it clear to potential readers that this isn't how I actually write or even wrote. Much of the wording was chosen to allude to class material, not to be grandiloquent. If you would like to read some of my better writing, it may or may not be available on this site, or on my personal page. Also, please don't consider this post as a technical guide. I did things somewhat poorly, but that I was able to do them proves my point well. Thank you for your time, -B.

Reptilianism: A Study in Wrongness

March 30th, 2023 C.E.

The Fallacy

In class, you stated that a .org top-level domain afforded a level of credibility above that of the .com. When I spoke to the contrary, I was not only booed, but you made the unsubstantiated claim that .org domains required certification of one’s status as a non-profit organization. A student then made a web search to support the discussion (while not utilizing the information-vetting strategies you had just taught) and incorrectly stated that .org domains did require verification. This is clearly wrong, as I have acquired a .org domain without any verification. All I needed was a PayPal account.

The Process

  1. I checked for my domain of choice on Porkbun, a popular, affordable domain registrar. An image of the .org's availability on a domain registrar.

  2. I purchased the domain. An image of me purchasing the domain.

  3. To secure the site and speed up loading, I set the nameservers to CloudFlare nameservers to make use of CloudFlare’s DDoS protection and content distribution system, respectively. An image of me changing the nameservers in Porkbun's control panel. An image of the CloudFlare dashboard for this domain.

  4. I wrote this page in Markdown and used Sphinx to convert it to HTML. An image of me writing this website.

  5. I hosted this on my server and set CloudFlare to forward the content of my webserver to this domain. (No image this time because it’s mostly just editing configuration files).

  6. That was it. Those were all the steps.

Addressing a Possible Counterargument

One might say that all this requires an awful amount of tech-savviness and expertise, but the reality is that anyone with Google, common sense, and $7.49 in digitally supported money can do it.

The Exigence

Pure, unbridled spite and a passion for facts.

[What follows is an August 10th, 2023 Revision]
It's my ND, actually. I just found it easier for the unnamed (and wrong) teacher to continue living in her fantasy world where facts are a matter of opinion and I was just a weird, mean student. The fact of the matter is that it is trivially easy to fact check, as we are in the era of the internet. [2024 revision ND].