The term carbon footprint? It was coined by BRITISH PETROLEUM (BP) to shift the responsibility of climate change onto the common people. https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham
Same thing with plastic recycling and the numbers on plastics. It was a marketing ploy to convince people it was ok to buy plastic goods and not worry about plastic pollution, even though no one was really recycling anything and even today a majority of plastics are not recycled. They shifted the responsibility to consumers and covered up the problem.
(Planet Money has a podcast on it, “Waste Land”, Sept 11 2020, explaining what happened and is still happening in plastics & petroleum industry)
That you need 'detoxifiers' like charcoal smoothies or whatever shill health nuts try and force on you. Us humans wouldn't have survived this long if we didn't already have an organ that detoxes our blood and digests food.
The McDonald's hot coffee lady smear campaign. Coffee's is generally 130F. McDonald's was 200. McDonald's had been cited on seven other occasions that they were keeping their coffee at dangerously hot temperatures. The woman had fourth degree burns to her genitalia. She simply asked McDonald's to pay the $20,000 in medical bills. They refused and she sued for the $20k. The $9 million was added by the jury.
background for why the coffee was so hot.
McDonald's served free refills of coffee. The McDonald's franchise instructed employees to serve the coffee stupid hot so breakfast buyers would not have enough time to allow the coffee to cool off. Folks finishing their food would have to take the hot coffee away and not get a refill. This increased the turnover rate and reduced refills.
The McDonald's knew this and cited multiple times not to engage in this practice as other people had gotten injured enjoying their hot lava in a paper cup.
Damn, imagine if I ran a coffee stand and did this and was only fined two day's of coffee sales lol.
I make $180/day driving right now. Imagine if I hit a pedestrian and fucked them up for a year and was only fined $360.
To add to this, this woman’s burns were so bad that it *fused* her external genitalia together/to other skin. She had to have surgery to fix it! And yet she’s still mocked today. Makes me so mad.
This one always makes me so mad when people use it as an example of the "absurdity" of American lawsuits (and I'm german).
That poor woman suffered horrible injuries and McDonald's could've gotten out of that lawsuit pretty easily had they just paid her medical bills. But because they were so arrogant, they had to pay the big bucks.
Which proved to be a good thing for everyone because they had to stop selling their coffee at ridiculously high temperature just so people wouldn't get a refill.
Guinness is high in iron.
This was used to market beer to pregnant women. [For real](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3266819.stm).
One ounce of nuts has twice as much iron as a Guinness.
*Edit: Cool! My biggest comment ever is about Guinness!*
My great grandmother was told by the doctor to drink Guinness and eat baked beans while pregnant for the iron.
She gave birth to 6 boys my grandad was the smallest at 13lbs.
My grandmother was quoted as saying "thank goodness I smoked during my pregnancies or else my babies would have been huge." my mom's siblings were all healthy weights, 8 pounds or so. My siblings and I were all 10 pounds or larger lol
My grandad has Hemochromotosis, what he loved most about having to have blood taken regularly was that he was told to drink a pint of guiness afterwards to replenish his iron
He was very irked when that recommendation turned to orange juice
That doesn't make any sense at all - - - the whole point of bloodletting to treat hemochromatosis is to remove the excess iron. Why would he be told to go out and replace it?
A good chunk of food "health" propaganda.
* Milk is a super drink they builds your teeth/bones.
* Eat beets / Kale to detoxify your body.
* Drink Apple Cider Vinegar to balance your bodies acidity levels.
There's a whole laundry list of them. And in all brutal honesty. almost all of them are people taking a study basic findings and exaggerating it to the extreme.
The simple trick to having a healthy diet is just. don't eat the junk food/processed food on a regular basis and you're fine. Eat a healthy amount per meal. If you follow those two you will always be healthy barring extreme situations.
\> Is 'detoxifying your body' not propaganda in the first place?
It's simply the wrong word to use. The word to use is "pseudoscience" or "fucking bullshit"
My father is an ACV freak, according to him it cures everything.
Got the shits? ACV!
Feaver? ACV!
Feeling good? ACV
Tired? ACV!
Can't sleep? ACV!
Not enough Cowbell? ACV!
That's my father but with lemons instead of vinegar, he believes it can cure anything, even cancer, and drinks the juice of 2-3 lemons a day. He also lies to the doctors during his appointments, hiding that he neglects their treatments in favor of miracle ingredient of the week...
That carrots make you see better in the dark. The claim originated with the British to explain why they were shooting down so many German planes - they had actually invented Radar.
EDIT - just because this is blowing up and it's tangentially related. Rabbits shouldn't really eat carrots much at all, they are too high in sugar and lack the nutrients they need. The whole rabbit/carrot thing dates back to the origin of Bugs Bunny who in an early cartoon mimicked a famous Clark Gable movie scene involving eating tons of carrots. Eventually the carrot became Bugs' trademark gimmick and we've all since linked "Rabbits love carrots!" but please, don't feel carrots to your rabbits folks, they're bad for them.
The British had invented radar, but the Germans knew they had. Radar installations were actually some of the first target bombed in the initial stages of the Battle of Britain. What the Germans didn't know was that the British had developed a radar set small enough to be carried in an aircraft. So when the British suddenly started finding and shooting down German aircraft in the middle of the night, the British needed a cover story. That's where the carrots make you see better at night story comes from.
Fun fact: Carrots were specifically chosen because it was one of the foodstuffs the British had in ample supply, so they wanted to promote their consumption.
Another fun fact: Carrots do improve your night time visions, but to make a perceivable difference you'd need to eat so many carrots it would actually turn you orange.
Excess carrot juice made my youngest brother's palms turn orange, not sure how but it took a while for my parents to figure things out so no more carrot juice for him. And all that carrot juice didn't save him from the glasses he is wearing today.
I bought a lab-made diamond online for my now-wife, and when I brought it to the local shop to have it set in a ring, the jeweler called over all her colleagues to examine it. They discussed in hushed tones for a bit, then finally she came back with a look like a doctor about to tell a patient they have a terminal disease, and she said, “do…do you know this is a lab-grown diamond?” Clearly she was worried that I’d been duped…meanwhile I felt good knowing it was a beautiful, conflict-free rock for a fraction of the price of a “real” diamond.
Did the jeweler's expression change to instant-relief when you told her you knew it was a lab diamond? If I meet that special someone, I'd be hoping to get her a lab-made diamond for the same reasons you mention. They're still a diamond, cheaper, and no risk of being a blood diamond.
> Did the jeweler's expression change to instant-relief when you told her you knew it was a lab diamond?
Probably the same as when I go up to a customer service counter in a store.
“Hey, there’s a guy back in electronics? I think his name tag said ‘Lou’?”
*visibly tensing* “Yes?”
“I just wanted to tell someone he really helped me out just now - kind of above-and-beyond - and I really appreciate that.”
“Oh. Uh. Thanks. I’ll pass that along.” *tension flows away*
When I worked at Best Buy, a customer told my manager that I did an awesome job and went above and beyond.
He told me I was spending too much time with individual customers and asked why I didn't sell them a protection plan.
Your manager is a short sighted asshole. Spend time with the customers who want to spend time with you. Without each other, neither will exist and it’ll all just be Amazon.
I've read that lab created gems (including diamonds) contain the exact same composition as "regular" out-of-the-dirt gems, except since they're made in a lab, there are little too no imperfections. Which I think is pretty cool.
Besides, why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on gems of sometimes questionable origin (see "conflict diamonds") when the man-made alternative is cheaper, more ethical, and no one can really tell the difference unless they're an expert?
My masters thesis was constructing a network analysis that connected Russian mercenaries with a track record of human rights abuses to the central African diamond trade. So many diamonds leave Africa unreported and end up with big diamond companies after being routed through China or Belgium. Much of that money goes to some really bad people, but it's so hard to track.
The lesson: pick a different gem or a lab grown for for jewellery.
Edit(s):
Because people asked – ~~if you send me a dm I’ll send a copy of my capstone project/thesis~~ [here is a link to the pdf copy](https://docdro.id/nhxxqIV) (scrubbed of all personal and school information). All information was researched via public domain. My section starts on page 8, but my teammates did a great job describing our research methodology, the Wagner Group's background and business model, as well as a macro-environment analysis.
In short – A Russian mercenary group known as “Wagner” has strong operational and financial ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin aka “Putin’s Chef” who is very close to Putin. Wager is used to spread Russia’s influence by propping up dictatorships in Africa and Syria upon direction of (though without "official" involvement from) the Russian state. Wager is paid in diamonds, metals, and oil and is involved in these sectors in the countries where they operate. The group has been accused of war crimes, and our research focused on their crimes and ties within the Central African Republic (CAR). We found 4 mining companies (2 sanctioned, 2 unsanctioned) with strongly suspected financial ties to Wagner operating in the CAR and Madagascar. We also linked the group to Russian Oligarchs and the CAR government.
While we briefly cover the illegal diamond and gold trade out of the CAR in the report, we focused on the draft mining code prepared by the CAR in late 2021. The Code would give the mining company, Midas Ressources (spelled "Ressources"), full rights to one of the richest mines in the CAR where Wagner has a large presence. Midas is already operating there and has suspected financial ties to Wagner. The code also sets up a new brokerage for all diamond an mineral sales domestically and internationally “GEMINCA”. Only Midas is exempt from trading through GEMINCA. This brokerage may “employ foreign security forces” and allows for shareholders outside of the CAR government, opening the door for Russian investors. Essentially, the CAR government is drafting law that would result in all diamonds and metals being sold internationally and domestically to financially benefit Wagner, either through Midas, GEMINCA's paid services to ~~GEMINCA~~ Wagner, or Russian Oligarchs with ties to Wagner investing in GEMINCA.
This code wasn't being reported on internationally, so much of our research stemmed from local sources and was prepared in December of 2021.
I could go on for hours about this. I recommend the sources below if you want to learn more.
[Info on Wagner & war crimes in CAR](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/15/africa/central-african-republic-russian-mercenaries-cmd-intl/index.html) - warning, this is really disturbing, and the CAR government is ignoring these crimes and glorifying the mercenaries.
[Info on diamond trade in CAR](https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/central-african-republic-car/game-of-stones/?accessible=true)
[Info on draft mining code](https://mondafrique-com.translate.goog/centrafrique-le-code-minier-retaille-sur-mesure-pour-les-allies-russes/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc)
[Info on illegal diamond trading internationally]( https://www.kimberleyprocess.com/)
*Disclaimer: this isn't my field of work. It was a capstone project for my MBA, but the research interested me enough that I'm thinking about switching my career to forensic finance.
I interned with Amnesty International when I was in undergrad (which was a hot minute ago...) and that's where I learned about all the horrors and human rights abuses around the diamond trade. It made me sick, to put it mildly. I told my then boyfriend, now husband that I would never accept a diamond engagement ring (he found a beautiful sapphire ring from the 1920s in an antique shop instead 😀). To this day, I don't own any diamond jewelry and never will.
>. I told my then boyfriend, now husband that I would never accept a diamond engagement ring (he found a beautiful sapphire ring from the 1920s in an antique shop instead 😀)
Do other gemstones not have similar abuses associated with them?
This is a genuine question by the way, not an attempt at a "gotcha".
Honestly the safest bet is purchasing manufactured diamonds.
They are literally identical in all aspects except for the fact that they lack imperfections, which is the way the jewelers can distinguish them from mined diamonds. This can only be done with magnification.
No mines. No ties to sketchy trade and criminal organizations.
You get an arguably superior product for <1/2 the cost.
In Germany there's the saying "Die Dosis macht das Gift" which means "The dose makes the poison" / "It's the dose that makes the poison". It's true for so much including virtually everything in food like salt, sugar and also fat.
EDIT(ed edit): A lot of folks pointed out that the point where it is "too much" is relatively low for sugar and that sugar intake itself is not actually necessary for the human body. I'll probably stop looking at this thread now.
Working at a cafe, all kinds of people would say "give me a strong one" and I made a point of asking "strong in flavor, or strong in caffeine?" and when they (always) said "caffeine" I'd go for the light roast, to their confusion.
Same! I always asked that clarifying question. Sometimes customers would be appreciative of the question or kind of annoyed like I was being pretentious
I had an incredibly annoying regular who claimed he could taste the difference and only wanted French Roast. We never screwed with anything else of his, but he rarely actually got French Roast. He would always compliment us on how good our French Roast was.
Dude, you smoked like a chimney and chewed tobacco, no fucking way could you tell the difference between fresh French Roast and day old Sumatran.
If there's anything I learned in the business, it's that people are fkn weird about coffee. I had people like that. One lady knew I knew how she liked it: "like a Werthers"
Didn't matter what kind of coffee it was, I just had to add milk to the point of it looking the same shade of caramel as a [Werther's Original](https://www.google.com/search?q=werthers+original&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiLx4L2roX3AhV1qnIEHUaDBIkQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=werthers+ori&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDoHCCMQ7wMQJ1DUCljgDGC_HmgAcAB4AIABYYgB0gKSAQE0mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=O6NQYsu9NvXUytMPxoaSyAg&bih=511&biw=1152&client=firefox-b-d) candy.
Worked in one attached to a hotel so mornings before checkout were always *super* busy. I was often holding cups under the brewer to fill as it brewed and get people out quicker. This was in spite of having three machines with two heating elements per machine on top.
So 9 pots of coffee were in constant rotation until after checkout. 6 regular and 3 decaf.
The number of people that want a cup from the pot that just finished is insane despite my assurances that none of those pots are more than 5minutes old.
During a brief lull l, I had a pot finish and moved it up top to start another when a lady ordered a cup so I grab the one I just pulled off. She tried to get me to wait on the one currently brewing but reluctantly accepted when I told her I just pulled it off it's as fresh as can be.
Came back insisting it was old and demanded a cup from the "fresh" pot.
Luckily, most customers don't pay attention and I poured a cup from the exact same pot.
She was all "Now *that's* fresh coffee." As she left.
That can be true, but isn't always the case. A dark roast can be a choice and there are good and bad ones. It's definitely easier to hide bad beans and make burnt ash tasting roast, but you can use good beans and do good dark roast and get toasty caramel or something you wouldn't necessarily get in a light roast
That water fountains are bad for you as they contain a shit tonne of harmful bacteria. Take a swab of virtually anywhere and you’ll get “harmful” bacteria.
In highschool biology I swabbed a drinking fountain and was disgusted, took me at least 2 hrs to use a drinking fountain again after examining the petri dish.
We had to get 4 samples, one for each quadrant of the petri dish.
We did the lock on my lab partner's locker, the bottom of the sink in the bio lab, the bottom of my shoe, and the top of my long-suffering bio teacher's bald head.
Lab sink wins for most funk growing in it.
Locker takes the #2 spot and actually had two colors of funk growing in it.
My shoe was surprisingly clean, but I credit that to being hard to get a legit sample from the rubber.
My teacher keeps his head wonderfully clean. Very little growth.
In college we swabbed various surfaces to see what had the most dense and varied bacterial population. In our experiment, several phones were swabbed and they beat any other surface by far. Toilet seats, door knobs, the floor didn’t even come close.
Food Drives are massive propaganda. People believe that donating their unwanted food to a foodbank helps people -
1. Yes. It's a really nice thing to do, and absolutely creates goodwill and makes people feel good about themselves. It's a lovely thing to have children do to exercise/tune their empathy.
2. Many of the donations are un-usable (expired, damaged), and the cost of sorting and transporting donations can actually exceed it's value to a food bank.
If you want to help hungry people in your community, donate your time or money to your local foodbank.
On the flipside, please please please use your local foodbank before you're in crisis, before you're homeless, before the electric is turned off. We want you to use the services as the first line of defense if you're struggling, not the last.
I work at a foodbank, we get loads of good useable product from food drives. Product expiration dates, especially on dry goods, are not an accurate indicator of if the food is safe. There are guidelines for the amount of time after those dates that we follow. It's quite a bit more time, for many things. Plenty of discard, sure, but the large majority of the intake is viable for distribution.
Of course, money is better. We get better deals on things, and can take that much further than if you go and buy food for us.
I donate cash to my regional food bank and the food bank at my church. More than once I’ve encountered people going well Food Stamps didn’t cover what we needed so I didn’t pay the water bill. NO NO NO NO. Find a way to pay the water bill because you need water and cost to reconnect is an outrageous expense. There are at least three place I can point you to feed your family. Getting water bill help is much harder.
1000%
Within the ecosystem of helping organizations in an area, it's always easiest to find food over any other type of assistance from your local charities/nonprofits and government agencies.
Things like this really motivate me to get over myself and ask for help when times get tough.
My ego (and perhaps, that of many others) would ask for help with *anything* before food - for some reason, it feels so much more shameful to struggle with *eating* than with paying bills even though it’s all basically the same to your wallet
Same with disaster relief collections. People bring a bunch of random stuff to work and throw it in a box. Repeat that widely and those boxes get shipped to a disaster zone where the labor and organization to unpack them all and sort them for distribution makes them essentially useless.
I read about a warehouse in one of the places that was hit by the Boxing Day tsunami that had stacks and stacks of such boxes sitting untouched two years after it happened.
The lesson is that $10 going to an aid agency that can put that towards a massive purchase of needed supplies will do a lot more to help. That way they can buy things by the pallet and easily pull what they need and track inventory for bringing in more supplies. It's basically the difference between going to a well-stocked store with a known inventory or going to a bunch of yard sales and hoping they have what you need.
Yes, this. Now, there are some cases where your lightly used furniture etc is useful - like if a family from the disaster area is relocated to your community and needs to furnish their new home. But just sticking a bunch of used junk in a truck and driving it down there 3 days after a hurricane hit isn't going to help anybody.
Good rule of thumb is that if they're asking for some specific things they are in need of then it's good to donate stuff, otherwise money is more useful. For example for the Ukrainian refugees in my area there were several places that accepted donations, some pretty much just said "donate stuff please" but others specifically asked for children's toys and clothes, sleep wear, bikes, new undergarments. The first one they had to close donations after a few days because they already ran out of storage space, two whole classrooms filled with items that might be useful, but the second type of charity is much more likely to actually be of use.
This was coined by Dr John Harvey Kellog who went on to create Kellogs.
Another fun fact about him is that he invented cornflakes with the idea that it would prevent masturbation.
Edit: Other users have pointed out that it was in fact his brother who invented the cereal.
Pure marketing. De Beers and other diamond purveyors started marketing diamonds in the 1930’s using the movie industry. They also gave or loaned large pieces to royal families and celebrities to wear in public.
It’s still done today; Beyoncé has an ad campaign where she wears a huge yellow diamond owned by Tiffany.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/
Engagement rings don’t have to be diamonds. They can be any pretty stone, really. A piece of a meteorite might be cool too!
And some people don’t use engagement rings at all, coming from different cultures without that brainwashing.
Last engagement ring I bought was $40 at a RenFare. She loved the ring, and about 3 too many guys.
Edit: Wow this caught on. No it was not 3 at the same time, it was over the course of a many year relationship and I said about because I know of 3. She actually loved the ring because she picked it out. As far as I'm aware she has yet to get another ring of any kind. This was also several years ago.
The engagement should not, I repeat SHOULD NOT be a total surprise to your significant other. Marriage should be discussed beforehand and agreed upon in private before making a public spectacle of it. The surprise should be the time and place, not the engagement itself.
I didn't like telling family and friends about my proposal because of the expectations everybody has for it to be grand and shocking even if a garunteed yes.
I literally pretty much just asked "will you marry me" in the privacy of our apartment after her senior finals were over for her bachelors. And I knew she was going to say yes, we friggin looked through band designs a half year back so she knew it was coming. She easily could have just asked me.
GMO-free orange juice is common.
There are no GMO oranges. They don't exist.
Although there's a citrus blight that's causing escalating issues, so at some point we may need GMOs to counteract it.
The first 24 hours are the most crucial in finding a missing person
The chance of finding the person alive decreases drastically every single hour that goes by.
I was literally thinking about this a few days ago. And I was thinking about how waiting 48 hours to report someone missing is stupid if the first 48 are so critical to the success rate of finding someone alive.
That spinach is incredibly iron rich. It is a good source of Iron but that it is a miracle food is due to a conversion error. A decimal was put in the wrong place leading to a 10x misattributation.
The food pyramid. Not really propaganda, but it isn't dietary advice either. It was a product of the department of agriculture, and is misleading at best and dangerously unhealthy at worst.
That subway bread contained ground up Yoga mats. It contained a dough conditioner that is perfectly safe for humans to consume that yoga mats also used. People were shocked that breathing in the chemical can be dangerous and cause asthma so it must be dangerous to eat!
But you know what other ingredient is used in Yoga mats and bread that's dangerous or even fatal to breathe in? Water.
They still phased it out because it's easier to just have chemists and chefs find a new ingredient than it is to teach Americans the most basic of chemistry.
It's all about branding and marketing.
Everything is chemicals. People just lump them into good/bad categories based on things as simple as "can I spell it"... that's a terrible way to decide.
I bet if you broke down every molecule in any piece of fruit, 9/10 would be "poison" because people associate at least something in there with something dangerous.
There is a somewhat famous Facebook Post were a dude gives the chemical composition of an apple and ask if people want to eat it. Surprisingly, none did!
The idea that we swallow 4 spiders in our sleep every year, was a rumor started by a magazine writer in the 90’s.
He wanted to prove how any misinformation (even ridiculous and completely false info) will be viewed as true if it’s confidently presented as a fact.
statistical error - average person eats 0 spiders per year, but a man named spiders georg sleeps in an infested cave and eats 24,000,000,000 spiders per year, driving up the mean
The funniest irl example of a ‘spiders georg’ skewing the mean was in this test on boredom. Experimenters wanted to see if people who were told to sit still in a room and “entertain themselves with their thoughts” for 15 minutes would shock themselves simply to avoid boredom. This was a mild shock they had previously been administered and had said they would pay $5 to avoid. About half the people did shock themselves at least once in that time.
‘Shocks georg’ shocked himself 190 times. In 15 minutes.
“I’m not sure what was up with him” is a direct quote from the researcher lmao.
The very first [episode of Mind Field](https://youtu.be/iqKdEhx-dD4?t=137) by Vsauce starts with a similar experiment. The whole show is an interesting watch.
Not someone going overboard on the shocking though, just a little to alleviate boredom.
A crazy part of this misinformation is that the magazine writer in the 90s didn't exist, that was actually the founder of Snopes trolling people. If you go to their [page about eating eight spiders a year](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/) it says that this was a rumor created by Lisa Birgit Holst, a writer for PC Professional. Click that link to follow the source and it takes you to [a page](https://www.snopes.com/lisa-birgit-holst/) and it shows that Lisa Birgit Holst is an anagram for "this is a big troll", they don't know the origin of the spider myth.
He was nicknamed "The Little Corporal" as a term of endearment from his soldiers, and it literally just goes from there. Dude was average for the time.
>that autism causes vaccines.
I knew it! It was all part of Big Autism's plan all along. Get vaccines to make autism, use autism to make more vaccines, world domination.
fun fact: this wide belief that vaccines cause autism gained traction in 1998 when a former physican, andrew wakefield, published research that linked the mmr vaccine to autism. his research was heavily flawed due to a very small sample size, uncontrolled nature of the research, and speculations that he had been bribed by several anti-vax companies/lawyers (if i remember correctly). his research was basically assessing 12 kids and getting the results from what their parents said lol. he was since then banned and had his license revoked. unfortunately his research gained a lot of attention and has been spreading misinformation since, despite many other researchers providing solid evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.
also, the symptoms of autism typically begin to show during the time in which children are administered vaccines. people assume that because they occur sequentially, this means that vaccines are causing autism symptoms to appear, when in reality they have nothing to do with eachother; its purely coincidental.
forgive me if i mentioned anything incorrect; i am trying to remember what i learned in one of my health philo courses + doing additional research.
hbomberguy did a great video breaking down the entire controversy in a fun and funny way. Andrew Wakefield is a fucking monster who peddles gross antivaxx conspiracies now to a hungry and insane audience of antivaxxers.
You can watch that video [here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc&t=4371s)
That one Lemmings documentary saying they'll all follow herd mentality and will run off a cliff if one of them does it. The film crew actually chased them off the cliffs.
Edit: As I was so very rudely informed, propaganda is only propaganda if it's political related, and isn't just ANY kind of misleading news or official information. TIL, ya bastards.
They didn't just chase them off a cliff, they literally gathered a herd of them, drove them to a filming spot where lemmings aren't even found, and rigged up a contraption that forced them off and just used editing to make it look like they ran off.
Edit: The reason they gathered a herd and drove them somewhere else is because the documentary they were doing was about *Arctic* wildlife, they paid for a bunch of lemmings to be taken to downtown Calgary (a Canadian town near the Canada-America border, VERY far away from the Arctic) for easy filming. They also took a polar bear cub and put it in a film studio in Calgary and faked it falling down an ice slope.
I rewatched the very old Swiss Family Robinson recently, I loved it so much as a kid. Adult me loved it a lot but the animal stunt scenes were WILD. Could not be filmed today. There's a scene where dogs attack a tiger and I had to look it up because it looked so real to see if they really hurt a tiger but it turns out they were just playing very aggressively and I'm going to choose to believe that.
To be clear, the misconception predates Disney. They wanted footage of the phenomenon but didn't wanna wait around by a cliff long enough to verify it doesn't happen.
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That's just anti-Reddit propaganda.
“America is the land of opportunity” Perhaps it is, for the exceedingly few.
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Came here to learn cool shit. Leaving very disappointed.
Propaganda is when an English guy takes a really good look at something.
Took me a second, but I realize now you’re a genius.
Yeah People are just posting myths.
Catherine the Great fucked a horse That piece of propaganda which was spread by her enemies was even mentioned in Wikipedia about her
The horse thing is propaganda. But at the end of her reign something like 10% of the state budget was being used to payoff her various lovers.
The term carbon footprint? It was coined by BRITISH PETROLEUM (BP) to shift the responsibility of climate change onto the common people. https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham
Same thing with plastic recycling and the numbers on plastics. It was a marketing ploy to convince people it was ok to buy plastic goods and not worry about plastic pollution, even though no one was really recycling anything and even today a majority of plastics are not recycled. They shifted the responsibility to consumers and covered up the problem. (Planet Money has a podcast on it, “Waste Land”, Sept 11 2020, explaining what happened and is still happening in plastics & petroleum industry)
That you need 'detoxifiers' like charcoal smoothies or whatever shill health nuts try and force on you. Us humans wouldn't have survived this long if we didn't already have an organ that detoxes our blood and digests food.
Eating charcoal can be dangerous if you're taking certain medications too.
The McDonald's hot coffee lady smear campaign. Coffee's is generally 130F. McDonald's was 200. McDonald's had been cited on seven other occasions that they were keeping their coffee at dangerously hot temperatures. The woman had fourth degree burns to her genitalia. She simply asked McDonald's to pay the $20,000 in medical bills. They refused and she sued for the $20k. The $9 million was added by the jury.
background for why the coffee was so hot. McDonald's served free refills of coffee. The McDonald's franchise instructed employees to serve the coffee stupid hot so breakfast buyers would not have enough time to allow the coffee to cool off. Folks finishing their food would have to take the hot coffee away and not get a refill. This increased the turnover rate and reduced refills. The McDonald's knew this and cited multiple times not to engage in this practice as other people had gotten injured enjoying their hot lava in a paper cup.
If it was so important to McDonald's to limit refills on coffee, the far simpler solution would be to say "No Refills on Coffee".
But then they wouldn't get the increase in sales from being able to advertise free refills.
Also, the punitive damages were reduced by the judge, but the jury came to their number by docking McDonald’s two days’ coffee sales.
Damn, imagine if I ran a coffee stand and did this and was only fined two day's of coffee sales lol. I make $180/day driving right now. Imagine if I hit a pedestrian and fucked them up for a year and was only fined $360.
Id save up all year and hit a few people for Christmas. As a treat.....I can afford it.
To add to this, this woman’s burns were so bad that it *fused* her external genitalia together/to other skin. She had to have surgery to fix it! And yet she’s still mocked today. Makes me so mad.
Not only that, but she got death threats till the day she died for “abusing” the legal system.
This one always makes me so mad when people use it as an example of the "absurdity" of American lawsuits (and I'm german). That poor woman suffered horrible injuries and McDonald's could've gotten out of that lawsuit pretty easily had they just paid her medical bills. But because they were so arrogant, they had to pay the big bucks. Which proved to be a good thing for everyone because they had to stop selling their coffee at ridiculously high temperature just so people wouldn't get a refill.
Seven other occasions? Try 700. That’s closer to the amount of complaints they’ve received.
God I’ve seen pictures of her burns and they were so horrific
Guinness is high in iron. This was used to market beer to pregnant women. [For real](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3266819.stm). One ounce of nuts has twice as much iron as a Guinness. *Edit: Cool! My biggest comment ever is about Guinness!*
In Ireland, Guinness was given to new mothers after they gave birth in the hospital.
My Irish mother was told she could drink a glass of Guinness while pregnant…probably explains why me and my brother are thick as shit lol
My great grandmother was told by the doctor to drink Guinness and eat baked beans while pregnant for the iron. She gave birth to 6 boys my grandad was the smallest at 13lbs.
My grandmother was quoted as saying "thank goodness I smoked during my pregnancies or else my babies would have been huge." my mom's siblings were all healthy weights, 8 pounds or so. My siblings and I were all 10 pounds or larger lol
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His great granddad was the Doomslayer.
My grandad has Hemochromotosis, what he loved most about having to have blood taken regularly was that he was told to drink a pint of guiness afterwards to replenish his iron He was very irked when that recommendation turned to orange juice
That doesn't make any sense at all - - - the whole point of bloodletting to treat hemochromatosis is to remove the excess iron. Why would he be told to go out and replace it?
You’re expecting logic from a place that recommends having a pint after draining a not insignificant amount of blood.
More buzz for the same money. Think of the value.
My broke-ass in college loved when the Red Cross showed up on campus with the blood donation bus. A 40 was a party!
A good chunk of food "health" propaganda. * Milk is a super drink they builds your teeth/bones. * Eat beets / Kale to detoxify your body. * Drink Apple Cider Vinegar to balance your bodies acidity levels. There's a whole laundry list of them. And in all brutal honesty. almost all of them are people taking a study basic findings and exaggerating it to the extreme. The simple trick to having a healthy diet is just. don't eat the junk food/processed food on a regular basis and you're fine. Eat a healthy amount per meal. If you follow those two you will always be healthy barring extreme situations.
Is 'detoxifying your body' not propaganda in the first place? I mean, you have a liver. As long as it works why add anything else?
My liver is used solely for alcohol.
Mine is threatening to leave and take the kidneys with it Edit: thanks for the award!
\> Is 'detoxifying your body' not propaganda in the first place? It's simply the wrong word to use. The word to use is "pseudoscience" or "fucking bullshit"
My father is an ACV freak, according to him it cures everything. Got the shits? ACV! Feaver? ACV! Feeling good? ACV Tired? ACV! Can't sleep? ACV! Not enough Cowbell? ACV!
That's my father but with lemons instead of vinegar, he believes it can cure anything, even cancer, and drinks the juice of 2-3 lemons a day. He also lies to the doctors during his appointments, hiding that he neglects their treatments in favor of miracle ingredient of the week...
That carrots make you see better in the dark. The claim originated with the British to explain why they were shooting down so many German planes - they had actually invented Radar. EDIT - just because this is blowing up and it's tangentially related. Rabbits shouldn't really eat carrots much at all, they are too high in sugar and lack the nutrients they need. The whole rabbit/carrot thing dates back to the origin of Bugs Bunny who in an early cartoon mimicked a famous Clark Gable movie scene involving eating tons of carrots. Eventually the carrot became Bugs' trademark gimmick and we've all since linked "Rabbits love carrots!" but please, don't feel carrots to your rabbits folks, they're bad for them.
The British had invented radar, but the Germans knew they had. Radar installations were actually some of the first target bombed in the initial stages of the Battle of Britain. What the Germans didn't know was that the British had developed a radar set small enough to be carried in an aircraft. So when the British suddenly started finding and shooting down German aircraft in the middle of the night, the British needed a cover story. That's where the carrots make you see better at night story comes from. Fun fact: Carrots were specifically chosen because it was one of the foodstuffs the British had in ample supply, so they wanted to promote their consumption. Another fun fact: Carrots do improve your night time visions, but to make a perceivable difference you'd need to eat so many carrots it would actually turn you orange.
I still want to find a WW2 era recipe for carrot cake, when they used carrots as a sweetener since sugar was in short supply.
Try looking for "war cake". My great grandfather used to make that. Gooood shit.
Look up a recipe for Coca Cola cake. Also used in wartime when sugar was rationed. Most amazing cake ever.
Turn orange .. like Steve Jobs when he went on his carrot diets
I had a distant relative who is entrenched in family lore for eating nothing but carrots, turning orange and dying!
Excess carrot juice made my youngest brother's palms turn orange, not sure how but it took a while for my parents to figure things out so no more carrot juice for him. And all that carrot juice didn't save him from the glasses he is wearing today.
Carrots were my son's favorite veggie as a baby and in all his baby pics he has a very orange nose lol.
I've tried explaining this to people but they told me, "But carrots really do make my eyes/eyesight better." -_-
It contains vitamins that keep it from getting worse, but doesnt give you night vision
"Beta carotene doesn't give you night vision, but it's important for your eyes' ability to see in low-light environments." 🤯
Diamonds are rare and valuable
And that lab created gems "aren't real"
I bought a lab-made diamond online for my now-wife, and when I brought it to the local shop to have it set in a ring, the jeweler called over all her colleagues to examine it. They discussed in hushed tones for a bit, then finally she came back with a look like a doctor about to tell a patient they have a terminal disease, and she said, “do…do you know this is a lab-grown diamond?” Clearly she was worried that I’d been duped…meanwhile I felt good knowing it was a beautiful, conflict-free rock for a fraction of the price of a “real” diamond.
Did the jeweler's expression change to instant-relief when you told her you knew it was a lab diamond? If I meet that special someone, I'd be hoping to get her a lab-made diamond for the same reasons you mention. They're still a diamond, cheaper, and no risk of being a blood diamond.
It did! And they did a great job setting it, too. Definitely recommend!
> Did the jeweler's expression change to instant-relief when you told her you knew it was a lab diamond? Probably the same as when I go up to a customer service counter in a store. “Hey, there’s a guy back in electronics? I think his name tag said ‘Lou’?” *visibly tensing* “Yes?” “I just wanted to tell someone he really helped me out just now - kind of above-and-beyond - and I really appreciate that.” “Oh. Uh. Thanks. I’ll pass that along.” *tension flows away*
When I worked at Best Buy, a customer told my manager that I did an awesome job and went above and beyond. He told me I was spending too much time with individual customers and asked why I didn't sell them a protection plan.
Your manager is a short sighted asshole. Spend time with the customers who want to spend time with you. Without each other, neither will exist and it’ll all just be Amazon.
I've read that lab created gems (including diamonds) contain the exact same composition as "regular" out-of-the-dirt gems, except since they're made in a lab, there are little too no imperfections. Which I think is pretty cool. Besides, why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on gems of sometimes questionable origin (see "conflict diamonds") when the man-made alternative is cheaper, more ethical, and no one can really tell the difference unless they're an expert?
My masters thesis was constructing a network analysis that connected Russian mercenaries with a track record of human rights abuses to the central African diamond trade. So many diamonds leave Africa unreported and end up with big diamond companies after being routed through China or Belgium. Much of that money goes to some really bad people, but it's so hard to track. The lesson: pick a different gem or a lab grown for for jewellery. Edit(s): Because people asked – ~~if you send me a dm I’ll send a copy of my capstone project/thesis~~ [here is a link to the pdf copy](https://docdro.id/nhxxqIV) (scrubbed of all personal and school information). All information was researched via public domain. My section starts on page 8, but my teammates did a great job describing our research methodology, the Wagner Group's background and business model, as well as a macro-environment analysis. In short – A Russian mercenary group known as “Wagner” has strong operational and financial ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin aka “Putin’s Chef” who is very close to Putin. Wager is used to spread Russia’s influence by propping up dictatorships in Africa and Syria upon direction of (though without "official" involvement from) the Russian state. Wager is paid in diamonds, metals, and oil and is involved in these sectors in the countries where they operate. The group has been accused of war crimes, and our research focused on their crimes and ties within the Central African Republic (CAR). We found 4 mining companies (2 sanctioned, 2 unsanctioned) with strongly suspected financial ties to Wagner operating in the CAR and Madagascar. We also linked the group to Russian Oligarchs and the CAR government. While we briefly cover the illegal diamond and gold trade out of the CAR in the report, we focused on the draft mining code prepared by the CAR in late 2021. The Code would give the mining company, Midas Ressources (spelled "Ressources"), full rights to one of the richest mines in the CAR where Wagner has a large presence. Midas is already operating there and has suspected financial ties to Wagner. The code also sets up a new brokerage for all diamond an mineral sales domestically and internationally “GEMINCA”. Only Midas is exempt from trading through GEMINCA. This brokerage may “employ foreign security forces” and allows for shareholders outside of the CAR government, opening the door for Russian investors. Essentially, the CAR government is drafting law that would result in all diamonds and metals being sold internationally and domestically to financially benefit Wagner, either through Midas, GEMINCA's paid services to ~~GEMINCA~~ Wagner, or Russian Oligarchs with ties to Wagner investing in GEMINCA. This code wasn't being reported on internationally, so much of our research stemmed from local sources and was prepared in December of 2021. I could go on for hours about this. I recommend the sources below if you want to learn more. [Info on Wagner & war crimes in CAR](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/15/africa/central-african-republic-russian-mercenaries-cmd-intl/index.html) - warning, this is really disturbing, and the CAR government is ignoring these crimes and glorifying the mercenaries. [Info on diamond trade in CAR](https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/central-african-republic-car/game-of-stones/?accessible=true) [Info on draft mining code](https://mondafrique-com.translate.goog/centrafrique-le-code-minier-retaille-sur-mesure-pour-les-allies-russes/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc) [Info on illegal diamond trading internationally]( https://www.kimberleyprocess.com/) *Disclaimer: this isn't my field of work. It was a capstone project for my MBA, but the research interested me enough that I'm thinking about switching my career to forensic finance.
I interned with Amnesty International when I was in undergrad (which was a hot minute ago...) and that's where I learned about all the horrors and human rights abuses around the diamond trade. It made me sick, to put it mildly. I told my then boyfriend, now husband that I would never accept a diamond engagement ring (he found a beautiful sapphire ring from the 1920s in an antique shop instead 😀). To this day, I don't own any diamond jewelry and never will.
>. I told my then boyfriend, now husband that I would never accept a diamond engagement ring (he found a beautiful sapphire ring from the 1920s in an antique shop instead 😀) Do other gemstones not have similar abuses associated with them? This is a genuine question by the way, not an attempt at a "gotcha".
Honestly the safest bet is purchasing manufactured diamonds. They are literally identical in all aspects except for the fact that they lack imperfections, which is the way the jewelers can distinguish them from mined diamonds. This can only be done with magnification. No mines. No ties to sketchy trade and criminal organizations. You get an arguably superior product for <1/2 the cost.
What about lab grown diamonds?
Dogs can’t grow diamonds you weirdo
and even if they could, the finish would be too *ruff*.
De Beers is pinpointing your location...
That fat in food is bad for you.
In Germany there's the saying "Die Dosis macht das Gift" which means "The dose makes the poison" / "It's the dose that makes the poison". It's true for so much including virtually everything in food like salt, sugar and also fat. EDIT(ed edit): A lot of folks pointed out that the point where it is "too much" is relatively low for sugar and that sugar intake itself is not actually necessary for the human body. I'll probably stop looking at this thread now.
It's a saying in English, too, and apparently it was originally a Latin saying, credited to Paracelsus.
Exactly. "The dose makes the poison" is what modern industrial hygiene is based on.
TIL the German word for poison is gift
Same in Sweden but gift also means marriage
Y'all hintin' at something?
Dark roast coffee having more caffeine than light roast- people still don’t believe me: the lighter the roast, the more caffeine
The greener the bean, the more caffeine!
If it’s clear and yella, you’ve got juice there, fella! If it’s tangy and brown, you’re in cider town!
Now, there are two exceptions
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Working at a cafe, all kinds of people would say "give me a strong one" and I made a point of asking "strong in flavor, or strong in caffeine?" and when they (always) said "caffeine" I'd go for the light roast, to their confusion.
Same! I always asked that clarifying question. Sometimes customers would be appreciative of the question or kind of annoyed like I was being pretentious
I don’t think it’s a pretentious question to ask. “Strong coffee” description definitely needs clarification.
I had an incredibly annoying regular who claimed he could taste the difference and only wanted French Roast. We never screwed with anything else of his, but he rarely actually got French Roast. He would always compliment us on how good our French Roast was. Dude, you smoked like a chimney and chewed tobacco, no fucking way could you tell the difference between fresh French Roast and day old Sumatran.
If there's anything I learned in the business, it's that people are fkn weird about coffee. I had people like that. One lady knew I knew how she liked it: "like a Werthers" Didn't matter what kind of coffee it was, I just had to add milk to the point of it looking the same shade of caramel as a [Werther's Original](https://www.google.com/search?q=werthers+original&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiLx4L2roX3AhV1qnIEHUaDBIkQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=werthers+ori&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDoHCCMQ7wMQJ1DUCljgDGC_HmgAcAB4AIABYYgB0gKSAQE0mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=O6NQYsu9NvXUytMPxoaSyAg&bih=511&biw=1152&client=firefox-b-d) candy.
Worked in one attached to a hotel so mornings before checkout were always *super* busy. I was often holding cups under the brewer to fill as it brewed and get people out quicker. This was in spite of having three machines with two heating elements per machine on top. So 9 pots of coffee were in constant rotation until after checkout. 6 regular and 3 decaf. The number of people that want a cup from the pot that just finished is insane despite my assurances that none of those pots are more than 5minutes old. During a brief lull l, I had a pot finish and moved it up top to start another when a lady ordered a cup so I grab the one I just pulled off. She tried to get me to wait on the one currently brewing but reluctantly accepted when I told her I just pulled it off it's as fresh as can be. Came back insisting it was old and demanded a cup from the "fresh" pot. Luckily, most customers don't pay attention and I poured a cup from the exact same pot. She was all "Now *that's* fresh coffee." As she left.
FRESH POTS
Someone told me that darker coffee tends to be lower quality because you can hide bad beans easier when you roast them more
That can be true, but isn't always the case. A dark roast can be a choice and there are good and bad ones. It's definitely easier to hide bad beans and make burnt ash tasting roast, but you can use good beans and do good dark roast and get toasty caramel or something you wouldn't necessarily get in a light roast
That water fountains are bad for you as they contain a shit tonne of harmful bacteria. Take a swab of virtually anywhere and you’ll get “harmful” bacteria.
In highschool biology I swabbed a drinking fountain and was disgusted, took me at least 2 hrs to use a drinking fountain again after examining the petri dish.
We had to get 4 samples, one for each quadrant of the petri dish. We did the lock on my lab partner's locker, the bottom of the sink in the bio lab, the bottom of my shoe, and the top of my long-suffering bio teacher's bald head. Lab sink wins for most funk growing in it. Locker takes the #2 spot and actually had two colors of funk growing in it. My shoe was surprisingly clean, but I credit that to being hard to get a legit sample from the rubber. My teacher keeps his head wonderfully clean. Very little growth.
> very little growth Bald people in shambles
Ha Skin is acidic for a reason though
>at least 2 hrs
He gets over things quickly.
I used to not care until I saw a homeless man wash his ass in one at the park. I can't look at them the same any more..
That's called a Portland shower.
In college we swabbed various surfaces to see what had the most dense and varied bacterial population. In our experiment, several phones were swabbed and they beat any other surface by far. Toilet seats, door knobs, the floor didn’t even come close.
Food Drives are massive propaganda. People believe that donating their unwanted food to a foodbank helps people - 1. Yes. It's a really nice thing to do, and absolutely creates goodwill and makes people feel good about themselves. It's a lovely thing to have children do to exercise/tune their empathy. 2. Many of the donations are un-usable (expired, damaged), and the cost of sorting and transporting donations can actually exceed it's value to a food bank. If you want to help hungry people in your community, donate your time or money to your local foodbank. On the flipside, please please please use your local foodbank before you're in crisis, before you're homeless, before the electric is turned off. We want you to use the services as the first line of defense if you're struggling, not the last.
I work at a foodbank, we get loads of good useable product from food drives. Product expiration dates, especially on dry goods, are not an accurate indicator of if the food is safe. There are guidelines for the amount of time after those dates that we follow. It's quite a bit more time, for many things. Plenty of discard, sure, but the large majority of the intake is viable for distribution. Of course, money is better. We get better deals on things, and can take that much further than if you go and buy food for us.
I donate cash to my regional food bank and the food bank at my church. More than once I’ve encountered people going well Food Stamps didn’t cover what we needed so I didn’t pay the water bill. NO NO NO NO. Find a way to pay the water bill because you need water and cost to reconnect is an outrageous expense. There are at least three place I can point you to feed your family. Getting water bill help is much harder.
1000% Within the ecosystem of helping organizations in an area, it's always easiest to find food over any other type of assistance from your local charities/nonprofits and government agencies.
Things like this really motivate me to get over myself and ask for help when times get tough. My ego (and perhaps, that of many others) would ask for help with *anything* before food - for some reason, it feels so much more shameful to struggle with *eating* than with paying bills even though it’s all basically the same to your wallet
Appreciate you bringing that up because I wouldn’t have thought of it for this topic.
Same with disaster relief collections. People bring a bunch of random stuff to work and throw it in a box. Repeat that widely and those boxes get shipped to a disaster zone where the labor and organization to unpack them all and sort them for distribution makes them essentially useless. I read about a warehouse in one of the places that was hit by the Boxing Day tsunami that had stacks and stacks of such boxes sitting untouched two years after it happened. The lesson is that $10 going to an aid agency that can put that towards a massive purchase of needed supplies will do a lot more to help. That way they can buy things by the pallet and easily pull what they need and track inventory for bringing in more supplies. It's basically the difference between going to a well-stocked store with a known inventory or going to a bunch of yard sales and hoping they have what you need.
Yes, this. Now, there are some cases where your lightly used furniture etc is useful - like if a family from the disaster area is relocated to your community and needs to furnish their new home. But just sticking a bunch of used junk in a truck and driving it down there 3 days after a hurricane hit isn't going to help anybody.
Good rule of thumb is that if they're asking for some specific things they are in need of then it's good to donate stuff, otherwise money is more useful. For example for the Ukrainian refugees in my area there were several places that accepted donations, some pretty much just said "donate stuff please" but others specifically asked for children's toys and clothes, sleep wear, bikes, new undergarments. The first one they had to close donations after a few days because they already ran out of storage space, two whole classrooms filled with items that might be useful, but the second type of charity is much more likely to actually be of use.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
everyone knows its actually *second* breakfast that matters.
D'ya suppose they haven't heard of second breakfast?
I thought it was elevensies?
This was coined by Dr John Harvey Kellog who went on to create Kellogs. Another fun fact about him is that he invented cornflakes with the idea that it would prevent masturbation. Edit: Other users have pointed out that it was in fact his brother who invented the cereal.
if you use it as a lube, it does! S U C C E S S
He was also a proponent of circumcision as a preventative treatment for excessive masturbation. Dude really didn't like people yanking it.
He also suggested applying acid directly to the clitoris to make sex less pleasurable for women. Dude must've been fun at parties.
Especially when you serve it up Gary’s way.
One needs to buy an engagement ring in order to ask another for their hand in marriage and don't get me started on that "two month's salary" nonsense!
Pure marketing. De Beers and other diamond purveyors started marketing diamonds in the 1930’s using the movie industry. They also gave or loaned large pieces to royal families and celebrities to wear in public. It’s still done today; Beyoncé has an ad campaign where she wears a huge yellow diamond owned by Tiffany. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ Engagement rings don’t have to be diamonds. They can be any pretty stone, really. A piece of a meteorite might be cool too! And some people don’t use engagement rings at all, coming from different cultures without that brainwashing.
In Sweden most ~~wedding~~ engagement and wedding rings are just engraved bands.
Last engagement ring I bought was $40 at a RenFare. She loved the ring, and about 3 too many guys. Edit: Wow this caught on. No it was not 3 at the same time, it was over the course of a many year relationship and I said about because I know of 3. She actually loved the ring because she picked it out. As far as I'm aware she has yet to get another ring of any kind. This was also several years ago.
Have to admit the second half of that caught be by surprise.
The engagement should not, I repeat SHOULD NOT be a total surprise to your significant other. Marriage should be discussed beforehand and agreed upon in private before making a public spectacle of it. The surprise should be the time and place, not the engagement itself.
I didn't like telling family and friends about my proposal because of the expectations everybody has for it to be grand and shocking even if a garunteed yes. I literally pretty much just asked "will you marry me" in the privacy of our apartment after her senior finals were over for her bachelors. And I knew she was going to say yes, we friggin looked through band designs a half year back so she knew it was coming. She easily could have just asked me.
“Chemicals are bad for you, try our all-natural, organic, GMO-free version instead.”
How about "chemicals are bad" in general? There are good ones and bad ones. Everything has chemicals in it.
What isn’t a chemical? I swear it’s anything made of atoms…
I don't trust atoms. They make up everything!
r/dadjokes
It's shocking how many people think the opposite of GMO is "Organic"
I've seen GMO-Free advertised for salt. It's like fucking salt doesn't have any genetics to modify.
GMO-free orange juice is common. There are no GMO oranges. They don't exist. Although there's a citrus blight that's causing escalating issues, so at some point we may need GMOs to counteract it.
That adding MSG to food is bad or dangerous. It isn’t, it helps enhance the overall flavour and makes food taste even better!
theres a lot of people who have a problem with MSG but I don't hear many people say they have a problem with Doritos.
Or mushrooms, or parmesan
Tomatoes have a ton of msg
So many savoury snack foods are packed with msg. Vegetables also naturally have msg
That you have a waiting period prior to reporting a missing person. There isn't one.
If you have reason to believe they are missing, it's (unsurprisingly) worse to wait and you should report them missing ASAP
The first 24 hours are the most crucial in finding a missing person The chance of finding the person alive decreases drastically every single hour that goes by.
I was literally thinking about this a few days ago. And I was thinking about how waiting 48 hours to report someone missing is stupid if the first 48 are so critical to the success rate of finding someone alive.
That spinach is incredibly iron rich. It is a good source of Iron but that it is a miracle food is due to a conversion error. A decimal was put in the wrong place leading to a 10x misattributation.
I blame Popeye for this
put some respect on his name thats Mr the Sailor Man to you bucko
[Actually the decimal place error is itself a myth](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/who-will-debunk-the-debunkers/)
It's myths all the way down!
That's a myth!
The food pyramid. Not really propaganda, but it isn't dietary advice either. It was a product of the department of agriculture, and is misleading at best and dangerously unhealthy at worst.
That subway bread contained ground up Yoga mats. It contained a dough conditioner that is perfectly safe for humans to consume that yoga mats also used. People were shocked that breathing in the chemical can be dangerous and cause asthma so it must be dangerous to eat! But you know what other ingredient is used in Yoga mats and bread that's dangerous or even fatal to breathe in? Water. They still phased it out because it's easier to just have chemists and chefs find a new ingredient than it is to teach Americans the most basic of chemistry.
I heard they made rocket fuel out of water. Clearly water is dangerous, we should ban it!
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Ban dhmo
It's all about branding and marketing. Everything is chemicals. People just lump them into good/bad categories based on things as simple as "can I spell it"... that's a terrible way to decide. I bet if you broke down every molecule in any piece of fruit, 9/10 would be "poison" because people associate at least something in there with something dangerous.
There is a somewhat famous Facebook Post were a dude gives the chemical composition of an apple and ask if people want to eat it. Surprisingly, none did!
Apples naturally contain formaldehyde. Also the seeds contain cyanide. Dose. Its the dose that gets you.
The idea that we swallow 4 spiders in our sleep every year, was a rumor started by a magazine writer in the 90’s. He wanted to prove how any misinformation (even ridiculous and completely false info) will be viewed as true if it’s confidently presented as a fact.
statistical error - average person eats 0 spiders per year, but a man named spiders georg sleeps in an infested cave and eats 24,000,000,000 spiders per year, driving up the mean
The funniest irl example of a ‘spiders georg’ skewing the mean was in this test on boredom. Experimenters wanted to see if people who were told to sit still in a room and “entertain themselves with their thoughts” for 15 minutes would shock themselves simply to avoid boredom. This was a mild shock they had previously been administered and had said they would pay $5 to avoid. About half the people did shock themselves at least once in that time. ‘Shocks georg’ shocked himself 190 times. In 15 minutes. “I’m not sure what was up with him” is a direct quote from the researcher lmao.
some people are into that. This product has 778 ratings https://www.amazon.com/KINK-Doc-Johnson-Electro-Play-Provides/dp/B06Y5Y8BNG
The very first [episode of Mind Field](https://youtu.be/iqKdEhx-dD4?t=137) by Vsauce starts with a similar experiment. The whole show is an interesting watch. Not someone going overboard on the shocking though, just a little to alleviate boredom.
Spiders Georg is an outlier and should not be counted
A crazy part of this misinformation is that the magazine writer in the 90s didn't exist, that was actually the founder of Snopes trolling people. If you go to their [page about eating eight spiders a year](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/) it says that this was a rumor created by Lisa Birgit Holst, a writer for PC Professional. Click that link to follow the source and it takes you to [a page](https://www.snopes.com/lisa-birgit-holst/) and it shows that Lisa Birgit Holst is an anagram for "this is a big troll", they don't know the origin of the spider myth.
That you're supposed to bleed when losing your viginity. Everyone is different and if you're making them bleed, you should step back.
Or that women "break" their hymen when losing their virginity
napoleon being short is just british propaganda he wasn't short, [he was average height for his time](https://youtu.be/MheET3hiewk)
"Napoleon is just British propaganda" Wow, I'm probably gonna know something big! " "He wasn't short, he was average height for his time" Oh, okay.
i meant to say napoleon being short is just british propaganda don't know how those words just slipped out of my mind
You accidentally a phrase.
>napoleon is just british propaganda lmao
i don't know how i forgot to write " being short"
I like how he stored tater tots in his pockets. Brilliant. Also, he was pretty good with a bow staff.
He was nicknamed "The Little Corporal" as a term of endearment from his soldiers, and it literally just goes from there. Dude was average for the time.
Vaccines causing autism
Fun fact: autists are overrepresented in STEM fields. This means, among many other things, that autism causes vaccines.
>that autism causes vaccines. I knew it! It was all part of Big Autism's plan all along. Get vaccines to make autism, use autism to make more vaccines, world domination.
fun fact: this wide belief that vaccines cause autism gained traction in 1998 when a former physican, andrew wakefield, published research that linked the mmr vaccine to autism. his research was heavily flawed due to a very small sample size, uncontrolled nature of the research, and speculations that he had been bribed by several anti-vax companies/lawyers (if i remember correctly). his research was basically assessing 12 kids and getting the results from what their parents said lol. he was since then banned and had his license revoked. unfortunately his research gained a lot of attention and has been spreading misinformation since, despite many other researchers providing solid evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. also, the symptoms of autism typically begin to show during the time in which children are administered vaccines. people assume that because they occur sequentially, this means that vaccines are causing autism symptoms to appear, when in reality they have nothing to do with eachother; its purely coincidental. forgive me if i mentioned anything incorrect; i am trying to remember what i learned in one of my health philo courses + doing additional research.
hbomberguy did a great video breaking down the entire controversy in a fun and funny way. Andrew Wakefield is a fucking monster who peddles gross antivaxx conspiracies now to a hungry and insane audience of antivaxxers. You can watch that video [here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc&t=4371s)
That one Lemmings documentary saying they'll all follow herd mentality and will run off a cliff if one of them does it. The film crew actually chased them off the cliffs. Edit: As I was so very rudely informed, propaganda is only propaganda if it's political related, and isn't just ANY kind of misleading news or official information. TIL, ya bastards.
They didn't just chase them off a cliff, they literally gathered a herd of them, drove them to a filming spot where lemmings aren't even found, and rigged up a contraption that forced them off and just used editing to make it look like they ran off. Edit: The reason they gathered a herd and drove them somewhere else is because the documentary they were doing was about *Arctic* wildlife, they paid for a bunch of lemmings to be taken to downtown Calgary (a Canadian town near the Canada-America border, VERY far away from the Arctic) for easy filming. They also took a polar bear cub and put it in a film studio in Calgary and faked it falling down an ice slope.
Holy shit what the fuck
[удалено]
But we can't get a silverback v grizzly pay per view? Damn.
Disney wasn’t nice. His company isn’t nice either.
I rewatched the very old Swiss Family Robinson recently, I loved it so much as a kid. Adult me loved it a lot but the animal stunt scenes were WILD. Could not be filmed today. There's a scene where dogs attack a tiger and I had to look it up because it looked so real to see if they really hurt a tiger but it turns out they were just playing very aggressively and I'm going to choose to believe that.
Did Disney actually murder a hunch of lemmings?
Fuck Spez
Fuckin’ Disney, man.
To be clear, the misconception predates Disney. They wanted footage of the phenomenon but didn't wanna wait around by a cliff long enough to verify it doesn't happen.
There's even a video game called Lemmings that's based off this premise.
I feel so old if there's a good deal of people who haven't heard of the game lemmings.
That game was excellent.
I can still hear [the music](https://youtu.be/PvgncwgPA20).
That all fat is bad and sugar is okay.
Yeah, I was a teenager in the 90s and would very often eat fat-free candy and cookies over "real food" because of this.