#debunkery

[the-science-llama]

My dream come true. Bill Nye will be debunking pseudoscience bullshit on Netflix

[pagansquare]

Are Easter and Ishtar Related?

Contrary to what you may read in the local papers a few weeks from now, there's no historical connection between Easter and Ishtar.

Easter is the modern English name of the pan-Indo-European Dawn Goddess, also known as Ostara, Aušrine, Austra, Aurora, Eos, Ushas, and by many other names. All these names clearly derive from the Proto-Indo-European root for 'east.'

Read more...

[youarenotthewalrus]

Attention conservation notice: Line-by-line takedown of an obviously wrong take. Probably a waste of time, but it felt good to write. CN: toxoplasma, uncharitable

http://satanicdoki.tumblr.com/post/168132402665/morphodyke-advertising-is-so-normalized-we/embed

This is incredible. Let’s take this from the top:

advertising is so normalized we rarely talk about what it is and what it does

it is designed to catch your attention on a subconscious level, to utilize all known tricks of psychological manipulation to implant a subconscious desire toward a certain commodity,

No??? Advertising is there to a) alert you to the existence of the product, b) tell you who the product is for, and c) tout the superiority of its product. Budweiser doesn’t need to fucking hypnotize people into drinking their beer, just remind people that it exists.

which it does by catering to the desire-structure of the most socially dominant, meaning that it at all levels structurally reinforces white supremacy, patriarchy, cis supremacy, heterosexuality, ableism, antisemitism, classism, islamophobia, settler-colonialism, etc, etc.

As we all know, society is entirely dominated by straight cis able-bodied white men who hate women, the LGBTQ, and ethnic and religious minorities. This is why advertisements never depict ethnic minorities or gay couples.

it is a massive worldwide concerted effort at brainwashing and behavior modification to serve the desires of the ruling classes.

This is awfully strong language to use for “our paper towels are 80% stronger than the leading bargain brand.” I wonder if the local businesses I see ads for know they’re part of the ruling classes. Damn petty bourgeoisie. Off to the guillotine with them, I guess. Sorry Bill, but trying to let people know about your selection of musical instruments was all just a sinister effort to lull them into complacency. 

this isn’t some secret or conspiracy, that’s literally what it openly aspires to be, just framed in other terms.

Man, I bet all those marketing people outside of the Western world are gonna feel silly when they realize they joined a field openly dedicated to promoting white supremacy.

and we learn to treat it with blasé disregard because of its omnipresence. but it is deeply psychologically damaging to us.

O hai Adbusters. Do tell us how billboards cause us psychic harm.

it is driving the divides between form of life, data self, social self, embodied self, addictive drives, survival drives, etc that is rendering us all increasingly unstable.

I bet it’s increasing our body thetans too. Man, I’m never gonna make Clear at this rate! Seriously though, this is gibberish.

it is trying to turn us into things we are not. it is trying to shape how we talk and think, and what we talk and think about.

and you can see it working. you can see the effects on people, see them being restructured away from certain drives and towards other, more productive or consumptive or self-destructive ones.

Yup! Just like how communist propaganda in the USSR molded its populace into obedient, hardworking new Soviet men who continue to this day to support the communist system- Hold on...

it grows reactivity, it grows addiction culture, it grows abuse culture. it alienates people from themselves and each other.

More buzzwords. Gosh, it sure does suck how seeing Tide ads destroys our sense of connection with other people. “Addiction culture”-wise, you could probably make an argument around ads for tobacco and alcohol increasing abuse of those substances, maybe tie it into the opioid epidemic somehow, but I don’t think OP is equipped to make that argument.

it subverts and corrupts the radical potentials of new media. it is pervasive and reinforced by the military-industrial death machine.

“As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”

advertising is designed to cultivate stockholm syndrome relations to capital. identification with the abuser.

See, this is actually an interesting angle, if not one I’m inclined to agree with, but instead of explaining what they mean or trying to back it up, OP ends the post right there, one half-formed thought at the top of a pile of anger and conspiracy theories. How the everloving fuck does this have 950 notes? Is OP themself a master of brainwashing? No. OP is angry, and so it gets reblogged by other angry people, people who share OP’s anger and (hopefully) agree more with the spirit than the letter of their words, and people like me who are angry at the OP, who got bit by the damn toxoplasma bug and can’t help but respond. That’s a hell of way to manipulate people into spreading your message. Why haven’t advertisers caught on yet? Stupid ruling classes, so inefficient...

[pavel-nosok]

No, the OnePlus 8 Pro Does Not Have X-Ray Vision Back when I reviewed the OnePlus 8 Pro, I said the phone’s built-in color filter camera felt gimmicky considering it only offered four different filter effects.

[youarenotthewalrus]

I’m seeing claims that tumblr is suppressing posts about net neutrality, but people in the notes are saying it’s just a glitch, and frankly, if you think “Verizon is attempting to fight net neutrality by hamhandedly unfollowing people from the #net neutrality tag on tumblr” is a more likely story than “tumblr isn’t working correctly,” you should probably step away from the computer and do something else for a while.

[songscloset]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/experts-are-extremely-dubious-about-the-voynich-solution/

I thought the 'translator' sounded a bit pat. Women's health, sure, but if it was as simple as he was claiming, it wouldn't have been a mystery in the first place.

[youarenotthewalrus]

I’ve been seeing more crappy anti-imperialist politics on my dash recently. Is it because of the Fourth? Who knows. Anyway let’s go:

American propaganda works so well that we still have people out here thinking it was totally fine and justified that the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians, killing well over 100,000 innocent people.

American propaganda works so well that some people disagree with me on the relative utility of a military action with large numbers of civilian casualties! Brainwashed fools!

It works so well that, even though the United States is the only country to ever use a nuclear bomb in warfare, people think that the United States is still the only qualified entity to invade other countries in order to stop them from having nuclear weapons.

You do realize that the last time the US used a nuclear weapon was 72 years ago, right? Everyone involved in that decision is dead. This is like saying Britain isn’t qualified to take action against regimes stockpiling chemical weapons because it used them in WWI.

It works so well that you can read all about every war crime committed by the United States all around the world, with little to no government censorship, and that STILL doesn’t make people rise up in anger.

It takes a lot to make people rise up in anger. Like, this isn’t the result of some elaborate propaganda campaign, this is a result of people not really giving a shit about bad things happening to people in far off foreign countries. If anything, this is the result of a lack of propaganda; you want people to get mad about US war crimes, you need to work to make people aware. There’s a lot of information out there, and people won’t seek out what they don’t care about and don’t think to look for.

It works so well that you can read accounts of the CIA or FBI literally trying to brainwash Americans into total subservience and people STILL won’t resist.

This is straight-up conspiracy theory nonsense which is presumably based on a misinterpretation of MKUltra, which was about finding more effective means to torture, interrogate, and brainwash enemy agents, not to brainwash the American public, who, spoiler alert, are generally pretty complacent. They’re not “resisting” because MKUltra was in the ‘60s and nobody buys your narrative except people who consider Infowars a credible news source.

Americans put the Soviets to shame in how effective their propaganda is. It’s not even close.

So let’s review. Your basis for the incredible effectiveness of the brainwashing power of the Amerikkkan Empire is:

People aren’t angry about innocent people being killed in a war 70 years ago

People don’t think that using a nuke 70 years ago is reason to think we are unqualified to go to war with Iran

People don’t care about US war crimes

People don’t care about (wildly sensationalized takes on) unethical secret experiments conducted 50 years ago

1) is stupid because the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, to reiterate, over 70 years ago. Of course people don’t care. Why should they? What could they possibly do about it?

2) is stupid because, again, 70 years ago, and there are much better reasons to oppose invading Iran.

3) is a genuine concern, but is the product of apathy and lack of effectiveness of the anti-war faction rather than ingenious propaganda.

4) is, again, decades old and half of your complaint is people not believing in conspiracy theories.

In conclusion, American propaganda isn’t particularly effective, people just don’t agree with you.

[youarenotthewalrus]

I want to talk about this post.

On the one hand, as an Illinoisan, it’s nice to see people talking about issues that impact my state. On the other hand, this is a highly alarmist and sensationalist take and I do not care for it. Is the budget crisis a Big McFreaking Deal? Of course it is. But from the way OP tells it, you’d think it was the end of the world, that the moment the state’s credit rating hits junk hellfire will start raining from the sky and anarchy will reign from Cairo to Rockport. This is a post that makes some pretty big claims, and then has one source, which validates the crisis but not the apocalyptic effects. Let’s go through these, shall we?

Schools are closing. A lot of schools won’t open this fall. The second largest school district in the state won’t open.

A lot of schools and school districts rely on state money to operate and do not have the means to go another year without it, including U46, the state’s second-largest school district, which would have trouble making it through the winter without a budget. This would be bad, but it also wouldn’t be permanent.

The Illinois lottery is over.

The Illinois Lottery, Powerball, and Mega Millions have stopped selling tickets and delayed payments until such time as there is a budget. The above statement is grossly misleading and makes it sound like the lottery is permanently gone.

There’s talks of annexing the state.

I don’t have any sources to give for this one, because I have been unable to find any indication anywhere that such a measure has been considered anywhere by anybody. And this statement is, frankly, why I made this post, because in a post that was otherwise wildly alarmist and hyperbolic but not really wrong, this is complete and utter horseshit and OP should be ashamed of themselves for spreading it. Nobody has suggested such a thing, nobody is considering such a thing, such a thing would be wholly without precedent. It’s not gonna fucking happen. It’s the equivalent of ending a post talking about Russian interference in the 2016 election with an off-hand statement that Trump is considering disbanding the military and declaring the US a Russian protectorate. It’s blatantly wrong and to share such wild misinformation is incredibly irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable.