What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?
Trump was good for the economy.
During the election this kept being repeated even though the economy collapsed because of his covid response
thats just pure propaganda spread by MSM in the hopes he would get re-elected. propaganda is more aggressive than Disinformation.
The statement imo is an overreach of the short term financial gains shown as companies are allowed to chase profits via the removal of ethical responsibility (environmental, social, etc.). He IS good for pure profit driven companies. He is not good for anything else.
That food stamps or any handouts at all are a serious problem. Our (the US) government launches a single bomb that’s worth years of food support. Idgaf if the food stamp recipients never do a damn thing but watch TV. I’d much rather millions of people doing that than bombing brown people half a world away.
Additionally, it’s been proven in scientific study time and time again that giving people enough money to meet their needs significantly reduces crime and costs significantly less money than the “traditional” approach like inflating police budgets. Literally giving people cash money reduces crime better than any other way you could use the money.
then it wont be able to fund MIC, Prison industries, or low wage. thats why they attack or neglect education funding, and drive culture wars to make jobs pay less by providing billionaires more benefits.
The idea of monetary scale is one I think is a big misconception anytime we’re talking about budget. “This committee wasted MILLIONS of dollars on this stupid niche scenario!” Well, yeah; the USA has millions of people in it. If a program affects the entire country, how much are you willing to spend per person? 8 cents?
Exactly. Budgets on national levels do not compute on a personal level. I like it when articles scale down the numbers to a more individual level “so let’s pretend that the federal government is a single family home…”
I also find it irritating when politicians brag about bills like “this will create 3000 American jobs.” Seriously, that is not even a drop in the bucket.
I also am sick of the sacrificial worship at the altar of “jobs.”
Jobs doing what? Variably scheduled positions pushing bricks around with a broom for minimum wage and getting laid off 4 months later? Jobs only open to those with a Master’s in lepidopterology? Jobs at Burger King making flame-broiled whoppers wearing paper hats?
Seemingly the public loses their poop if it means “jobs”, but won’t put enough energy into support outside of jobs, because we have a state mandated religion based solely on exhaustive toil for its own sake, value and results optional.
Stuff your jobs. Give us healthcare, dammit.
even fast food jobs dont respond to online ads, like from indeed. i notice if the franchise is employing significant amount of 1 demographic they wont hire anyone else but that demo, especially if your name is not of that demographic.
only gop ever brag about it after they voted against it, while the majority voted for it and set it into law. thier supporters are just that dumb.
God.
That the granny who sued McDonald’s was just upset that her coffee was too hot.
She suffered from either third or fourth degree burns, on her lap.
Parts of her were fused together.
She just wanted McDonald’s to cover the medical bill, but they dragged her name through the mud.
Yep, also they had previously been warned about serving coffee that hot, but studies had shown that serving it that hot meant that people drank less of it. And that “crazy” judgement (2.5 million?) wasn’t a random number. That’s how much they make off coffee in one day.
Yeah we actually learned very quickly about that in legal studies (high school) way back in 2000s and it was presented like a silly Americans (Australian here) kind of thing, just a quick silly case in a small box in the textbook. Wasn’t til I got older I learned the full story!
We had an Aussie silly case too, not just picking on the US 😅 ours was about some drink in an opaque bottle and someone drank it all before they could see there was some kind of bug or even a snail in the bottle? Something like that so they sued the drink company 🤢 can’t remember enough about that one to find anything on it!
I saw that, yeah McDonald’s really tried to blast her as a sue happy bitch. All she asked for was medical bill costs initially which is reasonable.
This misconception was well paid for. McDonalds and a large group of fortune 500 companies started a slander ad campaign against lawsuits. They literally paid people to write and run stories about “stupid and unjust” lawsuits, claiming the lawsuits wee a waste and of course bringing up this one.
It worked.
People are really bad with misretelling court cases. The amount of times I’ve read “this guy was arrested for wearing a silly hat!” Only to look deeper and find out he was threatening to stab people or something.
Hairs grow longer, thicker and darker when you cut them.
This is less a misconception and more a lie told to teens to get them to shave their horrible little pube faces.
That all the Y2K preparation stuff was a waste of time / a scam, instead of an example of massive success (people coming together and pulling off something to avoid a disaster)
Also see Acid Rain and the hole in the ozone.
A friend of mine got a high-paying temp job reprogramming servers in some obscure programming language. I think the client was a major bank.
Yeah, a lot of dirtbags took advantage of Y2K, but that doesn’t mean Y2K wasn’t a serious problem. It easily could have been.
It easily could have been
It was a very serious problem.
Very few dirtbags took advantage of it.
Obscure language was probably COBOL. Obscure in the sense that it was once immensely popular for business applications, but by the late 90s there were very few new applications written in it, but a huge number of large businesses still ran it.
You are really underselling the fact that many of these businesses are still running COBOL despite it being the equivalent of ancient Mayan.
That’s not a fair assessment really… Some of them are still using PROLOG.
Shivers
I meant “it easily could have been” in the sense that it if it hadn’t been taken seriously, it would affected virtually everyone in some way.
These are the people who think the precautions around Covid were unnecessary too. If there hadn’t been any precautions, there would have been a lot more deaths and these same idiots would be asking why nothing was done to prevent it. But instead the death toll was kept to a minimum and these people just assume this is how it woukd have been regardless, no sense of cause and effect. Disasters are successfully mitigated and people assume there was no potential disaster at all. But if it had been allowed to happen, then they’d be asking why no action was taken
You’re tired of this? Like, you’ve encountered people actively talking about it so much you’re tired? Besides the odd online post, I’ve never met anyone making reference to or talking about this.
Mate i pulled 70+ hour shifts for months on end to make sure it wasn’t a problem, it only takes one fool for me to be tired of hearing it
Fair enough.
Dozens of times yes
Marginal Tax brackets drive me insane especially my parents constantly misunderstand and think a payrise will make them lose money.
They don’t understand that the tax is only paid on the money earned in that bracket. So going up 5% isn’t your total income being taxed an extra 5% its only the money earned on that bracket that is taxed at the higher rate.
There’s technically a spot where making more can cost you money, but that’s well out of reach of normal people. It involves triggering the alternative minimum tax.
I got another one. It bugs me when people say that it’s not possible for two dark haired people to produce a blonde child. These people think they’re so smart because they know genetics exist. But if they learned anything about genetics at all, very basic punnet square genetics you learn in highschool biology explains why it’s not only possible but pretty common. If both dark haired parents are carriers for the blonde gene, there is a 25% chance of a blonde child. And reality is probably more complex than what I learned in highschool.
It’s like the stubborn fuckers who refuse to accept the science of sex and gender being any more complex that “penis man vagina woman”. They think they’re so smart for knowing “basic” biology and refuse to fucking learn anything beyond that.
There are many genes that affect the color of our hair and skin. Dark colors are caused by higher amounts of melamine in hair/skin. Those darker traits are dominant genes. In the same vein, two black people can have a child that will have lighter skin than them if the parents carry recessive genes and pass them on.
But it is even more complex than that because there are so many factors that affect the expressivity of genes : the environment, the diet or even other genes.
And don’t get me started on genre/sex… Biology is sooo complex, and genetics is just one of its branch, but people want to believe it’s simple to justify their bigotry. I studied biology for two years at university and I just know that I know practically nothing about it…
Propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.
Solar panels are the cheapest source of electricity now. Batteries have dropped in price by more than 90% in the past decade, and are now viable for grid-scale storage, addressing the main issue with renewable energy. EVs are competitive with combustion cars, and in some ways superior. Heat pumps are now superior to furnaces in many locations. The solar punk future is now! But you wouldn’t know any of this by listening to the public discourse, mainstream media, and many politicians.
Relevant video from Technology Connections
I got the vibe of his video as soon as I read the first sentence lol.
The persistent myth that corporations are legally required to act only in the service of shareholders’ financial interests.
Powerful groups have a vested interest in keeping the myth around, but it doesn’t even pass the smell test— they were more interested in social control with the return to office stuff. Even though productivity is higher and costs are lower with WFH. Even if you argued it served the interest of shareholders as a broad class, without checking for the real estate holdings of the company’s shareholders, they could accidentally assist companies that their shareholders don’t have investments in. Or worse, competing ones.
It goes further. Why not treat employees better to reduce turnover or improve performance? No, of course not. It is used exclusively to justify immoral actions.
So a lot of that changed when the law changed that capped ceo salary at $1M. They started getting comp in stock. So of course when they say they only have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders they really mean to themselves.
Everyone was all yay CEO salaries were out of control so we got them capped. But look at the monster the side effect of that created.
CEOs are literally not a problem compared to the billionaires who own these companies. CEOs are still bad, but they are henchmen, not the main villains.
Difference without much distinction.
I only bring it up because people seem to focus on CEOs without thinking about the bigger system behind why CEOs are such garbage.
Tryptophan makes you sleepy on Thanksgiving.
Large doses of Tryptophan can make you sleepy, but the amount you get in turkey doesn’t come close. Thanksgiving meals make you sleepy because you eat a huge meal. Eat a huge meal without turkey and you will be tired, eat a normal sized meal with turkey and you won’t be more tired than any other meal.
yup its the insulin/high blood sugar levels that are causing it. its more significant in people who have type 2 or prediabetes. people have reporting sleepiness after a large meal, especially if it includes alot of carbs.
I’m ready for a nap after finishing a foot long sub.
The average person only lived to be 35 back in the day.
No, the average lifespan was like 35 back in the day. 40 year olds weren’t some rare wrinkled old person, the average was affected by the extremely high childhood mortality. If you could survive the first few years of your life your chances of surviving the next 60 were pretty good.
That being said, even among people who survived childhood, living to the ages we see nowadays was more rare than it is today due to a lot of environmental and societal factors like plagues and war. It wasn’t unheard of, but that is also something that brought the average down to an extent.
We essentially had a plague in 2020, and there are multiple wars going on as we speak. Those factors didn’t disappear.
The deaths from both the wars going on in the modern day and infectious diseases like COVID are nowhere near on the scale that they were before, especially in terms of the percent of the world population killed by them. We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.
Fun fact, the bubonic plague never went away. It’s still kicking around the world. Obviously not like it was with The Plague, but still.
There are a couple cases a year in the States. It’s treatable now, that’s the difference
We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.
WWII had 3-5 times the number of deaths (depending on whose numbers you trust) as WWI though? Like, it’s not even close. Even using the highest estimate for WWI (22 million) and the lowest estimate for WWII (70 million) WWII was more than triple the deaths.
The global population at the time of WWI was ~1.8 billion, and at the time of WWII is was 2.3 billion.
So in terms of of percent of the world population, WWI loses.
I will concede that the Spanish flu was a lot worse than COVID.
True, but we don’t wholesale shit in our drinking water any more while riddled with syphilis
I got relatives that lived to their 90’s in the 1600’s, we may have skewed it a bit
That the general population are directly responsible for the amount of pollution occurring a la “carbon footprint” when there are 10 companies producing 70% of the world’s pollution
The best first aid for someone having a seizure is to shove a wallet (or something) in their mouth, so that they don’t “swallow their tongue”.
NO!
Never do this. Absolutely never. It’s far more likely that you’ll injure the victim (or yourself) in the attempt.
Furthermore, don’t restrain a seizure victim in any way unless it’s absolutely necessary for their physical safety (like if they’re in danger of falling down a stairway. Even then, it’s usually better to just stand at the top step and act as a barrier). Whenever possible, move things they may hit out of their way; don’t try to move the victim. If there’s something you can’t move, try to put something soft between the victim and the object.
Most of the time, the best thing you can do for a seizure victim is to not touch them at all, and simply give them room.
Is putting a pillow or something soft under their head adviseable? I know the floor is considered a hard immovable object but it putting something under them sorta so im not sure if that qualifies
Generally the advice is moving everything out of the way, if possible a blanket or something under their head as quickly as possible if they are on a hard surface and calling the ambulance (if someone else is there get them to do that straight away while you move stuff!) Also a good idea to time the seizure if possible! When they come to, have them stay laying down for a few minutes at least before sitting up. Some people can appear to be okay but go back into seizure so slowly, slowly with sitting up and even before offering a water.
If you know someone who has seizures, even irregularly, it’s a good idea to ask them about it beforehand in case it ever happens when you’re with them. People can have different management plans and it also just gives you some guidance and the other person some control should it happen.
(I work in disability!)
Thank you. I work with someone that can have seizures and we have a looot of hard floors so this is great advice for me.
Just adding, TIME the seizure. Super important.
Worked with a guy who hasn’t had a seizure in years and had stopped taking his meds. He never disclosed any of this beforehand. Was a fun surprise when he started to get loopy staring at a rotating motor shaft then trying to touch then hug said shaft spinning at several hundred rpm. Pulled him back from trying to bear hug it for him to start convulsing. Trying to carefully lay him down and support his skull to prevent it from cracking on the concrete and metal flooring was an adventure I’d rather never go on again
Is that for information to give first responders when they arrive? Not questioning your advice, just curious about what to do with that information.
Yep that’s right, to give to first responders, the person themselves or any other support people that may be involved. Can help people pick up on if anything is changing, longer seizures can mean medication might need looking at, condition deteriorating etc.
History time!
Myth: People in the past drank beer because it was safer than drinking water.
Fact: People in the past drank beer because it was full of calories and tasty. Before modern times people generally had access to or knew how to find clean water, and water has always been the most popular drink throughout history.
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Myth: People needed spices to cover the taste of rotten meat.
Fact: People ate fresh meat when it was available and preserved it when they could by smoking, drying, salting, fermenting, or otherwise processing it. When they didn’t have access to meat they just wouldn’t eat it. They wanted spices for the same reason we do - because they taste good.
Wasn’t that literally the purpose of grog? A mixture of beer and water used on ships to kill harmful bacteria that would grow in the ships’ water stores over a long voyage?
And if people in the past knew how to make water safe to drink, then why was epidemiology invented when Londoners couldn’t figure out that they should stop drinking poop water?
Wasn’t that literally the purpose of grog? A mixture of beer and water used on ships to kill harmful bacteria that would grow in the ships’ water stores over a long voyage?
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Grog was a mixture of rum, water, and lime juice. Beer does not have enough of an alcohol content to have any antibacterial impact. Your basic premise is flawed.
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The main reasons grog was invented were twofold, first and foremost, it diluted the alcohol to manage the sailors’ intoxication levels (much like drinking a rum and Coke does today). Secondly, the addition of lime juice helped fight off scurvy (leading to British sailors being called “limeys”).
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While it did improve the flavor of stale water, the disinfecting properties have been greatly exaggerated over time.
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Grog was way after the middle ages.
Beer was the main beverage aboard ships before, as it keeps better than water in eigen kegs. But you can’t stock up on beer everywhere. Distilled alcohol has a better form factor, do you can take more. It made the water kind of palatable but doesn’t clean it.
I can’t speak to practices on sailing ships, those surely differ from general history especially when it comes to fresh water which isn’t freely available on the ocean.
And to your second point, in the context of history that happened in modern times. The cholera epidemics happened in the 19th century with the epidemiologist John Snow publishing his treatise in 1855. Unsafe drinking water causing widespread disease was mainly a problem of modern cities in the industrial age and the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that came with it.
Then why does people’s preference for spicy food correlate to local food pathogen prevalence?
See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9586227/
To elaborate a little further. “Just not eating” something is a modern luxury. For most of our history, you ate everything that was available or (someone, usually your youngest kids first) starved. The argument isn’t that spices cover the taste of rotten food, but that they actually kill the pathogens that make humans sick, making more food edible for longer. This is a spill over from these plants’ long evolutionary arms race with phytotoxins. Cultures in places with high food pathogen prevalence, where spicing makes a real difference to survival, develop a preference for spicy food, despite their initially aversive taste. Cultures in cold climates with few food pathogens don’t.
I’m skeptical of this. It seems more likely that they’re simply correlated because biodiversity is higher in warmer climates, both of microorganisms and plants.
Ask yourself these two questions. One, why would there be any spoiled meat around? Why was it not consumed or preserved immediately? People knew meat spoiled quickly and would treat it accordingly.
Two, have you ever smelled or tasted rotten meat? It’s quite literally repulsive, it’s hard to even get near. No amount of chili or black pepper is covering it. And if you were able to stomach it it wouldn’t be worth the vomiting and diarrhea it might cause. Food poisoning could be a death sentence in premodern times, and in fact diarrhea is one of the most common causes of death in undeveloped regions today.
Billing and Sherman have some pretty robust statistical controls to address these kinds of alternatives. Worth reading the paper.
Fully spoiled food is inedible, but there’s a long window of pathogen growth before that point, which can be lengthened further by spices. Why would some meat not be consumed immediately? Because life is messy, people make mistakes, and animals are large.
Yeah no, pubs used to totally used to use curry powder and ketchup to drown the taste of gamey meat.
