What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?
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.
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.
Hairs grow longer, thicker and darker when you cut them.
Trump was good for the economy.
During the election this kept being repeated even though the economy collapsed because of his covid response
God.
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.
Oh plenty…
The myth of “alpha wolves” and all the men who build a toxic social and psychological image of themselves and other men because of it, apparently because they would like to live in a zoo and get into conflicts with other men they have never met before or something.
But seriously, there were some grave errors in how this came to be. This wasn’t observing wolves in their natural environment. There are no “alpha wolves” in nature. The researcher, David Mech, who was in part responsible for this stupidity has been working since then to correct this, but media and society already swallowed the misconception too hard.
Next one:
“LLMs are not AI.” Yes, they are. AI is a scientific label for a bunch of methods, algorithms, and models.
“But they are not ‘intelligent’.” My dear fellow flesh bag, we do not even have a clear definition of what ‘intelligence’ even is. Come up with a good one, then let’s talk about this particular label. Until then, you can rename AI to ‘pesto alfredo’ for all I care as long as we agree what kind of methods we mean by that to categorize a bunch of computer science stuff.In the opposite corner:
“We have achieved AGI with LLMs”. No, we have not. There is still a substantial lack of capabilties and properties.Or: “LLMs are sentient and self-aware”. To the best of my knowledge, they are not. To be fair, there is little room for debate, which often boils down to stuff like semantic arguments about consciousness and definitions of understanding, but the consensus is that they are not.
Another one:
“Homeopathy cures diseases.” No, it doesn’t. It has a placebo effect but that’s pretty much about it.
There is more:
“Evolution theory is just a ‘theory’.” No, it’s a proven set of explanations and models supported by overwhelming empirical evidence. Popular confusion of the colloquial use of the word “theory” with the scientific one.Colloquial meaning: a guess, hunch, speculation, or unproven idea.
Scientific meaning: a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence and capable of being tested and potentially falsified.
And there is even more, but I have already written a wall of text and am tired now.
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.
"survival of fittest "was not coined by DARWIN, it was by herbert who co-opt his research.
Chronic lyme does not exist as a disease, and its coined by non-scientist which has snowballed into a large industry(providing questionable testing, LYME DOCTORA) by providing services that is equivalent to pseudoscience AND Belief its in more than 1 country, eventhough its mostly found deer ticks in americas, and not ANY TICK species. people actually went a little crazy with the Rx. basically people have what psyches called, delusional parasitosis, or psychosomatic disorders, i visited these forums and it seems alot of these people have mental illness+ they long term damage from using supplements and plant extracts that are likely somewhat toxic. seems pervasive in the midwest, and what a surprise chronic use of antibiotics from these “lyme doctors” also have cause long term damage. and this pairs with homeopathy/naturopathy/alternative medication.
Most MSMs prior to trumps 2nd or 1st term is not “liberal leftist” media, none existed for decades. the only 1 i see was a podcast/on a obscure channel and time Demcry now! is the closest thing to be talking even something remotely “left”. every other just fawns over “Fallen soldiers” even cnn did often, plus its significant amount of copaganda show.
also recently the artemis launch is , and the cold war launches are wildly still believed by asians as faked, and done in by studio. the most common excuse is why "is there wind in space, because the flag is “flapping”…etc. i was actually surprised older asians still widely believe it. during 2019, and currently to.
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.
New cars are reliable.
First of all, no. Their more complex and failure prone, and you are the guinea pig they test new crap on.
Second of all, you literally cannot call a one year old vehicle reliable. You do not have enough data to make that claim. My jeep is about 40 years old, and with the 40 year old head start will still out live a brand new jeep. It has no “limp mode” because u slipped out of 4 lo in the woods (actual customer example), and it doesn’t require Internet connection + a security gateway authentication to reset things like limp mode and doing a clutch position relearn. If you want a reliable vehicle get something made between 85 and 05, as long as it doesn’t rust out from underneath you it will give u less headaches than anything made in the last 20 years.
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
Huh, odd, why do they do this?
To make the general population think that they’re responsible for the problems caused by the massive uncontrolled exploitation of limited resources by corporations.
(Or in simpler terms; So the general population don’t show the CEOs just how fragile their mortal bodies are.)
No, why do they produce all the emissions?
It’s a nice “gotcha” you’re trying do. These companies emit because they are producing goods and services for us, the people, right?
No.
The point of blaming 10 companies for 70% of emissions, most of whom are fossil fuel energy companies, is that we have the technology and the resources to begin a 100% switch over to cleaner energy sources today. But these 10 companies make obscene profits and use those profits to control the political system and prevent that switchover.
We don’t have to use fossil fuels to maintain our society, but these companies use their influence to make sure we do it anyways.
Combustion produces byproducts, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and depending on the fuel or the quality of combustion, sulphur oxides and other fantastically poisonous substances that are building up in our limited breathing air and drinking water.
Engines that use this process are called internal combustion engines, they mix the fuel with air and ignite it, this creates heat and pressure, because the big molecules that make up the fuel are broken down into a massive quantity of smaller ones. That pressure then pushes on pistons which turn a crankshaft that can be connected to a transmission in a car, or a generator in a power plant, the hot exhaust gases that make up a lot of the pollution then get forced out of the engine into the air.
Unless you’re asking why specifically those companies are the ones producing the emissions, in which case it’s a matter of the amount of carbon fuel they use to mine/refine/move the materials and build/run the factories, and the transport they use to move their finished product and run all of the processes that lead up to the product being made. All of which drives emissions.
To draw on an example thats incredibly apt right now, considering Utah is now allowing a datacenter that will use 9 GW of power, more than every combined person and business in the state uses.
A data center is designed in CAD software - electrical energy from the grid is used in the computer
The data center is built - Heavy machinery prepares the ground and Concrete is poured - earthmovers use carbon fuel, the concrete manufacturer itself burns fuel to create the concrete, then ships it via trucks to the building site where it is poured, setting concrete also releases carbon dioxide.
The computer components are built - rare earth metals are dug from the ground and refined into chips that are shipped to factories where they are assembled onto circuitboards - the material and manufacture requirements of these components take a lot of fuel, and a lot of highly specialised equipment that is energy intensive
The computer components are shipped to the site - this also takes fuel.
This is all contributing to the emissions cost that the company has racked up, and the datacenter isn’t even active yet.
ALSO, NONE of these examples take into account physical pollution, where crude oil or a carbon product (such as in Palestine… the American one; where a derailed train load of polyvinyl was set on fire and left to uncontrollably burn because it was cheaper than calling a chemical spill team) is either poured into the worlds water from crashed tankers or from drilling platforms (or from military actions where refineries are burned, and we get events like the mass swathe of marine life dieoff thanks to oil being spilled into the ocean)
Hopefully that answers your question, if not you’ll have to ask a different way because I don’t know what you mean when you say “why do they produce emissions?” (The answer is burning things makes emissions, and they’re burning the lot.)
The point they are trying to get at is that the vast majority of carbon produced by these companies is produced to see to the wants and needs of common people, and it is disingenuous to imply that solving climate change would impact no one except these companies shareholders.
Most carbon isn’t being created to build data centers. It is used to build roads, apartments, office buildings, cars, and trains. It is created by people driving cars or using gas stoves or eating hamburgers or running a heat pump on electricity generated in a coal plant. It is created when cheap plastic knick knacks are manufactured in indonesia, shipped across an ocean, and then transported overland to a store where they can be bought, used today, and thrown in the dump the next.
So regardless of where you apply pressure to stymie climate change, common people will be impacted, and pretending otherwise is essentially telling a lie to those common people.
Yeah convenience culture will have to die. To keep food not in plastic and not shipped halfway across the world you’re going to gave to give up getting your favorite flavor of dorito from the gas station at 2am. They won’t be able to package specialty flavors at a plant 600mi away then seal them in airtight nitrogen and ship them all over the country to that stores that are open 24/7 where they’ll be shelf stable for the next few months. You’ll have to order them by mail yourself or make do with local / regional variants made with different ingredients. The kids who stop eating when their dino nuggies have a different breading are just gonna starve (had an ex like that at 25y/o he was exhausting.)
disingenuous to imply that solving climate change would impact no one except these companies shareholders.
Where did I imply that making it so the planet doesnt kill us impacts only the companies?
Most carbon isn’t being created to build data centers.
I used one single example among many, datacentres are a single part of the problem, but a not inconsiderable one given that 7% of the total power consumption of the entire US goes to datacenters.
It is created by people driving cars or using gas stoves or eating hamburgers or running a heat pump on electricity generated in a coal plant. It is created when cheap plastic knick knacks are manufactured in indonesia, shipped across an ocean, and then transported overland to a store where they can be bought, used today, and thrown in the dump the next
In no way am I saying that mass consumption of oil product tat that goes to landfill after a week isn’t part of the problem, given that plastic waste in the air and water is also a major part of pollution and feeding climate change.
I’m not pretending that people aren’t going to be impacted, but I’d much rather a change where people can’t buy useless tat, than one that we’re living in now, where we can buy the tat but where doing so is destroying the planet we live on.
Blaming people for the companies making products worse, advertising disposable plastic items as if it solves the problems we already solved (but its so much cheaper for the company to make things out of plastics and not materials that last, and they can sell it to us ten times over to make up their profits) and then shipping them around the world in boats that use bunker fuel is unsustainable.
I spoke at length about the processes of one small part, but none of what I said was all-encompassing, it was merely a simplified example of one thing among many that make up the system of manufacture and shipping that feeds pollution into our planet for the sake of profits.
Where did I imply that making it so the planet doesnt kill us impacts only the companies?
You implied it when twice you went on long tangents going into the minutiae of the carbon production process while avoiding providing the simple, obvious answer to the question. Why do those companies produce all that carbon? Because they are making things that people want and need.
The problem with this framing is that it implies that climate change exists solely due to a few bad actors, and if we just constrained them or sestroyed them or whatever, then we would all live happily ever after. But this is not the case.
Suppose we round up all the CEOs and major shareholders to these companies tomorrow, and put them on a firing line, and threaten anyone else with the same if they don’t immediately dissolve the companies. Well, after maybe a year or two of a global economic crisis and restructuring of the world’s supply lines, do you think carbon emmissions would have gone down? Probably not. Instead, you would likely have new major players who stepped into the old companies roles. Or maybe now those roles are more dispersed - so instead of 7 companies emmitting all this carbon, we now have 700 million.
Now, I’m not saying that the concentration of global economic power isn’t a problem. But it isn’t the main problem to solve if we want to solve climate change. Because the production of carbon isn’t driven by companies making products, but by consumers demanding products. Nigerians coming out of poverty want dirty two stroke mopeds. Vietnamese pho vendors want propane to power their food carts. Latvian software developers want to display their wealth by driving low end luxury cars. Argentinian housewives want to eat steak for every meal. And remote villiagers in Pakistan want to keep enjoying the power they now have in their homes for only the last few years that comes from the coal plant 100km away. And if we want to snap our fingers and decarbonize the world, then at least some of these people are going to face disruptions to some of these goods.
That doesn’t mean that a decarbonized world has to be worse for everyone. But it means that maybe Latvian software developers need to develop a taste for expensive watches, and maybe Argentinian housewives will need to learn to grill jackfruit, and maybe an NGO needs to pay for rural Pakistanis to have solar panels on their roofs. But the actual number of companies that are the endpoints of pollution based on whatever statistical analysis is fairly irrelivant. Whether it is 7 companies or 700 million, we need to stop the demand for carbon intensive goods that is driving the supply - and that means changing peoples preferences or creating alternatives for those preferences to be met which do not depend on carbon emmissions.
I’m being a bit annoying about it because the companies don’t burn all that crap for fun but, as you laid out, for our collective consumption patterns. I developed the impression that the whole “x companies do y% of emissions!” thing, similar to “no ethical consumption” reminders tends to fulfill a function not aimed at motivating larger-scale changes (e.g. banning animal agriculture wholly instead of making an individual choice to not consume em; banning ICE cars from being produced/sold while creating comprehensive public transport instead of merely biking to work yourself) but at detaching oneself from the role we do actually play in society. (Also, smaller/individual scale weirdoes are a good source of activists that can radiate social structures out into general society)
The problem with relying on the mass of society changing their consumption patterns is that the mass of society is too damn poor to even give a damn, let alone scrounge up the extra money it costs to buy the non-polluting version of the commodity they need.
We’ve been trying to implement bottom-up change for 50+ years, and pretty much the only people who have made any voluntary changes are middle-class yuppies.
On the other hand, top down legislation has had an exponentially larger impact on emissions.
I’m not saying the “70% of emissions come from 10 companies” fact as a get out of jail ‘I’ll burn tyres in my yard because the companies do worse’ - that’s being part of the problem and not helping in any way.
I 100% agree with your follow up of we need to embrace the fact that we exist as part of a system and our actions have consequences.
My position is and has always been that we need to take better actions to prevent these companies from digging oil out of the ground or the pandemics, famines, resource wars, baseball sized hail, mass flooding, wildfires and supercell tornados are going to only get worse for everyone.
To be clear: the direction I’d like to see isn’t ignoring larger-scale changes but embracing that these things are linked. Companies don’t burn fuel for fun, but for profit (or non-capitalist modes of resource allocation - if the central party committee decides to satiate the people’s hunger for meat and cars, that’s also a problem). And the profit there comes from all of us, individually as well as collectively. So action against that probably should also happen on both levels.
I think the issue lies in that the corporations have an incentive to keep the increased carbon footprint and the average person composting or sorting trash for recycling (typical footprint reduction suggestions) does nothing to reduce this incentive. Moving the markets desires away from items with high carbon footprints is a monumental task and one we should strive for but a faster method of reduction would be direct pressure to the corporations exploiting cheap labor that has a higher carbon footprint cost
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
That WW1 was the same moral black and white as WW2.
In my opinion, every country in WW1 was the villain just that one side was impatient enough to be the aggressor first.Yep, WWI was the result of a bunch of inbred rulers turning family disagreements into a war because they could.
Yeah. When you look at how the war even got started, you start to see that Germany didn’t expect Austria-Hungary to be that incompetent diplomatically and that Russia was the one who threw away a potential peace plan before the war started.
Ooh this is a hot take, can you explain a little?
I don’t think it is.
They all were colonial powers that oppressed and subdued their colonial holdings, extracting wealth and even soldiers. France was the only republic, all the others were monarchies and Russia had the most absolutist monarchy. But that doesn’t really factor in, because even France wasn’t fighting to spread or preserve democracy.All were fighting to beat them arch enemies, to steal a piece of land or two or maybe a colony and to test their newly developed industrial weaponry. They were all
stompingchomping at the bit before it started.The German Empire was surely the most militaristic society. But they still fought all for the same ideology and reason.
To my last point, you can see that in the result: the losers had to gave up colonies but not to independence but to the victors as spoils.There was a large propaganda effort by the British and French to pin the blame for the war on one of the Central Powers and Germany was the only major Central Powers that didn’t fall apart due to the war.
Stomping at the bit? I’ve never heard that phrase
Yeah I meant chomping at the bit. It comes from horses chewing the metal part of the bridle because they’re fired up and want to run.
“champing” not “chomping”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/champing at the bit
Ah, thanks. I am not a native English speaker.
May you explain why you think it’s controversial? Only if you want to.
To my primitive understanding the war was triggered by the Austrians, escalated by the Germans and win by the Allies. But I’ve never bothered to question the information, so it felt quite controversial to read. Your other comment explaining it makes perfect sense however.
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)
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
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.
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
