Obesity is a medically and scientifically complicated topic that is even further complicated by the public’s lack of medical and scientific knowledge. And you triple-down on the complexity once you figure in social factors such as body image standards, and shame. Obesity is as undeniably bad for you as the Earth is round, but that doesn’t stop a large segment of the population from denying either.
Smoking, on the other hand, is pretty damn cut-and-dried that it’s bad for you–at least since the 1960’s.
We’ve been dealing with Bad Science since the moment the word “Science” carried weight with the public.
The UK’s National Health Service recently made the decision to ban non-urgent surgeries for the obese and smokers that do not voluntarily change their risky behaviors. The Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) states that obese patients “will not get non-urgent surgery until they reduce their weight” at all, except in “exceptional circumstances”.
Non-urgent surgeries include hip and knee replacement and hernia repairs. The move is expected to save £68m in the current fiscal year, and free up resources for less high-risk patients using the system.
The decision is rousing significant opposition from both patients and physicians. While the primary criticisms center around skepticism for the suggested cost savings and fears of a “two tier health system”, some comments on the fringe attempt to link the move to “Eugenics”. Critics of Socialized Medicine have also weighed in pointing to this as an example of government overreach.
As real as any “Ninja” in the modern era is–and don’t get us started on all the doughy suburban white dudes who cosplay as ninjas.
On this day in 1960, 17 year old Otoya Yamaguchi assassinated the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party in front of a live television audience. Yamaguchi was a member of a far right-wing Japanese nationalist group called Uyoku Dantai which wanted to restore the dignity of the Japanese Emperor and return society to its traditional roots. The attack took place at Tokyo’s Hibiya Hall during a political debate that was to precede elections. Using a wakizashi–a traditional Japanese short sword–Yamaguchi killed the Socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma.
Roughly three weeks after the assassination, he mixed a small amount of tooth paste with water and wrote on the wall of his cell a quotation from fourteenth-century Samurai Kusunoki Masashige, noted in history as the example of loyalty to the Japanese Emperor:
“Seven lives for my country. Ten thousand years for His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!”
Yamaguchi then hanged himself in his cell with a rope made out of knotted bed sheets, tied to the light fixture. The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to photographer Yasushi Nagao for capturing the photo seconds after the assassin withdrew the blade.
But in this case, it was the “Daywalkers” who were responsible for the actual death and destruction, and… tax evasion? Just kidding about that last one, Good luck with those IRS payments, Wesley.
1. Before we start, let’s get this out of the way: yes, this happened in Africa.
2. If you grew up in a developed nation with a decent education system and still hold superstitious beliefs yourself, you don’t get to feel superior: these people at least have an excuse.
3. The entire point of this article is to drive home how important a rational, evidence-based education is, and conversely, how not-harmless beliefs in superstitions are.
4. Giving away the premise of the article this early on is generally a bad practice in a day when people have the attention spans of a
5. That sentence was deliberately left unfinished; that was a joke.
6. So is continuing this list past item 3.
7. If you explain a joke it stops being funny, unless you overexplain it.
8. Anyone who directs an accusation of “cultural imperialism” at people wanting to stop superstition-inspired violence has probably never even been punched in the face, let alone lived under the risk of such deadly violence.
The Recurring Issue of “Vampire Attacks” in Malawi
At least five people have been killed and more injured in ongoing mob attacks, prompting the UN Department on Safety and Security to issue a report recommending withdrawal of all Non-Governmental Organizations and UN staff from the region. The violence is directed at people accused of Vampirism and those sheltering them.
The report from the UNDSS attributes the attacks to rumors of vampirism that originated in Mozambique, the country neighboring Malawi, but provided no specifics as to the origin. Accusations of Vampirism and resulting violence are not new to the area. In 2002, a similar outbreak of hysteria included the beating of three Catholic priests and the stoning death of another man accused of collaborating.
Malawians queue for food aid distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP)
The Cynical Reality
As if it were a script from the world’s most fucked-up episode of Scooby Doo, there is evidence supporting the idea that these rumors–both in 2002 and in the present day–were started by local opposition groups to undermine the government and disrupt the efforts of relief workers. In both cases, rumors accuse the aid workers themselves of being the vampires or their agents, and the government of trading access to the locals’ blood in order for the aid.
In the 2002 incident, the President of Malawi directly addressed the accusations, responding not with incredulity about the claim of vampires existing, but outrage at the idea of government trading blood to them: “No government can go about sucking (the) blood of its own people,” said President Bakili Muluzi. “That’s thuggery.”
If we can’t get proper aid to Africa, can we at least get them episodes of Scooby Doo? No, we’re serious here: they need to learn the lesson that anything spooky is almost always some asshole trying to run a con.
Just kidding, we need the ad revenue. But seriously, that’s how this fallacy works… or rather, doesn’t work. Because it’sa fallacy; it literally* doesn’t work… except as an argument by someone spewing bullshit at you.
Anyway folks, buckle your seat belts and fluff your motion sickness bags: we’re about to take a trip to a surprisingly well-populated suburb of Stupidtown. The funny thing is, you’ve been meeting people from there all your life and just never knew it.
Stupidtown: it’s up the road from Flavortown, but all they have are Olive Gardens.
How can you tell if you’ve met one? Easy: just voice a perfectly reasonable criticism of their neighborhood. Maybe you’re passing through and notice off-leash dogs everywhere, not just at city parks but in restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and even hospitals. If you remarked to a local on how this was a bad idea–if not because of the possible car accidents, then because of serious health risks, you’d be met with the following response:
“Well if you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave?”
Sound familiar at all? See, you have met one of these people, haven’t you? And obviously, by “these people” we mean, “this fallacy”. (It’s called a metaphor; literally… literarily, whatever.)
Ergo Decedo – Latin for “Well Then, F**k Off” (Basically)
The reason this is a fallacy is simple: it completely avoids addressing the actual argument or criticism, instead, putting the emphasis on the affiliation of the person making it. It’s a form of Ad Hominem–attacking the person rather than the argument.
But it’s an even more insidious form of that common fallacy, because it appeals to our primitive tribal nature. It’s based on the idea that if you don’t belong to the “in” group–by way of accepting their social norms–you don’t have any right to criticize those norms. So not only does this argument avoid addressing the criticism, it’s circular, fingernails-on-your-brain stem stupidity: in order for your criticism to be valid you must not have a criticism of the thing you want to criticize.
Let’s look at it another way:
Love It or Leave It
“It was white velour you revolting bastard!”
Your significant other walks in on you doing something disgusting… let’s say for the sake of relative propriety that you’re sitting bare-assed on the couch, chewing off your toenails–you can imagine whatever you’d like in this scenario. They express their revulsion, and you reply, “well if you don’t like–seeing me gnaw on my own feet while my butthole rubs all over the couch–(or whatever other sick thing you imagined), why don’t you just break up with me?”
So now that you’re back on the dating scene you have plenty of time to reconsider what you said. As you sift through the ashes of your t-shirts and Pokemon card collection, that squishy gunk between your ears might brush up against everything that’s wrong with the entire chain of thoughts that led up to you being newly single. Gee, you think to yourself, maybe criticism should be independent of one’s status in the group. You also think, maybe I should get some toenail clippers.
Parting Shots
It should go without saying that this fallacy is used mostly in political arguments. But it doesn’t matter where you’re from, or who’s making it: it’s bullshitwithin any set of lines on a map, within any group, political party, cause, or monkey troop. If you’re going to bring Patriotism into it, it’s a safe bet you’re doing so because you don’t want to face up to criticism; and you’re not fooling anyone except people who can’t identify the sharpened end of the pencil in the voting booth. Besides, this guy is more badass than any politician you’ve ever voted for in your entire life, and he disagrees:
No caption needed.
So love it, and leave that bullshit somewhere else.
FIN
Footnotes
*In the actual sense of the word used by people who aren’t happily sodomizing the English language on a daily basis**.
**This does not include the Merriam-Webster Freaking Dictionary any more; or maybe we should say “anymore”, irregardless***.
We were going to use the word “dumbass” in the title, but the Internet is filled with dumbasses and “stooge” more accurately describes that particular kind of dumbass whose lack of intelligence and sophistication causes them to get used as a tool by scumbags.
“Rube” would also apply, “sucker” as well, but like “dumbass” it casts too wide a net, and since there’s “one born every minute” we might offend some future political party.
This wasn’t a movie, it was prophecy… being fulfilled as we speak
“Dipshit“, while appropriate, would just be a little too hostile, and we’re trying to do our part to tone down the toxic rhetoric… a little. (Don’t believe us, well fu… ahem.)
“Mook” and “Goon” imply low-level bad guy status like the dudes you beat up in the early stages of Double Dragon on NES, and also imply an awareness of their role which we’re sure a lot of the people who shared content from these pages probably don’t have. “Schmuck” is a Yiddish word which encompasses a lot of these ideas, which would be doubly appropriate in a certain sense we’re only going to allude to because we want to keep this politically neutral.
So unless there’s some fifteen character German word for idiots-whose-inability-to-discern-facts-from-bullshit-causes-them-to-spread-propaganda-used-to-destabilize-their-own-country-because-they’re-fucking-idiots, we’ll stick with “stooge“.
Something just like this…
Anywho, enough with playing Idiot Thesaurus.
The Actual Article
You. This is you.
Foreign governments have used social media to spread unrest and division since the earliest days of the Internet, before people even used the term “social media”. Back in 2002 when Bullshido was founded in the pre-Facebook–hell, pre-MySpace days–as the site increased in popularity so did the number of foreign accounts. Unfortunately for them, we’ve always thrived on discord and agitation, and our “Forum Bullies” relished the opportunity to eat the more obvious trolls alive, elbows and toenails first.
But the digital landscape has changed, especially with the rise of smart phones allowing nearly anyone the ability to access online media, where once it required a computer and at least a small amount of technical literacy. The average Internet user now on Facebook is nowhere near as sophisticated in spotting trolls or agitators as they once were, and as we’ve been covering for a while, that is a serious problembecause more and more people–especially active voters–get their news from social media sites rather than traditional sources. Foremost among the sites consumed for news purposes: Facebook.
In 2016, various American intelligence services sounded the alarm that Facebook was being overrun with Russian accounts attempting to not only influence the upcoming election, but sow general discord and anger in western countries.
It was largely ignored, possibly–and we’ll admit this is speculation if not common sense–because a significant amount of money was pouring in to promote the posts.
Now there’s a complete list of compromised or wholly-owned Russian propaganda Facebook Pages currently floating around a Congressional subcommittee which they’re not releasing yet, and once we get our hands on it we’ll publish it so that you can scroll through your own posts and see if you were an unwitting participant in information warfare against your own country–stooge.
But for the moment…
The Facebook Pages In Question
Secured Borders was one of the ostensibly patriotic Facebook pages that not only shared content calling for the killing of Muslims and labeling illegal immigrants as “rapists, murderers, and child molesters”, it spent money to promote those posts into people’s feeds.
Does this look familiar? If so, you probably suck at life
This was one of the pages explicitly identified by Facebook in Congressional testimony as having been operated by Russian agitators.
Blacktivist also purchased ads during the election, with the apparent purpose of inflaming racial strife. Its content included videos that allegedly showed police violence toward blacks, calls for a new civil war, and statements that attributed white supremacy to both Democrats and Republicans.
Example of the videos posted to the “Blacktivist” page
Heart of Texas
One of the more insidious aspects of this ongoing campaign in the information war is that local areas are often targeted, sometimes even down to the small town level. In this case, the “Heart of Texas” page operators looked to “rile up” in the local parlance, the residents of the Lone Star State.
♫ The звезды at night, are большой and яркий, *clap clap clap clap* deep in the сердце of Texas… ♫
Being Patriotic
As of the time this article was written, these pages have been deactivated by Facebook–some as recently as August. But others have popped up in their wake, and there’s little sign of the dis/mis-information campaign slowing.
Collectively these pages had well over a million subscribers, many who replied zealously and even rabidly. Some, like “Being Patriotic”–which had over 200,000 subscribers on its own, even organized real-world protest events attended by the hundreds.
Nothing says “I’m ‘Being Patriotic’!” like attending a flash mob organized by a hostile foreign power.
The page organized both protests against Hillary Clinton, and in support of Donald Trump, in several states. In some of their more aggressive posts, they went after the Black Lives Matter group, imploring their followers to “Arrest and shoot every sh*thead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA”.
Red (Brain) Dead Redemption
So yes, if you’ve shared content from any of these pages–or any of the hundreds of other ones on the list that are due to be released–you are a stooge. And not just a stooge, but in the global game of Information Warfare, you’ve just played the role of pawn.
If you think this isn’t a big deal, just remember what happens to pawns on a chessboard when the big pieces start moving. If you played a part in the spreading of this nonsense, it’s long-since too late to redeem yourself. But maybe, just maybe, you can learn your lesson and be a little bit more astute when it comes to who you take seriously as news sources.
Maybe.
Probably not.
And if you’re not guilty of sharing this garbage–as we suspect most of our regular readers aren’t–but you’ve seen posts from these pages on your own Facebook feed from friends or relatives, you have a moral duty to do what you can to educate them. Because when we’re all in the same boat, it’s kinda important to keep the idiots from drilling holes in the hull.
You can start by sharing this article to your own feed. But that’s just a friendly suggestion. We promise, this was written in the USA, by an actual American.
Roughly 40 percent of all cancers in the United States are connected with excess weight according to American health officials. 71% of Americans are either overweight or obese according to the CDC.
The increased risk is related to 13 different kinds of tumors, including rectal, colon, uterine, ovary, kidney, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, stomach, thyroid, and esophageal. And as the obesity epidemic rises, so do the rates of cancer, and these forms of the disease are now being referred to as “obesity-related” cancers.
One third of all American adults are overweight, and over a third–37.9%–are obese. Half of Americans aren’t even aware that being overweight increases the chances of developing cancer.
CDC infographic on the rate of increase of obesity-related cancersThe various Obesity-Related Cancers
For when your acts of violence need corporate sponsorship…
Art is entirely subjective, so we’re not going to comment on the artistic merit of a Nike swoosh turned into a shank. But we will comment on the effectiveness of these weapons as actual weapons, and maybe the in/appropriateness of pairing them with the slogan “Just Do It”:
The Nike Swoosh
Just… take it… easy… man.Maybe this should be called a “Knifke”, or a “Swooshiv”?
Stick’s Take: It looks like the Nike swoosh is only sharpened on the inside edge. It will definitely kill you, but it’s less than ideal. The shape may be good for some binding or catching or grappling of some sort.
TheMightyMcClaw’s Take: Yeah, that is not something I’d want to fight.
Setsu Uzume’s Take: Nike is the goddess of victory, and she would be disappointed. It has neither the stability of a jutte, nor the style of a broken beer bottle. Try a sharpie marker. It has the same leverage capabilities, passes security, and won’t poke a hole in your pocket.
Gezere’s Take: This is on point. rimshot. The best of the lot–will get the job done, if the job is shanking someone.
McDonald’s Brass McKnuckles
You wanna get your ass McKicked?
Bam bam bop bam boop, I’m lumpin’ it (your head).Still probably healthier for you than that McDouble. Also, something about Szechuan sauce.
Stick’s Take: These strike me (pun intended?–ed) as possibly problematic; the separation in the arches makes me think there is a fair shot of hitting with only one of the two, and that doing so could twist or torque the hand and wrist badly. If you’re hitting something big though, it’s probably not an issue.
TheMightyMcClaw’s Take: Probably about as effective as its normal-weapon counterpart.
Setsu Uzume’s Take: Unwieldy. The distribution of force from your punch through the contact points are unpredictable. Definitely more likely to hurt yourself than your target.
Gezere’s Take: Too big and I don’t think it would be effective after one hit. He may just damage the user’s wrist.
Facebook Freindbar
Let’s be real, some people need this used on them…Also useful for dealing with fake news propagators
Stick’s Take: the crowbar is dumb, but mostly because crowbars are dumb weapons (unless you’re Gordon Freeman–ed). He should have made something like a Chinese hook sword or African throwing knife/axe thing.
TheMightyMcClaw’s Take: Again, about as effective as its normal-weapon counterpart.
Setsu Uzume’s Take: The crossbar kills this design. It’s too close to make the most of the hook, and the hook itself provides a buffer against using the tip of the bar like the spike on a halberd. Can’t even really use it as a crowbar. If a weapon evolved from a tool, it should still be a functional tool; but that’s just me.
Gezere’s Take: Same as the Nike shiv, but for bashing.
Mercedes-Benz Shuriken/”Ninja Star”
For when you drive through that sketchy neighborhood of only 3BR houses.“ShuriKANT park next to me in your Hyunday, riff-raff.”
Stick’s Take: The star seems too light and spindly without a good plane to it, not enough of a frisbee shape, so it will just tumble. Also, it probably doesn’t have enough weight to penetrate very deeply.
TheMightyMcClaw’s Take: is probably about as useless as a regular shuriken.
Setsu Uzume’s Take: Too flimsy to fly. Throw rocks instead.
Gezere’s Take: These look to small to throw well enough to do any real damage. Shurikens weren’t really that deadly anyway.
Additional Credit to Omega for commentary and Phrost for the captions. TheMightyMcClaw can be found posting on the Forums, and his Instagram is NSFW so we’re not linking that. Setsu Uzume writes for PodCastle.org and can be found on Twitter @KatanaPen. Gezere is a Brazilian Jiujitsu black belt, Kung Fu master, and retired military officer. He can be found in a triple-locked vault in a European black site waiting until the dire moment his country needs to activate him.
It seems that the most reliable way to make a quick buck these days over social media is to find a niche populated by people with a lack of critical thinking skills, and sell them products. And as you might have guessed with all our coverage of the industry, Health and Fitness is currently one of the easiest targets for scam artists and frauds.
Why’s this? In an organic, fair trade, vegan nutshell, there’s a dangerous convergence of social pressure, abject laziness and an unwillingness to put in the necessary effort, a sense of entitlement to instant solutions to complicated problems, and most importantly, assholes willing to take advantage of all these things to make money.
Without hard numbers on the phenomenon–excruciatingly difficult to obtain given the amount of money at stake in this industry–we’ll admit we can’t represent this in graph form with perfect accuracy. However, our best guess is that if we plotted it on a Venn diagram, it’d look like a fucking circle.
In order to get the joke here you need a basic understanding of Venn diagrams, which we’ll assume you do since Bullshido’s never been very idiot-friendly. Anyway, yes, we’re implying that overlapping all of those separate categories of stupidity and assholes is rendered into a shit-brown circle. Longest. Caption. Ever.
Bell Gibson is the author of the pseudonutrition book “The Whole Pantry”. Her story is much like a lot of the other nutrition scam bloggers on the Internet, but with a few extra twists:
She flat out lied about having had cancer and subsequently curing it with a special diet.
She scammed money meant for a boy with an inoperable brain tumor. Her book has since been withdrawn by the publisher.
Via Goodreads’ listing of her book. Note the fact that it is still rated relatively highly.
If you’re already pissed, here’s the good news: she was fined $410,000 by the Australian courts for her shady bullshit.
$90,000 for failing to donate proceeds from the sale of The Whole Pantry app, as publicly advertised
$50,000 for failing to donate proceeds from the launch of The Whole Pantry app
$30,000 for failing to donate proceeds from a 2014 Mothers Day event
$90,000 for failing to donate other company profits
$150,000 for failing to donate 100 per cent of one week’s app sales to the family of Joshua Schwarz, the boy who had an inoperable brain tumor
..despite significant publicity surrounding Ms Gibson’s charitable pledges, she made only three donations totalling $10,800.
So this is is a win for health and science, but the fight continues. Gibson has since deleted most of her social media presence, but other bullshit artists like Vani “Food Babe” Hari and David “Avocado” Wolfe still have millions of un-skeptical followers who buy their crap both figuratively and literally. Otherwise, how else can an asshole make a buck in this world, right?
For more info, check out the Belle Gibson Exposed page on Facebook who’ve been covering her nonsense for a while.
“There cannot be two kinds of medicine—conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not… ”
The European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) represents 29 national and international scientific academies in Europe, including the Royal Society (UK) and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In a statement on Wednesday, the EASAC emphasized the need to “reinforce criticisms” by scientists as the markets for homeopathy in the EU and US continue to grow.
Scientific mechanisms of action—where we conclude that the claims for
homeopathy are implausible and inconsistent with established scientific concepts.
Clinical efficacy—we acknowledge that a placebo effect may appear in individual
patients but we agree with previous extensive evaluations concluding that there are
no known diseases for which there is robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathy
is effective beyond the placebo effect. There are related concerns for patient-informed
consent and for safety, the latter associated with poor quality control in preparing
homeopathic remedies.
Promotion of homeopathy—we note that this may pose significant harm to the patient
if incurring delay in seeking evidence-based medical care and that there is a more general
risk of undermining public confidence in the nature and value of scientific evidence.
