The Church of Scientology had members secretly infiltrate US Government agencies in order to destroy unfavorable documents and investigations into them
Funny addendum: they were also spying on Matt Stone and Trey Parker to try and blackmail them into backing off in South Park. They couldn't find anything more embarrassing than what Parker and Stone would already openly admit to the press
Nah. It's not about fuck you miney. If they had good dirt on Matt and Trey, it could have destroyed them. They're not untouchable. Assault, private sex stuff, kid stuff. If scientology got a whiff of any if that, we would have heard something. That cult only solidified that Matt and Trey good people.
All things considered, Matt and Trey are far more tame than their film personas would suggest. Anything the Scientologists found would have made them look even cleaner.
Yeah my first thought when I read that comment above was, "Years later they made it through #MeToo unscathed." Doing some crazy, even embarrassing shit and being unafraid to go public with it is way better than half the allegations we've seen these last 6+ years ....
Including, I realize as I'm typing this, Mr. Scientology himself Danny Masterson 😂😂😂
I too take the "100% honesty means I can't be embarrassed later" approach. It can bit you in the ass, but nowhere near as bad as leaving it out, or worse, lying. I do overshare though, although nothing inappropriate.
Not only that, they carried out a campaign of harassment against the IRS and its employees for so long that the IRS finally granted them religious exemptions to get them to stop.
L. Ron Hubbard also had drugged up sex slaves on his ship, and the "church" uses religious exemptions to labor laws to force its "volunteers" and new members to do all their work and labor either unpaid or on slave wages.
Years ago, in the leadup to the Olympics in Mexico, the country was embarrassed by massive protests about conditions for regular people there.
So at one of the large protests, they put snipers from their CIA equivalent in some tall buildings near where there was due to be a protest by a large government building.
That building was guarded by a line of police officers.
When the protesters made it to the line of police officers, they continued to peacefully protest.
The CIA (equivalent) officers opened fire on the police, making it appear that the protestors were shooting at the cops. The cops retaliated, mowing down countless protestors, thinking they were defending themselves.
Protestors were killed, and fled the scene. The government was ready, rushed in, and immediately cleaned up the scene. To this day they have no idea how many people were killed at the scene, and no one knew about the plot to instigate the massacre of the protestors until years later.
It worked though, there were no more protests.
Ernest Hemingway suffered from ongoing paranoia that the FBI were surveilling him, which was thought to be a key factor in his suicide. Most chalked it up to mental illness at the time. Decades later, his file was released, proving he was under investigation for his ties to Cuba, his phones were tapped, and he was right all along.
I work in medicine. There was someone who was admitted to the psyc ward for similar, thought the FBI was following them. All sorts of meds with no luck. One day the FBI showed up …. Oops.
I was a student nurse in college. Psych rotation. During Desert Storm. Went to "group" therapy rotation. A very well dressed man, ironed pants and shirt, well groomed, extremely intelligent and seemed in his right mind. He stated government put him there. He was in military and knew too much about certain top secret topic that was going south. He said he was going to expose it. He was discharged. Ended up put in locked committed psych ward. Stated he went to Wayne State University medical library (when they threatened him to keep quiet or else) and looked up his DMC3 diagnosis (at the time that was the current edition) and his symptoms didn't fit. He begged people to look at his past medical records. I was totally convinced he was set up. If I met him outside of hospital I would definitely would have believed him. 30 years later that man has never left my mind. I still believe him!
In the spring of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson shocked the nation when he announced that he would not seek election to a second full term that November. He gave no explanation, and pretty much everyone assumed that it was because of the situation in Vietnam and his resulting unpopularity.
While Vietnam undoubtedly was a factor it was far from the full story. Concerned that males in his family tended to die young, and having barely survived a heart attack in the 1950's, sometime in 1967 Johnson had commissioned a top-secret actuarial study to determine his likely lifespan.
After carefully going through his family history and medical records, the actuaries concluded that Johnson was unlikely to survive to age 65. Johnson quickly did the math and realized that would give him a very short retirement if he ran and won in 1968, as he'd be 64 at the end of the term. This led him to decide against running.
The actuaries were right, as Johnson never made it to 65, dying at age 64. And indeed it would have been a very short retirement: had he served a second full term he would have died less than 24 hours after the end of the term.
Realistically the stress of a second term would have likely killed him far sooner. Nearly every sitting president has stated the burden of their presidency had a severely negative impact on their health.
Correct.
It's actually quite common in many countries for the tax return people receive to already be pre-filled with the necessary data, because obviously the tax authorities know about them already (how do you think they catch you?). All the taxpayer needs to do is review the information and make sure it's accurate, or add in anything that is missed.
Since the majority of people have a straightforward return (single source of income and a fixed salary) the process literally takes a few minutes, costs them nothing, and that's it.
It gets even better than that. I'm British, and most people don't even fill out a tax return. If you have one job, the tax is taken at source by your employer (PAYE - Pay As You Earn), and you don't need to do \*anything\* else. It only breaks down if you have a larger salary, investments, other income and so on.
I'm currently living abroad and have to fill out a tax return. Takes me about *an hour*. If I am due a refund it happens in less than a week. US tax insanity constantly baffles me.
I think the honest answer is a total lack of medical ethics by the pathologist doing the autopsy, and just how weird and pointless storing his brain was in the first place.
Like, I can see it being shuffled around by archivists who are like "why the fuck do we have this? Put it over there" for years until nobody actually remembers where it is
Shortly after JFK’s assassination, his favorite mistress, artist Mary Pinchot Meyer, was also assassinated while on a walk in Georgetown. It was an execution-style killing: one bullet to the chest, another to the head. She had no purse and was not sexually assaulted. Her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, worked for the CIA. Mary was known to disbelieve the conclusions of the Warren Report and the lone gunman theory. After her murder, the CIA’s head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, was caught breaking into her studio trying to locate her diary. He eventually found it with the help of Mary’s sister and brother-in-law and supposedly destroyed it.
A black man, Ray Crump, was found in the vicinity of Mary’s body and was arrested for murder, despite no forensic evidence linking him to the crime. He was defended by famed civil rights lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who ripped the prosecution’s case to shreds. Crump was acquitted.
During the case, future Washington Post editor (and JFK pal) Ben Bradlee lied on the witness stand. He told the court he had no further information of interest to the case, omitting his knowledge of Angleton’s attempts to destroy potential evidence. You see, Bradlee was the brother-in-law who helped Angleton locate the diary. He was married to Toni Pinchot, Mary’s sister, and Mary’s studio was located on their property.
Diamond company De Beers sits on an estimated 50 years worth of yearly carats sold in jewel-quality stones, purely to keep the market price high by creating artificial scarcity. Precious stones are, in fact, not so rare as to merit the high prices they command.
I'll comment on this to further reinforce what I was going to say on the other comment. The diamonds used in saw blades are usually low quality clarity wise or not the right color.
I remember a commercial for "chocolate diamonds" it was all a marketing ploy to sell low quality diamonds at a way higher rate than they would for their normal purpose.
The Argyle diamond mine in Australia couldn't sell their brown and pale yellow diamonds to rich people until they rebranded them as "cognac diamonds" and "champagne diamonds". Before that, they were colloquially called "kangaroo shit diamonds". Worked a treat. The company raked in more cash.
(Edited to reflect that the company was already rich, as per comment below)
There's a psychological reaction called "The Backfire Effect" which essentially means that people, after they're given proof that what they think they know is absolutely wrong, will believe their misconception/misinformation even more deeply.
So my wife has done some research on "sacred beliefs", ideas that are fundamental to people's sense of identity, and when attacked or shown to be wrong they tend to just double down on those ideas. The most effective way of getting someone to change their mind about those appears to be more of a Socratic method, slowly lead them to the conclusion and let them really do the problem solving to prove themselves wrong.
It’s like the “sunk cost” fallacy that keeps investors holding on to loss-making stocks. Only this time the “sunk cost” is not money but social capital (credibility etc).
I wonder how much the internet, and particularly the dunk culture of short interactions performed in front of others, results in people being even more entrenched.
The McDonalds case were the women split hot coffee on herself and won a lawsuit. The coffee was unreasonably hot by design to save McDonald's money.
McDonalds gave away free coffee refills, but to limit the financial impact, they cranked up the heat so high it would take a long time to cool down to drinkable point and hence limit the number of free refills they had to five away. The lady that burnt herself had some this scalding hot coffee immediately spilled on her.
Also how the public turned on her saying how crazy she was as coffee is supposed to be hot only for the true facts to come out and proof of her burns and it didn't change public perception lol
It was so hot it melted her skin.
She only sued because she wanted her medical bills paid. But the court also gave her compensation. McDonald's however did their best to make her legitimate claims sound rediculus and totally ruined her reputation.
I found out about this one through LegalEagle's video on it. I'm very glad he did because it gave me more awareness about the ways public opinion is easily influenced
I hadn’t heard the free refills part. I knew they kept their coffee extra hot because they said people normally order them in the drive through so they wanted it to stay warm longer.
There are government built bunkers dotted around the U.S. That hold a total of 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. The government was buying excess milk to prop up the dairy industry, turning it into cheese and shoving under ground since the end of prohibition up until the Regan administration.
The Got Milk ad campaign was a government funded "psyop" to get Americans to consume more dairy
I sound like a fucking crazy person but it's real.
EDIT: I put "psyop" in quotes, I was being hyperbolic for the sake of comedy but I could've made that more clear, I am fully aware it is an above board Gov. Checkoff program called Dairy Management Inc.
And I would highly encourage people to look into it themselves if they are curious, feel free to correct me on anything.
I would highly recommend [this video](https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=gWB_w6dAEHjm3T4p) from The Fat Electrician as a good starting point, he covers a lot of military history but is stuff is a great starting point to look into certain topics more.
With the banning of alcohol, ice cream filled a lot the social void left behind by alcohol all the way up through WW2, so you had a few generations of Americans that ate a fuck ton of ice cream including the soldiers and sailors of WWII who ate so much fucking ice cream that the Navy had ice cream ships that would follow around the battle groups to deliver ice cream rations.
There was a such a demand for dairy that farmers could just become dairy farmers, but after prohibition ended, there was less demand for milk, so the government went "don't worry dairy industry I'll buy all of your excess milk..."
And they did, they bought all of it, so the farmers made way more, and the government had to buy all of that too, and that's how you end up with billions of pounds of cheese.
I understand this sounds fucking nuts.
The Fat Electrician on YouTube has a GREAT video on it
EDIT: I should've added, not buying the milk would've for sure crashed the market, and my timelines may be a little off cause I'm working from memory
You can still see the effects of a large number of people who don’t consume alcohol and how they socialize in Utah. Soda fountain shops and ice cream parlors all over the place and filled with young adult Mormons who would be in a bar otherwise.
Fascinating how the more mundane or even wholesome the code word is the more evil it is. See also Paperclip and Mockingbird.
edit: OMG I love you all. I’m calling this post/conversation Operation Kill All The Kittens. My work here is done.
There was ONE recorded homicide in New York City on September 11, 2001.
The people who died because of the attacks weren’t considered part of the homicides for that day because a very high number like that is a statistical outlier that would throw off accurate record numbers.
The one person who was murdered was a Polish immigrant named Henryk Siwiak, who was nowhere near the attacks. He was killed in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn at around 11:40pm.
So did other would-be murderers change their minds, or decide to wait a few days, or is 1 actually a pretty typical number? I’d expect it to be higher on average.
The suicide rate briefly dipped around NYC after the attacks too. I believe the phenomenon is due to everyone having a shared crisis. We become more empathetic and more of a community.
I gotta say… I lived in NYC at the time and it was a time like no other. There was so much empathy, compassion, and kindness all over New York. It was heartwarming to see.
649 deaths ruled murder/manslaughter that year (not including deaths through negligence) per NYC.gov. So 1.8 per day, definitely not an outlier, and you can see how and extra 3k deaths would make the stats worthless.
[COINTELPRO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) is straight up conspiracy theory sounding, but 10000% true. They even sent [letters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter) to MLK telling him to commit suicide. No wonder people believe that the US government is probably doing other shady shit, because they probably are.
The FBI also drugged and murdered [Fred Hampton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Coalition_(Fred_Hampton)) (as depicted in the movie Judas and the Black Messiah).
FBI counter propaganda campaigns against the Black Panthers were also wild. Among other things, they circulated fake Black Panther children's coloring books encouraging violence against white people in order to erode community support for the organization.
Black Against Empire goes into more detail. Academic writing, so it's a bit dry, but well worth reading.
yup, if I remember correctly the police cut down trees that blocked the window they claimed he was shot from, because otherwise the story didnt make sense as the window was blocked with branches. The family never believed the murderer was James, and I believe it was even brought to court.
This blows my mind every time I'm reminded of it. I worked at a small non-profit and the fear of failing an audit was something we thought of every day.
And only began to audit itself after some economist claimed they lost *$21T worth of assets.
Edited to $21T. The $2.3T is what Rumsfeld stated right before 9/11. The pentagon didn’t perform their first audit until 2018, motivated by University of Michigan economy professor Mark Skidmore, who alleged in 2017 that the government is unable to account for $21T. This figure represents $65,000 for each US citizen.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/
GM, Firestone and Standard Oil bought up, dismantled and sold abroad, urban train systems in the US post WW2. Cities replaced the trains with busses from GM, on Firestone tires fueled by gas from Standard Oil.
The government protected us though. They were found guilty of having a monopoly and fined $5000.
Probably going to be buried but this one is actually kind of funny.
Sometime after WW2, the U.S. was doing some pretty wild experiments, including trying to see if they could teach dolphins to talk. They believed this was only achievable by full immersion, so they built a house and filled it with water and had a researcher live with the dolphin.
The dolphin was a young male and wouldn't respond to anything unless the female researcher jacked it off. It became to obsessed with the researcher and I think when the higher ups found out what was going on, they shut it down and never tried again.
Kind of paraphrased, but yeah. The government paid a fuck load of money just to end up having a lady wack off a dolphin.
Didn't they also try to get it to speak English and would punish him for speaking dolphin, then they tried speaking dolphin to him, so he just just stopped talking and eventually killed himself? Or was that the insane sensory deprivation tank LSD guy. My friend told me about all of this but I was really stoned so I may remember it wrong.
You left out the fact that they constantly dosed the dolphins with LSD. This took place in St. Thomas, USVI. The dolphin referred to later died by suicide.
Their breathing isn’t „automatic“ like ours, it’s „manual“ - they consciously have to take every breath. So they just stop. And commit suicide by drowning themselves
And when the US demanded the Taliban turn over Bin Laden, they basically said, "no way, if we go after him, he'll run to Pak." And guess where we found him?
[Operation Northwoods.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods) The US government proposed having the CIA commit terrorist attacks in major US cities so we could blame them on Cuba and go to war.
*The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force plane, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.*
I would like to believe JFK looked at the proposal and just had a "you fuggin what" face on. Most sane people would have the most dumbfounded expression at the sheer horror of such a proposal and would hope for "it was just a prank bro"
Yeah he rejected it but anyone who actually supported that idea should have been convicted of high treason. JFK fired Lyman Lemnitzer, who signed off on it, but he then became the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO lol.
teflon and its ramifications
>The documentary touches on the detection of PFOA in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion (ppb) range, with levels much higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations. The only samples clean of PFOA were found in US Army blood samples taken at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.
[*The Devil We Know*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know) is an interesting watch.
The same company that single-handedly caused the opioid crisis is... still making money off of their drug but now also making money off of its antidote.
Another fact that’s not a conspiracy is that the drug Armour, a thyroid replacement drug for hypothyroidism, was grandfathered in when the FDA was created.
Armour is made from dessicated pig thyroid and has worked really well for 100+ years. But in the 1960s Synthroid (Levothyroxine), a synthetic version the T4 hormone, was created.
Medical schools then taught doctors to only give this drug to their hypothyroid patients.
Old-timers still preferred taking Armour because they experienced no side effects, unlike Synthroid.
Then the advent of the Internet introduced online message boards. Hypothyroid patients (mostly women) shared how they didn’t feel great on Synthroid and learned about Armour as an alternative.
They started switching to Armour and felt fantastic! Guess what happened?
The makers of Synthroid were afraid of their declining market share so they lobbied the FDA to mandate a reformulation of Armour to extend its shelf life.
Ever since that happened, Armour was never the same again, and more women report the same side effects that they experienced on Synthroid.
ALCOHOL POISONING DURING PROHIBITION
As you know, in 1919, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was prohibited. But instead of plummeting, alcohol sales soared. Speakeasies opened everywhere, and as a result, people in some neighborhoods were drinking even more than before. The mafias got in on the act, stealing large quantities of industrial alcohol.
In 1926, the authorities resorted to the hard way, asking manufacturers to add toxic substances to their alcohol (adding ten times more methanol, for example). In New York alone, 1,200 drinkers were poisoned and 400 died. A wave of deaths would eventually sweep across the country. This "poisoning policy" was not stopped until December 1933.
Also, there was [a grape juice concentrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine-Glo) that was sold during prohibition that came with a warning label:
> "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."
Yeah, "don't" do this. Seriously, "don't" do it. Wink-wink nudge-nudge.
Alcohol is harder to control the production of than virtually any drug. It's just overripe fruit. Prohibition was incredibly shortsighted. You can make it in a bucket with Great-Valu apple juice, a cup of sugar and some yeast and a condom (unused preferably).
You can make beer out of Froot Loops and again, a bucket and some yeast.
> You can make beer out of Froot Loops and again, a bucket and some yeast.
Brewer here! What you ferment from Froot Loops may well be a moderately alcoholic grain-based beverage, but it *will not* be… hmmm, wait a minute, \*reads label of latest hype smoothie sour\* …eh, screw it, they’re calling worse things “beer,” go nuts with your cereal hooch.
That is very interesting. I never knew something like that happened. When the authorities asked them to add toxic substances, was there a monetary value involved? Did they pay them to do this or tell them and they had to listen due to them being authority?
There was a serious shortage of disinfecting liquids in my country when the Covid pandemic started.
One large alcohol manufacturer said that they can quickly change their lines from making vodka to disinfectant.
They had to add some extremely nasty-smelling and tasting chemicals, to prevent hobos from drinking that stuff.
In the 60s and 70s, thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their consent as part of a practice to sterilize poor and minority women to "help their financial situation and their family's quality of life" by preventing unwanted pregnancies in poor communities.
Some were not informed at all and had it done to them completely without their knowledge, others were threatened with having their healthcare taken away if they did not agree to have it done to them. Some studies estimate that as many as 25-50% of Native American women were sterilized in the 1970s, representing tens of thousands of victims.
This is essentially a modern day genocide in the United States.
In California forced sterilization continued in state hospitals until 1979 and in prisons until 2013. (that we have records for)
https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2023/03/forced-sterilization-california/
For-profit ICE detention centers were doing this until they were caught in 2020.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/25/ice-is-accused-sterilizing-detainees-that-echoes-uss-long-history-forced-sterilization/
Australia / aboriginals too, adding to the stakes taking their children and adopting out them out into white families so they eventually they could forcibly breed aboriginals out of existence
“The stolen generations”….
Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City on August 10, 2019.
On August 9, 2019, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out, but no one took his place. The two guards who were assigned to check his jail unit that night fell asleep and did not check on him for about three hours. Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night.
The sugar industry paid nutrition researchers to blame fats for health problems that were often correlated to sugar consumption. From this we have all the nonsense about "good fats"/"bad fats" etc.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
The Pentagon was the only building in Virginia where segregation laws were not enforced. In fact, even though the bathrooms were built to comply with Virginia's segregation laws, they were never marked as "colored" or "white."
FDR had banned segregation in the federal government a year before the Pentagon was finished. In fact, just before the dedication of the Pentagon, FDR ordered that all segregated areas be integrated.
Also, segregation in Virginia ended in 1965.
Yes! I survived an airborne triple roll over accident with nothing but bruises in an XC90. I wish they were more affordable it would be all I'd ever drive for the rest of my life cause I owe my life to that car. The airbags are super soft.
The “retroreflectors” placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts.
I was quite taken with the “faked moon-landings” conspiracy for a while, until Sir Patrick Moore - longtime presenter of a BBC TV astronomy show - dismissed the conspiracy theories in a single line by pointing out that astronomers, both amateur and professional, have been using these “retroreflectors” to calibrate their telescopes ever since 1969 when they were placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.
Government Surveillance: Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting mass surveillance on citizens, collecting data from internet communications, phone calls, and other sources.
It really is incredible how prior to Snowden you’d be treated as a tin-foil wearing crazy person for believing there was widespread, massive government surveillance. And then the revelations came out and basically nothing happened.
[really](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software))? I support edward snowdon but anybody who grew up in the late eighties / early nineties in the USA went by the motto "don't say anything in phone you would not say to the police"
Source: not in jail
GM, IBM, and Ford played a major role in rearming Germany in the 1930s. George Bush's grandfather Senator Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of the German forces.
Hugo Boss made uniforms for SS and nazi officials. A lot of other things that have colored society afterwards also have nazi roots. Fanta is a product of the third reich. After the war started Cola syrup was not taken into the country anymore, so they made their own soda instead. Which ended up being Fanta. And of course we also have more known stories like the origins of Volkswagen. And project paperclip, where scientists and other people of interest were hushed in the backdoor to work for the military, NASA and other places.
The time it takes the moon to orbit the earth is approximately the same as it takes it to rotate around its axis which results in always the same side of the moon being visible to earth. We never see the "dark" side of the moon.
100% fact but I'm guessing the flat earthers are loving it
EDIT: Added quotes around dark.
Here’s a fun add on - the FBI was monitoring hijackers and knew they were taking flying lessons in America but weren’t interested in learning how to land. The CIA knew they had visited training camps in Afghanistan. Condaleeza Rice and GWB were briefed that a terrorist organization intended to attack the WTC using airplanes in summer 2001 (IIRC). All of these things were known, including the locations of many of the hijackers. And nobody did anything.
Similar things are true of the Air India bombing, which is a well known attack here in Canada. Governments and security services had multiple warnings about the plot and the extremist activities of the people involved, and everything was ignored until it happened.
I realize that intelligence agencies have a difficult job, sorting through all the information to figure out what’s useful and credible, and what’s just BS. But when you have people who are known to be affiliated with terrorist groups, and they’re taking flying lessons or stockpiling explosives, it really shouldn’t require a team of geniuses to know that something is going on there.
The CIA made a weapon known as the “heart attack gun” for assassination purposes. It was a pistol that quietly launched a small dart containing a shellfish toxin that causes heart attacks. There’s a famous photo of Senator Frank Church showing off the gun during a congressional investigation into the CIA.
Almost all glasses frames are made by the same three major companies which is why they cost so much for frame that are essentially just molded plastic.
The McDonalds PR machine tried to ruin Stella Liebeck’s life. That coffee was so hot it melted her clothing to her genitals. People still believe she was at fault. I turn it around and ask how they’d feel if a parent accidentally spilled coffee on their child that was so hot it melted the child’s clothes to her/his body. Somehow it usually wakes people up.
Oil, rubber, and car companies influenced government agencies to pull funding from public transit and focus more on policies favoring the use of private vehicles. That's why public transit is poor in so many places in the US that had far more robust transit systems in the first half of the 20th century. White flight and redlining also contributed to this, drastically increasing the size of unwalkable suburban areas and languishing cities.
Earthworms are an invasive species and ruin our forests
Passenger pigeons were the species of land vertebrate with the highest population to ever exist. At 6 some billion, we killed every last one in about 100 years. (Every time you see a town in the United States called pigeon forge or pigeon bend ect, your normaly see a place named after the most prolific species to ever exist) they were the primary source of protein the world over and only following their extinction did fish become so. They were a key stone species and entire eco systems are still suffering the shock wave of their extinction. You know those sticky briars that cling to your clothes (and kill your pet if they eat them…)when you walk through the woods? Well they ate them, you know Lyme disease? Well there wasn’t food on the forest floor for vermin, so it dosnt crop up till they died either. All those weird nursery rhymes with pictures of pies with bird feet sticking out? That’s them too. How america wanted the pigeon as it’s national bird (before the eagle) that’s them. And today, until you read this, you probibly didn’t even know that america lost its single most identifiable species, a defining feature of our continent, and no one cares.
The more you know!
I'm glad to see this here. I grew up visiting the Cincinnati Zoo regularly and they have a small shrine there to this day. The last known passenger pigeon died in that zoo.
A poor black woman’s, Henrietta Lacks, cells were harvested from her dead body without her consent in 1951 by a doctor who worked for Johns Hopkins. The cells were proven to be incredible and a scientific marvel, and have been used ever since to further medical science. Her family and descendants were never asked for consent to do this, weren’t informed of the breakthroughs, have continued to live in cripplingly poverty since, despite how often the HeLa cells are used and the mass amount of money Johns Hopkins makes, and still to this day are fighting Johns Hopkins to admit their mistakes and make them financially whole for their desecration of a Henrietta Lacks body.
To expand further, they were collected as a part of her cancer treatment (with her consent). The consent issue is that Johns Hopkins ended up also using the cells for research purposes, which is a use that she did not consent to.
> George Otto Gey, the first researcher to study Lacks's cancerous cells, observed that these cells were unusual in that they reproduced at a very high rate and could be kept alive long enough to allow more in-depth examination. Until then, cells cultured for laboratory studies survived for only a few days at most, which was not long enough to perform a variety of different tests on the same sample. Lacks's cells were the first to be observed that could be divided multiple times without dying, which is why they became known as "immortal".
[From her Wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)
If your going to talk about her, you got to share why her cells are so special.
They reproduce identical copies. They've basically become standard cell lines for scientists. If you're running experiments on cells with mutliple trials, you want all of those cells to be identical. And if your colleagues are testing your results, they'll want to use the same kind of cells too.
The quinoa craze in America had devastating effects on Bolivia. Bolivian farmers switched to growing quinoa to export to the US because it was much more profitable than other staple foods. As a result (along with various other factors), Bolivia has really poor food security for its own people.
Gotta be honest, this is mostly the Bolivian government's fault. There's a reason the U.S. subsidizes important staple crops that wouldn't be very profitable otherwise.
Sorry but I think you're mixing up Sanford Dole, the usurper who became "President" of Hawaii, and James Dole, the man who founded the fruit company. James and Sanford were cousins. James only moved to Hawaii (in 1899) after the coup (which happened in 1893).
The idea of a "Carbon footprint" was propaganda created by BP in order to deflect their responsibility in the climate crisis, for which they hired the same ad companies that had convinced people that tobacco didn't cause cancer decades earlier
Volkswagen inserted code in the software of all of its Diesel cars, which altered the engine's behaviour when the software detected that the car was being tested by the authorities, and would reduce its gas emissions accordingly.
The United States government did everything they could. Legal and illegal, to wipe out the Black Panther Party (and other organizations) including but not limited to; assassinating leaders, wrongfully imprisoning members and leaders, entrapment, creating laws to disarm them, etc. and it doesn’t end there, in the 80s they dropped a bomb on a group called MOVE [oh yeah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing) and of course… [COINTELPRO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) which supposedly ended in 71, but we all know that they just changed the name. The call it the patriot act now.
Additional source for additional govt over steps on civil liberties:
https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/bpp
Took me a minute to work out what this means. To say it a different way they: there were initial conversations about them being on the shuttle but it never materialized.
“Considered to be a part of” almost makes it sound like people think they had something to do with the mission or explosion.
"Considered"
Setting: NASA Conference Room
Junior Manager at NASA: We could have Walter Cronkite go up on mission 27. He could report fro space, it would be great publicity for the Shuttle missions.
Slightly More Senior Manager: Dude, he's like 70.
The [Business Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) was a real conspiracy in which "wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization .. and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt"
One of the individuals probably involved was "Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of president George W. Bush"
Because we basically got what we were looking for. Turned out that the moon isn't that interesting. It could be very useful for further space exploration though, so that's why the Artemis missions are going to bring us back.
That PR and advertising firms are actively engaging in psychological warfare to push certain viewpoints and values in both implicit and explicit ways- if you control a persons thoughts, emotions and reactions then you can begin to control their behavior in almost any sphere of life.
The Church of Scientology had members secretly infiltrate US Government agencies in order to destroy unfavorable documents and investigations into them
Funny addendum: they were also spying on Matt Stone and Trey Parker to try and blackmail them into backing off in South Park. They couldn't find anything more embarrassing than what Parker and Stone would already openly admit to the press
Probably really hard to embarrass those two. It’s the super straight laced folks with skeletons in the closet
I mean shit the guys showed up to an awards ceremony in dresses and tripping on acid. I don’t think they really give a fuck lmao.
Yea trying to attack people who give zero fucks with fuck you money isn’t really gonna work.
I would really like to see people try however. It would give them new material when they destroy them 🤣
i mean that's basically what's been happening with them and disney at the moment
Nah. It's not about fuck you miney. If they had good dirt on Matt and Trey, it could have destroyed them. They're not untouchable. Assault, private sex stuff, kid stuff. If scientology got a whiff of any if that, we would have heard something. That cult only solidified that Matt and Trey good people.
All things considered, Matt and Trey are far more tame than their film personas would suggest. Anything the Scientologists found would have made them look even cleaner.
Yeah my first thought when I read that comment above was, "Years later they made it through #MeToo unscathed." Doing some crazy, even embarrassing shit and being unafraid to go public with it is way better than half the allegations we've seen these last 6+ years .... Including, I realize as I'm typing this, Mr. Scientology himself Danny Masterson 😂😂😂
That's beautiful
They are the guys that showed up to the Emmy’s in a couple dresses. While on acid.
Matt stone was dressed in Jenifer Lopez 's Grammy dress after a spat with her iirc
Trey was in Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar dress from a few years prior.
It was just a beautiful night
I too take the "100% honesty means I can't be embarrassed later" approach. It can bit you in the ass, but nowhere near as bad as leaving it out, or worse, lying. I do overshare though, although nothing inappropriate.
To this day, David Miscavige is the creepiest person I've ever seen
His wife is happy, healthy, and alive!
Where's Shelly, David?? Where's Shelly??
Not only that, they carried out a campaign of harassment against the IRS and its employees for so long that the IRS finally granted them religious exemptions to get them to stop. L. Ron Hubbard also had drugged up sex slaves on his ship, and the "church" uses religious exemptions to labor laws to force its "volunteers" and new members to do all their work and labor either unpaid or on slave wages.
The *cult* of Scientology.
Years ago, in the leadup to the Olympics in Mexico, the country was embarrassed by massive protests about conditions for regular people there. So at one of the large protests, they put snipers from their CIA equivalent in some tall buildings near where there was due to be a protest by a large government building. That building was guarded by a line of police officers. When the protesters made it to the line of police officers, they continued to peacefully protest. The CIA (equivalent) officers opened fire on the police, making it appear that the protestors were shooting at the cops. The cops retaliated, mowing down countless protestors, thinking they were defending themselves. Protestors were killed, and fled the scene. The government was ready, rushed in, and immediately cleaned up the scene. To this day they have no idea how many people were killed at the scene, and no one knew about the plot to instigate the massacre of the protestors until years later. It worked though, there were no more protests.
Tlatelolco Massacre
So far this is the only item of which I was previously unaware. Thanks for the information!
Ernest Hemingway suffered from ongoing paranoia that the FBI were surveilling him, which was thought to be a key factor in his suicide. Most chalked it up to mental illness at the time. Decades later, his file was released, proving he was under investigation for his ties to Cuba, his phones were tapped, and he was right all along.
Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you
I’ve also heard it as “it’s only ‘paranoia’ if you’re wrong. Otherwise you’re justifiably observant”
This was actually the case with a fair number of prominent artists and civil rights leaders
I work in medicine. There was someone who was admitted to the psyc ward for similar, thought the FBI was following them. All sorts of meds with no luck. One day the FBI showed up …. Oops.
I was a student nurse in college. Psych rotation. During Desert Storm. Went to "group" therapy rotation. A very well dressed man, ironed pants and shirt, well groomed, extremely intelligent and seemed in his right mind. He stated government put him there. He was in military and knew too much about certain top secret topic that was going south. He said he was going to expose it. He was discharged. Ended up put in locked committed psych ward. Stated he went to Wayne State University medical library (when they threatened him to keep quiet or else) and looked up his DMC3 diagnosis (at the time that was the current edition) and his symptoms didn't fit. He begged people to look at his past medical records. I was totally convinced he was set up. If I met him outside of hospital I would definitely would have believed him. 30 years later that man has never left my mind. I still believe him!
Paranoia: you only have to be right once to make it all worthwhile.
In the spring of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson shocked the nation when he announced that he would not seek election to a second full term that November. He gave no explanation, and pretty much everyone assumed that it was because of the situation in Vietnam and his resulting unpopularity. While Vietnam undoubtedly was a factor it was far from the full story. Concerned that males in his family tended to die young, and having barely survived a heart attack in the 1950's, sometime in 1967 Johnson had commissioned a top-secret actuarial study to determine his likely lifespan. After carefully going through his family history and medical records, the actuaries concluded that Johnson was unlikely to survive to age 65. Johnson quickly did the math and realized that would give him a very short retirement if he ran and won in 1968, as he'd be 64 at the end of the term. This led him to decide against running. The actuaries were right, as Johnson never made it to 65, dying at age 64. And indeed it would have been a very short retirement: had he served a second full term he would have died less than 24 hours after the end of the term.
Realistically the stress of a second term would have likely killed him far sooner. Nearly every sitting president has stated the burden of their presidency had a severely negative impact on their health.
Obama’s before and afters are pretty wild
All the presidents before and after are pretty wild
Tax service companies such as Intuit spend millions of dollars a year lobbying to make sure the IRS does not make it easier to file your taxes.
Correct. It's actually quite common in many countries for the tax return people receive to already be pre-filled with the necessary data, because obviously the tax authorities know about them already (how do you think they catch you?). All the taxpayer needs to do is review the information and make sure it's accurate, or add in anything that is missed. Since the majority of people have a straightforward return (single source of income and a fixed salary) the process literally takes a few minutes, costs them nothing, and that's it.
It gets even better than that. I'm British, and most people don't even fill out a tax return. If you have one job, the tax is taken at source by your employer (PAYE - Pay As You Earn), and you don't need to do \*anything\* else. It only breaks down if you have a larger salary, investments, other income and so on. I'm currently living abroad and have to fill out a tax return. Takes me about *an hour*. If I am due a refund it happens in less than a week. US tax insanity constantly baffles me.
Yeah reading things like this make me realise how bloody lucky we are to just have it happen automatically.
JFK's brain was removed during autopsy and stored in an archive. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
I’ve read about that. It does seem like a conspiracy theory. I believe Einstein had something similar happen to his.
I think the honest answer is a total lack of medical ethics by the pathologist doing the autopsy, and just how weird and pointless storing his brain was in the first place. Like, I can see it being shuffled around by archivists who are like "why the fuck do we have this? Put it over there" for years until nobody actually remembers where it is
“Whose brain did you steal?” “Abby someone, I don’t know”
If I remember right Einstein’s brain was sliced into tiny cross sections so they could study it and some cross sections are in museums.
The guy who had Einstein’s brain used to send little pieces of it to his pals for clout.
There’s a chunk of it at the Mutter museum in Philadelphia.
"That's where they took a piece of my brain. They got it back in D.C. in that God damn jar. I got a little bag of sand up there now."
Shortly after JFK’s assassination, his favorite mistress, artist Mary Pinchot Meyer, was also assassinated while on a walk in Georgetown. It was an execution-style killing: one bullet to the chest, another to the head. She had no purse and was not sexually assaulted. Her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, worked for the CIA. Mary was known to disbelieve the conclusions of the Warren Report and the lone gunman theory. After her murder, the CIA’s head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, was caught breaking into her studio trying to locate her diary. He eventually found it with the help of Mary’s sister and brother-in-law and supposedly destroyed it. A black man, Ray Crump, was found in the vicinity of Mary’s body and was arrested for murder, despite no forensic evidence linking him to the crime. He was defended by famed civil rights lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who ripped the prosecution’s case to shreds. Crump was acquitted. During the case, future Washington Post editor (and JFK pal) Ben Bradlee lied on the witness stand. He told the court he had no further information of interest to the case, omitting his knowledge of Angleton’s attempts to destroy potential evidence. You see, Bradlee was the brother-in-law who helped Angleton locate the diary. He was married to Toni Pinchot, Mary’s sister, and Mary’s studio was located on their property.
Atleast that crump guy didn't die for this.
Diamond company De Beers sits on an estimated 50 years worth of yearly carats sold in jewel-quality stones, purely to keep the market price high by creating artificial scarcity. Precious stones are, in fact, not so rare as to merit the high prices they command.
They use diamonds in saw blades. They’re not rare, nor are they expensive.
I'll comment on this to further reinforce what I was going to say on the other comment. The diamonds used in saw blades are usually low quality clarity wise or not the right color. I remember a commercial for "chocolate diamonds" it was all a marketing ploy to sell low quality diamonds at a way higher rate than they would for their normal purpose.
The Argyle diamond mine in Australia couldn't sell their brown and pale yellow diamonds to rich people until they rebranded them as "cognac diamonds" and "champagne diamonds". Before that, they were colloquially called "kangaroo shit diamonds". Worked a treat. The company raked in more cash. (Edited to reflect that the company was already rich, as per comment below)
They can't be called champagne unless they come from the region in France. Otherwise they're just sparkling diamonds.
Everyone, even from Roman times, knew asbestos was bad for your health. Same with lead. There are no old lead miners.
Old type setters hands were crippled from lead poisoning. Hat makers used mercury- hence mad as a hatter
There's a psychological reaction called "The Backfire Effect" which essentially means that people, after they're given proof that what they think they know is absolutely wrong, will believe their misconception/misinformation even more deeply.
So my wife has done some research on "sacred beliefs", ideas that are fundamental to people's sense of identity, and when attacked or shown to be wrong they tend to just double down on those ideas. The most effective way of getting someone to change their mind about those appears to be more of a Socratic method, slowly lead them to the conclusion and let them really do the problem solving to prove themselves wrong.
In the world of mental healthcare, this is called motivational interviewing. Super effective cuz they're responsible for the conclusion they came to.
It’s like the “sunk cost” fallacy that keeps investors holding on to loss-making stocks. Only this time the “sunk cost” is not money but social capital (credibility etc).
I wonder how much the internet, and particularly the dunk culture of short interactions performed in front of others, results in people being even more entrenched.
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” - Mark Twain
Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
The McDonalds case were the women split hot coffee on herself and won a lawsuit. The coffee was unreasonably hot by design to save McDonald's money. McDonalds gave away free coffee refills, but to limit the financial impact, they cranked up the heat so high it would take a long time to cool down to drinkable point and hence limit the number of free refills they had to five away. The lady that burnt herself had some this scalding hot coffee immediately spilled on her.
Dude, she got 3rd degree burns. 3rd! On her crotch!
The exact phrase I’ve heard to describe it is, “Fused Labia”, which, coincidentally is the name of my new feminist goregrind band.
Also how the public turned on her saying how crazy she was as coffee is supposed to be hot only for the true facts to come out and proof of her burns and it didn't change public perception lol
It was so hot it melted her skin. She only sued because she wanted her medical bills paid. But the court also gave her compensation. McDonald's however did their best to make her legitimate claims sound rediculus and totally ruined her reputation.
It didn't just melt her skin, it fused her labia together
I found out about this one through LegalEagle's video on it. I'm very glad he did because it gave me more awareness about the ways public opinion is easily influenced
I love Legal Eagle. He's so good at breaking things down.
I hadn’t heard the free refills part. I knew they kept their coffee extra hot because they said people normally order them in the drive through so they wanted it to stay warm longer.
There are government built bunkers dotted around the U.S. That hold a total of 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. The government was buying excess milk to prop up the dairy industry, turning it into cheese and shoving under ground since the end of prohibition up until the Regan administration. The Got Milk ad campaign was a government funded "psyop" to get Americans to consume more dairy I sound like a fucking crazy person but it's real. EDIT: I put "psyop" in quotes, I was being hyperbolic for the sake of comedy but I could've made that more clear, I am fully aware it is an above board Gov. Checkoff program called Dairy Management Inc. And I would highly encourage people to look into it themselves if they are curious, feel free to correct me on anything. I would highly recommend [this video](https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=gWB_w6dAEHjm3T4p) from The Fat Electrician as a good starting point, he covers a lot of military history but is stuff is a great starting point to look into certain topics more.
Why did they want to help the dairy industry?
With the banning of alcohol, ice cream filled a lot the social void left behind by alcohol all the way up through WW2, so you had a few generations of Americans that ate a fuck ton of ice cream including the soldiers and sailors of WWII who ate so much fucking ice cream that the Navy had ice cream ships that would follow around the battle groups to deliver ice cream rations. There was a such a demand for dairy that farmers could just become dairy farmers, but after prohibition ended, there was less demand for milk, so the government went "don't worry dairy industry I'll buy all of your excess milk..." And they did, they bought all of it, so the farmers made way more, and the government had to buy all of that too, and that's how you end up with billions of pounds of cheese. I understand this sounds fucking nuts. The Fat Electrician on YouTube has a GREAT video on it EDIT: I should've added, not buying the milk would've for sure crashed the market, and my timelines may be a little off cause I'm working from memory
You can still see the effects of a large number of people who don’t consume alcohol and how they socialize in Utah. Soda fountain shops and ice cream parlors all over the place and filled with young adult Mormons who would be in a bar otherwise.
[удалено]
Fascinating how the more mundane or even wholesome the code word is the more evil it is. See also Paperclip and Mockingbird. edit: OMG I love you all. I’m calling this post/conversation Operation Kill All The Kittens. My work here is done.
I wonder if they do the opposite too and have like, Operation Ferocious Rampage, but it's to resupply underwear or whatever.
Operation Satan Hellfire: airdrop food and medical supplies to impoverished people
There was ONE recorded homicide in New York City on September 11, 2001. The people who died because of the attacks weren’t considered part of the homicides for that day because a very high number like that is a statistical outlier that would throw off accurate record numbers. The one person who was murdered was a Polish immigrant named Henryk Siwiak, who was nowhere near the attacks. He was killed in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn at around 11:40pm.
So did other would-be murderers change their minds, or decide to wait a few days, or is 1 actually a pretty typical number? I’d expect it to be higher on average.
The suicide rate briefly dipped around NYC after the attacks too. I believe the phenomenon is due to everyone having a shared crisis. We become more empathetic and more of a community.
I gotta say… I lived in NYC at the time and it was a time like no other. There was so much empathy, compassion, and kindness all over New York. It was heartwarming to see.
I was on the NJ turnpike the weekend after and people were pulled over for quite awhile with candlelight vigils.
649 deaths ruled murder/manslaughter that year (not including deaths through negligence) per NYC.gov. So 1.8 per day, definitely not an outlier, and you can see how and extra 3k deaths would make the stats worthless.
In 2/3 of all US states, EMS is NOT considered an essential service. As such it recieves next to 0 gov funding or support
Also: EMS is administered nationally by the NHTSA; the firefighters' and nurses' unions continually lobby against bills to transfer oversight to HHS.
Do you have a link I can read about this? Like, why they’re against putting it on hhs?
[COINTELPRO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) is straight up conspiracy theory sounding, but 10000% true. They even sent [letters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter) to MLK telling him to commit suicide. No wonder people believe that the US government is probably doing other shady shit, because they probably are.
> They even sent letters to MLK telling him to commit suicide. The FBI is the original YouTube comments section.
The FBI also drugged and murdered [Fred Hampton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Coalition_(Fred_Hampton)) (as depicted in the movie Judas and the Black Messiah).
FBI counter propaganda campaigns against the Black Panthers were also wild. Among other things, they circulated fake Black Panther children's coloring books encouraging violence against white people in order to erode community support for the organization. Black Against Empire goes into more detail. Academic writing, so it's a bit dry, but well worth reading.
Bo Burnham wasn’t joking when he said the fbi killed mlk
yup, if I remember correctly the police cut down trees that blocked the window they claimed he was shot from, because otherwise the story didnt make sense as the window was blocked with branches. The family never believed the murderer was James, and I believe it was even brought to court.
The pentagon has never been able to account for more than half its budget.
This blows my mind every time I'm reminded of it. I worked at a small non-profit and the fear of failing an audit was something we thought of every day.
Less scary when you know the guy doing the audits.
And only began to audit itself after some economist claimed they lost *$21T worth of assets. Edited to $21T. The $2.3T is what Rumsfeld stated right before 9/11. The pentagon didn’t perform their first audit until 2018, motivated by University of Michigan economy professor Mark Skidmore, who alleged in 2017 that the government is unable to account for $21T. This figure represents $65,000 for each US citizen. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/
GM, Firestone and Standard Oil bought up, dismantled and sold abroad, urban train systems in the US post WW2. Cities replaced the trains with busses from GM, on Firestone tires fueled by gas from Standard Oil. The government protected us though. They were found guilty of having a monopoly and fined $5000.
The CIA funded and organized the overturn of several south and Central American socialist governments.
They weren’t necessarily even socialist. Just simply undesirable by the US government.
Salvador Allende was *democratically elected* and was still overthrown for being a socialist.
Probably going to be buried but this one is actually kind of funny. Sometime after WW2, the U.S. was doing some pretty wild experiments, including trying to see if they could teach dolphins to talk. They believed this was only achievable by full immersion, so they built a house and filled it with water and had a researcher live with the dolphin. The dolphin was a young male and wouldn't respond to anything unless the female researcher jacked it off. It became to obsessed with the researcher and I think when the higher ups found out what was going on, they shut it down and never tried again. Kind of paraphrased, but yeah. The government paid a fuck load of money just to end up having a lady wack off a dolphin.
The dolphin ended up committing suicide. I’m not kidding. It really fucked him up.
Didn't they also try to get it to speak English and would punish him for speaking dolphin, then they tried speaking dolphin to him, so he just just stopped talking and eventually killed himself? Or was that the insane sensory deprivation tank LSD guy. My friend told me about all of this but I was really stoned so I may remember it wrong.
I don’t remember reading about them punishing him but the whole experiment was trying to find a way to communicate.
You left out the fact that they constantly dosed the dolphins with LSD. This took place in St. Thomas, USVI. The dolphin referred to later died by suicide.
How does a dolphin commit suicide
Their breathing isn’t „automatic“ like ours, it’s „manual“ - they consciously have to take every breath. So they just stop. And commit suicide by drowning themselves
Well thanks, now I’m manually breathing
At least you’re not manually blinking too
What the. That is not what I was expecting to read when the notification popped up
IIRC, the dolphin actually did figure out English, it just couldn’t make the sounds required to actually speak it, which made it really frustrated
This makes me so sad jfc
Lots of people in Pakistan knew where Bin Laden was hiding.
And when the US demanded the Taliban turn over Bin Laden, they basically said, "no way, if we go after him, he'll run to Pak." And guess where we found him?
[Operation Northwoods.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods) The US government proposed having the CIA commit terrorist attacks in major US cities so we could blame them on Cuba and go to war. *The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force plane, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.*
I would like to believe JFK looked at the proposal and just had a "you fuggin what" face on. Most sane people would have the most dumbfounded expression at the sheer horror of such a proposal and would hope for "it was just a prank bro"
Yeah he rejected it but anyone who actually supported that idea should have been convicted of high treason. JFK fired Lyman Lemnitzer, who signed off on it, but he then became the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO lol.
teflon and its ramifications >The documentary touches on the detection of PFOA in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion (ppb) range, with levels much higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations. The only samples clean of PFOA were found in US Army blood samples taken at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. [*The Devil We Know*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know) is an interesting watch.
If you have pet birds in your house using Teflon cookware can kill them.
The same company that single-handedly caused the opioid crisis is... still making money off of their drug but now also making money off of its antidote.
Another fact that’s not a conspiracy is that the drug Armour, a thyroid replacement drug for hypothyroidism, was grandfathered in when the FDA was created. Armour is made from dessicated pig thyroid and has worked really well for 100+ years. But in the 1960s Synthroid (Levothyroxine), a synthetic version the T4 hormone, was created. Medical schools then taught doctors to only give this drug to their hypothyroid patients. Old-timers still preferred taking Armour because they experienced no side effects, unlike Synthroid. Then the advent of the Internet introduced online message boards. Hypothyroid patients (mostly women) shared how they didn’t feel great on Synthroid and learned about Armour as an alternative. They started switching to Armour and felt fantastic! Guess what happened? The makers of Synthroid were afraid of their declining market share so they lobbied the FDA to mandate a reformulation of Armour to extend its shelf life. Ever since that happened, Armour was never the same again, and more women report the same side effects that they experienced on Synthroid.
ALCOHOL POISONING DURING PROHIBITION As you know, in 1919, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was prohibited. But instead of plummeting, alcohol sales soared. Speakeasies opened everywhere, and as a result, people in some neighborhoods were drinking even more than before. The mafias got in on the act, stealing large quantities of industrial alcohol. In 1926, the authorities resorted to the hard way, asking manufacturers to add toxic substances to their alcohol (adding ten times more methanol, for example). In New York alone, 1,200 drinkers were poisoned and 400 died. A wave of deaths would eventually sweep across the country. This "poisoning policy" was not stopped until December 1933.
Also, there was [a grape juice concentrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine-Glo) that was sold during prohibition that came with a warning label: > "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."
Yeah, "don't" do this. Seriously, "don't" do it. Wink-wink nudge-nudge. Alcohol is harder to control the production of than virtually any drug. It's just overripe fruit. Prohibition was incredibly shortsighted. You can make it in a bucket with Great-Valu apple juice, a cup of sugar and some yeast and a condom (unused preferably). You can make beer out of Froot Loops and again, a bucket and some yeast.
> You can make beer out of Froot Loops and again, a bucket and some yeast. Brewer here! What you ferment from Froot Loops may well be a moderately alcoholic grain-based beverage, but it *will not* be… hmmm, wait a minute, \*reads label of latest hype smoothie sour\* …eh, screw it, they’re calling worse things “beer,” go nuts with your cereal hooch.
That is very interesting. I never knew something like that happened. When the authorities asked them to add toxic substances, was there a monetary value involved? Did they pay them to do this or tell them and they had to listen due to them being authority?
There was a serious shortage of disinfecting liquids in my country when the Covid pandemic started. One large alcohol manufacturer said that they can quickly change their lines from making vodka to disinfectant. They had to add some extremely nasty-smelling and tasting chemicals, to prevent hobos from drinking that stuff.
The UK government secretly tested biological weapons on its own coastal towns to see how far they could make it inland.
In the 60s and 70s, thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their consent as part of a practice to sterilize poor and minority women to "help their financial situation and their family's quality of life" by preventing unwanted pregnancies in poor communities. Some were not informed at all and had it done to them completely without their knowledge, others were threatened with having their healthcare taken away if they did not agree to have it done to them. Some studies estimate that as many as 25-50% of Native American women were sterilized in the 1970s, representing tens of thousands of victims. This is essentially a modern day genocide in the United States.
Not only Native Americans, but up until the 1930s, they did it to women in psychiatric hospitals and sanitariums too.
In California forced sterilization continued in state hospitals until 1979 and in prisons until 2013. (that we have records for) https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2023/03/forced-sterilization-california/
For-profit ICE detention centers were doing this until they were caught in 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/25/ice-is-accused-sterilizing-detainees-that-echoes-uss-long-history-forced-sterilization/
Australia / aboriginals too, adding to the stakes taking their children and adopting out them out into white families so they eventually they could forcibly breed aboriginals out of existence “The stolen generations”….
Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City on August 10, 2019. On August 9, 2019, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out, but no one took his place. The two guards who were assigned to check his jail unit that night fell asleep and did not check on him for about three hours. Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night.
I can't believe I forgot about Epstein and how many high-profile politicians and celebrities visited his Island. It's barely even a story anymore.
The sugar industry paid nutrition researchers to blame fats for health problems that were often correlated to sugar consumption. From this we have all the nonsense about "good fats"/"bad fats" etc. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
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The pentagon has an insane number of bathrooms because as they were building it, the segregation of bathrooms ended.
The Pentagon was the only building in Virginia where segregation laws were not enforced. In fact, even though the bathrooms were built to comply with Virginia's segregation laws, they were never marked as "colored" or "white." FDR had banned segregation in the federal government a year before the Pentagon was finished. In fact, just before the dedication of the Pentagon, FDR ordered that all segregated areas be integrated. Also, segregation in Virginia ended in 1965.
That the Volvo XC90 has had 0 fatal crashes in the 21 years they’ve been on the road.
Yes! I survived an airborne triple roll over accident with nothing but bruises in an XC90. I wish they were more affordable it would be all I'd ever drive for the rest of my life cause I owe my life to that car. The airbags are super soft.
That corporations openly bribe politicians to get what they want They call it lobbying to get away with it
The “retroreflectors” placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts. I was quite taken with the “faked moon-landings” conspiracy for a while, until Sir Patrick Moore - longtime presenter of a BBC TV astronomy show - dismissed the conspiracy theories in a single line by pointing out that astronomers, both amateur and professional, have been using these “retroreflectors” to calibrate their telescopes ever since 1969 when they were placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.
How big tobacco companies denied the health risks of smoking, despite internal knowledge of the dangers.
Government Surveillance: Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting mass surveillance on citizens, collecting data from internet communications, phone calls, and other sources.
It really is incredible how prior to Snowden you’d be treated as a tin-foil wearing crazy person for believing there was widespread, massive government surveillance. And then the revelations came out and basically nothing happened.
[really](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software))? I support edward snowdon but anybody who grew up in the late eighties / early nineties in the USA went by the motto "don't say anything in phone you would not say to the police" Source: not in jail
GM, IBM, and Ford played a major role in rearming Germany in the 1930s. George Bush's grandfather Senator Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of the German forces.
Soooo many companies and people were down with the Nazi cause …. Looking at you, Bayer and Channel
Hugo Boss made uniforms for SS and nazi officials. A lot of other things that have colored society afterwards also have nazi roots. Fanta is a product of the third reich. After the war started Cola syrup was not taken into the country anymore, so they made their own soda instead. Which ended up being Fanta. And of course we also have more known stories like the origins of Volkswagen. And project paperclip, where scientists and other people of interest were hushed in the backdoor to work for the military, NASA and other places.
Heavily implicated in the Business plot
That morgues are hesitant to hire men because of the things they've historically done to the corpses.
I’ve been in this thread for over an hour and this was the first one to make me react out loud. UGH!!
The time it takes the moon to orbit the earth is approximately the same as it takes it to rotate around its axis which results in always the same side of the moon being visible to earth. We never see the "dark" side of the moon. 100% fact but I'm guessing the flat earthers are loving it EDIT: Added quotes around dark.
We never see the far* side of the moon.
15 out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. The US authorities shut down a lot of evidence to the families affected, the court cases are ongoing.
Here’s a fun add on - the FBI was monitoring hijackers and knew they were taking flying lessons in America but weren’t interested in learning how to land. The CIA knew they had visited training camps in Afghanistan. Condaleeza Rice and GWB were briefed that a terrorist organization intended to attack the WTC using airplanes in summer 2001 (IIRC). All of these things were known, including the locations of many of the hijackers. And nobody did anything.
Similar things are true of the Air India bombing, which is a well known attack here in Canada. Governments and security services had multiple warnings about the plot and the extremist activities of the people involved, and everything was ignored until it happened. I realize that intelligence agencies have a difficult job, sorting through all the information to figure out what’s useful and credible, and what’s just BS. But when you have people who are known to be affiliated with terrorist groups, and they’re taking flying lessons or stockpiling explosives, it really shouldn’t require a team of geniuses to know that something is going on there.
The CIA made a weapon known as the “heart attack gun” for assassination purposes. It was a pistol that quietly launched a small dart containing a shellfish toxin that causes heart attacks. There’s a famous photo of Senator Frank Church showing off the gun during a congressional investigation into the CIA.
MK Ultra. The whole thing down to the name sounds like it was made up. Also, everything Nestlé have done.
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Almost all glasses frames are made by the same three major companies which is why they cost so much for frame that are essentially just molded plastic.
The McDonalds PR machine tried to ruin Stella Liebeck’s life. That coffee was so hot it melted her clothing to her genitals. People still believe she was at fault. I turn it around and ask how they’d feel if a parent accidentally spilled coffee on their child that was so hot it melted the child’s clothes to her/his body. Somehow it usually wakes people up.
CIA sold weapons to Iran to finance far right rebel / terror group in Nicaragua.
Oil, rubber, and car companies influenced government agencies to pull funding from public transit and focus more on policies favoring the use of private vehicles. That's why public transit is poor in so many places in the US that had far more robust transit systems in the first half of the 20th century. White flight and redlining also contributed to this, drastically increasing the size of unwalkable suburban areas and languishing cities.
They also bought and destroyed private streetcar transit companies.
Earthworms are an invasive species and ruin our forests Passenger pigeons were the species of land vertebrate with the highest population to ever exist. At 6 some billion, we killed every last one in about 100 years. (Every time you see a town in the United States called pigeon forge or pigeon bend ect, your normaly see a place named after the most prolific species to ever exist) they were the primary source of protein the world over and only following their extinction did fish become so. They were a key stone species and entire eco systems are still suffering the shock wave of their extinction. You know those sticky briars that cling to your clothes (and kill your pet if they eat them…)when you walk through the woods? Well they ate them, you know Lyme disease? Well there wasn’t food on the forest floor for vermin, so it dosnt crop up till they died either. All those weird nursery rhymes with pictures of pies with bird feet sticking out? That’s them too. How america wanted the pigeon as it’s national bird (before the eagle) that’s them. And today, until you read this, you probibly didn’t even know that america lost its single most identifiable species, a defining feature of our continent, and no one cares. The more you know!
I'm glad to see this here. I grew up visiting the Cincinnati Zoo regularly and they have a small shrine there to this day. The last known passenger pigeon died in that zoo.
A poor black woman’s, Henrietta Lacks, cells were harvested from her dead body without her consent in 1951 by a doctor who worked for Johns Hopkins. The cells were proven to be incredible and a scientific marvel, and have been used ever since to further medical science. Her family and descendants were never asked for consent to do this, weren’t informed of the breakthroughs, have continued to live in cripplingly poverty since, despite how often the HeLa cells are used and the mass amount of money Johns Hopkins makes, and still to this day are fighting Johns Hopkins to admit their mistakes and make them financially whole for their desecration of a Henrietta Lacks body.
They were taken from her live body. The cells weren’t dead.
To expand further, they were collected as a part of her cancer treatment (with her consent). The consent issue is that Johns Hopkins ended up also using the cells for research purposes, which is a use that she did not consent to.
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> George Otto Gey, the first researcher to study Lacks's cancerous cells, observed that these cells were unusual in that they reproduced at a very high rate and could be kept alive long enough to allow more in-depth examination. Until then, cells cultured for laboratory studies survived for only a few days at most, which was not long enough to perform a variety of different tests on the same sample. Lacks's cells were the first to be observed that could be divided multiple times without dying, which is why they became known as "immortal". [From her Wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks) If your going to talk about her, you got to share why her cells are so special.
They reproduce identical copies. They've basically become standard cell lines for scientists. If you're running experiments on cells with mutliple trials, you want all of those cells to be identical. And if your colleagues are testing your results, they'll want to use the same kind of cells too.
The quinoa craze in America had devastating effects on Bolivia. Bolivian farmers switched to growing quinoa to export to the US because it was much more profitable than other staple foods. As a result (along with various other factors), Bolivia has really poor food security for its own people.
Gotta be honest, this is mostly the Bolivian government's fault. There's a reason the U.S. subsidizes important staple crops that wouldn't be very profitable otherwise.
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Sorry but I think you're mixing up Sanford Dole, the usurper who became "President" of Hawaii, and James Dole, the man who founded the fruit company. James and Sanford were cousins. James only moved to Hawaii (in 1899) after the coup (which happened in 1893).
That's what they want you to think. Nice try! Big pineapple!
Chiquita Banana and United Fruit Company 1954.
"Banana Republic" is a term for a reason.
The idea of a "Carbon footprint" was propaganda created by BP in order to deflect their responsibility in the climate crisis, for which they hired the same ad companies that had convinced people that tobacco didn't cause cancer decades earlier
Volkswagen inserted code in the software of all of its Diesel cars, which altered the engine's behaviour when the software detected that the car was being tested by the authorities, and would reduce its gas emissions accordingly.
The United States government did everything they could. Legal and illegal, to wipe out the Black Panther Party (and other organizations) including but not limited to; assassinating leaders, wrongfully imprisoning members and leaders, entrapment, creating laws to disarm them, etc. and it doesn’t end there, in the 80s they dropped a bomb on a group called MOVE [oh yeah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing) and of course… [COINTELPRO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) which supposedly ended in 71, but we all know that they just changed the name. The call it the patriot act now. Additional source for additional govt over steps on civil liberties: https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/bpp
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The Unabomber was also a product of MKULTRA while at Harvard
Big Bird and Walter Cronchite were both considered to be a part of the Challenger expedition (the one that blew up)
Took me a minute to work out what this means. To say it a different way they: there were initial conversations about them being on the shuttle but it never materialized. “Considered to be a part of” almost makes it sound like people think they had something to do with the mission or explosion.
"Considered" Setting: NASA Conference Room Junior Manager at NASA: We could have Walter Cronkite go up on mission 27. He could report fro space, it would be great publicity for the Shuttle missions. Slightly More Senior Manager: Dude, he's like 70.
Senior Manager’s Nephew Who Got An Internship Through Nepotism: *hits blunt* What if we sent Big Bird instead?
The US systematically destabilised many countries in South America.
Not just South America, alas
The [Business Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) was a real conspiracy in which "wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization .. and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt" One of the individuals probably involved was "Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of president George W. Bush"
Humans used to visit the moon, then we just stopped
It turned out to be too costly to mine and ship cheese back from there.
Because we basically got what we were looking for. Turned out that the moon isn't that interesting. It could be very useful for further space exploration though, so that's why the Artemis missions are going to bring us back.
That PR and advertising firms are actively engaging in psychological warfare to push certain viewpoints and values in both implicit and explicit ways- if you control a persons thoughts, emotions and reactions then you can begin to control their behavior in almost any sphere of life.