We haven’t been hearing about our grandson, Knut, quite as much lately, because he’s visiting the maternal side of his family for the past month or so. He’s in South Korea getting spoiled by his other set of grandparents, in a culture that is making much of the fact that he’s the first grandson in the family. I knew he was getting the royal treatment, but I didn’t realize how much until I got this photo today.
Very traditional. Very classy.
Apparently any twit with an obsession and a lot of persistence can do it. For example, Mike Adams, the “Health Ranger”, peddles silly supplements and “cures” alongside his right wing weirdness, and it seems he’s been a fanatic about linking to himself, and building a mass of self-referential garbage websites to create a custom echo chamber.
Much has been written recently about online “echo chambers”: the idea that we are catered to on the Internet with sites and recommendations that reinforce our preexisting beliefs. If you watch a lot of science videos on YouTube, follow many scientists on Twitter, and regularly search for scientific questions on Google, your online experience will shift away from neutrality, as search results, post sorting, and recommendations will be tailored to your pro-science stance. This is an echo chamber because, in due time, you only hear your beliefs repeated back at you and stop seeing what’s happening on the other side.
Echo chambers for the pseudoscience crowd exist as well, though Mike Adams’ online bubble is so vast and self-sufficient, it warrants the term “ecosystem”.
It’s impressive, in a narrow minded way. Every little whim he has prompts the creation of a new website, and then they all link to each other, so once you find your way to one, you reverberate all over the place, getting nothing but the Mike Adams perspective and the Mike Adams sales pitch.
A bit of online sleuthing revealed that Mike Adams owns over 50 websites. The topics they cover go beyond alternative medicine and help shape an entire worldview: fear of medicine and science (gmo.news, medicine.news, vaccines.news), anti-Left and pro-freedom hype (campusinsanity.com, libtards.news, freedom.news), and doomsday prep advice (survival.news, collapse.news).
He has his own search engine and his own social media site! Get sucked into that bubble and you’re never getting out again, by design. All it takes is dedication and a small team of people constantly taking advantage of search algorithms to assemble a self-reinforcing internet empire. One thing surprised me.
His Twitter account boasts 124,000 followers. On the day I write this, he has tweeted about reducing your risk of stroke by drinking full-fat milk; about the chemical bisphenol-A causing gender confusion; and about a woman who cured her cancer with cannabis oil. These tweets lead to his websites, which can be searched via his Good Gopher engine and accessed through his social media platform.
Mike Adams’ dark, conspiratorial Wonderland is vast and the rabbit hole is frightening in depth. “Down, down down. Would the fall never come to an end?”
OK, 124,000 twitter followers is a respectable number, but it’s not that large — I’ve got something over 150K, and I’m a nobody. What it takes is willingness to leverage those numbers, to use those people to shape a profitable network, and that just takes persistent wanking over yourself. Mike Adams is not particularly intelligent, and even he can do it…which makes me realize how little real insight it takes to create, for instance, a religion. Build a bubble around whatever — Scientology, Mormonism, Christianity, Mike Adams — seed it with busy little monkeys telling each other how vital their message is, and basic human predispositions will take over and make it grow, and fling more reinforcement/cash to the object of their fascination.
If ever I try to turn those 150K followers into a Church of PZ (I won’t), remind me of this post and tell me that once upon a time I considered that kind of manipulation to be evil.
You probably don’t have to worry about it, because one thing it requires is a lot of mindless work to keep the pump running, and that’s something I’m not good at.
For strange gourds. I saw this one, and for some mysterious reason, had to have it.
Stormy Daniels’ tell-all book tells me a heck of a lot more than I want to know.
Trump’s bodyguard invites Daniels to dinner, which turns out to be an invitation to Trump’s penthouse, she writes, in a description of alleged events that Daniels has disclosed previously but which in the book are rendered with new and lurid detail. She describes Trump’s penis as “smaller than average” but “not freakishly small.”
“He knows he has an unusual penis,” Daniels writes. “It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool…
“I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart…
“It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.”
Thoughts, in no particular order:
Ick. TMI.
Who cares? Penis shape is not a criterion for a good or bad president.
I hate to break the news to you guys, but every man’s penis is a weird-looking thing.
I’ll never be able to unsee this.
Toad is cute & cheerful, and not how I’d metaphorically describe any part of the president’s anatomy.
I’d rather have President Toad.
A neighborhood in Ipswich has been sporadically awakened to the sound of a children’s nursery rhyme being played over loudspeakers. Creepy weird, huh?
The owners of the speakers have an explanation. This doesn’t help.
The sound is only supposed to act as a deterrent for opportunistic thieves that come onto our property, and it’s designed only to be heard by people on our private land.
It’s an odd choice of an alarm, but OK. I guess if you want to instill bafflement in thieves, it would be effective. But then they go a step further and place the blame on innocents.
We are now aware of the problem – the motion sensors were being triggered by spiders crawling across the lenses of our cameras and it looks like we’ve had it turned up too loudly. We’ve spoken to the resident who brought it to our attention and adjusted it so this shouldn’t happen again.
Oh, sure. Blame the spiders. I think we’re seeing another instance of unthinking bigotry against the poly-armed community.
These new health features in the Apple Watch are tempting.
I would worry that the false positive rate is going to be sky high, but on the other hand, I’m getting older, have a family history of heart problems, and had my own cardiac scare several years ago. Maybe this would be a good thing to look into.
How much do these Apple Watches cost, anyway? (quickly checks apple.com to answer my own question.)
GAAAAAAH! $400!
(Strokes out. Goes into v-fib. Collapses. Heart explodes. Dies.)
Nope, sorry, the budget isn’t going to be able to cope with this at all.
We did our usual morning constitutional at a local garden, and I took a few pictures. Here’s the standard Monarch butterfly photo.
Also, summer is ending, as you can tell from this sad decrepit dinosaur frame that, in season, is full of brilliant greenery. Now it’s just dying and cobwebby.
Tesla has a drug testing policy, so one can only assume that Musk will be failing it soon.
Tesla stock plunged 9 percent on Friday after a bizarre podcast in which CEO Elon Musk smoked weed and sipped whiskey, and two high-profile executives abruptly announced they were leaving the company.
Due diligence argle bargle shareholders bla bla bla.
I’ve got my YouTube channel set to hold questionable comments for approval before posting them (it’s not a very flexible system, though, and lots of crap still gets through). This one was flagged as “likely spam”.
PZ Myers, if you continue to lead people to worship Satan after this notice, I shall rebuke you! “Maran Eashoa M’Sheekah, our Christ Lord, the Anointed Life-Giving Living Branch is the ONLY Name given to humanity by which you received the Covenant of Life.” – See My 2-video series: Lord Eashoa! Pray to the ONLY Name that heals and Saves! “Jesus the Messiah” NEVER performed ANY of the righteous works nor the good deeds recorded in the Holy Bible! That is not a living human being but is a baphomet neuter shapeshifting demonic carnivorous creature from below and Liar just like his son Hillary the Devil Cain Qain Gain of Satan and a killer of mankind from the beginning just like his father the false messiah Satan Donald JeSUS ZEUS SOS ISIS Trump that ancient shapeshifting serpent from the Paradise of Eden, the titan, not a creator of anything, just a demon from Sheol the house of the dead, that can present itself as a human being. You have been lied to. You have ALL been Commanded to work for the Creator of the heaven and the earth and the sea and the water springs. You cannot serve two masters! It is Judgment Hour and there are MANY universes yet to come after this one concludes which is coming quick! I am the Spirit and it is the Season of My Testimony which is on My channel, the Reveal of the Creator. HURRY! You have NO TIME to delay! You WILL NOT enter the Kingdom of Heaven if you sat by with idle hands. Faith without works is dead faith. Get busy watching the Reveal quickly and telling others that I am here, directing them to My channel and the Reveal of the Creator! WATCH: ‘WORLD WAR III IS NOW! SILENT WEAPONS – WMD’S ARE USED ON US NON-STOP! IT’S BEEN GOING ON! READ COMMENT BOX & PAY ATTENTION: WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT ATTACK BY SILENT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION! PROOF! DROP EVERYTHING & WATCH THIS NOW! My Testimony: the Spirit confirming this for you NOW! HUMANS ARE BEING KILLED WELL INTO THE MILLIONS OF MILLIONS!
Now I have a dilemma, though. This isn’t any loonier than the comments from creationists, or libertarians, or Jordan Peterson fans, or anti-feminists, and in fact is probably less evil (slightly) than any of those. So I’ll ask you, O Readers, should I click on the “approve” button or not?
Note: I do not accept any variant of free speech absolutism — I’m going to filter no matter what, so the only question is where I should draw the line.
