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Nope, that is no typo. Fandamentalism is real; the dictionary just has not caught up to reality yet. But, trust me, it will in due time. English is a notoriously slow language, but it always catches on in the end. So, what is fandamentalism, you ask? Well, for many, fandom is the new religion. That may seem like an overstatement. I mean, most people do not fall down on their knees and pray to the televisions, especially if the big game is not on. However, it is also important to realize that falling down on your knees and praying is not the only requirement for religiosity. Here is the definition of the term "religion": the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods; a particular system of faith and worship; a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Note the usage of the word "gods" in the first part of the meaning; it is not capitalized. So what is the difference between "God" and "gods"? "God" is the divine power at the head of monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc). "Gods" are the forces leading pantheism: that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe; this is also why you will hear celebrities and their fans casually refer to themselves as gods. You see, to really worship something, it has to become a part of your life, your essence, your being. I want you to seriously ask yourself this question, exactly how much of the average person's life is dictated by celebrity preferences? Would I even know you if I was not informed of your various celebrity obsessions? How much of you is there to you really? Isn't this person that you refer to as "myself" just a combination of various celebrity orders and dictates that you have consumed throughout your life? Let's take a look. "According to research commissioned by Vision Direct, the average U.S. adult will spend the equivalent of 44 years of their life staring at screens. Polling  of 2,000 adults in the U.S. found more than 6,259 hours a year are  spent glued to gadgets such as phones, laptops and televisions. That equates to an astonishing 382,652 hours and 48 minutes over the average adult lifetime of 60.7 years. Up  to four and a half hours a day will be spent looking at TV screens,  with almost five hours staring at laptops and three hours and 12 minutes  using gaming devices. Smartphones also take up an astonishing four hours and 33 minutes of an adult’s daily screen time. But despite the time spent on devices, people believe less than half the time they spend on these devices is "productive." (People, 2020) Generally when people use terms like "productive" they are referring to their work schedule or running errands; it is pretty much synonymous with things people consider boring. But even if we entertain the idea that half of those 44 years are spent doing work, that is still 22 years of every Americans' life devoted strictly to the worship of celebrities. That is a lot of time devoted to the sanctity of celebrity. So, it is no wonder that some people develop fundamentalist like standards when it comes to the celebrities they love the most. We saw this fandamentalism in action when the cast of the all female version of "Ghost Busters" were sadistically attacked for lacking dicks. We also saw it when Disney dared to cast a black and an Asian person in the new Star Wars remakes. We see it all the time when singers change their look or artistic choices. But fandamentalism does not only affect the rich and famous; it has real repercussions when it comes to honest critique. It creates an environment where only the opinions of fandamentalists matter because they are the ones driving ticket sales. It also makes entertainment bland, boring and dull. 

Sorry, no Guy Fawkes nursery rhymes here; this is an all American affair. Of course no one planned to go on strike in America. There were no meetings of American workers. There were no staged attempts at political theater. There were no riots in the streets. There were no calls to action. There were no slime ball politicians looking to add to their twitter followings. There were no jerk off celebrities trying to stay relevant by appearing to care. There were few labor union discussions. Hell, no one even called it a strike. Up until this point it has been referred to as a "labor shortage", but we all know there are plenty of workers. There just are not enough decent jobs. Big business got too greedy; they got too comfortable thinking that all Americans were a bunch of push overs willing to sacrifice everything for a few pieces of stale apple pie. Well, times have changed and Americans finally put two and two together. If we refuse to work, then they must, finally, after all these years, start appreciating us. None of this was planned, but it was not entirely spontaneous either. All across the nation, signs that a massive walkout of workers of all stripes was in the works was evident as early as February 2020, that was before the media could even spell coronavirus. American employers thought that if they eradicated unions then they would never have to worry about strikes again, but they were incorrect as usual. Sure, they snuffed out the unions, but they could not control the people. "The number of work strikes and the number of union members are going  in opposite directions, and that divergence is highlighting an important  fact about today’s job market, experts say. There were 25 major  work stoppages last year, up 25% from 20 stoppages in 2018 and up 257%  from seven in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),  including a 40-day General Motors strike that ended in a four-year deal securing signing bonuses and better wages...Labor experts from both sides of the aisle say the paradox points to one  conclusion: Workers are emboldened to press for better pay and work  conditions because they believe they have options in an economy with a 3.6% unemployment rate and employers that are focused on attracting and keeping staff. (Market Watch, 2020)" Yeah, buddy! And that was then, now the current unemployment rate sits at 4.8% so workers have even more sway than they did in 2020. This should put an end to any theories you hear about coronavirus being the sole reason workers are not returning. Hell, many people went to Lalapalooza so they cannot be that scared of the virus anymore. No, no, no, it's the low pay, the lack of benefits (especially lack of day care, but other things like no paid vacation time and subpar healthcare as well) and the complete disregard for worker safety that is keeping Americans home. Delta is still a threat; I still wear my mask all the time, probably more than most people, but that is no longer my main concern either. My biggest fear about going back to work is that I may very well be murdered, severely injured or sickened by one of these lunatic anti-vaxxers who have done everything from threatening children to assaulting teachers to tearing down vaccination sites to killing people all in the name of their idiotic crusade to keep the nation as stupid and sick as possible. You think I'm going to get killed so you can go out to eat? How dare you even imagine such a thing would happen? I'm not your damn servant; you don't pay me enough to risk my life for you, so guess what? You can deal with those maniacs by yourselves! Order up and make it snappy!  

Ah Netflix, the one place you can turn to if you are looking to kill an hour...or twelve. You can find anything on Netflix, but you likely will not find anything original. People often forget that Netflix is a tech company, meaning that they use similar algorithms as Facebook and Youtube to determine what people will like. As you have probably already realized by now, these algorithms generally elevate far right "entertainment" (calling it that is a bit of a stretch; it's really just a bunch of overpaid bullies making fun of liberals). So, it makes sense that Dave Chapelle's "comedy" special, The Closer is right at the top of everyone's list. Of course Dave Chapelle has a huge following, so Netflix was more than willing to throw money at him so he can spew hate and steal Eddie Murphy's jokes. Eddie Murphy tells jokes very similar to Chapelle's "new" routine, even the "joke" that Dave recently told about aids is stolen from Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy also frequently mocked gays in his 1983 comedy routine. The difference between Chapelle and Murphy is that, with age, Murphy has matured quite a bit. Here is what Eddie Murphy recently said about his old style of humor in the New York Post, “Some of it. Some of it, I cringe when I watch,” he said. “I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe I said that!” However, the “Saturday Night Live” alum also appeared to chalk it all  up both to being “within the context of the times” and being a young  performer. (He was only 19 when he joined the cast of “SNL” in 1980.) “You’ll get a joke that’s cringey. But that’s not to say that I don’t  appreciate it. I still appreciate it,” he said, adding, “And I’m going,  okay, I’m a kid, saying that.” This is the reason Eddie Murphy will always be the real king of black American comedy. Sure, many black comedians have claimed that title, but all of those comedians, including Dave Chapelle, know that they are full of shit when they say that. You see, a real king matures with age; he learns from his past mistakes and atones for them. He is willing to learn, willing to change, willing to show mercy on others, and, most importantly, willing to listen to his followers. That is what makes a king great, not pandering to extremists for a few likes on twitter. Despite what many in black communities claim, Dave Chapelle is no king; he is not even a court jester. Chapelle does not understand comedy. He does not know the meaning of the word. Chapelle thinks that comedy is getting on stage and hurling insults at those weaker than him; he believes this to be funny, just like all bullies do, and that is exactly what Dave Chapelle is, a big bully with a big ego and even bigger paycheck. Chapelle is often presented as some sort of representative of the black community, but this is extremely misleading. I am a member of the black community and I have not watched Dave Chapelle for about ten years. Why? Because he does not speak for me; he speaks for himself and other wealthy black conservatives like Candace Owens, Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell. Chapelle comes from an age when it was cool for black people to mock gay people; he does not realize how much the landscape has changed in the black community. Today "34% of Black respondents who saw a health care provider in the past year reported having at least one negative experience related to being transgender, 6.7% of Black respondents are living with HIV...more than twenty times the rate in the U.S. population (0.3%), Thirty-five percent (35%) of Black respondents identified as transgender men, 34% were non-binary, 30% were transgender women, and 2% identified as crossdressers (transequality.org)" So, Dave Chapelle is living in the past and he seems to like it there. He does not care that a large chunk of the people he is offending are, whether he wants to admit it or not, black people. And I would not expect him to care; he is no Eddie Murphy. Did I hurt your feelings? Deal with it snowflakes. 

There's gold in them thar oil spills! Plastic gold, that is. Did you know that plastic is actually made from oil? Well, it is and that is bad news for the environment. In fact, eight percent of the world's oil production is used to make plastic water bottles. According to EU estimates, "...it takes a quarter of a litre of oil to produce a single one-litre water bottle." Wow, that is some oily water. As oil currently gushes into the ocean, again, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on how often we consume water from bottles unnecessarily. While bottled water is important for people who have poorly functioning water filtration systems, mostly in rural areas like the Central Valley of California and de-industrialized cities like Flint, Michigan, America has one of the safest water filtration systems in the world, especially in big cities, where a large chunk of the nation happens to live. So, why the obsession with plastic when it comes to consuming water? Some would argue that it is somehow healthier, but that is simply false. Water from the tap has important minerals in it like magnesium; after companies like Coke and Pepsi filter their water from the tap, those minerals are taken out. In other words, your bottled water is less healthy for you than your tap water. This makes sense considering the fact that Coca Cola and Pepsi have wreaked havoc on people's health everywhere they have gone. They break up unions and abuse their workers all the time. If they do not give a damn about them, then why the hell would they give a damn about your health? These are the same companies that advertise sugary drinks to kids in a nation plagued by childhood obesity for crying out loud. They do not care about you. They do not care about anything but money, just like every other successful corporation. But you recycle so it's all good, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. "80 percent of the plastic water bottles we buy end up in landfills. U.S. landfills are overflowing with more than 2 million tons of discarded water bottles. It takes up to 1,000 years for every single  bottle of water to decompose. Each bottle leaks harmful chemicals into  our environment along the way as it decomposes." (healthyhumanlife.com) So, even when it decomposes, all that happens is those chemicals go into the water so that you get a face full of toxins the next time you and the kids go on vacation. This is insanity. We can stop this today if we so chose, but we continue to be lazy and reckless with our planet nonetheless. Some have theorized this is going on because Hollywood spent years advertising bottled water in their movies, on TV and in commercials. Whenever you see a brand name product in a movie or TV show, you are witnessing what is known as product placement. They show you your favorite celebrities drinking bottled water so that you will buy more, and so that the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi can buy a fourth or fifth vacation home. "With staggering numbers such as 1 million plastic bottles discarded per  minute and 500 million plastic straws discarded per day or 40 billion  pieces of plastic cutlery discarded per year we must find innovative  ways to close the “tap”..." Cute joke there, but that will not help in the end if we do not start the trend ourselves. Hollywood will sell what consumers buy; they cannot be trusted to act responsibly because Hollywood is owned by corporations. We have to stop the waste ourselves by simply telling Coke, Pepsi and Hollywood that we will no longer support the production of such products with our money. If your tap water is safe do us all a favor and drink it before we all drown in plastic gold. 

People shy away from the word "terrorism" a lot. I don't really know why. Terrorism is a crime that anyone can commit quick and on the cheap. But there is still this idea that the only real terrorist threat in the world comes from radical Islam. While radical Islam certainly remains a threat, that threat has long since been overshadowed by various other home grown domestic terrorists. The Incel movement, for example, has routinely topped terrorist lists ahead of radical Islamic terrorism. Another group that the FBI have routinely investigated are white supremacist groups like the proud boys, the neo-nazis and the KKK. But ahead of even those lies a particular group of terrorists who consider American law to be nothing more than a farce because America abandoned the gold standard. These people recognize no laws made after the 1930s and frequently challenge American law whenever presented with the opportunity. This led a woman by the name of Shenetta Little, to be locked out of her New Jersey home, which she paid for, by a group of terrorists who call themselves "sovereign citizens". "And so it was with surprise that Little found herself in her yard on Ivy  Street on a June afternoon as a police SWAT team negotiated with a man  who had broken in, changed her locks and hung a red-and-green flag in  its window. He claimed he was a sovereign citizen of a country that does not exist and for whom the laws of the United States do not apply" (yahoo news). While many assume sovereign citizens are nothing more than a bunch of tin foil hat wearing nerds living in their mothers' basements, "a closer look at sovereign citizens’ more severe crimes, from financial scams to impersonating or threatening law enforcement officials, gives reason for concern. If someone challenges (e.g., a standard traffic stop for false license plates) their ideology, the behavior of these sovereign-citizen extremists quickly can escalate to violence. Since 2000, lone-offender sovereign-citizen extremists have killed six law enforcement officers. In 2010, two Arkansas police officers stopped sovereign-citizen extremists Jerry Kane and his 16-year-old son Joseph during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 40. Joseph Kane jumped out of the vehicle and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing both officers". If they are willing to kill police, please trust and believe that they will not hesitate to kill you or anyone else for that matter. But because the world is so terrified of Islam in particular, these threats have gone largely unnoticed by the general public, which makes it more difficult for law enforcement to reign them in. Some the crimes these terrorists commit include: paper terrorism, death threats, vandalism, illegal sale and production of hard drugs such as meth, impersonating law enforcement, and murder. Needless to say, these are not good people. You see, Little's case is not unique and this is not a predominantly black movement; sovereign citizens have no distinct race, culture, religion or political ideology, which makes them even more dangerous than other terrorist cells. Four attempted thefts of housing occurred in Seattle suburbs within weeks of each other in December, 2020 alone. "Someone knocks on a door, claims to be the legal owner of the house, and  tells the current occupant to clear out. But these aren’t the evictions  that have swept the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re hoaxes  perpetrated by the Moorish sovereign citizen movement, a conspiratorial  group that claims its members are the rightful owners of virtually all  property in America." It is high time we analyze this movement and how it is used by conservative propagandists to bankrupt and make a mockery of our justice system. You may be afraid of the strangers in Afghanistan, but I am far more concerned about someone who can attack me today, than someone who may or may not attack me tomorrow. Image: Lil Artsy

There is no need for Minority Report like technology, where 3D figures pop out of computers to personalize sales pitches that are tailored just for you. We do not need that technology because we already have it in the form of celebrities. Like it or not, at the end of the day, a celebrity's main job is to sell you junk that you do not need. It is that simple; there is nothing more to it than that. This is, after all, the only reason certain celebrities make more money than others. You are meant to assume that a person is paid by how talented they are, but talent has nothing to do with being famous. When you think about it, it is extremely easy to create art that most people will like. You see it all the time on social media; some influencer figures out what their followers love (generally an amalgamation of unboxing videos, reaction scenes and puppies) and, the next thing you know, some douche bag down the street has over a million views for selling you supplements for "anxiety" (anxiety is real, but most people who claim to have it have never received a formal diagnosis for it and very well could just be experiencing a basic stress reaction, which you cannot treat, no matter how many sugar pills you pop). Youtube celebrities are somewhat new, but trust me when I tell you that they are not really all that different from Hollywood celebrities. For example, why do celebrity comics go on standup comedy tours? Sure, it makes sense for someone just breaking in the business to do this because, well, no one knows who they are. But the higher up the ladder you go, the less sense it makes for these celebrities to go on tour. Standup comics often say that they are honing their craft, but really what they are doing is selling products. Touring actors, singers, dancers, and stand up comedians all have long lasting contracts with various companies. Dave Chapelle, for example, is owned by Netflix, and he does a wonderful job making money for them by advertising with his infantile shock humor, which Netflix then turns into a profit by selling various anti-gay films to extremist consumers. Don't believe me? Here is a list of so-called "spiritual movies" on the so-called "liberal" companies platform: A Walk to Remember (2002), Soul Surfer (2011), The Healer (2017), God Bless the Broken Road (2018), God's Not Dead (2014), An Interview With God (2018), Never Heard (2018) ...The Young Messiah (2018), etc. Chapelle's rabid anti-gay humor is encouraged by Netflix because it helps to sell these crappy movies to Christian extremists. But Chapelle is a lightweight compared to Oprah Winfrey, who was really the first big celebrity influencer. Conspiracy theorists like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson have all copied the Oprah sales pitch model, which marketers have named "The Oprah Effect". Oprah had the largest daytime audience..ever, and still does even in syndication. If Oprah mentions your product on the air, you are going to make big bucks because, well, Oprah's fans listen to everything she tells them to do, everything. You know, like a cult, which is all fandom really is. In 2014 Oprah simply mentioned Weight Watchers on the her show and overnight they were a multi-million dollar company. Oprah's fans eventually left weight watchers because it was ineffective at creating weight loss, but many of them have returned, led back to the same damn diet that does not work by various other celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Jenny McCarthy (who also happens to be an anti-vaxxer by the way) and Jennifer Hudson, who, go figure, just happens to make appearances on Oprah's OWN network all the time. They all work together to maximize their profits and you are fronting the bill. Of course the Oprah effect is nothing more than the Halo Effect, which elevates celebrities above the rest of us because "ow, look at that, they can speak well or sing or act". It is perhaps the dumbest bias and it could lead you to the poor house. 

If I am being honest, not many of the reports I do surprise me. Celebrity scandal? Par for the course. Intellectual brown nosing? See it all the time. Perversion of science? Please, that is just a Tuesday. Rabid anti-vaxxers destroying public property while the police kick back and stuff more donuts down their throats? Well, that is pretty much every day. Conspiracy theories about aliens? You cannot walk two feet in America without hearing one. Offshore tax shelters? You do realize that is the reason that billionaires exist, right? Granted, the aforementioned topics are all interesting, but they are also expected. However, I did not expect Facebook to spread conspiracy theories while it was not even operational. I mean, how does that even happen? It turns out, in a desperate attempt to get attention from somebody, Facebook fanatics jumped on Twitter so that they could spread their conspiracy nonsense their instead. You may not realize it, but Facebook is one of the largest spreaders of misinformation on the web today. According to NPR, (a reputable right center news organization, not a far left communist plot to take over the world as some Facebook users may claim) "After the events of Jan. 6, researcher Laura Edelson expected to see a  spike in Facebook users engaging with the day's news, similar to  Election Day. 'The thing was, most of that spike was concentrated among the partisan  extremes and misinformation providers,' Edelson told NPR's All Things Considered.  'And when I really sit back and think about that, I think the idea that  on a day like that, which was so scary and so uncertain, that the most  extreme and least reputable sources were the ones Facebook users were  engaging with, is pretty troubling.' It turns out Facebook is one the largest super spreaders of misinformation out there today, so it makes perfect sense that when Facebook is down, the misinformation spreads to other social platforms like Twitter, which is where several false conspiracy theories about the Facebook blackout spread like wildfire. Some, mostly Q-anon followers, even claimed that the blackout was part of the "ten days of darkness" that would return king Trump of Orange to his greasy throne. No such thing happened of course, and Facebook was fully operational by the end of the same night it went down. And, trust me, the misinformation will not stop now that it is back up; it will only increase, "A new study from Cybersecurity For Democracy found that far-right accounts known  for spreading misinformation are not only thriving on Facebook, they're  actually more successful than other kinds of accounts at getting likes,  shares and other forms of user engagement...It's almost twice as much engagement per follower among the sources  that have a reputation for spreading misinformation," Edelson said. "So,  clearly, that portion of the news ecosystem is behaving very  differently." Yeah, differently as in crazily. "What Edelson and her colleagues discovered is what some Facebook critics — and at least one anonymous executive — have been saying for some time: that far-right content is just more  engaging. In fact, the study found that among far-right sources, those  known for spreading misinformation significantly outperformed  non-misinformation sources." So, as you dive back into the wild world of Zuckerberg, always remember that the posts you are most likely to see are likely far right fear mongers trying to sell you guns, supplements, archaic religious fundamentalism, and horse paste enemas. Facebook is like smoking a box of cigars all at once, you never know when you're going to die a horrible death. Image Credit: Oladimeji Ajegbile

People complain all the time about dieting. They need to know the latest study on it so that they can slim down in time for the holidays or the wedding or the baby shower or whatever event they are attending that leads to huge displays of vanity. But what if I told you their attempts at becoming Brad Pitt or Adele are, unfortunately, in vain. I suppose that could be expected from vanity, but enough with the similar sounding words, let's get down to the facts. "Thinking that one is following a low-calorie diet might facilitate weight loss, a new preliminary Frontiers in Psychiatry study finds. The placebo effect of the imaginary low-calorie diet was  found to be sufficient for study participants to lose weight while  following the same diet did not result in any significant results for  participants believing they followed a balanced diet" (psypost). In other words, all of those lose weight quick popular diets may just be inducing the placebo effect on people. But what is the placebo effect exactly and why is it so powerful? Further, how the hell does it work anyway? Well, the mechanisms for the placebo effect are far more complex than just keeping a positive attitude about treatment or popping a sugar pill every time you want to lose a few pounds. In fact, attitude may have nothing to do with it at all. It does, however, have everything to do with the brain. 

"How placebos work is still not quite understood, but it involves a  complex neurobiological reaction that includes everything from increases  in feel-good neurotransmitters, like endorphins and dopamine, to  greater activity in certain brain regions linked to moods, emotional  reactions, and self-awareness. All of it can have therapeutic benefit.  "The placebo effect is a way for your brain to tell the body what it  needs to feel better," says Kaptchuk. But placebos are not all about releasing brainpower. You also need  the ritual of treatment. "When you look at these studies that compare  drugs with placebos, there is the entire environmental and ritual factor  at work," says Kaptchuk. "You have to go to a clinic at certain times  and be examined by medical professionals in white coats. You receive all  kinds of exotic pills and undergo strange procedures. All this can have  a profound impact on how the body perceives symptoms because you feel  you are getting attention and care" (health.harvard.edu). So this is much more complex than any of that positive thinking nonsense, which has been demonstrated several times to not work. You cannot just keep a positive outlook and be healed. There must be some very specific sort of ritual involving treatment: the doctors in lab coats, the generic pills, the constant surveillance by trained professionals. All of this working in tandem with feel good neurochemicals in the brain may actually cause you to lose weight, but it does not help you keep it off. This placebo effect also explains why some people cannot keep the weight off after they lose it. They either give up on the rituals that reassured their brain that weight loss was possible or simply stopped taking those rituals so seriously, and everyone stops eventually. Once they stop taking the treatment seriously, then the positive benefits tend to fade. "The maximal effect of  placebo, approximately 40% reduction in symptom scores, is likely to be  achieved within the first four to six months. After this, the placebo effect stabilizes and gradually wears off but is still present following 12 months of treatment" Gee, sure sounds like the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of a lot of diet plans, eh? So, high carb, low carb, paleo, vegetarian, or vegan? Which placebo will you choose to lose weight only to put it back on again after a few months? 

The name of Alex Jones' popular youtube channel is Info Wars, but I think Alex is more of an Info whore if you ask me. His news is cheap, dirty and, when it comes to facts anyway, scantily clad. Of all the propagandists out there right now, Alex is most likely the worst, which is why his net worth is so much smaller than that of Tucker Carlson, another popular propagandist. Alex is not taken seriously in most serious media circles; he is used as a kind of clown for paranoid people to listen to so that the main news stories do not have to be too weird. He is also the main reason that Donald Trump ever became president. Had Jones never endorsed Trump, using several conspiracy theories about Hilary Clinton being a pedophile to do so, Trump would have never become the violent authoritarian dictator he eventually came to be; he simply would not have had the votes. When I first returned to reality, I frantically tried to warn people about this info whore you all call Alex Jones. I described in great detail how dangerous he was, not because he made sense, but because he believed in what he was saying or at least he believes in the real harm that the things he says will cause. People often look at people like Jones and think, "well, there's no need to worry about him; he is clearly crazy and no smart person would ever listen to him." An interesting observation considering that Jones, like his dear friend Joe Rogan (Rogan has had Jones on his show, which I am sure is just a coincidence), has one of the most popular podcasts on the planet. Time and time again people would say, "Alex is just some fringe conspiracy theorist", but all the while Jones gained a substantial following, mostly by appealing to racists and bigots. Jones has railed against what he termed, "the Jewish mafia" (a common term in white supremacists circles), stating that "leftist Jews" showed up in disguise at the racist Unite The Right rally in Virginia in order to cause trouble and discredit white supremacists. "Based in Austin, Texas, Jones boasts a national audience, thanks to his  radio show, which is broadcast on 100 stations nationwide, and his  websites Infowars and Prison Planet, where his many specious claims are  presented, in multimedia format, as “news.” Though platforms, pages, and  channels associated with Jones were banned from prominent social media  platforms in 2018, Infowars continues to maintain a significant reach.  According to the web analytics firm Quantcast, Infowars reached approximately 3.34 million unique readers in February 2020 alone" (ADL). Jones' net worth is five million big ones. How many millionaires do you know? Are they on the "fringe" of society too? Or are they your bosses who tell you what to do every day? I rest my case. Throughout the Trump years and well into the pandemic, Alex Jones has led us all about the nose, toying with our emotions and destroying our health. Meanwhile, it took social media giants almost twenty years to finally ban his content from their platforms. If he reached millions of people in one month of 2020 alone, how many people has Jones reached since he started his ridiculous career in 1999? There is probably no way to know for sure. But one thing we can know for certain is that pretty much nothing this clown says is ever actually true. "In the months since the coronavirus emerged as a public health threat,  Jones has been hawking several products and dietary supplements as  preventative and treatment measures for the virus – despite a lack of  supporting scientific evidence." (ADL) Hm, perhaps he should change the name of the show to Science Wars, if he can afford to keep it on the air after he pays the victims and his lawyers that is. The source for the article read in this episode is NBC; there was no author listed. 

We often hear about the horrors of not having enough education, but it is seldom that we are told the dangers of being over educated. Once you have been deemed "smart" by people you respect, you begin to believe that you know everything, and that it would be unthinkable for you not to have the answer. This is not at all a correct way of thinking about the world. There is no superior knowledge; there are various different perspectives and all of those perspectives are equally valid. But the brown nosing, often referred to as networking, that goes on in intellectual communities can lead a person's supposedly superior brain straight to the gutter. Always remember that those who orchestrate horrible acts of violence such as genocide are some of the smartest people to ever walk the face of the earth. No one forces their way into being a dictator; they simply flatter others until they are able to assume power. The antivaxx and anti-mask movements are perfect examples here. Of course there are antivaxxers who are just stupid (you can turn on the TV and see some idiot yelling at a fast food worker over a mask mandate any time of the day); however, other antivaxxers hold prominent positions in entertainment, academia and politics. These antivaxxers are often ignored or presented as some sort of anomaly, as if this is uncommon. Yet the amount of people who hold PHDs that are antivaxxers (20%) is almost identical to the amount of high school drops outs who are antivaxxers (18%). There is literally no difference. Why? Because too much education makes you arrogant. It makes you believe that you have the answers when you very well may have no idea what you are talking about. Just look at how frequently people retweet or like misinformation. This happens frequently on social media. If these people know so much, if they are so much better than the rest of us, then why do they believe in things that are not even accurate? The supposedly intellectual captains of industry lie all of the time. When I was young, they told us that a bachelor's degree was sufficient. That was a lie. Today, "Your new bachelor's degree is becoming increasingly worthless as more and more people graduate from college, as jobs that used to need only a bachelor's degree now prefer master's degrees". I thought that smart people were supposed to be honest and they may honestly believe that they are correct in telling you that college is the golden ticket, but they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not live in the real world, but in fantasy land where smart people are always rewarded. Well, that is easy to believe if you hang out with a bunch of other people who have been deemed smart who also live in this fantasy land, but that is nothing more than confirmation bias and there is nothing smart about that. But what about money? Are people with college degrees at least earning the money back that they paid for? Of course a person with a college degree who was lucky enough to be hired will tell you, "absolutely, college will make you successful", but again they are simply taking into account their personal experience, not what really goes on in the real world. Here is a quote from the Economist on the subject, "Meanwhile, about 40 percent of U.S. college students don’t actually walk the aisle in four years...Additionally, some “over-educated” graduates get stuck in jobs that don’t actually require a degree." Hm, that sure does not sound like a positive return on investment. The article continues, "The Economist produced its own gauge of how over-educated the job force  is, and noted that more than 25 million U.S. workers — two-thirds of  those with degrees — “are doing work that was mostly done by  non-graduates a half-century ago". I think this is the part where Willy Wonka would say, "So, you went to college for ten years, ended up working at Amazon, and you want to tell me how smart you are? Tell me more..."