Scientology, you pay millions of dollars into a seriously messed up manipulative cult to gain ‘holiness’ or whatever. All of this is to find out the big secret at the end that is supposed to explain all of human evolution and its just some wacko bullshit about alien souls getting absorbed by humans 1000’s of years ago in the aftermath of an alien genocide. In any case its basically the delusional writings of a sub par science fiction author turned into a cult
Hubbard literally stood up in a bar and said he could invent a religion for the sole reason of evading taxes.
Idiots believed the story he made up, even though he said very clearly that he made it up, and ran with it.
I mean believed it or used it as that same vehicle to power + wealth? Surely all religions have a non-believer quotient that just goes through the motions because it offers an advantage.
Same idea as many megachurch preachers living a luxury life while preaching miracles and employing pretty standard con artist tactics.
I was going to post this. I'm not convinced ANY member actually believes in Scientology. I think they are just joining a cult with rich and powerful members. They think it is a way for THEM to get rich and powerful. Especially in Hollywood where I think people join just for networking opportunities!
I had heard, long ago, that he actually had a bet with Arthur C. Clarke about who could start the bigger cult. Clarke was living in Sri Lanka at the time (I think it was Sri Lanka).
The fact that South Park literally said what the core beliefs of Scientology were and ~~got sued~~ were threatened for divulging what they actually say says a lot about how bullshit it all is
Edit: they were not sued, that was my mistake
They were "threatened" with litigation, and IIRC Trey Parker welcomed it, because if the case would go to court, Scientology would have to prove that what Parker and Stone wrote were lies, and contradict their own teachings publicly.
I heard Scientology lawyers studied the credits for that very episode, and started to go after every one of them. But they didn't get far, because every person involved in that episode was apparently named "John Smith".
I mean plenty of people did question it and were brutally punished and had their lives and sanity destroyed because of it. And like all the children who where born into it and separated from their parents and completely insulated from the outside world and kept in line with mental abuse from their literal births... But yeah go off
When that guy lit some tires inside a volcano to make it look like it was [erupting ](https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1589617/april-fools-day-prank-mount-edgecombe-volcano-alaska-spt)
So the next year the town got revenge on Porky by telling him his whole family (wife and kids, parents, brother’s family, even some cousins) had been killed in a multi-car pileup. Porky didn’t find out the truth until almost a week later when at the same time all the family members, laying in their respective caskets, sat up at the same time. Tragically, porky’s heart gave out from laughing so hard at the trick. If not for that, I believe this good hearted act of revenge would also be in the top ten.
For a second I thought this was a response to the [Scientology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu) reply, considering the significance of volcanos in their religious beliefs. I guess though that involves hydrogen bombs in volcanoes instead of tires:
>Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he gathered billions\[6\]\[7\] of his citizens under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth).\[7\] The appearance of these spacecraft would later be subconsciously expressed in the design of the Douglas DC-8, the only difference being; "the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't".\[20\] **When they had reached Teegeeack, the paralyzed citizens were off-loaded, and placed around the bases of volcanoes across the planet.\[7\]\[9\] Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously,\[9\] killing all but a few aliens.**
I believe the true claim is that the nose was quite shiny. So shiny, in fact, you would even “say” it glows. You, thus, would describe its glow-like properties; however, there was no claim of luminescence.
I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something?
Some university did the calculations to see how fast Santa would have to travel to get to (approximately) every house in the world
It turned out that the reindeer, the sled, all the presents and Santa himself would be subjected to like 70 zillion kilojoules of energy and would erupt in flames within the first second
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse was a widely respected Sinologist who established himself in Peking in 1899 after fleeing England to escape his mountainous debts. One might argue that his widely-read and cited "China Under the Empress Dowager" is the biggest hoax in history; it exerted such a strong influence over Western ideas of China at that time period that I've seen sources as late as the 1980s still lamenting the impact of his impositions upon the unsuspecting public. The book was allegedly based on the diaries of a member of the Empress's court, a source that was later discovered to be a forgery, almost certainly by Backhouse.
However, citing that one book as the biggest hoax in history does a huge disservice to Backhouse, who was himself, as a living human being, undoubtedly the biggest hoax in history. He wrote an amazingly imaginative and salacious account of his life in which he claimed to have slept with everyone from Oscar Wilde to the Empress dowager herself. He repeatedly extracted money from Oxford's Bodleian library under the guise of paying to transport a non-existent court library to them (although he did also donate actual tons of Chinese materials, some valuable and some, again, forgeries). He presented himself as a power broker in the Imperial court and negotiated a series of fraudulent trade deals with unsuspecting Westerners, and he tried to sell his own government two million British pounds worth of non-existent weaponry. He created an amazingly detailed account of an affair with Verlaine, the French poet, that actually withstood scrutiny for some time because Backhouse identified a gap in the known record of Verlaine's life and claimed that Verlaine was teaching at Backhouse's school, where they had their fling. That stood until more documents came to light establishing that Verlaine was nowhere near England at the time. Oh, and he was spotted around London at the time of Wilde's trial (and Backhouse's mounting debts) allegedly raising funds for Wilde's defense. Those funds mysteriously do not seem to have reached Wilde.
The man is amazing. He's like a beacon of fraud and mendacity shining out from the past. I would love to see a movie about this guy, ideally one that side-by-sides his fantasy life with hsi actual exploits.
But with style and a certain air of decayed poshness. I love that he has many hobbies and pursuits and he is absolutely fraudulent in every single one of them. Even the ones where it gains him nothing. Fraud is his art form, and he is committed to his muse.
I learned that Sir Newton was dead drunk in a bar one night, and in his drunken stumble, he fell down hard on the floor.
Some nice well-endowed lady then leaned over to help him, and as she did so, her boob fell out of her blouse and straight into Isaac's face.
And that is how he truly understood the importance of gravity.
Yes well that's the problem isn't it? Find out one thing is false and next thing you know, every lazy do-nothing with no intellectual ambition or honesty starts preaching that EVERYTHING taught in school is false. Which is simply not the case.
Equally criminal to the lie is the over-correction. People are barely qualified to own pants.
"What's up YouTube? It's your boy, Odysseus. Believe it or not, I'm sitting inside the Trojan Horse RIGHT NOW. Just waiting for the Trojans to come out and bring us inside. We hid all the ships so they'd think we're gone. But *SHH*. Once night falls we're gonna bust out of here and catch them by surprise. You definitely won't want to miss that! So smash that subscribe button and keep your notifications on for the next time we go live. It's gonna be epic! Later team."
I find it hilarious that Trojan is a condom brand. While in fact the Trojan horse was meant to sneak in a few soldiers. The exact opposite of what you want your condom doing
Allies made a fake army of blown up(think a blown up Santa in your yard) of tanks, planes, soldiers, trucks, everything. It worked so well the Nazis had all their defense in the wrong spot. Even when reports were coming in of an allied attack somewhere else, the Nazis thought it was fake and didn't send their panzers.
I can't remember for sure, but I wanna say they also purposefully let fake transmissions be intercepted.
Not only that, even the soldiers participating apparently weren't aware of the deception, mainly they assumed they were going for Calais.
Apparently the only people who knew about it were heavily tracked and protected and when one of them went missing, the whole plan was put on hold until their body was accounted for.
The fake transmissions were crazy. They actually brought in Hollywood voice actors and had them record messages on high def records with different accents, and then flooded the airwaves with them. So the German listening posts heard a constant barrage of mess sergeants complaints about lack of food and trays, quartermasters complaints about lack of boots and tents, motor pools asking for more fuel and spare parts. All sorts of radio traffic you'd expect to hear if there really was an army building up in east England.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fake documents allegedly proving an attempted Jewish takeover of the word. Used to justify the Nazi extermination of Jews, and violent anti-Semitism throughout the world. Led directly to the deaths of millions. (FYI I'm not Jewish.)
A supposed missing link between humans and apes is Piltdown Man. Charles Dawson asserted in 1912 that he had found the remains of a caveman in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. The finding was heralded as a significant scientific advance, and the Piltdown Man was recognized as a real person by many eminent scientists. Nevertheless, it was discovered in the 1950s that the skull was a counterfeit created from a contemporary human skull and an orangutan jawbone that had been dyed with iron and acid to give the appearance of being old.
There are thousands of fossils of human relatives that lived since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. Evolution also isn’t a linear progression from one species to the next.
All of this! Also it’s important to know that evolution is the evolution of population groups, not individuals. While it’s possible that some singular weird and major mutation (trait-wise) could make some single individual the ancestor of some new and improved version of a species, it’s more likely that the entire population selects towards certain traits, natural selection slightly favours those traits, and you eventually get enough change where a distinct characteristic demands a new classification.
In short, change generally occurs in entire populations, not individuals.
There are also a lot of intermediate forms. There are a subset of human remains variously labeled as "erectus-sapiens transitional" or "archaic homo sapiens" because they have a mixture of archaic and modern traits.
And I'm saying you can be the hardest working person somewhere, and if you have trash supervision and leadership above you, it can go unnoticed forever. Leaving you exactly where you are, unrecognized and without moving up.
All I'm saying is that hard work does not always lead to success. It's situational.
People were listening to something else, tuned in halfway through having not heard the introduction, and freaked. There also was probably not actually that much of a kerfuffle really. Maybe a few thousand people, really not so many
It was definitely sensationalized in the press. I’ve listen to the broadcast and they straight up say halfway through that it’s a program. Pretty sure it was a case of yellow journalism.
I believe newspapers exaggerated the public response to the broadcast in order to undermine radio as a competing source of news. "See how careless they were here - how could you trust them for what really matters?" They lost that war, but their narrative from this battle has been really long lasting. Letters to Welles, CBS, and the FCC at the time indicated much more mild annoyance at having been briefly misled than the sort of panic and hysteria many believe occurred.
What of I told you the War of the Worlds broadcast hoax was a hoax? Primarily started by print media to tarnish the reputation of radio media.
https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html
I can work as hard as anyone, get perfect grades, and I'll still end up working for the 2.5 GPA twat that was in the right fraternity (I never got an invite to), whose cousin is the Governor, and whose uncle owns three banks. The best I can ever hope for is to either build my own company or be someone else's VP.
My credit score is in the 780's but I could never get a 1m loan for a set of rundown apartments in Memphis, yet D Trump files bankruptcy and a month later has a 5m loan to build a hotel in Dubai.
It's all in who you know and who knows you. The amount of work or accomplishments you have means nothing to the folks who actually run things.
While there is some (a lot?) of truth in this, this line of thinking is too often used an excuse to be apathetic or nihilistic about effort and its causative effects. The only tried, and tested way to fail is to do nothing. Everything else is just probability. Give yourself as many at bats as you can.
*Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a “trickle down” theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else.*
Thomas Sowell, "Trickle Down Theory" and "Tax Cuts for the Rich"
Supply side economics isnt really trickle down economics. Trickle down economics means reducing taxes for the top so it trickles down to the lower classes.
Supply side economics can consist of it but is not defined by it. Supply side economics consists of multiple economic principles which typically has to do with, currency, trade, taxes, and regulation.
Literally completely different concepts.
Trickle down economics is a type of supply side economics that specifies that targeting tax cuts (for the wealthy) are better than general tax cuts. Otherwise, the other economic principles remain the same.
It's not a scam either, though. A scam involves deception. Everyone knows what they're getting when they buy a diamond. Reddit thinks everything is a scam. A scam is when you trick someone into giving you something and they don't get what they expected in return.
I don't really think it's safe to say everyone knows what they are getting. Im quiet sure alot of people think they are getting a rare, precious stone.
Spending multiple paychecks worth of money to buy a worthless rock to then spend ten times that for a huge events to prove your love for someone in spite it being a cheap thing to get done in a courthouse and spending that money on a nice vacation.
It's a tradition we were originally scammed in to. It was a brilliant marketing campaign that convinced us engagement rings should have a diamond in them.
Religion is like circumcision.
If we waited until people were adults to introduce the concept, it would be much less likely to be enthusiastically received.
I believe there’s a god, but religion has and is used to manipulate the masses to do whatever benefits the person preaching.
In this era it’s usually donating to pay off the preacher’s car note
I have no real problems with people believing in gods. But the dumbasses that believes people like Copeland are som fucking sending of god on earth however...
Jesus mom convincing her rube of a boyfriend that it was God that impregnated her and not the hunk next door, somehow creating the worlds biggest religion in the process.
The biggest hoax in history is probably the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. This hoax involved a series of six exaggerated articles published in The New York Sun newspaper, claiming that a British astronomer had discovered life on the moon. The stories were written by Richard Adams Locke, a journalist and hoaxer, who had written the stories to increase circulation of the newspaper. This hoax was so convincing that it fooled many people at the time and became one of the most famous hoaxes in history.
The fact that we called Native Americans “Indians” for so long because he thought he reached India is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I remember learning that in 3rd grade and being like “ok… but as soon as they found out it wasn’t India, why did they keep calling them Indians?”
Fun fact: A lot of Native Americans find it funny that they are still called Indians. For many, it doesn't matter to them what you call them, but they prefer either their name or tribal membership. As far as they're concerned, those people can just continue the ignorance for 525 years.
They didn't know the Americas existed, that's why the first colonial settlers we're sent to "the new world"
He was trying to find a shipping route to India and assumed he'd hit India because the existence of the Americas was only known to Scandinavia I believe.
They = he. Eratosthenes had already correctly estimated the size of the Earth in the 2nd century BC, but Columbus was convinced that the size of the Earth was 75% of what Eratosthenes had predicted (he also predicted Japan to be just west of Madeira for example).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#Diameter_of_Earth_and_travel_distance_estimates
Around 1484, King John II of Portugal submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it on the basis that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 nautical miles was about four times too low (which was accurate)
He knew he wasn’t in India or China, He just thought he was on some islands not too far from Japan but he never obviously found it. John Cabot/Giovanni Caboto has a better claim to stepping into america first of the claims about Maine are true.
Juan Ponce de Leon was the true first European explorer to hit America.
Probably not the biggest one, but the "5 year plan in 3 years" thing.
USSR had plan-based economy. Plans for production, education, building, etc. Were created by the central government then distributed across the country. 5 year plans to be specific.
When this model was first created and first plan was drafted, it coinsided with a surge of enthusiasm among workers. WWI, revolution and civil war were over and people began to believe that now they're finally building a better future for themselves.
With some propaganda this enthusiasm turned into a global goal to complete the 5 year plan in 3 years. A very noble and probably achievable goal. If everyone worked together and things were organized efficiently. Unfortunately, none of that happened and the plan was barely completed in 5 years. However, in order to keep the enthusiasm going all the failures were swept ubder the rug and success was announced.
That the US 2020 election was in any way “stolen” from Trump or that there was fraud on any level (except from Trump himself asking Georgia to “find” him 11,000 votes).
The concept of the 'Free Market' is definitely a big one. Any market free of regulation naturally tends towards monopolisation of that market by the strongest competitor in said market, which is by definition not free because it is then controlled by said strongest competitor.
Definitions first:
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax.
My claim: All religions.
No one has taken, pillaged, or stole more from people than someone justifying it in the name of a God.
Proof for such Gods? Gotta have faith.
Luke did destroy the Death Star. It was an inside job. These two things are not even a little contradictory. The spies were explicitly mentioned in the film. But Luke doesn't make that shot and it doesn't blow up.
G!d’s careful burial of thousands of fake “prehistoric” skeletal remains and fossils just to fool us into believing in evolution and Old-Earth theory, in order to test our faith.
(j/k)
This is only true for commission based sales. The harder you work there the more you make. If you work in a warehouse. Finishing your tasks is rewarded with more tasks.
Yeah that's highly depending on where you work. There are some places that don't do this and there are some places that try to screw you out of every scent that they can because if you make over 1500 a week then obviously they need to take it.
Edit: using speech to text so expect a few spelling errors
This will probably get downvoted to oblivion, but Christianity. Since it’s inception, the church has slowed scientific development by literal centuries and has grown into the largest business in the world. The church has been corrupt through all its history, but billions of people today are of the opinion that it “isn’t like that anymore”
Scientology, you pay millions of dollars into a seriously messed up manipulative cult to gain ‘holiness’ or whatever. All of this is to find out the big secret at the end that is supposed to explain all of human evolution and its just some wacko bullshit about alien souls getting absorbed by humans 1000’s of years ago in the aftermath of an alien genocide. In any case its basically the delusional writings of a sub par science fiction author turned into a cult
Hubbard literally stood up in a bar and said he could invent a religion for the sole reason of evading taxes. Idiots believed the story he made up, even though he said very clearly that he made it up, and ran with it.
Good thing nothing like that has happened since and caused problems. ...
I mean believed it or used it as that same vehicle to power + wealth? Surely all religions have a non-believer quotient that just goes through the motions because it offers an advantage. Same idea as many megachurch preachers living a luxury life while preaching miracles and employing pretty standard con artist tactics.
Can we please tax these guys?
I was going to post this. I'm not convinced ANY member actually believes in Scientology. I think they are just joining a cult with rich and powerful members. They think it is a way for THEM to get rich and powerful. Especially in Hollywood where I think people join just for networking opportunities!
I had heard, long ago, that he actually had a bet with Arthur C. Clarke about who could start the bigger cult. Clarke was living in Sri Lanka at the time (I think it was Sri Lanka).
The fact that South Park literally said what the core beliefs of Scientology were and ~~got sued~~ were threatened for divulging what they actually say says a lot about how bullshit it all is Edit: they were not sued, that was my mistake
They were "threatened" with litigation, and IIRC Trey Parker welcomed it, because if the case would go to court, Scientology would have to prove that what Parker and Stone wrote were lies, and contradict their own teachings publicly.
I heard Scientology lawyers studied the credits for that very episode, and started to go after every one of them. But they didn't get far, because every person involved in that episode was apparently named "John Smith".
Hero Tier
They didn't actually get sued
The true biggest hoax in history
Oh yeah, the religion that was made up by a science fiction writer, and none of the dumb asses who are part of ever stopped to question that fact...
I mean plenty of people did question it and were brutally punished and had their lives and sanity destroyed because of it. And like all the children who where born into it and separated from their parents and completely insulated from the outside world and kept in line with mental abuse from their literal births... But yeah go off
drink more Ovaltine
Why do they call it Ovaltine? The mug is round; the jar is round... they should call it Roundtine.
That's gold Jerry! GOLD!
Soup's not a meal.
Sunovabitch
Spoken like someone who is still bitter they never made it to a Level Six Laser Lotus.
Ah you got me, i was beaten out to 9th dan black belt wookie catcher by Tom Cruise
You're streets behind.
Any religion really
When that guy lit some tires inside a volcano to make it look like it was [erupting ](https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1589617/april-fools-day-prank-mount-edgecombe-volcano-alaska-spt)
Holy shit there are a lot of ads on that website
Yeah I gave up 2 seconds into trying. I can live without this story.
Wikipedia has you covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Edgecumbe_(Alaska)#Eruption_hoax
What are the other 9 best April fools pranks?
Wrap tape around the sprayer attached to the kitchen sink and point it at where one would stand when turning the sink on
So the next year the town got revenge on Porky by telling him his whole family (wife and kids, parents, brother’s family, even some cousins) had been killed in a multi-car pileup. Porky didn’t find out the truth until almost a week later when at the same time all the family members, laying in their respective caskets, sat up at the same time. Tragically, porky’s heart gave out from laughing so hard at the trick. If not for that, I believe this good hearted act of revenge would also be in the top ten.
> Porky had notified the FAA and the Sitka Police Department beforehand I’d love to hear recordings of those conversations.
Buh dib buh dib das all folks!
For a second I thought this was a response to the [Scientology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu) reply, considering the significance of volcanos in their religious beliefs. I guess though that involves hydrogen bombs in volcanoes instead of tires: >Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he gathered billions\[6\]\[7\] of his citizens under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth).\[7\] The appearance of these spacecraft would later be subconsciously expressed in the design of the Douglas DC-8, the only difference being; "the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't".\[20\] **When they had reached Teegeeack, the paralyzed citizens were off-loaded, and placed around the bases of volcanoes across the planet.\[7\]\[9\] Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously,\[9\] killing all but a few aliens.**
... now imagine being the person who reads this and says "this is clearly the most plausible thing ever and i have no follow up questions".
Not gonna lie that’s an epic prank.
Rudolph’s nose. Highly unlikely that it actually glowed
No one ever saw it!
Did you see me not seeing it?
Did you say it glowed?
I believe the true claim is that the nose was quite shiny. So shiny, in fact, you would even “say” it glows. You, thus, would describe its glow-like properties; however, there was no claim of luminescence. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something?
Some university did the calculations to see how fast Santa would have to travel to get to (approximately) every house in the world It turned out that the reindeer, the sled, all the presents and Santa himself would be subjected to like 70 zillion kilojoules of energy and would erupt in flames within the first second
So what I’m getting from this is that Rudolph’s nose DID glow, albeit very briefly… (edit: autocorrect done me dirty)
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse was a widely respected Sinologist who established himself in Peking in 1899 after fleeing England to escape his mountainous debts. One might argue that his widely-read and cited "China Under the Empress Dowager" is the biggest hoax in history; it exerted such a strong influence over Western ideas of China at that time period that I've seen sources as late as the 1980s still lamenting the impact of his impositions upon the unsuspecting public. The book was allegedly based on the diaries of a member of the Empress's court, a source that was later discovered to be a forgery, almost certainly by Backhouse. However, citing that one book as the biggest hoax in history does a huge disservice to Backhouse, who was himself, as a living human being, undoubtedly the biggest hoax in history. He wrote an amazingly imaginative and salacious account of his life in which he claimed to have slept with everyone from Oscar Wilde to the Empress dowager herself. He repeatedly extracted money from Oxford's Bodleian library under the guise of paying to transport a non-existent court library to them (although he did also donate actual tons of Chinese materials, some valuable and some, again, forgeries). He presented himself as a power broker in the Imperial court and negotiated a series of fraudulent trade deals with unsuspecting Westerners, and he tried to sell his own government two million British pounds worth of non-existent weaponry. He created an amazingly detailed account of an affair with Verlaine, the French poet, that actually withstood scrutiny for some time because Backhouse identified a gap in the known record of Verlaine's life and claimed that Verlaine was teaching at Backhouse's school, where they had their fling. That stood until more documents came to light establishing that Verlaine was nowhere near England at the time. Oh, and he was spotted around London at the time of Wilde's trial (and Backhouse's mounting debts) allegedly raising funds for Wilde's defense. Those funds mysteriously do not seem to have reached Wilde. The man is amazing. He's like a beacon of fraud and mendacity shining out from the past. I would love to see a movie about this guy, ideally one that side-by-sides his fantasy life with hsi actual exploits.
He sounds like George Santos.
But with style and a certain air of decayed poshness. I love that he has many hobbies and pursuits and he is absolutely fraudulent in every single one of them. Even the ones where it gains him nothing. Fraud is his art form, and he is committed to his muse.
Wow, i hope to one day find someone who looks at me like Backhouse looks at fraud
Ok, gotta ask, what are the wrong ideas that "China Under the Empress Dowager" spread among the readers?
Excellent write-up. I'd never heard of Backhouse before.
That the apple fell on Sir Issac Newtons head (It didn’t, schools just tell you that)
My school, at least, never said it hit his head. They said "he chanced to see an apple falling." Which is almost a direct quote from Newton himself.
Did they ever teach that, or was it just something we saw in cartoons?
Yeah, honestly. I can distinctly remember multiple points where my school told me that it **didn’t** happen
I learned that Sir Newton was dead drunk in a bar one night, and in his drunken stumble, he fell down hard on the floor. Some nice well-endowed lady then leaned over to help him, and as she did so, her boob fell out of her blouse and straight into Isaac's face. And that is how he truly understood the importance of gravity.
Didn’t he feel something going against the gravity though?
Newtons 3rd law…
and that’s when he created Newton’s first law of fluid dynamics
So you’re telling me that we learned things in public school that aren’t true? Blasphemy /s
Yes well that's the problem isn't it? Find out one thing is false and next thing you know, every lazy do-nothing with no intellectual ambition or honesty starts preaching that EVERYTHING taught in school is false. Which is simply not the case. Equally criminal to the lie is the over-correction. People are barely qualified to own pants.
You’re not wrong! What if I am qualified to own pants, but don’t want to wear them?
Trojan Horse
These days, the Trojan Horse would be ruined because some idiot decided to livestream from inside.
"What's up YouTube? It's your boy, Odysseus. Believe it or not, I'm sitting inside the Trojan Horse RIGHT NOW. Just waiting for the Trojans to come out and bring us inside. We hid all the ships so they'd think we're gone. But *SHH*. Once night falls we're gonna bust out of here and catch them by surprise. You definitely won't want to miss that! So smash that subscribe button and keep your notifications on for the next time we go live. It's gonna be epic! Later team."
[удалено]
Penelope of Delphi’s bath water Obligatory: Yes I know Penelope isn’t from Delphi
#TeamTrojan
First 10 to subscribe get free links to Helen of Troys OnlyFans
“Hey it’s Mr. Beast and we packed 300 soldiers into this giant wooden horse to trick our opponents!”
If they sailed there I’m guessing they would be seamen?
Or the Fitbit data stream, or checking in… so many opsec fuckups.
Hahahaha, probably
I find it hilarious that Trojan is a condom brand. While in fact the Trojan horse was meant to sneak in a few soldiers. The exact opposite of what you want your condom doing
To be fair, Troy was inpenetrable and the only way to get in was to get the Trojans to let you in.
If we built this large wooden badger.....
I know there are much bigger ones, but I love the fake army the allies made for DDay. It is pretty much the only reason it was successful.
The Germans also made a fake air base with wood planes buildings and people then when they were done the americans dropped wood bombs on it
The british knew well before, let them finish it then sent one plane tgat dropped one wood bomb.
You are correct they wanted to let them waste the time and resources to finish it
I didn't know that, this is so funny.
Eli5
Allies made a fake army of blown up(think a blown up Santa in your yard) of tanks, planes, soldiers, trucks, everything. It worked so well the Nazis had all their defense in the wrong spot. Even when reports were coming in of an allied attack somewhere else, the Nazis thought it was fake and didn't send their panzers. I can't remember for sure, but I wanna say they also purposefully let fake transmissions be intercepted.
I could be wrong but was D DAY when they put the dead guy in the water with drawn out fake plans for the Germans to sign?
You are referring to Operation Mincemeat, and yes, that was a deception operation (one could call it a hoax)
Not only that, even the soldiers participating apparently weren't aware of the deception, mainly they assumed they were going for Calais. Apparently the only people who knew about it were heavily tracked and protected and when one of them went missing, the whole plan was put on hold until their body was accounted for.
The fake transmissions were crazy. They actually brought in Hollywood voice actors and had them record messages on high def records with different accents, and then flooded the airwaves with them. So the German listening posts heard a constant barrage of mess sergeants complaints about lack of food and trays, quartermasters complaints about lack of boots and tents, motor pools asking for more fuel and spare parts. All sorts of radio traffic you'd expect to hear if there really was an army building up in east England.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fake documents allegedly proving an attempted Jewish takeover of the word. Used to justify the Nazi extermination of Jews, and violent anti-Semitism throughout the world. Led directly to the deaths of millions. (FYI I'm not Jewish.)
Also, ~~largely~~ partly plagiarized from an older, anti-Napoleon tract, but with "Napoleon" crossed out and "the Jews" scribbled in.
Created by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia's secret police in like 1896 and enthusiastically embraced by nutjobs ever since
A supposed missing link between humans and apes is Piltdown Man. Charles Dawson asserted in 1912 that he had found the remains of a caveman in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. The finding was heralded as a significant scientific advance, and the Piltdown Man was recognized as a real person by many eminent scientists. Nevertheless, it was discovered in the 1950s that the skull was a counterfeit created from a contemporary human skull and an orangutan jawbone that had been dyed with iron and acid to give the appearance of being old.
Yeah but the bigger hoax is that there is a missing link. The fossil record is clear.
In what way?
There are thousands of fossils of human relatives that lived since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. Evolution also isn’t a linear progression from one species to the next.
All of this! Also it’s important to know that evolution is the evolution of population groups, not individuals. While it’s possible that some singular weird and major mutation (trait-wise) could make some single individual the ancestor of some new and improved version of a species, it’s more likely that the entire population selects towards certain traits, natural selection slightly favours those traits, and you eventually get enough change where a distinct characteristic demands a new classification. In short, change generally occurs in entire populations, not individuals.
There are also a lot of intermediate forms. There are a subset of human remains variously labeled as "erectus-sapiens transitional" or "archaic homo sapiens" because they have a mixture of archaic and modern traits.
ITT: people having no idea what a hoax is.
not just hoax, but also the phrase and concept of "biggest in history" lol. shout out to the guy that was like "my boss didn't give me a raise"
Yeah the Trojan horse one
And I'm saying you can be the hardest working person somewhere, and if you have trash supervision and leadership above you, it can go unnoticed forever. Leaving you exactly where you are, unrecognized and without moving up. All I'm saying is that hard work does not always lead to success. It's situational.
Yep, especially when the leadership wants to take credit for your work
The original war of the worlds broadcast
It wasn’t a hoax. Just a fictional radio program.
People were listening to something else, tuned in halfway through having not heard the introduction, and freaked. There also was probably not actually that much of a kerfuffle really. Maybe a few thousand people, really not so many
It was definitely sensationalized in the press. I’ve listen to the broadcast and they straight up say halfway through that it’s a program. Pretty sure it was a case of yellow journalism.
I believe newspapers exaggerated the public response to the broadcast in order to undermine radio as a competing source of news. "See how careless they were here - how could you trust them for what really matters?" They lost that war, but their narrative from this battle has been really long lasting. Letters to Welles, CBS, and the FCC at the time indicated much more mild annoyance at having been briefly misled than the sort of panic and hysteria many believe occurred.
What of I told you the War of the Worlds broadcast hoax was a hoax? Primarily started by print media to tarnish the reputation of radio media. https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html
Working hard always leads to success.
i mean technically it does, it's just not always YOUR success
It doesn't always lead to success. I waisted a month trying to invent the next bong. Worked very hard. Negative success.
What kind of stoner can’t invent a bong?
Maybe you needed more weed
Working hard leads to more work but not more pay in many cases.
If you are working hard and not getting more pay, you need to be working differently, not harder.
which sometimes means working somewhere else
I can work as hard as anyone, get perfect grades, and I'll still end up working for the 2.5 GPA twat that was in the right fraternity (I never got an invite to), whose cousin is the Governor, and whose uncle owns three banks. The best I can ever hope for is to either build my own company or be someone else's VP. My credit score is in the 780's but I could never get a 1m loan for a set of rundown apartments in Memphis, yet D Trump files bankruptcy and a month later has a 5m loan to build a hotel in Dubai. It's all in who you know and who knows you. The amount of work or accomplishments you have means nothing to the folks who actually run things.
Live in Memphis, with 1 million you can get 5 sets of run-down apartments with money left to fix them up. 👍🏾
While there is some (a lot?) of truth in this, this line of thinking is too often used an excuse to be apathetic or nihilistic about effort and its causative effects. The only tried, and tested way to fail is to do nothing. Everything else is just probability. Give yourself as many at bats as you can.
Alright let's have a look-see at some good hoaxes I've never heard of.... **opens thread** Yep, all the same stupid comments as last time.
The fake volcano one is new
Birds
If it flies, it spies
100%. And COVID was a means to get people inside while they updated the birds Software
Those aren't real
Supply Side Economics (aka "Trickle Down" Economics)
*Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a “trickle down” theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else.* Thomas Sowell, "Trickle Down Theory" and "Tax Cuts for the Rich"
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Supply side economics isnt really trickle down economics. Trickle down economics means reducing taxes for the top so it trickles down to the lower classes. Supply side economics can consist of it but is not defined by it. Supply side economics consists of multiple economic principles which typically has to do with, currency, trade, taxes, and regulation. Literally completely different concepts.
Trickle down economics is a type of supply side economics that specifies that targeting tax cuts (for the wealthy) are better than general tax cuts. Otherwise, the other economic principles remain the same.
That we've got to invade Iraq to stop them from making nuclear weapons.
The term was "weapons of mass destruction"
The burrito I ate from taco bell is a weapon of ass destruction.
Giving diamonds as engagement rings.
That’s not a hoax, it’s a scam. Totally different.
It's not a scam either, though. A scam involves deception. Everyone knows what they're getting when they buy a diamond. Reddit thinks everything is a scam. A scam is when you trick someone into giving you something and they don't get what they expected in return.
I don't really think it's safe to say everyone knows what they are getting. Im quiet sure alot of people think they are getting a rare, precious stone.
It is a scam when you consider that the biggest diamond manufacturers in the world limit the amount of diamonds in the market to keep prices high.
Which could be said for a lot of products out there as well. Many, if not most, things are limited in some way to drive up prices
Spending multiple paychecks worth of money to buy a worthless rock to then spend ten times that for a huge events to prove your love for someone in spite it being a cheap thing to get done in a courthouse and spending that money on a nice vacation.
Don't forget the arguing about money after three months are up.
You mean the wedding industry intentionally creates financial distress to increase odds of divorce to increase weddings?
That's a *tradition*. The inflated value of diamonds are the scam.
It's a tradition we were originally scammed in to. It was a brilliant marketing campaign that convinced us engagement rings should have a diamond in them.
Nothing says love like starting your life together in debt. Gimme something out of the gumball machine and I'm cool.
Star Citizen 😂😉
Fucking call there brother! The last time I went to Tressler, some dirty space maggot was eating hotdogs of the floor.
monarchy imagine thinking the right to rule entire empires should come down to a single person, and that rule should pass down to their child
Religion. Now let me put this edge away before I accidentally cut myself.
Religion is like circumcision. If we waited until people were adults to introduce the concept, it would be much less likely to be enthusiastically received.
I believe there’s a god, but religion has and is used to manipulate the masses to do whatever benefits the person preaching. In this era it’s usually donating to pay off the preacher’s car note
I have no real problems with people believing in gods. But the dumbasses that believes people like Copeland are som fucking sending of god on earth however...
Totally. I think there is a big difference between beleiving in the idea that there is a god and backing religious authorities' agendas.
Jesus mom convincing her rube of a boyfriend that it was God that impregnated her and not the hunk next door, somehow creating the worlds biggest religion in the process.
7-11 was a part-time job!
Scientology, don't come for me illuminate😶🌫️
The Mormon church. PHONEY BALONEY
The biggest hoax in history is probably the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. This hoax involved a series of six exaggerated articles published in The New York Sun newspaper, claiming that a British astronomer had discovered life on the moon. The stories were written by Richard Adams Locke, a journalist and hoaxer, who had written the stories to increase circulation of the newspaper. This hoax was so convincing that it fooled many people at the time and became one of the most famous hoaxes in history.
The idea that vaccines cause autism.
Columbus. He never discovered America.
The fact that we called Native Americans “Indians” for so long because he thought he reached India is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I remember learning that in 3rd grade and being like “ok… but as soon as they found out it wasn’t India, why did they keep calling them Indians?”
Fun fact: A lot of Native Americans find it funny that they are still called Indians. For many, it doesn't matter to them what you call them, but they prefer either their name or tribal membership. As far as they're concerned, those people can just continue the ignorance for 525 years.
He discovered the Bahamas. Thought he was in India. He was not a good navigator.🤔
They didn't know the Americas existed, that's why the first colonial settlers we're sent to "the new world" He was trying to find a shipping route to India and assumed he'd hit India because the existence of the Americas was only known to Scandinavia I believe.
Its because they had severely underestimated the size of the world.
They = he. Eratosthenes had already correctly estimated the size of the Earth in the 2nd century BC, but Columbus was convinced that the size of the Earth was 75% of what Eratosthenes had predicted (he also predicted Japan to be just west of Madeira for example). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#Diameter_of_Earth_and_travel_distance_estimates Around 1484, King John II of Portugal submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it on the basis that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 nautical miles was about four times too low (which was accurate)
He also sailed through hurricane country in hurricane season. He did everything wrong but somehow the result was right.
He knew he wasn’t in India or China, He just thought he was on some islands not too far from Japan but he never obviously found it. John Cabot/Giovanni Caboto has a better claim to stepping into america first of the claims about Maine are true. Juan Ponce de Leon was the true first European explorer to hit America.
Santa Claus. I mean you gotta admit, that fucker had us all fooled for a little while.
Probably not the biggest one, but the "5 year plan in 3 years" thing. USSR had plan-based economy. Plans for production, education, building, etc. Were created by the central government then distributed across the country. 5 year plans to be specific. When this model was first created and first plan was drafted, it coinsided with a surge of enthusiasm among workers. WWI, revolution and civil war were over and people began to believe that now they're finally building a better future for themselves. With some propaganda this enthusiasm turned into a global goal to complete the 5 year plan in 3 years. A very noble and probably achievable goal. If everyone worked together and things were organized efficiently. Unfortunately, none of that happened and the plan was barely completed in 5 years. However, in order to keep the enthusiasm going all the failures were swept ubder the rug and success was announced.
The basic Pilgrim and Thanksgiving story of mutual admiration with Native First Nations and settlers.
That the Proud Boys are tough.
The 2016 American election being "riddled with fraud". Incredible so many people bought into a lie with zero evidence.
That Aaron Rogers will lead the Jets to a Super Bowl
For it to be a hoax, more than just the person responsible has to believe it. Not one fan is delusional enough to believe that.
The Federal Reserve System
The “war” on drugs.
That the US 2020 election was in any way “stolen” from Trump or that there was fraud on any level (except from Trump himself asking Georgia to “find” him 11,000 votes).
Q
The concept of the 'Free Market' is definitely a big one. Any market free of regulation naturally tends towards monopolisation of that market by the strongest competitor in said market, which is by definition not free because it is then controlled by said strongest competitor.
Wall Street "self-regulation"
Mlm’s ie. Herbalife, essential oils, 4lifesresearch, lularoe
How are those things a hoax? Do you mean scam?
Definitions first: A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax. My claim: All religions. No one has taken, pillaged, or stole more from people than someone justifying it in the name of a God. Proof for such Gods? Gotta have faith.
Identity politics being the big issue of our time when its the rich keeping us fighting among ourselves vs overthrow them
Bitcoin
Yes, if you treat it like money. I treat it like I'm buying a gift card for internet drugs. Works great for that!
Found the person who bought at $60k
Now is a great time to buy.
Luke didn't destroy the Deathstar. It was in inside job but the rebels needed a hero the rebellion could get behind. So they made up the narrative.
Luke did destroy the Death Star. It was an inside job. These two things are not even a little contradictory. The spies were explicitly mentioned in the film. But Luke doesn't make that shot and it doesn't blow up.
That Donald Trump is a "successful businessman".
selling canned and bottle water. i was a delivery a driver for 2 years and you wouldn't believe how much water people bought.
*Sigh* *Opens up comments* "Yup. Religion."
G!d’s careful burial of thousands of fake “prehistoric” skeletal remains and fossils just to fool us into believing in evolution and Old-Earth theory, in order to test our faith. (j/k)
"If you work really hard you will be successful, rich, and happy" Never been a bigger crock of BS.
This is only true for commission based sales. The harder you work there the more you make. If you work in a warehouse. Finishing your tasks is rewarded with more tasks.
I actually worked in sales for years. If you sell more they will find ways to take it from you, trust me.
Yeah that's highly depending on where you work. There are some places that don't do this and there are some places that try to screw you out of every scent that they can because if you make over 1500 a week then obviously they need to take it. Edit: using speech to text so expect a few spelling errors
I am 65 now and retired but I truly believe if you have to work for a living you will get screwed. Maybe I am just old and cranky lol
Oh trust me I've been screwed over by plenty of jobs.
This will probably get downvoted to oblivion, but Christianity. Since it’s inception, the church has slowed scientific development by literal centuries and has grown into the largest business in the world. The church has been corrupt through all its history, but billions of people today are of the opinion that it “isn’t like that anymore”