(relatively low stakes, as in like not 9/11 or JFK level)
Mine: plastic straw (and now plastic cutlery) ban initiatives are directly funded by petrochemical companies. Plastic straws are one of the most common and useful types of disposable plastic an average American encounters every day, so banning them causes people a huge inconvenience and tarnishes the idea of other green initiatives (that might have actual teeth) as more nanny state "not allowed to have this"-ery (also has the side effect of making gullible libs think they're actually doing something to help the planet by using a reusable straw while they get their plastic container of meat products)
That's not a conspiracy I'm pretty sure all those things have been like, written about in magazines lol
I mean true but by that standard, pretty much the entire capitalist system could be called a conspiracy
Conspiracies don’t have to be untrue or uncommon knowledge to be conspiracies
But it's not a theory when like, they openly talk about it because the manipulative design is itself a sort of commodity-capital to be sold as a service to stores or used as PR to make their gormless shareholders nod dully and decide that the store is indeed doing enough to extract wealth to feed to them.
Industrial/organizational psychology. It’s basically what evil capitalists study to fuck people up scientifically (reward schemes, temperature of the bullpen, team building, HR bullshit)___
i have a local kroger that has the produce on the left for some reason; i'd be very interested to see how it does in terms of sales compared to all the other ones in the area, which have it on the more traditional right
That's not a conspiricy theory, that's literally the marketing textbooks.
But it's not a conspiracy, it's standard, publically available operating procedure that you learn day 1. If anything it's out of date info. Current methodologies are to priming what a weak willow bark tea is to pharmaceutical grade morphine.
It's like saying cars are secretly not run by steam engines or tiny demons on hamster wheels at all, but by a nefarious "internal combustion engine" in order to benefit petroleum companies. Yeah, it's not wrong.
If you go to any marketing manager, no matter how junior, in the entire world and ask them if they do this (or the equivalent in their sub field), they will go "Yeah, Duh", we started doing this in the 1930s.
For a marketing conspiracy, try...Google operates its services in such a way that businesses that funnel ad dollars to Google (and are in the same tight tech bubble as Google execs) prosper the most and in turn capture the lion's share of consumer money, without the algorithm ever actually being biased in any direct way towards these companies, and with each individual weighting decision seeming entirely reasonable.
You have music playing in your grocery stores..? Also in your Lidls?
There almost always is, sometimes it's just at really low volume, usually Muzak. Older, bigger stores might even have something like this set up. That guy has a few more background music systems he's looked at. It's a pretty interesting bit of history. Lots of engineering went into those things.
They also rearrange the shelf layouts regularly so you can’t learn the layout and get to things quickly without browsing.
OF COURSE, I was wondering why all the supermarkets I visit regularly seem to shuffle things around at least once a year
A lot of wegmans I've been to puts the produce front and center, then beer and paper towels on the extreme ends with butter in like the faaar corner.
Other than that you're pretty accurate.
The way American colleges are set up, their primary purpose isn't higher education, it's to have a kind of holding pen for youngsters to work off some rebellious/revolutionary energy. By the time they graduate, their fire is dimmed and they're drowning in debt too, so they settle into "normal" existence. I don't know how much that's conspiracy and how much that's just a very cynical worldview, but it cracked me up when my mom told me some Russian-American college professors told her that. :V
I would agree with you but I think it's more of a happy by-product of the profit motive that many colleges run under. That is to keep the paying population (students) still paying you're better off keeping them happy and that placation is what leads to the rebellious energy being dampened.
As a Russian American I can 100% see one of us saying that lol
It's also a way for the wealthy to form professional networks while young that will give them infinite advantages in their careers over people who didn't go to the same wealthy-kid schools.
This one literally made me laugh. Like just imagining how funny it would be if he was just really good at faking being blind haha.
there are always varying degrees of blindness. for some people it might mean having some amount of peripheral vision left etc etc.
Holy fuck I thought I was weird for never being hungry until a few hours after I woke up.
i always felt like i was basically forcing myself to eat. i can never get a lunch in at work and that's the only reason i eat breakfast these days otherwise it's icky.
that some Don Draper looking mf probably came up with that sentence in the 60s to sell you fucking fruit loops
You are literally correct, but it was Edward Bernays, one of the people Don Draper's character was inspired by.
https://www.medexpert.com/breakfast-the-power-of-marketing/#:~:text=By%201917%20Lenna%20F.,demand%20for%20Beech%2DNut%20Bacon.
Chance the Rapper is not truly independent, his "no label" gimmick is just part of the marketing and he gets away with not officially having a label via some loophole
It's so weird that the no label thing is a gimmick, its corny but also there's lots of more popular artists that have no label, like Frank Ocean.
Frank hasn't released anything since he got out of his record deal
Exactly! I was prescribed lithium several months ago, but only because I refused the relatively newer, obviously patented shit they tried to get me to take first. They wanted to give me a second-gen anti-psychotic and I had to explain why that wasn't what I needed. They probably would've tried to give me SSRIs too if I hadn't had my psychiatrist call them and tell them I've tried SSRIs and they didn't work. Psych ward psychiatrists are the worst, and I'm so grateful that my psychiatrist is a good person and is willing to stand up for me. I've also been looking into getting an experimental ketamine infusion to treat my depression. The doctor I talked to about that explained that it's "experimental" because ketamine has been around so long that it can't be patented, therefore the pharma companies won't pay to get it FDA approved.
I've heard it has a lot of potential for treating depression. I hope I can afford the treatments, since insurance won't cover it due to the lack of FDA approval.
Anecdotally friends have told me it’s helped their depression. I hope when you find some it works for you. Also heard you don’t need to take it daily to receive the longer term effects.
Yeah the doctor said I could go once a week and after several times, I might not need it anymore. Some people have had permanent improvements in their depression symptoms after only a few sets of treatments.
Addicted to ketamine, I am; drive over people in my 2001 Honda civic, I must.
i accidently cured my depression with it when i was younger. i got a hold of some just regularly enough (like once a month) and never made the connection until years later.
Hmm, bit of a strange one there. On one hand, that straight makes sense, though my SSRIs seem to be doing the trick. On the other given that I'm in a country with free healthcare, free psychiatry (limited, but free) and super cheap meds (like 6 to 12 bucks a month), there isn't much incentive for the docs not to prescribe.
SSRI's didn't work for me, but my psychiatrist used it as a stepping stone, eventually finding one that really really helped me basically to the point of recovering from OCD. I'm luckily not in the Capitalist Dystopia of the USA, but from my research and brief discussions with psychiatrists, it seems SSRIs are a (relatively) safe introductory medicine. I believe it's prescribed more as a placeholder with the added bonus of potentially helping you out maybe.
Yeah that makes sense. Companies responsible for a lot of pollution love scapegoating the general public.
My pet low-stakes conspiracy theory is that libs make it intentionally more difficult for civilians to access non-lethal/less-lethal self defense items so people depend on the police more, giving police departments an excuse to ask for more funding. My state (MA) has some absurd laws about pepper spray. You can buy it from licensed gun dealers, but can't get it through the mail. And anyone who has been hospitalized for mental illness/substance abuse in the past needs a letter from a psychiatrist or psychologist saying they trust them with pepper spray.
If you're a park ranger, they let you carry it for free. Just do that.
The cups you fill laundry detergent into before you dump them into the wash have a fill line twice as large in volume as they need to be.
I operated like this for a period but then my clothes started to be stinky and my mom made fun of me. Just anecdotal
My usual brand changed the cap design recently to one that's twice as big, and I kept the old cap around for reference.
hmmmmmmmmm true mine has milliliter lines and when I fill it according to water hardness etc it's mostly half full
That when Lucas wrote "A New Hope", he never intended for Vader to be Luke's father. He only came up with that idea after the first movie made it big.
Isn't that pretty well-documented though? Especially given when Luke talks to Obi-Wan in RotJ he does that incredible backpedal. "oh uh yeah I said he killed your dad but I meant uh in a greater kinda abstract sense"
I guess? I remember I suggested that once on reddit and the star wars nerds there lost their shit
Vader is literally the German word for father. I doubt that was a coincidence.
Very great idea! But also, wasn't the snow queen also verging on copyright infringement? I heard that was an issue that it was based on some other property (besides the Hans Christian Anderson connection)
Mohamed Nasheed, former first Democratically elected president of the Maldives, was the victim of a military coup funded by international hospitality conglomerates like Marriott and Hilton because he attempted to turn their island dictatorship into a neolib vacation hotspot by allowing ordinary Maldivian people to open and run their own hotels to compete with the massive luxury chains.
Although Mohamed Nasheed is a neolib, he seems like an earnest one who was actually trying to make his island nation less of a hell on Earth to live in. Before he was elected, Maldivians were banned from doing almost anything. They couldn't own a cell phone, they couldn't open a bank account, they couldn't connect to the internet, they couldn't even travel between islands without express permission from the government, which was always denied to prevent any political organizing between the islands. If one island revolted against the military government, the military could focus their efforts there and the other islands would be none the wiser. In fact, when Nasheed """resigned""", Maldivians traveled in boats to the capital city-island of Malé to protest, only to be rounded up en-route by military boats and re-routed to a penal colony island where they were kept until the protests died down.
Since tourism accounts for 30% of the Maldives GDP, and the largest international companies enjoyed special privileges from the pre-Nasheed fundamentalist Sunni military government, such as prohibition of alcohol being lifted only on mega-hotel islands. When Mohamed Nasheed allowed citizens to start their own hotels and started the inter-island national ferry system, he empowered his own people in a way that hurt the profits of these mega chains. These locally owned and run hotels offer the same amenities as the big chains, but cost less than 10% per night. They also have an added cultural exchange element as many of these hotels are staffed by one family that will treat you like their house guest while you're there, sometimes having seafood BBQs together or going night fishing or just talking about what tsunamis are like.
This was hailed by the IMF as an example of an inspiring story where "the free market" improved everyone's, which is kind of true, but mostly due to getting rid of the dictatorship that mega-hotel companies were already cool with in the first place. However, you could tell the mega-hotel chains didn't like it. They began limiting how many people could visit their hotel islands per day, hoping to reduce tourists from local hotels showing up to use the pool and going, "whoa that's crazy, you pay $600 per night here? Yeah my room is like that, but it's just $40 for me and my GF back on Maafushi island." I don't have any internal revenue numbers from these big hotel chains to see if they felt an economic impact from the sudden increase in local competition, but I suspect there was some money lost and the threat was only growing as more Maldivians on more islands started opening more hotels.
This conspiracy theory is based on what a ton of local Maldivian people told me had happened when I was asking around on a few islands.
The official story is Mohammed Nasheed resigned from his job and was then swiftly arrested for "terrorism", but so many people in Male told me the same thing; Nasheed's Vice President, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, arranged a meeting between the top generals in the Maldivian military and Nasheed, where Nasheed believed they were going to be discussing routine business. Instead, he found a resignation letter and pen in front of his seat. At some point, a general put his gun on the table and told Nasheed that he wasn't leaving the room as president of the Maldives, he can only choose the physical condition in which he leaves the room.
Nasheed ended up in a prison on Maafushi Island, ironically the first island where local Maldivians opened hotels under Nasheed's presidency.
The Maldives is something I imagine would be really horrific if I looked into it. Everyone just knows it as the beautiful tourist spot.
It was super hell world before Nasheed, now that Nasheed is gone and the military is back in de facto charge, everyone is waiting for it to go back to hell world as their island nation sinks among rising oceans. They're planning to relocate to Sri Lanka, but still.
No, at least nothing is official, but that's been the talk for a long time since Sri Lanka is just a 30 minute plane ride from the Maldives and has tons of room. Mohamed Nasheed lives in exile there and he is personally planning on buying land in Sri Lanka for Maldivians to move to. https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-maldives-exiled-president-20180417-story.html
idk if the plastic straw ban is a conspiracy, but it's definitely being used to make people feel like they're doing something about plastic pollution when fishing is doing way more damage.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report
A recent study of the “great Pacific garbage patch”, an area of plastic accumulation in the north Pacific, estimated that it contained 42,000 tonnes of megaplastics, of which 86% was fishing nets.
Older source from national geographic
“The interesting piece is that at least half of what they’re finding is not consumer plastics, which are central to much of the current debate, but fishing gear,” says George Leonard, the chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy.
Can't help but notice nobody bothered to eliminate those plastic CAPS yet...
Optometrists will always find something wrong with your eyes so they can sell you glasses. I know it probs isn't true, but I've never been able to shake that feeling.
I have no idea how dental surgery hasn't been socialised in Australia yet. It was my one medical experience that cost me thousands, and it was just to pull some wisdom teeth (something most people have to do at some point). Dentists against the wall?
The story I've heard is that it was lobbied against during the formation of medicare by "big dental" (i'm doing air quotes with my fingers as I type this), I think it was an cth post so hopefully someone from Aus crossed over and can explain further.
Oh no, just found out it was Gough all along!
For real though, looks like "big medical" hated Medicare from day one, doctors and dentists. Gough looked like he picked his battle hoping things would open up in the future.
"hoping things would open up in the future.", 6 years on, no one tell his grave
I did Invisalign with one company but do my cleanings with a dentist who is a family friend. There's been several times where the other company has said I needed some expensive procedure done and when I've gone to the family friend he's laughed and said they're just trying to make money off of me. It really sucks that with so many of these professions that we can't trust them not to take advantage of us.
I've never been to an optometrist but I've seen psychiatrists do shit like that. I have enough knowledge of chemistry/pharmacology that I can explain why I don't need what they want to prescribe, then they realize they can't fuck with me and they start prefacing every sentence with "I might be wrong about this" or "It's just a suggestion" because they know they can't fool me. I can't imagine what people who haven't gone out of their way to learn about that stuff have to experience because of these doctors. It's disturbing that I need to flex about my chemistry knowledge to prevent doctors from giving me expensive meds I don't need.
So, I don't have the book on me because I lent it to someone right before everything fun got cancelled, but I have a book called Torture Taxi about the CIAs rendition flights, and I don't recall there being anything about DIA in there, but it's a great and quick read related to airport fuckery, I'd highly recommend looking it up, it goes into great detail about the CIA used non-existent companies as a front for these privately owned jets, because the CIA A isn't actually a military organization, they're technically "civilian." There's a lot of military activity in Colorado, with the Air Force Base in Colorado Springs (they've had high school marching band state championships there before, fun fact), Rocky Mountain Aresenal, and My Cheyenne. I wouldn't be at all surprised if DIA has some clandestine connection to all that. I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, because I think DIA is really just a good excuse to develop all that land into more endless suburb.
The reason many great artists , writers and musicians etc. Die young or before their time is because we are being observed by a civilization of very powerful aliens who abduct them at the peak of their creative ability, create some sort of tragic death scenario and whisk them away to their home planet for entertainment purposes.
Or we live in a simulation and are all generations of one great machine learning exercise. Those of us who are able to excel above the others are plucked from the machine to be utilized for something outside the machine, perhaps to be sold as little AI hologram keychains in advanced vending machines called "Pocket Rockers" or something. 2 credits and 1 turn is all it takes to get Jimi Hendrix performing personal concerts on demand on your desk, forever and ever. You don't even need to wear pants around pocket Jimi Hendrix, in fact, you can make him look. You can collect other rock stars, too, like Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain. Maybe if you collect them all, they play a special song together that you can enjoy with or without pants.
Yeah they get em at their creative peak. That means they abduct some when they're in their 20's and others much later.
