Fake News, #5

• Prior to the wide-spread use of anesthesia, patients requiring amputation were given a tobacco enema until the resulting nicotine poisoning exhausted the patient’s entire neuromuscular system, making them still enough for the surgeon to perform the operation. 

• Slenderman has been DJing at a rave club in Western Manitoba since 1983.

• HTML 6.2, a web technology that will not allow a statement to be posted to the web or used in an e-mail unless it is true, is currently under development at the IANA in Switzerland.

• The state of Minneapolis has more freshwater lakes than the entire country of Canada.

• Howard Hughes, a skilled aviator who conducted secret intelligence missions for the United States, flew his last solo mission for several hours over London, England, wearing no clothing whatsoever. 

• Jupiter’s moon Europa experiences over one hundred tsunamis each year.

• Adolf Hitler’s likeness generates over three million dollars of licensing revenue every year.

• Pink Flamingos get the color in their skin from crustaceans living in industrialized seawater.
   
• Because of lackadaisical product labeling regulations in Minnesota, laundry detergent pods have become a health epidemic by exploding in children’s throats.

• There are four breeds of poultry approved for the production of chicken wings in the United States, a breed each for small, medium, large, and extra-large chicken wings.

• The netting of shellfish and the clubbing of baby seals and other maritime game is forbidden along Jerusalem’s Whaling Wall.

Disclaimer and Terms of Service for “Fake News”

Nothing stated in “Fake News” has been has been discovered, checked, researched, or verified in any way. All “facts” listed here are products of the author’s imagination, and the author is completely indifferent about whether or not these facts are a representation of reality.

If you’re too lazy to read about, or to question, the source of the data that you rely on, and you wind up quoting one of these facts for journalistic work or an academic publication, well, gee, sorry, I guess…

Especially if you live in a Western culture, every day you hear many thousands of cited “facts”, “figures”, and “statistics”. A great deal of the “information” you hear is an agenda-driven, semi-clever, mathematical and semantic marketing manipulation, an outright misstatement, or just pure unadulterated horseshit, as fresh and filthy as the day is long. Normally it’s intended to create a sense of dread, fascination, or urgency. Producing information as an entertainment commodity has become one of the highest-profiting industries in the history of our galaxy.

Don’t you think that, maybe once in a while, you ought to take a step back from it all, try to figure out who’s really saying what, and why? Maybe take a breath, calm down a little? Let the nature of the thing swirl around in your head for a while? Then think about who the stakeholders and who the advertisers are, and what they really care about? And who among them might be trying to sell you snake oil?

I know that at least some of you do.... I sometimes can't help but think the world might be a nicer place if more of us did.