The Questions We Dare Not Ask

Mike Rothschild

This week, a juicy and horrifying story from Vanity Fair portrayed President Trump as a man quickly and graphically spiraling out of alignment with reality.

The story described President Trump as isolating himself behind a wall of Fox News bullshit, consumed by darkness.  At one point, the piece describes a conversation Trump had with Steve Bannon, who described the risks of Trump being removed from office by a majority of the cabinet via the 25th Amendment. As one of the more troubling nuggets in the story claims,

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The Second Shooter Security Blanket

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

A few days ago, I wrote about how the vast majority of the inevitable conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas terrorist attack weren’t worth the time or trouble to debunk.

Naturally, the flow of conspiracies and allegations about the attack has only gotten worse.

Thanks to the totally unfounded “intel” posted on social media by “citizen journalists” who all want you to give them money, the internet has determined what actually happened and what “they” don’t want you to know.

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Debunking Las Vegas Shooting Conspiracy Theories

Mike Rothschild3 Comments

You probably clicked on this thinking you’d find a lengthy, heavily-researched debunking of all of the conspiracy theories and rumors that immediately sprung up after last night’s horrific terrorist attack in Las Vegas.

I bet you were also thinking that once you’ve read it, you’ll be armed with the information you need to face down the legions of trolls, shit-stirrers, cranks, and grief ghouls out there gumming up social media during a time of crisis and mourning.

Unfortunately, you won’t be, because I’m not doing that.

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Trump, the NFL, and the Streisand Effect

Mike Rothschild

In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a photographer taking pictures for an endeavor called the California Coastal Records project. Meant to document the erosion of the state’s beaches, the CCRP took one photo approximately every 500 feet all up and down California’s coast.

One of those pictures showed a particularly ritzy part of the Malibu coast, which happened to house Streisand’s mansion. The picture had been downloaded six times before Streisand’s suit, which alleged that the CCRP had violated her privacy, demanded the image be suppressed. The publicity brought by the suit brought a massive spotlight to the image, and it was downloaded nearly half-a-million times over the next month. In attempting to erase the image, Streisand brought it far more attention than it ever would have had otherwise.

This “Streisand Effect” is now cited whenever an attempt to stamp out information only makes that information more available.

Over the weekend, President Trump employed a version of the Streisand Effect to bring a massive spotlight to something that, before, had almost totally faded away from the public eye: NFL players taking a knee during the singing of the National Anthem.

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21st Century Conspiracy Theories #1: Apocalypse Meh

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

A great comet descends from the heavens and smashes into the Earth, at the same time as nuclear missiles leave the safety of their launch tubes and begin their journey skyward. Sickness ravages the people, while the world economy collapses and money becomes worthless. Meanwhile, great religious feasts of different faiths line up, while the planets themselves intricately dance together in a column starting at the Earth and ending at a distant galaxy.

The world heaves and thrashes. Billions die. Leaders turn on their people. Society destroys itself and descends into anarchy. And the survivors live in a burned-out husk, stripped of their livelihood and freedom, unless they had the good sense to listen to prophets and prep for the end times.

Some or all of this is what’s forecast to come down from God when the world ends on September 23, 2017.

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