Pet Peeve rants.

PatrThom

PatrThom

Cheesy1 said:
"Man, that was a messy one! But I've finally cleaned up the last bit of it and . . . OH COME ON, AGAIN?! MORE?! I know I've said I'm full of shit, but I didn't mean it LITERALLY!"
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You: "Well thank goodness that's all done! My that was an eventful twenty minutes."
You, moving to stand up: "I guess now I can..."
Voice of God: NOT YET
You, sitting back down: "...sit right back down here for a while."
--Patrick
 
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Staff member
I feel like I've posted this before but it came up yet again. Anyone else experience this? I have a few times now.

"I don't watch TV"
"Ok. Great."
"Did you see season x of y?"
"Wait, I thought you just said you don't watch TV"
"I don't. I use my computer to watch the shows on Netflix"
"Soooooooo you watch TV then"
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
figmentPez said:
A pet peeve of mine is bad reporting of health news/studies. I just saw an article claiming that eating vegetarian is healthier because vegetarians had a lower BMI. Aside from the fact that the BMI is a load of bullshit when it comes to measuring health, it's pretty damn obvious where the flaw in their research lies. They compared vegetarians to all people who eat meat freely. Vegetarians are on a restricted diet, quite a few people on meat are on a virtually unrestricted diet. They would have done better to compare vegetarians to people who eat meat, but still have to restrict certain foods, like the gluten intolerant, people with other severe allergies, or who otherwise have difficulty eating whatever suits them. Any time you broadly restrict what can be eaten, and end up forcing someone to eat a smaller variety of food, especially if that requires them to think about what they eat, and often cook themselves instead of just living on fast food, then you're going to have people weigh less.

Next, let's compare people who go rock climbing to all other people, and therefore prove that rock climbing is more healthy than any other type of exercise!
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ARGH! More bad science reporting.

Foodbeast says, "Study Shows Pickled Foods Might Help Minimize Anxiety "

Actual study says, "Decreased social anxiety among young adults who eat fermented foods"

The majority of pickled foods on a supermarket shelf are vinegar preserved and are not fermented. A jar of Vlasic pickles is not fermented. Neither are most jars of green olives, most sauerkraut, etc. If it's not in the refrigerated section, it's probably not fermented, and may not be even then.

This is like taking a study about how grapefruit can interact with some medications, and then making the headline and article about how citrus should be avoided by patients on heart medication.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

figmentPez said:
ARGH! More bad science reporting.

Foodbeast says, "Study Shows Pickled Foods Might Help Minimize Anxiety "

Actual study says, "Decreased social anxiety among young adults who eat fermented foods"

The majority of pickled foods on a supermarket shelf are vinegar preserved and are not fermented. A jar of Vlasic pickles is not fermented. Neither are most jars of green olives, most sauerkraut, etc. If it's not in the refrigerated section, it's probably not fermented, and may not be even then.

This is like taking a study about how grapefruit can interact with some medications, and then making the headline and article about how citrus should be avoided by patients on heart medication.
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Better title: "drink more beer" :p
 
Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

figmentPez said:
I'm torn between liking the joke, and pedantically wanting to explain that beer is not fermented with lacto bacillus and thus contains no probiotics.
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My blunt advice would be, if there's ever a choice between pedantry and something else, choose the other thing. "Hm, I could pedantically explain... Or I could murder this bus full of orphans and kittens."

That would be a bad day to be an orphan or kitten, but it would still be the right thing to do.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Chad Sexington said:
My blunt advice would be, if there's ever a choice between pedantry and something else, choose the other thing. "Hm, I could pedantically explain... Or I could murder this bus full of orphans and kittens."

That would be a bad day to be an orphan or kitten, but it would still be the right thing to do.
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I have an idea for the next Hitman game.

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
figmentPez said:
ARGH! More bad science reporting.
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Still more shitty science reporting. Butterflies remember a mountain that hasn't existed for millenia

So, according to the article, monarch butterflies traveling over Lake Superior make a dogleg to travel around a mountain that used to be in the way of their migratory path, because their genetic memory tells them it's still there. Yeah, nevermind that the Great Lakes have been there since the last ice age, so that's kind of impossible for butterflies to have had the same migratory path since there were mountains in that area. IO9 cites two sources. The first of which is an article on butterfly migration that makes no mention of a change in path over Lake Superior! The second is a novel Amazon lists under fiction.

So, why am I pissed over an article from 2013? Because people are still passing around this shit as true. This stupid post on Tumblr is closing in on 200,000 likes and reblogs, with people commenting that it's blown their minds, and given them a new understanding of how genetic memory may play a role in the world.

This is making my head hurt.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Gruebeard said:
And I feel it's kind of ironic right now that I'm watching 1984.
Instead of government thought control, we're getting it from doubleplus unsmart people.
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These would be the same people who fill in all your missing data for you on Facebook.

"Xxxxxx thinks you work at Yyyy, Inc. Is this correct?"
"You just unfriended Xxxxxx."

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Gruebeard said:
And I feel it's kind of ironic right now that I'm watching 1984.

Instead of government thought control, we're getting it from doubleplus unsmart people.
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For a while I've been wondering if we've replaced "good", "plus good" and "doubleplus good" with "awesome", "amazingly awesome" and "totally amazingly awesome".

There are so many adjectives that have just been reduced down to simply "good". To the point that just saying "it was good" can come across as an insult. Terrific, astounding, mind-blowing, stellar, sublime, illuminating, etc., etc. all very often just mean "good", when used individually. We're so given to hyperbole, that to really compliment something, you've got to throw multiple adjectives at it.

Is having a bigger vocabulary actually any better, if all the words mean the same thing, and they're used all the time, interchangeably?

I mean, it's horrible. Fucking horrible. Totally fucking terrible that hyperbole is so overused that words have lost all meaning!
 
Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

figmentPez said:
For a while I've been wondering if we've replaced "good", "plus good" and "doubleplus good" with "awesome", "amazingly awesome" and "totally amazingly awesome".

There are so many adjectives that have just been reduced down to simply "good". To the point that just saying "it was good" can come across as an insult. Terrific, astounding, mind-blowing, stellar, sublime, illuminating, etc., etc. all very often just mean "good", when used individually. We're so given to hyperbole, that to really compliment something, you've got to throw multiple adjectives at it.

Is having a bigger vocabulary actually any better, if all the words mean the same thing, and they're used all the time, interchangeably?

I mean, it's horrible. Fucking horrible. Totally fucking terrible that hyperbole is so overused that words have lost all meaning!
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You should reread Orwell's essay about newspeak... We haven't done that.
 
Gruebeard

Gruebeard

Well then, call them out here so we can laugh at them . . . although lets first tell our own stories of how we were suckered into believing fake stuff so that our laughter isn't mean.

That story about Subway bread containg some toxic chemical? Dammit, I fell for that.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Yup. I believed the fluoride=dumb progeny thing for about a week.

Also when I was in grade school a friend of mine convinced me he had a holographic projector. I thought it was fantastic but I admit I wanted it to be true SO BAD.

--Patrick
 
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