Category: Manipulation

Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, Manipulation, PsychologyLeave a comment

Why Regulators Can’t Curb Social Media Hype for Weight Loss Drugs

Fernando Kaskais

Online influencers are driving demand for new weight loss drugs. Regulators have limited power to rein them in. BY DARIUS TAHIR & HANNAH NORMAN, KHN SUZETTE ZUENA IS her own best advertisement for weight loss. Zuena, the “founder/visionary” of LH Spa & Rejuvenation in Livingston and Madison, New Jersey, has dropped 30 pounds. Her husband has lost 42 pounds. “We go out a lot,” Zuena said of the pair’s social routine. “People saw us basically shrinking.” They would ask how the couple did it. Her response: point people to her spa and a relatively new type of medication — GLP-1 agonists, a … Continue reading Why Regulators Can’t Curb Social Media Hype for Weight Loss Drugs

Hypocrisy, Manipulation, Media&Culture, Psychology, TechnologyLeave a comment

Honey, I sold the kids

Fernando Kaskais

Photo by martin-dm/Getty We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online? By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, is a British journalist writing on current affairs, the arts and religion, with work published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The New York Times, among others. Formerly based in China and Australia, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York. When it’s dark outside, and the lights are on, I can see straight into my neighbour’s house. It’s a few days before Christmas, and she appears to be performing a mini Broadway show – in her … Continue reading Honey, I sold the kids

Activism, Eco, Hypocrisy, ManipulationLeave a comment

Your ‘Recycled’ Grocery Bag Might Not Have Been Recycled

Fernando Kaskais

Top: In 2015, recycling is sorted at the Sims Municipal Recycling Facility in New York City. Visual: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Recent laws encourage recycling old plastic into new products. But verifying recycled content relies on tricky math. BY IAN MORSE TO JUMPSTART A paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, albeit with lower targets. California now requires that beverage containers be made of 15 … Continue reading Your ‘Recycled’ Grocery Bag Might Not Have Been Recycled

Animals, Health, Manipulation, ScienceLeave a comment

Where went the wolf?

Fernando Kaskais

The very attributes that make small dogs cute and popular are slowly strangling their ability to function as real animals Photo by Richard Clark/Getty By Jessica Pierce, is a bioethicist whose work focuses on human-animal relationships and interconnections between ecosystems and health. She is a faculty affiliate with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Her books include Run, Spot, Run (2016); Unleashing Your Dog (2019) and A Dog’s World (2021), with Marc Bekoff; and Who’s a Good Dog? And How to Be a Better Human (forthcoming, 2023). She  writes the blog All Dogs Go to Heaven for Psychology Today, and is based … Continue reading Where went the wolf?

Big Food, Eco, Manipulation, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

Monsanto and the Struggle Over Scientific Consensus

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: Richard Hamilton Smith/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images In “Glyphosate and the Swirl,” Vincanne Adams explores the history and debate surrounding a potent herbicide. BY COLLEEN WOOD ALMOST 90 percent of scientists believe that genetically modified foods are entirely safe. Yet, just 37 percent of the general public think these foods are safe to eat. Why are so few on board with the scientific consensus? Are they just anti-science? In “Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move,” medical anthropologist Vincanne Adams deciphers competing claims about the history and epidemiological impact of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, the powerful herbicide … Continue reading Monsanto and the Struggle Over Scientific Consensus

Future, Globalization, Living, Manipulation, Politics1 Comment

LIFE IN THE POST-COVID WORLD ORDER

Fernando Kaskais

Dr. Tim Coles, New Dawn Waking Times In Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley wrote that the slaves of the future are happy. Drugged and genetically modified, their personalities are blunted and their bodies and minds configured by a technocracy whose scientists design humans to maximise their outputs for the benefit of the ruling classes. Outside the world of fiction, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is an umbrella of multibillion-dollar, mostly US-based corporations and billionaires; a think tank in which the rulers of the world meet to discuss and try to shape the general direction of the global order. With permanent strikers … Continue reading LIFE IN THE POST-COVID WORLD ORDER

Fascism, Freak Religion, Hypocrisy, Manipulation, PoliticsLeave a comment

An unholy alliance

Fernando Kaskais

Authoritarian leaders who play the religious card are not mere hypocrites. There’s something far more troubling going on Suzanne Schneider is deputy director and core faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She is the author of Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine (2018) and The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism (2021). Viktor Orbán reportedly does not attend church. Benjamin Netanyahu eats at non-kosher restaurants. New York libertine Donald Trump lacks all manner of evident religious virtue. Yet it is a fact that today’s crop of aspiring authoritarians invoke religious themes and … Continue reading An unholy alliance

Big Food, Eco, Health, Living, ManipulationLeave a comment

Risk On: The Dramatic Rise Of Genetically Modified Food

Fernando Kaskais

POSTED BY: CAMILLE SU VIA THE EPOCH TIMES  Technocrat tinkering with life is risky to human life and well being. While skating by the the Department of Agriculture as “substantially equivalent” foods, our human food supply is permanently tainted. The biggest risk is to the human biome and the immune system. Each year large numbers of food items are added to the GLO shelf in supermarkets. ⁃ TN Editor Gene editing has long been primarily used for research, treatment, and disease prevention. Currently, this technology is increasingly being applied to modify agricultural products to create more “perfect” species. More and more … Continue reading Risk On: The Dramatic Rise Of Genetically Modified Food

Health, Manipulation, Science, SexLeave a comment

The blunt scientific truth about transgender women’s athletic ability

Fernando Kaskais

Even after a decade of hormone therapy, trans women are stronger and faster than cis women. KEY TAKEAWAYS Ross Pomeroy Whether or not transgender women should be allowed to participate in sports along with cisgender women has been controversial (to put it mildly), with strong feelings and compelling arguments on both sides of the debate. Those opposed to their participation generally contend that transgender women — who were born as biological males — have an unfair advantage over their cisgendered competitors owing to their earlier development as men, which boosted their physical ability. Those in favor of their participation argue that excluding … Continue reading The blunt scientific truth about transgender women’s athletic ability

Animals, History, Manipulation, PsychologyLeave a comment

Semiotics of dogs

Fernando Kaskais

In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of both human hopes and foibles by Katrina Gulliver, is a historian and writer, whose work has been published in The New Criterion, The Spectator and Reason, among others. She is the author of Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender and Global Modernity Between the Wars (2012), and is now researching a book on cities. Walt Disney’s animated movie Lady and the Tramp (1955) is a telling, through dogs, of a classic human tale. The privileged woman falling for a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. The golden-haired uptown girl … Continue reading Semiotics of dogs