Quackery Binx

MY TRINA 💔💔

You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

Hey btw, this goes for the Panera lemonade thing too. I’m already seeing articles with headlines like “Caffeinated lemonade turns out to contain caffeine”, which is a truly incredible level of spin, seeing as the issue is that Panera fucking killed people. Their products were so deceptively labeled that multiple people who were actively attempting to carefully monitor their caffeine intake still mistakenly drank a lemonade which had more caffeine in it than any energy drink on the market. Do not let a handful of carefully crafted PR one-liners about “underlying conditions” and “what did they think charged meant” turn the narrative on this into a wankfest of victim blamey bullshit. The facts of the case are utterly damning, and the money and effort that Panera is pouring into smearing the victims is as appalling as it is predictable.

My go-to thought before I even look at the article, If the headline is bonkers-sounding, is “if (company) really wasn’t at fault why would they need to further smear the consumer”

If the consumer was the one who made a mistake McDonald’s wouldn’t need to make fun of a four year old’s burns

Because at that point they’re just needlessly rubbing salt in the wound, why would they do that? Answer is they wouldn’t. The only reason they try to smear the consumer is because they fucked up big time and they need as many people on their side as possible

if i’m ever brutally murdered and everyone feels like they need to do something productive in my memory, all i want is for you to pass legislation banning LED headlights in my name. regardless of how irrelevant it is to my murder. it’s relevant to my heart.

babe are you okay you reblogged got that fog in me 11 times

wait, i did? i don't remember doing that...

babe are you okay you reblogged got that fog in me 11 times

wait, i did? i don't remember doing that...

babe are you okay you reblogged got that fog in me 11 times

wait, i did? i don't remember doing that...

babe are you okay you reblogged got that fog in me 11 times

wait, i did? i don't remember doing that...

theres bikes around the city you can rent but you have to use an app that needs your drivers license. theres buses that drive right to your destination, but if you dont have change you need the app. you can wash your car here if you sign into the app. you can go to the bathroom here you just have to unlock it with the app that needs your location on. you can order at this restaurant if you scan the code and download the app. im losing my freaking mind

I got my phone and wallet stolen once and the amount of things I couldn’t fucking do without The App was bonkers. I couldn’t order an Uber or the bus home because no phone or wallet, so I had to walk home based on directions written on a sticky note. I couldn’t do my laundry even though I had change in my apartment because my building’s laundry machines required The App. I couldn’t log into my school email because my school’s email requires two factor authentication and will ONLY take a phone number, not another email address. I had a hard as fuck time getting new cards set up with my bank because in order to do that I needed to log into The App. I couldn’t get any packages that were delivered to me because my building’s locker system was app based. So on and so forth.

We should not have this fucking single point of failure like this.

Scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot scoot scoot scoot

edit: this post is a severely different experience with the sound on

@stlgeekgirl here's the noodle! :D

I remember during puberty talk in 6th grade they handed out permission slips for parents to sign if they didn’t want their kids getting sex ed and like five students ended up having to wait in the library while the rest of us learned about puberty and health stuff.

Afterwards during lunch recess almost everyone in class spent our time telling those five kids what we learned and showing them our handouts.

Cosmic alignment…

Fuck all of the good luck posts out there. Reblog this to immaculate your vibes

"i want more media with zero drama, no tension, and zero problematic characters and i am not joking"

Great! Here are my recommendations:

phineas wasnt kidding when he said “you just wait ten years” !

Sluts can be found in Seattle

Proof

Wait that’s a slug

Not it's the South Lake Union Trolley, or SLUT for short

TUMBLR ATE THE QUALITY NOOOOO