Daily conspiracy

[Fake Messiah]

Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested, conspiracy theorists do their thing

Andrew Tate was early to spin the news in his favor, writing on X (formerly Twitter), “The owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has just been arrested in France for failing to censor the truth on his application."

Another conspiracy theory regarding Durov’s arrest concerns the timing of his flights to Azerbaijan and France. Proponents point to the fact that Vladimir Putin was in Azerbaijan at the same time as Durov. Kremlin-controlled media claims that Durov tried to arrange a meeting with Putin which Putin reportedly declined.

Assuming the worst here, theorists claim that Durov voluntarily chose to fly to France to escape Russian retaliation, knowing that his inevitable arrest would provide physical security and buy him time to plan his next move. (Durov is a French citizen with a European Union passport and would prefer European due process to a Russian jail, these theorists claim.)

An offshoot of this theory proposes that European authorities arrested Durov to exert negotiation pressure on Putin. The idea here is that Western governments are presently using their detention of Durov — who has historically cooperated with Putin, such as on his compliant operation of VK, Durov’s Russian version of Facebook — as leverage for geopolitical negotiation with Putin.

For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that Durov’s arrest wasn’t political. Instead, he assures the public that the arrest narrowly relates to an independent investigation involving 12 alleged criminal violations.

https://protos.com/telegram-founder-pave...eir-thing/

[Fake Messiah]

Conspiracies in action: Oregon, which has one of the highest vaccine exemption rates for school children, is having its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years…entirely in the unvaccinated.



Antivaxxers don’t care about children; they’re selfish, ignorant adults forcing children to get preventable diseases.

[zebo-the-fat]

That's child abuse!

[Fake Messiah]

Luis Elizondo's "Imminent" reached #1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list.



https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-selle...onfiction/

[Fake Messiah]

PBS is endorsing an archaeological conspiracy theory by featuring a new documentary that follows "amateur historian" Makis Mataxas on his quest to prove Odysseus existed and is buried on the island of Kefalonia, which he says was Homer's Ithaca.

https://www.pbs.org/show/odysseus-returns/

[Fake Messiah]

So today it's Elon Musk who is creating conspiracies by claiming that a Brazilian judge arranged the election in Brazil along with some former Twitter employees.

He's making claims and asking people on X to provide him with the evidence.

I guess it's the similar situation as what he recently did for the UK.

Brazil Top Court's "Fake" Judge Deliberately Interfered In Election: Elon Musk

Musk said this after de Moraes ordered to block Musk's social media platform X nationwide, following the company's refusal to appoint a legal representative in the country.

"There is growing evidence that fake judge Alexandre engaged in serious, repeated, and deliberate election interference in Brazil's last presidential election," Musk said in a post on X.

"Under Brazilian law, that would mean up to 20 years in prison. And, I'm sorry to say that it appears that some former Twitter employees were complicit in helping him do so. Anyone with examples or evidence to this effect, please reply to this post," Musk said.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with reportedly more than 22 million users.

Musk also cautioned investors from investing in the country. On Saturday he said: "The oppressive regime in Brazil is so afraid of the people learning the truth that they will bankrupt anyone who tries".

The SC judge said that the platform is "enabling the spread of Nazi, racist, fascist, hateful, and anti-democratic speech", particularly ahead of the upcoming elections.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/brazil-t...sk-6467056

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

PBS is endorsing an archaeological conspiracy theory by featuring a new documentary that follows "amateur historian" Makis Mataxas on his quest to prove Odysseus existed and is buried on the island of Kefalonia, which he says was Homer's Ithaca.

https://www.pbs.org/show/odysseus-returns/

Not a conspiracy theory. Not to say it’s true - it could simply turn out to be bad science or pseudoscience.

And I hardly think PBS can be accused of ‘endorsing’ this.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

It is a conspiracy, Bor, and if you watch the "documentary" you hear the usual conspiracy trites:

Metaxas claims that the Greek ministry overseeing archaeology has tried to suppress his claims to maintain the status quo.

Metaxas spends some time explaining how he has been wronged, persecuted, and ridiculed for threatening the monopoly of Big Greek Myth.

He then visits Tzanata tholos tomb, which had been open for tourists but is currently off limits due to what is said to be conservation and restoration work for which Metaxas notes that almost no work has been, but instead he claims that the Greek government and elite archaeologists are conspiring to lock away the tomb to prevent the public from learning that Odysseus was real and buried on Kefalonia so Ithaki can keep collecting Odyssey-themed tourism money.

[Fake Messiah]

Surging Belief in Alien Visitors Is Becoming a Serious Problem For Our Society

This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist.

The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the US, feel they have to respond. The disclosure of information about claimed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs rather than UFOs) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country.

Much of it plays upon familiar anti-elite tropes that both parties have been ready to use, such as the idea that the military and a secretive cabal of private commercial interests are keeping the deep truth about alien visitation hidden. That truth is believed to involve sightings, abductions and reverse-engineered alien technology.

Pentagon disclosure finally began during the early stages of Joe Biden's term of office, but so far there has been nothing to see. Nothing looks like an encounter. Nothing looks close.

Still, the background noise does not go away.

All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.

Actual science finds itself badly outnumbered by entertainment repackaged as factual.

Alien visitation narratives have also repeatedly tried to hijack and overwrite the history and mythology of indigenous people.

The modern alien visitation narrative has not, after all, emerged out of indigenous communities. Quite the opposite. It emerged in part as a way for conspiracy-minded thinkers in a Europe torn apart by racism to "explain" how complex urban civilisations in places like South America could have existed prior to European settlement.

It is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that has real and damaging consequences.

https://www.sciencealert.com/surging-bel...ur-society

[Fake Messiah]

Yes, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But maybe our phones really are listening to us

404 Media, a tech-focused news site, recently got hold of a pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), touting its “Active Listening” software, which targets adverts based on what people say near their device microphones. The presentation doesn’t specify whether this voice data comes from smart TVs, smart speakers, or smartphones but the slide where it extols “the power of voice (and our devices’ microphones)” has a picture of people looking at their phones.

It’s hard to know how widespread the use of this service is, but CMG’s deck lists Facebook, Google and Amazon among its partners – though this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve partnered on this particular technology. Amazon, for its part, has said it has never worked with CMG, and Google removed CMG from its Partners Program after the 404 report. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it is investigating whether CMG has violated its terms of service. While a lot of details remain murky, what’s clear is this: privacy died a long time ago. Nothing is off-limits for some advertisers – there have even been experiments with “targeted dream incubation” in an attempt to brand your dreams. The future is a meticulously personalised, highly targeted nightmare.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ning-to-us