What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
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    18 hours ago

    I got another one. It bugs me when people say that it’s not possible for two dark haired people to produce a blonde child. These people think they’re so smart because they know genetics exist. But if they learned anything about genetics at all, very basic punnet square genetics you learn in highschool biology explains why it’s not only possible but pretty common. If both dark haired parents are carriers for the blonde gene, there is a 25% chance of a blonde child. And reality is probably more complex than what I learned in highschool.

    It’s like the stubborn fuckers who refuse to accept the science of sex and gender being any more complex that “penis man vagina woman”. They think they’re so smart for knowing “basic” biology and refuse to fucking learn anything beyond that.

    • CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      There are many genes that affect the color of our hair and skin. Dark colors are caused by higher amounts of melamine in hair/skin. Those darker traits are dominant genes. In the same vein, two black people can have a child that will have lighter skin than them if the parents carry recessive genes and pass them on.

      But it is even more complex than that because there are so many factors that affect the expressivity of genes : the environment, the diet or even other genes.

      And don’t get me started on genre/sex… Biology is sooo complex, and genetics is just one of its branch, but people want to believe it’s simple to justify their bigotry. I studied biology for two years at university and I just know that I know practically nothing about it…

  • thrawn@piefed.social
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    19 hours ago

    The persistent myth that corporations are legally required to act only in the service of shareholders’ financial interests.

    Powerful groups have a vested interest in keeping the myth around, but it doesn’t even pass the smell test— they were more interested in social control with the return to office stuff. Even though productivity is higher and costs are lower with WFH. Even if you argued it served the interest of shareholders as a broad class, without checking for the real estate holdings of the company’s shareholders, they could accidentally assist companies that their shareholders don’t have investments in. Or worse, competing ones.

    It goes further. Why not treat employees better to reduce turnover or improve performance? No, of course not. It is used exclusively to justify immoral actions.

    • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      So a lot of that changed when the law changed that capped ceo salary at $1M. They started getting comp in stock. So of course when they say they only have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders they really mean to themselves.

      Everyone was all yay CEO salaries were out of control so we got them capped. But look at the monster the side effect of that created.

    • Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml
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      8 hours ago

      This is less a misconception and more a lie told to teens to get them to shave their horrible little pube faces.

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Trump was good for the economy.

    During the election this kept being repeated even though the economy collapsed because of his covid response

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      23 hours ago

      thats just pure propaganda spread by MSM in the hopes he would get re-elected. propaganda is more aggressive than Disinformation.

    • oneser@lemmy.zip
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      16 hours ago

      The statement imo is an overreach of the short term financial gains shown as companies are allowed to chase profits via the removal of ethical responsibility (environmental, social, etc.). He IS good for pure profit driven companies. He is not good for anything else.

  • EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Tryptophan makes you sleepy on Thanksgiving.

    Large doses of Tryptophan can make you sleepy, but the amount you get in turkey doesn’t come close. Thanksgiving meals make you sleepy because you eat a huge meal. Eat a huge meal without turkey and you will be tired, eat a normal sized meal with turkey and you won’t be more tired than any other meal.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      23 hours ago

      yup its the insulin/high blood sugar levels that are causing it. its more significant in people who have type 2 or prediabetes. people have reporting sleepiness after a large meal, especially if it includes alot of carbs.

  • Zacryon@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Oh plenty…


    The myth of “alpha wolves” and all the men who build a toxic social and psychological image of themselves and other men because of it, apparently because they would like to live in a zoo and get into conflicts with other men they have never met before or something.

    But seriously, there were some grave errors in how this came to be. This wasn’t observing wolves in their natural environment. There are no “alpha wolves” in nature. The researcher, David Mech, who was in part responsible for this stupidity has been working since then to correct this, but media and society already swallowed the misconception too hard.


    Next one:
    “LLMs are not AI.” Yes, they are. AI is a scientific label for a bunch of methods, algorithms, and models.
    “But they are not ‘intelligent’.” My dear fellow flesh bag, we do not even have a clear definition of what ‘intelligence’ even is. Come up with a good one, then let’s talk about this particular label. Until then, you can rename AI to ‘pesto alfredo’ for all I care as long as we agree what kind of methods we mean by that to categorize a bunch of computer science stuff.

    In the opposite corner:
    “We have achieved AGI with LLMs”. No, we have not. There is still a substantial lack of capabilties and properties.

    Or: “LLMs are sentient and self-aware”. To the best of my knowledge, they are not. To be fair, there is little room for debate, which often boils down to stuff like semantic arguments about consciousness and definitions of understanding, but the consensus is that they are not.


    Another one:
    “Homeopathy cures diseases.” No, it doesn’t. It has a placebo effect but that’s pretty much about it.


    There is more:
    “Evolution theory is just a ‘theory’.” No, it’s a proven set of explanations and models supported by overwhelming empirical evidence. Popular confusion of the colloquial use of the word “theory” with the scientific one.

    Colloquial meaning: a guess, hunch, speculation, or unproven idea.

    Scientific meaning: a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence and capable of being tested and potentially falsified.


    And there is even more, but I have already written a wall of text and am tired now.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    23 hours ago

    "survival of fittest "was not coined by DARWIN, it was by herbert who co-opt his research.

    Chronic lyme does not exist as a disease, and its coined by non-scientist which has snowballed into a large industry(providing questionable testing, LYME DOCTORA) by providing services that is equivalent to pseudoscience AND Belief its in more than 1 country, eventhough its mostly found deer ticks in americas, and not ANY TICK species. people actually went a little crazy with the Rx. basically people have what psyches called, delusional parasitosis, or psychosomatic disorders, i visited these forums and it seems alot of these people have mental illness+ they long term damage from using supplements and plant extracts that are likely somewhat toxic. seems pervasive in the midwest, and what a surprise chronic use of antibiotics from these “lyme doctors” also have cause long term damage. and this pairs with homeopathy/naturopathy/alternative medication.

    Most MSMs prior to trumps 2nd or 1st term is not “liberal leftist” media, none existed for decades. the only 1 i see was a podcast/on a obscure channel and time Demcry now! is the closest thing to be talking even something remotely “left”. every other just fawns over “Fallen soldiers” even cnn did often, plus its significant amount of copaganda show.

    also recently the artemis launch is , and the cold war launches are wildly still believed by asians as faked, and done in by studio. the most common excuse is why "is there wind in space, because the flag is “flapping”…etc. i was actually surprised older asians still widely believe it. during 2019, and currently to.

  • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    That food stamps or any handouts at all are a serious problem. Our (the US) government launches a single bomb that’s worth years of food support. Idgaf if the food stamp recipients never do a damn thing but watch TV. I’d much rather millions of people doing that than bombing brown people half a world away.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Additionally, it’s been proven in scientific study time and time again that giving people enough money to meet their needs significantly reduces crime and costs significantly less money than the “traditional” approach like inflating police budgets. Literally giving people cash money reduces crime better than any other way you could use the money.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        22 hours ago

        then it wont be able to fund MIC, Prison industries, or low wage. thats why they attack or neglect education funding, and drive culture wars to make jobs pay less by providing billionaires more benefits.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The idea of monetary scale is one I think is a big misconception anytime we’re talking about budget. “This committee wasted MILLIONS of dollars on this stupid niche scenario!” Well, yeah; the USA has millions of people in it. If a program affects the entire country, how much are you willing to spend per person? 8 cents?

      • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        Exactly. Budgets on national levels do not compute on a personal level. I like it when articles scale down the numbers to a more individual level “so let’s pretend that the federal government is a single family home…”

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I also find it irritating when politicians brag about bills like “this will create 3000 American jobs.” Seriously, that is not even a drop in the bucket.

          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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            22 hours ago

            only gop ever brag about it after they voted against it, while the majority voted for it and set it into law. thier supporters are just that dumb.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            I also am sick of the sacrificial worship at the altar of “jobs.”

            Jobs doing what? Variably scheduled positions pushing bricks around with a broom for minimum wage and getting laid off 4 months later? Jobs only open to those with a Master’s in lepidopterology? Jobs at Burger King making flame-broiled whoppers wearing paper hats?

            Seemingly the public loses their poop if it means “jobs”, but won’t put enough energy into support outside of jobs, because we have a state mandated religion based solely on exhaustive toil for its own sake, value and results optional.

            Stuff your jobs. Give us healthcare, dammit.

            • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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              23 hours ago

              even fast food jobs dont respond to online ads, like from indeed. i notice if the franchise is employing significant amount of 1 demographic they wont hire anyone else but that demo, especially if your name is not of that demographic.

  • innermachine@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    New cars are reliable.

    First of all, no. Their more complex and failure prone, and you are the guinea pig they test new crap on.

    Second of all, you literally cannot call a one year old vehicle reliable. You do not have enough data to make that claim. My jeep is about 40 years old, and with the 40 year old head start will still out live a brand new jeep. It has no “limp mode” because u slipped out of 4 lo in the woods (actual customer example), and it doesn’t require Internet connection + a security gateway authentication to reset things like limp mode and doing a clutch position relearn. If you want a reliable vehicle get something made between 85 and 05, as long as it doesn’t rust out from underneath you it will give u less headaches than anything made in the last 20 years.

  • wieson@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    That WW1 was the same moral black and white as WW2.
    In my opinion, every country in WW1 was the villain just that one side was impatient enough to be the aggressor first.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Yep, WWI was the result of a bunch of inbred rulers turning family disagreements into a war because they could.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      2 days ago

      Yeah. When you look at how the war even got started, you start to see that Germany didn’t expect Austria-Hungary to be that incompetent diplomatically and that Russia was the one who threw away a potential peace plan before the war started.

      • wieson@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think it is.
        They all were colonial powers that oppressed and subdued their colonial holdings, extracting wealth and even soldiers. France was the only republic, all the others were monarchies and Russia had the most absolutist monarchy. But that doesn’t really factor in, because even France wasn’t fighting to spread or preserve democracy.

        All were fighting to beat them arch enemies, to steal a piece of land or two or maybe a colony and to test their newly developed industrial weaponry. They were all stomping chomping at the bit before it started.

        The German Empire was surely the most militaristic society. But they still fought all for the same ideology and reason.
        To my last point, you can see that in the result: the losers had to gave up colonies but not to independence but to the victors as spoils.

        • oneser@lemmy.zip
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          16 hours ago

          To my primitive understanding the war was triggered by the Austrians, escalated by the Germans and win by the Allies. But I’ve never bothered to question the information, so it felt quite controversial to read. Your other comment explaining it makes perfect sense however.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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    2 days ago

    That Social Security is going to collapse. I’ve been hearing it for literally 50 years. I honestly grew up thinking SS would not be there at retirement, and now I’m collecting it (although I’m not retired). It was a psy-op the whole time, trying to keep workers anxious, and at the grindstone.

    Social Security is literally the easiest problem in DC to fix. All they have to do is raise the income cap. Right now, the cap is $184,500. You pay into Social Security on the first $184,500 of income, and anything over that doesn’t get touched. If you make less than that, then 100% of your income gets tapped for SS. But if you make more, you pay a much tinier percentage of your total income.

    So if SS is looking like a problem, all they have to do is raise the cap. It goes up a bit every year anyway, but there is no reason it can’t be $500,000, or even $1 million. Of course the rich will scream, but they’re always screaming. We have to learn to ignore that as background radiation, nothing to be concerned about.

    Raise the cap enough, and you not only protect Social Security forever, you can give Grandma a nice raise. Doesn’t she deserve it for all those delicious cookies? Or brownies actually, in my Grandma’s case. She made the best homemade brownies, and she cut them BIG!

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      50 years ago was 1976, which was before the 1983 reforms. In 2023, I see a prediction it will run out of trust money by 2035. In 2009, they were predicting the same trust exhaustion in 2037. In 2005, Bush’s campaign warned it would run out by 2042. You’ll notice that these dates keep moving closer and closer as we get more data. There are real structural problems in social security.

      With the cap, social security collected 1,159,984 + 188,399 million dollars in 2024, on the 6.2% + 6.2% tax rate. Medicare with no cap at the 1.45% + 1.45% tax rate collected 441,003 million dollars.

      That implies taxable income for medicare was 14,172,517 million dollars, and for social security it was 10,874,056 million dollars. Completely removing the cap on social security would fix the current shortfall, but leave the structural issues in the program intact. Maybe it would buy us 25 more years. There are still people living today that would pay in more than they can possibly receive back from the system.

      In short, you’re telling the people funding your lifestyle, “Fuck you, I got mine”, then denying that that is what’s happening.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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        1 day ago

        I hear you, that all makes sense, and I’ve been hearing it my entire life. When I was young, Social Security was supposed to end before the 21st Century, and yet, here we are.

        I believe they’ve just been softening us up to accept it when they finally figure out some mechanism to kill it, and they can say “Well, we always said it couldn’t last,” and we’ll say, “Yeah, it was good while it lasted.”

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      23 hours ago

      another one, single or more public option for healthcare cost more, or takes too long to see a doc. not true its almost equal to Insurance provided healthcare in wait times. but the cost is way more significantly higher rather than low cost or free.

      also depends if your using a PUBLIC network with govt subsidized hospitals over a private network that is subsidized by the govt that provides free healthcare to patients.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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        17 hours ago

        Yeah, MAGA likes to scream about all the problems with their health care in Canada or England, but threaten to take it away, and those countries all go nuts.

        It’s unrealistic to expect perfection, but even their imperfect systems are miles ahead of the immoral predatory system we have.

    • oopsgodisdeadmybad@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Orrrr just remove the cap entirely. No reason to give them any happiness at all. Raise the floor above 100k and remove the cap. And then change the rate to say 5x.

      Or even a sliding scale, so the further you are above the floor, the higher rate you pay.

      Over 1 million or so and it gets up to 100%.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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        2 days ago

        I’ve thought of that, but then we miss out on the opportunity to piss them off every time we raise it, and that’s so much fun.

        I love when rich people start screaming that they don’t have enough money, and the poor get all the breaks, and it isn’t fair. Hilarious.

        • oopsgodisdeadmybad@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          Oh I’d rather just drown them in their anger and literally tax them to financial (and in most cases actual) death then keep them around to listen to their torture. I’m actually 1000% ok with making a new law yesterday that just means death sentence for having over a certain amount. Legal to earn only if you can show that you are personally investing billions into infrastructure and public good. To be planned and handled by neutral parties, so you can’t be faking numbers and all that.

          I feel like it’s the reverse of that saying from the Incredibles.

          Once no one is rich, everyone will be.

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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            2 days ago

            Valid perspective, the main point being that it is imperative that we reconfigure our country so that neither society, nor the government serve the needs of the wealthy, the wealthy serve the needs of government and society. The wealthy have no needs, they are wealthy.

            They need to learn that they keep their money at the pleasure of the Citizens, and if they step out of line, or even hint at trouble, the Board of Directors goes to prison, and their entire net worth is confiscated. Do that to a few wealthy families, make them destitute, and have to send their kids to {gasp!} public school, and they’ll learn real quick who they work for.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      23 hours ago

      dems are RIGHT wing asf, the us being the most right country in the west. thats why conservatives can flourish in AMERICA, they cant be too right wing otherwise they end up like russia. schumer, hakeem, slotkin, NEWSOME are right to center right. while bernie and aoc, zohran is mostly to the “left of them”.

      and supporting Israel/ME with military aid makes your party very right wing. an actual left influence is quite small in america, despite the RIGHT constantly drumming up the boogeyman “leftist”

  • MusicSoulEdu@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    That the granny who sued McDonald’s was just upset that her coffee was too hot.

    She suffered from either third or fourth degree burns, on her lap.

    Parts of her were fused together.

    She just wanted McDonald’s to cover the medical bill, but they dragged her name through the mud.

    • elfharm@sh.itjust.works
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      Yep, also they had previously been warned about serving coffee that hot, but studies had shown that serving it that hot meant that people drank less of it. And that “crazy” judgement (2.5 million?) wasn’t a random number. That’s how much they make off coffee in one day.

      • lifeinlarkhall@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah we actually learned very quickly about that in legal studies (high school) way back in 2000s and it was presented like a silly Americans (Australian here) kind of thing, just a quick silly case in a small box in the textbook. Wasn’t til I got older I learned the full story!

        We had an Aussie silly case too, not just picking on the US 😅 ours was about some drink in an opaque bottle and someone drank it all before they could see there was some kind of bug or even a snail in the bottle? Something like that so they sued the drink company 🤢 can’t remember enough about that one to find anything on it!

    • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      This misconception was well paid for. McDonalds and a large group of fortune 500 companies started a slander ad campaign against lawsuits. They literally paid people to write and run stories about “stupid and unjust” lawsuits, claiming the lawsuits wee a waste and of course bringing up this one.

      It worked.

    • Tiral@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I saw that, yeah McDonald’s really tried to blast her as a sue happy bitch. All she asked for was medical bill costs initially which is reasonable.

  • ripcord@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    That all the Y2K preparation stuff was a waste of time / a scam, instead of an example of massive success (people coming together and pulling off something to avoid a disaster)

    • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      These are the people who think the precautions around Covid were unnecessary too. If there hadn’t been any precautions, there would have been a lot more deaths and these same idiots would be asking why nothing was done to prevent it. But instead the death toll was kept to a minimum and these people just assume this is how it woukd have been regardless, no sense of cause and effect. Disasters are successfully mitigated and people assume there was no potential disaster at all. But if it had been allowed to happen, then they’d be asking why no action was taken

    • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      A friend of mine got a high-paying temp job reprogramming servers in some obscure programming language. I think the client was a major bank.

      Yeah, a lot of dirtbags took advantage of Y2K, but that doesn’t mean Y2K wasn’t a serious problem. It easily could have been.

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It easily could have been

        It was a very serious problem.

        Very few dirtbags took advantage of it.

        Obscure language was probably COBOL. Obscure in the sense that it was once immensely popular for business applications, but by the late 90s there were very few new applications written in it, but a huge number of large businesses still ran it.

    • iegod@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      You’re tired of this? Like, you’ve encountered people actively talking about it so much you’re tired? Besides the odd online post, I’ve never met anyone making reference to or talking about this.