Essential oils. Homeopathy. Chiropractic. Reiki. Juice cleanses. Perineum sunning. Internet accelerator software. Iridology. Faith healing. Organic food. Oil pulling. Gold plated digital audio cables.
It’s worth noting that gold plated connectors are not snake oil. Gold is a good conductor and doesn’t form a nonconductive oxide layer. That means it’s going to be more durable and won’t corrode together or apart like those old ass sheet metal tube sockets that all need to be cleaned.
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I think you replied to the wrong comment.
I absolutely did. Thanks for that.
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Everything marketed audiophiles, not only gold plated cables, but also anything that uses vacuum tubes because “they sound better”
There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audio world. Especially home theater and home studio setups. I’m a professional audio technician, and some of the “audiophile” setups I have seen are just outright asinine.
Use balanced signal for runs over ~3 feet. Use the cheapest star-quad cable you can get, and the most basic $4 Neutrik connectors. Why? Because that album you’re using to test your “hi-fi” sound system was recorded using exactly that: Cheap ¢30/foot cable and basic Neutrik connectors.
It’s also what concert setups use. You think a concert with six combined miles of cabling is going to be paying $2000 per cable? Fuck no, they’re using the cheap shit (which was hand soldered in bulk at the warehouse workbench by their lowest paid shop tech), to run that million dollar audio system. Their money goes to the speakers, amps, and mixer; Not gold plated wire, robotic soldering, or triple insulated jackets. In double-blind tests, audiophiles can’t hear the difference between a $500 cable and a couple of plasti-dipped coat hangers twisted together.
The people who complain about digital audio also can’t tell the difference in double-blind tests. Because modern audio hardware is able to perfectly emulate old analog gear. Google the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a breakdown of how we can perfectly capture and recreate analog audio with digital equipment. Vacuum tubes were groundbreaking when they were first used. But they had a lot of issues, and have very little relevance in today’s systems. They’re prone to burning out, notoriously fragile, and can be emulated perfectly.
The Norquist-Shannon rate sampling theorem only asserts that for a given maximum frequency, you only need another other given maximum frequency of sampling to represent it.
It does not say you can “perfectly” reproduce a signal. Only that you can reproduce all fourier components of the signal that are below half your sampling rate in frequency. It perfectly does that, yes.
But the signals that only contain a finite number of frequencies all below a certain maximum frequency are abstractions used in signal theory classes for teaching that theorem, and in engineering to hit a “good enough” target, not a “perfect” target.
Any frequencies bouncing around the room at over 22 kHz are lost at least to something using the 44 kHz sampling format.
TL;DR: Norquist-Shannon lets you completely reproduce signals with finite information in them. But real life sound doesn’t have finite information in it.
It’s Nyquist–Shannon. Norquist is taxes.
Also frequencies greater than half the sampling rate aren’t lost they fold into lower frequencies unless filtered out.
But if you think it’s easiser to capture those room acoustics with analog equipment the non linear amplification and distortion of any analog system is going to change the sound just add much if not more then a good digital system.
So yeah both lose or distort the signal but digital does it in avery predictable way that can be accounted for and it does have a frequency region that it captures precisely. Analog doesn’t.
Nyquist, thank you.
aren’t lost they fold into lower frequencies unless filtered out
If by “fold into” you mean they add noise to and hence distort the readings on the lower frequencies, that’s correct. But that just takes it further from a perfect reproduction.
Frequency folding is the term used in DSP no need for quotes. The Nyquist frequency is commonly referred to as the folding frequency.
And yes frequencies above the Nyquist folding frequency alias into lower frequencies. A simple low pass filter prevents this however.
Properly filtered digital sampling produced a more accurate reproduction of the frequency range with less distortion then an analog signal.
Also I used quotes to refer to your words, not to throw shade at a term’s validity. I use quote marks to quote.
If by “x” you mean …
Doesn’t mean the same thing as just randomly surrounding it with quotes in normal use means.
I don’t disagree that there’s noise in analog signals too, limiting their information capacity. But that’s coming from the limitations of our physical implementations’ quality, no?
I agree, but with one caveat.
Fully analog tube amps do definitely produce a warmer/richer sound with less complicated things to go wrong. Artists like them because they are reliable, generally user serviceable, (usually just need to replace bad/old tubes) and makes each recording sound relatively unique.
The thing is, is that it really only works during production. Unless being cut direct to a master record, the sound will get saved in a digital format to produce the user-facing media, which can include digital-source vinyls.
Those products marketed to audiophiles try to take the digitally recorded/archived products to “try” making it sound like the original.
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The Guys podcast has a pretty fun episode about this.
Perineum sunning
I’m sorry WHAT
I’ve not heard of this but I assume it’s irradiating your taint/barse/grundle with sunlight. Although for what purpose is beyond me.
Edit: Wikipedia link
Isn’t showing the sun your grundle purpose enough?
Fair enough.
Organic food is devinetively not snake oil. As you mentioned,Nutrition wise its exactly the same. However, the Environmental Impact is completely different. Organic farming is much better in terms of biodiversity, soil health. Since organic farming doesn’t include the use of pesticides it doesn’t kills everything else that would live on a field. Also, Theres always parts of the pesticides that stay in the crops and that you eat. I don’t know exactly how bad they are, but considering that(at least in Germany) Parkinson is an accepted work related illness for farmers its sure that they aren’t entirely safe for humans. However, we should take into consideration, that farmers get exposed to much higher doses of pesticides. If someone has some articles regarding this topic feel free to share.
This is going to be different country to country, but organic farming can still use pesticides. I posted a link below as well, but organic farming is also not conclusively better for the environment. It has lower yields, and therefore requires more land. You have to balance the effects of converting more land into organic farmland versus the benefit of, for example, less fertilizer runoff.
At the end of the day, “organic” is a marketing term, not a statement of health or ecological benefit. Most complaints about conventional agriculture (and GMOs) are actually complaints about industrialized agriculture as a whole.
I wish there was a good, regulated term for food that was produced with the best known processes (and perhaps there is for specific foods), but “organic” is not it.
I personally think, that the loss in efficiency is worth it, if you don’t have to use pesticides. This also becomes less relevant, when you take into consideration, that we have to move away from eating that much meat(which needs more land), so we have the land to compensate this loss in efficiency.
How do you bundle up organic food with the rest of that ?
At best, organic food offers the same nutritional value as non organic food. At worst, it’s less nutritious and more expensive.
Internet accelerator software is not. Once you use IDM or XDM, you cannot go back to regular single threaded downloading. They are also download managers and provide a ton of useful functions.
Also essential oils are not snake oil. They are infinitely superior to the chemical deodorant crap we are accustomed to using. Although I do not know what purpose you mean by it is snake oil.
When they are talking about essential oils, they are talking about the peddling Karens and Staceys that consume overpriced lavender oil and shit with every meal and also put it into the food of their kids. And then wonder why their kid exhibits sings of certain poisoning and hives.
consume overpriced lavender oil and shit with every meal
Who does this? This does not happen in the East, where essential oils are originally made to use as scent.
Who do you think does it?
Western women apparently seem to consume it, and even make kids consume it, according to some comments in this thread. It is wild to hear something as dumb as this happens. This is akin to rightwingers eating fentanyl to defeat COVID.
It’s the same demographic, don’t worry.
Organic food? Please let me take that out of your list. Organic produce has a huge lot of benefits over industrial, to both the consumer and the environment.
All it takes to qualify for the organic label is a payment to the right industry group.
That’s another thing. That’s organic certification.
You’re fighting for semantics, but the other guy is right here. Organic labeled food and “organic food” can be used interchangeably
Maybe in the US or the EU.
Yep. I’m pretty sure. But we have to distinguish “organic input based produce” v/s regenerative agriculture, which is also “organic”. And there’s a huge gray area in between.
All food is organic. Every bit of it is made of carbon building blocks.
That’s another meaning for the word “organic”.
All food is organic. Unless you have a crop like a chicken (you don’t), you really shouldn’t put any inorganic materials in your body.
That’s another meaning for the word “organic”.
What is
Organic means both chemical compounds that contain carbon and a form of agriculture that complies with certain standarda
Chiropractic
I dunno what shysters you’ve all been going to. My chiro, with his kinesiology degree and full physiotherapy ticket in addition to his nationally-recognized certification, seems to do a lot more “do these stretches and stop sitting stupidly” guidance and reeeeally isn’t interested in a “programme of wellness” grift that my friends in other regions worry about.
Downvotes? What, jealous my guy isn’t an overt shyster quack like the horror stories? I hope when you need them, there’s a good one out there for ya. I’m 30 years on a wicked back injury and I’m still limber so woo!
Chiropractic is literally based on the teachings of a ghost while haunting its founder.
No, really. Look it up.
Hi-resolution audio, especially for streaming. The general idea is that listening to digital audio files that have a greater bit depth and sample rate than CD (24-bit/192Khz vs 16-bit/44.1 KHz) translates to better-sounding audio, but in practice that isn’t the case.
For a detailed breakdown as to why, there’s a great explanation here. But in summary, the format for CDs was so chosen because it covers enough depth and range to cover the full spectrum of human hearing.
So while “hi-res” audio does contain a lot more information (which, incidentally, means it uses up significantly more data/storage space and costs more money), our ears aren’t capable of hearing it in the first place. Certain people may try to argue otherwise based on their own subjective experience, but to that I say “the placebo effect is a helluva drug.”
which, incidentally, means they use up significantly more data/storage space and cost more money
All of this is very true, but this is the only issue I really disagree with here.
I am in an era where a good quality rip of a movie can be almost 50 gigabytes by itself. That means for every terabyte of storage, I can store just 20 of movies of this size.
Don’t even get my started on television series and how big those can balloon to with the same kind of encoding.
An entire collection of FLACs, thousands of albums worth, is still less than 500 gigabytes total, in other words half a terabyte. (My personal collection anyway)
I mean, the average size of one of my FLAC albums is around 200-300 megabytes. Even with the larger “hi-res” FLAC files you’re still not getting as obscenely big as movie and television files.
Sure, it takes up more space than an MP3 or a FLAC properly encoded to CD standards (my preferred choice, for the reasons outlined above), but realistically, the amount of space it takes up compared to those is negligible when compared to other types of media.
Storage and energy to operate storage has become incredibly cheap, especially when you’re dealing with smaller files like this.
This is true, especially if you are storing files locally. However, even compared to “CD quality” FLAC, a 24/192 album is still going to be around three times larger (around 1GB per album) to download. If everyone switched over to streaming hi-res audio tomorrow, there would be a noticeable jump in worldwide Internet traffic.
I’m personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping up over 3x (and even more compared to lossy streaming) for no discernable benefit.
I’m personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping tenfold for no discernable benefit.
An extremely reasonable position to take! Because even if the increase in energy usage is negligible locally, when widespread, those small chunks of energy use add up into a much larger chunk of energy use. Especially when including transferring that over an endless number of networks.
I always talk about this in regards to automobiles and manual roll-up/down windows versus automatic windows. Sure, it’s an extremely small amount of energy to use for automatic windows on a car, but when you add up the energy used on every cars automatic windows through the life of each and every car with automatic windows and suddenly it’s no longer a small number. Very wasteful, imho.
50 GB for a BRD rip is one that is not re-encoded, that’s a straight rip from the disk.
50GB for the simple dual layer discs. You can theoretically reach 100GB with triple layer disks. The largest BDRip I have is 90GB for the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Edit: UHD Blu-ray only supports dual and triple layer disks, not quad. Quad layer discs do exist though, with up to 128GB of capacity.
You use something called VMAF to manage this 50GB problem.
If you can figure out, you just won the lottery. Wasting space is not necessary even for archival purpose.
I’ve always kinda wondered about this. I’m not an audio guy and really can’t tell the difference between most of the standards. That said, I definitely remember tons and tons ‘experts’ telling me that no one can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p TV at typical distance to your couch. And I absolutely could and many of the people I know could. I can also tell the difference between 1080 and 4k, at the same distances.
So I’m curious if there’s just a natural variance in an individual’s ability to hear and audiophiles just have a better than average range that does exceed CD quality?
Similar to this, I can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, but not 60 to 120, yet some people swear they can. Which I believe, I just know that I can’t. Seems like these guidelines are probably more averages, rather than hard biological limits.
It’s a fair question. Human hearing ability is a spectrum like anything else, however when it comes to discerning the difference in audio quality, the vast, vast majority of people cannot reliably tell the difference between high-bitrate lossy and lossless when they do a double blinded test. And that includes audiophiles with equipment worth thousands of dollars.
Of that tiny minority who can consistently distinguish between the two, they generally can only tell by listening very closely for the very particular characteristics of the encoder format, which takes a highly trained ear and a lot of practice.
The blind aspect is important because side-by-side comparisons (be they different audio formats, or 60fps vs 120fps video) are highly unreliable because people will generally subconsciously prefer the one they know is supposed to be better.
I think this is the case where certain people simply can’t see it here the difference.
I collect video game and movie soundtracks and the main difference I can hear between a 320kbps VS a FLAC that’s in the 1000kbps range is not straight up “clarity” in the sense that something like an instrument is “clearer” but rather the spacing and the ability to discern the difference where instruments come from is much better in a Hi-Res file with some decent wired headphones (my pair is $200). All this likey doesn’t matter much though when most users stream via Spotify which sounds worse than my 320kbps locally and people are using Bluetooth headphones at lower bitrates since they don’t have better codec compatibility like aptX and LDAC.
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It’s for all the pets at homes hearing the same audio, now with original insects and birds outside and mice in the walls.
True. There’s something to be said for pleasuring any passing bats who might be in the vicinity.
What genres are your bats listening to?
Goth.
A lot of it will depend on your output device; cheap headphones will wreck audio quality.
I remember the bad old days when .mp3 files for streaming were often 128kbps (or less!); I could absolutely hear audio artifacts on those, and it got significantly worse with lower bitrates. 320kbps though seems to be both fairly small, and I can’t personally tell the difference between that and any lossless formats.
All you really need is the Nyquist frequency of human hearing to know. That’s a good breakdown for audiophiles I’m sure but it is broadly as simple as the Nyquist frequency.
Blue light filter on glasses. When I got my glasses, the lady said they come with blue light filter for free, and I said, “I don’t want that, my job requires that I see colors accurately, so I can’t have any sort of color filter.” She said don’t worry, it doesn’t filter any colors. Ok, then what the fuck is it exactly?
She was just upselling, not actually knowledgeable. They filter some blue spectrum, not the whole color blue.
They literally have no blue light filter in them. It was just marketing snake oil. I don’t even know why they do that. Who would want that in their glasses?
I thought it was a coating, like what they use to filter UV light. I have Theraspecs that do it, but those are sunglasses.
No. Blue light filter is separate from UV filter found on sunglasses and custom specs.
If it’s a UV filter, they should call it a UV filter, not a blue light filter. If it doesn’t filter blue light, then it’s not a blue light filter.
I have a blue light filter on my glasses. I opted in because I sometimes use screens close to bed time for work.
I’m not going to tell you they work better then a placebo, but they work as good as one, and that’s all I need.
They are 100% yellow tinted. Anyone who tells you they don’t block blue light is a liar.
Same here, and I’ve tested it with a blue laser and the lenses block the blue laser almost completely. It’s definitely a benefit to have the blue / UV filter coating on glasses. Another easy test is to walk outside in the bright June sunlight and look around with and without the glasses. The UV filtering reduces eye strain outdoors in the bright sun too, but obviously not as well as sunglasses.
Here’s an expert explaining why they’re a scam: https://www.quora.com/If-blue-light-on-smartphones-causes-macular-degeneration-shouldnt-it-be-illegal/answer/Bill-Otto-5
Hmm wasn’t expecting an actual answer on Quora but I was pleasantly surprised
I practice polyphasic sleep and reducing blue light is pretty important there to avoid messing your circadian rhythm.
The community recomends wearing the orange laser protection glasses, the same ones laser cutter operators use. Because that’s what glasses actually have to look like to filter blue light.
That reminds me of my quora account. One of my answers gets a few views every once in a while and they send me ten notifications about it.
You cannot be serious? Haha
Most devices have a built in “night light” that does it anyway.
Anecdotally, I have two pairs of glasses where one has the filter and the other does not. I experience less eye strain when working at the computer with the filtered glasses. There’s a definite yellow tint to them, but you don’t notice after a while.
However, I 100% believe that it could be the placebo effect, so take from that what you will.
If yours have a yellow tint then at least they actually have a filter. Mine have zero tint whatsoever. (Which is what I want, but they were marketed to me as having blue light filter.)
I’ve worn blue filtered glasses for the past few years and there’s definitely a noticeable tint to them
There are wave lengths that you cannot perceive, like, I don’t know… UV, maybe?
Yes, but that’s called UV, not blue. Blue light filter is a thing, and this was not that.
Chiropractic anything. John Oliver covered it quite well.
I have a couple from the hip actually, because America has grifting baked into it’s soul. In no particular order:
- MMS (Drinkin’ bleach)
- Crystal healing (most sellers)
- WitchTok kits (TikTok influencers selling expensive spices)
- Brain pills
- Any product peddled by a megachurch (see the Baker bucket for a great example)
- Chiropractors
As more of these come to me, I’ll try to expand the list.
Update: I can’t believe I forgot chiros! They turned themselves into a religion at one point to try to dodge medical licensure laws.
I would say that a lot of stuff being peddled through tiktok and Instagram are scams. Those anti-5g dongles come to mind.
Tin foil hats are much better anti5g solution.
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Anti-5g dongles? That’s new for me, but I consume a lot of these grifts secondhand through a few podcasts I listen to. I might be behind.
Sounds like the bones of a good scam are there though, assuming the anti-5G conspiracy still gets traction and clicks.
Edit: Do you know if someone like bigclive got one? He takes those sorts of devices apart a lot to explain them and I’d love to see what’s inside. I just don’t want to pay the money for one to fund the grift.
There is a good few videos on them, it has died down significantly since the whole 5g panic went away. Some of them were just some clear USB keys, some were just stickers. Mr. Whosetheboss did a video on them.
Baker Bucket is a good name for a gravity bong setup.
Any product peddled by a megachurch (see the Baker bucket for a great example)
Some megachurches have sold freeze-dried prepper food. It’s not a grift per se, because it’s perfectly edible freeze dried food, but it’s overpriced for what you’re getting.
You’re right, but I was thinking of the buckets that are basically terrible quality slop that’s borderline inedible.
I might still call it a grift because they’re asking for payment as “donations” to skirt paying taxes on them. That, and like you said, it’s not a great value for what you get. Maybe not pure snake oil, but there’s definitely still enough dishonesty involved imo that I’d be comfortable calling it a grift.
baked into its* soul
Shampoo and conditioner with vitamins in it.
Your hair is dead. It can’t metabolize anything.
I don’t know anything about how it works, but I assumed it was absorbed by the skin on your head not the actual hair.
I still doubt that putting vitamin whatever on your head everyday will actually make a difference
This is correct. It’s about a healthy scalp. Like lotion for your head.
I didn’t know that. I am definitely going to keep this in mind now.
Vitamins yeah that’s no good.
Things like fruit, honey, or flowers must be good though right?
I mean, my wife’s honey pomegranate and hybiscus body scrub must be amazing with all that fruity yummy stuff.
They just smell nice, your skin is dead and you’re not retrieving anything from it. Just eat the fruits and veggies.
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PH numbers in any hair washing/conditioning product that gets rinsed out.
You end up with the PH of the water, people.
Anything sold by Gwyneth Paltrow in her online shop, which I will not name here so as not to promote it. In the best case, goods sold there will be harmless and entirely useless. In the worst case, they will cause serious harm.
AI, particularly in how the likes of microsoft are marketing it to businesses.
Any “quick fix/all-in-one” fitness or nutrition solutions. While there are minute optimizations for elite athletes, 99.99% of the population can adhere to the general consensus of nutrition and health science.
- Do something that gets your heart rate up for at least 30 minutes a day. Speed walk, bike, row, shoot hoops, jump rope, doesn’t matter, just get your heart pumping hard for at least half an hour a day.
- Roughly a third of your food should be fresh leafy greens & veggies. A third should be whole grains and unprocessed starches and sugars like sweet potato and fresh fruit. The final third should be a protein. Lean meat like fish or chicken, or if you’re veg/vegan, beans, tofu, seeds, peas, etc.
- To build strength, general bodyweight exercises combined with stretching is fine for most people. If you wanna get really strong, get a few kettle bells or adjustable dumbells on the used market for $50-$100. You don’t need an expensive fitness club membership or one of those all-in-one $2,000+ fancy machines that mounts on your wall.
- Don’t drink often, don’t smoke, don’t pound stimulants like caffeine or nicotine.
- Brush your teeth well.
- Get 6-8 hours a night of good quality sleep.
- Keep your brain engaged, read, play music, play games, learn a language, etc.
I’m speaking from experience, because I have fallen for stuff over the years that promised fast results and optimal methods with minimal effort. Fact is, unless you’re training for the Olympics or you have very specific heath conditions, those basic bullet points will cover the vast majority if general health and fitness.
I agree with almost everything you said, except I wouldn’t advocate for people including stretching as a regular part of exercise. Despite what people tend to think, there isn’t really evidence to support broad general benefits of stretching. Obviously, if you are a gymnast or another type of athlete with specific needs for range of motion beyond what is “normal”, go for it. It may not hurt, but it is likely a waste of time, and if you are constrained in the amount of time you can spend on exercise, you should spend that time doing things with well established benefits, like weightlifting.
The other thing I want to add on (again cause I agree with what you said) to the diet part is that people probably shouldn’t trust products like Athletic Greens to “count” as their daily vegetables, despite their marketing. I haven’t been able to find good research on it that wasn’t funded by them. Also, just more generally, I’m skeptical of the purported benefits of juice and smoothies. Again, it’s hard to find good studies on it, but much of the benefit of fruit and veggies is in the fiber and resulting delayed digestion, so it stands to reason that the processing removes some of the benefit.
You forgot the big ones.
- Do not watch porn.
- Do not fry your brain with multitasking.
- Do not fry your dopamine receptors with constant binging of social media, YouTube, TV shows, video games.
I am working on fixing myself for almost a year now.
one of those all-in-one $2,000+ fancy machines that mounts on your wall.
Actually about $4000 to start, plus the cost of the weight plates, bars (I prefer Ivanko), Iron Grip dumbbell sets, and so on.
In almost all cases, it’s cheaper to have a gym membership at a decent hardcore gym.
There are a lot of things you simply can’t do with bodyweight alone. And you can’t do it with just a couple kettlebells and adjustable dumbbells either. Having a lot of strength and muscle mass when you’re young is a very strong predictor of health in old age, since past the age of about 40, people just start losing mass and strength; the more you have before that, the better off you are.
I said $2,000+ to encompass even more expensive machines/setups.
I never said bodyweight or a kettlebell set could provide exercises for every possible movement or strength vector.
I said that the vast majority of people don’t need anything more than those to build a healthy level of fitness. And given that the average cost of a gym membership in the US is around $50 per month, after a few months, their used kettle bells or simple dumbell set has already paid for itself.
And weights last basically forever unless they are severely damaged, so zero maintenance cost.
Nothing wrong with going more hardcore if that’s your thing, but that’s not at all necessary to build a solid base of strength and general fitness.
Body weight exercises can build plenty of muscle. You only need specialized muscle targeting once you’re body building. For health body weight exercises are ideal, targeting individual muscles is not as useful to fitness as training many muscles in tandem for common movements.
If you want to get really strong, you might want protein and creatine supplements to speed up your progress, but even that’s not necessary and they only speed things up a little.
VPNs for internet access, at least the way they are advertised
I’m sure plenty of them have nice little deals with the NSA lol
Most of them are owned by one company. The only independent ones are Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN. For the most part, you want to Tor and never sign into anything if you are being ultra private about your browsing.
They don’t give you complete privacy, no. On the other hand, if what you’re concerned about is your workplace seeing that you’re fucking off at work, or a Hollywood studio suing you for pirating a 20 year old television show that isn’t available to buy or stream, well, a VPN is just fine. In regards to piracy, it obfuscates a lot of your internet behavior from your ISP, so they aren’t able to easily track what you’re doing either.
If I was worried about gov’t level threats, Tails, Tor, and public, unsecured WiFi would be the only thing I’d be using.
What about airvpn ?
The Mayers Briggs Type Indicator test. It was developed with the same rigor as horoscopes, yet I still hear people I know are smart proudly tell me their four letter personality code.
Yeah, it’s corporate astrology
Cleanses. You don’t need a cleanse if you have a liver and kidneys, and if you don’t you need dialysis.
Homeopathic remedies
Apple products
I don’t think you understand what “snake oil” means.
Homeopathics, though sometimes even a placebo can have beneficial effects.
Definitely this one, the products are sometimes placed right next to legitimate ones and worse:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-homeopathic-products-1.6254025
Hidden camera reveals some pharmacists recommend homeopathic products to treat kids’ cold and flu
Not really “modern day” snake oil when it was invented in the 1700’s lol.
As long as it continues to be sold on store shelves, it’s modern enough to count.
This is a common misconception of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a measurement issue, not an actual benefit.
Tests are corrupted by using the reposnes and judgement of humans. People will say they had some sort of benefit because of expectations, poor recollection and politeness. It doesn’t mean a benefit was gained. A placebo group allows researchers to quantify how much the placebo effect has on the data they gathered, they can then see if the experiment they did had any effect. Placebo is literally our definition of zero effect.
Anyone telling you placebo is a good thing is wrong, misinformed or deliberately misleading you. In many countries it is illegal for doctors to prescribe ‘placebo treatments’. They will still recommend such things to their patients - not because they work but because they get the patient out the door and less likely to come bother them again.
