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The Conspiracy News for July 2019
28 Plays5 years ago
In their monthly news update, Josh and M discuss: the Vatican's missing bodies problem; weird goings in the New Zealand Police Force; why you probably shouldn't congregate near or at Area 51; how the final issue of "The Walking Dead" was covered up; and the White House Summit on Social Media.
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
and learn more about their academic work at:
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Transcript
Opening with Humor and Historical Hoaxes
00:00:00
Speaker
Previously in July's Gone By… It's 2018 and we're talking about the Casca Whiskey Hoax, which is funny if you're both scared of Russians and the Scots. We also talked about my colleagues' latest book and asked why their return to Aotearoa also saw two noted alt-writers Lauren Southern and Stephen Molyneux come
Conspiracy Theories: Coincidence or Design?
00:00:18
Speaker
to visit. Coincidence!
00:00:19
Speaker
or conspiracy. Whoosh! Announced 2017. We have a rather rudely titled episode about that American president we're avoiding talking about. Which is about it, really. Yep. Whoop, whoop. It's the Time Lords in the year of 2016. And what a July it was.
2016 Events and Fictional Conspiracies
00:00:38
Speaker
Brexit, fictional conspiracy theories, the Chilcot Report, Turkish conspiracy theories, and Hillary Clinton in the DNC email hack. The story that launched a thousand conspirachips.
00:00:47
Speaker
Meanwhile, in the relative peace and sanity of 2015, we interviewed Martin Orr, won James F Tracey. Before that unfortunate incident with him and Lenny Posner became
Mysterious Mentions: Nazis, David Icke, and MH17
00:00:58
Speaker
a thing. And we talked with Jack Z Bratich. There's also a bit of Nazi UFO fun with Operation High Jump.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yep, and we're back to the beginning with the year of our Lord 2014. And who is that Lord? Why, it's David Icke, who got his first mention that July. We also talked about the other seminal conspiracy theory of the show, the Downing of Flight MH17, and discussed the old coincidence versus conspiracy thing.
Regular Segments and Patron Contributions
00:01:22
Speaker
But now it is 8pm on July the 18th, and this is The Conspira News.
00:01:37
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Emdenteth. Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. I am Josh Addison sitting next to me, Dr. Emdenteth. It's news time again. We are again at the end of the four-week cycle that we've decided to go by, so it's time for a news update.
00:02:03
Speaker
But before we update the news, we should update our own news. Here's an update basically, but it's not part of the news, which is that we've got a new patron. We do the mysterious TG. These initialised individuals. That's our second mysterious
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, of course, they haven't actually paid the money to be formally named. Oh, I see. So, thus I want to recognise they're contributing, but they become even more mysterious by being initialised and not named. They will not be appearing at any conspiracy. Oh, this of course actually do turn out to appear in an actual conspiracy. It would be quite interesting if we had a patron who was actually implicated in an actual conspiracy. That would be nice. Well, surely you must have been.
00:02:48
Speaker
Well, of course, I've been implicated in conspiracies, but not... I patronise the podcast, but I'm not a patron of the podcast. No, that's true. You do have a point. You have a point. So that's our exciting bit of podcast-related news, meta news of some kind, I suppose. But it's not news news. It's not news news, no. But it's also not Blue's Clothes. No.
Debunking Urban Legends and Vatican Mysteries
00:03:11
Speaker
No, not really a conspir- urban legend about the Blue's Clues guys, wasn't it? Dying of a drug overdose. Not really a conspiracy though. Isn't it not sure? Weren't they covering the fact that he was a cannibal, humanoid, underground dweller? No, they weren't. So I think it's fine. Well then, then that's ruined my whole life existence. So it's time for us to get into the news, I think. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:03:41
Speaker
news news breaking breaking conspiracy theories
00:03:52
Speaker
So one of the most conspiratorial organizations on Earth is the Vatican. And we have Vatican news. Joshua, tell me about some missing corpses. Missing corpses in the Vatican. One of the better headlines that's come out of the last few weeks. So this story popped up a little while ago. It relates to quite an old case.
00:04:15
Speaker
actually, or a very old case going back to the 1830s, but we'll get to that. In 1983, an Italian teenager by the name of Emanuella Orlandi went missing. Now, she was the daughter of a clerk at the Vatican.
00:04:30
Speaker
And apparently at the time it was a bit of a scandal. There was all sorts of theories about exactly what happened to this young woman. Had she been kidnapped by an organised crime gang trying to get some sort of leverage over someone in the Vatican?
00:04:47
Speaker
There was the theory that she'd been abducted to try and release Mehmet al-Aghkar, the Turkish man who tried to kill Pope John Paul the second two years previously. So there are lots of ideas, but she was never found and no one exactly knows what happened to her. But there was a potential break in the case a couple of weeks ago when her family received an anonymous tip.
00:05:11
Speaker
An anonymous tip. An anonymous tip saying that... She just said in 1983. So an anonymous tip. That's quite a long time for a tip to be quiet. It's almost 40 years. It is. And the fact that it was so long, it was essentially taken to being a tip to where to find her remains. There was no real hope. I think that she'd still be alive at this time.
00:05:35
Speaker
But they were told that she could be found in the Teutonic cemetery, which is a burial ground just inside the Vatican. It's been used for church figures and members of noble families of German or Austrian origin, according to my notes. So yes, they received this note. They were told to look where the angel is pointing. Which is a very Dan Brown way of doing things. Are you sure this isn't a plot point from angels and demons?
00:05:59
Speaker
Well, I don't know. I would not be surprised if it turned out to be some sort of weird advanced publicity. But for now, as far as we know, it's genuine. The thing is, things just got even more interesting when they found a tomb in the Teutonic cemetery where there was an angel holding a book or something pointing in the direction of this tomb. So they opened it up and inside they found nothing.
00:06:24
Speaker
Now, that's kind of interesting for the sheer fact that tombs normally contain something, even if it isn't someone who disappeared in 1983. Yes, so not only did it not contain the remains of this missing teenager from 1983,
00:06:41
Speaker
It also did not contain the remains of the two princesses who were supposed to have been buried there. One, Princess Sophie von Hohenler, who died in 1836, and Princess Carlotta Federica of Mecklenburg, who died in 1840. And now I regret the fact that I had sons and not daughters because I did not think to name one of them Princess Carlotta Federica of Mecklenburg. I mean, I still could, deep holes there.
00:07:04
Speaker
And your children could change their names. They could. Like I've changed my name so many times. You certainly have. But anyway, so yes, they were expecting to at the very least find the bones of these two long-dead princesses, but they didn't even find those. And everybody thought, well, this is very weird. How has the Vatican managed to mislay the remains of a couple of European princesses?
00:07:27
Speaker
But there has since been further developments. Recently, some people obviously, while it turned out to not be a lead for this mystery dating back to the 80s, it prompted a mystery of its own. And so then people looked around and realised, well, actually, the Teutonic Sea material did apparently undergo some fairly major renovation.
00:07:49
Speaker
in the 1960s and 70s and so then they thought okay well if that's happened then possibly the remains were moved while renovations were going on and then put back somewhere else and sure enough nearby they found a couple of ossuaries hidden underneath a compartment in the floor or something of some other place in the cemetery and so they're currently DNA testing the bones they found there to see if they are actually the bones of these princesses in which case it will be case closed. So at the time the story first came out
00:08:17
Speaker
It was particularly mysterious and rife for conspiracy theories, bodies going missing from the Vatican, but unfortunately time, the story moved a little too quickly for us and so it looks like it may actually have a more prosaic explanation. Although you do end up having that kind of, so we renovated the cemetery and we could have put the bodies to one side, marked them and then put them back in the tombs.
00:08:40
Speaker
But it was easier to dig a hole and just pour all the bones to one location, because who's going to look inside the tomb of someone who died in 1836? And then someone else, who may or may not be connected to the disappearance of someone who died in 1983, points people towards a tomb which has been renovated but not reoccupied.
00:09:03
Speaker
And we still don't know what happened to M. Minwata? We do not, unfortunately, no. You almost wonder, was it not actually someone who had anything to do with her case, but simply someone who was a little bit annoyed about the shoddy work they did renovating 50 years ago? See, I would be looking.
00:09:23
Speaker
for the people who hold the ancestral seat for these two particular princesses. I think there's a vendetta against whoever did the renovation. Well, because I'm pretty sure they have tracked down relatives. I mean, they would have to be... Yeah, precisely. Yeah, I mean, the ossuaries, as I understand, in this case, with sort of wooden boxes. So it's not like their bones were all chucked into a pile amongst other bones. They were separated out into their own little containers. Boxed, but not in mint condition. No.
00:09:53
Speaker
So an excellent sounding case around an organization who is rife with conspiracies and conspiracy theories, but maybe this particular case not as conspiratorial as it first seemed.
00:10:08
Speaker
All right, then let's move on to the police, the New Zealand police.
Victoria Kirichuk's Allegations and Police Response
00:10:11
Speaker
The New Zealand, yeah. And this actually does seem ever so slightly conspiratorial. Someone who's been pressured by the police force who, yeah, this all sounds a rather dubious. Have you been following this? Because I've only seen the one story which was on the local news site News Hub. I haven't seen much of it elsewhere. I don't know if that's just because other news organisations don't want to acknowledge another company's scoop.
00:10:37
Speaker
Well, except as we've discovered recently, News Hub and the New Zealand Herald seem to like stealing each other's material and then re-presenting it. So maybe the revelations about that a few weeks ago have led to people at the Herald going, nope, we won't touch the story at all, or they're working on their own inside scoop. But yes, tell me about Victoria Karachuk.
00:11:00
Speaker
Victoria Kirichuk is or rather was a police officer in the New Zealand police force. She moved here with her family from Ukraine in 2002, so she's been living here for a decent chunk of time. But her claim is that she was approached and offered a decent chunk of money in order to give confidential police information to an unnamed third party.
00:11:27
Speaker
So her account is that her father was working, was a business partner, an antenna business partner of this fellow called Mikhail Kimich, who's been involved in development things, which I think have been a little bit shady.
00:11:45
Speaker
So she was at a party with her father, this other guy, and other people involved in the adventure. She was approached by someone, and the News Hub article goes to lengths to not name the someone. And when it quotes her directly, it redacts this person's name.
00:12:01
Speaker
presumably means it's been redacted for legal reasons. Yes, we'd assume that either there's a case before and under investigation or they don't want to be done for libel or something. The threat of being sued. Well, nothing has been proven. So basically she said, initially she was approached by someone who just sort of casually was like, so you're a police constable, how much do you make doing that?
00:12:23
Speaker
and she told this person. And then later was then approached and offered essentially three times her pay as a police constable for occasionally giving access to police databases when asked. Now she said no, she refused this. Then apparently a bunch of threats were made against her and her father. She said there are a bunch of threatening phone calls and two cases of an intruder entering their property at night.
00:12:52
Speaker
So she raised this with the police thinking, you know, hey, guys, someone has asked me to compromise your systems. We better do something about that. But she then reckons her complaints were not taken seriously. So she went to the IPCA. The Independent Police Complaints Authority. Right.
00:13:10
Speaker
As opposed to the association of independent police complaints. No. So then the EIPCA referred her complaint back to the police. And then at that point she started getting hassled from within the police force. She said apparently officers who she worked with started making complaints about her, which you reckon is not something that ever happened to her previously. She didn't have a history of that.
00:13:34
Speaker
the police tried to make her have a psychological assessment, which she refused, and eventually she said that her working conditions became such that she felt she had to resign. So this is all still very much underway. It's a bit hard to tell. I assume what they're getting at is that the police didn't like the fact that she sort of went over their heads and went to the IPCA. You sort of... Yeah, so it sounds that what happened is she went to the police,
00:14:02
Speaker
She didn't feel the police took her allegations seriously, and it does sound like her allegations should have been taken seriously at the time.
00:14:12
Speaker
So then she complained to the IPCA about the police conduct, about not taking her complaint seriously, and then they thought she was a snitch. And what do snitches get? Britches? Yes, snitches get britches for stitches. Stitching their britches, that's important.
00:14:36
Speaker
Gotta mend your britches. But not worth his snitches. No, obviously not. Initially, it almost sounded like reading the first couple of paragraphs, it almost sounded like she tried to bring attention to this conspiracy to get at the police force.
00:14:53
Speaker
and then only to be forced out by police officers who were themselves part of the, who were already in on it, but then reading down, it didn't all look like, okay, no, they were just annoyed at her being a snitch rather than there being some conspiracy that goes all the way to the top or something like that.
00:15:09
Speaker
I'm surprised I haven't read more about it, basically. I've read this one article. Given that the main perpetrator, the unnamed individual, is unnamed, maybe there is something going on in the background and other news organisations are going, we're not touching this until such time, there's a judgement.
00:15:28
Speaker
But, I mean, yes, it certainly claims, at least, of what definitely appears to be conspiratorial activity to compromise our police force. Well, yes, because you have to ask, why does this unnamed person want operational details about the police such that the constable in question was uncomfortable about... So, I mean, if the questions were simply, so you know,
00:15:56
Speaker
Where do you work? How much do you earn? Do you enjoy your job? Council will say, well, I work at this station. I enjoy my job. You know, average salary is. But it's also a government position. So salary, the government tells more like the questions were. So how many people work in the station and what time do they go home? Does he?
00:16:18
Speaker
Have it locked up all the time? I think it was more that they were wanting her to access police databases and acquire information that she would then pass back to these people when they asked for it. So corrupt activities. Yeah.
00:16:34
Speaker
Very definitely. And you have to wonder if someone's doing that, they've probably got some greater goal in mind, as opposed to, I just want to know more about number plates. I love number plates. And especially when you're offering someone three times what they paid to do it, they want that information very badly, it would seem.
00:16:53
Speaker
But yes, I mean, it's it's it sounds like it should be a bigger deal than it currently is. But as you say, that could well be just because wheels are in motion and their investigations underway and so on. And nobody wants to report anything definite until the results are known. But that certainly seems to be the the biggest story in conspiracy wise this month. But we have a bunch of smaller but but probably more fun stories,
The Storm Area 51 Phenomenon
00:17:19
Speaker
I think.
00:17:19
Speaker
Wait, let's talk about Area 51. Area 51. Are you planning on going to Area 51 with your friends? The question is, why? And also, who's organizing it? And also, why? Yes.
00:17:34
Speaker
So I mean, you've probably heard of this one. It has been in the news a bit because it's one of those stories that people like to talk around because it seems a bit silly, but it's something the kids are up to. It's all about the then Facebook. Yep. So there is a Facebook event scheduled for September the 20th called Storm Area 51. They can't stop all of us.
00:17:53
Speaker
So this plan that we will all meet up at Area 51, alien-centred tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. So it's this idea that if we just rush Area 51 en masse, then we'll be able to break in. At least some of us will get past the guards and we'll be able to break in.
00:18:09
Speaker
find out what's in there. So, at the time, last time I checked, 1.4 million people had marked themselves as attending the event.
00:18:24
Speaker
Absolutely nothing. It certainly does. And it probably means less than nothing when you consider the fact that this is quite obviously a joke, and the people who've organised it have said, no, this is quite obviously a joke. I'm a little bit surprised it's got the increase in tears. The thing is, just because the organisers say it's a joke,
00:18:41
Speaker
Well, does it mean that it's not going to be taken seriously by some? Because let's say 1.4 million people have indicated they're going, 1.1 million have said they're interested, even if only a small proportion of both those numbers end up deciding, yeah, let's meet en masse.
00:19:01
Speaker
outside the suspected entrance to Area 51, you're still looking at a fairly sizable crowd. Well potentially yes. And whether or not you think it's serious. And I mean, you'll also get onlookers who will go on the off chance for maybe people to turn up. Just in case I see something kick off, yeah.
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so that's sort of the danger, I guess some people have said, you know, okay, yes, you and I can see this is obviously a joke, but the potentially more unhinged members of the alien conspiracy theory community might actually take it seriously. And the military has said, you know, look, it's
00:19:38
Speaker
There may not be aliens there, but it's still a classified military base guarded by soldiers with guns Anyone trying to rush into it is gonna get themselves shot pretty quick So we know the real reason they're making that claim the underground caverns where they keep the flying saucers are
00:19:55
Speaker
from the aborted invasion of Earth in 1953 as chronicled by the film War of the World and then subsequently chronicled by the excellent TV series War of the Worlds in 1989 means that the giant underground caverns that keep the Martian warships in
00:20:14
Speaker
will be in danger of collapse by large numbers of people standing on top of them. This is not a drill. This is not a drill. So yes, I mean, various news organisations have had lots of fun pointing out how silly this is. I can't remember which one it was. One of the bigger ones mentioned that the Facebook event also includes the line, if we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets.
00:20:38
Speaker
Naruto being the the anime series about ninjas where the main character runs in some silly fashion with both his arms out behind him and it sort of there's you know the Naruto run is a reference to this anime cartoon when people believe that running in this fashion allows them to move faster it does not but yeah so I mean
00:20:58
Speaker
What is that? Hopefully September 20th comes along and absolutely nothing happens. Hopefully no silly people go along and get themselves shot. Are we actually hopeful that's the result or are we hopeful that people will turn up and something will happen? I would rather nothing happen because I imagine it would end in gunfire if people really did show up there.
00:21:21
Speaker
I can't imagine, while the whole thing is very comedic, I cannot imagine comedy would result from a whole bunch of people showing up at an American military base. Not even a Benny Hill style chase sequence? Only if the guards were all sexy women in the underwear, which I'm pretty sure is not standard operating procedure for American military bases. Maybe we'll be on September 20th. Who knows? Who knows?
00:21:45
Speaker
Now, do you watch The Walking Dead? No, because I got halfway through season two. They killed off Dale, the only character I actually liked. And then it went, I hate every single person on the show. I hope they die. And in my mind, my mind cannon. That's what happened next.
00:22:03
Speaker
Well, probably, you know, I didn't make it per season two either, I know some people did, but the show is still going, but the comic that it's originally based on finished this
Facial Recognition, Juggalos, and AI Concerns
00:22:13
Speaker
month. And there's a conspiracy. One of those nice benign conspiracies that you like to talk about, like... Yeah, yeah, this is... Well, I mean, so this is the case of the creator of The Walking Dead comic books and the creator of the TV shows, which is Robert Kirkman. Robert Kirkman, yep.
00:22:32
Speaker
decided that he wanted to end the comic when he wanted to, but he also wanted to end the comic in a surprising fashion. So the comic ended with issue 193 at the start of this month,
00:22:50
Speaker
But to ensure that people were going to be caught unaware, they solicited pre-orders for issues beyond 193, to the point where they even created fake covers and plot synopses of issues going forward, so that when issue 192 came out and Copeland went, oh, by the way, next issue is the last one,
00:23:16
Speaker
People were caught completely unaware. In fact, I don't think he even did that. I think it was issue 193 came out and he said, by the way, this issue was the last one. Well, no, because there was talk weeks beforehand. The issue coming out next week is the end. So it was signaled just before the final. It was, yes. But in the comics themselves, like the latest page, it was 193 was where he said, yep, this is the last one.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean this is a definite conspiracy. Let's see if people were in on it. It requires covering up the fact the comics coming to an end by secretly ensuring that people think that it's not coming to an end. It's a classic case of a, well, a benign conspiracy if you aren't a really big fan of The Walking Dead comic book and now hate Robert Kirkman for ending it the way that he did. Well, yes, yes.
00:24:09
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, just so now, as well as talking about surprise birthday parties, you can talk about the end of the Walking Dead comic. I can. Yeah. But perhaps a more weighty issue now. Juggalos. Juggalos are a weighty issue themselves. Actually, this is the point in time. Only we've actually put on Juggalo makeup for this episode suddenly for the visual vodcast.
00:24:34
Speaker
It would be really good. Although we possibly didn't need to put on juggalo makeup because now the juggalizer exists. It's true. The juggalizer being of course a Facebook filter that you apply to your photos to make it look like your... Do people know what juggalos are? Is that a widely enough used term that we can assume that our audience knows what they're on about? See, we know what juggalos are. So juggalos are...
00:24:59
Speaker
An interesting section of the population mostly found in the US. I don't know that Juklo is a particularly big outsider of the continent. The point is they're fans of the band Insane Clown Posse and they do follow them around on tour. Very doubtful about the science of magnets. Yeah, they're those ones. The other ones who said magnets, how do they work?
00:25:22
Speaker
And as you'd suggest from a band with the name Insane Clown Posse, they do wear very distinctive clownish, black and white clown makeup. And so a juggalo culture, people who dress like the Insane Clown Posse and adhere to the same kind of beliefs, it's a little bit hard to, there's a lot of getting stoned. Yeah. But there's a whole sort of culture. And there's a big list of family and trusting one another.
00:25:52
Speaker
And there are juggalo meetups and there are questions as to whether the juggalo... What's it called? The dark carnival of pain or fear or something like that. And juggalos are concerned about being discriminated at work because they want to wear their face makeup all the time. And now it turns out that certain facial recognition apps
00:26:16
Speaker
Can't recognize you if you dress like an insane clown from the insane clown posse? Yeah, so supposedly there was news recently that Juggalo, the clown makeup, will defeat facial recognition, or some at least. I've seen things before of like hairstyles and stuff designed to defeat facial recognition soft, which sort of had splashes of colour around. I thought the whole point was being asymmetrical and stuff, whereas the clown makeup generally isn't, but who knows?
00:26:44
Speaker
This was the claim anyway, which has then led people to come up with an actual conspiracy theory, which is that the point of the juggalizer filter is to amass a database of photos of people with and without juggalo makeup on, which could then be used to train facial recognition algorithms to account for juggalo makeup.
00:27:06
Speaker
Makeup and therefore remove the the way of defeating factory saying juggler. I'm just So you might recall I can't remember if we talked about in the episode I think it was in one of the bonus episodes I can't remember we did mention that back when a little while ago there was the the the meme of posting a photo of yourself and then yourself
00:27:32
Speaker
10 years younger or five years or whatever it was. And at the time we sort of said there was a bit of a theory there that people were like, well, if you wanted to train facial recognition software to take aging into account, then being able to look up a ton of photos of side by side comparisons of faces 10 years apart would be very useful for that. Well, in the same respect, whenever you do a capture,
00:27:55
Speaker
to log on to a website, you are helping train an AI. So I click on all the pictures that have a car. That's not to test whether you're human, but also to teach the machine to be able to look out for things that allow them to answer the same questions. And then even more recently, the latest one has been that face app thing with the filter that makes you look old.
00:28:19
Speaker
Which, as I said on Twitter, I tried it out and the portrait in my attic almost exploded. And again, I've heard people saying that's a way of training algorithms for making deepfakes. Those deepfakes that they talk about, this is the one where you... By the way, your eyes go deepfakes. Oh, you have to. You can't not say deepfakes without waggling your eyebrows.
00:28:41
Speaker
which if you don't know is the idea, which has been shown to be relatively successful, being able to, I think they can even, do they require video footage or could they just do it off a photo? I can't remember. Basically being able to manipulate video footage so that you can
00:28:58
Speaker
take a person's face and then make a video where you animate their face realistically basically so you can make it look like a person is saying things that they don't actually so that was the one they did it of Mark Zuckerberg. Yes and also Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's sort of to test whether how committed Facebook was to freedom of speech by posting this deep fake of where they make Mark Zuckerberg look like he's
00:29:21
Speaker
I can't remember what he was saying, talking about how he wants to harvest all their data and how he... Yeah, basically, Ed missing, he's a member of some new world order. Yeah. And I mean, how seriously can we take these things? So it's sort of, here's the stuff which does result in a whole bunch of data being on the internet. One use you could think of for that data is training facial recognition and so on, but can you really leap from there to say that's what these things were put in place for initially? Well, the worry is...
00:29:50
Speaker
Even if they're not put in place for doing it initially, the data can be used after the fact. So suddenly you have a whole bunch of images on Facebook, a social media platform, which is quite happy to take your data for all kinds of rationales.
00:30:10
Speaker
And you've got differences in age between five to 10 years between one photo and another, which will then make it easier if Facebook decided to harvest that data to then look at photos of you in 10 years time and go, oh, we think this is you. Let's add it to your story stream or photo stream or AR experience, whatever Facebook is doing in 10 years time. If indeed Facebook is still around. If we're still around. Well, quite.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yes, I mean, you don't have to think that the origins of these things are part of some nasty conspiracy, but nevertheless, you could plausibly come up with a theory that the data generated by them... Because it's out there, someone could use it. It's interesting to see people saying, well, the new face app, the one that does the AG filter, people saying, oh, look at its terms and conditions. It says that any image you take is sort of owned by them and they can share it around and do that. And it's all evil. And people saying, well,
00:31:05
Speaker
Yes, that is true. It's actually every other social media app has the same. You understand that, right? I remember when Gmail first... Oh, but FaceApp is Russian. So it's a big issue. I remember when Gmail first came out and there was a lot of scaremongering around. Well, Gmail, they keep your emails stay on their servers forever. And even if you tell them to delete it, they might still actually be on some of their servers because they're mirrored around all over the place. And at the time, well, yes, that is true. But it's also true of every other
00:31:32
Speaker
internet email service, which you haven't had a problem with. So yes, I mean, it's true. You probably shouldn't be sharing anything on Facebook or anything on social media rather ever. But unless of course you want to put it into the comments. Yes. But speaking of social media,
Social Media Bias and Unavoidable Politics
00:31:51
Speaker
Trump. So the White House had a social media summit earlier this week.
00:31:57
Speaker
where they invited a whole bunch of right wing commentators to talk about how Facebook and Twitter are being really, really mean to conservative voices. And this led to a barrage of complaints
00:32:13
Speaker
five people from the alt-right. From the alt-right? The alt-right! Because they've invited people from the right to discuss a conservative bias in social media, but they didn't actually invite anyone who had been de-platformed by Facebook or Twitter. So there was no Laura Loomer, there was no Alex Jones, and there was no Gavin McInnis.
00:32:37
Speaker
founder of the Proud Boys. They did invite a cartoonist by the name of Ben Garrison who they then had to disinvite because it turned out he had an anti-Semitic cartoon published rather recently and that turned out to be a little bit embarrassing. QAnon promoter Bill Mitchell did turn up but curiously didn't actually mention Q or QAnon because it wasn't the right circumstance to talk to the president
00:33:07
Speaker
that QAnon is convinced is actually going to reveal the Deep State and destroy it. So you had the chance to actually talk to Trump about Q and went, no, this is not the right time. This is not the right time to destroy the elite pedophile network that exists in American society.
00:33:26
Speaker
So I assume the implication is that the people who have actually been booted off Twitter and Facebook were done so for having fairly unsavory, I suppose, views and opinions. Yes. And so despite the fact that they're wanting to complain about right-wing people being censored on social media, they are
00:33:50
Speaker
tacitly acknowledging that they're kind of as good reason to because these views are unpalatable enough that they don't actually want to be associated with them. But more curious, Trump's biggest contribution to the debate was to lament the fact that he doesn't have enough followers on Twitter. Well, that's always been his thing, isn't it? So it seems to basically be an excuse for Trump to go
00:34:16
Speaker
more people should follow me online, someone stopping the people from following the best president the United States has never had. Do we know who exactly organized this? Like, was it Trump's idea, or was it just his people and he got dragged into it? That I don't know, actually.
00:34:33
Speaker
Trump seemed rather keen on the idea because he's had a big thing about social media and conservative anti-bias on social media platforms. But no, I'm actually not quite sure whether it was his idea or whether it was an idea that was designed to please the president. But it happened and most of the complaints have been by people on the alt right about not being invited. Yeah, well there you go.
00:34:58
Speaker
And so we ended up talking about Trump after all. But it's just a news episode, I think. Even if we do end up talking about Trump every news episode, that at least is only going to be once a month. And we'll try to avoid it anyway, because we're frankly sick of talking about the guy. Well, we haven't actually really talked about him for quite some time. No, we haven't. We've been quite good on that. Well, yeah. By talking about him. And that's all the news we had. All the conspirator news.
00:35:26
Speaker
But for patrons, they get content. And we've got two juicy bits of content. We've got a rather interesting article from vice.com about how QAnon is destroying relationships we want to talk about. And then kind of an update on a potential deciphering of the old Voynich Manuscript. Have we talked about the Voynich Manuscript? When I talked about it in passing. Yes.
00:35:51
Speaker
This is the, how old is it? 17th century? A manuscript which is written in a language no one understands with what appear to be botanical drawings of entities that couldn't possibly exist upon this earth. Yes, which people have been puzzling over for centuries and every now and then someone will pull up and say, ah, I finally managed to translate it. And someone from Bristol claims that he has. But if you want to know more,
00:36:18
Speaker
You'll have to stick around for the bonus episode. And if you want to stick around for the bonus episode... You have to give us some money. It's just the way the world works. Sounds extortionate. I mean, we're both communists, but unfortunately communists have to make a living wage. Josh, you're a communist now. I would have said democratic socialist, or socialist democrat. I never know the difference between those two, and I don't think anyone else actually does either. That's why he's a communist.
00:36:43
Speaker
Anyway, yes, so if you feel like giving us money, feel free to. And if you already give us money, thank you very much. And you'll get to listen.
00:36:52
Speaker
to the Bonus Air episode whenever you please. But whether or not you're sticking around, this is very definitely the end of this episode. So until next News Free, we're back to the, is it Nazi Science next week? Do we get to do Nazi Science next week? Josh, if you want to do Nazi Science next week, we will do Nazi Science next week. Super. So until then, auf Wiedersehen. La rivadece.
00:37:21
Speaker
you
00:37:26
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em.
Supporting the Podcast: Contact and Contribution
00:37:37
Speaker
You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:38:27
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples.