Last year I promoted physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTube channel, so I figured I should probably comment on her video last week, in which she takes the moderate position between both "crazy" sides of the trans "debate." skepchick.org/2023/05/physic… I went through Hossenfelder's video line by line and found it to be a mixed bag: some good and accurate information that sits alongside citation-free assertions, like "doctors in clinics report cases of 'rapid onset of gender dysphoria."

Buckle up, here's a new video on why Jon Stewart is 100% WRONG about how we should "engage" with Joe Rogan. skepchick.org/2022/02/jon-st… On a recent episode of his show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, Stewart claims Rogan is not an ideologue. He points to Rogan's talk with Josh Zepps as a good example. skepchick.org/2022/02/jon-st…

A new study found that conservative think tanks and blogs have been running a coordinated disinformation campaign to lie to the general public about climate change to benefit the fossil fuel industry. The level of detail in the study is impressive 1/5

https://twitter.com/skepchicks/status/1464296126614548483

Researchers built an AI that analyzed ~250,000 climate change documents released by rightwing groups over the past 20 years, finding 5 major lies:
1) It's not happening
2) It's not us
3) It's not bad
4) Solutions won't work
5) We can't trust scientists
2/5
skepchick.org/2021/11/study-…

Last month a patron asked me what the deal is with ivermectin. That sent me down a rabbit hole to figure out WHY people started taking dewormer for a virus in the first place. Turns out that there's real science behind it! Way behind it. But it's there. skepchick.org/2021/08/why-ar… Here's the tl;dr for those who hate to leave this hellsite: ivermectin is an anti-parasite that is generally safe for humans. But like many meds, it can do double duty: past research has shown it can slow the replication of certain viruses in petri dishes. 2/5

Well, fire season is upon us, and it's always earthquake season in the Bay Area, so I sat down to go through our emergency kit and go bags. I made a list of everything, checked expiration dates, and am now replacing food, charging batteries, and adding some things. 1/5 I'm no expert but maybe it's helpful for people who don't know how to make an emergency kit to see what my setup is. The big container is from Costco & contains heavier, less essential items. My partner & I each have an old backpack filled with the most important stuff. 2/5

So it turns out that an organization I thought was doing good work, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (associated with Center for Inquiry, James Randi, and Martin Gardner) was actually caping for pedophiles. Uhhhh oops?

https://twitter.com/skepchicks/status/1350133200966836225

Since this, bizarrely, turned out to be one of my longest videos ever (??) here's a quick thread to sum it up for those of you like myself with short attention spans. 1/10

In my most recent Safeway grocery order they substituted the bread flour I ordered with gluten-free flour and my seltzer with generic diet Squirt. Where do I report this hate crime Also awhile back I wanted oranges and the website said they were $1.65/lb. It asked for a qty but didn’t make it clear if it was number of lbs or oranges so I put “1”. Turns out it was both. Look at this chungus

I see more people (like @xeni) starting to call out Jeffrey Epstein's connections to scientists who helped him clean his pedo image. Let me tell you about the one who not only quietly took his money but vociferously supported him AFTER Epstein's conviction: Lawrence Krauss
1/12 I've been covering this since 2011. Epstein had already been convicted of raping underage girls when he gave Krauss $250k for his Origins Project. Krauss said "I don’t feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.” skepchick.org/2011/04/lawren…
2/12

Huh, the Ohio mass shooter was a misogynist in a cringey metal band who threatened to rape women. A guy who said he was going to rape & kill me a few years ago was in Ohio and in a cringey metal band. Forget guns, ban Ohio men in cringey metal bands Here's the album he made about me, with my picture on the cover (with a target over it) and a tracklist including hits like "I have a gravestone with rebecca watson's name on it." A fan found it on Bandcamp and sent it to me. Good times.

I've been watching/reading a lot of True Crime murder stuff lately, which reminds me of a story. A weird and awful story, so, be warned. In high school I worked for a mom & pop store in a 1-streetlight town surrounded by woods & farmland. Only one other teen worked there (H) so we often worked together after school. ~3pm to close.