Category: current events

Viral Story Rabbit Holes on the Web

Sena told me about the viral story on the web entitled “A Woman Removes Painting Varnish and Uncovers Husband’s 50 Year Old Secret.” It’s dated December 27, 2022. The story is written in slide show format, which has a rabbit hole feel to it, especially after I try to verify the details.

You’ve probably seen this or a slightly different version of it. The basic stem is somebody finds out her spouse has a longstanding secret life that she learns of only after he dies, leaves her a painting which is apparently worthless but underneath a lot of paint or varnish lies a note or some other object which leads to the discovery that he led a secret life and left her a vast fortune. Sometimes the story changes even this detail.

I found other similar versions which differ mainly in small details, none of which I can verify—not even the identity of the author of the story. For example, who is Lindsey Charleston? I can’t find out, even though I can find the web site “History All Day” where supposedly this author is listed among others, who are also anonymous. No biographical data is discoverable about the writers.

The pictures in the story are taken from web sites offering free images, such as pixabay. I’ve used images from sites like that. One of them features a video which is a slide show, featuring a photo of a woman who looks shocked and the picture is marked as copyrighted and being from “YouTube PBS.” It appears to be from PBS Antiques Roadshow, and it’s just a slide, like all the rest of the images. There’s no actual video with this particular woman in a green blouse. One of the slides shows a picture of Fiona Bruce, the hostess of the BBC version of Antiques Roadshow. After this last picture, there’s an ad by Amazon. In fact, the slide show has several interrupting ad photos.

However, the YouTube PBS picture is linked to another version of this story which is a video and it’s dated February 3, 2021. It looks like there are many different versions of this video. The names of the people involved, even the nationalities, are all apparently different. Yet the thread of the story is similar to the one published 3 days ago. One striking similarity is the photo of Fiona Bruce! Moreover, the narrator reveals that the art work was featured on the British TV show, “Fake or Fortune,” a show hosted by Fiona Bruce.

And the narrator of this video sounds robotic, like one of those non-human digital recordings because occasionally the accent falls on the wrong syllables. Near the end of the video while it is still in progress, another video is superimposed showing a fisherman and 3 bear cubs, entitled “Fisherman noticed the three bear cubs sneaking up on him late, what happened next is breathtaking! This is a familiar type of advertisement lure I’ve noticed many times on the web.

There are many different versions of the story showing different characters who are of different nationalities, names, and the identities, like those of the authors of the stories, are all either unknown or impossibly difficult to track down—like going down a rabbit hole.

The stories are identified as “Viral Stories” which seems to be a web site advertised on the PBS video, but is probably not. I should say I found a web site with that name but it doesn’t list this story or its permutations.

OK, many of you probably already knew this, but I think these are cleverly disguised rabbit hole stories designed to lure the reader into advertisement traps. Many of them are tagged with the short word “Ad” somewhere on the photo link—but some are not.

Incidentally, the featured image for this post is an obvious plug for my book. I don’t have to use cute bear cubs to get you to buy it—do I?

Snow Day!

I wrote this post yesterday because I didn’t know whether or not we’d have a power outage because of high winds (up to nearly 50 mph) predicted for the Arctic Blast this week.

When we’re not outside scooping our walkway and driveway, we’ll probably be playing cribbage or, God forbid, Scrabble (which I always lose).

We’ve heard about the renewed interest in board games, one of them being Scrabble. We recently found an old Scrabble game at Old Capitol Town Center (formerly Old Capitol Mall). It’s Super Scrabble and it was on sale for $50 at a hole-in-the-wall shop lacking an entrance sign. The high price is because it’s a collectible relic from the past, although a quick internet search revealed it was made in 2004—hardly an antique. You can find them on eBay for $30. On the other hand, you can find them going for as much as $179 at an on-line store called Mercari.

We’ll also probably take a break by munching on our Christmas cookies.

I’m all set for the freezing weather. I’ve got my thermal underwear out and sweats out, along with my heavy gloves.

The wind will probably make shoveling pointless at times. We’ll probably bag it and then I’ll practice the juggling behind the back trick—another pointless activity.

Total Lunar Eclipse Blood Moon This Freezing Morning!

I took my very first selfie ever with my smartphone, which I’ve had for about 7 years. The occasion is the 2nd total lunar eclipse blood moon I’ve ever seen, which started at about 2:00 AM this morning.

It was so cold outside I had to wear a sweater and my winter coat with hat and gloves. I could see my breath for crying out loud. Temperatures were in the mid-30s out there but the wind made it feel even colder, close to freezing.

I hope my photos turn out. If they don’t, I’m going to be very disappointed.

Get Your Tin Foil Hats Out for the Total Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

I just found out this morning that there’s a total lunar eclipse that will be visible starting tomorrow morning. We saw the one in May this year, and we’re excited—about getting up early in the morning around 4:00 AM.

Although you don’t need to wear special eye protection for a lunar eclipse, you will need to get your tin foil hats on. This is to protect you from the extraterrestrials who will be looking for hapless earthlings who are distracted by the eclipse, and hypnotize them into cooking Thanksgiving turkey and dressing for them.

Since the event will be in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, we plan on getting up early to try to get some pictures. Good luck!

See the World’s Largest Dinosaurs Exhibit at the Science Center of Iowa!

You can see the world’s largest dinosaurs exhibit at the Science Center of Iowa in Des Moines, Iowa from October 15, 2022 to April 16, 2023. It’s a traveling exhibit, so see it before it thunders off!

Here We Go Again About Antidepressants

Back in August, my colleagues, Drs. George Dawson, MD and Ronald Pies, MD wrote a rejoinder in Psychiatric Times to a review article published in Molecular Psychiatry by J. Moncrieff, Mark Horowitz and others (Moncrieff J, Cooper RE, Stockmann T, Amendola S, Hengartner MP, Horowitz MA. The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. Mol Psychiatry. 2022 Jul 20. doi: 10.1038/s41380-022-01661-0. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35854107.)

The idea that most psychiatrists subscribe to the so-called “chemical imbalance” theory of depression has arisen again in an article by Mark Horowitz on October 7, 2022. Sena alerted me to the article which is getting a lot of attention. There were well over 600 comments and counting about it when we read it on October 7th.

I would like to refer readers to the Dawson and Pies article, “The Serotonin Fixation: Much Ado About Nothing New,” published August 3, 2022. Since the issue about emotional blunting from SSRIs resurfaced again on October 7th, it wouldn’t hurt to review their September 26, 2022, Psychiatric Times article, “Antidepressants Do Not Work by Numbing Emotions.”

Scouts Food Drive Pickup Today

Today is the bag pickup day for the Scouts food drive. Bags were distributed October 1-5. They’ll be picked up between 9:00 AM to noon. According to the Scouting for Food website,

On average, the Scouting for Food Drive typically collects over 93,387+ pounds of food from Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and its neighboring areas. This translates to over 77,823+ meals that will be served for those who need it most during the winter season.

Maybe We Need a Dose of Humor

Sena and I were listening to the Mike Waters morning radio show (KOKZ 105.7) this morning and his invitation to listeners was to call in and quote their favorite dumb question. One of the callers recited something which was actually a George Carlin joke. Neither one of us thought we heard it right, but it’s the same framework as the joke I found on the web (only the numbers were changed):

“If you’ve got 24 odds and ends on the table and 23 of them fall off, what’ve you got? An odd or an end?”

This is an example of his wordplay humor.

Carlin’s humor was also marked by satire on American culture and politics, the latter of which has gotten pretty rough. You’ll also find references on the web to Carlin’s past history of substance use, which reportedly included psychedelics.

That reminds me of an opinion piece published in the September issue of Current Psychiatry, by the journal’s editor, Henry A. Nasrallah, MD (From neuroplasticity to psychoplasticity: Psilocybin may reverse personality disorders and political fanaticism. Current Psychiatry. 2022 September, 21(9): 4-6 | doi: 10.12788/cp.0283).

I was a little surprised at Dr. Nasrallah’s enthusiastic endorsement of psilocybin for treatment of personality disorders and political extremism. He acknowledges the lack of any studies on the issue. In the last paragraph of his essay is a sweeping endorsement:

In the current political zeitgeist, could psychedelics such as psilocybin reduce or even eliminate political extremism and visceral hatred on all sides? It would be remarkable research to carry out to heal a politically divided populace. The dogma of untreatable personality disorders or hopelessly entrenched political extremism is on the chopping block, and psychedelics offer hope to splinter those beliefs by concurrently remodeling brain tissue (neuroplasticity) and rectifying the mindset (psychoplasticity).

While I’m not so sure about how effective psilocybin would be for this, I’m all for trying something to reduce the “visceral hatred on all sides.”

Maybe humor could be part of the solution. It doesn’t have to be exactly like that of George Carlin. Both parody and satire have been used by many writers for this.

I like the distinction between parody and satire in one article I found on the web. One recent example of satire (or parody; the distinction is sometimes hard to make since the story was listed as “Iowa Parodies”) was in the news and it apparently fooled at least a few people. It was about the Iowa football coaching staff. The title was “Brian Ferentz Promoted to University President To Avoid Having to Fire Him (Satire): The move was deemed ‘a way easier conversation than having him fired’ by the athletic director. It was written by Creighton M, posted September 5, 2022.

I think the story was originally printed without the word “Satire” in the title. I can’t recall seeing the heading “Iowa Parodies” either. A later version of the story added the word “Satire.”

The story might have been about nepotism in the hiring of Brian Ferentz (he’s the son of head coach Kirk Ferentz) as offensive coach. On the other hand, under Iowa law, it was not illegal to hire Brian Ferentz, who in any case reports to athletic director Gary Barta, not Kirk Ferentz.

I suspect the joke had more to do with negative public attitudes about the performance of the Iowa football offense early in the season.

Is it funny? I guess it depends on your perspective. The Iowa football coaching staff probably didn’t chuckle over it. But it more or less fits the definition of satire. It uses humor to expose flaws in the way we behave. And it avoids direct and nasty confrontation, which usually triggers antagonism rather than collaboration. Will it change the Iowa football program? I doubt it. They’re actually doing pretty good so far.

But satire as a strategy to inform and maybe change the public opinion will endure. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is one of my favorite books and it satirizes governments and the foolishness of people. I first learned about The Onion newspaper while we were in the process of relocating to Wisconsin (a short adventure). It satirizes the Associated Press news style.

One of the most uproarious examples of parody is a TV show which is no longer available on cable television but still offered on a streaming service (I think), Mountain Monsters. It’s a hilarious sendup of all the Bigfoot hunter shows.

The added benefit of parody and satire and other such forms of humor is that they are safer than psychedelics—unless your target was born without a funny bone.