Agreed! Penguin though…like, come on! They’re huge! And Cosmo 
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Yes! And it’s wild because even a brief inquiry turned up inconsistencies… But look only a stupid person wouldnt be able to see the emperors clothes 
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Isn’t it also extra wild to you because of how people usually do question disability/illness status? I’m like, how on earth was she not questioned to absolute death on her condition??? Like people just took it at face value? bc that has not been my experience, lol.
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Yes! Although IDK maybe because instead of people being like “oh hey you should try insert thing here” she was already ahead of the game by pushing her WellnessStuff so nobody could interrogate her further to push their idea of WellnessStuff they thought would CureEverything ™? Because that seems to be a big part of the interrogation game.
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Ohhhh, that’s a very interesting point! Maybe being “cured” already made it more believable too, because there is inherently less disbelief in “this was broken and is fixed now” versus “this is broken forever and can’t be fixed”. Especially since suspicion came on so strong after she was “re-diagnosed”.
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I clearly need to be more pro-active.
E.g. “Hey Karen, have you tried my new ginger tumeric yogatte? You simply MUST try it”
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The episode was actually a let down because I felt like I knew more about belle gibson than they did!
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So goid
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Hahaha, and that’s why I love you. I feel that way when I watch cult documentaries a lot, lol.
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Now I would like the Elle X Allhat Belle Gibson episode.
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The “Twinkie Defence” is Maintenance Phase’s dip into True Crime and I was not prepared for that today, whoops.
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There was so much I didn’t know in that one!
Thought people might find this interesting. One of the (many) things I’ve learned from MP is about how the standards of BMI categories changed in 1998. I had no idea about that. I thought it would be interesting to see some old articles about that shift, like as it happened at the time, and found this.
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/17/weight.guidelines/
I found it interesting that the NIH and AHA were kind of in on this together. And it really is so fear driven. Like it doesn’t make any logical sense IMO.
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So I just listened to episode 1 of Batman Unburied on Spotify and holy shit I think I’ve found a podcast that I can actually pay attention to. It helps that some dude on Tumblr made transcripts for it so I can read along with it. That’ll keep my brain engaged enough that it doesn’t just become background noise.
Here’s the link for the transacripts
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The Q Anon Wellness Pipeline episode is fascinating! I’ve been wondering about that whole thing because it’s so freaking weird. And also bc when I grew up in the bible belt things like yoga and essential oils would have probably been considered satanic by a lot of people…and now it’s like a whole thing on the ultra conspiracy theory right (some of which is also anti organized religion which is a whole other thing). Anyway, 10/10 recommend!
I also thought the compassion in the episode was so refreshing, you can tell the guest has spent a lot of time talking to people and not just for the purpose of dunking or mocking. I found it kind of hopeful too how he promoted not cutting people off but just being loving in the areas you can be, and not talking politics because you can become a safe haven for them should they kind of…come out of their weird echo chamber. I think culturally we don’t actually have a word for this type of decentralized extremist…not cult because the level of control isn’t there, but the whole “cut off everyone who disagrees” for sure is. And it’s not like, one cult leader inducing people in…it’s curated feeds and forums that all parrot the same opinion. It’s really fascinating to me from the standpoint of someone who has followed cults for a long time. Because like, there are similarities between Q Anon believers and cult members for sure, but like…there is no underpinning structure to it. And I see it in other niche areas online too, even down to how people explain their opinions, which is almost verbatim to each other. That’s always like a red flag in my mind because it reminds me so much of religious extremism and the way circular logic would just be parroted, and then if someone disagrees you make some sort of damaging claim about them or find another way to shut it down so no conversation can happen. Fascinating IMO.
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The way that Q Anon has rolled in all other conspiracies honestly reminds me a lot of early missionary Christianity… willing to roll in any spiritual practices it comes across, anything for more followers to come on in. It’s fascinating and bizarre and from a like- Detached/academic view I’m curious to see how it develops over the next few years.
I’ll try to listen to this some time. Not sure when, but some time! Maybe if Latte naps today I’ll take a podcast nap.
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This is one of my favorite rabbit hole topics. My mom was an early adopter of ultra right conspiracy theory + wellness culture…she was going to church 3x a week AND using essential oils + yoga, before it was cool! Haha. In fact our church was very anti yoga, essential oils and wellness at the time, but now if we were to go back, I’m sure it has become a part of the culture there.
If you ever want a deep dive on the topic, I listen to a podcast called Conspirituality which is basically solely about this topic and various origins of a lot of the ideas…they also cover quite a bit of current events stuff, as well
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I’ve never heard of that podcast!!! Thanks! It’s one of my favorites too! Check your mom out, lol, being on the cutting edge of…somethin’, haha. I also find it super interesting how a lot of fringe conservative christians are now doing stuff like not eating pork and covering their hair like OT style, all the sudden (I mean hutterites and mennonites have always done the hair thing, but pork seems new).
I’m not aware of any other diets like that in Christianity (Catholics with fish I guess? IDK if that counts tho since it’s not all the time) other than Seventh Day Adventists who are almost exclusively vegetarian (and responsible for a lot of early imports of things like tofu and tempeh in North America from Asia) which I found out when researching health outcomes for non meat eaters and finding that apparently scientists use Seventh Day Adventists as a natural pool of vegans and vegetarians for that. BTW, anyone who is interested in this stuff should totally check out Ellen G. White, who had a HUGE hand in dictating stuff for the Seventh Day Adventist church and was a real fucking wild card. Also Kellogg was an Adventist too, the cereal inventor. He thought it would help people stop masturbating and having impure thoughts. Yes, he was a violent pedophile himself, how on earth did you guess?
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The only vegan chef college you could go to for ages was the 7th day adventists and I seriously considered it til I read their other rules of conduct.
In the cult Christian world- fundamentalist Latter Day Saints have tons of food requirements under Jeff warren. Rachel warren, his daughter who left, talked about how they got harder and harder
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