conspiracy theories - Fresh Lime Soda

Broken clocks during the pandemic

Jun 2, 2021 4 min read

Proponents of conspiracy theories during the pandemic, at least in India, appear to be like broken clocks: they are right by coincidence, without the right body of evidence to back their claims. Two o…

Journalistic entropy

Jun 14, 2020 6 min read

Analysis Scicomm conspiracy theories coronavirus pandemic COVID-19 entropy fact-checking false balance health journalism image compression Indian Council of Medical Research information theory Prime Minister Narendra Modi Priyanka Pulla pseudoscience science journalism thermodynamics Washington Post

Say you need to store a square image 1,000 pixels wide to a side with the smallest filesize (setting aside compression techniques). The image begins with the colour #009900 on the left side and, as yo…

In defence of ignorance

Apr 29, 2020 5 min read

Analysis Culture conspiracy theories Dunning-Kruger effect expertise fear of missing out FOMO hot air human psychology ignorance information overload Jose Luis Borges social media The Souffle the thing itself Twitter

Wish I may, wish I might Have this wish, I wish tonight I want that star, I want it now I want it all and I don't care how Metallica, King Nothing I'm a news editor who frequently uses Twitt…

Review: 'Hunters' (2020)

Mar 8, 2020 1 min read

Culture Al Pacino Amazon Prime conspiracy theories Hunters moral dilemma Nazism Operation Paperclip

Just binge-watched the first season of Hunters, the bizarre Amazon Prime original about a covert group of Jews in 1970s' New York city tracking down and killing Nazis who were integrated by the US…

To see faces where there are none

Nov 22, 2019 2 min read

Science arXiv Björn Brembs conspiracy theories Elisabeth Bik image manipulation impact factor Ingelfinger rule journal rank Nature Medicine Ohio State University open knowledge pareidolia peer review preprints research fraud William Romoser

This week in "neither university press offices nor prestigious journals know what they're doing": a professor emeritus at Ohio University who claimed he had evidence of life on Mars, and…