The war on vaping peaked during the Obama administration and though the names behind it were groups you expect to be promoting public health - the U.S. CDC, American Lung Association and more - the funding behind many of those efforts may be two groups that are more interested in promoting nicotine patches and gums for Big Pharma than saving the lives of smokers.

In the current climate, you can't lie about being a native American if you are an academic but you can get away with a lot. Yet even those options are dwindling. Professor Tyrone Hayes of Berkeley once engaged in threats and bullying of women and it was rationalized by his allies but such cock-fixated megalomaniac behavior would get calls for his dismissal now.

A decade ago there was controversy over allowing oil drilling in the gigantic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The people living there all wanted it because they knew what the area the drilling would occur was like - the moon more than the earth we love. Activists nonetheless showed pictures of caribou munching on grass far below where the actual drilling was.

It wasn't even explored until the 1950s, that is how remote much of it is. There are no roads into it. It's been a political football since the 1970s. A Senate bill forced President Trump to approve two leases while President Biden issued an executive order halting development - and then a few months later was criticizing oil companies for not producing enough oil during the Russian-Ukraine War.

In 1066, Duke William of Normandy left France on a fleet of ships to fight his cousin and competitor for the vacant English throne, Harold Godwinson, and at the Battle of Hastings, the matter was settled. Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon claimant, was dead, and a new age for England began.(1)

Had the EU existed then, he'd have never had the chance. Given current EU red tape, efforts to make a replica of La Mora, the ship Williams used to become The Conqueror, mean it may still not be ready for the 1,000 year anniversary. Unless Great Britain, having shucked off their two-decade experiment in the EU, build it for them.

An account going by the name of Andy Hsieh, there is a lot of astroturf in the anti-science community so it's hard to know if it's even a real blogger, wrote one of those predictable screeds endorsing their political allies, this time against agriculture.

It could have been cell phones or vaccines or nuclear energy - 84% of the time if you see any of those you know every political and scientific position they hold(1) - and the conspiracy tale would be the same.

The pandemic must be over because activists are back to complaining about Christmas trees, which means they will also be back to being anti-vaccine as soon as Republicans stop being idiots and it is once again a safe space for progressives to own. Just like every year from 1998 to 2020.

The California state legislature mostly exists to pass new regulations, but does very little for the public they claim to serve. Anything important instead has to go around government by way of voter referendum.

You wouldn't know it by deceptive marketing practices but it takes far more chemicals per calorie using "organic" certified pesticides than it does using modern ones. 

The reason is simple; organic industry lobbyists picked an artificial point in time and declared anything before it was organic. Mutagenesis, for example, is a literal radiation and chemical bath to force mutations randomly, but thousands and thousands of products are not only on the market without protest, they are certified organic while far more precise modern genetic modification is not. 

NASA is really excited they can fly a spacecraft near the moon. This seems odd, since they did a flyby nearly 60 years ago, as preparation for the moon landing in 1969.

Now, some people think the moon landing never happened, just like some people believe organic red wine is good for you or that solar power is a viable option source of energy for more than 0.6% of us.


In all cases they can point to strange government writings as circumstantial proof, and the moon hoax fringe has to be as giddy as NASA is about Artemis.