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2020年12月23日
发表者 minici
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圣诞节庆祝活动的借用习俗和传统

虽然圣诞节表面上是基督教庆祝耶稣诞生的,但许多仪式和习俗来自其他传统,包括精神传统和世俗传统。

【原文】

This article about Christmas traditions is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


Not long to go now before many of us get to spread some good tidings and joy as we celebrate Christmas.

The main ways we understand and mark the occasion seem to be rather similar across the world. It’s about time with community, family, food-sharing, gift-giving and overall merry festivities.

In the Southern hemisphere, in countries such as New Zealand and Australia, the traditional Christmas celebrations have evolved into their own specific brand, which is much more suited to the warmer summer months.

Christmas is an imported event in these areas and acts as a constant reminder of the spread of European colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Celebrating Christmas still carries the influence of European contexts, being a time for merriment, gift-giving and community spirit.

Even some of the traditional foods of the season here are still indebted to Euro-British traditions, with turkey and ham taking centre stage.

All the same, as Christmas falls in the summer down under, there are also different ways to celebrate it in New Zealand and other regions that clearly have nothing to do with winter festivals.

Barbecues and beach days are prominent new traditions, as borrowed practices co-exist with novel ways of adapting the event to a different context.

A plate of mini tropical fruit pavlovas with berriesA plate of mini tropical fruit pavlovas with berries
Try a pavlova, something more summery for Christmas in New Zealand.
Marco Verch Professional/Flickr, CC BY


The wintery Christmas puddings are often exchanged for more summery pavlovas, whose fresh fruit toppings and meringue base certainly befit the warmer season to a greater extent.

The transition to outdoor Christmas celebrations in the Southern hemisphere is obviously locked in common sense because of the warmer weather.

Nonetheless, it also shows how both cultural and geographical drivers can influence the evolution of celebrating important festivals. And if you really want to experience a cold Christmas down under, there is always a mid-year Christmas in July to look forward to.The Conversation


Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Professor of Popular Culture, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月23日
发表者 minici
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不,“药剂师” 哈维·斯陶布关于 COVID 不对

声称由药剂师撰写的推文断言,Tamiflu 销量的下降证明 COVID-19 并不像声称的那样危险。在如何不使用数据方面,这是一个很好的案例研究。

【宣称】

COVID 的 “误报” 实际上是流感或普通感冒的病例,正在扩大 COVID-19 和疫情的真正危险。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

A Dec. 12, 2020, Twitter thread authored by an account using Winston Churchill as a profile picture and the user name of Harvey Staub (emojis excluded) argued that people falsely categorized as COVID-19 positive who subsequently got the flu or the common cold make the disease — and the pandemic itself — seem more dangerous than it really is. The central evidence used to support this thesis is an alleged decline in sales of the drug Tamiflu, an antiviral widely used during the flu season to hasten recovery.

As background, the assertion of false positives comes from a mischaracterization of what COVID-19 PCR tests are meant to indicate. Though there are unresolved questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests in general, the problem is not with so-called “false positives.” Rather, its limitation is that it detects only the presence of specific SARS-CoV-2 RNA, and the presence of this RNA is not necessarily indicative of being infected or contagious with SARS-CoV-2. This is not a false positive for COVID-19 the disease, it is a true positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA.

The argument, partially rooted in the above fallacy, goes like this: COVID-19 tests produce high rates of false positives; COVID-19 is described as deadly, but because so many people have falsely tested positive during the flu season, the deadliness or severity of COVID-19 is exaggerated by including flu deaths as COVID-19 deaths; undiagnosed flu cases are evidenced by a lack of Tamiflu prescriptions.

While we remind our readers not to take the unverified statements of anonymous Twitter accounts as truth, it is factual that there have been fewer prescriptions for Tamiflu filled this flu season. According to ABC News, “data analysts at Walgreens have tracked sales of antiviral medications for flu over the past seven years to estimate flu activity across the U.S. and 2020 has had significantly lower sales than in 2019.”

This fact can be interpreted in multiple ways. Staub interpreted it as evidence that flu cases are being under-diagnosed. Another explanation, though, is that there have actually been significantly fewer flu cases this year. The key is to defend an interpretation with actual evidence. Staub provides none. On the other hand, evidence that fewer people have contracted influenza this season, as well as data-driven explanations for why this is the case, are readily available.

For one thing, the country has been locked down and social distancing (to varying degrees) since March 2020. While this has been done to limit the spread of COVID-19, it also provides fewer opportunities to transmit the flu. With people working from home, avoiding indoor dining, and having fewer face-to-face actions, opportunities for influenza transmission are significantly —  even historically — reduced compared to an average year.

For another thing, an aggressive public health campaign encouraging flu shots to minimize the potential for co-occurring viral outbreaks resulted in historically high influenza vaccination rates this season. According to analysis based on weekly sales reports of pharmaceuticals, the IT firm IQVIA found that “23.5 million people got the flu shot from Aug. 7 through Oct. 2, compared with 12.6 million during the same timeframe in 2019.”

Even if you reject the notion that increased vaccination or reduced social contact could contribute to fewer cases of influenza, though, the fact is that the number of deaths caused by influenza and pneumonia combined in pre-pandemic years are far too low to account for the increased amount of mortality seen presently. In other words, if the signal of increased death was caused by increased influenza cases, we would be in the midst of a catastrophic flu season. This snapshot from CDC’s Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report (as of mid-December 2020) visualizes present and historical numbers of deaths caused by influenza (the yellow area) compared to deaths coded as COVID-19 (blue area):

Indeed, the best refutation of the assertion that the pandemic is overhyped or manufactured is also the simplest: Significantly more people are dying, period, than would be expected based on historical data. This reality began in April 2020, well before the influenza season, and it has not abated since. The CDC collects weekly data on this metric, known as excess mortality. By doing this on a weekly basis, the metric takes into account seasonal features like the flu season. By lumping all deaths together regardless of cause, the metric is also unaffected by any perceived problem with COVID-19 testing.

Because no evidence exists to support anything close to the level of increased flu or cold cases needed to create the level of excess mortality that characterizes this pandemic, because surveillance data suggests fewer cases of influenza, and because fewer cases of influenza are to be expected in a country with record-setting flu vaccination levels that has also been socially distancing and working from home since before the flu season began, Staub’s analysis is without merit. As such, the claim is “False.”

2020年12月23日
发表者 minici
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“失败者” 是否被投影到特朗普苏格兰高尔夫球场的草坪上?

一个活动家团体在特朗普坦伯里举行了一场独特的灯光秀,抗议美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的假选欺诈主张。

【宣称】

一张照片显示了在美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在苏格兰的高尔夫球场草坪上投影的 “失败者” 一词。

【结论】


【原文】

Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here.

In late November 2020, shortly after President-elect Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, a picture started circulating on social media that supposedly showed the word “loser” projected onto the lawn of U.S. President Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland:

This is a genuine photograph of the lawn at Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, Scotland. 

This visual display was created by the British activist group “Led By Donkeys.” The group posted a video of the visual protest to Twitter on Nov. 25 in response to a tweet from Trump falsely claiming that the election was rigged:

We know you’re finding it difficult to accept the election result so we projected it onto your golf course with some familiar music pic.twitter.com/sn6h0zA5MT

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) November 25, 2020

This is at least the second time that Led By Donkeys has criticized Trump by projecting a display on the lawn of Trump Turnberry. In September, the group projected the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in the United States under Trump’s watch.

The Scotsman wrote:

A political campaign group has staged a protest outside Donald Trump’s flagship overseas resort, projecting images of the spiralling US Covid-19 death stats onto the US president’s property.

The protest, carried out and filmed by the Led By Donkeys group, saw a video projection of the rapidly rising death rate imposed on the grounds outside the South Ayrshire hotel.

The multimedia protest also projected the constantly increasing number of times that Mr Trump has visited one of his golf resorts during the pandemic.

Here’s a video of that display:

As of this writing in December 2020, the death toll in the United States from COVID-19 has climbed to more than 270,000

2020年12月23日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

不,查克·诺里斯的净值没有让家庭 “流泪”

每个人都知道这是另一种方式。

【宣称】

查克·诺里斯的净资产使他的家人流泪。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

Chuck Norris became the subject of at least two death hoaxes in 2020, one of which claimed his net worth purportedly “left his family in tears.” Earlier in 2020, a false rumor spread that the “Walker, Texas Ranger” star had died from the COVID-19 coronavirus disease. This prompted endless jokes, the likes of which had previously endured through the years:

This just in: Coronavirus has tested positive for Chuck Norris and is now in quarantine…… #legends #dividebyzero pic.twitter.com/m76EPSpV2D

— Nik-Nic (@nnpeoples97) April 7, 2020

As for Norris’ net worth leaving his family “in tears,” the claim appeared to originate in misleading online advertisements featuring one of the following photographs:

chuck norris net worth left his family in tears

Readers who clicked the advertisements were led inexplicably to a story on the website Cars & Yachts titled, “59 Celebrities & Their Incredible Net Worth – Can You Guess Who Has The Biggest Bank Account?” The list of “59 Celebrities” spanned 230 pages. Norris appeared on page 228. Nothing on that page mentioned anything about his family being left “in tears”:

Chuck Norris – $70 Million

Chuck Norris is a former U.S. Air Force policeman-turned-martial artist and actor. He has several karate schools that he has set up around the U.S, and he happened to have taught several celebrities including Steve McQueen and Priscilla Presley. Norris made his acting debut in 1969 when he starred in “The Wrecking Ball.” He’s best known for his role in the TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He is currently worth $70 million, with acting work and his karate business contributing to his wealth. Norris has also appeared in several infomercials endorsing Total Gym exercise equipment.

“Chuck Norris’ net worth left his family in tears” also appeared on a strange website with the domain “97bb076.awfory.xyz.” It was unclear how long the net worth hoax had been present on the internet.

An earlier death hoax appeared in the form of a Facebook scam in 2012. Norris was born on March 10, 1940, and as of late 2020 was 80 years old.

We previously reported on similar “net worth left his family in tears” hoaxes featuring Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Jaleel White, Richard Gere, and Clint Eastwood. While Trebek and Connery died in 2020, White, Gere, and Eastwood were all still alive.

Since everyone knows Norris wields the power to make onions cry, we’re not concerned about the prospect of the Norris family being left in tears.

2020年12月22日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

如何减少假新闻的传播-无所作为

这看起来似乎违反直觉,但对假新闻作出反应 —— 并减少其影响的最佳方法可能是什么都不做。

【原文】

This article about fake news is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


When we come across false information on social media, it is only natural to feel the need to call it out or argue with it. But my research suggests this might do more harm than good. It might seem counterintuitive, but the best way to react to fake news – and reduce its impact – may be to do nothing at all.

False information on social media is a big problem. A UK parliament committee said online misinformation was a threat to “the very fabric of our democracy”. It can exploit and exacerbate divisions in society. There are many examples of it leading to social unrest and inciting violence, for example in Myanmar and the United States.

Any kind of interaction at all – whether clicking on the link or reacting with an angry face emoji – will make it more likely that the social media platform will show the material to other people. In this way, false information can spread far and fast. So even by arguing with a message, you are spreading it further. This matters, because if more people see it, or see it more often, it will have an even greater effect.

I recently completed a series of experiments with a total of 2,634 participants looking at why people share false material online. In these, people were shown examples of false information under different conditions and asked if they would be likely to share it. They were also asked about whether they had shared false information online in the past.

Some of the findings weren’t particularly surprising. For example, people were more likely to share things they thought were true or were consistent with their beliefs.

But two things stood out. The first was that some people had deliberately shared political information online that they knew at the time was untrue. There may be different reasons for doing this (trying to debunk it, for instance). The second thing that stood out was that people rated themselves as more likely to share material if they thought they had seen it before. The implication is that if you have seen things before, you are more likely to share when you see them again.

Dangerous repetition

It has been well established by numerous studies that the more often people see pieces of information, the more likely they are to think they are true. A common maxim of propaganda is that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

This extends to false information online. A 2018 study found that when people repeatedly saw false headlines on social media, they rated them as being more accurate. This was even the case when the headlines were flagged as being disputed by fact checkers. Other research has shown that repeatedly encountering false information makes people think it is less unethical to spread it (even if they know it is not true, and don’t believe it).

So to reduce the effects of false information, people should try to reduce its visibility. Everyone should try to avoid spreading false messages. That means that social media companies should consider removing false information completely, rather than just attaching a warning label. And it means that the best thing individual social media users can do is not to engage with false information at all.The Conversation


Tom Buchanan, Professor of Psychology, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月22日
发表者 minici
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没有 “有争议的场景” 将 “贝弗利山庄” 放下

“贝弗利 Hillbillies” 直到最后仍然是一个受欢迎的电视连续剧,但它吸引了错误类型的观众继续下去。

【宣称】

受欢迎的情景喜剧 “Beverly Hillbillies” 由于一个有争议的场景的影响而被取消。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

“The Beverly Hillbillies,” a sitcom about a poor backwoods family who struck it rich after discovering oil on their property and moved to a mansion in Beverly Hills, California, was one of the most popular television series of the 1960s.

Airing on CBS for nine seasons from 1962 to 1971, “The Beverly Hillbillies” was among the top 20 most-watched programs on television for eight of those nine years, and it ranked as the overall #1 TV program in the U.S. for its first two seasons.

 
Most successful TV series remain on the air as long as their ratings remain sufficiently high, but a video from the woefully misnamed “Facts Verse” YouTube channel implied that “The Beverly Hillbillies” was removed from the airwaves, despite its success, due to a “controversial scene”:

 
But in fact, neither any controversy nor any particular scene was responsible for the ultimate cancellation of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” as the title “The Controversial Scene That Took ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ off the Air” wrongly suggested. Hapless viewers had to sit through nearly six minutes of a narrator’s reciting 16 mundane “facts” (not all of them true) about the show before they finally got to the payoff teased by the video’s title … only to be completely let down when they were lamely informed (in the brief 20 seconds the video devoted to this topic) that “well, it wasn’t actually one scene; it was the entire show.”

“The Beverly Hillbillies” had no taint of controversy that led to its demise — rather, the show was a victim of the so-called “rural purge” of the early 1970s. During that timeframe, several long-running series featuring rural characters and settings (primarily on the CBS network) were canceled even though they were still pulling down respectable ratings numbers, because those programs’ viewership skewed to an older, rural demographic rather than the younger, urban audience prized by advertisers.

Besides “The Beverly Hillbillies,” series such as “Green Acres,” “Hee Haw,” and “Mayberry R.F.D.” all got the axe after the 1970-71 season, to be replaced by shows that proved to be ratings kings as the 1970s unfolded — the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “All in the Family,” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”

2020年12月22日
发表者 minici
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Ruby Freeman 没有被联邦调查局逮捕

2020 年,选举欺诈粉丝小说失控。

【宣称】

联邦调查局于 2020 年 12 月逮捕了佐治亚州选举工作者 Ruby Free

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

On Dec. 17, 2020, dozens of Twitter accounts started spamming social media with near-verbatim messages falsely claiming that a woman named Ruby Freeman had been arrested by the FBI for crimes related to election fraud in Atlanta, Georgia.

The viral copypasta read:

“HUGE BREAKING NEWS! Ruby Freeman (the Democrat suitcase blonde-braid woman in GA) has been arrested! She has acknowledged to law enforcement and investigators her role in the Fulton County methods of GOP witness complaints and the after hours ballot scheme count.”

There was no truth to this rumor. The FBI did not arrest Ruby Freeman for election fraud and this person was not suspected (outside of conspiracy-minded circles) of any illegal activity related to the 2020 election. 

While most of the iterations of this viral message that we encountered simply contained the message above, some versions were part of longer Twitter threads that included additional claims about various charges that the FBI allegedly filed against Freeman. 

The longer versions of this rumor claimed that the “source” of the information was an FBI statement posted in the early hours of Dec. 17. However, we found no such news release. We looked through the websites and social media pages of the FBI, the FBI’s Atlanta Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, and the Fulton County Police Department, but found no mention of Freeman’s alleged arrest. 

The false rumors about Freeman’s arrest were just another installment in a weeks-long smear campaign against the U.S. electoral process. In early December, U.S. President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, disreputable websites such as the Gateway Pundit, and conspiracy-minded social media users started sharing a video that showed an election worker they identified as Freeman removing ballots from a suitcase. While Giuliani and others have claimed without evidence that this suitcase was filled with illegal ballots, election officials labeled this claim “ridiculous” and offered a much more reasonable explanation. 

The New York Times reported:

Late on Nov. 3, election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, heard that they would be allowed to go home for the night. So they packed uncounted ballots into suitcases and prepared to lock up for the evening.

When word came that they couldn’t leave yet, they dragged the suitcases back out and began counting the ballots again.

That singular scene — of workers taking out suitcases of votes — was then selectively edited and shared by allies of President Trump as a conspiracy theory that election workers had dragged out fraudulent ballots under the cover of night. According to the theory, those suitcases helped swing Georgia’s Electoral College votes to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But on Monday, Georgia’s secretary of state office dedicated part of a morning news conference to debunking that falsehood and many others, in what was called “Disinformation Monday.” Gabriel Sterling, the voting implementation manager in Georgia and a Republican, said in the news conference that watching the entire surveillance footage of Election Day showed that workers had first packed the suitcases with valid, uncounted ballots and then later unpacked those same ballots. They had not taken out suitcases full of fake ballots, he said.

After the suitcase-of-fraud claims were dismissed by election officials, social media users started sharing a “confession” that Freeman supposedly posted to her Instagram account. This Instagram account, however, does not actually belong to Freeman. Shortly after this “confession” went viral, the @RubyFreeman_Georgia Instagram account (which was created on the same day this message was posted), started sharing content that mocked those who fell for its ruse. 

In addition to falsely accusing this woman of confessing to election fraud, many social media users also passed around a mug shot of an entirely different “Ruby Freeman” in an apparent attempt to further smear her character or resuscitate this rumor. 

The accusations against Freeman were without merit, as were a plethora of claims holding that the 2020 presidential election was marred by widespread voter fraud. Claims of voter fraud have been dismissed by election officials and lawsuits alleging fraud have been dismissed by judges across the country.

As for Ruby Freeman, she was not arrested by the FBI and she is not suspected (outside of conspiracy-minded circles) of any wrongdoing related to the 2020 election. 

2020年12月21日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

必应确认中国会入侵美国吗?

TikTok 视频声称,必应搜索引擎正在显示消息,称中国计划在 2020-2025 年入侵美国并参与战争。

【宣称】

Bing.com 证实中国计划入侵美国。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

Beginning in December 2020, conspiracy theorists published TikTok videos that warned the Microsoft search engine, Bing.com, had confirmed an upcoming and successful Chinese invasion of the United States. In the videos, TikTok users directed viewers to visit Bing.com to type in “China invade USA” (without quotes). The videos showed a snippet result on the right-hand side called “Invasion of the U.S. Mainland,” apparently scheduled for 2020-2025 with a “Red Chinese victory.”

china invade us usa bing search chinese invasion

It’s true that entering the text “China invade USA” (without quotes) on Bing.com will bring up the result seen in the image above.

However, the snippet on the right titled “Invasion of the U.S. Mainland” was not a confirmation or prediction of war by Bing.com, nor was it a news story. The embedded content was nothing more than a search engine results preview of fiction writing from the Future section of the website Fandom.com.

The fictional story began with an August 2020 invasion of Alaska:

Invasion of Alaska and Canada

The chaotic situation in the US mainland after the surprise Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack provided excellent opportunities for further Chinese expansionism, US military forces is in disarray with the whole US power grid knocked out American strategic nuclear forces were paralyzed leaving the whole US mainland open to invasion.

China saw Alaska as a stepping stone for its conquest of the US with its limitless supply of raw materials, its manufactured goods, and as a protective staging ground against Canada and the rest of the United States.

China invaded Alaska outright in August 2020. Russia took Attu Island. After five months of fighting, the puppet state of Democratic State of Alaska was established in December 2020, with an Eskimo rebel chieftain Pung Hunni, installed as its puppet President. Militarily too paralyzed to challenge China directly, America send in irregular forces to continue resistance.

We previously reported on a very similar story that claimed Chinese troops were amassed in Canada and were planning to invade the U.S. That rumor was also false.

The fictional story from Fandom.com claimed that 30,000,000 American civilians would die in an upcoming war, and that 7,350,000 U.S. military members would die. It also said that Chinese leaders would join forces with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some 5,000,000 soldiers were said to die China’s side of the war from 2020-2025. Again, all of this was a work of fiction.

The story ended without the Chinese being able to claim a “decisive victory”:

By 2025 China had occupied much of Midwest and the west coast of the former United States, but the US provisional central government and military had successfully retreated to the eastern interior to continue their resistance, while the American guerrillas remained in control of base areas in the Appalachian mountains . In the occupied areas, Chinese control was mainly limited to highways as well as railroads and major cities . They did not have a major military or administrative presence in the vast American countryside, where American guerrillas roamed freely. This stalemate situation made a decisive victory seem difficult to the Chinese.

In short, “China invade USA” was not a special way to find top secret information, nor was it a key to find out what will happen in the future.

2020年12月21日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

沃尔玛员工是否为自己隐藏了 PS5 储藏处?

发布到 TikTok 的视频据称显示了隐藏在沃尔玛花园区域的 PlayStation 5 视频游戏机的 “藏匿”。

【宣称】

沃尔玛的员工被抓住隐藏 PS5 是为了自己保存视频游戏机。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

In November 2020, Sony released the newest in the line of PlayStation consoles: PlayStation 5 (PS5). But shoppers had a hard time finding a PS5 because of shortages and scalpers who used “sophisticated bots” to quickly buy up any stock. Meanwhile, Google searches for PS5 availability at Walmart trended in November and December 2020, following the Nov. 12, 2020, release date.

So when we came across TikTok videos that purported to show Walmart employees “trying 2 stash” away PS5s for themselves, we decided to take a closer look.

The videos were posted by TikTok user @skitdaddle_420. He claimed to find a “stash” of PS5s that were hidden away by Walmart employees in what appeared to be the store’s garden section. We were unable to confirm the Walmart location where the videos were recorded. The first video had been viewed more than 269,000 times:

@skitdaddle_420

caught employees trying 2 stash bunch of ps5s at walmart🤣 follow and like 4 part 2 of the cage full of ps5s. I deserve one🤣 #foryou #ps5 #walmart

♬ original sound – Adrian Bridges

However, the TikTok videos did not show that Walmart employees had “stashed” a bunch of PS5 consoles for themselves. All of the boxes visible in the second video were marked with names and either “pickup” or “delivery,” because they were already purchased. At the end of the first video, an unidentified person told @skitdaddle_420: “These are for people who ordered them online.” This meant they were likely preorders or online orders.

As for the scalper problem that had plagued the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, Chicago Tribune reported it could threaten the platform’s longterm success:

A console’s debut is supposed to set off a virtuous cycle of consumers rushing to buy the devices, while developers release games that capitalize on new graphics and processor capabilities, sending demand on both sides surging. Sony risks suffering the opposite.

“The PlayStation 5 could miss a critical chance to get into a good hardware-software upward spiral,” said Kazunori Ito of Morningstar Research. “The peak of the platform will likely be low and the platform’s total revenue earned won’t be as strong as we hoped for.”

Scalpers deploy bots that constantly monitor online stores for changes in inventory and supplies, then automatically place orders and check out in seconds when devices become available. The technique is based on familiar web-crawling or scraping technology, but is specifically tailored for e-commerce and can sometimes jump to the front of order queues.

Walmart published a blog post about what it calls “grinch bots” and called on lawmakers to help with the problem:

We have more next-gen consoles coming online soon, and we’re continuing to work hard to get them into the hands of as many customers as possible. We hope others across the retail industry will join us by asking lawmakers to do more to prevent these unwanted bots on retail sites, so customers have equal access to the products they want.

For further reading, we previously published another story about video games that claimed Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 6 was hinted at in a GTA Online teaser.

2020年12月21日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

探索泰坦尼克号的潜水员创造了 “深度震动” 的新发现?

一篇 80 页的故事说,泰坦尼克号残骸中出现了 “令人深感震惊”、“困扰” 和 “令人寒冷” 的新发现。

【宣称】

探索泰坦尼克号残骸的潜水员发现了一个令人震惊的新发现。

【结论】

混合

【原文】

In December 2020, the website HistoricalPost.com advertised a new dramatic story about the Titanic: “Divers Exploring The Titanic Wreckage Made A Spine-Chilling New Discovery.”

The advertisement led to an 80-page story with the headline: “Divers Explored The Titanic For The First Time In 14 Years – And They Made A Haunting Discovery.” The story also described the “new discovery” as being “deeply shocking.”

However, the big reveal was the fact that the ship was quickly deteriorating, perhaps not surprising given it had been under water for more than a century.

But what the intrepid voyagers ultimately found at the location of the wreck was deeply shocking.

You see, the detritus of the Titanic is disappearing quickly. And Patrick Lahey – expedition member and president of Limiting Factor owner Triton Submarines – explained as much in a press release from Triton. Lahey revealed, “The most fascinating aspect [of the expedition] was seeing how the Titanic is being consumed by the ocean and returning to its elemental form while providing refuge for a remarkably diverse number of animals.”

And much has vanished, too. For example, one artifact known as the “captain’s bathtub” – which has become famous thanks to various photographs – is no longer to be seen at the site. But what is left of the ship – as well as the thriving undersea wildlife that lives on the wreck – has been stunningly captured in the 4K footage that the divers were able to shoot.

[Titanic history expert Parks] Stephenson emphasized the state of the vessel, too, when in August 2019 he told the BBC in August 2019, “[The] Titanic is returning to nature.” Powerful ocean currents, the corrosive action of salt water and bacteria that eat metal are all contributing to the disappearance of the the ship’s wreck.

It was true that a 2019 expedition found that the wreckage of the Titanic was rapidly deteriorating. Explorers took the DSV Limiting Factor submersible down to the ship five times. It was the first dive down to the Titanic with people aboard in nearly 15 years.

On Aug. 21, 2019, BBC.com reported that the expedition found that “the wreck is deteriorating rapidly.”

Despite the near-freezing conditions, pitch black waters and immense pressure, life is thriving there.

This though, said expedition scientist Clare Fitzsimmons, from Newcastle University, was a factor in the Titanic’s decay.

“There are microbes on the shipwreck that are eating away the iron of the wreck itself, creating ‘rusticle’ structures, which is a much weaker form of the metal,” she said.

These rusticles – stalactites of rust hanging off the wreck – are so fragile that they can crumble into a cloud of dust if disturbed.

Titanic historian Parks Stephenson referred to the 2019 expedition as being “shocking.” However, we were unable to find any mention of anything that was “deeply shocking,” as mentioned in the 80-page story from HistoricalPost.com.

An opposing perspective came from oceanographer David Gallo, who also had some expertise in diving to the Titanic. He told USA Today that he didn’t find the purported discovery to be “shocking”:

While photos of the ship may look ghostly, oceanographer David Gallo said the deterioration doesn’t look much different than when he co-lead a remotely operated expedition to the Titanic in 2010. Gallo stressed that it’s too soon to tell how long the ship will take to decay and more research needs to be done.

“I don’t see what was seen as being ‘shocking,'” Gallo said. “It’s been over 100 years and the ship shows wear, but it certainly looks like it’s going to last another 100 years,”

A documentary from the 2019 expedition titled “Back to the Titanic” was released on Disney+ and National Geographic.

We recently covered other claims about the Titanic. One said that the “hidden truth” of the ship’s sinking had been “covered up for decades.” Another story advertised that an “old camera” had been found in the “deep ocean” with “horrifying Titanic photos” still loaded into the device.

2020年12月20日
发表者 minici
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TikTok 视频 “暴露” 麦当劳的早餐吗?

就像食物一样,有关麦当劳快速行动的传言。

【宣称】

TikTok 视频描绘了麦当劳的员工准备大早餐和香肠卷饼菜单项目。

【结论】


【原文】

In a 1992 McDonald’s TV advertisement, a singer belts out a tune: “McDonald’s is really cooking breakfast!” McDonald’s breakfast was first introduced in the 1970s, and through the years, it has gone through quite a number of changes. And many rumors have circulated about its ingredients and preparation. For example, we previously reported that its McMuffin menu items were still prepared with freshly cracked eggs. More recently, TikTok videos appeared to “expose” how McDonald’s restaurants prepare other breakfast menu items. We looked into the issue to find out.

The TikTok Videos

In early December 2020, TikTok user @carlosarmendariz94 posted two videos that showed how two popular McDonald’s breakfast items were prepared. A video purporting to show a Sausage Burrito was posted on Dec. 5, and had racked up nearly 88,000 views:

@carlosarmendariz94

My friend @jesusalvarez171 wasn’t that mad lol! #mcdonalds #breakfast #mcdonaldsburrito

♬ original sound – Carlos Armendariz

The Old Days of McDonald’s Breakfast

With that information in mind, it might be time for a brief history lesson. We found a number of comments that said there was once a time when McDonald’s restaurants quickly cooked fresh breakfast items. Those comments were from people who claimed to have worked for McDonald’s in the past.

TikTok user @lamandis commented: “I feel old. I remember working in McDonald’s when we would go in at 5:00 a.m. to actually make the biscuits.” User @d4sc33 added: “I used to work for McDonald’s in the 1990s. We used to hand-make everything with the exception of the biscuits.” Rachel Marie Slade also commented: “I’m so old. When I worked at McDonald’s, we made the biscuits from scratch in 1985.”

It was true that there was a time McDonald’s breakfast biscuits were made from scratch:

What about McDonald’s Hotcakes breakfast item? TikTok user @moniepressed commented: “Naw. McDonald’s used to mix pancakes and make them on the griddle back when I worked there in the 1990s.” Aaliyah Katt also said: “When I worked at MD we cooked the pancakes individually back in the 90s.” @suemare107 added: “When I worked for McDonald’s we made the pancakes and biscuits fresh. Salads were made that day as well. Mind you that was 30 years ago lol.” Finally, @lizperales31 commented: “McDonald’s sure has changed. When I worked there, many moons ago, biscuits and pancakes were fresh.”

It was also true that McDonald’s once advertised freshly made Hotcakes:

We were unable to confirm whether or not any McDonald’s restaurants still made biscuits or Hotcakes from scratch. However, we observed several commenters who hinted this may be the case. User @clara.martin16 commented: “I worked at McDonald’s for 4 years and our biscuits were made from scratch every AM. I live in a small town so the could be the difference.” Meanwhile, @sammyqueens0 also said: “Not all McDonald’s biscuits are frozen. At the one I work at we make biscuits from scratch.” Felix Santiago replied: “They still do, but certain stores choose frozen because they are unable to keep a biscuit maker.”

The Rockin’ Hot Cakes

Not only did McDonald’s once make more of its breakfast menu items from scratch, but the franchise also featured a special lineup of characters for the McDonald’s Hotcakes: the Rockin’ Hot Cakes — a trio of singing and dancing pancakes:

For further reading, we also previously looked at TikTok videos that purportedly showed a McRib being prepared.

2020年12月20日
发表者 minici
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Chipotle 员工神秘地消失了吗?

在 Chipotle Mexican Grill 拍摄的 TikTok 视频显示,光天化日下有一家空的餐厅,内外没有任何人的迹象。

【宣称】

Chipotle Mexican Grill 餐厅的员工和顾客神秘地消失,没有解释发生了什么。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

Mysterious disappearances were often the main focus of both the old and rebooted “Unsolved Mysteries” television shows. “Next on ‘Unsolved Mysteries’… the disappearance of Chipotle workers,” commented TikTok user Cory Fogarty. However, the case of the empty Chipotle likely won’t be looked at in a future episode, because the truth was right there all along.

In early December 2020, TikTok user @migueljrmartinez posted a video that purported to show an empty Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant:

@migueljrmartinez

@chipotle what’s going here

♬ original sound – Miguel Jr Martinez

We reached out to Chipotle, and they confirmed they were temporarily closed because of a heating issue.

2020年12月19日
发表者 minici
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伯利恒之星正在复出吗?

2020 年 12 月 21 日,木星和土星将在夜空中穿越路径。这与伯利恒之星有同样的现象吗?

【原文】

This article about the Star of Bethlehem is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


On Dec. 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will cross paths in the night’s sky and for a brief moment, they will appear to shine together as one body. While planetary conjunctions like this are not everyday events, they also are not particularly rare.

This year’s conjunction is different for at least two reasons. The first is the degree to which the two planets will be aligned. Experts predict that they will appear closer during this conjunction than they have in nearly eight centuries and also brighter.

Put another way, I argue that Matthew’s goal in telling this story is more theological than it is historical.

The upcoming conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is therefore likely not a return of the Star of Bethlehem, but Matthew would likely be pleased with the awe it inspires in those who anticipate it.

(Check out our collection of other holiday legends.)

The Conversation


Eric M. Vanden Eykel, Associate Professor of Religion, Ferrum College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月19日
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为什么纯粹人打击庆祝圣诞节

当所谓的 “圣诞战争” 升温时,请记住,清教徒首先阻止了尤勒蒂德庆祝活动,然后直接禁止了这些庆祝活动。

【原文】

This article about the alleged “War on Christmas” and the Puritans is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged “War on Christmas” heats up.

In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups have sparked furor by wishing customers “happy holidays.” This year, with state officials warning of holiday gatherings becoming superspreader events in the midst of a pandemic, opponents of some public health measures to limit the spread of the pandemic are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday.

The Conversation


Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月19日
发表者 minici
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糖果手杖的历史以及为什么它们味道如此酷

糖果手杖曾经是白棒糖。现在糖果手杖是条纹的,有各种口味,包括泡菜。

【原文】

This article on “The history of candy canes and why they taste so cool” is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


Candy canes are an iconic symbol of Christmas. Their red and white stripes adorn trees and homes during the holidays while their minty flavour delights taste buds.

According to the National Confectionery Association, a U.S.-based group that advocates for the confectionery industry, candy canes are the No. 1 selling non-chocolate candy in the month of December — 90 per cent are sold between U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We perceive mint as cold because methanol activates a specific receptor found in the sensory neurons of the skin and mouth. When menthol connects with an ion channel called TRPM8, it sends an electrical signal along the length of the neuron.

Normally, the TRPM8 receptor is activated by cold temperatures such as icy water or a slushy. Menthol, however, is able to bind with the TRPM8 protein triggering it in the same way that something cold would. When TRPM8 detects menthol, the receptor sends the signal to the brain that something cold is in the mouth.

If you don’t care for minty candy canes, don’t worry, you’re still in luck. Candy manufacturers also make candy canes in a variety of other flavours and colours.

Pickle, anyone?

The Conversation


Veronica Ann Hislop, Graduate Student in Food Molecular Science, Ryerson University and Dérick Rousseau, Professor in the department of chemistry and biology, Ryerson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月19日
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圣诞装饰品的起源:装饰历史大厅

冬季中旬挂起装饰品的想法比圣诞节本身还要老,可追溯到萨图纳利亚的罗马盛宴。

【原文】

This article on the origins of Christmas decorations is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


The idea of hanging up decorations in the middle of winter is older than Christmas itself. Decorations are mentioned in ancient descriptions of the Roman feast of Saturnalia, which is thought to have originated in the 5th century BC.

Some 900 years later, a Christian bishop in Turkey wrote disapprovingly about members of his congregation who were drinking, feasting, dancing and “crowning their doors” with decorations in a pagan fashion at this time of year.

Today, of course, plastic is widely out of favour. As a result, perhaps we will see further reinvention of our Christmas decorations and traditions – which, from a historical perspective, is a tradition in itself.The Conversation


Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor in Medieval History, University of Reading

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月19日
发表者 minici
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哈里王子 “改变了他对梅根马克的主意” 吗?

我们不建议在引用小报的网站上寻找有关梅根·马克尔和王室的新闻。

【宣称】

一份报告证实,哈里王子改变了对梅根·马克尔的主意,他认为她可能不是 “那个人”。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

The internet is full of clickbait advertisements about the British royal family. In the past, misleading ads often led to lengthy stories with more than 40 pages for readers to click through. One false online advertisement claimed that the royal family had a problem with Meghan Markle’s net worth, but the advertised story mentioned nothing of the sort.

We also saw an outdated story about the former Kate Middleton, now Duchess of Cambridge, and an unproven story about Prince Charles and baby Archie, the son of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

In December 2020, another baseless ad also made mention of the young couple, Harry and Meghan. It read: “Prince Harry Has Changed His Mind About Meghan Markle.”

The advertisement, once clicked, led readers to a story on TheFashionBall.com with the headline: “Harry Admits That Meghan Markle May Not Be ‘The One.'” However, nowhere in the 41-page story was it revealed that Prince Harry admitted Markle may not be “the one.” Further, no mention was made in the story that Harry had “changed his mind” about her.

The story was first published in June 2020. Nearly six months later, the second sentence of the story still failed to capitalize Harry’s name. The article also lacked proper sourcing. For example, at least one page cited the tabloid The Daily Mail. In 2017, The Daily Mail was considered to be so “unreliable” that it was banned from being used as a source on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia editors have voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group “generally unreliable.”

The move is highly unusual for the online encyclopaedia, which rarely puts in place a blanket ban on publications and which still allows links to sources such as Kremlin backed news organisation Russia Today, and Fox News, both of which have raised concern among editors.

The editors described the arguments for a ban as “centred on the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication.”

The baseless advertisement and misleading headline appeared to be nothing more than gossip and conjecture about the royal family.

The couple and their young son, Archie, made their apparent departure from royal life in early 2020. As of December 2020, the family lived in Montecito, California, located north of Los Angeles.

2020年12月19日
发表者 minici
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最高法院在德克萨斯州选民欺诈案的高喊比赛中爆发了吗?

假新闻无论谁重复,都是假新闻。

【宣称】

首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨在 2020 年 12 月尖叫美国最高法院的其他法官驳回了德克萨斯州选民欺诈案件。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

On Dec. 17, 2020, a rumor started to circulate on social media that Chief Justice John Roberts had screamed at his U.S. Supreme Court colleagues while urging them to dismiss a lawsuit from Texas’ attorney general asking the court to block millions of votes that were cast in the 2020 election.

The rumor was often shared with comments accusing Roberts of “moral cowardice.” The conservative justice who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush allegedly wanted to dismiss the lawsuit, the rumor claimed, because he was afraid of the “radical left” and the inevitable riots that would ensue if the court took up the case. 

These rumors were bolstered by a video that showed a man describing a report he read online. The report was supposedly written by a Supreme Court staffer who allegedly overheard a loud argument “behind closed doors” as the Supreme Court debated the matter:

TEXAS ELECTORAL COLLEGE:

"The Justices went into a closed room…When Texas case was brought up he said he heard screaming through the walls as Justice Roberts and the other liberal Justices were insisting…afraid of what would happen if they did right thing…Moral cowardice" pic.twitter.com/JhnPN59wkP

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) December 14, 2020

The story recounted in the above-displayed video does not originate with a Supreme Court staffer. Rather, this story is a rehashed version of a piece of misinformation that was originally published on far-right conspiracy theorist Hal Turner’s website. 

On Dec. 12, HalTurnerRadio.com published an article titled, “Loud Arguments in US Supreme Court Chambers over Texas Lawsuit – COURT INTIMIDATED.” It was supposedly based on a “source deep inside the US Supreme Court.”

Hal, as you know I am a clerk for one of the Justices on SCOTUS. Today was like nothing we have ever seen. The justices are arguing loudly behind closed doors.

The Justices met in a closed and sealed room, as is standard.

Usually it is very calm, however today we could hear screaming all the way down the hall.

They met in person, because they didn’t trust telephonic meeting as secure.

Chief Justice Roberts was screaming

“Are you going to be responsible for the rioting if we hear this case?”

This account can be dismissed for one simple reason: The Supreme Court did not meet in a “closed and seal room, as is standard” to discuss this case. The Supreme Court has not met in person for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Supreme Court writes on its website:

The Court will hear all oral arguments scheduled for the November and December sessions by telephone conference. In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the Justices and counsel will all participate remotely. The oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. On days when more than one case will be heard, there will be a three minute pause before the second case begins.

While articles published to Turner’s website should be viewed with a hefty dose of skepticism due to the proprietor’s  long history of spreading misinformation, many people encountered this particular piece of misinformation in the more official-looking setting of the viral video. 

The video was taken on Dec. 14 and shows a meeting of Texas electors before they cast their ballots in the 2020 election. The man in the video identified himself as Matt Patrick from Texas’ 32nd district. In the full video (shown below), Patrick notes that he doesn’t have a citation for his story (he notes that it was something he read online that morning) and offers no additional details about this alleged screaming match. It appears that Patrick was merely rehashing a piece of misinformation that was published on a conspiracy theorist’s website. 

Here’s the full video of Patrick’s remarks:

The anecdote about a loud shouting match being overheard as the Supreme Court discussed Texas’ lawsuit is a work of fiction. In reality, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit for “lack of standing.” 

The Texas Tribune reported:

Briskly rejecting a long-shot but high-stakes case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday tossed out the Texas lawsuit that had become a vehicle for Republicans across the country to contest President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

In a few brief sentences, the high court said it would not consider the case for procedural reasons, because Texas lacked standing to bring it.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.

2020年12月18日
发表者 minici
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黑密歇根州代表应对私刑威胁,面临强烈反应

民主党议员辛西娅·约翰逊似乎在 Facebook 视频中威胁特朗普的支持者。

【原文】

Michigan legislators are divided over a Facebook video in which a fellow politician responded to racially-motivated harassment and threats of violence and as a result is now facing a reprimand.

Here’s what we know: After state Rep. Cynthia Johnson, a Black woman, criticized incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing in early December 2020, she received harassing phone calls from Trump supporters, including at least one of lynching.

She posted a Facebook video after receiving the threats, where she issued a “warning” to “Trumpers.” Subsequently, House Republican leaders stripped her of her positions on various committees — including the Oversight Committee. Republican leaders called her Facebook video comments “unacceptable and unAmerican,” while Democrats said the action against her would only increase tensions.

While these events happened largely as described, her initial language in the controversial Facebook video was unclear.

In a Dec. 8, 2020, rambling Facebook live video, she said: “Hit their asses in the pocketbook […] So this is just a warning to you Trumpers. Be careful, walk lightly. We ain’t playing with you. Enough of the shenanigans […] And for those of you who are soldiers, you know how to do it. Do it right. Be in order. Make them pay.” In context, her language seemed to imply that she wanted threatening individuals to be affected economically.

MIchigan Attorney General Dana Nessel condemned the violent threats directed at Johnson, as well as the contents of her Facebook video. Michigan Republican Party chair Laura Cox said: “It is reprehensible that an elected official would call on her ‘soldiers’ to make the supporters of an opposing party ‘pay’, and clearly such a statement could incite people to violence.”

Johnson clarified she was not inciting violence with her message. Based on recordings of voicemails she posted online, she was responding to much more violent and racist threats that were made against her, including one in which a caller said she should be “swinging from a […] rope.” Another text message used misogynistic slurs against her. 

We wrote about kidnapping threats against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer back in October over her stay-at-home orders around the COVID-19 pandemic. After the November elections, death threats against state officials have grown. Armed protesters showed up at the Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s house to chant about unproven claims of election fraud. 

The threats against Johnson got so bad that local, state, and federal agencies were investigating them, according to Johnson. She said that law enforcement was patrolling her home daily. But she added that despite the abuse, she “ain’t backing down.” 

2020年12月18日
发表者 minici
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关于弗兰克·沙伦伯格 “知情疫苗同意” 帖子

据称由一位医生撰写的一篇促进可疑的 “臭氧疗法” 的文章错误地认为,玉米病疫情已经结束。

【原文】

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

A letter allegedly authored by a controversial physician and alternative medicine practitioner named Frank Shallenberger began making the rounds on social media in December 2020. Although the letter’s content appears consistent with views he has expressed in the past, Shallenberger did not respond to our request to verify his authorship of the letter. Regardless of authorship, the post’s “bottom line” is this:

I would much rather get a Covid infection than get a Covid vaccine. That would be safer and more effective. I have had a number of Covid positive flu cases this year. Some were old and had health concerns. Every single one has done really well with natural therapies including ozone therapy and iv Vitamin C. Just because modern medicine has no effective treatment for viral infections, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.

The post arrives at these conclusions after listing a litany of purported concerns about COVID-19 vaccination and doubts about the reality of there being a pandemic at all. In this article, we tackle the post in two different ways. First, we fact-check the post’s assertions, which are often factually incorrect and misleading, point-by-point. Second, we discuss the purported remedy of ozone therapy for COVID-19 and explain why Shallenberger’s authorship, or at least the invocation of his name, should be a red flag.

Indeed, this is what a November 2020 Washington Post article stated. It also stated that “government, academic, and health-care officials say that significant numbers of providers want more data about the vaccine before it is deployed.” Now, in December 2020, we have more data about the vaccine, its efficacy, and its safety.

Has the Pandemic Been Over Since September 2020?

  • Since the death rate from COVID resumed to the normal flu death rate way back in early September, the pandemic has been over since then. Therefore, at this point in time no vaccine is needed.

To be clear, the author of this viral post is attempting to assert that a pandemic currently killing over 3,000 Americans every day is “over.” This is neither true nor supported by anything resembling empirical evidence. For comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza.”

In just the 2 1/2 months from the beginning of September (when the author of the post alleges the pandemic to have ended) to the time of the publication of this piece, the U.S. has had over 115,600 COVID-19 deaths. In total, the U.S. has had over 300,000 deaths —  an entire order of magnitude more than from influenza in the previous season.

Is the Pandemic Really Just Caused by PCR Test False Positives? 

  • The current scare tactics regarding “escalating cases” is based on a PCR test that because it exceeds 34 amplifications has a 100% false positive rate unless it is performed between the 3rd and 5th day after the first day of symptoms. It is therefor [sic] 100% inaccurate in people with no symptoms. This is well established in the scientific literature. The weekly death rates in the US are now lower than they normally are during an average flu season.

The problem with PCR testing does not rest with false positives, though there are unresolved questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests in general. Rather, its limitation is that it detects only the presence of specific SARS-CoV-2 RNA, and the presence of this RNA is not necessarily indicative of being infected or contagious with SARS-CoV-2. This is not a false positive for COVID-19, it is a true positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Still, the argument goes, deaths attributed to COVID-19 (discussed above) stem from falsely attributing COVID-19 as the cause based merely on the trace presence SARS-CoV-2 in people with unrelated health conditions. 

To suggest the pandemic is caused by false positives is an untenable position. That’s because evidence of the pandemic in the form of excess mortality (the number of deaths compared to the number of deaths on average for any given period of time) is not sensitive to whatever result a person received on a PCR test prior to death. The figure below shows weekly deaths (from all causes) in the United States from 2017 to the present compared to the average number for that week. It shows that deaths have significantly exceeded a normal year’s totals every week since April 2020 and have been rising rapidly in just the last few weeks.

It goes without saying, but this is also a big blow to the “weekly death rates in the US are now lower than they normally are during an average flu season,” line.

Are COVID-19 Vaccines Unnecessary Because of Herd Immunity?

  • The other reason you don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19 is that substantial herd immunity has already taken place in the United States. This is the primary reason for the end of the pandemic.

As previously discussed, the pandemic is not over. It is, in fact, getting worse.

Who Is Frank Shallenberger?

Shallenberger is both an M.D., licensed by the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners, and an alternative medical practitioner. The Nevada Board of Medical Examiners has reprimanded him twice. Prior to setting up a practice in Nevada, he was forced to surrender his earlier California license in response to several allegations against him. While we can find no instance outside of this viral post in which he recommends ozone therapy specifically for COVID-19, he did recommend a related alternative treatment that involves breathing nebulized hydrogen peroxide as a COVID-19 cure in a March 2020 newsletter article.

At the end of the “Informed Vaccine Consent” post, Shallenberger allegedly wrote “you cannot completely trust what you hear from the media” because “they are all supported by Big Pharma and the other entities selling the COVID vaccines.” If this post was truly authored by Shallenberger, his recommendation of “ozone therapy” shouldn’t be trusted either due to his own financial interest. Shallenberger considers himself to be the “godfather of ozone therapy in the United States,” owns a medical practice that specializes in the treatment, and he is the developer of a proprietary form of ozone treatment named Prolozone. He receives money certifying other alternative practitioners in the use of ozone. 

Hailed on Shallenberger’s clinic’s website as a cure for virtually anything and everything (but not COVID-19 explicitly), ozone treatment under his care involves removing a small amount of blood, adding gaseous ozone to it, and then reinjecting this gasified blood back into the body. Such a treatment, in contrast to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, lacks any peer-reviewed study demonstrating efficacy against the disease, and the Department of Justice has taken action against people who tout ozone treatment as a cure for COVID-19. The FDA considers ozone to be “a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy,” noting that, “In order for ozone to be effective as a germicide, it must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals.”

All of this is to say that Shallenberger may not be the best source for unbiased information regarding the efficacy of ozone treatment in COVID-19 cases, and invoking his name should be considered a red flag even if someone is impersonating Shallenberger. If he truly is under the impression that the pandemic ended in September, he is probably not a great source for information on COVID-19 in general, either.

2020年12月18日
发表者 minici
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不,克林特·伊斯特伍德的净资产没有让家庭 “流泪”

关于克林特·伊斯特伍德净资产的一个奇怪的在线死亡骗局据称使他的家人 “流泪” 在 2020 年末在线广告中流传。

【宣称】

克林特·伊斯特伍德的净资产使他的家人流泪。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-winning work includes four Oscars: Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role for both 1993’s “Unforgiven” and 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby.” Eastwood’s work spans decades, and some of his roles were uncredited. For example, he briefly appeared in 1995’s “Casper.” Also, since at least September 2020 he appeared uncredited in none other than an online advertisement that read: “Clint Eastwood’s Net Worth Left His Family In Tears.”

Of course, Eastwood had nothing to do with the dubious ad. Further, he was not dead. As of December 2020, Clint Eastwood was alive and filming a new movie during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 90-year-old actor was born on May 31, 1930.

The misleading advertisements that falsely claimed Eastwood’s net worth “left his family in tears” led readers to a seemingly endless, multi-page story on refinancegold.com. The headline for the slideshow-style article read: “Special Celebs & Their Incredible Net Worth.”

Clint Eastwood’s name finally appeared on page 225 after readers had clicked “Next” 225 times, right before the end of the story. The page included no mention of his family being left “in tears.”

Clint Eastwood ~ $375 Million

(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for AFI)

Clint Eastwood is Hollywood’s 70’s star who has had a long and fruitful acting career in succeeding decades, mostly portraying rough-and-tough characters in Western settings. These days, he is one a highly accomplished director. He is best known for his roles in the Dollars Trilogy and Dirty Harry films. With a $375-million net fortune in his bank account from his long career as an actor, producer and director in show business, he will never need to ask for a loan in his life ever again.

We previously covered other misleading net worth advertisements for Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Jaleel White, and Richard Gere. White and Gere were both still alive.

On the TrustPilot.com reviews website, a user named Paul H. posted a one-star review for refinancegold.com, the website that created the misleading Clint Eastwood advertisement:

Hurtful Misleading Ad to Draw You In

Their morally despicable ad to draw you to their website should warn you right off of having anything to do with this company. The hook was:
“Clint Eastwood’s Net Worth Left His Family in Tears” (accompanied by a pic of Clint looking distraught and at death’s door – the sort of pic we could all be caught with at the wrong time of the day).

I’m not particularly a fan of Clint Eastwood but as far as I know he’s very much alive and not going bankrupt any time soon. I’m sure he doesn’t need me to defend him, but this sort of ad is hurtful to those who love him, deceitful and without conscience.

Avoid this company like the plague, how far can you trust people who are willing to draw you in with that sort of ad?

2020年12月18日
发表者 minici
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水管工是否建议 “晚上将盐倒入你的排水道”?

一个在线广告吸引了读者的标题:“今晚将盐倒进你的排水道,这就是为什么。”但它没有解释为什么。

【宣称】

持牌水管工建议晚上将盐倒入排水道。

【结论】

混合

【原文】

What are those online advertisements all about that say to “pour salt down your drain tonight”? We previously reported about ads that hinted at the effectiveness of pouring dish soap in toilets, tubs, and sinks. Dish soap, along with water heated to a low to medium temperature, can potentially help remove common and minor household clogs.

pour salt down your drain at night tonight
A misleading advertisement.

“Pour Salt Down Your Drain Tonight, Here’s Why” was the text in an advertisement in December 2020, although it perhaps had first been displayed long before. Readers who clicked the advertisement were led to a 31-page slideshow story at the website The Delite. That story did not feature the same picture of salt being poured into a drain, nor did it include a tip about pouring salt down a drain at night, before bed.

We looked into whether licensed plumbers recommended pouring salt down drains at night or at all. As we also mentioned in our dish soap story, it is potentially dangerous to pour boiling water into drains. Several Twitter users learned this the hard way.

Red Lilly Plumbing published tips on unclogging drains, and the company’s advice included mentions of salt. The Los Angeles-based licensed plumbers shared this helpful advice about the use of boiling water, vinegar, baking soda, and salt:

Boiling Hot Water

Clogged sinks can be remedied with boiling water. Hot water won’t do it — boiling is the key to dissolving any organic matter in your sink. Be advised though: Don’t use boiling water if you have PVC pipes, as the heat could cause the joints to loosen. In addition, make sure to never pour boiling water directly down a porcelain sink as it can crack. Use a large kettle or funnel to pour the boiling water down the drain if necessary.

Vinegar and Baking Soda

If boiling water alone doesn’t clear a sink, you can try using vinegar and baking soda. Start by pouring half a box of baking soda down your drain. Next, pour half a cup of vinegar down the sink and then stop the drain with a metal stopper —vinegar and baking soda produce a “volcanic” reaction. Allow this to sit for 30 minutes before pouring boiling water down the drain.

Baking Soda and Salt

Baking soda is great for cutting grease in clogged sinks. When it comes to clog removal, mix one part of baking soda with one part salt and four parts of boiling water. Dump this mixture down the drain and let it sit overnight. Flush your drain with hot water in the morning.

Other licensed plumbers mentioned salt as well. Pittsburgh-based Terry’s Plumbing advised using salt in a recipe for cleaning drains and letting it sit “overnight.” This was perhaps the sort of thing the online advertisement for The Delite was hinting at, even though it made no mention of this method in its 31-page story.

The Roto-Rooter Plumbing company, which was founded in 1935, also published a YouTube video that showed salt can be effective in getting rid of drain flies:

The video’s description included more information:

The good news is that you can eliminate pesky drain flies using items and products you probably already have in your house. For instance, salt, baking soda, vinegar, hot water, a pan, and a cup. Supplement these items with a pest strip and some flypaper, and you’ll be able to catch all the adults that are buzzing around the area.

Pour a cup of salt down the drain. Next pour a cup of baking soda into the drain. Then pour in a cup of vinegar. Let sit overnight. The next morning, pour in the hot water. If you have a stainless steel, cast iron, or copper sink, you can pour in boiling water. But if your sink is made of composite material, it could crack if you pour in boiling water, so just use hot tap water instead.

Put out the flypaper or pest strips to catch the drain flies that are buzzing around the room.

It’s true that some licensed plumbers recommend salt as one of several ingredients that may help deal with clogs and drain flies. However, we were unable to find a consensus from professionals regarding pouring a little bit of salt down drains on a nightly basis, or on the regular in any way, as The Delite’s advertisement appeared to be suggesting.

Perhaps the best tip of all is to call a licensed plumbing company for advice.

If you are a licensed professional and have feedback on this story, please let us know.

2020年12月17日
发表者 minici
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耶稣真的出生在伯利恒吗?

新约圣经福音书对耶稣在伯利恒出生的细节不同意。有些人根本没有提及伯利恒或耶稣的出生。

【原文】

This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


Every Christmas, a relatively small town in the Palestinian West Bank comes center stage: Bethlehem. Jesus, according to some biblical sources, was born in this town some two millennia ago.

Yet the New Testament Gospels do not agree about the details of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Some do not mention Bethlehem or Jesus’ birth at all.

But within the Hebrew Bible, a prophetic book called Micah, thought to be written around B.C. 722, prophesies that the messiah would come from David’s hometown, Bethlehem. This text is repeated in Matthew’s version. Luke mentions that Jesus is not only genealogically connected to King David, but also born in Bethlehem, “the city of David.”

Genealogical claims were made for important ancient founders and political leaders. For example, Ion, the founder of the Greek colonies in Asia, was considered to be a descendant of Apollo. Alexander the Great, whose empire reached from Macedonia to India, was claimed to be a son of Hercules. Caesar Augustus, who was the first Roman emperor, was proclaimed as a descendant of Apollo. And a Jewish writer named Philo who lived in the first century wrote that Abraham and the Jewish priest and prophets were born of God.

Regardless of whether these claims were accepted at the time to be true, they shaped a person’s ethnic identity, political status and claims to honor. As the Greek historian Polybius explains, the renown deeds of ancestors are “part of the heritage of posterity.”

Matthew and Luke’s inclusion of the city of Bethlehem contributed to the claim that Jesus was the Messiah from a Davidic lineage. They made sure that readers were aware of Jesus’ genealogical connection to King David with the mention of this city. Birth stories in Bethlehem solidified the claim that Jesus was a rightful descendant of King David.

So today, when the importance of Bethlehem is heard in Christmas carols or displayed in Nativity scenes, the name of the town connects Jesus to an ancestral lineage and the prophetic hope for a new leader like King David.

The Conversation

The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.


Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III, Adjunct Assistant Professor of the New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月17日
发表者 minici
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在寒冷中出去会让你感冒吗?

感冒不是你感冒的原因。但确实,寒冷的天气使感冒或流感更容易。

【原文】

This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


Many of us have heard: “Don’t go outside without a coat; you’ll catch a cold.”

That’s not exactly true. As with many things, the reality is more complicated. Here’s the distinction: Being cold isn’t why you get a cold. But it is true that cold weather makes it easier to get the cold or flu. It is still too early to tell how weather impacts the COVID-19 virus, but scientists are starting to think it behaves differently than cold and flu viruses.

And one more important thing this year: When it’s your turn, make sure you get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Conversation


Libby Richards, Associate Professor of Nursing, Purdue University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月17日
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消费者是否对 TreseMé 洗发水中的指称脱发成分提起诉讼?

Facebook 的一篇病毒性帖子和在线文章报告了 2020 年底针对联合利华的潜在重大集体诉讼。

【宣称】

2020 年末,伊利诺伊州的一名消费者对联合利华提起集体诉讼,指控该公司在 TreseMé 洗发水中使用某种特定成分时违反了各种法律。

【结论】


【原文】

In December 2020, we received multiple inquiries from Snopes readers asking us to examine the accuracy of reports and social media posts that claimed users of two variants of TRESemmé shampoo had filed a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer, Unilever, over the alleged inclusion of an ingredient that causes hair loss.

On Dec. 3, Facebook user Shevelle Finney recounted her alleged experience of hair loss in a post that was shared more than 250,000 times. She wrote:

…I have very long thick curly hair that is now half the thickness it was this time last year. It has been falling out by the brush full and in the shower. I just chalked it up to the stress. I’ve used Tresemme shampoo for years it’s the only thing that tames my hair. Well guess what… I got a phone call from my mother tonight telling me to stop using it. She just got an email about a new class action lawsuit against Tresemme shampoo for having ingredients in it that make your hair fall out. 

Internet users also inquired about a Nov. 17 article on the website ClassAction.org, that reported the following:

A proposed class action filed this week claims the makers of the TRESemmé Keratin Smooth line of shampoos failed to warn users that an ingredient in the products can cause significant hair loss and scalp irritation.

According to the 49-page case, TRESemmé Keratin Hair Smoothing Shampoo and TRESemmé Keratin Smooth Color Shampoo, made by defendants Unilever United States, Inc. and Conopco, Inc., contain a preservative called DMDM hydantoin, which is known to leach formaldehyde when it comes into contact with water.

Given formaldehyde is a “well-known human carcinogen” that can cause cancer and other harmful reactions when absorbed into the skin, Unilever’s use of DMDM hydantoin in the TRESemmé Keratin Smooth products is “an entirely unnecessary risk” since safer and natural alternatives exist, the lawsuit argues.

Nevertheless, the suit alleges, the defendants have failed to properly warn consumers of the risks associated with using such a strong chemical on their hair and have even gone so far as to claim the TRESemmé Keratin Smooth products are safe.

The website TopClassActions.com published a similar article.  

Setting aside Finney’s descriptions of her own personal experience, which we’re not in a position to assess, those accounts were accurate in their descriptions of the lawsuit in question. 

On Nov. 16, 2020, Illinois woman Emily Castillo filed a lawsuit against Unilever USA and its subsidiary Conopco, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, on behalf of herself and “other similarly situated consumers.” In her complaint, Castillo alleged that:

  • Two products (TRESemmé Keratin Hair Smoothing Shampoo and TRESemmé Keratin Smooth Color Shampoo) contain DMDM hydantoin, a preservative known to release formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen, and the products’ use of DMDM hydantoin can cause or contribute to hair loss and scalp irritation.
  • Unilever has been aware of those facts since 2012
  • Unilever failed to properly warn consumers about the risks associated with the products’ use of DMDM hydantoin. 

As a result, Castillo argued, the defendants had committed consumer fraud, breach of warranty, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment. According to her complaint, the number of would-be participants in the class action lawsuit could be “thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,” and she asked the court to order a recall of the products, as well as to instruct Unilever and Conopco to pay unspecified amounts in restitution, damages, attorneys’ fees and other costs. 

Unilever has not yet filed a response to the allegations contained in the complaint, and has until February 2021 to do so. Snopes invited the company to answer Castillo’s allegations, but we did not receive any reply in time for publication.

In her widely-shared Facebook post, Finney included a photograph of a bottle of TRESemmé Moisture Rich conditioner. It’s not clear whether that photograph was for illustration purposes only, or indicates that it is the only TRESemmé product she uses, and therefore one which she alleges caused her hair to fall out. (The text of Finney’s post referred to TRESemmé shampoo, but the photograph showed a bottle of conditioner.)

That particular conditioner does contain DMDM hydantoin, the ingredient at the center of Castillo’s lawsuit, but it is not one of the two specific TRESemmé shampoo variants cited in the complaint.

2020年12月17日
发表者 minici
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该岛是来自 AllState 电视广告的真实吗?

也许在这么小的岛屿上,一辆高尔夫球车可能就足够了。

【宣称】

2020 年,全州电视广告中播放了一个真正的岛屿。

【结论】

大多是真的

【原文】

On Oct. 11, 2020, Allstate insurance company released a new television advertisement that showed a man going about his day on what turned out to be a tiny island. The aim of the commercial appeared to highlight a new payment option that allowed drivers to only pay for miles driven. This meant smaller bills for drivers who don’t drive a lot.

The ad featured Babe Rainbow’s “Morning Song.” In the final shot, it was revealed that the man lived on a very small island. We found no shortage of tweets that asked if the island was real:

Is the island in the Allstate commercial a real place? I want to live there

— Hall of Fame Internet Person Stephen (@SHGrove90) November 29, 2020

The island in the Allstate video is indeed real. It is Ona, located in Norway. RepublicWorld.com reported the news in October.

allstate island real
Norway, Ona island lighthouse. (Courtesy: Andrea Pistolesi/Getty Images)

According to Fjords.com: “Ona is the name of the island community which consists of the two islands Ona and Husøya. The two islands are connected with a small bridge.”

VisitNorway.com published a page with information for what tourists could expect when visiting the island:

Norway’s southernmost living fishing village. The island serves as a year-round residence for 11 people and has a beauty that attracts travelers from far and near. Ona Fyr is a 15-meter high landmark built in 1865, located on the island’s highest point, Onakalven. It is possible to go inside the lighthouse, and from the top, there is a fantastic view out over the sea and towards the mainland.

You will also find the exclusive Ona Chocolate here, a small summer café, two pottery workshops, a craft shop, a chapel, and a long, white sandy beach. The island is a peaceful place where you can enjoy the silence and tranquility. On the island, there are holiday homes located directly on the dock, and local suppliers offer a wide range of activities on-site, including various forms of fishing.

While Ona is a real island, it appeared that the final shot of the Allstate advertisement might have been altered in editing to give the island a bit of a cleaner look. For instance, here is the view of the island from the end opposite the one shown in the Allstate advertisement:

allstate island real
Ona, Norway. (Courtesy: Andrea Pistolesi/Getty Images)

A number of YouTube videos also showed that small patches of rock surround Ona, which did not appear in the Allstate video. For example, small patches of rock appeared here at 0:23, but not in the advertisement:

Digitally altered or not, Ona appeared to be a quiet, lovely vacation destination for anyone visiting Norway in the future.

Speaking of islands, we previously reported about a photograph of a purported “Violin Island” in Costa Rica. That picture first arrived in our inboxes in 2017.

2020年12月17日
发表者 minici
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TikTok 视频是否 “暴露” 了麦当劳的 mCrib 是如何煮熟的?

像 mCrib 一样,这些 TikTok 视频可能只在有限的时间内提供。

【宣称】

TikTok 视频描述了麦当劳的员工烹饪和存储 mcRIb 菜单项。

【结论】


【原文】

McDonald’s famous McRib sandwich debuted in 1981. “Here’s the blueprint,” wrote syndicated columnist Ken Hoffman in 1998, describing the treat as “4 ounces of slapped-together pork chunks molded in the shape of a miniature rack of ribs, smothered in tangy barbecue sauce and topped with slivered onions and pickles on a hoagie roll.”

This week I reached out for a McRib sandwich, available for a limited time only (again and again) at McDonald’s.

Of all the specialty sandwiches that come and go at McDonald’s, the McRib is by far the most popular. It’s been a recurring character, sort of like Newman on “Seinfeld,” since 1981.

Over the years, the McRib was such a hit that it was featured in a number of TV advertisements, including this one from 1989:

Long after the McRib’s 1981 debut, the TikTok video platform arrived in 2016. In the years following its launch, TikTok quickly became popular with its lineup of users’ videos recorded in fast food kitchens. We previously reported on genuine TikTok videos that depicted how Taco Bell’s refried beans are made, how Chick-fil-A’s chicken nuggets are prepared, and how Panera Bread makes its soups, chicken, and macaroni and cheese. It came as no surprise when new TikTok videos surfaced that showed how the McRib was made.

Previously in 2013, a photograph of a frozen McRib patty went “viral” after appearing on Reddit.

Courtesy: DJDanaK (Reddit)

PennLive.com described the virality of the picture at the time:

It looks like a solid white brick with ridges. But it’s supposed to be a succulent pork patty that serves the basis for one of McDonald’s most popular items: the McRib sandwich.

But an employee with a smartphone just happened to snap a picture of a slab of frozen McRib meat, fresh from the box at a McDonald’s somewhere out there. And now that photo has raced around the Internet, raising eyebrows and deadening appetites. It’s the exact opposite of McDonald’s marketing that always shows its fast food in only the best light.

In December 2020, the McRib was set to be available for a limited time, as is tradition.

2020年12月17日
发表者 minici
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在印度尼西亚找到了活的三角龙吗?

欢迎来到莫约瑟米森林公园。

【宣称】

一段视频显示了印度尼西亚正在从卡车上卸下真正的三角龙。

【结论】

字幕错误

【原文】

In December 2020, a video supposedly showing a living triceratops in Indonesia being taken down from a truck a bed was widely circulated online:

Meanwhile in Magetan, East Java, Indonesia.

And 2020 is not over yet. pic.twitter.com/Vp3ictHYe7

— Alex Journey (@alexjourneyID) December 14, 2020

Surprisingly, this is not the most unbelievable dinosaur topic that we’ve covered at Snopes.com. A viral photograph of director Steven Spielberg with one of the animatronic triceratops used in the movie “Jurassic Park” is often circulated on social media along with the claim that it shows a big game hunter with his trophy at the end of an exotic safari. 

2020年12月16日
发表者 minici
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送礼禁忌不像你想象的那么糟糕

行为科学研究表明,对于赠送者来说可能看起来似乎 “禁忌” 的礼物实际上可能比他们想象的更好地受到接受者的赞赏。

【原文】

This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.


There are many social norms that dictate gift-giving, including when, how and what to give as gifts.

Interestingly, these norms don’t seem to be about making sure that recipients get the gifts they want. What makes for a good or bad gift often differs in the eyes of givers and recipients.

But even if givers ignore this advice, there is hope: one last taboo to bust is the taboo on regifting. According Gabrielle Adams of the London Business School and colleagues, givers aren’t as bothered by regifting as recipients think.

Even if what you get is not what you want, you can pass it along to someone else, and hope that next time, the norms will work in your favor.The Conversation


Mary Steffel, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Northeastern University and Elanor Williams, Assistant Professor, Indiana University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

2020年12月16日
发表者 minici
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塔可贝尔是否刚宣布 “重大” 和 “虚幻” COVID 变化?

也许这个 Taco Bell 故事唯一不真实的是它的标题。

【宣称】

塔可贝尔刚刚宣布对 COVID 餐厅进行重大变动,这是虚幻的。

【结论】

大多是真的

【原文】

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

On Dec. 7, 2020, the SheFinds.com website published a new story about Taco Bell during the COVID-19 pandemic that read “Taco Bell Just Announced MAJOR Changes To Its Restaurants For COVID–It’s Unreal!”

SheFinds.com

This was similar to a previous story about McDonald’s, also published by SheFinds.com. We reported on that article, as well as another misleading piece that claimed Wendy’s purportedly made a “heartbreaking” announcement.

As for the Taco Bell story, it purported to detail “major” and “unreal” upcoming changes:

Taco Bell Just Announced MAJOR Changes To Its Restaurants For COVID–It’s Unreal!

Taco Bell is joining restaurants like Chipotle, McDonald’s and Burger King in completely overhauling their dining experience for COVID!

The company announced in August that it would be launching a “Taco Bell Go Mobile” restaurant concept in Q1 of 2021. The new format has been in the works for a few years, but was accelerated due to the pandemic, according to a rep.

“I think the COVID environment has just accelerated those customer insights and needs,” president and global chief operating officer Mike Grams told Nation’s Restaurant News at the time of the release. “It’s really clear what the consumer wants from us.”

This was mostly true. However, it was slightly misleading for the headline to claim that Taco Bell “just” made the announcement. The news story was published nearly four months after the company announced its “Taco Bell Go Mobile” plans.

While “major” and “unreal” were subjective terms, it was also somewhat misleading for the headline to claim that the changes were “for COVID.” According to an interview with Nation’s Restaurant News, the “Taco Bell Go Mobile” experience had already been in the works for three or four years. The story included this interview, but the sensational headline perhaps read as if Taco Bell devised the plans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Taco Bell Go Mobile” concept art. (Courtesy: Taco Bell)

In August 2020, it was announced on the Taco Bell website that its “Go Mobile” restaurant would first open in Q1 of 2021. Each of the new locations would feature smaller restaurant buildings, two drive-thru lanes, a “smart kitchen” that’s “integrated with the Taco Bell app,” curbside pick-up, and bellhops with tablets for ordering.

“Taco Bell Go Mobile” concept art. (Courtesy: Taco Bell)

The “dual drive-thru” experience was described in the news release: “The new concepts will have two drive-thru lanes including a new priority pick-up lane with rapid service for customers who order via the Taco Bell app. This new lane will supplement the existing, traditional lane.”

Previously covered under the Taco Bell name were fact checks about “Grade D but edible” meat, TikTok videos that purportedly showed how its refried beans are prepared, and the disappearance of menu items like the Mexican Pizza.

2020年12月16日
发表者 minici
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特朗普是否将 2020 年圣诞节前夕定为联邦假日?

据称,该命令在圣诞节前一天免除了所有联邦雇员的职务。

【宣称】

2020 年 12 月 11 日,美国总统唐纳德·特朗普发布行政命令,指定 2020 年平安夜为联邦假日。

【结论】


【原文】

In an executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump on Dec. 11, 2020, the 45th commander in chief ordered that Christmas Eve 2020 be designated as a federal holiday, excusing federal employees from duty on the day before Christmas Day.

BREAKING: Christmas Eve is now a federal holiday in 2020, according to an executive order signed Friday by President Trump.

— Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) December 11, 2020

The order read that “all executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government” be closed, and their employees excused from duty on Dec. 24, but that certain offices may remain open for “reasons of national security, defense, or other public need” as determined by the heads of executive departments and agencies.

Though Christmas Day is considered one of 10 federal holidays by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Christmas Eve has not generally been designated as such. However, the president can issue an executive order to give federal workers the day off. Following similar announcements in 2018 and 2019, the 2020 move marked the third time Trump has opted to designate Christmas Eve as a federal holiday.

Trump isn’t the first president to issue a day off on the days before or after the Christmas Day holiday. He joined Franklin Roosevelt as one of two sitting presidents to relieve a full eight-hour workday.

The following presidents issued four-hours of time off on Christmas Eve:

Obama also issued an executive order granting Dec. 26, 2014, as a federal holiday.

This designation may or may not extend to employees in the private sector. Private employers are not legally required to observe national holidays, and granting paid time off is a matter of internal policy.

2020年12月15日
发表者 minici
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特朗普是否被欧洲最大的杂志之一评为 “年度失败者”?

德国新闻杂志《明镜》上的一篇文章称美国总统唐纳德·特朗普为 “Der Verlierer des Jahres”。

【宣称】

欧洲最大的杂志之一将美国总统唐纳德·特朗普命名为 “年度输家”。

【结论】

大多是真的

【原文】

In December 2020, as Time magazine named U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris “Person of the Year,” many social media users encountered messages that U.S. President Donald Trump had been named “loser of the year” by one of Europe’s biggest magazines:

Biden and Harris were truly named Time’s “Person of the Year” in 2020, and the German magazine Der Spiegel truly published an article naming Trump the “loser of the year.” It should be noted, however, that unlike Time’s “Person of the Year” award, the “loser of the year” is not an annual award handed out by the German magazine. 

The “loser of the year” title comes from a more than 3,000-word article published in December 2020 by Der Spiegel. Titled “Der Verlierer des Jahres,” it was highly critical of the American president. Reporters Roland Nelles and Ralf Neukirch write about various scandals that took place during Trump’s administration, such as (among other things) Trump’s downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic, his tear-gassing of peaceful protesters, his efforts to divide the country, his demonizing of the media, his impeachment, and his failure to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The magazine writes (translated via Google):

He refuses to admit defeat. Instead, he speaks of massive electoral fraud, although there is no evidence for it. The whole thing is not surprising. Trump’s presidency ends as it began. Without decency and without dignity.

[…]

The country is more divided than ever since the times of the civil war. This is not a by-product of Trump’s politics, it is their goal. The permanent conflict is part of his strategy. As the first head of state in recent US history, he does not even give the impression that he is the president of all Americans.

[…]

In fact, Trump is doing much better than generally expected. Why? Because he manages to isolate some of his followers from reality. Many people believe the lie that the Democrats are electoral fraud. They are convinced that the traditional media (“fake news”) lie and not their president. And they follow Trump and his conspiracy fantasies that China developed the virus to weaken America.

2020年12月15日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

吉尔·拜登是医生吗?

对于那些拥有博士学位的人来说,使用标题 “博士” 并不罕见。

【宣称】

吉尔·拜登博士不是医生,因此错误地使用了 “博士”

【结论】

混合

【原文】

Following the contentious 2020 presidential contest between Republican incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump and his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, the victory of the latter politician sparked a new wave of political misinformation and smear campaigns on the internet. 

Among such coverage was the argument that future first lady Dr. Jill Biden should nix her prefix because she is not a medical doctor, nor did she receive a medical degree. The first lady-elect is referred to as “Dr. Jill Biden” in news releases issued from the president-elect’s office and also has the title on her official Twitter and Facebook profiles. 

The question of whether the first lady-elect was a doctor came after a Dec. 11, 2020, opinion piece was published in The Wall Street Journal titled, “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.” In the article, former Northwestern University lecturer Joseph Epstein — who had not taught at the university since 2003 — referred to the future FOTUS as “kiddo,” and said that her honorific title felt “fraudulent” and comic.” The piece went on to say:

Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.

[…]

A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

Subsequent coverage of the opinion piece was covered in a number of news publications, from The New York Times to Fox News.

It is true that Biden is not a medical doctor nor did she receive a degree in medicine. However, the future first lady received two master’s degrees from West Chester University and Villanova University, as well as a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in January 2007 — an academic accomplishment that warrants the prefix of “Dr.”

A doctorate of education is a professional degree for practitioners interested in educational leadership roles that differ from a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) in education. An Ed.D. is designed for those wishing to pursue research and teaching roles, according to the private research institute Northeastern University in Boston. Those with an Ed.D. typically work in higher education as administrators or executives in a practice-based leadership role. Biden worked as an educator at a psychiatric hospital in the 1980s, and taught as an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

The question of who is entitled to affix the “Dr.” preface before their name is largely a matter of opinion. But as a general practice, it is acceptable for those with doctorate degrees to refer to themselves as a doctor. At news organizations like Snopes, for example, we follow Associated Press style guidelines, which dictate that only medical doctors are referred to as “Dr.”

In a statement released on Dec. 12, Northwestern University condemned the opinions expressed in the Wall Street Journal article.

“While we firmly support academic freedom and freedom of expression, we do not agree with Mr. Epstein’s opinion and believe the designation of doctor is well deserved by anyone who has earned a Ph.D., an Ed.D. or an M.D.,” wrote the university. “Northwestern is firmly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, and strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views.”

The English department at the university also furthered that Epstein was a former adjunct professor who had not taught within the department in nearly 20 years, adding that his written piece “casts unmerited aspersion on Dr. Jill Biden’s rightful public claiming of her doctoral credentials and expertise.”

“The Department rejects this opinion as well as the diminishment of anyone’s duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university,” wrote the department on its website.

2020年12月15日
发表者 minici
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阿道夫·希特勒在 1938 年被《时代杂志》评为 “年度最佳人” 吗?

时代对年度人物的选择往往是有争议的。

【宣称】

阿道夫·希特勒于 1938 年被《时代》杂志评为 “年度人类”。

【结论】


【原文】

A meme stating that Adolf Hitler was named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine in 1938 has been frequently shared on social media as evidence that the “mainstream media is not always reliable.”

It is undeniably true that Time dubbed the Nazi leader with his title in 1938.  However, the meme is based on the false assumption that Time‘s “Man of the Year” designations were intended to signify greatness and approval, and were only assigned to people who have had beneficial effects on the world. That is not the case — Time‘s standard for the title has been identifying the person who has “had the greatest impact on the news,” regardless of whether that impact was positive or negative:

TIME’s choices for Person of the Year are often controversial. Editors are asked to choose the person or thing that had the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill — guidelines that leave them no choice but to select a newsworthy — not necessarily praiseworthy — cover subject.

The magazine has nominated several controversial figures as “Man of the Year” since the tradition began in 1927, including Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khruschchev, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Osama bin Laden was strongly considered in 2001, but the the title went to New York mayor Rudy Giuliani instead.

In Time‘s 1938 “Man of the Year” article, Hitler was labeled the “greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today.”  That was as much an endorsement of Hitler’s actions in 1938 as it would be today — in other words, not at all.

2020年12月15日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

王室在 “哭泣梅根·马克尔的净值”?

哈里王子、梅根·马克尔和他们的儿子阿奇(Archie)从王室搬到加利福尼亚州的蒙特西托。

【宣称】

一份报告揭示了王室对梅根·马克尔的净资产的潜在负面看法。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

We’ve seen no shortage of questionable claims about the royal family in 2020. The departure of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, from the royal family earlier in the year resulted in quite a bit of clickbait advertisements. One such online advertisement concerned the royal family and Meghan Markle’s net worth.

The advertisement read: “The Royal Family is Cringing at Meghan Markle’s Net Worth.”

However, this was misleading. Readers who clicked on the advertisement landed on a 50-page slideshow article on the website Money Pop. The story’s headline was: “Here’s How Much Each Member of The Royal Family is Worth.” The story made no mention of any of the royal family “cringing” at or being ashamed of Meghan Markle’s net worth in any way.

Markle’s purported net worth appeared on page 18 in the Money Pop story, and included no mention of the royal family’s thoughts on the figure:

Meghan Markle ($5 Million)

Meghan Markle used to do freelance calligraphy between acting auditions in order to make ends meet. Despite the fact that numerous members of her family have filed for bankruptcy over the years (including her own father), the actress was independently wealthy before she ever became a royal.

It’s estimated that she earned around $50,000 per episode of “Suits” and was thought to have brought in around half a million a year from acting and sponsorships. After officially stepping down as a senior royal, Meghan has a net worth of around $5 million.

Other names that appeared in the story included Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince William, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton (the former), Prince George, and a number of others.

The same website that published this story, Money Pop, also promoted a misleading online advertisement that made it appear Olive Garden was going out of business. It’s true that restaurant chains including Olive Garden had been financially burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Olive Garden had not announced it was closing its doors for good.

2020年12月14日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

向下倒洗碗肥皂排水管会去除木板吗?

无论是厕所、浴缸还是厨房水槽,将洗碗皂倒入家庭管道中,都引发了很多在线提示和警告。

【宣称】

将洗碗皂倒入马桶、浴缸或厨房水槽可以清除堵塞的管道。

【结论】

混合

【原文】

Online advertisements that lead to lengthy slideshow-style stories and endless “next page” clicks are perhaps not the most reliable source of information. For example, one advertisement we previously reported on said to “pour vinegar on bread and leave it in your garage.” Readers who clicked the advertisement were led to a story with 92 pages. While the ad may have meant to say “garbage,” none of the 92 pages contained information about pouring vinegar on bread.

In December 2020, advertisements about pouring dish soap down drains appeared on a number of news websites. One advertisement we found said that “pouring dish soap in the toilet is a trick to remember”:

Another said to “pour dish soap in your bath tub at night, here’s why”:

One of the advertisements led to a story on the BetterBe.co website. “Unclog your toilet” appeared on page 20:

Clogged toilets are the worst! But with just a little dish soap, you can solve the problem of your backed-up lavatory. Rather than going at your porcelain throne with a plunger, simply pour half a cup of dish soap into the toilet.

Allow the dish soap to sit in the toilet for roughly 15-20 minutes. Then use a hot bucket of water to flush the refuse down the drain. Thanks to the dish soap, your pipes should be free from all the yucky debris that first caused the clog.

We were unable to find the same trick for bath tubs on the BetterBe.co website, although another website placed the exact same photo at #20. It said: “Save your back while you put dish soap and a broom to work cleaning your bathtub. The same soap that cuts grease on your dishes will tackle soap scum and mildew in the bathroom.”

It is true that dish soap such as Dawn and other popular brands can help fix common and minor drain clogs. Several recipes to unclog drains also mention vinegar and baking soda, but for the purpose of this fact check rating we’ll be concentrating mostly on dish soap.

The San Francisco Chronicle published a recipe to unclog a toilet using dish soap. It included tips about using water heated up to a low or medium temperature on a stove. The basic idea was to pour half a cup of dish soap into the toilet, and then pour hot water (not boiling) into the toilet 10 minutes later. The Chronicle said to call a plumber if the clog remains after 30 minutes. 

The website named for home improvement extraordinaire Bob Vila also recommended dish soap to unclog drains. BobVila.com published that dish soap acts “as a lubricant,” greasing “the clog in the toilet drain to get everything moving again.”

A viral video with millions of views shows the dish soap trick for a toilet, as does a not-so-viral video from the licensed plumbers at 1-Tom-Plumber in Cincinnati, Ohio:

In the YouTube video description, it said: “This trick will only work if your kitchen sink is partially clogged. If your kitchen sink is completely clogged, we recommend going to our YouTube channel and watching our video, ‘How To Unclog Your Kitchen Sink With Vinegar & Baking Soda.'”

One tip we saw mentioned in several guides and videos was to not use boiling water in plumbing. It could crack a toilet or damage piping. The licensed team with Gilmore Heating, Air, and Solar in Sacramento, California, warned: “Do not pour boiling water down your sink or toilet.”

In recent years, DIYers looking to find a green alternative to chemical products have suggested pouring a potful of boiling water into a clogged sink or toilet to clear a clog. While it’s probably okay to dump boiling water in the sink when your pipes are clear, a clog will trap the water in the pipe. This can melt PVC piping and pipe seals, causing serious damage.

In addition, using boiling water to clear a clogged toilet can melt the wax ring around the toilet, or even crack the porcelain bowl, leading to a pricey trip to your favorite hardware store.

The also widely suggested solution of pouring baking soda into a drain, followed by vinegar, isn’t nearly as problematic, as vinegar isn’t very acidic. In fact, it may clear very mild clogs. However, this likely won’t accomplish much with more severe clogs, as all the fizzing reaction does is shift around whatever is clogging the pipe.

2020年12月14日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

德克萨斯州 HB 196 “废除” 城堡教义吗?

该法案似乎确实为自我或他人的辩护添加了 “撤退义务” 条款。但是,在自己的财产上进行自卫呢?

【宣称】

德克萨斯州众议员特里·梅萨提出的 HB 196 将废除被称为城堡学说的法律原则。

【结论】

混合

【原文】

On Nov. 9 2020, Texas state Rep. Terry Meza, D-Texas, introduced a bill that would alter three portions of the Texas code relating to an individual’s right to use force in self-defense. The three sections — 9.32, 9.41, and 9.42 — pertain to the use of deadly force in defense of a person, the use of force in the protection of one’s own property, and the use of deadly force in the protection of one’s own property, respectively.

The proposal drew sharp criticism from many Texans, with viral stories or social media posts claiming that the bill represented a repeal of the long-standing legal concept known as the castle doctrine, which is a broad legal concept that predates the U.S. Constitution and has its origins in English common law. While laws that enshrine the castle doctrine vary between states, the doctrine is almost universally described as stating that “an individual has no duty to retreat when in his or her home” and can use deadly force to protect life and property when present in his or her home.

On Dec. 9, 2020, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted, “Let me be clear. The Castle Doctrine will not be reduced. We won’t force Texas homeowners to retreat.” Meza argued on Twitter that her bill has been misrepresented by her political opponents.

To address the controversy, Snopes first looked at the proposed changes to the law presented in Meza’s House Bill (HB) 196.

Proposed Changes to 9.32 (Deadly Force in Defense of Person)

  • Adds a requirement that people using deadly force to protect themselves in situations outside their own home must be “unable to safely retreat.”
  • Removes language that explicitly states that a “finder of fact” in cases that involve a deadly force incident performed in self-defense “may not consider whether the [person using force to defend himself] failed to retreat.”
  • Removes robbery and aggravated robbery from crimes that justify deadly force outside of one’s home.
  • Removes language that explicitly describes an unlawful entry (with or without force) of a person’s home, vehicle, or place of business as a reasonable basis for the use of deadly force.
  • Clarifies that changes to this section do not require a person to retreat when the defender is using deadly force “in the person’s own habitation.”
  • Replaces “would be justified” language with “is justified” as it relates to using deadly force in defense of a person.

Proposed Changes to 9.41 ( Protection of One’s Own Property)

  • Changed to explicitly include “a habitation on land” (i.e., a home) as a form of property covered under this section. This section allows for the use of force “to prevent or terminate the other’s trespass on the land or unlawful interference with the property” or in cases when a person “reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to reenter the land or recover the property if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession.”

Proposed Changes to 9.42 (Deadly Force to Protect Property)

  • Changed to explicitly include “habitation on the land” as a form of property covered in this portion of the law, which describes when deadly force can be used to protect private property.
  • Removes “would be justified” language with “is justified” as it relates to using deadly force in defense of land and property.

Analysis

If one takes the castle doctrine to be a prohibition on a legal requirement that people attempt to retreat before defending their own home with deadly force, Meza’s bill does not explicitly repeal it. As stated in her proposed legislation, “a person who is in the person’s own habitation who has not provoked the person against whom the deadly force is used, and who is not engaged in criminal activity at the time the deadly force is used, is not required to retreat before using deadly force as described by this section.”

More accurately, this bill limits “stand your ground” self-defenses, which are laws in various states that allow for the use of deadly force in self-defense outside of the person’s home. Meza’s bill does add a “duty to retreat” clause, but that clause only applies outside a person’s own home —  an area not typically considered part of the castle doctrine. The bill would also remove robbery and aggravated robbery from the list of crimes meriting deadly force when outside one’s own home, but again this would be a challenge to stand your ground laws, not the castle doctrine.

However, the bill does narrow, to a degree, situations in which the castle doctrine might apply.

For example, it limits the use of deadly force without a duty to retreat to “a person who is in the person’s own habitation” as opposed to “a person who has a right to be present at the location where the deadly force is used.” It also appears to remove some room for judgement in the interpretation of what situations call for deadly force with minor language tweaks such as replacing “would be justified” with “is justified” in several sections.

Because Meza’s bill does not repeal a narrowly defined castle doctrine, but does limit the scope of when and where deadly force can be used in self-defense with a duty to retreat provision, we rank the claim that HB 196 repeals the castle doctrine as a “Mixture.”

2020年12月14日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

TikTok 是否揭示了解锁任何 iPhone 的秘密?

承诺 “如何解锁任何人的 iPhone” 的 TikTok 视频被观看了数百万次。

【宣称】

在苹果的计算器应用程序中,可以使用密码解锁锁定 iPhone。

【结论】

虚假

【原文】

Since at least 2019, TikTok has sort of become the modern-day, go-to spot for watching videos that purportedly expose or reveal secrets about a variety of topics.

We previously covered TikTok videos that revealed Chick-fil-A’s nuggets prep process and “exposed” Panera Bread’s frozen soups and other foods. We even debunked a TikTok video that claimed to reveal zombies found on Google Earth. So it came as no surprise when a TikTok video claimed to reveal how to unlock any iPhone — the same device used by millions of people to view said TikTok videos.

On Dec. 7, 2020, TikTok user @f_y_._p posted a video that claimed to show “How to Unlock Anybody’s iPhone.” After three days, it had been viewed nearly 4 million times.

The video showed what appeared to be a child covering the top of an iPhone to stop facial recognition from automatically unlocking the device. (Face ID is Apple’s technology for facial recognition, and is a security component in iPhone devices that allows iPhone owners to unlock their device with ease, simply by looking at it.)

@f_y_._p

#fyp

♬ original sound – 

The person in the video covered the front camera on the phone for the purpose of the demonstration in the video. A series of onscreen buttons were then tapped. The Calculator app was opened. In the calculator, the combination “7×4+EE=C” was tapped. The user then swiped up, and the iPhone appeared to unlock.

What appeared to be a secret code was actually nothing of the sort. While the person in the video covered up the camera at the beginning of the video, he or she later removed the hand from covering the camera. The iPhone unlocked not because of a secret code, but rather because it recognized its owner.

For some readers, this may have brought back memories of the early days of computer labs and Windows 98. With an early version of Windows such as Windows 98, it was possible to open an internet browser even if the administrator had restricted access to the internet.

A YouTube video showed a similar exploit in Windows 98.

A comment on an old thread on the Y Combinator website recalled the trick:

Reminds me of how we had Windows 98 computers at school which required an administrator password to access the internet, else the system was limited to a few applications. We managed by opening a text editor or Word or whatever, file -> open, right-click a file, Explore which gave you access to the file system.

Typing in an URL in the address bar changed windows explorer to internet explorer (a feature which MS later had to pay a fine and a browser selection window for), and huzzah, internets!

2020年12月13日
发表者 minici
暂无评论

“美国历史上最致命的日子” 中有 4 个发生在 2020 年 12 月吗?

一个广泛分享的模因将 COVID-19 造成的死亡置于严酷的历史背景下。

【宣称】

由于 COVID-19 疫情,“美国历史上最致命的八天” 中的四天发生在 2020 年 12 月的第一周。

【结论】

混合

【原文】

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

In December 2020, amid a renewed surge in new COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States, many thousands of internet users shared a list that purported to put the devastating impact of fatalities from the pandemic into stark historical context. 

On Dec. 8, Twitter user @Sundae_Gurl posted a list of the eight “Deadliest Days in American History,” with four of the eight purportedly taking place during the first week of December 2020 (image above).

Memes that included the same content and figures were widely promoted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The list shared widely in December 2020 contained some notable omissions and questionable figures, and the inclusion of likely daily death totals from the peak of the 1918 influenza pandemic would eclipse those resulting from COVID-19 between Dec. 1 and Dec. 4, 2020, and see them relegated from the “Top 8”.

Nonetheless, the daily death tolls from COVID-19 have indeed been very high by historical standards. It is of particular symbolic significance that several days in 2020, including during the first week of December, saw more deaths from COVID-19 than the 2,403 American deaths that resulted from the attacks on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — a milestone event in modern American history, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed “a date which will live in infamy.”

Notable mass-fatality events omitted from the list include the San Ciriaco hurricane, which killed a reported 3,369 people in Puerto Rico, after it made landfall there on Aug. 8, 1899; and the Lake Okeechobee hurricane, which killed an estimated 2,500-3,000 people as it swept through parts of Florida on Sept. 16, 1928. 

Historically, the death toll from the San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906, had been set in the hundreds, but decades of research led by former city archivist Gladys Hansen revealed more than 3,400 deaths directly attributable to the disaster, as well as a political cover-up of those fatalities. In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors formally voted to record a new official death count in accordance with Hansen’s research. 

Finally, the 1918 flu pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of fatalities throughout the United States. Daily death totals are not available, but the U.S. Census Bureau recorded all deaths from influenza and pneumonia as attributable to “pandemic mortality” and reported (page 27) that 477,467 such deaths had taken place in the U.S. in 1918. Of those, 79.8 % took place in “the last four months of the year” — Sept. 1 through Dec. 31, 1918. 

That’s 381,019 deaths from the flu pandemic in just 122 days, an average of 3,123 per day. Given that that figure is only an average, it is certain that at least a few days during the autumn of 1918 saw death tolls from the flu pandemic comfortably in excess of 3,000, which would cause the four days from early December 2020 to be further relegated in the rankings of “The Deadliest Days in American History.”

2020年12月13日
发表者 minici
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是否在山上找到遗体。乞力马扎罗山与圣经故事并行?

约瑟夫的故事讲述了一个兄弟被他的亲属推翻的故事,然后他升到埃及法老的令人垂涎的约会。

【宣称】

乞力马扎罗山上发现的遗迹为约瑟夫的故事提供了证据,约瑟夫的故事是一篇著名的圣经段落,讲述了近 4000 年前埃及发生的干旱。

【结论】

大部分是假

【原文】

In 2000, researchers studying the rate of ice melt atop Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro constructed for the first time a climatic record of the African continent. In doing so, they extracted ice core samples that contained critical environmental information that spanned nearly 12,000 years.

Reddit users and some media publications speculated at the time that “remains” found on Mount Kilimanjaro provided evidence to support the story of Joseph, a well-known Bible passage recorded in the book of Genesis that described a catastrophic drought in what is now Egypt nearly 4,000 years ago.

The collected ice core samples — not “remains” — were analyzed and described in a study published in the Oct. 18, 2002, journal Science, which characterized three “catastrophic droughts” in the region, one of which coincided with the proposed drought depicted in the story of Joseph. While the findings provide some evidence that events depicted in the Bible occurred, they do not confirm the existence of Joseph or his prophetic dreams. It is also important to note that no human, anthropological, or archaeological remains were recovered at the location of the ice core sampling. 

Ice core samples play a vital role in understanding the history of our planet. Climatic events spanning thousands of years are recorded in layers of ice in much the same way that tree rings paint a picture of the environmental conditions that existed during their growth and development. As ice and snow layers build up over millennia, particulates, oxygen bubbles, and dissolved chemicals captured in the snow become part of the ice to create a record of climate conditions.

“Layers of ice accumulate over seasons and years, creating a record of the climate conditions at the time of formation, including snow accumulation, local temperature, the chemical composition of the atmosphere including greenhouse gas concentrations, volcanic activity, and solar activity,” explained the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, which was not affiliated with the study, on its website

In 2000, researchers at Ohio State University extracted six core samples retrieved from three shrinking ice fields atop Mount Kilimanjaro at a drill site located above 19,300 feet in what the researchers described as the “last opportunity to establish an ice core record of the African climate.” In particular, the scientists planned to look for chemical markers in the ice. In this case, that’s a spike in the isotope chlorine-36, a radioactive remnant of nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s that scientists use to calibrate historic records in ice. The same spike has been found in South America and China.

After calibrating the timeframe of the samples, the scientists found that the tropical glaciers from where they were extracted began to form 11,700 years ago. They also found chemical and atmospheric evidence of three catastrophic droughts that were 8,300, 5,200, and 4,000 years ago, the last of which was characterized by a visible layer of dust that marked a 300-year drought in the region described in the book of Genesis.

That Genesis story tells the tale of Joseph, the son of a rich man named Jacob. Joseph was given a colorful coat by his father that at the time would have held prestige in a world where vivid fabrics were costly to dye. Joseph’s brothers grew envious of their father’s perceived preference for Joseph and ultimately captured and sold Joseph into slavery. After suffering years of servitude and imprisonment, Joseph reportedly gained a reputation for interpreting dreams and told the pharaoh of Egypt that the land would experience seven years of bounty followed by seven years of famine, which ultimately led to his role as a key adviser to the pharaoh.

Though no archaeological evidence or written record exists to confirm the Biblical account of Joseph, the BBC suggested at the time the study was published that the ice core samples may confirm that the drought did take place roughly four millennia ago — a time that correlates with Joseph’s story projected to take place around 3,600 years ago.

An 1863 painting by Léon Pierre Urbain Bourgeois shows Joseph being recognized by his brothers after having served the pharaoh of Egypt. Creative Commons

In short, while the findings do not confirm that Joseph was a real person or that he experienced prophetic dreams that led to his appointment as an adviser to the Egyptian pharaoh, evidence exists to suggest that the droughts and the following centuries of famine described in the Bible may hold some truth.