From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is time yet again for our returning listener mail program. Thought we could shout this out at the very top here, Matt, you and Doc and I were talking about this little bit off air. Hey I'll see this shirt.
Yeah I do. Whoa yees killer.
This is from our We're all family. Here is from our good friends over at the legendary Atlanta restaurant ell Mere, who, it turns out, are big fans of the shows, so.
Big fans of hell Raiser.
Yes, it is a hell Raiser theme shirt.
Me and your shirts are kind of on theme, Ben, I'm rocking a Neil Game and Sandman shirt. Morpheus is kind of a kinder, gentler pin head in some ways.
Right, that's not an off base comparison. I appreciate.
Yeah.
Similar to the earlier story this week about shouting out someone at a bank, we wanted to shout out Sam at el Mere. And next time you're in Atlanta, folks, let us know. Maybe we'll go get some burritos or a case of deal with you. In the meantime, we are going to hear from some awesome people. We're gonna have a great question about conspiracy theory that might be unfamiliar to people outside of the realm of the military. We're gonna hear some reactions to Facebook Pornhub Texas, Canada.
We're gonna learn about a very cool response to our earlier questions about sandwiches. But before we do any of that, we have a voicemail.
And we are here with a message from D who graced our voicemail lines not that long ago.
Here is D.
Hi. Guys, you can call me the I've called a few times before. But I was just listening to your episode talking about Robert Kennedy and the brain thing, and it got me thinking. I read an article yesterday that they did some tests on Beethoven's hair and found that a lot of his ailments, including potentially his deafness could have been caused by extended periods of time of lead poisoning. They also found arsenic I think in the hair samples.
Last week I watched the stand up that Shane Gillis put out I think on Netflix show Ever, and he was talking about George Washington's teeth and how there was probably lead in them as well as unfortunately the teeth of enslaved human beings. But uh, this got me thinking about the potential of you know, other leaders who we revere and we think about who've come to power or
shown greatness over time in tandem with potential poisonings. I mean, I think of like Shanwan Di who was slowly drinking mercury because we thought it would, you know, keep him alive forever. I think even like Hitler, who was not a great man but rose to power. I know he was on a concoction of medications and things. So I just it got me thinking of that potential and just wanted to hear what you guys had to say about it and see if you would explore. Have a great day.
Thank you as always for having these conversations. Look forward to.
Fantastic question. Also nice references historically love Shane Gillis.
Too, yes, and he's mentioning George Washington's teeth as potentially being from enslaved people. There's some you know, there's there's some interesting something you find online about that that kind of rebutes that and says it was probably like a couple of different animal teeth, right.
And yeah, they were called straight seahorse, they were called yeah, hippopotamus, and it was the from what I understand, it was the lower kind of bridge of the teeth that we're from enslaved people's uh. And I think the the issue was that lead was kind of the bracing or framework for some of that.
Probably not great.
No, No, there's an entire hypothesis, there's a surprising amount of sand to it, arguing that lead exposure can partially explain some rises crime over generations.
Pretty wow.
Yeah, because it does have cognitive effects, right again, just like mercury does. That has had exactly because I swear we've had an elongated conversation about this kind of thing because I specifically remember mercury poisoning. Maybe it was when we were talking about red mercury way back in the day, and we like it was a tangent or something.
Tis Ijuan was mentioned in episode we did on the Quest for Immortality or several of those, because he essentially ran his version of the known world and the boffins that he paid to be on his court, or the boffins that were forced to be on his court because if they did not agree, they would be tortured and murdered. They told him drinking mercury would elongate his life, possibly to an indefinite degree. His seed bastards, History would prove they were incorrect.
Well, do you think they knew they were incorrect? Were they secretly just trying to poison him because he was so awful to them?
What a cool question? I don't know, wasn't there at the time.
I don't know a ton about that guy, But just if you want to search for him, it is Qi N Space Shi Space Hua n G.
Team Team Wong. We also know to your question, d We also know that a lot of very very intelligent people for their time did things that people in the modern day might find dangerous and foolish. Right, but we have to understand we have the benefit of retrospect now, so a lot of those folks might discover something and not fully know the physiological implications of interacting with that substance or chemical or process.
Right.
Marie kri is one of the most famous examples. Her groundbreaking work did not render her mad, but it did expose her to very carcinogenic substances for sure.
Guys, let's get to the question of somehow this kind
of thing making people rise to the top. Do we think it is potentially a cause and effect thing like that, or is it somebody persevering against maybe lead exposure, Like the episode a very recent episode of All Things Considered from NPR where they discussed Beethoven's hair samples that de mentioned in that message, where somebody, some so and so out there owned some of Beethoven's hair, you know, as you do and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And this person allowed,
you know, a few strands of that to go out to the Mayo Clinic for testing, and they looked at
it and they saw potential lead poisoning there. Of course, it's not known whether lead was introduced at some point well after Beethoven's death or after at least that sample was collected, but it would maybe give some insight, at least according to this episode, into the specialists that were interviewed within it that it would gives them insight to some of the maladies Beethoven suffered from, you know, including some of the things that made him great.
Right.
When you think about Beethoven, I don't know. I always think about the stuff that he couldn't hear and yet somehow was able to make this incredible music.
Just pure music theory at that point. And yeah, sensing vibrations.
Exactly, I mean, And to me, it's thinking about those kinds of people who you imagine may kind of have superpowers, right, and what if that kind of superpower is only born out of the negative effects or negative situation that has occurred before it, Right.
The poison that makes the antidope. Yeah, I mean, it's a to answer your general question, Matt, and to your question, d it seems like we could find cases arguing for both sides of that. We could find the heroic struggle against medical condition. We could also find a malady that in some way may have explained the later notoriety, prominence, or success of a human individual throughout history. And that's
simply a matter of the huge sample size. Because so many people have lived and died, we also, I don't know this without waxing too philosophical early in this program. I've always thought, you guys, tell me think about this.
I've always thought that the ability to become successful, the opportunity, the luck, all of that together, it inherently bundles within it this idea of envisioning a world in which your position or your et cetera are different right than they are at that present pre success moment, which technically is the nice way to say it is an imagination. The
meaner way to say it is hallucination. So maybe you do kind of have to hallucinate a little bit to envision a different world and you having a different place in it.
Well said dude, I'm into it.
Let's go in jeez, I mean, let's not ingest lead nobody jest led mercury is not going to help.
Or or we could listen to the doctors from I don't know, the late eighteen hundreds, although up to about nineteen twenty, and we could take this stuff called the blue Mass that I had never heard of before.
Is that the stuff that Ben a Jesra drink in the Dune movies.
Maybe I still haven't seen the second one, but this is a substance that is like used as a tincture, right, or as a some kind of specialty medicine that you would take that a doctor would say, Hey, Ben Nol, I know you're feeling a little down with whatever. Why don't you take some of those blue Mass. Well, what's in it?
Guys?
Licorice, root, rose, water, honey, sugar, and a ton of mercury.
Mercury or heroine.
I thought you might end with just orange extract. It was like, wait, which one's the bad one?
Yeah? Well so according to a couple of sources I'm looking at right here, it was originally prescribed as a cure for syphilis, ye old syphilis. But it was also then used as like, you're sick, take some blue mass it'll help. Sure, you got a toothache, got stomach worms? No problem, Blue masks is here for you. Yeah. Allegedly, Abraham Lincoln took quite a bit of blue Mass, but yeah, probably not a great thing. But hey, Lincoln did some cool stuff.
Yeah, Juliam Luncheon to go team WOA. That part is not proven, but yeah, Lincoln did some cool stuff. Noted as an amateur wrestler, and I think he went on to have another career as well, but that may be lost to history. I'm doing ridiculous history references.
Awesome, guys. I don't have a ton more on this one. I think it's a fascinating topic.
I don't.
I think we might might have to expand on it a little bit, but just to find some people who were going through some kind of exposure to some kind of chemical that could have maybe even changed the course of history if they had not been exposed to it.
Oh, I got one. Sigmund Freud and cocaine, I know, multiple poets through the Victorian and the Victorian era in particular.
And opiate laudanum. Yeah exactly. Yeah, and and and Hitler and the Nazis were quite fond of of amphetamines. Kept kept him going to the bitter end, and he was terrible.
Sorry, hot take. I think it was kind of a not a good job, not a good dude.
It's reminding me of our episode on Presidents and Drugs. Yes, we talked about all the amphetamines and barbituates and methadone and what was it, demarol stuff. The JFK was just on all the time for all his various However, he needed to be there was a drug for that.
I feel like.
That might explain the race to the Moon a little bit, you know what I mean, Like he gets his injection or whatever it is, and then someone catches him at the right time while he's super out of it and he's and he's just like, we'll do it because it's hard.
Dude.
They were gamma globulins, Gamma globulins. Come on, if that's not like superhero Marvelly kind of stuff.
What is sounds like you're saying, Gamma goblins.
Gamma globulins.
I'm on for both of them.
Let's do it.
Let's hang out with the gamma goblins and uh, let's experiment college style with gamma globular Wait.
Gamma gamma god blob. Yeah, it's fun to say. All right, well, hey, that's it for now. D Thank you so much for sending us that message. If you want to call in, our number is one eight three three st d w y t K. You'll hear how to do it at the end, but you can just call the number now if you want. But for right now, while you're calling, I guess we're going to move on to a message from our sponsors. Then some more messages from you, and.
We've returned with the message another message in fact from you, Yes, you, the public, the conspiracy public, conspiracy realists out there. Today we've got a message from the very cryptically named seven. Uh. Okay, this is a really cool topic, guys, one that I was not familiar with, and I've done a little bit of a cursory research, but I think this may well be an interesting topic to go a little deeper on
down the line. And it also pertains to what we were just talking about, Matt in terms of like the effects that toxic substances can have unexpectedly. Perhaps here we go from seven. Hey, guys, I love the show. I just fell down a rabbit hole that I can't believe you guys haven't covered, or at least if you have, I haven't seen or heard about it. Don't think we have.
So we all know about how militaries around the world have access to night vision goggles, night observation devices, and other similar technologies, But have you ever heard of die cyanin, a chemical that was at one point tested and even used for producing lenses that would be used in night observation devices. Die Sianin apparently allows users to see things that were not really there, potentially seeing into other realms
of existence. Internet investigators and quote fingers there of the subject claim Die sian In production is now illegal in the United States and purer die Sion and die is impossible to get a hold of due to the government wanting to hide the powers that users get from utilizing die sign and treated lenses. I found a few claims of testing during the Vietnam War and soldiers reported seeing demons. No official news on it, as it was easily accessible
enough for me to find. However, I found this to be an exciting and interesting rabbit hole to fall down and consume, and I'm sure many fans of the show would enjoy it as well. It fits in well with themes of hauntings and war zones, as I was previously reading about paranormal activity reported by US service members in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Syria for delving into the die sign In situation.
Abu Grab Prison in Iraq is reportedly extremely haunted, and US service members in Afghanistan I have reportedly heard old Soviet radio transmissions as well as seen apparitions. Syria even had a report of a gin being sighted near the Turkish border. Thanks for your time, and I hope you find this email interesting respectfully, seven.
Oh buddy, written out seven or number seven, number seven. That's why we ask. That's all I remember. Yeah, this is uh, this is a doozy. I don't want to plot twist this too soon. But Noel, what do you think? What's your initial reaction?
Well? I had to do a little digging, you know, just to kind of wrap a head around what this even was or is. And it seems as though die Sign and coated lenses were at one point kind of sold as like a novelty device, kind of almost like spyglasses, you know, with the little mirrors on the side. And I actually found a couple of listings for these vintage uh they're called Aura goggles, and I've got two of
what looked like the same exact product. One on eBay official die Sign and our glass is weird rare hunting ghost Wicca psychic, and then another one that says I Sign and Oura Goggles hunting ghost Reiki Crystal paranormal psychic. One of them is eighty nine to ninety nine, so the other is four thousand, ninety nine dollars. The second one, Yeah, yeah, it says see it says die sign in our glass, Di sign in. First of all, the trademark Aura glasses
trademark see Auras instantly works as described. I can even see ghosts with them. Amazing glasses by Reiki. Students love them, help full seller, saw my aura instantly in the mirror. Thank you, fast delivery. Awesome product and they work just like.
Okay, not to yuck anyone's young before we get into it, but would it not be cheaper just to take some shrooms?
Well, hey guys, you get book savings here. If you buy it just one, it's only it's forty nine to ninety nine even, But if you buy two, it's forty four ninety nine and ten cents. So last bit, SI pass on the savings, No I digest. But it's pretty funny. This is not actually a vintage thing. This is clearly a grift, you know. And that's the thing about stuff like reports of aura, of being able to see auras. You know, we do have some folks that do it
very good naturedly. Of course you have. There's actually a pretty cool local person here in Atlanta who does aura photography, which is really cool and I'm not really up on the technology or how that works exactly, but it does seem to whatever type of photographic techniques are used create a varying colors depending on the person and the idea of an area. Of course, is this internal energy. I
guess that expresses itself in color. And the thing that's interesting about Diecian then is my understanding that what it does is it kind of allows allows you to see more colors. Because the typical human eye has three cones, and the cones or what allow us to see color, one of them that a lot of people don't have is the one that allows you to see red, and if you don't have that, it leads to color blindness.
And I, Ben, I believe that's that's what you have, right, So you if you would be lacking that that red.
Cone, just winged it traffic lights. It's surprising so few people have died.
Well, I trust you, Ben, I know that you've got it down pat at this point. But here's the thing that's interesting. The typical human being has three different types of cones that divide up visual color. This is from a health Line article Information into red green and blue signals. These signals can be combined in the brain in a total visual message. There are, however, folks that have an extra type of cone that allows them to see a
fourth dimensionality of color. This results from a genetic mutation, and these individuals are called tetra chromats. And guess who are more likely to be tetrachromats, guys.
Female identifying.
That is absolutely true. Okay, sorry, then scooped you man, Yes, female identifying individuals with containing two X chromosomes, because that is a genetic condition that tends to make that mutation more likely.
Oh right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interject here. We shouldn't say female identifying, just people with two X.
Chromat people two X chromosomes expression. It is about the expression, yeah, specifically, and oftentimes individuals with those two X chromosomes, they tend to be identified as more likely to have psychic powers or the ability to see beyond the veil, you know, witches. That's exactly what.
We also talk about. Tetrachromats in depth in our previous episodes. Are real life superpowers.
Exactly right, that's a real thing. Well, and that's the thing, guys. There are ways of like, I think there are a couple of tests that you can do to quote unquote try to see your aura or the aura of others. And there's two very distinctly different ones. One is like holding your hand up in front of a white background, and one involves holding your hand up in front of a black background. And the supporters of each of these
tests claim theirs is the best. But it's sort of about looking past your hand and into the kind of middle distance, almost like you're trying to solve one of those magic eye pieces that I've never been very successful at doing, so I kind of have a have a feeling that I would not see auras either. But you know, we also know that if you squint your eyes real hard, you start to see crazy colors, and if you focus on things long enough, you get eye fatigue that starts to,
you know, make things get a little psychedelic looking. So the question then becomes, is this a real energy that is being perceived by those you know who maybe are blessed with this with this additional cone or not, Because there certainly are people that can claim to see auras, claim to be able to see into other realms without the benefit of these these aura goggles or this you know di cyanin coded lenses.
Yeah, he well, yeah, I mean the first part of your question there is U. I think pretty pretty on point. Human beings, all living things, do emit various sorts of energy. Some of that energy could be heat, right, and animals whose vision ranges into the infrared would be able to perceive that. However, humans in the grand scheme of things have a fairly limited spectrum of vision. Also, the idea of documenting it, we've got to say it before the
emails get to us. Conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Curelean photography is considered one of the old school proofs of auras or energy emanated. And I think also, isn't there the thing where all human beings their skin is actually sort of zebra like and they do they do glow in the dark just a little bit. I can't remember. I'll have to find it. Well.
I do want to shout out a podcast that I just discovered called Planet Weird, or maybe that's the network and the pod. Yeah, the podcast is called Haunted Objects Podcasts on the Planet Weird network and they actually are on YouTube and the host, one of whom identifies as a which talk extensively about this stuff, and I really
learned a lot from listening to their conversation. And they reference the something that came up for us very recently too, the John Carpenter film They Live, where when the person puts on the glasses, he all of a sudden sees through the veil of what's being you know, like the wool being pulled over our eyes or whatever, and sees the truth behind it all this like species of whatever, like zombie alien stand in for you know, bad invaders, overlords,
corporate monsters are actually who are running the show. And also you know, things like money, all those like catchphrases like what is it we own you or something like that. I actually that's right, obay of course. And Shepherd Fairy the artist took a lot of that imagery and ran with a lot of his work.
Money is so hot, right.
Yeah, money is how I like money. I watched Idiocracy the other night, does not hold up? Did not age?
Well, you didn't like it?
I like parts of it. But they say the F word, not the fun one, the not so fun one a lot in that movie. And I found it a little little cringey that there are things about it that are funny, but overall it is a pretty stupid movie, which is sort of the point. And by and by the F word, I'm referring to the one that is a disparaging term for for the queer community. And I don't think they meant any harm. It's it's it's it's meant as a satire.
It's it's meant to be depicting stupid people who are thoughtless. But when you see it thrown around like that a bunch and I'm also watching it with my kid, who is you know it identifies as as queer. Uh, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit, But anyway, that's neither here nor there. This is not a soapbox time for Noel Brown.
We do have an answer for you seven and we can trace a little bit of this so uh the die signing concept, the idea that exposure of human optic capabilities could increase the amount of the spectrum a human can see. It's actually it's pretty ancient. It got pop or pretty old. It got popular I think due to TikTok conspiracies fairly recently. And the idea of the cover up is amazing and does sound worth looking into because
Uncle Sam gets up to all kinds of creepy. The answer is it dates back, in my opinion, to nineteen twelve.
Oh okay, I didn't want to add maybe before you give us the juice. It's not illegal to own or to possess. I do think it's not manufactured because it's really toxic. It was used as a fabric dye and industrial processes. But I was looking on some Reddit threads discussing this very thing, and some very helpful chemists went on there and told you how you can make a batch up yourself if.
You want to, because it's like coal tar, right is.
That's why we're going it's certainly not scheduled or something or some somehow illegal to manufacture in your own personal home. It's just no longer made because it was, you know, pretty pretty deadly, much like mercury is no longer used in curing. You know the felt for hats.
Well, it's just from the name it sounds deathly. Familion.
But ben, what happened in nineteen twelve?
Oh yeah, so back in nineteen twelve, there's this guy named Walter John Kilner k I L n e R. And he is in London. He was in charge of electro therapy at Saint Thomas Hospital and he was super
into auras. He published one of the first Western medical studies of what he called He called it, I think the human atmosphere, and he said that if he treated His argument was that if he treated certain interfaces or like kilner screens, with this substance in particular, then you would be able to perceive radiation outside the normal spectrum of light that's visible to humans. And he got a lot of attention for it until wait, he published the
study in like nineteen eleven. In nineteen twelve, the British Medical Journal comes out and they say, this absolutely doesn't work. We can't prove this is an oric force. And maybe the reason he also to your point noal he said, he said, look, we can't look at these screens too long because it will hurt our eyes. But if we look at them after a regular pattern of viewing, if we get our ocular reps in, then we don't need
our screens at all. We've been exposed to this die so hard or these substances that we can perceive what he called the N rays. N rays come from another French scientist like the letter in for Moto or North in rays.
Guy, I thought in my head it was like aura is the outrays and then that's way.
Cooler, that's way cooler.
Good.
But it looks like what it looks like what happened, And you can read the British medical journals approach on this or their conclusions. It looks like Kilner was not able to convince people that his methods were real or that you could see auras. And it's tough because there's not There wasn't at that point a way to really measure it. We also know that's a heck of a campfire story for sure.
But if the.
US government had any kind of perceivable edge in that any government had a perceivable edge in that kind of pursuit, they would have done it. You know what I mean. Nuclear weapons can end the world, and we still a ton of those, so why wouldn't they mess with some contacts that could save you some money on night goggles?
So dope, just put that right in your eyes.
Just finally, you know what I mean.
Just stick it right in my neck while okay, just put it right in there.
And this is not again. We never want to be the people who come in with this, like wrecking the fun of a good story. But to the point you made earlier in this conversation, die siding is dangerous for people. So it's important to know that if you genuinely seek night vision at this point, you're probably better off just buying the goggles.
Yeah, only only five grand or eight email listing Actually night vision goggles okay? Sorry? Sorry?
Which are in the hundreds and thousands, absolutely good will?
Does TIMO have them? Does tim have no? Oh?
I hope so. I'm sure they probably are made with the cyanide stuff, though I didn't want to add the ben You mentioned certain animals seeing was it infrared?
Yes?
I believe there are also like butterflies have something like six cones and they can see. They can perceive a world of color that is unknown to any of us. And I do love this idea, and it really is a good thing to always kind of ground yourself to not be skeptical of people perceiving things that we can't perceive,
because we know that that's very real. You don't have the equipment for this stuff, And it really does make me continue to kind of believe that there is something out there that we can't fully wrap our heads around. And I am always annoyed when people when people are like I can't see it, therefore it's not real.
I find that to be a realism.
Yeah, it's just it's just to cop out and it is just it's kind of what's the word just arbitrary kind of I don't know, negativity. It's just nagging. It's yucking the yum and trying to act like you're It's a very egocentric view of the world and I think that's maybe the best way to put it.
Also, animals can see an ultraviolet right. Look, humans are behind It is a vision game.
Have you seen that? Predator?
Guys?
I mean, holy cow, guys. I have a way for us to get ahead on this game and a challenge that I think we can we can make happen. They sell on this Amazon site that I just found for the.
First the same as Timu.
I think so or wish. Maybe it has diffraction glasses like prism glasses that you can buy for fifteen dollars or sixteen dollars excuse me if you have prime Also two day returns of whatever it says on here. It's a weird website. It's got all kinds of information.
This episode brought to you by Let's.
All all get a pair of those Alexis. You're included on this. Let's all get a pair of those and then just wear them out somewhere socially publicly and see if we can function while all the light we encounter is diffracted as though we are on some kind of substance.
Those are called rainbow goggles, and I'll be there with you, but I'll be wearing my gooner goggles aka the Apple Vision pro Nice. Surely there's a diffraction setting on that thing, right for however, many thousands of dollars that costs? Well? Hey, thanks number seven seven, the number seven written out as a numerical form. We appreciate that one. That was. That was That was some cool food for thought. Let's take
a quick break. We'll come back. We'll have one more piece of listener, ma'am, we've returned, skirt.
Skirt can take it a record, scratch, doc terfect, thank you. We've got a couple of pieces of correspondence. We've got one from the Maiden Fair, which goes into bacteria phages but talks about something else at the beginning. So let's go to that. Let's go to that now. Oh and we're working live. Got a correction. I can't remember which show this is odd or we'll call it correction. Helping hand from our pal small Box Games. The stubby tailed cats,
the ones they're born without tails. They are the Manx cats. So thank you small Box Games. Just got to us on that one. And now we go to the Maiden Fair. The Maiden Fair says, hey, guys, it's the Maiden Fair. You can use my name if you'd like, if you did want to share this. It's very relevant to your recent show on porn Hub, which, by the way, Maiden Fair, I think was very difficult for all of us. Very dark, dark subject. So Maiden Fair says, I live in Texas.
I just listened to your episode on primarily Pornhub and Adult Entertainment.
And wait, she listens to us on Pornhub.
Yeah, well it's a gig economy, okay, So she says, I was waiting for you all to talk about the new self imposed band porn Hub has inflicted upon its users in Texas. I don't know if you were aware of this. She basically says, I will attach screenshots I took from what I could see when I try to go to the site from my phone without a VPN. There, the Maiden Fair concludes, And just to give some context here, Maiden Fair, in that episode, we had to explore some
very troubling things. I think we published that on the seventeenth, and maybe the porn Hub Texas band came into effect on the fifteenth of May, a couple of days before. But have you guys heard about this one?
Oh?
Yeah, that was just a piece of like random news. I guess when we were researching that episode. Well, it's weird. I think Maiden Fair is talking about a VPN, Like, if we put our like, used a VPN from here and selected Texas, could we still access.
Pornite right, you're you're a spot on dude. Yeah. Porn Ub is also blocked in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Utah.
I didn't know that individual states could block websites.
No, No, it's the private company blocking access to.
It because of the laws being to so stringent there that they're afraid of correct, OK, got it?
Yeah, the requirement, at least in the case of Texas, it's a bill called HB eleven eighty one requiring adult sites to verify that visitors are of age.
And it's you know, it's very telling, isn't it of porn hubbs policies that they would just say, you know what, better safe than sorry, let's just pull the whole thing.
Just turn it off right there?
Yep. Yeah.
And porn Hub's argument there is interesting because they're saying this type of legislation will only drive people to less scrupulous sites, which quote put minors in your privacy at risk. Yeah, but it's a for profit company saying that.
Yeah. And as we said, it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, distributor of lapron.
Lapro and okay, old school, old school internet language. I love it. We're so lat right now. But you make an excellent point there, Matt, because porn hub is, of course one facet of a much larger company. And we go into detail on called a low which was formerly called mind Geek, And this is something that I think more people should be aware of. We talked in our previous Strange News earlier this week about VPNs in general,
it is good to have a VPN. You don't need to rationalize it by saying you're looking at untoward things, unclean things. It's just a way to protect yourself against the growing erosion of privacy. But also I don't it might being a jerk. I would question some of their motives in this.
In this, Oh, you think porn hubs motives in the question dear No, Yeah, definitely, by the way I mean the VPN thing. One thing I think people forget is like there are all kinds of hacking scams out in public Internet that are disguised as other things. If you log into that without a VPN, you are exposed. But if you do it through a VPN, you got that extra layer of protection. So there are many completely legitimate reasons for using a VPN.
Well SA. So this leads us to another conversation and something that this show and Civilization, I think more importantly is wrestling with in the human world, which is the idea of anonymity or perceptions thereof in the online landscape. Right Whenever, whenever there is a move against privacy, it's often going to be packaged and presented as protecting the innocent, right,
protecting the children. You need to have your government ID on record to use the internet, because if you don't the terrorist win stuff like that?
But sure, it just stinks that I can see the argument for it.
Yeah, I could see the argument too.
I'm just saying I can also see how it is convenient, crooked, and easily weaponized.
I'm right there with you too.
I Uh.
It just thinks that we can't have it both ways. I can't stop the really truly evil stuff that's happening unless you have something like that. But then the rest of us are. I don't know, I don't like it.
What if people were just less crappy?
Hey, you think we could make that happen?
I don't know.
I think that ship might have sailed.
Ben Right, you need to get the lead out of our water sources.
Remember that's Oh my god, you just gave me a flashback. On my local classic rock radio stations may have been common. They always had a block of led Zeppelin music called get the lead out. Nice.
Oh well, what if we just, you know, as corporate America says, and obviously corporate America never makes mistakes, what if we just lean into it. What if we get the lead back in the pipes? What if we get the mercury back in the.
Hats and the microplastics out of our balls.
It's just man, maybe it'll give us superpowers, you know.
I mean, if pissing plastic is a superpower, so is that.
Going to be a new search term on port hub microplast.
Oh boy, oh boy, these are too deep.
We have we do have one more piece of one more piece of corespond and it's here. Just as you know, folks, we like to end the show with the letters from home. And there's something that's very important to all of us, both making the show and more importantly, all of us listening along at home wherever in the wide world we may be. This comes to us from uninformed Burrito, who says, hey, guys,
just listen to strange news earlier. Is it possible that the burrito taco ruling you mentioned was made for tax purposes? I live in northwestern Ontario and our province has rules about what taxes places can apply based on if the item can be considered a meal or just a snack and ding dean burrito, you are correct.
No, that's exactly right. That's exactly It was a designation of like fast food versus like a sit down thing. It was about zoning. It was something I read that.
And that's exactly that's in the article. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's also there's also a cool thing here, Like usually when we hear those fun, viral late night news fodder stories, usually there is some real, often financially motivated reason behind it.
Right.
That's why certain products have weird qualifications as foods in the United States. It goes back to how they're taxed. So kudos to Burrito. I would say you are not uninformed different, you are a very informed Burrito. You also hipped us to something called the food cube rule. Have you guys heard of this?
Have you seen this? It's the food cube like the new food pyramid.
I'm looking at it right now.
I don't know about this, so I'll share a picture.
First thing I'm seeing. I just had sushi the other day. Their depiction of sushi is right and wrong. It's right and wrong because you can get sushi with the toast situation too, where the rice is just on the bottom.
Right.
Yeah, it's like a heuristic, right, So it's not it's not in depth, correct, but it's the food cube rule or the cube rule of food is premised on the idea that one can identify dishes based on the location of the starch. And you make an excellent point, Matt. Not all sushi is cubed up, right, Sashimi, I like a hand roll, hand you love a hand roll.
I love a handrel.
And the calzona corse, there are six in the cube rule of food. There's one toast or an open face sandwich as someone call it a pizza. Yeah, a pizza.
Well, see, that's the thing. One one could argue that a hot dog is an open faced sandwich.
One could one could, especially depending on like when I was living in Central America, there are often hot dogs are often served like on a.
Pa or a.
Taco. Then is number three, well, number two sandwich stars on bottom and top, taco starch is on the bottom, and then the two vertical sides sushi cube. That's a as we said, it's heuristic. It's not entirely accurate. But yes, exactly, oh yes, thank you.
Yes. But is it a hypercube?
That is the question. The calzone also could have further cubes of food within it. The mystery continues, and we're glad you're here for it, folks. We want to hear your in depth. Beat me here, doc, you're in a depth opinion on sandwiches and foodstuffs in general. We're big fans of food. Hope that's not a hot take. Thanks to d Thanks and seven is.
A salad with croutons a sandwich. Sorry, my head's all mess.
It depends on the size as cube. It's one big creuton. I would eat a creuton bowl salad. Thanks also to the very Informed Burrito. Thanks to the Maiden Fair. Thanks to everybody who has tuned in and joined us. We cannot wait to hear from you. Get in contact with us, let us know what's going on in your neck of the global woods. We try to be easy to find in any number of ways.
Correct. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, YouTube and xfka, Twitter, on Instagram and TikToker Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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