Creating a far-right movement, who IS the mysterious gut doctor, teens protesting the Methodist church
And why banana flavoring tastes so gross
Want to build a far-right movement? Spain’s Vox party shows how – “Opposition to Catalan and Basque separatism; opposition to feminism and same-sex marriage; opposition to immigration, especially by Muslims; anger at corruption; boredom with mainstream politics; a handful of issues, such as hunting and gun ownership, that some people care a lot about and others don’t know exist; plus a streak of libertarianism, a talent for mockery and a whiff of nostalgia — though it’s not quite clear for what: All of these are the ingredients that have gone into the creation of Vox.”
Omaha teens reject confirmation, in protest of church’s LGBT stance – “”We want to be clear that, while we love our congregation, we believe that the United Methodist policies on LGBTQ+ clergy and same sex marriage are immoral,” the group wrote in a statement. “We are concerned that if we join at this time, we will be sending a message that we approve of this decision.””
Intersex youth react to the discriminatory ruling against Caster Semenya – “This ruling tells me that my body needs to be put under a microscope, forcibly regulated, and changed in a way that suggests there is something wrong with me, when changing my body is what would actually be unnatural.”
A mysterious gut doctor is begging Americans to throw out “this vegetable” now. But, like, which? – Why are so many ads about this mysterious gut doctor? “The gut doctor is, at this point, a meme. Last December, Saturday Night Live writer Paula Pell tweeted, “Gut doctors warn: THROW THIS VEGETABLE OUT IMMEDIATELY,” above a photograph of President Trump.” From Mary.
Why doesn’t artificial banana flavor taste like bananas? – “…studies of the flavor compounds in Gros Michel bananas (which are still grown by banana-philes) show that the old-school bananas packed in much more of that isoamyl acetate flavor than their present-day counterparts. So it’s not that the fake banana flavor doesn’t taste like bananas, it’s that bananas don’t taste as flavorful as they used to.”
Featured image by steve_h (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Oops. ‘Chum,’ as in ‘chumbox,’ isn’t small bait fish. Chum is usually half-rotten fish-guts and waste that’s dumped in the water in the hope of attracting schools to feed. So the term is even more contemptuous than the article implies.
I guess there’s a kind of symmetry about it, since it’s the ‘gut doctor’ being promoted…
I’ve always enjoyed banana flavoring, but that’s because I’m messed in the head.
On the chumbox thing: this specific scenario reminds me a bit of surfing for porn in the ancient days of the modern internet (so after searching around for file directories with pictures that would then take 2 minutes to load on my screen). You’d have places that advertised free galleries (usually as a way of trying to get you to subscribe to a site with more of the same), and some of the links would link to other places offering free galleries instead of actual pictures, and then it would just keep going around and around like that.
I did get the mentioned chumbox link in the bottom of the Vox article, which was pretty fun.