Where's the crane? the mudroom? the medic's office? the radio... |
After years of complaining about halfwits who write at pay sites, we've decided to finally strike a blow for knowledge. We've repurposed this blog to call attention to some of these stupid people and the things they've written while in too big a hurry to make money to deal with useless crap like "facts" and "knowledge." Meet the Dumbass of the Day, people!
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Oil Business Salaries for Dummies
Friday, October 30, 2015
Phillips Screwdrivers for Dummies
Phillips screw and screwdriver |
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Poverty for Dummy Freelancers
Based on the self-help section at the local (and online) bookstorea, one surefire way to get rich is to tell people how to get rich. Some freelancers have taken this idea to heart, preying on the less fortunate among us in the desperate search for residual income (i.e., riches). Today's dumbass, caught trying to do just that, is InfoBarrel's Shay Carmack, aka MsShay. Shay called her foray into the get-rich arena "How to Afford Presents During the Holidays."
Carmack's four-step instructions are followed by a blank "Tips and Warnings" section – maybe she tried to publish it at eHow first? Regardless, however, her advice is simple – and mostly stupid:
Carmack's four-step instructions are followed by a blank "Tips and Warnings" section – maybe she tried to publish it at eHow first? Regardless, however, her advice is simple – and mostly stupid:
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Secret Compartments for Dummies
Every spooky old house has a secret compartment; perhaps even a hidden staircase or a whole secret room where the robber baron who built it hid tons of gold and all his blackmail photos. Yeah, sure. Modern houses don't have handy hidey-holes where you can stash your AR-15 and live grenades to keep 'em out of the gummint's hands, but if you're fairly good with tools you can probably build one. Just don't follow the directions of multiple-award dumbass Naima Manal, instructions she published in "How to Build a Secret Compartment or Closet" at SFGate.com.
The whole idea of a secret compartment, after all, is that only people in on the secret know it's there. Naima starts out OK by suggesting that your hiding place be concealed "behind a mobile bookshelf, a large mirror or furniture piece..." We don't know about the Manal house, but none of our bookcases are "mobile"! None are even movable. Never mind that, though...
The whole idea of a secret compartment, after all, is that only people in on the secret know it's there. Naima starts out OK by suggesting that your hiding place be concealed "behind a mobile bookshelf, a large mirror or furniture piece..." We don't know about the Manal house, but none of our bookcases are "mobile"! None are even movable. Never mind that, though...
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Decks and Vinyl Siding for the Dummy DIYer
Ledger board attachment |
Why do we say that? Because of the inane, moronic, stupid, and just plain dangerous instructions Pearson pounded out for eHow, instructions such as these:
Monday, October 26, 2015
Mortise and Miter for Dummies
One of the chief problems with the internet is that no matter how stupid a question, there's someone out there ready to answer it. Want to know how many years Zbigniew Brzezinski served as Secretary of State? Someone will be happy to tell you, "Four." That's even though Ziggy was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, not his Secretary of State. This syndrome is widely observed at eHow.com, where freelancers answer questions harvested from internet searches; and we all know that "if it's on the internet, it must be true"! That's probably why serial dumbass Elizabeth Knoll somehow managed to tell the world "An Easy Way to Miter a Hinge"¹ at – naturally – eHow.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Earthquakes for the Clueless Californian
Earthquake damage in Japan |
"Tectonic plates are floating on a bed of soft magma and rock below the earth's crust."
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Shale Gas for Dummies with Business Degrees
Natural gas wellhead |
Friday, October 23, 2015
Balconies: the Dummies Version
Juliet balcony |
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Measuring Diameter for Dummies
The straight lines of a circle |
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Pedometers for Dummies
Classic pedometer design |
If there was any question at all that Jenny (or should we call her[?] "Super"?) is another of the non-native English speakers who routinely spin some article they found somewhere else and post the results at a content farm, that question disappeared in the first paragraph:
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Rulers for Dummies
Folding rule |
Monday, October 19, 2015
Gutter Slope for Dummies
Rain gutter |
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Retaining Walls for Dummies
Stone retaining wall |
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Central Air Conditioning for Dummies
Parts of a central air conditioning system |
Friday, October 16, 2015
Conventional Oil, a Dummies Version
Around the Antisocial Network, one of our favorite adages is, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." It's a crying shame that some freelancers have never learned this lesson, people like eHow.com's Tom Lutzenberger, for instance. Eager to collect his stipend from that font of misinformation, Tom seized upon the topic, "What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Conventional Oil?" which is now (for some unknown reason) at ItStillRuns.com. As is so often the case with English majors freelancing in science, Tom wandered way, way outside his expertise to "answer" this question.
Now, we won't argue (much) with his list of advantages, except for one. Tom finds it necessary to "inform" his readers that,
Now, we won't argue (much) with his list of advantages, except for one. Tom finds it necessary to "inform" his readers that,
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Headers for the Dummy Carpenter
Window Headers |
We're pretty sure Shelly had no idea that such a thing as a header exists before taking on this assignment and we're not sure she knew afterward what they are. Why else would she say something like,
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Car Batteries for Dummies
12-volt car battery |
Unlike most eHow contributors, Mark has a degree in science. Unfortunately, it's political science. It's pretty clear that he didn't major in chemistry from misinformation like
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Reversing Doors for Total Dummies
Door terminology |
We doubt that, before her cursory research, Manal had any knowledge on the topic and we're pretty sure that after finishing, she had about the same: she wouldn't know an inswing if it hit her in the butt. Basically, Naima's solution is to pull all the hardware and remount it, reversed (though she doesn't actually mentioning the reversal part) on the opposite side of the stop molding (which she – incorrectly – calls a "doorstop").
Monday, October 12, 2015
Decks for Clueless Dummies
Adding a deck |
Riddle us this: would a native English speaker from the "American mid-west" (where the word is only hyphenated by new immigrants) introduce building a deck this way?
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Compasses for Total Dummies
Simple magnetic compass |
"[A compass] is an instrument composed of a suspended magnetic pointer that is attracted to the polarity of the North Pole."
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Auto Maintenance for Dummies (Seekyt Week 7)
Basic maintenance |
Besides the fact that Dastan (an Indo-Canadian handyman, we believe) doesn't know how to use the return key, there are myriad other problems with this copy-spin-paste piece. One such problem is
Friday, October 9, 2015
Radon for Dummies (Seekyt Week 6)
Radon |
Let's begin where TeenageGeek began, with the introduction:
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Bay Windows for Utter Dummies (Seekyt Week 5)
Bay window... on a bathroom??? |
As is so often the case at Seekyt (and elsewhere), Manoj's "instructions" are rather inane. He begins by telling you to
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
English for the Dummy Client (Seekyt Week 4)
Tracking corrections in MS Word |
Of course, according to Trixxie, English-speaking writers are better than non-English-speaking writers. That makes sense, since anything you write in a language you don't speak at all will probably end up total gibberish. So what Trixxie probably means is "non-native English speakers"; though we can't be sure. But let's face it: Trixxie is definitely a dumbass for having written this balderdash:
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Gibberish for Dummies (Seekyt Week 3)
Gastrointestinal tract |
Why self-promotion? Because Rakhi has four links with his Seekyt referral code in the post, and a quick survey of his profile shows that he uses the same first paragraph – with three referral links – for every post. We might have let him get away with that sort of bullshit if his content were... coherent. But it's not. Take a gander at this hot mess:
Monday, October 5, 2015
Band Saws for the Dummy Woodworker (Seekyt Week 2)
Floor-standing band saw |
In just a few days of looking through Seekyt's content, we determined that much of the site's content is thinly disguised advertisement for Australian or British companies, as is the case in Jennie's post. Why anyone would hire a total dumbass to write bad copy about his business is beyond our ken, however. If you sold band saws, would you want someone telling your potential customers bullshit like
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Maintenance for the Dummy Car Owner
troubleshooting your car |
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Screw Sizes for Dummies
Types of screws |
In keeping with the typical eHow.com bull pattern, Joan begins with a nonsense introduction:
Friday, October 2, 2015
The Young Earth for Creationist Dummies
Today we take a look at the phenomenon of selective blindness, the practice of ignoring anything that does not fit with your preconceived notions. Our DotD today uses the yahoo email address job41 to conceal his name, but, at least according to the scanned letter in the body of his blog post "The Bible and Radiometric dating,"¹ his name might be Scott Taylor. Of course, given the tendency of creationists to endlessly recycle the same bogus information, who knows whether that's his real name: it might even be a pseudonym used to protect him from the well-deserved ridicule of others less blind to facts.
But let's take a look at a few examples of job41's bull, beginning with this claim:
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Fracking for the Scientifically Clueless
Schematic of fracking job |
Jones was all over InfoBarrel in the days before the Panda update killed so many content farms, pumping out trash on just about any topic that showed up near the top of google keyword results. Like many of his ilk, Sam mainly reworded other content (though to his credit, he at least didn't just run it through a spinning algorithm). Problem being, of course, that when you write about everything under the sun without sufficient background knowledge, you get stuff wrong – and Jones gets stuff wrong... like
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