Republican Politics for Dummies

Ivanka Trump for vice president?

While we don't say so very often, most of the staffers at the Antisocial Network are convinced that, if you want to hear something really stupid, you just need to ask people political questions. That probably goes double for asking people about the politics of a different country: most Americans don't comprehend the parliamentary system of government: how do they think the Canadian PM is elected? Today's DotD falls under that category: he's a Pakistani who calls himself Emge, and he offered up this cogent political analysis at DailyTwoCents.com: "Ivanka Trump as running mate?"¹

Sonar and Parking Assist for Dummies

Active parking assist

You may have noticed that we here at the Antisocial Network hold in great disdain the liberal arts types who try (and fail) to interpret science and mathematics. There are worse freelancers, however: they're the ones who claim to have a technical background and yet still make a mess of a topic in the name of making cash. That's our complaint with today's DotD, a first-timer from DailyTwoCents.com by the name of Sharifa Sanderson, who claims a "Bsc.-Electronics and Mathematics" (really?) but demonstrates a grasp of neither subject in the post she called "How Car Sonar Helps Drivers in Parking."¹

If you can fight your way past the overwhelming number of ads and popups on the website, you'll see that Sanderson opens her little piece with the introduction, "Car Sonar Sensors- How Do They Work?" and then goes on to... well, not tell us how they work any more than

Renewable Energy and Water Power, the Dummy Version

Generating hydrogen through electrolysis of water

We hear a lot about a "polarized society" these days ("No duh!" as kids used to say). Perhaps one of the reasons for this polarization is intellectual laziness, the tendency to let others do our thinking for us; so we can do more important things like sending pictures of our latest meal to our Instagram feed or sexting with our SO in Snapchat. Really, people, if you devoted as much time to learning as you do to social media... Anyway, speaking of a lack of intellectual rigor, that's the topic of today's mini-rant. You see, we recently turned up a bit of rubbish on DailyTwoCents.com, a small chunk of content published by one Athena Goodlight that she titled "More Water Powered Cars, Please."¹

Get some Amethyst, Dummies!

Amethyst crystals

Our science team members run across more than a few people who ascribe magical powers to crystals during their research. We tend to avoid that content like the plague, mainly because we're not in the habit of trying to debunk metaphysical claims, though we're perfectly happy to point out a writer's innate dumbassery whenever they start making errors of fact. Sometimes, people are just trying to sell their products – that seems to be the case with Eric Jhonson [sic] of DailyTwoCents.com, who's penned a series of articles about gemstones that are... somewhat suspect. Given that Jhonson's bio says he's "an accomplished writer," we figured anything he says is fair game,  so we're taking on "Amethyst Gemstone: All That You Ever Wanted to Know."¹ Does Eric elucidate? or just advertise his goods on some auction site called LiquidationChannel.com?

Metrification for Dummy Activists (Metric System 5)

It used to be you could just pound out a few paragraphs of rubbish on your keyboard and rake in the cash at any content farm. The Google Panda update of 2011 changed all that; inserting some vague measurement of "quality" into the site's search algorithm. Immediately, wannabe freelancers began schooling themselves in SEO, branding, and a host of other buzzwords in an attempt to improve that "quality." What many of these freelancers failed to realize that the Panda update punished sites for bad content. So why did the hangers-on continue to publish utter bull? Because they already had that arrow in their quiver and it takes considerably more work to write good material. That's why hacks like DailyTwoCents.com's Deborah-Diane (sometimes known as Deborah Dian or Deborah Diane Carr) keep churning out twaddle like "The U.S. Needs to Convert to the Metric System."¹

Cyclocomputers for Dummies

cycle computer

In the days before every vendor let let every customer (and, for that matter, non-customer) post product reviews on their websites, there were sites where a prolific product reviewer could bring in a few dollars a month by posting reviews of whatever product they happened to have used (or just seen) lately. There were sites like Viewpoints, Epinions, Ciao, and others. These days, most of the sites are dead or dying, having been slammed by Google's anti-content farm Panda update several years ago. That news hasn't reached some folks, yet; so they're still merrily plugging away. Sadly, the ones who haven't gotten the message are often the ones who drove review sites into the ground with poor-quality and even faked reviews – content like "Pedometer for Bike Riding" posted to DailyTwoCents.com¹ by someone claiming to be Wwkeen.

Simple Math for Dummies

Math formulae

Got a few minutes? Wanna get rich? Just jot down your deepest thoughts and post them on an internet content farm somewhere, and you can be certain that millions worldwide will rush to their screens to click on your link. Here at the Antisocial Network, we're living proof that ain't the case... but it doesn't stop the likes of Maribel over at DailyTwoCents.com. Oh, she posted all right; but we sincerely hope she didn't get rich off the kind of babble she fed her readers in "Mathematics in our life."¹ Her having forgotten (if she ever knew) that "our" is a plural possessive should clue you in to the depth of her thought processes.

But wait, there's more! (there always is...) Maribel would like us to know that

Drought for Activist Dummies

We wonder if irrigation causes droughts, too. Gordon?

Perhaps the most common logical fallacy known to man is the assumption that correlation implies causation. This form of oversimplification of complex events is a favorite of demagogues and politicians, right up there with post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "after the fact, therefore because of the fact." Freelance dummies like to trot out this sort of simple-minded logic, too. Take the example of Gordon Rupe (writing under the pen name gordon) at DailyTwoCents.com when he penned a little note he called "Did Fracking Cause California’s Drought?"¹

Gordon did some homework and a little math. Then he drew a conclusion based on his math -- or, rather, he pointed his readers at the conclusion he wanted them to draw. Here's how it went down, with our comments

Backpacking for Dummies

Backpack

Ever clicked on a link in your search results only to find that the target page had nothing to do with the topic? Yeah, me too - and it really turns my crank. Some of the pages are spun garbage full of SEO terms and some are just glitches in the search. And then there are the dumbass freelancers, like Rosie Young (RosieYoung27, to be exact), who plies her trade, such as it is, for DailyTwoCents, where she posts articles with useful-sounding names like "5 Backpacking Essentials."¹ 

Redefining Greed for Dummies

light bulb

You can always tell when people on a paid writing website have nothing to say, because they say it anyway. Personally, I think it's pretty shameless to write an "informative" article about something as banal as "how to put on gloves," but that never stops some folks. By "some folks," I mean the likes of Joana Mendoza, who writes at DailyTwoCents.com.¹ Here's a classic example of having nothing to say but writing about it anyway: "Simple Tips for Replacing Broken Bulbs."

Thoughts about Zymurgy, Dummy Style

There’s a possibility that no branch of science suffers more at the hands of self-appointed freelancers than nutrition. Every darned fad diet that comes down the pike is the subject of thousands of glowing blog posts, each carefully tailored to suck in eyeballs. Never mind that three months later, the same "nutrition" or "fitness" blogger will be posting another glowing review of a different fad diet…

Those freelancers also hit the pay-for-hits sites, too. Here’s a little piece of rubbish published by someone who calls himself Emge over at DailyTwoCents, an article on “Benefits of Drinking Beer.”¹ We’ll forgive the writer for the spelling and grammatical mistakes since English is not his first language, but we won't forgive the misinformation:

Bad "Grammer Advise" from Dummies

Some people tend to get a little grumpy about the proper use of the English language. There are enough of us that damned near all word-processing software now includes not only spell-checking, but also real-time grammar-checking. Sadly, though, the spelling part's apparently a lost cause... Back to the topic of grammar: there's nothing that elicits an outpouring of schadenfruede in our house grammar curmudgeon quite like seeing purported grammar advice that itself violates grammatical rules. Take this, for instance, from someone calling herself Fiona Rey, "writing" about the perils of missing commas for the readers of DailyTwoCents.com: