19 Comments
User's avatar
David's avatar

Well done! The claims and the relevant receipts all in one place.

Expand full comment
James M.'s avatar

I see similar examples routinely these days. Sometimes they’re compiled on X… sometimes I just run recent headlines against stories from a few years back. Sometimes the two discordant pieces are in the same publication. 😂

I think it’s obvious by now that legacy media is incapable of reforming itself. The missing ingredient is, of course, honesty (an excellent quality for a journalist).. but also self-awareness. They don’t understand how normal people view their work because they never interact with any.

Expand full comment
Bootsorourke's avatar

🤢

Love this piece but the photography was difficult for me to look at.

This even though I ate chocolate covered bees and ants in a candy bar back in the 70s on a dare. Bought the bars in our local hamlet's sandwich shop.

Question though for anyone reading: Doesn't the insect exoskeleton pose a danger to the human intestines and colon? (a question I did not consider back then). So much for it being good for us.

Expand full comment
James M.'s avatar

I think it's made of chitin, which other supplements contain (Stackers caffeine pills, for one). I'm not sure... but I know that exposure to insect dander is a hypoallergen, especially for children.

To folks saying that we should pursue a bugs-based diet, I say: you first. Stop writing articles about it and start chowing down. Otherwise leave us alone. The past decade is littered with elitist political movements that propose things that OTHER people should be doing (equity in schools, defund the police, emissions reductions, USAID) while the advocates themselves do nothing. It's a strange case of adopting opinions to make yourself seem more virtuous and enlightened... while changing/sacrificing nothing yourself. I think this fits into that category.

Expand full comment
Bootsorourke's avatar

Haha! Too true!

Expand full comment
Albert Cory's avatar

this was worth it just to learn the latest euphemism:

"Micro livestock"

What's next? "Nano livestock" for when we switch to eating plankton?

Expand full comment
geoduck's avatar

It’s been around for a while:

https://www.littleherds.org

Expand full comment
Ken Barber's avatar

I will not get into the railroad cars.

I will not date the trannies.

I will not eat the bugs.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

that right there explains just about everything worth noticing the enduring obsession of “news”media content providers and “arts”reviewers with Race/Gender/Sexuality: it’s a story angle that writes itself, independent of any other aspect remotely resembling newsworthiness, artistic relevance, or journalistic insight. A turnkey operation: refer to boilerplate template, fill in the blanks and hit “send” to the editor. Literally everyone has those identity aspects, the political angles associated with them are practically pre-ordained, and the story can be told entirely by reference to politically approved stereotypes. The results make for some of the most tedious, empty reading in the history of cultural criticism. But the people signing the checks somehow keep paying their writers to churn out those phony rote exercises, day after day, year after year.

Expand full comment
Irshaad's avatar

All the bugs are shaking their heads, no. 😬

Expand full comment
Bootsorourke's avatar

hahahah

Expand full comment
Balint's avatar

I don't think it's doublethink: the conspiracy theory is elites forcing people to eat bugs, while the other articles are about trying to convince people why eating bugs is good.

Expand full comment
Bootsorourke's avatar

That's how they start to force you

Expand full comment
Penny Adrian's avatar

I don’t think this movie is for old white females, either.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Feb 7
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
James M.'s avatar

Thanks! I wrote some pieces trying to pin down the various media dissembling strategies:

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/media-guide-part-1-the-invisible

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/media-guide-part-2-narrative-uber

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/from-distortion-to-farce

And my latest post:

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/convinced-by-captain-k

I honestly have an entire handwritten notebook of like 80 pages where I've tried to unravel what is happening and why. It's in interesting time.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 4
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 4
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Steve's avatar

I don't deny that Colin Powell fooled me on Iraq. I was young and thought that he was moderate and 'mainstream' and if Democrats didn't want a war, it had to be a good thing, because they hate America.

The Democrats suck even harder now, and still hate everything worthwhile, but 25 years of forever wars with nothing to show for it but debt and inflation was enough to get me to look past narratives. Actually it only took about five, after we prosecuted the wars like weenies who didn't want to win, when Obama couldn't (or wouldn't) wind it all down and the Tea Party failed in its own premise, becoming the latest in a long line of "gracious losers," and so on.

Heck even Iraq and Afghanistan somehow morphed from existential threat to regime change to nation building, when we were promised no nation building. And we didn't even manage to change the regime in Afghanistan!

I didn't *totally* put it all together until Trump exposed the uniparty regime for what it was/is. Maybe it was just getting older and wiser.

But I fully admit to being wrong.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 8
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Steve's avatar

Not that weird, Trump is a 90 Democrat who donned the Republican Party as a skinsuit.

And actually if you ditch the 90 Democrat views on taxes, health care, welfare, affirmative action, their overly broad definition of 'harassment,' and the federal bureaucracy/regulatory state, they weren't all bad compared to what the party became. But they also walked down a path to their current insanity FAR too easily, and most of them blindly followed their leaders over the cliff like lemmings, so I still don't trust that type.

The irony is that it was my most left-wing teachers who taught me to resist things like Covid mandates, stand up for free speech, and fight for good American jobs for everyone. They told me not to be a totalitarian fascist, but then they all became totalitarian fascists themselves. It's kind of surreal.

Hopefully I don't turn into them (as they are now) in 20-30 years!

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 8
Comment deleted
Expand full comment