Rant #1 – Lying PR weasels and their AI accomplices

Toilet paper, cholesterol, motion sickness, Russia, and Net-Zero

Most essays I publish are fairly long and require time to think through and write. They are therefore infrequent. Recently I’ve been wondering whether I should publish shorter and less serious pieces on ‘smaller’ issues. There are many issues I would like to talk about that may not warrant a ‘serious’ essay. Some might even be fun to write and read. So, if my readers approve, I might from time to time publish the occasional rant about this or that. This is the first rant – and we shall see if you approve!

A long time ago, unfortunately not in a galaxy far away, I had a job which involved manipulating people. I designed ‘campaigns’ which were intended to influence people’s attitudes and behavior. It involved all kinds of projects, mostly to get people to change their attitudes toward brands, lifestyles, and such. Most were non-malicious, but there were exceptions. For example, I did a project for a well-known software company which made me want to take a rape shower after it was executed. Considering how it was designed and what its goals were, it was disturbing to see how well it worked.

Although I only had this job for a few years, it was extremely instructive. It changed the way I perceive the world around me and made me question any and all information – in the media and on the internet in general. I had been on ‘the inside’ and I knew how many ‘information structures’ presented to people are not only false – but malicious.

This also made me able to almost smell PR campaigns and manipulation. Managed information has a certain structure and texture. It’s too coherent and too convenient. It offers clarity instead of confusion. It’s package rather than fragments. It’s based on emotions mixed with selective logic. It’s even obvious opinion disguised as fact or rationality.

PR campaigns almost always provide you with a small but coherent ‘information package’ which contains simple and clear logic combined with emotional motivation. They will try to simulate ‘understanding’ and people who assimilate them will feel that they suddenly understand something they didn’t understand before – and even understand it better than others. As a rule of thumb – if you can form a clear opinion after having read something for two minutes, you’re probably being told what to think.

If you can spot a PR campaign, you can usually also figure out who is behind it. You can’t be sure but you can make an educated guess. Some PR campaigns obviously have corporate sponsors who are trying to preempt a problem with their product or to slander the competition in an indirect fashion. Some, however, seem to have sponsors who seem to have higher ‘ideals’ than just marketing.

Let’s look at a few examples of recent PR campaigns to get a feel for the problem.

Toilet paper, cholesterol, and motion sickness

A good example of a probably corporate–sponsored PR campaign is, of all things, recycled toilet paper. I noticed by chance that search engines were providing disturbing information about recycled toilet paper. Turns out it is toxic and can poison your behind. It’s much safer to use paper from virgin wood pulp. Many people reading up on recycled paper – particularly toilet paper – were provided with this important public-safety information by helpful search engines.

Apparently there may or may not be trace amounts of bisphenol in recycled toilet paper. This may or may not come from receipts you get in stores made of thermal paper. This paper is soaked in bisphenol – which is a toxic endocrine disruptor. Some of those receipts may find their way into the recycling process, and from there find their way to your behind.

Wiping your ass with a toxic compound sounds ominous. What is apparently not ominous is that all food (and drink) enclosed in plastic, including those nasty cans with liners on the inside, is saturated with bisphenol that has leaked from the plastic into the food. A lifetime of ass-wiping with recycled toilet paper will expose you to far less bisphenol than one can of ready-to-eat soup. The bisphenol experts who did the PR campaign didn’t mention that.

I’m guessing this PR effort was successful. It creates concern and presents an easy solution to alleviate the concern – i.e. to buy virgin toilet paper instead. I’m guessing some producers of virgin toilet paper sponsored this campaign.

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Another preposterous example is about a man (from Florida of course) who was on the carnivore diet and ate a lot of butter. Cholesterol started leaking from his skin!!!!! This was eventually diagnosed as extreme xanthelasma – or the buildup of cholesterol under the skin. This relatively rare buildup of cholesterol IS CAUSED BY HIGH CHOLESTEROL! No, I’m kidding. It may or may not be caused by diabetes, heart disease, thyroid problems, atherosclerosis, obesity, high blood pressure, family history of all these things and more. Apparently, half of the people with the condition also have high cholesterol so it seems clear that high cholesterol is the major cause of this high-cholesterol phenomenon (just kidding again).

What happened here was that a seemingly extreme case involving some lunatic from Florida who ate pounds of butter a day was turned into a PR campaign against the carnivore diet and butter consumption. It demonstrated what might happen if you misbehave and don’t just eat carbs like a farm animal.

The causal link between cholesterol and all associated diseases it vague – to put it mildly – except in ‘sponsored’ research. The link between cholesterol and carnivore diet is either non-existent or negative – except in ‘sponsored’ research. This PR campaign, however, told you what the links were in very clear terms. Carnivore diet and butter => super-high cholesterol => disfigurement and death. It’s all total bullshit but people believe this because it’s graphic and put in a convenient package. You don’t even need to think to understand the logic.

The tight package of doom and easy logic is not the only reason I think this was an orchestrated PR campaign. The other reason was the huge footprint. This was published by a massive number of media outlets almost simultaneously – indicating a PR effort. Of course it’s possible that this was all spontaneous. Maybe it started with one story and every single vegan neoliberal in every media outlet decided subsequently to republish it using the classic logic of PR manipulation. It’s possible – but I don’t think so.

So, who would bankroll a disinformation campaign aimed at meat and butter? Difficult to say – but it might be the same people who bankrolled the disastrous ‘food pyramid’ back in the day.

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Yet another example is the suspicious ‘motion sickness’ problem in electric vehicles. Articles are appearing about this in increasing numbers and search results seem to have been manipulated. The foul smell of a preemptive PR campaign is in the air. What could this be about?

The issue is that a significant number of people feel sick from travelling in electric vehicles. This is so common that it might possibly become a problem for the electric car industry and all the idealists pushing for the electrification of transportation. So, why would an electric vehicle make you sick?

According to the ‘experts’ – i.e. the PR campaign – this is just motion sickness. Electric cars feel different from other cars. They are silent and they accelerate and decelerate fast, and so on. Some people therefore get carsick in electric cars.

Carsickness is no joke. I used to get terribly carsick as a child but after I became an adult it stopped. The only exception is when I travel in a Volvo. Sitting in a moving Volvo, any Volvo, makes me nauseous immediately. I have no idea why this happens. I’m starting to suspect that all Volvo cars have a morphic resonance field of toxic Swedish feminism. That would explain why I immediately feel physically ill in a Volvo. I have, however never felt sick in an electric vehicle.

Still, this seems to be a bigger problem than people realize. I was talking to a bus driver in a mid-size city recently. The bus company has diesel busses and electric busses. He told me that about half of all the bus drivers in the city try to avoid driving the electric busses. Driving them makes them nauseous and gives them a splitting headache. The other half is not affected at all.

Apparently this is all because of motion sickness. The poor bus drivers are just carsick. The problem, however, is that these symptoms are exactly the same as some people experience near high-voltage power lines and installations. Being close to power lines causes motion sickness – apparently. The really big problem here is that headache and nausea are not the only issues associated with high-voltage power lines. Cancer is also associated with power lines – particularly leukemia.

What do high-voltage power lines and electric vehicles have in common? Only one of them moves, but both of them have strong magnetic fields. Wouldn’t it be a shame if leukemia would become associated with electric vehicles?

The fact that there is without a doubt a PR campaign ongoing is suspicious and indicates that someone sees this as a problem which must be preempted. The goal is to convince everyone that they are sick because the electric car moves funny, not because they are sitting inside a strong magnetic field which might give them cancer. Any association between cancer and electric cars cannot be allowed. Thus the PR campaign and the manipulation of internet search results.

Net-Zero and trivialization

Many PR campaigns create a ‘problem’ which then must be solved. Other PR campaigns then have the very specific goal of trivializing the ‘problem’ to trick people into embarking on a quest to solve it. People cannot be persuaded to make sacrifices to solve an insurmountable problem, even if it’s seen as a serious one. The problem must therefore be trivialized – i.e. made possible to solve through fake logic and fake facts.

We saw this clearly in the two decades before the Russo-Ukraine war. First there were coordinated PR campaigns to persuade us that Russia was dangerous and aggressive and would tear us limb from limb if nothing was done. Then there were campaigns to persuade us that neutralizing the Russian problem was actually easy. They told us that Russia is indeed weak – with an economy smaller than the Netherlands, a gas station masquerading as a country, populated by primitive brutes, with a weak and corrupt army, with incompetent leaders, and so on.

A very serious problem was defined – i.e. the evil Russia. This problem led to a goal to solve it – i.e. to destroy Russia. Then the problem was trivialized to make the goal sound realistic. Otherwise there would be no support for going to war. We can see that this trivialization PR campaign is still being run full blast – even as Ukraine is being decimated. This demonstrates the importance of the trivialization process in mass manipulation. It also demonstrates how the majority of people are unable to spot DoubleThink – because that’s what building up a problem and trivializing it at the same time is.

We can also see this PR method used in the net-zero goals being forced upon western societies and economies by our elites. A huge problem is created – i.e. carbon emissions are destroying the planet by heating it up until we all get cooked like rotisserie chickens. A solution is then introduced – i.e. to stop all carbon emissions. This is referred to as the goal of ‘net-zero’ emissions.

Achieving this goal will destroy everything in sight economically (see Germany and the EU in general), destroy individual freedom, the freedom of movement, and eventually destroy/reset entire societies. For people to agree to these sacrifices the problem must not only be serious – but the solution must be doable. If people do not think this can be done in the time-frame allotted (ca 25-30 years), or at all, they won’t cooperate.

To convince people that this is actually doable, PR campaigns were of course designed. One of them is the ‘150 trillion’ campaign which aims at convincing us that replacing all emissions with alternative energy would only cost 150 trillion dollars and only take about 30 years. We would only need a measly 5 trillion annual investment – so this would actually be a piece of cake. Since that has been established we should move on immediately and reset our economies and societies! We’re almost there, and all we need is political will!

This PR campaign has been running for years. I’m not sure where it originally came from – but the WEF is a likely candidate.

So, is this $150 trillion cost for net-zero emissions really a PR campaign falsehood or is it perhaps accurate? I decided to do what the kids do and asked an AI.

I accessed my favorite AI – DeepSeek – and asked what it would cost to achieve net-zero and asked it to itemize the cost. DeepSeek provided data on all kinds of things, including energy generating facilities (nuclear, solar and wind), the best mix of the three, the infrastructure required to get this power to the consumer in a stable and efficient fashion, the infrastructure to move transportation into this scheme – and so on and so forth. The approximate cost was – you guessed it – about 150 trillion dollars.

So is this doable in a 30 year time frame? Yes absolutely, DeepSeek told me. We only need to prioritize this and balance that and all will be well.

A ‘normal person’ would see this as confirmation. The media says this and an AI confirms it! It must be true. A less normal person, such as yours truly, would suspect that this might just be an AI repeating the dominant narrative and structuring the evaluation like the narrative was structured by the PR people who created it to begin with. In other words, this might just be a ‘canned response’ based on a PR information package in the AI’s training material.

To test this I started up Excel and started creating a ‘structure’ to evaluate the infrastructure needed to do all this. I listed everything DeepSeek had listed before and added a lot of specifics. I calculated estimates for the number of factories needed to produce and recycle solar cells and wind-power installation according to the optimal scenario. I calculated the replacement need for all those things, as well as the nuclear power plants. I calculated the mining activities needed. I set up scenarios for electricity management to keep the grid stable and for translating this energy into useable form for mass transportation. I estimated the hardware needed to enable and maintain transportation using this energy into the future.

This resulted in several excel sheets which I then used as a guide to ask DeepSeek specific questions. Before I had asked generally – but now I was asking specifically.

I accessed DeepSeek again and starting asking the questions about the infrastructure needs and the associated costs. I listed the answers in the Excel sheets and then added them up. The results were as follows:

• The estimated cost of reaching net-zero emissions is approximately 400 trillion dollars.

• The additional infrastructure needed for this would be roughly equivalent to the entire infrastructure in the United States – including every outhouse, doghouse and henhouse. This is in addition to current global infrastructure.

• The minimal annual industrial investment would be in the neighborhood of 15 trillion dollars – possibly more. This would be required forever because as the infrastructure is built up, it also needs to be replaced and renewed.

• The industrial activity needed to do this annually and forever would be equivalent to the entire industrial output of China. Actually, we might need 1.5 Chinas rather than just one China.

• We would need to increase mining to procure the necessary materials to such a degree that it would destroy a significant part of our planet’s remaining untouched areas.

This wasn’t all because these calculations are based on the following:

• They are based only on what I could think of – which means that they are almost certainly too low.

• They use the current world energy consumption and do not assume increase as the Global South industrializes and AI farms multiply.

• They do not account for the additional energy this massive increase in global infrastructure would need to be sustained.

This means that after 30 years the actual situation could perhaps turn into a cost of 800 trillion dollars, requiring 2-3 Chinas to manufacture and maintain, with twice as much infrastructure load and environmental damage caused by mining.

I also calculated how much the global population would have to be reduced for a system like this to be feasible within 30 years. The result was that it would have to be reduced down to 1.2-1.5 billion. That sounds like a familiar number – doesn’t it?

My opinion is that the ‘150 trillion’ net-zero number is a deception carried out by a trivialization PR campaign. It is intended to trick us into embarking on a journey which will lead to ruin. Also keep in mind that if it’s a lie (which it is), why would the ‘problem’ part of the equation be true? Perhaps they were also lying about us all turning into rotisserie chickens.

According to DeepSeek in ‘specific question mode’ – net-zero cannot be achieved in the 30 year time frame – and the industrial build-up and investment is completely undoable. It will require different solutions, new technologies, and 100 years instead of 30. The alternative is to kill 85% of the human race.

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These are just a few examples of likely PR campaigns with various aims. I may be mistaken about one or maybe two, but that doesn’t change the fact that the modern information space is swarming with PR information packages. They are absolutely everywhere.

They come wrapped in science, morality and fear. They are compelling because they provide false clarity through simple logic. They are insidious because they manipulate emotions. They are convenient for the regular folks who are too busy with their lives to actively seek information. They are extremely tempting to the ignorant, the fake intellectuals, and those who can’t access their internal mental processes to think independently and critically. For those they can replace conscious thought altogether – with propaganda packages turning into the center of their being – and even into a religion of sorts.

The truth is out there – but it is guarded by PR lies.

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This concludes rant #1. It was a bit longer than I planned but the next one will hopefully be shorter.

So, what do you think? Should I post more rants or am I just being silly? If you want more, by all means make suggestions.

And finally – many thanks to my readers and supporters who visit my tip jar. Your support is greatly appreciated!