probably the most entertaining article I've read this week... adapted from the author's upcoming book. \\ "Many of us simply find ourselves confronted at a dinner party by the man who just knows the "real story," and has arrived armed with his killer facts and certainty. You on the other hand, have nothing but your instinct for nonsense. I offer this short guide to how conspiracy theories work, the better to rebut them. [T]hey share certain features that make them work: an appeal to precedent, self-heroization, contempt for the benighted masses, a claim to be only asking "disturbing questions," invariably exaggerating the status and expertise of supporters, the use of apparently scholarly ways of laying out arguments, the appropriation of imagined Secret Service jargon, circularity in logic, hydra-headedness in growing new arguments as soon as old ones are chopped off, and, finally, the exciting suggestion of persecution." - Adriano from Bookmarklet