Frances McDornand gave a speech at the Oscars in which she asked everyone to include an “inclusion rider” in their contracts. Like most people around the country, I had to google it to find out what an “inclusion rider” is.

What the heck is an inclusion rider? It’s a way to make Hollywood more equitable. Actors sign contracts when they are cast in films, and they have the ability to negotiate for riders, or additional provisions. An inclusion rider is a stipulation that the minor roles of a film reflect the demography of where the film takes place, including a proportionate number of women, minorities, LGBTQ individuals and people with disabilities. Big name actors who have leverage in negotiations could put this stipulation into their contracts and drastically change representation in film.

Hey! Why don’t we have such a thing for speakers at atheist cons (maybe you do, and I just don’t know about it)? This would be so useful. You want me to speak at your event? Great! But part of the deal is that I don’t show up and discover that I’m one among a big roster of nothing but old white men.

Or maybe you don’t want me anyway, and that’s fine — but what would be really powerful is if all those popular old white men also had an “inclusion rider” in their contracts that would motivate conference organizers to be a bit more balanced in their lineups if they want Big Name Atheist to join their meeting. It might also be revealing to find out which Big Name Atheists don’t want to leverage greater inclusivity in the events they grace.

My one obstacle is ignorance. We made a big push to have reasonable harassment policies at cons a few years ago. Maybe this would be a good next step: if someone who knows the legalese to craft a basic boilerplate conference speaker contract, I’d be happy to use it and would include it in any of my agreements to speak somewhere as a requirement. If enough of us start using such a thing, conference organizers would have to accommodate to them and figure them into the speaker lineups they put together.

Or they could just start automatically rejecting speakers who expect an appropriate gender and minority balance. That would be good to know about a conference, too.

(Psst. Science conferences, too. Any event where there exists a more desirable class of speakers — use your power to promote more diversity.)

If I wanted to build a horrible chimeric religion to get rich, that would probably be a profitable combo…but I’d have to be totally rotten at the core to be able to do it. Just like Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman, who founded a cult called variously NXIVM or the Knife of Aristotle.

There are innumerable articles on NXIVM and Raniere that are worth your time, including this 2010 piece in Vanity Fair that claims Raniere took advantage of several wealthy heiresses, among other alleged victims. What everyone seems to agree on is that NXIVM shares DNA with Scientology, but mostly appears to be a direct descendant of the ‘70s self-investment movement EST. Most in my age range know about EST from its appearance in recent seasons of FX’s The Americans. NXIVM goes a step further than either, with ex-members reporting harems, color-coded hierarchy dress codes, deep sexism, and other assorted basic bitch cult moves—especially litigation against journalists and anti-Raniere voices. There’s also a website devoted to tracking the group, which seems like it shouldn’t be alone in this. After all, Raniere has been on the cover of Forbes magazine. He’s not hiding from anything.

So NXIVM focuses on internal truth and a re-prioritized set of internal ethics, mostly ripped from the objectivist pages of Ayn Rand, which I think solves the mystery of “Why fake news?”

Talk about your unholy hybrids…it’s terrifying that people actually fall for this kind of poison.

I can sort of see the twisted logic behind the claim that cancer is good.

• If cancer were an indicator of an underlying systemic problem, rather than the problem itself;

• If cancers were easily treatable;

• If cancers weren’t a massive cause of pain and death;

Then yes, cancer would be great! You get a lump in your breast, you start pooping blood, you have been coughing up slime and can’t catch your breath…why, happy day, that means you have to go take a big swig of orange juice and all your problems would go away, breasts would be instantly perky, rainbows will shine out of your ass, and you’ll be off running marathons.

The only problem is that none of those premises are true. Just ask someone who has cancer. Cancer isn’t a symptom, it’s the disease. Only quacks claim that cancer can be easily cured. And if all it took was changing your diet to cure it, how do you account for the millions of people who died in terrible agony from it?

The person spreading these damnable lies is a Canadian naturopath, Brittany Auerbach, who calls herself “Montreal Healthy Girl”. Her article on this is a case study in the arrogance of ignorance.

Cancer is not a disease that came from ‘out there’, you did not ‘catch it’ and there is no need for the powerless self-pitying of ” how can this happen to me, I am so unlucky!”. By understanding the actual physiology behind what cancer really is, it makes knowing the true ‘cure’ pretty simple and straight-forward.

She thinks she understands the physiology of cancer. In the next paragraph, she demonstrates that she doesn’t.

It is imperative that we understand one point: the human body is alkaline by design and acidic by function. It fights for homeostasis and works every minute of every living moment to keep our blood Ph at an alkaline 7.2-7.4. The body is meant to thrive on oxygen and alkaline minerals, we cannot survive without them. All foods and substances that are healthiest for us leave an alkaline residue and alkaline minerals in the body. Healthy tissues are oxygen-rich and loaded with alkaline nutrient stores that the body can use to neutralize the acids that are produced by everyday activities like walking, having sex, digestion, breathing, etc. When the body is rich in alkaline nutrients and rich in oxygen, it is disease-free and optimally functional. When the body becomes too acidic, the cells close themselves off by encasing themselves with alkaline minerals to protect the blood from becoming very acid (which would result in death). By closing themselves off, these cells begin to be unable to absorb alkaline nutrients or oxygen and basically turn anaerobic and cancerous. It is the same process that a bacteria undertakes: when blood supply and oxygen is cut off and acidity increases, they morph into ‘superbugs’, ones that can thrive and grow in the even the most undesirable of environments. AH thanks to acidic antibiotics!

I’ve seen this before. There’s a whole industry of quacks who reduce every ailment to one simple thing, pH, and make these silly arguments about an imbalance of hydrogen ions. At least the ancients argued for four humors that needed balancing, these loons have reduced it to just one. The “pH Miracle” scam has been going on for decades.

This horrible person also doesn’t just claim that cancer is a minor inconvenience, she’s also going to blame antibiotics for magically morphing bacteria into antibiotic resistant superbugs.

In fact, she has a treatment for everything! She can cure cancer, all viruses, all bacterial infections, alcoholism, ADD, and a whole raft of imaginary problems! She’s a fraud, but she’s got a successful scam going.

I was reminded of the Dunning-Kruger effect while browsing Brittany’s website. Ignorant people do not have empty minds; rather, their brain is filled with inaccurate information they believe to be true. And the Dunning-Kruger effect is the fact that many of these people actually think they have superior knowledge. If a fool knew they were a fool, they would not be dangerous. But a fool who thinks he is a genius, that is problematic. With videos that can reach up to half a million people, Brittany “MontrealHealthyGirl” Auerbach can do a lot of damage. She has more YouTube subscribers (over 106,000) than the Food Babe (38,566), though her Facebook and Twitter followers are dwarfed by her American counterpart.

If you’re listening to these lying phonies, you need to stop. She may be a fool, but she’s successfully milking a hundred thousand other fools.