my favorite part about this is that this is more of an explanation than we ever got canonically

If your parents didn’t have children, there’s a 100% chance that you won’t either

stone cold do not remember this post. what was i cooking in 2010. also jesus fucking christ FOURTEEN YEARS I’VE BEEN HERE???

I wish I was a stress cleaner. Never once has my response to stress been “time to employ some good habits”

they should invent 7 hours between 10pm and midnight

I am becoming aware of the effect a lack of trust in the media has had on people, paired with a dearth of research skills.

I'm thinking about the argument I got caught in yesterday- the subject of it doesn't matter.

Often, pseudoscience and misinformation comes packaged with a lot of very important sounding words, and the jargon gets to the point where it seems like a lot of work to fact check it. Which makes the 'I encourage you to do your own research' statements real obnoxious. If it's phrased in a way that's impossible to navigate, good luck.

It sucks, but you gotta.

If you don't want to fact check individual words, that's fine. That's a lot to ask of someone that's just trying to figure out whether something is true.

This is where we get into something called 'lateral research.' Instead of trying to draw a map to a sentence, you check the credibility of their source material.

This is your Snopes, your Fact Check/Media Bias, your Follow The Money.

Knowing more context about what someone is saying will save you a lot of time and energy.

If you're not sure about something, question it.

I feel like I've been throwing this around a LOT lately, but:

Practice SIFT! SIFT is based on lateral research and can be very helpful for these situations.

DON'T just share information without doing your due diligence.

whyyy the fuck does this not have more notes please rb this more often qwq

Well, I mean... probably because I posted it like an hour ago.

STOP

i have found this post and infographic and i want to share it

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

zetabrarian's blog says they are a socially progressive librarian monsterfucker, which a quick scroll through their blog seems to support. This makes them pretty cool but not necessarily the perfect source -- anyone can say they are a librarian, and surely not every librarian is correct about processing information

FIND BETTER COVERAGE

if i go to a search engine (in this case google via firefox) i see that several universities, libraries from large municipalities (like Los Angeles) as well as the BBC all agree that this is a real method experts in information fields recommend. I wouldn't necessarily take any single one of these sources as 100% credible, but they are individually reasonably reliable, and taken together indicate a high probability of factual information

TRACE TO ORIGINAL CONTEXT

A brief search reveals that the SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield, who is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. This is an extremely good source of information for how to process information on the internet. As the creator of the SIFT method, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops.

I could not find a post or page about SIFT written by Mike Caulfield himself, so i went to the University of Washington's website for this page about it, since that is the university that employs him.

It corroborates the above information, though there are a few notable differences. For example, under the "trace to original context" section in the Washington U. source (again, as close to the original as i could find) this step contains advice to check the date. This seems very good to include, as in the fast moving world of internet information, things become outdated or get updated very quickly, and yet first takes and outdated articles hang around and get shared for a long time.

EXTRA CREDIT

I personally find that it is important to outright search for the opposite information. For example, I put in a few searches like "Mike Caulfield discredited" "Mike Caulfield wrong" "SIFT method bad" etc. I found nothing showing me any indications this method has any problems. Interestingly, somehow this did turn up an article about news literacy on Medium, which was actually written by Mike Caulfield in April of 2017

tumblrinas need to see this

At a festival. Small child is lying on the ground nearby with a large rock on their chest yelling MORE WEIGHT!!! GIVE ME MORE WEIGHT!!!

wait hold on gotta look something up

oh no

My favorite part of the Giles Corey story is that the Ghost of one of my ancestors was used as a witness against Corey at his trial.

they were TWELVE 

i like experiences ^_^ unless i don’t like them. then i don’t like them -_- but other than that i like experiences <3

tuck her in thursday

kitten, stop fucking around and tell daddy where you hid his prozac or daddy's gonna add another 'hey there delilah' to the sex playlist

why do you guys only like my bad posts

hi prev i read all my tags anyway my wife watches house and she says you’re right

something incredibly American about an Allied trooper yelling brand names at Soviets until they recognize him as an ally.

notice anything strange about the arrangement of your trinkets?

>:3

itty bitty baby kitty sized

WAITTTT oh my god you’re so right, I forgot that I’ve bought toddler furniture for my cats before. I have an irl reference for Half-Foot sized furniture

i've never been so jealous of halflings before