cynick

Tim’s come up with a clever way to tackle Bash’s claw-trimming needs. Join us next Friday at 5pm for more! 🥰

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The time Stormtrooper Larry befriended a stray cat

Unexplained Phenomena, Software Programming

horrid little cat saved me from my devil's nap by putting her paw directly into my mouth

pov your sleep paralysis demon is very cute

oh this is not even CLOSE to the angriest chickpea looks. at any given moment she has the face of someone about to knife you for bread in the sewer. this is just how her face is! a selection of miss piss for your perusal:

resting slap the fuck out of you face

[ID: eight black and white stills of James Baldwin, overlayed with white subtitles. Text reads: “I’m terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves…moral monsters.” //End ID]

Young Library, St. Lawrence University. Canton, New York. Don Hisaka.

In effect from November 15, 2024.

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

Republicans carve up a good Democratic econony to reward the worst oligarchs.

At this point in history, we have to assume it’s deliberate.

"Party of fiscal responsibility"

the lovely woman who owned kabosu, the shiba known as doge, should get to take a point blank shot at elon musk with the doohickey that killed shinzo abe

My initial reaction was YES! but after reading the following interview with her, Atsuko Sato, I think she should just get all his money to donate to animal rescue orgs, which is what she has done with money from one US company that sent her the proceeds from some of its Doge-themed merchandise.

In Japan, she raises awareness about the cruelty of puppy mills like the one Kabosu was rescued from (she was about to be put down, and sadly many of her littermates were). Sato encourages people to adopt.

I think one thing we might do to shame Elon Musk is spread the story of the dog and the kind lady whose photos were, after all, stolen from her personal blog and monetized for millions of dollars without her knowledge or consent by cryptobros who don't even know she exists.

It's amazing how the modern world repeats the classic pattern of men with power and status based on inherited wealth being written into the history books history while subverting and ignoring the women whose work they steal and profit from and whose causes and interests they not only ignore, but don't even know exist.

Like all sociopaths, musk is incapable of empathy or shame.