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

OK Tumblr Geriatric Ward, let’s talk about your posture-

there are things you should be doing now to prevent yourself from starting to look like 🥀

Why does it matter? Future you would like to avoid the pain, limited motion, and fall risk that goes along with worsening posture.

What’s the focus?

1. Keep the flexibility in your spine

2. Stretch the muscles in the front

3. Strengthen the muscle in the back

Here are some simple things you can do daily while sitting and when you get up to go into the bathroom or the kitchen

Keep the flexibility by doing these repeated movements: 10 repetitions several times a day

The goal is to give yourself a double or triple chin. Keep your nose pointing forward, don’t let it tip up or down

Thoracic extension- use a chair with a seat back that comes up to the level of your shoulder blades. Try to bend back over the top of the chair without arching away from the seat back and without extending your neck. If the pressure from the top of the chair is uncomfortable you can place a towel there

Stretch the muscles in the front by using a door frame. This one will feel good afterwards

If this isn’t enough of a stretch you can do one side at a time. If you have the right arm up step forward with the right foot and turn slightly to the left. Then do it on the other side.

Strengthen the muscles in the back by squeezing your shoulder blades together for a count of 10 and then repeating 10 times. You can do this several times a day Hint: Don’t lift your shoulder blades up

There are lots more exercises for strengthening your back muscles but this is a good starting point and easy to do. I like doing it while driving

NOTE: I can do most of these with the cerebral palsy. In fact, a lot of these little exercises are automatically part of my physical therapy. My problem is I already have hyperlordosis, spine arthritis, and cervicogenic headache. These have helped me at least try to have a posture.

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW GOOD THIS ADVICE IS

there’s something about a beautiful entrance…just means so much to me…

biggest mindfuck is the fact that it can be so so difficult to tell the difference between when it's time for "do it bored/scared/stupid but by jove just do it" and when it's time for "if it sucks hit the bricks"

made a flowchart

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

Hang on a minute. I recognize the name “penwiper”. Let me check– Ok, yeah, I’ve heard of this person.

OP also invented armsocks.

OP I have been thinking about YOUR IMPACT since 2011. Do you know what you did for Homestuck lmao

http://entropyhouse.com/penwiper/costumes/helmsdeep.html

ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that's like '[children's media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!' is that those stories really and truly aren't for people who'll think about that, they're for the people the children's age, who don't, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they're too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword

#''children save the world'' stories are for the children to feel powerful and strong  #''responsible adult steps in'' stories are for adults looking back realizing they shouldn't have needed to be strong in the first place  #because someone should have done something (and that someone could be them now)  #the former is an important story to tell because children deserve to feel powerful and strong  #the latter we see a lot on tumblr because. well. that's who's here (via @iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid​)

Spot on original post, and great addition in the notes.

One of my absolute favorite tropes is “We have taken the one you love most!” “Oh, have you? Good fukken luck lmao” *distant screams of kidnappers as loved one escapes* or the flipside: “We’ve kidnapped you!” “You are in so much trouble. You are in so much fucking trouble. You are in the most trouble ever, oh my god.” *DOOR EXPLODES INWARDS AS LOVED ONE ARRIVES* and the alternate: *vehicle pulls up, door opens, person is shoved out, door slams, vehicle screeches away* “Did you get kidnapped??” “For a minute yeah”

How to protect yourself during stampede

this isn’t the usual thing I’d share on my stupid nerd blog, but this is SO important. I was nearly crushed in a crowd like this once. It was terrifying because you have NO control over the panicking mass of humans around you. you are just at the mercy of all this chaotic force. this is a real thing that can happen very suddenly! it did happen in the news recently! My situation was, the olympics was happening in my city, I was on my way home from school, and a crowd of people suddenly flooded into the street around me. in seconds it went from, busy-city-street-crowded, to, wtf I can’t even move crowded. I was so pressed against the backpack of the man in front of me, my feet lifted off the ground a moment. People were climbing lamp posts, signs, bus shelters, trees, everything to get up out of it. it was like the street became an ocean of people, and all the people’s survival instincts were making them dumber. everyone was yelling. no one knew how to solve it. police, fire fighters and medics saved us by breaking the locks on the inside of the mall we were trapped next to. a huge group flooded into the building, releasing a bit of the pressure on the people outside. I was in that group that got in.

We were trapped in the mall awhile. Because the olympics was on, they had big screens in a few sitting areas of the mall that would normally be showing the games. but now the coverage was focused on this crowd surge. They showed a helicopter shot of the building we were now in, totally surrounded by colorful dots. a solid mass of humans with no space between.  I know someone was partially trampled and needed medics, because I saw that, but i don’t know the statistics on who else was hurt, hopefully no one killed! I don’t know if these methods can definitely save you, but they might give you a better chance. so watch and share!

Sharing to my own stupid nerd blog for the same reason, this is SO IMPORTANT. Human crushes are one of the most unexpected ways to die. People go out to a show or a sports game, and make it there, but they never come back. Other strategies include staying away from large obstacles (like fences) that you could get crushed against, and doing your best to stay above the crowd. Try to climb onto something if you can.

And also — not to get nitpicky with deadly tragedies, but they’re called “human crushes,” not “stampedes.” It’s an important difference in description and also in respect. The deaths usually happen because the victims are pinned together in a tight space, they can’t breathe (as in the video) and they suffocate. “Stampede” doesn’t convey what actually happened to those people. The crush that happened in Seoul recently wasn’t because people “stampeded,” it was because they couldn’t move at all and they suffocated. But calling it a “stampede,” you’d think it was the people themselves that ran over each other, like wild animals. It’s disrespectful and untrue.

Horrifyingly, the victims of many human crushes have been blamed for their own deaths, which are usually purely accidental or due to criminal mismanagement from authorities. If you’re in a mental place to read about tragedies and police corruption, check out the Hillsborough Disaster, in which 97 people died due to the incompetence of the police, who then blamed everything on the victims: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

If you can’t play the video:

1. Stand like a boxer. Nice wide stance, arms up like you’re preparing to either throw a punch or shield against one, i.e. elbows bent by your waist and fists by your shoulders. That will keep some space around your chest

2. If you fall and can’t get up, roll onto your side and curl up in the foetal position

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds.), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

Elizabeth Hinton, America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transformative Justice

Colin Kaepernick (ed.), Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons

Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Victoria Law, "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

Zena Sharman, The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health

Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation

Lightsaber Forms I through VII [Knights of Fate | a sourcebook for Fantasy Flight Game's Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG series]

My favourite trope has to be:

I sacrificed myself to save you. I didn't plan to survive. I burnt all the bridges. I intended to break your heart with my death, but that would be all right, because I wouldn't be around to see you. I pretended that you'll mourn me for a while and move on. I convinced myself I was going down in the blaze of glory. That my deed was appreciated. That everything was going to be all right afterwards, and I didn't need to be there to see it.

But I survived. And now I have to look you in the eye. I have to pick up the pieces of the life I shattered and figure out how to put it back together. If it can be done at all.

No one give me any ideas because this makes me feral

Catching up with Thedas

We’re getting another time-skip between Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC and Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Here’s a summary of things that have happened in the supplementary material leading up to this. Obviously, major spoiler warning for everything discussed here.

If this summary intrigues you, I would definitely suggest checking out the full stories for yourself. They’re all great—especially the comics. The characters in the comics are so good and that’s not something you get to appreciate just in summaries.

Are you overwhelmed by all the extra Dragon Age material that's been out between Inquisition and the upcoming game? Do you want to know what's been going on in the world of Thedas since DA:I's Trespasser DLC but don't want to read it all yourself? Look no further!

All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"

Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"

"I mean, on the plus side, there's live rats in a lot of places, so the odds of you casting that spell within close enough range of a live rat to work is pretty high? Like, if you've ever had that spell just randomly fizzle out on you, then you tried it again ten minutes later without changing anything and it suddenly worked, a rat probably just wandered into range in that time."

disclaimer: spell does not work in Alberta

Pressed flower collage of a comet moth, by Helen Ahpornsiri

PRESSED FLOWERS???

Sometimes ppl do stuff with art and I go "why did you.... how did you.... thank you for your esoteric and ultra specific medium art"

@onenicebugperday

(via Alessandro Michele: Der Ex-Gucci-Designer zeigt uns sein faszinierendes Zuhause in Rom | Vogue Germany)

society's infantilization of decorated objects is honestly one of the greatest recent crimes against humans' innate desire for beauty

"the toothbrush/hairbrush/bike/vanity desk with flowers on it is For Kids! this plain beige one is For Adults!"

I am literally throwing you into a volcano

Everyone should decorate their shit.

No more "keep the house beige incase we decide to sell it someday"

Oh god that's beautiful