#Fact check

[cosmogyros]

Regarding the addition, this is not entirely correct. I just read the OpenAI Terms of Service (i.e. the ToS for ChatGPT) myself, which you can find here. It says, among other things, the following:

[id:

Your content. You may provide input to the Services (“Input”), and receive output from the Services based on the Input (“Output”). Input and Output are collectively “Content.” You are responsible for Content, including ensuring that it does not violate any applicable law or these Terms. You represent and warrant that you have all rights, licenses, and permissions needed to provide Input to our Services.

Ownership of content. As between you and OpenAI, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you (a) retain your ownership rights in Input and (b) own the Output. We hereby assign to you all our right, title, and interest, if any, in and to Output.

/end id]

[id:

Our use of content. We may use Content to provide, maintain, develop, and improve our Services, comply with applicable law, enforce our terms and policies, and keep our Services safe. If you're using ChatGPT through Apple's integrations, see this Help Center article⁠(opens in a new window) for how we handle your Content.

Opt out. If you do not want us to use your Content to train our models, you can opt out by following the instructions in this Help Center article⁠(opens in a new window). Please note that in some cases this may limit the ability of our Services to better address your specific use case.

/end id]

So, technically speaking, you retain ownership to all your own content (both input and output from ChatGPT), BUT OpenAI acquires the right to use anything you put into ChatGPT, for... pretty much any purposes they want (their description of "what it can be used for" is – probably intentionally – vague and wide-ranging), unless you actively opt out. Which I imagine most folks are not bothering to do.

So, in a nutshell: No, they do not own your content. However, they can still do whatever they want with it. So please DON'T USE CHATGPT or any similar tools!

"use chatgpt" that's the devil talking. buy four caffeinated drinks and pull an all nighter. this is the way.

[o-kurwa]

[blumineck]

Is Pole Dance the same as Stripping?

I get a lot of comments saying something like “bro is a striper” (usually when a post breaks containment), so thought I might as well address the topic!

Please consider supporting me on Patreon if you like my videos!

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[i-dont-think-thats-true]

I don’t think that’s true

the patient needs 50 lolita dresses to live . yes the expensive ones. with the frills and ribbons. it's urgent

[is-the-post-reliable]

(reposting as I am unable to reblog the original.)

requested by @kodicraft

🔶 Rating: Partially Reliable 🔶

The Devils Hole is home to the endangered Devils Hole Pupfish.

From the National Park Service's page on Devils Hole: 'Devils Hole--a detached unit of Death Valley National Park--is habitat for the only naturally occurring population of the endangered Devils Hole Pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis).'

The existence of the pupfish does prevent the pumping of groundwater in the area, after a legal battle. I am not sure this would apply to all mining.

From a High Country News article on the pupfish: 'The Cappaert case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, testing the power of the Antiquities Act and the weight of the new Endangered Species Act. In 1976, the High Court affirmed the federal government’s right to maintain water levels sufficient to support the pupfish, even at the expense of water rights held by nearby ranchers.'

The habitat of this fish is incredibly small. However, it is slightly larger than suggested, as the fish swim at least 20m deep; the rock shelf referenced is the only place where the fish feed and spawn in the wild.

From the same National Park Service page: 'Although pupfish have been found as deep as 66 feet (20 m), the fish forage and spawn exclusively on a shallow rock shelf near the surface, feeding on the algae and diatoms found there.'

It is true that multiple conservation attempts have failed. Previous attempts to breed or crossbreed the fish have not been successful.

From a National Park Foundation article on the pupfish: 'Despite past efforts to create a similar artificial platform for the pupfish, as well as attempts to breed Devils Hole pupfish and hybrids in captivity, this small ledge remains the sole spawning and feeding shelf for the fish.'

I have not been able to find any references to 'assassination attempts'. One individual did threaten to pour pesticide into Devil's Hole, but it seems this was never attemped. If anyone can find anything on this, please let me know, but in the mean time I have to say this claim is unsubstantiated.

From a High Country News article on an incident of tresspassing and the pupfish: 'A Pahrump newspaper editor even threatened to throw the pesticide Rotenone into the sunken cave to “make the pupfish a moot point.”'

The fencing was initially installed after two people drowned, not after an assassination attempt. Later, more fencing and security was installed after three men drunkenly tresspassed and killed a pupfish.

From the same National Park Service page: 'Subsequently, the Hole was fenced after two divers drowned in its water.'

From a High Country News article on the incident of tresspassing : 'Since the incident, Devils Hole has become an even more formidable fortress. The Park Service capped its towering fences with additional barbed wire. The public can only view the sunken cave from a distance now, more than 20 feet above it. And inside the fenced viewing area are even more cameras, motion sensors and “No Trespassing” signs.'

There is a breeding program at Ash Meadows Facility, where scientists have attempted to mimic the natural habitat of the pupfish.

From a National Geographic article on the breeding attempts: 'And when they built the Ash Meadows facility, the scientists tried to create a mirror image of Devil’s Hole, which meant bringing in water, substrate, and algae from the natural environment.'

It is possible that a different research/breeding facility is being referred to, but the Ash Meadows Facility does not seem to have a secret location. In fact, the facility is open to visitors, according to their website.

I wont attempt to fact check whether the cave is haunted, but I can confirm that at least two people drowned and were not recovered from Devils Hole. Whilst the cave is not truly bottomless, the bottom has not yet been found.

From an SFGATE article on Devils Hole: 'When the bottom of Devils Hole is one day found, the skeletons of two brothers-in-law may finally be recovered, fathoms below the frolicking pupfish.'

The breeding program has been more successful in recent years. This may be due to the discovery that diving beetles were eating the eggs and larvae, and the beetle population in the artificial environment being controlled. (This fact was not included in the original post, but I thought it was cool.)

From a National Geographic article on the breeding attempts: 'As Feuerbacher watched the infrared footage, which can visualize objects in the dark, a tiny pupfish larva smaller than a peppercorn flitted into the camera’s frame. This was big news. When a population gets as low as that of the pupfish, every animal—wild or captive, larva or adult—is critical to the species’ survival.

“I was pretty excited to see there was reproduction going on in the tank, and I just watched it for a little bit,” says Feuerbacher, a fish biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Then I saw a beetle swim past.”

It began circling the fish, and closing in.

“Then it just dove in and basically tore the fish in half right while I was watching,” says Feuerbacher.

[...]

During the first beetle collection, facility manager Jennifer Gumm says they caught 500 beetles in three hours. And on the very next pupfish egg collection, which is done by leaving out pieces of carpet that the fish like to lay their eggs on, the team retrieved close to 40 pupfish eggs.

Before this, they had been lucky to find four or five pupfish eggs during a refuge collection. Usually, it was zero.'

[destielmemenews]

PolitiFact

[reasonsforhope]

Given the misinformation that's been going around and will be going around, thought this might be helpful to some people

For a lot of reasons, I'm very good at this/at searching, to the point where I have worked as a professional fact-checker for two different publishers. So, here goes:

My Article Fact-Checking Protocol

Thorough Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

Go to the website's home page and read through the headlines. Look at what topics they cover/prioritize, sensationalist headlines, and whether they're framing anything in a way that feels odd/off to you

Do a search related to the topic. This can be keywords, a question, or even just copy-paste the article title (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo so the results don't change based on what Google thinks they can sell you)

If multiple highly credible sources that say the same thing pop up, and there's no major societal biases that might affect the coverage of the topic in those sources (e.g. anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict/Palestinian genocide, no matter which side), then I'm done!

If there are major societal biases, or I can't get a consensus of sufficiently credible sources, then I do some combination of:

(1) search the topic again + the words "controversy" and/or "fake"

(2) search the opposite of the topic, or do some sort of other filtered search

(3) look up a sufficiently credible news outlet with the opposite point of view of my source, and see what they have to say

(4) if it's a big enough topic, start by looking up 2 of the top national papers and 1 major paper for your region (I usually do the ones in the US, because that's where I am In the US: the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the NY Times)

Adjust "news" to "relevant type of source, e.g. tech, environmental" as relevant for all of the above options

If no red flags come up, and it's a topic I understand enough to smell huge bullshit,

Then I'm usually done!

If there are red flags, or I actually need a certain amount of detail/understanding, then it gets more complicated, but that would be a whole other thing to break down and such

or

tl;dr

Quick Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true.

If I don't know the website:

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

If I trust the source, but something else pinged my radar:

Do a quick web search to verify anything that sounds suspicious or too good/bad to be true (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo)

[i-dont-think-thats-true]

I don’t think that’s true

I'm literally just a dog!!! I'm literally just a fucking dog!!!!!!!

[positivelypresent]

Check your facts!

[katboykirby]

Sharing the thread I wrote over on Twitter, since there's been a lot of misinformation around Nightbringer recently

I see a LOT of people accusing Nightbringer of existing purely for "greed" because Solmare is "money hungry" when that isn't even remotely close to the truth.

And of course, legitimate criticisms are valid! No game is perfect (and I'm certainly not trying to claim that OM or NB are flawless) but criticism based on misinformation isn't helpful for anybody ✌️

[nando161mando]

[i-dont-think-thats-true]

I don’t think that’s true

I invented a perpetual motion engine but the only motion it can do is very obscene and I'm too shy to reveal it in public.

[reality-detective]

Project 2025 is “The wrap up smear” and has nothing to do with Donald Trump 🤔

[sir-kettle-of-countertop]

So, I saw a post circulating here about the “extinction of birds in 2023“, with this picture attached

My, what a bold claim! All these poor birdies, “went extinct” in just one year alone? Why would such an outrageous, depressing and catchy claim be spread around? Let’s fact check it.

All the species listed, Bachman’s wabler (Vermivora bachmanii, 1988 or 1980s), Kāmaʻo or large Kauaʻi thrush (Myadestes myadestinus, 1989 or 1987), Bridled white-eye (Zosterops conspicillatus, 1983 and 1983), Kauai ʻakialoa (Akialoa stejnegeri, 1969 or 1960s), Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Moho braccatus, 1987 and 1987), Kauaʻi nukupuʻu (Hemignathus hanapepe, 1899 and 1899), Maui ʻakepa (Loxops ochraceus, 1988 and 1988), Kākāwahie or Molokaʻi creeper (Paroreomyza flammea, 1963 and 1963), Maui nukupuʻu (Hemignathus affinis, 1896* and 1996 ) and Poʻouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma, 2004 and 2004) are all, indeed, either extinct or possibly extinct, according to IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

What are the dates after the scientific names? Well, those all are *last sightings* per IUCN Red List and USFWS accordingly. So, these birds were not seen for DECADES and in one case FOR MORE THAN A GODDAMN CENTURY. And sure as hell there is NO information about them very suddenly being gone all last year.

What’s the deal then? Where did this claim even come from? Well, likely from this article "21 Species Delisted from the Endangered Species Act due to Extinction" from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. It includes all the birds in the picture (with the last date of sight, listed above).

From the article: “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delisting 21 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service determined these species are extinct and should be removed from the list of species protected under the ESA. Most of these species were listed under the ESA in the 1970s and 80s and were in very low numbers or likely already extinct at the time of listing.”

They didn’t ALL fucking suddenly drop dead all in the same year – if they did, as some other people have already pointed out, there would be an uproar EVERYWHERE. Ornithologists alone would not let it live down. They were officially delisted from endangered status by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that year, there was a proposition to do so back in 2021, too. Some were already declared extinct before by IUCN.

Despite not being seen for so long, they remained on the list of critically endangered for a long while, cause you cannot just immediately declare a species extinct. There’s no RTS unit amount number that goes to 0 once there’s nothing left; people keep checking for them over and over and over again. Sometimes it turns out that a species previously thought to be extinct is actually still out there. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna for example was last sighted SIXTY YEARS ago before being sighted again in 2023. It was thought to be extinct for a while, before 2007, when signs of its activity was spotted again. More often than not though, a species turns out to be actually very extinct, unfortunately – like in this case. I cannot possibly know if the creators of this picture, or people that spread it on social media ever had good intentions behind it for awareness, however even if they did, it turned out to be nothing but very blatant misinformation, with a fearmongering effect. The only thing this achieves is not awareness of habitat destruction or pernicious tourist influence or climate change or what have you – the only thing this achieves is despair and panic. People already so casually fall into complete doomerism, they’re very used to hear bad news. And guess what doomerists do? Typically nothing. It renders people helpless. It’s not gonna make people get up and be ready for action, it, at best, would just make people feel sad and/or angry, or at worst, feed into the current alarming rise of ecofascism. NOTHING good comes out of this. At the very goddamn least, no one needs to lie to promote a goal.

The aim of the USFWS article, on the other hand, IS to make people aware about those animals that are already gone from the face of the planet, no matter how long ago, and that now we have to protect those animals that are critically endangered and still out there – to not have to repeat those tragedies.

Be very critical of what you see on the internet, especially if it’s sited with no sources. Especially-especially if it causes a strong emotional reaction. Lies and misinfo could only hurt the cause, no matter how noble. And please, be aware of your local wildlife status. Check in with it accoding to trusted sources.

[*sic, possibly a typo and it was meant to be 1996, other confirmed date listed there is 1989] Addendum: I could not for sure find the uncredided (who woulda thunken that ppl that don't cite their sources would also not credit the artists) author(s) of the bird illustrations. If someone finds them, please, let me know! Edit: Huge thanks to moosefinch for finding the sources for the artwork! I'll add their contribution below:

"Image sources!

The Kauai ʻakialoa, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, Maui ʻakepa and Kauaʻi nukupuʻu are from Birds of the World.

The "Maui nukupuʻu" and "Molokaʻi creeper" illustrations are also Birds of the World, but are actually a female Kauaʻi nukupuʻu (the other being the male) and Laysan honeycreeper/Laysan ʻapapane respectively.

The bridled white-eye is by Lauren Helton according to this source.

Bachman's warbler is by Lynn Hawkinson Smith/smithhouse2 according to this Etsy listing.

The Poʻouli is by Christina Czajkowski."

[jewelleria]

“zionism is white supremacy” shut up and open a fucking dictionary. open an encyclopedia. open a goddamn history book.

zionism doesn’t mean the absence of rights for everyone other than jews. zionism means establishing and continuing to defend a country that keeps jews safe, because we’ve learned from 3000+ years of being kicked out of literally everywhere else that if we don’t protect ourselves, no one will.

grow up. stop being so childish. y’all are just mad it’s harder to kill jews than it used to be.