#but fact check.

[historiansmp3]

it’s fucking insane that a moderator had to say “there is no state where you can kill a baby after it’s born” at a presidential debate.

[o-kurwa]

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[atalana]

the curse of adhd:

i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text

i will forget, in the time it takes me to pick up my phone, that i picked it up intending to send a text

[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

[nevereacheaven]

put him on the pride flag

[noodles-and-tea]

Just some more thoughts on that jayvik dbh au

[someonestrawberry]

saw I trap: hey girlie! this guy is dead. but he has a key in his tummy!! could you get it out to save yourself??

saw traps II and up: preform brain surgery on yourself then eat your own arm then watch your wife be brutally murdered then melt all your skin off with this acid then kill 7 innocent bystanders. you have 45 seconds. now you'll think twice about taking antidepressants.

[swordy-da-goat]

Do the traffic cones have any basic knowledge like shapes and colors or do they have to learn all that from road wiz?

They have a school session every week

[madqueenalanna]

been seeing homies get deep into "the terror" and making me want to rewatch SO i spent two hours in the dead of night reading the wiki/the subreddit/other linked articles and like. one of those articles was deadass fucked up

there was a woman who spoke inuktitut who was writing a book containing a lot of inuit oral histories, and in nunavut she was able to hear passed-down recollections of when survivors from the franklin expedition were passing through

and like. i can't imagine being an inuit family/group, knowing that europeans exist but having never seen them, seeing 8-9 shambling, blue-skinned, cold-to-the-touch out-of-their-minds white men come wandering by. they invited the men inside their igloos for warmth, for food, to be hospitable. the men refused to eat, refused to speak, and when trade was offered, clutched their possessions close and refused to entertain the idea of trade. this was, offputting, to say the least. the group set them up in their own igloo, with their own fire, and left three whole seals for them to eat. and then they fled cause what the FUCK get out of there. they came back in a few days to check on the strangers. the three seals were completely untouched, while all of the men had killed and eaten each other

i mean. fuck dude. there are obviously pretty dark angles to view the franklin expedition from– honestly can't think of a good angle, it's pure colonialism and british exceptionalism– but that specific interaction, that inuit group who were living lives as normal until a dozen fucking walking dead showed up and did cannibalism. no wonder that story got passed down, i'd be shitting my pants if i saw that

[buggachat]

Part 183 of my bakery “enemies” au!

I'M BACK AND READY FOR DAILY UPLOADS!!!

First / Prev / Next / All

Kofi

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Schools, houses of worship, hospitals, and other "sensitive locations" are no longer federally protected from ICE raids and arrests. Many school districts and religious organizations are creating plans to protect immigrants and find ways to keep ICE out (namely through officially making their buildings private and therefore requiring warrants to enter), and I strongly recommend looking into local efforts and supporting them when possible, but a lot of the information about ICE that was true a week ago no longer is. Be aware, be prepared, and know your rights.

[more information]

[ACLU'S Know Your Rights page for immigrants, available in other languages.]

[Red cards for immigrant rights to print for free or purchase large amounts and share, available in other languages.]

[canarypost]

id: a tweet from pop tingz. "max announces the release of the 'luigi mangione: the ceo killer' documentary on february 17th."

hey! just a reminder this alleged "ceo killer" hasn't been convicted of anything, hasn't even gone to trial, was taken into custody without being dna tested or fingerprinted (what fingerprints they did find near the scene were entirely circumstantial), didn't have any contact with legal rep before his extradition hearing, and wasn't identified as a facial match by the fbi's top notch ai software. just don't watch this doc, it's bound to be full of bullshit just like tmz.

[inkskinned]

you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

[akanemnon]

Just a regular day