#no misinformation

[alton-towers-real]

Since the Smiler has been trending on different platforms and some new fans are spreading misinformation about the 2015 crash, so here is the correct information:

Incident Overview:

June 2nd, 2015, the Smiler roller coaster at Alton Towers crashed, resulting in severe injuries to riders, including two teenagers losing their legs.

Operating Conditions:

The park was unusually busy with high wind speeds exceeding safety limits set by the manufacturer.

Technical Difficulties:

At 1 pm, the Smiler experienced technical issues, prompting closure for maintenance.

Safety Oversight:

During maintenance, a fifth train was added without informing the maintenance team, breaching safety protocols.

Faulty Procedure:

Despite high winds, the empty fifth train was sent without water dummies for weight, causing it to roll back and stall.

Miscommunication:

Maintenance incorrectly assumed a "ghost train" triggered a safety mechanism, leading to an override.

Collision and Injuries:

The overridden safety mechanism led to a collision between the stalled empty train and a fully loaded one, resulting in injuries to all riders.

Responsibility and Fines:

Investigations attributed fault to both ride operations and maintenance teams, with Alton Towers receiving the majority of blame. The park was fined five million pounds.

Safety Improvements:

Post-incident, enhanced safety measures were implemented, including more CCTV, revised staff training, and the prevention of override unless by senior engineers.

Preventative Measures:

Gerslauer, the manufacturer, introduced features to prevent operation during high winds, ensuring a similar incident would be impossible, enhancing safety across the industry.

[lesbinewren]

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email

[adhdisgay]

Friendly reminder to listen VERY VERY CRITICALLY if someone tries to convince you not to register for federal disaster assistance following a declared disaster. Helene is still moving north and I see the usual rants picking up steam already.

That person trying to win social commentary points online is not your friend. That person can’t give you funds for house repair or to restock on food and meds. And if they say they can - that is a scammer and not someone you can trust.

Scammers and developers trying to take advantage after a disaster intentionally spread rumors/misinformation to convince survivors not to apply for federal disaster assistance. Many well meaning people pick this misinformation up and spread it further without understanding how the assistance process works. It’s happened more and more over the years and it will happen with Helene.

If you do not apply for assistance, you lose the chance to receive federal funds. APPLY APPLY APPLY. This doesn’t guarantee you will meet eligibility requirements, but you definitely can’t meet them if you don’t apply. The application process isn’t perfect but it continues to be updated - and was updated in 2024!! - to try and make it easier for survivors. If you have damages or lost power for an extended time, APPLY.

You can check on FEMA.gov or with local news to see when disaster recovery centers will open, how long the application period will last, and what information you’ll need when applying.

[wiki-but-made-them-up]

[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

[kuuhaiyu]

i really can't emphasize how heartbreaking it is that the recent harassment campaign against @/90-ghost (among others; see: 1, 2, 3) has led to well-meaning people telling others not to listen to him. he is one of the most visible survivors of the genocide here on tumblr. his entire journey of escape is so well documented! and yet, it only took a few people confidently pointing fingers to create an entire witch hunt accusing him and other palestinians of being disreputable scammers and liars.

i can't help but feel like the reason why people were SO eager to believe those accusations, is because it was uncomfortable to see posts from palestinians every day asking for our time, attention, money, and support; so when someone presented the perfect excuse to ignore all those posts and asks while also taking the high ground, people just LEAPED onto it. they wanted to believe it, because it would be more comfortable.

honestly, i understand feeling overwhelmed by bad news, by the number of asks and messages in your inbox, and so on and so forth. i understand needing to set boundaries for yourself so you don't get burned out. i think this is really when you have to have a set of principles to fall back on, even when you're tired, uncomfortable, angry, and/or sad. so here's the one i suggest, which has been working for me best: don't make your discomfort with this situation into someone else's problem, and for god's sake don't make it a public problem.

if you hate seeing fundraiser posts or news about gaza, i can't emphasize this enough, JUST MOVE ON. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND SCROLL PAST! all you have to do is absolutely nothing. which is what you were doing anyway, so it shouldn't be hard. if you don't have the heart to read, or reblog, or share, or donate, or support in other ways, at the very least, don't obstruct the efforts of people who ARE trying to make a difference. this is, quite literally, the least you can do.

[samipekoe]

mother hen

[fesenmoon]

no fucking way

[gizmotemusic]

You know how the word "feline" refers to cats, and "canine" refers to dogs? There are a whole bunch more animal adjectives, and here are some of them:

equine -> horses

bovine -> cows

murine -> mice/rats

porcupine -> porcupines

wolverine -> wolves

marine -> marmosets

saline -> salmonella

cosine -> cosmonauts

citrine -> citrus

combine -> combs

famine -> your fam

bromine -> your bros

palpatine -> your pals

alpine -> alps

christine -> christ

asinine -> asses

machine -> the speed of sound

landmine -> explosions

migraine -> migrants

trampoline -> tramps

dopamine -> dopes

medicine -> the Medici family

praline -> prey

masculine -> mascara

feminine -> femurs

latrine -> latissimus dorsi

fettuccine -> fetuses

poutine -> sadness

turbine -> turbans

engine -> england

supine -> soup

valentine -> valence electrons

Follow for more nature facts!

[puraiuddo]

FanFiction.net is not gone.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to steal traffic from FFn by purchasing a very similar domain.

Correction:

The new "fake" site that people are seeing still belongs to FanFiction.net—they just misconfigured their servers and are not redirecting traffic from the bare fanfiction.net to the main site at www.fanfiction.net. There is likely no malicious agent. Didn't mean to scare anyone! Just wanted to let people know the site wasn't deleted!

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net".

Please share so people stop panicking.

[rhinozzryan]

PSA: the guardian is not working on a hit piece on diy hrt, and claims they are are misinformation (see update)

UPDATE: the guardian has published an article referenced by the original 4chan post, which was legitimate. the email continues to be fake. the article appears not to have contacted trans people or under-18s. and the message remains the same: don't talk to journalists about your personal information or history. you can see a recap and response to this publishing here. tl;dr: claims that the guardian's Susanna Rustin is writing a piece on diy hrt and contacting trans people for comment is false.

on the 18th, this post appeared on 4chan's /lgbt/ (slurs in thread: link). a screenshot was posted to reddit, then to tumblr. you've probably seen it:

today, the 23rd, another screenshot popped up on various discord servers, then was reposted variously to twitter. it shows a supposed email from guardian journalist and notorious TERF Susanna Rustin, claiming as the original 4chan post does.

it's now been shared around, and it's with good intentions. the message is useful: don't share your personal information or medical data with journalists, especially ones that happen to be TERFs.

but the post does this through misinformation and fearmongering. i'm still waiting on my response by email from Rustin, but she's reiterated twice (once, twice) that she did not write the email and is not working on such a story. on the 19th, i talked to other guardian newsroom journalists, who said they also did not know of a story's existence.

the moral of the story: this is misinformation, and it's dangerous. it spreads a fine message here, but it does it through spreading anxiety and terror.

you can follow along with this post on my parallel thread on twitter. also calling on @wakewithgiggli to delete their original post!

[riverofrainbows]

It becomes clear that the last covid wave (brought on by spring festivals and carnevals and such where I live) has left people with both a stubborn cough (classical) and/or with thoroughly stubborn mucus in their sinuses. So stubborn that most medication that normally clears that up has not worked more than partially or temporarily.

So, if you had a ""cold"" and now have issues with mucus in your sinuses:

Consider wearing a mask in public. You probably had covid, and now have a compromised immune system for at least the next 6 months and probably longer. Consider avoiding super spreader events (EM, concerts, bars, conventions) or at least wear a mask so you're less likely to both get and spread covid at those events. Consider also getting the new covid vaccine come fall, or now if you hadn't before. It's not just a booster, it's based on the omicron variant instead. You should get it, because you now have a higher chance of getting disabled by long covid with your next covid infection, and any protection from getting infected helps lower that risk, as well as vaccination lowering the risk for developing long covid.

And if you're scared of social repercussions: At least wear it when you're sick or anyone close to you is sick. I'm begging actually.

I remember all the people during lockdown who said they would definitely wear a mask even for the regular cold after the pandemic has ended, because they now have the knowledge and means to not breath germs onto other people while actively infectious.

Where are y'all now? The pandemic hasn't even ended yet and almost no one is wearing a mask when sick.

Where is everyone who said that masks while sick should become the new normal?

Please don't even bother to feel guilty for not doing it so far, you fell for worldwide misinformation campaigns. Just start wearing a mask again and get all your covid vaccines.

Your actions are more important and way more impactful than your moral purity. Please just make wearing FFP2/N95 masks when sick and/or in high risk situations your new normal.

PS: (Edit to add my tags)

The worldwide misinformation campaigns are by capitalism. If anyone adds anything antisemitic on my post you're getting reported.

[awkwardlii]

I’ve seen several media outlets trying to claim that the UN has ‘quietly’ halved the number of Palestinian women and children killed since October 7th. Some have gone so far as to allege that Hamas fabricated the original numbers to try and cover for the 1:1 ratio of insurgents to civilians killed.

They’ve chosen to ignore the fact that the UN published a completely separate report, comprised of individuals whose remains have been identified.

The UN has clarified that the total number of women and children killed in Gaza since October 7th remains unchanged.

[thesadvampire]

[isitcorrect]

Something unremittingly bleak about a goddamn country starting "crisis actor" conspiracy theories to deny their crimes. A term invented to deny the deaths of children at Sandy Hook in 2012 is now used to deny the deaths of children in Gaza in 2023.

As the community note says, this isn't a crisis actor. This is a guy who posts on Instagram. A influencer who posts videos online of breaking events...is seen at a lot of breaking events. To Israel, this is a sign of a conspiracy. In fact, some of those images aren't even him, or aren't even related to Palestine at all; one image included in other posts targeting Saleh Aljafarawi is a Halloween costume from Thailand. That article says "pro-Israeli accounts" tweeted this, but it's the literal, official Twitter account of Israel posting this shit, next to their comedy sketches that somehow make trans people the punchline bc fascists only have one joke the whole world wide I guess

Like. It's not new for a government to deny the reality of its atrocities. It is new for that government to outright use a conspiracy theory term devised by Alex fucking Jones, or to, when called on doing so, defend it as a "meme" (also bizarre to see hardcore Zionists use a term crafted for especially antisemitic conspiracy theories). Everything rancid about the world in 2023 congealed into a single tweet, right here