A Recent Story brought several questions from readers wanting to know why it referred to a Black guy and a white guy — with those specific capitalizations:
Explainer
Amazon’s New Robot: Evil Wall-E?
My thoughts on Amazon’s new personal robot …and why I’ll NEVER have one in my home.
Our Dr. Brooks
Sometimes, the Lives of Readers intersect with mine in interesting ways. This is one such story, and it started in 1971 — though I didn’t realize the connection until much more recently.
091: Don’t Die in the Next Five Years
In This Episode: The title — Don’t Die in the Next Five Years — is an unofficial motto of an organization my wife and I joined, and we went to our first conference with them as members last week. They say this because of coming advances in medicine in the next several years, and we got a glimpse into some of those advances, including some things that aren’t even published yet in medical journals, that were mind-blowing. This episode is my first report on what I learned.
Snopsing Snopes
| Claim |
| In August 2021, Snopes’ co-founder and CEO David Mikkelson was revealed to be a serial plagiarizer, sloppily violating copyrights of other publications in an attempt to make the site look extremely proactive in uncovering news. |
| Rating |
 This is True |
Absurd Amazon-Aided Antics
We start with a story from this week’s column:
The Pulitzer Prize & This is True
When muckraking New York newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911, he left a $2 million endowment to Columbia University. To this day, Pulitzer’s name is best known for the resulting Pulitzer Prizes, given each year in multiple categories by the university.
This year, This is True was under consideration for the Prize in three categories.
Facebook Accused Me of Hate Speech — and I Appealed (Twice!)
I Am Guilty of posting “Hate Speech” on social media …according to Facebook’s algorithms and whoever (or whatever) reviewed that declaration when I appealed.
090: Rescuing Uncommon Sense
In This Episode: A story in This is True struck me as an astonishing example of Uncommon Sense, so I thought I’d tell you about it to see some really out-of-the-box thinking, and provide some practical advice that could save your life. Here’s a hint: no one thinks they’re going to get lost and need rescue. Yet there are tens of thousands of rescues every year in the U.S. alone. What will increase your odds of being safe? Uncommon Sense.
Florida Man: Not a Recent Phenomenon
An academic’s “history” of “Florida Man” makes some startling — and completely wrong! — claims about how the “Florida Man meme” got started online. No, it wasn’t in 2012, or even the “mid-2000s”!
Covid: Think for Yourself (Dammit!)
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After seeing this morning’s Randy’s Random post about Covid-19 (reproduced below), I got this comment by email from an old friend, Terry in Colorado:
082: You Don’t Need Willpower
In This Episode: You really don’t need willpower, and relying on it for change is a recipe for failure. So how can you succeed at the things you want to change without it being so danged hard? Well, a psychologist who has studied willpower says there’s a much, much, better, and easier, way.
Florida Man On Wheels: Marco Mazzetta Sets
Bar, Michael Popper Accepts Challenge
Florida Man Marco Mazzetta is an absolute obliviot, so why would anyone want to follow his example? Well keep reading, because Florida Man Michael Popper followed Mazetta like he was a recipe. [Jump to that 2022 Update]
Peak Stress
The lead story this week is mind-blowing …especially to me as a current first responder medic and former deputy sheriff. Here, I go through the incident step by step to show just how fast the deputy had to react — and make a life-altering decision along the way.
The Streisand Effect
Two recent This is True stories demonstrate the “Streisand effect,” and this page brings those two stories together (plus a third from 5 years ago), and then leads to more commentary on the “effect.”
Let’s start with the first of the two recent stories, from True’s 8 December 2019 issue:
Fixing Georgia
A story in this week’s issue needs a lot more room for explanation, not to mention a full-sized copy of the graph involved. First, let’s start with the story, from True’s 17 May 2020 issue:
Stay Put …Still
The Scenario Discussed in my blog post Stay Put looks more and more likely: that pressure on government officials to let businesses “open back up” is growing, and it’s way too early for that.
Your Task: Decide Which is Illegal
I’m Sure You are Dying to Know the story behind this week’s extra-weird Headline of the Week (Issue #1310, 21 July 2019):
One Small Step for [a] Man
Updated 16 July 2022
It was 50 years ago Saturday that Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong piloted the Eagle — the first manned lunar-landing spacecraft — to the surface of the moon.
“Let the Public Decide”? Bad Idea….
Be careful what you ask for, since when an organization asks the public for input on what they should name something, they’re opening a Pandora’s box.