Any claim without a URl should be treated as suspicious


"Many a man who wears laughable clothes from neckties to socks is afraid to put on an influenza mask for fear it might hurt his personal appearance."

I've recently seen lots of people tweeting this supposed newspaper clipping. An olde-timey warning about wearing flu masks. But is it too good to be true? The first thing to do with any image of a text quote is to search for the text. Look, I'm not saying tumblr isn't great, but… I wouldn't exactly […]

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Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Feynman


La mort, c'est un peu comme la connerie. Le mort, lui, il ne sait pas qu'il est mort. Ce sont les autres qui sont tristes. Le con, c'est pareil.

There are lots of celelbrities and famous academics on Twitter. Then there's Professor Richard Feynman. Who died in 1988. Every so often, one of "his" pearls of wisdom is regurgitated into my Twitter feed. Prof. Feynman@ProfFeynmanWhen you are dead, you don't know you are dead. It's pain only for others.It's the same thing when you […]

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Silver Haired Bias


Christine Lagard's official portrait. A silver haired woman.

I was unreasonably annoyed by some media commentator on Twitter complaining about the BBC. So I decided to use data to prove someone wrong on the Internet. In a recent article, the BBC described Christine Lagarde thusly: The role is likely to test the silver-haired 63-year-old, who has admitted before that she lacks economic experience. […]

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Tools to defeat fake news - Reverse Image Search


Screenshot of Facebook. A photo appears to show a giant whale in the ocean.

One of the most important tools in the war for your attention is the ability to critically examine media and discover its provenance. Take this example - a friend of a friend was tagged in this Facebook post, and so it appeared on my feed: WOW! Right! Nature is Coooooool! Or is it? If "The […]

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