#please think critically

You are SADLY letting patriarchy win, my sisters.

Just cleanse, tone, and moisturize + use sunscreen every day. That’s really all you need. It’s so upsetting to see women use “anti-wrinkle straws” alongside many other dumbass gadgets which only benefit capitalist corporations.

You will get older & you will die, eventually. We all will. It’s a privilege to get old, not something to fear. Just take care of yourself (mind and body).

Would recommend all of you to watch this icon on YouTube + many other intelligent people (esp. women) on the platform. (Just search!)

It's NOT a TERF or right-wing platform.

Please be careful about this because Neil Gaiman's PR and legal counsel (should he eventually need to hire counsel) will be 100% using this bullshit description as part of his defence.

Information about the investigators from from Splice Today:

"The investigators. The Slow Newscast belongs to an outfit called Tortoise Media. The lead presenter for the series is Rachel Johnson, a journalist who is undeniably the sister of Boris Johnson and who vocally opposes the idea that trans women are women. Gaiman believes they are and has said so emphatically, but no evidence has surfaced that Johnson’s attempting a hit job. Most of the reporting on the series, and some of the on-air presenting, was done by Paul Caruana Galizia. He’s won an Orwell Prize special award and a British Journalism Award; this information comes from Penguin Books, the publisher of Galizia’s A Death in Malta, which is about his mother’s life as an investigative reporter and her death in a car bombing."

I'm pro trans and anti Tory. You'll never find me going to bat for Rachel Johnson, of all people.

But I'm also Maltese and lived through Paul's mother's death, went to protests about it in my country, and I can vouch for his credentials and ethics.

If you look up his brother's Twitter (Matthew Caruana Galizia) you'll also see that Matthew is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and software engineer. He's also vocally pro-Palestine.

Like people will say "choice is an illusion when all production is owned by the same people" and "if you idiots just didn't buy any digital content, we'd still have dvds and physical copies of things that companies couldn't exploit" in the same breath and see no irony in it.

Here’s a tip: If you’re trying to determine whether or not a claim is true, think of a different way that you can obtain that same information. 

Truth -- ie, events that happen in the real world -- is verifiable and falsifiable. There is almost always a way to externally confirm the validity of a statement by checking a primary source. 

If News Source A says one thing and News Source B says another thing, that doesn’t automatically mean that both of them are right/neither are right/there is no right answer. You can check their sources and (quite often) independently verify them. That’s what fact-checking is all about. It’s also what legal investigations are about. 

Here is a scenario for you. 

You are a parent of a teenager named Billy. You’ve been called in to talk to the principal’s office because Billy has been skipping school. 

“No way!” Billy protests. “I haven’t been skipping! the principal just has it out for me! he’s lying!” 

You could decide to side with Billy, because he’s your kid and you trust everything he says (even though he could be lying to you to get out of trouble). Or you could decide to side with the principal, because he’s an authority figure (even though he could be using that authority to do harm). 

But you are a smart, critically-thinking parent, so you decide you want to do some investigating of your own. 

You can: 

Ask Billy’s teachers independently whether or not he’s been in class. Ask if you can see the attendance rolls. 

Ask Billy’s classmates whether or not Billy has been in class. 

Check security camera footage from the hallway to see if Billy shows up in time periods he shouldn’t be roaming around. 

If he were ditching, where would he most likely go? Does he have a car or would he be walking somewhere? Ask around for witness reports/camera footage of those areas. 

Does he have a motive to ditch? Does it sound like something he would normally do? Does it fit into a pattern of behavior?

Does the principal have a motive to lie? Does THAT fit into a pattern of behavior? 

The thing about secrets is they’re hard to keep, especially when they involve a lot of people. It’s one thing to lie about where you were; it’s something else to convince several other people to tell a story that matches up with yours. The more people involved, the more impossible it becomes to maintain the conspiracy. 

Now, a couple of caveats: 

Yes, some facts are easier to confirm than others. Yes, there are certain situations -- especially interpersonal conflict -- where it may truly come down to one person’s testimony against another, and you may not really know the truth. And in some cases, there truly is no objective truth, because the situation is not factual but rather a matter of opinion/ethics/philosophy/analysis.

But, by and large, when hearing any kind of claim, you should immediately and always ask yourself: 

How can this information be verified? Who else was present who can confirm or deny what occurred? 

Is there objective data that can be reviewed (camera footage, physical evidence, etc.) 

How many people would need to be keep this secret? 

Are there conflicting accounts?

Do the claims make sense? Do they fit into a pattern of behavior? Is there a clear motive? Is the claim logistically plausible?