Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for June 20, 2024

It’s only True if you choose to believe it

Rumors and lies have always been around. The internet just makes them easier to find. But as always, there are also trustworthy sources, and it’s important to know how to find them.

And the absolutely true stuff agrees with me.

There are some great things out there, some obvious lies (that some idiots will still believe) and a few very cleverly constructed lies that some jokers put a lot of thought into.

I never told students “Don’t use the internet when writing your papers,” like some professors. Students would have ignored me anyway. I always told them, “Wikipedia is a great place to start your research, but you’re in trouble if it ends there.”

The signal-to-noise ratio is daunting. I ♥ when tech support is responsive; I told them the button didn’t work online, so they removed the button (I was hoping for “fixed” but oh well).

The internet is a repository of information, in the broadest sense of that term. It doesn’t care about truth or falsity, it just collects everything. We humans are the ones who should care about thoze things.

..comics will never let you down..

True, ,Papi.

Everything I say is a lie. Really. I’m not lying.

now product placements?? c’mon Baldo…

I knew someone who swore Wikipedia was a reliable source. So I went on the page about our town and added his name as a “notable person”, as the person who invented the cheeseburger.

Everything on the Internet? You’ve only seen a tiny part of the Web. You don’t even know how to access most of the Internet.

How will he choose?

Before the internet, most of the world (US included) suffered a lack of information. Someone told you an old-wive’s tale, and you grew up believing it since there was no way to cross-check without some very in-depth research (and no such thing as Snopes.com). Now, we suffer from an overload of information, opinion, and misinformation, all blended together.

Our education system needs to incorporate a critical-thinking curriculum to instill a healthy sense of skepticism in people. We have become far too easy to manipulate by playing to our innate biases.

I grew up with two encyclopedias in our house. First set was a simpler one for younger children, later one for teens – my job was put the update stickers in the second encyclopedia when we got the annual update book. We also had “the almanac” in our house. I was taught to always check if something is true if someone tells me something (other than my parents or teachers).

Now my husband will get annoyed when I hear something and immediately look it up online – or in phone if we are out to find out more about whatever it is.