“And you’re right too”
Carlo Rovelli on general relativity and quantum mechanics.
“Past events”
From Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Dictionaries rising
From the Fashion and Style pages of The New York Times, a report on increased interest in dictionaries.
Gaslighting, moonlighting
It looks like our president is writing for Lifehacker.
“They simply swallowed everything”
From Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Daniel Schorr on journalism, politics, and truth
A useful reminder that before Trump there was Bush the Second. And before him, Richard Nixon.
Dan Rather on these times
“Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy.”
A Little Golden Book
This Little Golden Book of Alternative Facts.
Deresiewicz v. D’Agata
“It kills me to think that there are going to be people walking around who believe that Socrates was an essayist because a self-important ignoramus named D’Agata told them so.”
Lies and inconsistencies
At Daring Fireball, John Gruber unpacks the lies and illogicalities in a three-sentence statement from the president-elect’s transition team: 235 words to parse just 42.
“The Rot of Fake News”
An essay by Todd Zwillich.
A Word of the Year
“After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth.”
Spotting liars
A New York Times quiz: “Can You Spot the Liar?”
Self-love and truth
From Joseph Joubert: “Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.”
Trump tiles
Lying about little things.
Reality distortion fields
“A good RDF reshapes one’s sense of what is possible. Then there is the other kind of RDF, the kind that distorts matters of fact and history.”
Frankfurt on bullshit
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt: “For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.”
The lifespan of my interest in The Lifespan of a Fact
“What to make of a writer who claims to have changed a seemingly factual ‘thirty-one’ to ‘thirty-four’ because ‘the rhythm of “thirty-four” works better in that sentence’? Nothing, because that detail alone (on page 16, the second page of the text) made it easy for me to suspect that this book is not worth my time.”
George Orwell on historical truth
On the demise of truth: "Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist."