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MEMBERS ONLY Snopes Digest

May 26, 2020 • Issue #11

1 A Fauxtography Trip (From Home) Let’s take a vacation of the mind.

2 Behind the Snopes Team Snopes, a longtime remote team, tells us how they take a “staycation” when spending all their time at home.

3 In Case You Missed It The most popular and most important stories on Snopes.com lately.

4 Snopes-worthy Reads Good stories we’ve shared amongst ourselves recently.

Issue #11 edited by Brandon Echter and Bond Huberman.

1. Let’s take a vacation of the mind, Member. Memorial Day, the traditional start of the summer season, came and went a little differently this year. Although some states have begun reopening or lifting some lockdown restrictions, many of the regular beach trips, barbeques, and summertime plans have been postponed or canceled due to coronavirus concerns.

Just because you’re stuck at home doesn’t mean you can’t explore — and for that, we can’t recommend browsing our fauxtography archives enough. Can you imagine living in a world where flamingos flock the canals of Venice, or a horse lives in a third- floor apartment, or sea foam fills the streets of a Spanish town? (Okay, that last one is actually true and we do live in that world, but the point still stands!)

Let’s take a fauxtography trip from home — and stay safe.

Truthfully yours, Team Snopes

Snopes-tionary

Speak like an insider! Each newsletter, we’ll explain a term or piece of fact- checking lingo that we use on the Snopes team.

Fauxtography: A portmanteau of “faux” and “photography,” meaning imagery that has been digitally altered in order to mislead, entertain, or malign. The practice is so prevalent that everything and nothing looks real these days online. It’s unclear when Snopes began using the term in our work, but our founder David Mikkelson recalls this shark appearing to attack a British Navy Diver on a helicopter as one of the first examples we fact-checked. After wading through an ocean of deepfakes, dumbfakes, and manipulative visual memes made to mock public figures, oh how quaint an airborne shark seems today. 2. Behind The Snopes

Let’s talk about what’s going on with Snopes: the newsroom, the products, the people, and everything and anything that makes Snopes, Snopes. This week Team Snopes, a long time work-from- home company, explains how they try to take a staycation when they’re always at home.

Many of you may be ready to take some time to yourself. Luckily, we’re experts at getting away without getting away — Snopes was an entirely remote company long before the pandemic started. We asked the Snopes staff how they relax after a long day of working- from-home.

Assignments Editor Camille Knox: Changing surroundings is one way to stave off the boredom. Maybe finish reading a book on the patio.

Senior Reporter Alex Kasprak: I am notably bad at separating the two, but for me my non-work time is either mindless “Seinfeld” binging or working to convert the abandoned lot attached to my house into a functional backyard, which has involved removing trees, failing to remove some stumps, rehabbing a fence, and building a shed — none of the aforementioned projects were completed at the time of this reporting.

Assignments Editor Bond Huberman: I've gotten really into growing flowers and vegetables from seed (which I guess makes me kind of a cliche right now from what I see on social). Things were going really well until the other day I realized a snail broke into my makeshift "greenhouse" and razed many of my seedlings to nothing. That was an emotional day, but usually it's very relaxing — and a comforting contrast to whatever is happening in the news.

Vice President of Editorial Doreen Marchionni: I watch a lot of old “Columbo” episodes on Amazon Prime and take a lot of walks around my neighborhood, feeding the crows shelled peanuts as they follow me. Writer Dan Evon: I relax by making cocktails, reading, napping, and ignoring news and screens. Lately, though, I’ve been adding escaping to a picturesque Animal Crossing island to my staycation schedule.

Operations Editor Jordan Liles: I moved into a new house about three months ago, so I’ve been picking up all sorts of small objects left behind in the dirt by the previous owners of the house:

Rusted screws and nails; A few very small purple painted rocks, perhaps from children who lived here in the past; A headless giraffe toy, haven’t found the head; Red-painted scrap wood from who knows what; Half of a glass bottle buried a few inches underground; Bottle caps; Round metal washers; An old, flat, wire garden decoration; A golf ball; Six tennis balls.

We also removed an old shed and found a family, perhaps the first owners from a half century ago, had written their names in the concrete slab. And someone carved something in another part of the concrete on the side of the house, with what appears to be “1973.”

Communications Director Carly Gillis: I'm really putting my Xbox Game Pass to good use and trying out weird video games I'd usually not have the time to play. A delightful recent discovery is a game called “Pikuniku” about an adorable monster that unwittingly prevents the exploitation of natural resources by an evil corporation. It may not be total escapism, but at least it's really cute.

Reporter Jessica Rose Lee: Some things that relax me: Walks around nearby lakes with my dog. Playing virtual RISK with internet strangers on my phone while eating homemade pizza and drinking beer. Watching the Discovery Channel's “Naked and Afraid.” Researching where viral YouTube stars of the early 2000s are now. Turning traditional comfort food (shepherd's pie, lasagna, etc.) into vegan recipes. Doing yoga in my living room.

Editorial Assistant Liz Donaldson: I caved to family pressure and got us Netflix: Mother-in-law and I have been binging “The Crown;” Daughter and I have been binging “The Great British Bake Off;” Husband and I have been bingeing “Shetland.” I should have signed us up for BritBox instead!

Now that I know that “Columbo” is on Amazon Prime, I may change accents.

Snopes Founder David Mikkelson: I play board games with my Meetup friends on both sides of the country using Tabletop Simulator.

I also collect dogs — just kidding. [Editor’s note: He does have an impressive trio of pugs.]

Next time, you’ll hear from another member of the Snopes team about a unique aspect of working here that you might find interesting. Do you want us to cover something specific? Write to us here!

We Want to Hear from You What have you experienced during this coronavirus pandemic? How are you holding up? We want to hear how our readers are living through this crisis.

Tell Us Your Story

4. In Case You Missed It

The latest news and fact checks on Snopes.com. A new investigation from Snopes reveals that the driving force behind Michigan's anti-lockdown protests — and their connections to the family of Betsy DeVos — is even more complex than we initially thought.

Did 28 million mail-in ballots go “missing” in the last four elections? Our fact check shows that this argument is akin to declaring all the millions of Americans who don’t bother showing up to vote at polling places (some 40 to 60% of the eligible population) as “missing.”

Did Kroger send letters to employees demanding overpaid emergency pay be returned? Such letters were sent during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but after online backlash, it seems their message has changed.

We briefly paused our reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic to research … another pandemic. Readers asked: Did the Woodstock music festival take place during a pandemic? It seems the true factoid was cherry-picked to support one writer’s argument against current social distancing guidelines. Although the festival did take place during a pandemic, please don’t get it twisted: COVID-19 is already more deadly.

According to what he says, U.S. President Donald Trump is not a fan of voting-by-mail. But according to how he votes, a different story emerges. We confirmed that Trump has voted by mail before, so how does the president reconcile the conflicting standards he holds for himself and for American voters? Watch his response.

Is the sun going into “lockdown,” too? Could we blame it if it did in this news cycle? In seriousness, no. A headline set to maximum sensation misrepresented a fairly predictable solar pattern — as far as anyone studying helioseismology is concerned.

Are vegetarians safe from COVID-19? There is no evidence to suggest such a claim. Although it may be easy for some to laugh off the notion, this rumor carries a nationalist subtext Have a story tip? Send it here!

Mental Health Break Team Snopes investigates some grim and depressing claims, so we know how important it is to your mental health to see something silly, funny, or just plain heartwarming. Here are some links that made us smile.

Morris: A Cat For Our Times 1986 Calendar - Internet Archive

Forget Romeo Juliet, This Love Story Between a Corgi and a Pug Has Us Extremely Invested - Amrita Kohli, Hindustan Times

5. Snopes-worthy Reads

What Team Snopes is reading across the web.

The Pro-Trump Conspiracy That’s Becoming a Religion Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic

‘Wind of Change’ Podcast Review: Did the CIA Write the Cold War’s Biggest Anthem? Stevie Chick, The Guardian

How QAnon Conspiracy Theory Became an ‘Acceptable’ Option in Marketplace of Ideas — and More Lessons on Fake News Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post

We Don’t Even Have a COVID-19 Vaccine, and Yet the Conspiracies Are Here Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic

Have any recommended reads? Submit them here. The Pets of Snopes It’s true: The Snopes “team” was once just two people and a cat. Twenty- five years later, we have more humans and more cats (and even some dogs) than at our once-humble beginnings. We want you to meet our furry, fact-finding friends because, well, who doesn’t love a cute animal picture? Meet Ziggy, the official assistant to Communications Director Carly Gillis! When he’s not helping Carly with Team Snopes’ communications strategy, this 20-pound pup loves lying in the sun, playing hide and seek with his bones, and somehow taking up the entire bed while sleeping.

Thanks for reading this edition of the Snopes Digest. We’ll be releasing the newsletter every two weeks, so please add this email address to your white list and keep an eye out on June 9 for the next issue.

You can read the previous issue here.

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