fake news

The Truth Is In Here

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True Tales of the Worlds: Recently selected as the Least Truthful Newsbytes for the 69th year in succession, True Tales of the Worlds is the Associated Worlds’ longest-running comedic-speculation journal, memetic experiment, and/or example of untreated delusions. Having recently turned 4,000, we present here a selection of recent headlines, all of which, we feel, live up to the standard set by the front-page story of their first ever issue, “Holy Shit, Planets Actually Spherical”.

  • Alleged Leytra Star Just a Blue-White Hallucination
  • Three-Ended Wormhole Discovered: Duplicates Expedition
  • Dropped Comet Made of Cheese: Colonists Surprised, But Surprisingly Delicious
  • Every Star Nation Secretly Ruled by Lizard People (Except the Empire of the Lizard People)
  • Empire of the Lizard People Secretly Ruled by Different Lizard People
  • Transportation Cartel Cover-Up – Galaxy Only Twelve Million Miles Across!
  • Many-Colored Shooting Stars Expected After Explosion of Candy Freighter
  • Universe Not Hollow, Claims Scientist, And We Live On The Outside
  • Giant Space Yeast Found In Beer Nebula
  • Giant Space Yeast More Awesome Than Giant Space Amoeba, Scientists Agree
  • Panspermia: Space Currents or Self-Pleasuring Deity? Very-Large-Baseline Images You Won’t Believe!
  • Conclave Votes To Raise Luminal Limit
  • Let My People Go, Ring Dynamics!: Interview With a Giant Space Worm
  • Lord Blackfall Converting Sun To Private Hyperyacht, Threatens ‘Global Warming’
  • Precursor Artifact Found in Public ‘Fresher: Scientists Now Searching For ‘Hyperspace Poop Moon’
  • Sen Shari Demands Hope Hegemony Dye ‘Eyesore’ Nebula
  • League Treasury Buys Three-Ended Wormhole, Pays Half Price
  • Plans to Soft-Land Moon of Sedria in Original Location Move Forward, Citing Benefits to Science, Tourism
  • Vordon’s Empty: “Detuned Heterodynes” Hire All The Mercenaries As Roadies For Upcoming Galactic Tour
  • Eye-of-Night Spontaneously Emits Mint ’53 Atomo: Science Team Takes Rocket Ride
  • Mermaids Make First Contact, Protest Moon-Landing Plans
  • Eels! Why?

If you are currently asking yourself why, consider the True Tales‘ never-changed masthead:

“The Truth Shall Enrich”

– A Star Travelers’ Dictionary

In Which Reality Is Exactly As Strange As Fiction

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In today’s news, it turns out MSNBC’s legal correspondent, Ari Melber, has proposed treating “fake news”, or more technically “disprovable media claims” as a species of fraud along the same lines as fraudulent advertising – and therefore something the FTC can protect the public from.

Long-time readers may notice a certain similarity to the Empire’s  long-standing principle that “the freedom of speech is not the freedom to deceive” that establishes lies on matters of fact as criminal fraud, only aggravated by the number of people you’re lying to.

It’s just a more limited (concentrating only on “deceptive businesses” and keeping the government away from “actual journalists” and “citizens exercising their right to lie” – O tempora! O mores!) and government-centered (rather than creating a cause of action for anyone lied to) version of it. Which differences probably make it worthless anyway, but just in case anyone’s getting ideas from my fictional politics…

…it works there because of a millennia-old tradition of intellectual integrity (“right to lie, indeed!”) and of principled valxíjir and of not being a bunch of malevolent means-justifying sons-of-bitches. Both I and my fourth-wall-breaking characters strongly anti-endorse the notion for use here, where approximately none of those conditions hold true.