Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 12, 2025

If you have a kid under your influence, who is that bright, attribution is a secondary concern.

Is Caulfield admitting that he’s wrong?

Caulfield’s still not very bright.

Irresistible force, meet immovable object.

They are both right. If the quote is a meaningful one, it’s worth repeating, no matter who said it. But Caulfield shouldn’t attribute it to Mark Twain if there’s no evidence that he ever said it. At a minimum he could say something like “Questionably attributed to Mark Twain”.

Caulfield could have always just said, “Anonymous.” Would have been accurate and open for further speculation.

“I didn’t actually say most of that s**t, you know.” – Albert Einstein

…more right? Sheldon: “Right and wrong are concepts not subject to gradation”. Stuart: “It’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge”.

‘I don’t know nothin.’

I’d like to know the quote they are discussing….

Poor Mrs. Olsen! Any day with Caulfield is a hard day.

Getting the ‘gist of things’ to make decisions ok works sometimes. At other times, decisions acted upon from ‘gists’ prove the need for more study.

Attribution to famous thinkers gives a pithy saying more authority, and likely will short circuit any consideration of if the adage has any actual truth or value.

A rule of thumb that has served me well in the past: if you don’t know who said it, just say it was either Mark Twain or Dorothy Parker. (1) These days too few people are literate enough to feel safe calling you out, and (2) there’s about a 30% chance you’ll be right.

If what matters is what got said rather than who said it, then we is it so popular to try to build phoney prestige around your quote by lying about who said it?

Many quotes are attributed to George Carlin, often he didn’t say them. Some sound like something he could have said, some are simply made up by someone to prove their point.

“I really didn’t say everything I said.” Yogi Berra

Fact checkers matter first. Gist getters come after.

I criticized Caulfield for being too smart for his own good in yesterday’s strip. I take back all such comments, as we can learn something here.

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”

—Mark “I never said that” Twain

A good point with a bad citation undercuts your argument. Lawyers know that. Scientists know that. Publishers know that. Anyone who wants someday to be published should take it to heart, and develop good habits early.

the gist of lying

Conveying things you know aren’t true is the more effective distraction, as we can readily observe.

That kids ‘smart’ attitude will bite him in the butt someday.

Meta is ending its fact-checking program in favor of a ‘community notes’ system similar to X’s. from NBC News

I wish voters had gotten the gist of what Treason means.

“Pedantry distracts.” And you think you’re not a pedant?

If “the important thing is what got said,” don’t spoil or distract from it by attributing it to someone who didn’t say it. I’ve seen too many memes like that. Sometimes the saying is attributed to someone who died before the subject ever came up.

Bezos and Zuckerberg

Caufield’s a cool kid.