Good morning, John!

So, lies.  They've always been around; there was once a woman who convinced the entire medical establishment of Britain that she was giving birth to rabbits.  One of the  great tricks I see these days is something I call a "head lie," where I will tell you a true fact, but when that true information hits your brain, it becomes a lie.  It's sneaky, it's tricky, and we're really getting good at it.  I call it a head lie because it only becomes a lie when it hits your head, and also because it often happens inside of headlines.  So you're gonna want some examples to understand what is happening here; here are three that I saw this very week, lies that were put into my brain by true statements.

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Number one: U.S Birth Rates Plummeting!  First, it seems to be indicating that something bad is happening.  I'm not entirely sure what it is, I guess that it like- we're gonna go extinct as a species or as Americans or something.  But first, it's not really plummeting.  It's decreasing a little bit, but more importantly, the birth rate for people over 25 has actually been pretty steadily and substantially increasing, so what's going on here?  The head lie I've been told is that something bad is happening, the reality is that fewer teenagers are having babies.  But we don't wanna write a headline about that, cuz no one cares about good news!

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Moving on to number two: Tesla's safety stats.  Head lies do not have to be headlines.  Tesla releases "safety reports" every quarter.  They are extremely limited, here's  the most recent one.  And in it we see that there's one accident for every 2.87 million autopilot miles driven and one accident for every 1.76 million non-autopilot miles driven.  These are true things, the lie that has been put into my head is that autopilot is preventing crashes.  Is it?  I don't know!  Because Tesla's autopilot is mostly used on highways, and crashes per mile are much lower on highways.  So it this the effect of the autopilot or the effect of, like, the autopilot is just on in situations where crashes are less likely?  And I'm not saying that autopilot doesn't prevent crashes, I bet it does to some extent.  What I am saying is that every car company should be legally required to compile and release safety data, especially in regard to autonomous driving and it's really worrying that governments do not require them to do that when car crashes are one of the most significant public health threats in the world!

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Number three:  Carnival Cruises release ten times more pollution than all of the cars in Europe combined!  I'm not saying that we shouldn't be paying attention to the pollution caused by the shipping industry generally, cruise lines specifically, but this has kind of obviously created a lie in your head without being technically incorrect.  There are many different types of pollution, one of them is sulfur dioxide, which basically isn't produced by cars anymore at all, especially in Europe where they've done a really good job of removing sulfur from fuels.  So yes, Carnival Cruise Lines does release more sulfur dioxide than all of the cars in Europe because all of the cars in Europe. fore the most part, don't release any sulfur dioxide.

Look, I do want us to burn cleaner fuel in cruise ships, and I think that ultimately safety features like Tesla's autopilot-thogh it should not be called that-will save a lot of lives.  But I also think that there isn't really that much of a difference between giving people information that makes them think an untrue thing and just telling them an untrue thing.  And if you provide information to people, if that's part of your job, you have an obligation to not lie to them.

An here's a truth for you: I'm going to be doing a quick tour to celebrate the release of the paperback version of "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" and for everyone who can't come to that tour I'm showing you this very cute deer that was in my neighbor's yard.  The first night on July 30th I'm doing a bunch of fun weirdness at the Stateside Theater in Austin with Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth and that event will be livestreamed to Theaters all over the place.  Look at all these places.  And then I'll be in Houston on the next night, I'll be signing and saying hi to everybody who wants to do that after the events.  I'ts gonna be fun, I'm gonna share, I think, a little bit of my next book.  There's more information in the description and, John, I'll see you on Tuesday.