Anapoly Notebook

Digital garden

digital garden: a place to develop and share ideas in a flexible, interconnected, and constantly updated space.

Maggie Appleton describes digital gardening as the nurturing of ideas, connecting them through contextual association rather than publication date. Beginning as seeds, the ideas grow and evolve through thinking. Some prove fruitful, others less so.

Fact checking and source verification

When we encounter a dubious claim online, most of us ask the wrong question: is this true? Mike Caulfield (information literacy researcher, creator of The SIFT Method, and co-author of Verified) argues that we should instead ask: is this what people think it is? That shift in framing is the foundation of his work. Rather than chasing the slippery concept of truth, Caulfield focuses on understanding context: where a claim came from, how it's being used, what the range of informed opinion looks like, and whether the evidence behind it actually supports what's being claimed. He urges us to develop a habit: get it in, track it down, follow up. The goal is to make us better at navigating the information landscape before we decide what to believe. His Deep Background super-prompt is a valuable tool in support of that purpose.