The Factoid Thread

[jakelafortParticipant]

A few words popped into my consciousness. Manifold Fortnight Providence. The aforementioned common in literature and i never hear in conversation.

I love pho. Delicious. Used to call it foe until a vietnamese acqauantaince gave me the dope.

As far as i know in birds it is always the male with bells and whistles.

[UnseenParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

A few words popped into my consciousness. Manifold Fortnight Providence. The aforementioned common in literature and i never hear in conversation. I love pho. Delicious. Used to call it foe until a vietnamese acqauantaince gave me the dope. As far as i know in birds it is always the male with bells and whistles.

You never hear “exhaust manifold”? or “My kid is addicted to Fortnight”? And here in Portland, Providence (a Catholic charity) runs hospitals, clinics, and the Medicare Advantage Plan I belong to. “Providence,” in a Christian context, refers to God’s tending to and protection of his flock.

Yes, in the avian world it’s the males who get to be the charmers who need to attract the females, who often are actually bigger than their testosterone-driven counterparts.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Often cited for being the longest sentence ever written is one by author James Joyce. In his novel Ulysses, the character Molly Bloom has a monologue that goes on for 36 pages and has a total of 3,687 words. The only reason that a sentence this long works is because it is a monologue. Molly is speaking her thoughts out loud, and when combined with other punctuation, it is easy to follow along.

There is a happy ending though 🙂

[Belle RoseParticipant]

Often cited for being the longest sentence ever written is one by author James Joyce.

I recently saw a meme on Facebook that said something like:

“Write the longest sentence you can think of,”….

Answer: “A lifetime without you.”….

[UnseenParticipant]

The 50,000 word novel Gadsby, by Ernest Vincent Wright, is most notable for the fact that the letter “e” appears nowhere in the body of the text.

Yes, it was done as an exercise, but imagine the difficulty of not using the most common letter in the English language (and, indeed, most Western languages).

Consider just one of the many problems he had to deal with: being unable to use “ed” to indicate the past tense.

To be clear, 50,000 words isn’t in the same size league as War and Peace, but still. YOU try writing even a 200 word paragraph without using the letter “e”1

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

No factoid thread would be complete without Benny Hill’s famous impersonation of Michael Caine. I just wish I could find the video, but here’s the script:

“Not A Lot Of People Know That”–The Benny Hill Fandom Wikia
https://benny-hill.fandom.com/wiki/Not_A_Lot_Of_People_Know_That

Not that Michael Caine actually said “Not A Lot Of People Know That.”. 😁

[AutumnParticipant]

I can’t fathom it. Omitting this solitary phonogram robs us of so many important words. What would I say? What could I say without it? Ordinarily, I am loath to abstain from using any particular symbol from our common script. To strip away what is singularly our most ubiquitous mark of all? Lunacy. An Anglophobic assault on our anglophonic dictionary.

Any world I summon from my imagination and commit to ink would fall flat should I abstain from drawing on my full vocabulary. To my mind, it is agony. It is bland, gloomy anguish. It is an arduous, lugubrious task with no point. Only phrasal contortions will follow—torturous linguistic acrobatics, all just to avoid using such a common, innocuous thing? And for what? To show I can do it? To confirm I can abstain for a duration of a paragraph or two in a row? I can, but I shouldn’t. It would lack clarity. It would lack punch. It would lack unity and flow. Awkward rambling would quickly occur. Truly, I am loquacious (if not outright garrulous) and can oft run on and on, but I am not typically insipid. And insipidity is, unavoidably, what this ridiculous constraint is diminishing my writing to. With that final thought, I am approaching a satisfactory word count and should wrap up.

Excelsior!

[UnseenParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

I can’t fathom it. Omitting this solitary phonogram robs us of so many important words. What would I say? What could I say without it? Ordinarily, I am loath to abstain from using any particular symbol from our common script. To strip away what is singularly our most ubiquitous mark of all? Lunacy. An Anglophobic assault on our anglophonic dictionary.

Any world I summon from my imagination and commit to ink would fall flat should I abstain from drawing on my full vocabulary. To my mind, it is agony. It is bland, gloomy anguish. It is an arduous, lugubrious task with no point. Only phrasal contortions will follow—torturous linguistic acrobatics, all just to avoid using such a common, innocuous thing? And for what? To show I can do it? To confirm I can abstain for a duration of a paragraph or two in a row? I can, but I shouldn’t. It would lack clarity. It would lack punch. It would lack unity and flow. Awkward rambling would quickly occur. Truly, I am loquacious (if not outright garrulous) and can oft run on and on, but I am not typically insipid. And insipidity is, unavoidably, what this ridiculous constraint is diminishing my writing to. With that final thought, I am approaching a satisfactory word count and should wrap up.

Excelsior!

Good work! LOL

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Our Moon is by far the largest moon in the solar system. It is greater than 25% the size of the Earth.

[UnseenParticipant]

Another word you’re more likely to run into in writing than in everyday conversation:

The word “noisome” doesn’t mean the same as “noisy” though it certainly can involve noise. It is more closely-related to “annoying” than to “noisy.” It describes things which are annoying or harmful and perhaps even to the degree of being dangerous. A sound is noisome of it threatens to damage your hearing. However, a tub of rotting fish can also be noisome.

[_Robert_Participant]

Unseen wrote:

Our Moon is by far the largest moon in the solar system. It is greater than 25% the size of the Earth.

A stroke of good luck for life on earth.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-life-tides/

[jakelafortParticipant]

What is a factoid?

Did you know that Norman Mailer coined the word factoid?

We can thank Norman Mailer for factoid: he used the word in his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe), and he is believed to be the coiner of the word. In the book, he explains that factoids are “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.”

What is factitious?

artificially created or developed.
“a largely factitious national identity”

Query whether factitious factoid is redundant. Or don’t.

[DavisModerator]

Ehhh, Ganymede is larger than our moon (it is in fact larger than Mercury). There are in fact four moons larger than our moon. In terms of size and mass relative to the planet it orbits, Chiron is half the diameter and an eight the mass of Pluto, this is much much much greater than our moon relative to Earth. In fact, Chiron is so large relative to Pluto that their mean centre of gravity is between the two objects. None the less, yes, our moon is uncharacteristically large in proportion to the planet it orbits. But it simply isn’t the largest moon in our solar system nor the largest relative to the planet it orbits.

[AutumnParticipant]

Davis wrote:

But it simply isn’t the largest moon in our solar system nor the largest relative to the planet it orbits.

Pluto formally thanks you for recognizing is planetary status. Dwarfs are planets too.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

Ehhh, Ganymede is larger than our moon (it is in fact larger than Mercury). There are in fact four moons larger than our moon. In terms of size and mass relative to the planet it orbits, Chiron is half the diameter and an eight the mass of Pluto, this is much much much greater than our moon relative to Earth. In fact, Chiron is so large relative to Pluto that their mean centre of gravity is between the two objects. None the less, yes, our moon is uncharacteristically large in proportion to the planet it orbits. But it simply isn’t the largest moon in our solar system nor the largest relative to the planet it orbits.

Infamous quote: “I thought I made a mistake once,  but I was wrong.”

I don’t know how I got those “factoids” wrong, but I stand corrected. I probably misinterpreted something I heard in a documentary.

I apologize for putting the “oi” in “factoid.”

[Author]

Posts