I am going to consider this a success story, given that you were transparent about the provenance of this factoid, and you corrected yourself. Yay for learning!
Yes, I did delight in getting to accurately use the word “factoid”; it’s useful for working through the trauma of learning that “factoid” doesn’t just mean a neat tidbit of fun facts, but rather quite the opposite. And for a “learning is fun” kind of gal like me, misinformation masked as genuine learning is deeply unfun — that is, unless we make the factoid itself our new object of study.
I am going to consider this a success story, given that you were transparent about the provenance of this factoid, and you corrected yourself. Yay for learning!
I hadn’t ever thought to look it up over the last 10-12 years! Imagine that.
In fact it’s the most factoid it could be, an outright falsehood shared as a fact.
Yes, I did delight in getting to accurately use the word “factoid”; it’s useful for working through the trauma of learning that “factoid” doesn’t just mean a neat tidbit of fun facts, but rather quite the opposite. And for a “learning is fun” kind of gal like me, misinformation masked as genuine learning is deeply unfun — that is, unless we make the factoid itself our new object of study.
The system works!
This is about as good of an outcome as any can hope for in a “long” comment chain on the internet.
we did it
Yeah, the returns really become increasingly marginal the longer a comment chain goes on. ^(I think I’m committed to the bit though)