If you use the word “factoid” to refer to a bite-size nugget of authentic information of the sort you’ll find in a listicle,*5 you’ll sadden those of us who hold to the word’s original meaning: According to Norman Mailer, who should certainly know as he was the one who invented the word in the first place, 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.” That the Great Wall of China is visible from the Moon (or even from your plain-vanilla astronaut orbit) is
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