Friday Unwind #21: Join Guest Author Paul Macko for a Special After 21 Club
After 21 Club is where Friday meets you on the way to life’s little pleasures. Reviews, recommendations, thoughts, and your comments to share with multiple generations.
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Special Edition of After 21 Club
Welcome to a special edition of After 21 Club and our amazing guest author, Paul Macko. Paul is a retired realtor and marketing expert from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. His entertaining newsletter, Deplatformable, includes posts about marketing, Substack hacks, advertising, copywriting, technology, famous people, and business ideas. Every Tuesday and Friday he also offers ‘One Idea’, a rabbit hole of interesting and unique ideas to explore. Each Wednesday he publishes an AI illustrated version of the book, “Frankenstein”. Paul’s mastery of illustrative AI is impressive.
Thank you, Paul, for sharing 5 ideas for us this week!.
1. Fascinating misconceptions we thought to be true.
This Wikipedia page has a bunch of things that lots of people think are true but aren’t. It talks about all sorts of stuff, like science, history, and everyday things. You know, like how people think we only use 10% of our brains? Turns out, that's not the case!
It’s a great research tool for writers to find fun facts about stuff people often get wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
Some examples:
Xmas did not originate as a secular plan to "take the Christ out of Christmas".[102] X represents the Greek letter chi, the first letter of Χριστός (Christós), "Christ" in Greek,[103] as found in the chi-rho symbol ΧΡ since the 4th century. In English, "X" was first used as a scribal abbreviation for "Christ" in 1100; "X'temmas" is attested in 1551, and "Xmas" in 1721.
Ernest Hemingway did not author the flash fiction story "For sale: baby shoes, never worn". The story existed as early as 1906, and it was not attributed to him until decades after he died.
The Monkees did not outsell the Beatles' and the Rolling Stones' combined record sales in 1967. Michael Nesmith originated the claim in a 1977 interview as a prank.[159]
Concept albums did not begin with rock music in the 1960s. The format had already been employed by singers such as Frank Sinatra in the 1940s and 1950s.[162]
Phil Collins did not write his 1981 hit "In the Air Tonight" about witnessing someone drowning and then confronting the person in the audience who let it happen. According to Collins himself, it was about his emotions when divorcing from his first wife.[163]
While modern life expectancies are much higher than those in the Middle Ages and earlier,[245] adults in the Middle Ages did not die in their 30s or 40s on average. That was the life expectancy at birth, which was skewed by high infant and adolescent mortality. The life expectancy among adults was much higher;[246] a 21-year-old man in medieval England, for example, could expect to live to the age of 64.[247][246]
There is no evidence that Viking warriors wore horns on their helmets; this would have been impractical in battle.
Medieval cartographers did not regularly write "here be dragons" on their maps. The only maps from this era that have the phrase inscribed on them are the Hunt-Lenox Globe and the Ostrich Egg Globe, next to a coast in Southeast Asia for both of them. Maps instead were more likely to have "here are lions" inscribed. Maps in this period did occasionally have illustrations of mythical beasts like dragons and sea serpents, as well as exotic animals like elephants, on them.
The familiar story that Isaac Newton was inspired to research the nature of gravity when an apple fell on his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea came to him as he sat "in a contemplative mood" and "was occasioned by the fall of an apple".[272]
Napoleon Bonaparte was not especially short for a Frenchman of his time. He was the height of an average French male in 1800, but short for an aristocrat or officer.[283] After his death in 1821, the French emperor's height was recorded as 5 feet 2 inches in French feet, which in English measurements is 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m).[284] There are competing explanations for why he was nicknamed le Petit Caporal (The Little Corporal), one possibility being that the moniker was used as a term of endearment.[285] Napoleon was often accompanied by his imperial guard, who were selected for their height, and this may have contributed to a perception that he was comparatively short.[286]
2. Make your own daily newspaper-like comics page:
https://ironicsans.com/comicspage/comicpicker.html
3. RIP, Charlie Munger’s Almanack - Free PDF:
4. Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/24/picasso-brassai-ideas-creativity/
5. Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
In April of 1958, Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice.
Thompson’s letter, found in Letters of Note, offers some of the most thoughtful and profound advice I’ve ever encountered for those of us feeling a little lost.
The article by Shane Parrish, found at
https://fs.blog/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
Deplatformable Newsletter is like Ozempic for your mind…
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💬 COMMENTS
Hi! How’s your week been going?
What misconceptions did you think were true?
Did you try your hand at making your own comic strip? How’d it go?
Don’t forget to download Charlie Munger’s almanacl, courtesy of Paul Macko!
Where do your ideas come from?
Do you ever feel a little lost? Do you have some advice for others who feel that way too?
If you are a Substack writer and you’d like to be considered as a guest author on After 21 Club, please reply to this email and let’s start a conversation.
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Wherever you are, I hope life is sunny. 🌞❤Heather
What misconception did I always think was true, but wasn't?
The Coriolis effect, which I learned about in my high school physics class. I decided to test it the first time I crossed the equator. I was flying in a KLM 747, the Sir Frank Whittle, on a flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. Because it was a night flight. I forced myself to stay awake and watch the map with the little airplane on the cabin tv screen. When we were over the Sahara desert and still well north of the equator, I went to the bathroom, filled the sink full of water, pulled the plug and watched which way the water circled as it drained from the basin.
About an hour after the little airplane crossed the equator, I went back to the restroom, filled the basin with water again, and let it drain out. it swirled in the same direction as it did the first time.
It was at that moment I realized that the earth is flat, the moon is only 200 miles above the earth, and the lunar landings were all filmed at a secret studio in Area 51. Everything became clear to me at that moment.
What else did they lie to us about?
Oh no, I'm picking up Radio Moscow in my teeth fillings. I better go back to bed. It's encased in a Faraday shield to keep out all the brainwaves from the contrails. You will need to carry on without me.
Another wow message. I always leave your Friday newsletter with an expanded list of things to check out. News alert: I'm not keeping up. Debunking the apple and Isaac newton was real news to me, but in hindsight I should have seen it for what it was. Regarding Hemmingway, I never paid much attention to his being credited with the short, punchy, famous sentence, but having read him, I would have said it didn't sound like him.
Thank you. I'm going to check out some of what you suggested, though I wish it were more. Keep 'em coming