No, Oscar Wilde did not say "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness"


A tweet with thousands of reposts and likes. It reads: I just learned that the full Oscar Wilde quote about imitation is: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” The last part.. it matters.

Another day, another debunking! I've seen this quote flying around social media for some time. Everyone loves finding out that a famous quote has a twist and that the author isn't anonymous. It's the perfect piece of clickbait! But the thing is… this quote is bunkum. The easiest way to tell is to stick it into a search engine. You'll find lots of people confidently claiming it is by Wilde - but no actual sources. Try it now. Surely at some point someone would have pointed to the scene in …

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Did Nikola Tesla receive "nothing but insults and humiliation"?


IMPORTANT: The authenticity of this letter has never been confirmed...

I see this quote pop up occasionally: World of Engineering@engineers_feedNikola Tesla's last message to his mother: "All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation." pic.x.com/OmfbsC5GHR❤️ 21,733💬 367🔁 022:00 - Sun 25 July 2021 But what's the source of it? The most prominent source appears to be this article from March 2015 in Telegraf.rs. It is a series of letters purportedly written by Tesla to his mother just before she died. It c…

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Silver Haired Bias


Christine Lagard's official portrait. A silver haired woman.

I was unreasonably annoyed by some media commentator on Twitter complaining about the BBC. So I decided to use data to prove someone wrong on the Internet. In a recent article, the BBC described Christine Lagarde thusly: The role is likely to test the silver-haired 63-year-old, who has admitted before that she lacks economic experience. The commentator was disgusted that she'd be described as "silver-haired". He wondered out loud "I bet the BBC don't refer to men in this way!" Luckily,…

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