What a week on social media it has been. If people aren't fighting over Miss South Africa, they are watching videos of an Australian breakdancer who is an excellent example of why people need to be honest with each other about what they are actually good at.

Being contrarian in the markets tends to work better than being contrarian at the Olympics. Many investors are familiar with the concept of being contrarian, or going aganst the herd. But how many have heard of a contronym?

We’ll give you a clue to help you guess what we’re talking about: contronyms are also known as Janus words. Janus was an ancient Roman god with two faces that looked in opposite directions. Like the two-faced Janus, a contronym is a word that has two meanings that are opposite or nearly opposite. 

Here’s an example of the phenomenon in action: five people left the party. Now there are two people left. See how the word "left" means both going away and staying behind? 

A few of our favourite contronyms include:

dust: to wipe the dust from
dust: to sprinkle with a powder or dust

overlook: to fail to notice, perceive, or consider
overlook: to look after, oversee, or supervise

weather: to expose to the weather, to disintegrate
weather: to endure

back up: to support
back up: to retreat

pitted: having pits
pitted: having the pit removed

Perhaps "break dance" now finds its way into this list as well. It looked rather broken on that video.

Moving on, Dominique Olivier's piece this week is an absolute winner about investing in art. It will shock you and excite you, either scaring you off art altogether or getting you ready to visit a local gallery. Either way, it's a great article that features a self-shredding Banksy piece that tells you everything you need to know about the quirks of the art world. Enjoy it here>>>

Read on for a story of love, prisons and helicopters. Yes, really. And to finish, whilst love may be strange, brains are rather odd too. Dominique covers that in her Fast Facts.

Have a great Sunday!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)
 

TL;DR: When her serial-criminal husband Michel Vajour was arrested, Nadine Vajour did what any woman in love would do: she learned to pilot a helicopter and fetched him off the prison roof herself!

With the Olympics doing a great job of keeping France in our collective subconscious, I thought I’d share a statistic that you’d never expect to hear from the country most of us associate with baguettes and cheese: France has had more recorded helicopter prison escape attempts than any other country, with at least 11 officially recorded.

The most famous of these by a country mile has got to be the story of Michel Vaujour. In 1985, Michel received an 18-year sentence for bank robbery and attempted murder. Fortunately for him, his wife Nadine had a plan that could rival any Hollywood blockbuster.

Practically as soon as Michel was arrested, Nadine sprang into action. She signed up for helicopter piloting lessons and quickly became a familiar face at a helicopter rental company in southern Paris.

Meanwhile, inside the infamous Prison de la Santé, Michel and his jail buddy Pierre Hernandez carefully studied the layout of the prison yard, and soon realised there was no room for a helicopter to land. So, they adjusted their plan. On May 26, 1986, at 10:30 in the morning, Nadine flew a helicopter over central Paris, disregarding frantic radio warnings. She hovered above the prison roof, throwing the entire facility into chaos. Michel and Pierre burst through a door, racing across the rooftop. The guards, distracted by reports of inmates wielding grenades (which turned out to be nectarines painted green), didn’t fire a single shot.

Michel climbed into the helicopter, but Pierre lost his nerve and surrendered. Nadine flew Michel to safety, landing in a nearby athletic field where they jumped into a waiting car and sped off.

The couple evaded capture for months, even managing to retrieve their daughters from under police surveillance. Whether it was bold or foolish, they stayed in Paris - the same city where they had just pulled off a daring escape. Three months later, they were caught while robbing yet another bank. During the shootout that followed, Michel was shot in the head but survived. He was quickly returned to prison, where his sixth escape attempt, this time with a new accomplice, Jamila, soon ended in failure.

I guess Jamila wasn’t as quick a study at helicopter controls as Nadine was.

An assortment of facts that will take you only a minute to read.

1. The fastest speed for information to pass between neurons in the brain is estimated to be about 400km/h.

2. When you are awake, your brain generates about 12-25 watts of electricity, which is enough to power a small light bulb.

3. The human memory can hold the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of data.

4. The average person has up to 70,000 thoughts a day.

5. Within the first ten minutes after waking, you’ll forget about 90% of what you dreamt.

6. The brain’s oxygen consumption is significant, using 20% of the oxygen in the body. For context, that’s three times as much as the muscles use.