Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

Author: Christopher Merle (Page 1 of 52)

I made these boots to honor the memory of those who came before.

Verified

So the other day I shared on Facebook a few of these hilarious fake tweets by fake verified accounts using the new blue check verified service offered by Twitter. It was an utter disaster. Several companies stocks were tanked by these tweets.  Facebook was not amused and decided that I was sharing false information. I was not I was providing examples of false information and labeled it as such. I got a 24 hour ban.

 

WARNING! All of these tweets in this gallery contain false information and are posted by imposter accounts that Twitter verified because they paid the $8 price tag. Some of them are funnier than others.

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1001 Days

I’ve used Duolingo for 1001 days. I started my Duolingo odyssey to brush up on my high school German and college Russian in prep for a Baltic cruise that would start in Germany and stop in St Petersburg. Then the pandemic happened and our cruise was canceled.

I kept going. I eventually added Spanish, Ukrainian, and Scottish Gaelic. I had some Spanish in high school. It’s a useful language to know in Tucson. I started Ukrainian because of Russia’s invasion and I wanted to see how closely related and mutually intelligible they were. And to show my support for Ukraine. I learned Scottish Gaelic on my own 18 years ago and started a self-studies group in Tulsa. I decided to brush up on it too and see how good Duolingo is for it.

I chose 1001 days as a milestone as a nod to 1001 Arabian Nights. I’m not fluent in any of the languages and I’m not ready to converse in any of them, but my German comprehension is much better.

Of course Duolingo celebrates 1000 days as a milestone.

Four Corners

A few years ago we went to the Durango Celtic Festival and since we drove through the Navajo Nation to get there, we stopped at the Four Corners monument where the four corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. Later I found out this wasn’t the actual spot where the borders met. It was a few hundred yards north or something.

One of the signs we saw was warning people not to scatter the ashes of loved ones because it was disrespectful of Navajos to do so. I also imagine if they’d allowed it, there’d be a huge pile of ashes that’d have to get swept up every so often. I could think of better places to have my ashes dispersed if I choose to be cremated. Yes, the four corners are within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation.

LiveJournal (and Dreamwidth) Import

I finally imported my LiveJournal entries into my WordPress blog. I stopped posting on LiveJournal when they changed their terms & conditions. I migrated to Dreamwidth and imported all my entries there. There might be an easy way to import from Dreamwidth, but decided to go straight to the source. I have far fewer entries on Dreamwidth, so at worst I’ll be copying them and creating them manually. I’m in the process of going through those entries and putting them in the LiveJournal category. I added Dreamwidth as a sub-category. My username on both accounts was entp2007, so that’s my tag.

I’ll try to fix missing pictures and videos in those posts.

From The Ruins of the Dresden Library

I did not know that Albinoni’s Adagio was allegedly based on a fragment from the Dresden Library. I’d been a fan of this piece ever since I heard it used in the original Rollerball (1975) with James Caan. The composer Remo Giozatto used it to make the actual composition. He never produced the fragment to prove his claim.

The piece of music is fitting for the city of Dresden as it was firebombed by the Allies at the end of WWII. It was a war crime, and no one was ever brought to justice for it. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden when it was bombed. He wrote about it in his novel Slaughterhouse Five and A Man Without a Country.

U.S. students bring Kurt Vonnegut back to Dresden for firebombing anniversary
https://www.sott.net/article/274060-US-students-bring-Kurt-Vonnegut-back-to-Dresden-for-firebombing-anniversary

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