Marilyn's Photos - May 9 2026 - Retro Parenting

 

Parent like it's: 1950s, 1970s and 1990s - here is what they  have in common: Free-range play Home-cooked meals Reading aloud Gardening together Board game nights Handmade crafts Family storytelling Picnic outings Neighbourhood gatherings Nature walks Traditional celebrations Looks good to me, but then what is different today?  One article says that play has evolved from free-range to finely-tuned - parents driving all over the place picking up children from highly organized, time-defined activities does seem to be the norm now. We know what's happened to home cooked meals by walking up the middle aisles of a grocery store. And search for home-cooked meals and you will find that they can be delivered directly to your home. Some of these others seem suspect: who gardened together in the past - children had garden chores.   As I look at that list a bit more, these things seem like a hundred years ago.  Picnic outings, for example.  What does a picnic look like today?  AI has an answer for me - a blend of rustic charm and modern aesthetics. There is only one page of picnic articles, including the information that Picnic day is in March, an odd time of year for a picnic.   Then the "picnic" topic turns to what Prince Archie looks like now, Steven Kwan's future, what the iPhone 18 Pro looks like and May Day Italy 2026.  Picnics are not much of a 2026 activity.  What if this is one of those filler ideas that is fun to read? It does have a nostalgic sense for those of us who were children in that nuclear family of the 1950s to the 1970s.  A little nostalgia has made its way into the retro parenting topic.    I have three bee houses for native bees.  I put one of them on the top shelf of the potting bench to keep it out of the rain.  I now share the potting bench with the bees who come and go.  These aren't honey bees who have a hive to defend and would sting.  Our native stinging bee - the bumble bee - is too big to fit into any of the holes.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 8 2026 - Life of a Camera

 

If you were to calculate your camera's life in terms of shutter time, it would be a few minutes at 1/100 second shutter speed.   Here's another calculation: "If converted to time, a professional camera with a 300,000-shot lifespan used to take one photo every 10 seconds for 8 hours a day would last roughly 2 years." Modern mirrorless cameras have a mechanical shutter with a lifespan of infinity, as there are no moving parts.  There is now imaging technology where "a camera can capture light in super slow motion, effectively moving at the speed of light.  These cameras can record at a rate of one trillion frames per second, allowing them to capture light pulses moving at 600 million miles per hour in super slow motion.  Scientists are able to observe light in unprecedented detail." It is called T-CUP: The single-shot 10 trillion-frames-per second "compressed ultrafast photography" camera.  The article in evolving science is HERE.  The video of light passing through a bottle is HERE. The unit they talk about is a femtosecond.  "A femtosecond is an SI unit of time equal to \(10^{-15}\) seconds (one quadrillionth of a second). It is used to measure ultra-fast processes, such as molecular vibrations in chemistry and light traversing a human hair, which takes roughly 100 femtoseconds. Femtosecond lasers are widely applied in high-precision, non-thermal industrial processing and medical procedures like LASIK." Good thing they tell us it is a camera as the picture of it doesn't resemble any cameras that we know.   Another exotic Trillium in Marion Jarvie's garden.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 7 2026 - What's Real?

 

Update from yesterday on the question: Will there be actual 'real-time' people in the future? The answer is trending towards "no" with news from South Korea that a Robot Buddhist Monk took precept vows at Buddhist temple.  Looks like there's a daily quiz:  is this real?  Let's play.  Is that dog real or fake? What do you think? The next picture of the child jumping on the seats?  Real or fake video? And the answers?  The dog is real.  And the breed? American Bully - a breed known for its muscular build, broad chest and clipped ears.  it is a mix of the American Pit Bull Terrier and American Staffordshire Terrier that was bred between the 1980s and 1990s. Is it as dangerous as the image implies?  They were responsible for approximately 75% of fatal dog attacks between 2021 and 2023 in the U.K. while making up less than 1% of the dog population.  It is now illegal to own an XL Bully in the U.K.  Makes you wish the picture was fake. The jumping child picture/video was a real one too - out of many more that are fake. Should airlines do something about screaming, jumping and kicking children?  Maybe treat them as XL Bullies and ban them?  They are talking about creating "quiet zones." as these videos are everywhere.  The videos are the intro to articles giving advice on how to handle the jumping child behind you.  In comparison, there also are articles directed to the parents - things like be calm:  "if a neighbour complains, stay polite and empathetic."  The topic attracts headlines like: Man Teaches Lesson to Seat-Kicking Kid and Mom Mom Instructs Son to Keep Kicking Man's Seat... In-flight Karma:  Mischievous Boy's antics meet hilarious ... Annoying Seat-Kicking Boy Learns a Lesson on Plane ... I vote for the "quiet plane" - no children flights - like the advertisements for no children cruises.   It is time for a New Moon.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 6 2026 - My New AI Voice

 

I was at choir practice yesterday and I can hear it when someone in my section - the altos - is not singing the right notes.  Usually an alto singing wrong notes is singing lower rather than higher.   It seems to me that anyone inclined to sing higher seeks to be a soprano.  But that doesn't spare them when they sing wrong notes as I expect sopranos singing the wrong notes also sing lower.  This is called "tone-shy" compared to tone-deaf and people seek a "comfortable" pitch which generally is lower than the intended note.  This morning the Globe and Mail had an article on how call centres are using AI to change the accents of customer service centre representatives.  That's to make them more understandable to "us." What do you make of that?  First that they are still using real people, and second they can alter their voices in real time.  To me it seems like science fiction. We shouldn't be surprised. They already do that with celebrity singers in need of pitch correction.  Auto-tune became famous when Cher used it for a stylistic vocal effect on Believe. It is now standard practice. Not surprisingly, the article says that Justin Bieber uses auto-tune.  How do I know it isn't surprising?  I remember him as a teenager singing outside the Festival Theatre in Stratford and he sang so badly that Rick thought someone should put him out of his misery.  It may be that Rick offered to do the job. So would auto-tune be usable for our sopranos who have difficulty with those high notes?  My guess is yes. I see them all hooked up with tubes and little iPhone sorts of machines on their laps.  I guess I am inclined towards a science fiction sort of motif. My complaint about wrong notes goes nowhere - I can't expect it to help the wrong note singer.  It says it cannot fix singing that is extremely off-key.  Still in the science fiction motif my answer is this:  Wait a few days, and AI will have something to completely replace the singer in real time.  We'll just stand there. Would people be tempted to change their voices?  This seems like a lazy way to do it - rather than elocution lessons.  Get accents that are considered attractive, remove unattractive accents, change the pitch and emotion of voices and so on.  I expect it has already started. Will there be actual 'real-time' people in the future?   Are you ready for some giant exotic Trilliums?  These were in Marion Jarvie's garden on the weekend.  They are known as Giant Trilliums. Maybe it is Trillium chloropetalum var. giganteum ‘Alba’ - the flower petals stay vertical and don't open up like the Grandiflorum.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 5 2026 - The Met Gala

 

Last night was the New York Metropolitan Opera's Met Gala. It is a costume event rather than a red carpet movie star event.  It is one of those American extravaganzas - big money, big celebrities.  A ticket is $100,00, tables were $350,000 and brought in $42 million.  I wonder what happens to all that money.  Here's the answer:  the Costume Institute has to fund itself, so the gala is its source of income.  There's a lot written about the actual operating budget (Reddit contributors say $5 million) versus the pot of money raised. The theme was Fashion is Art.  Take this dress - made of 15,000 glass balls with a little machine that spewed bubbles.  Isn't that so amazing.  I can't get that many ornaments on a Christmas tree each year.    Here's an all-time creepy hair display. Beyonce - and her daughter whose name is Blue Ivy (age 14) - have enough of those hair extensions to further creating the nest  in a mountain cave that is lined with the feather/fur-looking dress.  I wonder what happens after the show - how do they remove them all?  The weight would be exhausting.  More creepy follows.  This is Doechii wearing "something" - the article said there was more fabric on the top of her head than in the dress.  And look at her on her tip toes.  She looks like one of those harem slaves in a Hollywood 1950s Aladdin movie. And time for an artful dress - doesn't it look like a painting with all that texture!  Too bad about the wearer's expression - zombie-like. Here's the rest in the Vogue article HERE.  It is amazing how creative we can be with clothing.  We wear utilitarian clothes each day as though dressing is a chore.  It is delightful to see what our human creativity can express. And here we have the expressions of nature with a happy spring tree moment today.

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