Marilyn's Photos - Oct 6 2026 - What to think about

 

Is there a "question" of the day? I guess so - one can hop over to BrainyQuote or WisdomQuotes and find a question or reflection of the day.   Today's "best thought" is:  The secret of getting ahead is getting started - that comes from Mark Twain. That's one of those proverbial quotes. Not really a question, either.  Try to find a "question" of the day and they seem trite - if today had a soundtrack, what song would open it?  What small thing always makes your day better?  That's more like an icebreaker in a conversation.  Nothing thought-provoking there.  And entirely personal - no investigation and curiosity required there.  The New York Times asked 100 scientists to give them the big unanswered questions in their fields.  Things like:  What preceded the Big Ban?  Why do we sleep? Why are humans the only species with a chin?  And the all-encompassing question one asked:  What is curiosity? That last one is intriguing. A question of the morning in pursuit of building the curiosity muscle - that would be interesting.  I wonder if schools do this -  build curiosity skills.  There are standardized curiosity quizzes and scales. They seem to be directed to personal growth mostly and how people approach new information, biases, and differing opinions.  Getting to know oneself sorts of questions.  I expect that curiosity has to be at the core of research.  Here's an expression that makes sense "cognitive appetite" - it is the internal drive that surfaces questions about how the world works.   Asking the question of how to develop cognitive appetite gets a good answer - structured courses that stimulate neuroplasticity, focus and critical thinking.  Harvard has on online course titled Cognitive Fitness - eat, sleep, exercise...that quickly moves to lifestyle training. I was wanting brain skills - focus/attention, working memory, long-term memory, logic and reasoning, auditory processing, visual processing, processing speed and so on.  That seems to be offered a udemy.com and it says it is a free course.  Introductory offer, I am sure.  One of the gardens on the garden tour has a beautiful statue - I decided it would be pretty in a walled garden setting, so here it is.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 5 2026 - Dolly and Freddie and Johnny

 

I am currently practicing Christmas songs for the choir's Christmas concert.  They are generally nice songs to sing.  We have practice tracks for our parts and we can listen to full choir versions with the same harmonies.  Listening to the choir for one of the songs, I notice in the sidebar Dolly Parton sitting next to Freddie Mercury on the Johnny Carson sofa with a headline saying Freddie Mercury DARED Dolly Parton to sing Bohemian Rhapsody live...what happened next shocked everyone.  So I went over and took a look.  However, there was no live coverage of the event.  It was a voice-over pseudo-documentary with stills.  If they had sung that together or if Dolly Parton had ever sung Bohemian Rhapsody on Johnny Carson, we would know it.  A specific date was given for this historic musical moment, and no Dolly or Freddie was on that night. Not any night together. We can expect that Dolly Parton was on Johnny Carson - that's a definite American moment - she was on 25 times. But nothing like Bob Hope who had the most guest appearances - an estimated 131. Then comes Joan Rivers with 105, David Steinberg, with 105, Tony Randall, with 104, Charles Nelson Reilly with 97, Orson Bean with 93, and Dr. Joyce Brothers with 90.  Was Freddie Mercury ever on Johnny Carson?  No.  I can't imagine he would have been invited and it confirms he wasn't. That "DARED" video floods Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube Music - it is by far the most popular of the pairing of fake Dolly Parton and Freddie Mercury videos. There's more - "The Moment Dolly Parton Saved Freddie Mercury's Performance"  and "Freddie Mercury Challenged Dolly Parton to Perform Without Her Wig". Even the video that headlined it was exposing the fake videos is an exploitation video.  So many levels of fakes.   Here's one of my favourite Grimsby gardens - on Robinson Street.  The house was originally built in the 1800s. Maybe part of my enjoyment of the garden is their Cavalier King Charles dog. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 4 2026 - Oktoberfest in Grimsby

 

can't remember seeing someone wearing lederhosen for well over 60 years.  Yesterday our next door neighbours had an Oktoberfest Party and they were dressed up for the event - dirndls and lederhosen.  Being German there should have been Oktoberfest parties when I was a child.  But I don't remember any for children. It was the 1950s and the war wasn't long over.  My grandfather was one of the founders of the German Club and they would have had an Oktoberfest celebration at Club Heidelberg.  I guess then they were for adults. You can still go to Club Heidelberg for Oktoberfest - Lederhosen and Dirndls encouraged.  Here's the dress-up today - these are funny enough as pictures, so you can imagine how entertained I was yesterday to see so many people dressed up.  They looked wonderful - next time I will be prepared to compliment them as being so very pretty.  In German one would say:  "Du bist ein hübsches Mädchen."  If they knew German they could reply with "Danke, alte Dame" - which is a polite expression for thank you old lady - as I expect I was the oldest woman there yesterday.   Someone brought a great big pretzel-thing.  I don't remember seeing these ever.   But then maybe they are contemporary - to be found in ball parks or The Forty Public House, a pub in Grimsby - which is listed as selling them.  Perhaps the Dutch Shop makes them especially for the festival season.  Seems odd for a Dutch Shop, though.  They stick to sprinkles and almond cakes. Kitchener is the centre of this Oktoberfest celebrations in Ontario with its large German population that came from the 1920s through to the 50s. It goes from September 25 to October 17.  Lots of time to get your lederhosen shipped from Amazon. And here's the Autumn celebration underway right now - pumpkin season.  This is last year's display at the RBG.  I expect it to be even bigger this year.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 3 2026 - A 4,000 mile rift

 

There is a four thousand mile crack in Africa.  It goes from the Red Sea down to Mozambique.  While the Nubian and Somali plates move very slowly - millimetres a year, there are occasions when giant cracks open up overnight.  THis happened in Kenya in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2005.  What makes this news in 2026?  There is the recent discovery of a superplume, a gigantic column of superheated, molten rock rising from inside the Earth's mantle.  Studying hot springs in Zambia, scientists for ancient gases leading from deep underground.  This proved that a separate branch of the risk system is active and opening the crust far below the surface.  In about 5 to 10 million years, the gap will grow deep enough for ocean water to flood in, creating a new sea.  East Africa would become its own separate "island".   In the past, there was debate over whether the East African Rift would break, so the new research marks a significant update.  It puts Africa's "breakup" sooner than originally expected.   Here's the geologist's joke: Why is Africa taking so long to split in two? Because it's committed to a really, really long-term relationship status: "It's complicated (give it 10 million years)." Here's a picture of Brian's hybrid lily named Peaches on Chocolate. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 2 2026 - Most Upvoted on Reddit

 

On June 29, 2026 Reddit noted/celebrated that it was the 4 year anniversary of the most upvoted Reddit post ever.  The title was "Times Square right now", and it got 490,000 upvotes.  Now in October 2026 it has 495,000 upvotes.  While it was celebrating upvotes, the events around the actual post happened in January 2021.  But the real story is not how many upvotes it got - the real story is the mess in the stock market and that Reddit users made a big disruption happen.  Here's the post - a billboard in NY. Do you know what this billboard is saying? I had to ask AI what this means because all the items I retrieved didn't make sense to me. The story goes that retail investors coordinated on Reddit to drive up the stock price of GameStop, known as GME. The "Go brrr" refers to the internet meme mocking the Federal Reserve printing money,  and "means" the stock is climbing rapidly.  So it seems to me it was telling everyone/retail investors that they should buy.  The upvoting is part of a "retail investor movement" - to make an impact on the stock market by disrupting the "big guys" - Wall Street hedge funds.  The upvoting seems to me to be a poke in the eye, which seems to be continuing as time goes on. The Wikipedia entry below counters that by noting that a large part of the market activity  was conducted by hedge funds who made substantial profits on the short squeeze.  The "short squeeze" allowed GameStop to issue new equity and raised cash to keep the company going.  The retail trading app Robinhood closed down trading and became the centre of controversy with retail investors losing the ability to sell the stock. The details are covered in Wikipedia HERE.  It is a long and fascinating story. And what has happened since then?  The supposed summary is that retail traders/individual investors have more clout as they now make up about 20% of average daily equity trading volume.  In the past, they used to be considered "dumb money" by institutional firms.  And institutional hedge funds crawl social media platforms, especially Reddit, to monitor retail sentiment and adjust their short exposures to prevent getting squeezed.   The mayhem in the U.S. market was serious.  Investigations followed - the Treasury Secretary, Congress, various Attorney Generals, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and many more got involved. There were lawsuits against Robinhood, some regulations, and everyone weighed in.   Of course, the next phase ensued: entertainment.  A movie was made - Dumb Money. Then a mini-series, and then an investigative docuseries.  And various others.   And so the story of "Most Upvoted on Reddit" is told.   Here's a picture from January 2021 - it seems appropriate.  Fast actions leading to motion blur in the winter landscape.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com