Marilyn's Photos - Dec 30 2025 - End of Year Message

 

The Bright Side    What is this 2026 Celebrity Death Pool?  This is something I didn’t know about until I looked for predictions for 2026.  I had wanted to read year-end messages from the famous and what comes up is the celebrity death pool 2026.  AI tells me that these are prediction games where participants select famous people they believe will die within a given timeframe, usually a year, with the winner have the most “hits” or points at year’s end.   This is a ghoulish research game - players scour newspapers and web sites for news on celebrities’ health.  So you can imagine that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on many lists. Isn’t this strange to be ending a year by predicting who will “end” in the next year.  You can guess that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on various lists.  Did you know there is some sort of humour in this?  It is the Keith Richards exception that he will ultimately outlive everyone playing the game.   I went looking for a tool shed in the snow picture and found this one from a few years back.  Then I got to wondering which white colour this is and could it be the colour of the year - Pantone Clouds.  I went into photoshop and checked out the colours with the colour picker. The Pantone Cloud white has yellow undertones. In my snow picture below,  there are so many variations. Pinks, blues, oranges, greens, and yes some yellow in there too.  So often we look out and consider the day a “gray day”.  Who would guess.

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Feb 18 2025 - Shakespeare and Snow

 

Did Shakespeare experience snow?  What would he say about the deep chill after the big snow storm? He grew up in the middle of England where there was snow and ice in the winter.   Rain, winds, cold and tempests show up in all his work - Blow, blow thou Winter wind sorts of things. I got to wondering about whether he mentions snow.  So went and checked it out. In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow And keep eternal spring-time on thy face. – Titus Andronicus; Act III, scene i For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there; Sap cheque’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where. – Sonnet 5 Cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams. – Henry VI, Part 2, 3.1.224   That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow! – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.63   At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows, But like of each thing that in season grows. – Love’s Labor’s Lost, 1.1.109 We think of Shakespeare with spring and summer weather - especially with his most famous poem - Sonnet 18 - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day.?"  There are over seventy references to roses.  Definitely Shakespeare voted for roses over snow.

Isn't this excellent - I found this image of one of the Painted Ladies gardens in Grimsby Beach from a few winters ago.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 4 2025 - AI Generated Art

 

It is currently quite easy to recognize Artificial Intelligence use in art  Many of the pictures generated are not like real photographs, but like animation characters and scenes.  I went looking to find out the guidance on how to tell the difference between real and generated. Here are some of the obvious differences: AI-generated images usually have overly intense colours, including contrasting colours. Mistakes in representation of the objects/subjects of the image.  One image failed to have 4 legs on a chair.  Where it is an AI-generated photo of people, the hands can be misplaced, and fingers wrong.  For city scapes, buildings can be missing and background geography features are wrong.   Historical photos typically have mistakes such s illegible text, and errors on human body parts seem to be common.  Human facial expressions don't match the tone of the photo.  Technical mistakes are made, and oversimplified shapes and patterns exist. This is the article to read to become better acquainted with evaluating AI images - HERE. What was interesting for me was to check the image with "google lens" - take the image over to google search and and blue box will expand with 'drop image here'.  Real images seem to retrieve articles and websites.   I tried this with my own images on Fine Art American and the google lens took me to my website or identified the subject of the picture - type of plant, Millie is a Cavalier King Charles, and so on. When it is an AI-generated image, google lens doesn't retrieve the Fine Art America version - it goes to stock image sites and shows similar pictures.  But not exactly the same.   Here's a sample of  images that are AI generated.  There are dozens of these bird images.  In the time I've written this, there could be hundreds of them.  By tomorrow, will there be thousands?  I will be suffocated by a flock of oversaturated, cute, round birds like in that Alfred Hitchcock movie. A sense of humour is in order - so here's a joke: Artificial intelligence might kill us all - with dad jokes.

I did enjoy the google lens response on this picture - it identified the blossom as a plum blossom rather than a cherry.  I guess it is hard to tell with all that snow on the blossoms.  But don't worry this picture is from a few years ago and the snow quickly melted leaving the blossoms unscathed.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 22 2024 - 51st State

 

It is Christmas and Trump is trolling Canada to become the 51st state.  If you want to give a surprise gift this Christmas check out this: 51st State: Master Set (2016)  Build, deal and raise your state out of the ashes of the apocalypse.  Alternate Names 51 Штат: Полный Набор + 4 more Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek Artist Grzegorz Bobrowski Publisher Portal Games + 2 more The world you know no longer exists. There is no government. No army. No civilization. The United States have collapsed. And now, thirty years after the war started, new powers finally try to take control over the ruined country, try to establish a new order, try to control others and create a new country, a new State: the 51st State. 51st State is a card game in which players control one of the four powers (mutants, traders, New Yorkers and Appalachians) and try to build their very own new country. Players put new locations into the game, they hire leaders, and send people to work in buildings to gain resources and new skills. Every card in 51st State can be put into play in three different ways. You can invade a location to gain many resources once, or you can sign a contract with this location to gain one resource every turn, or you can attach the location to your State so you can use its skill. One card, three possibilities. Lots of decisions and choices that matter. It is unnerving, isn't it?  SO let's go on to Christmas entertainment.  How much did Santa pay for his sleigh? Nothing – it was on the house. A gingerbread man went to the doctor’s complaining of a sore knee. “A sore knee?” the doctor said. “Have you tried icing it?” How did Scrooge win the football game? The Ghost of Christmas passed. What is Santa’s favourite kind of pizza? One that’s deep-pan, crisp and even. The Christmas jumper my kids gave me last year kept picking up static electricity. I took it back and exchanged it for another one – free of charge.

Here's a bit of nostalgia from the Orchard Crescent garden in Toronto - this is the little willow chair in the snowy woods behind the house.

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Dec 20 2024 - Christmas Attire

 

Attire seems the correct word for what is worn for Christmas pictures - matching "oatmeal" sweaters are on the front page of the Globe and Mail's Christmas photos coverage.  Sounds elegant for Christmas attire. Last Saturday, I saw a family - mother, father, and baby -  at the Watering Can in matching pyjama-sort of outfits like this below.  I don't remember if they had reindeer antlers on their heads.  That pyjama/sweat pants look is creepy to me, and got creepier every time I saw them again.

The female staff in Shoppers Drug mart were wearing elf dresses yesterday.They are a retro 50s style, so that must mean this is a trend gaining momentum.  Halloween is very popular, so why not dress up at Christmas given all the opportunities.  The trend is more towards women's vintage 1950s dresses.  If you remember the dresses in the movie White Christmas, that's the look.  Even with white gloves.  Not as many pajama outfits this year.  But maybe families all own the matching pyjamas, so are being pitched something different this year.  As I look through the dozens of pictures, I notice that  the dog dress Christmas Candy costs more than the Elves Blue Reindeer jumpsuit for people.  What do you think of this? Here's a retro style dress with a novel print - white gloves would go with this outfit - I wonder if this is a Christmas Carol.  And we're back to asking why this dress is listed for $34 compared to a dog outfit for $48. Here's a holiday greeting from a few years ago - let's see if this much snow falls today.

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Nov 27 2024 - Predicting Snow

 

I had this thought about the weather.  What if  the first snow happened every year on the exact same date?  For example, the Winter Solstice.  Weather completely predictable.  That is hard to imagine here in the Norther Hemisphere.   One of our major activities is "forecasting" the weather and then "commenting" on it.  We do that as an accepted social gambling game activity - it is unpredictable, changeable at a moment's notice, and often a surprise.  Who knows who will win the predictability challenge each day? Do you want predictable? Think Ecuador - that's what I read.  The weather in Ecuador " is consistent throughout the year. Since the country is at the equator, the sunshine is also steady and hence, these conditions make the country one of the places with the best weather in the world.'  The predictable weather in the world is in regions of either the polar high or the tropic low. At the opposite end of things, the most unpredictable weather in the U.S. is Rapid City, South Dakota.  The Great Plains and Upper Midwest are the most unpredictable areas in the world. The other places in the world are:  The Monsoon Coasts of Asia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean Basin.  With climate change, the weather has become a complicated search subject.  I wondered if Ontario has the most variable weather in Canada. Instead, the topics cover the question of whether things are normal variability or variable due to climate change.   But it doesn't matter as it turns out that Atlantic Canada has the most changeable and most variable climates anywhere in the country.  The worst weather is accorded to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Volatile weather conditions and frequent storms.  Yikes.   The prediction of the Weather Network is that we have our first snow on Friday, November 29th and it goes for a whole week.  I hope that weather forecast is incorrect.

Look at the back garden in 2018 after a massive snow fall.  Paths for Dezi and Baxter to get around - otherwise they might 'drown' in the snow.  Below that is the shed in the Toronto garden, a tranquil scene in comparison.

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Oct 20 2024 - Rain Ahead

 

Everyone has commented on the beautiful weather.  It has been late summer temperatures and we are rolling into November.  But by the end of the sentence of delight,  people take a breath of despair and "gloom" about the upcoming season of winter.    The weather forecast does not look gloomy at all - it shows rain in the forecast over the next week weeks, rather than snow.   Is it true that everyone has this gloomy projection?  Or just the people in my age group?  That's who I see the most.  I expect it is the case.  That is what makes for snow birds.  As one ages, the spectre of cold winter snow chases one down to Florida. For those who want to grimace,  there is a website named snowchance.com - with the headline "Chance of Snow Storms this Winter.  Enter Any Location.  Below that are the standard headlines - Abou , Contact Us, Help and FAQ, and then - oddly - Edmonton.  Of course there is a "chance of snow storms for Edmonton, Alberta covering the 2024-2025 snow season."   Grimsby is expected to get a snow storm in November.  Of course, we know that.  The lake effects are strong in November and so our great snowstorm a few years ago has given rise to the Snowvember Storm in 2014.

I've been processing images of water, particularly ripples and reflections.  I found this one from Victoria Harbour from a visit years ago. What an intensity of colour and wonderful lyrical shapes of the motion blur effects.

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Mar 242024 - Marilyn's Photos - Stupid Life Hacks

Stupid seems to be a favourite word today. Isn't this is proven by the headline "Stupid Life Hacks?" It doesn't really make sense given the meaning - "having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense."   It showed up in 1541 in the English language, but since 2000 it has exploded in popularity. Maybe it is so used because it has so many similar words and comparable meanings.  There are somewhere upwards of 447 similar and opposite words in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.   I found this list in one of the dictionaries and had to put it into alphabetical order to make some sense of it.    absurd asinine astute barmy batty birdbrained boneheaded bovine brain-dead brainless chuckleheaded clever cock-eyed crackbrained cracked crazy cretinous cuckoo daft damfool dense derpy dim doltish dopey dotty dozy dull dull-witted dumb dunce-like dunderheaded empty-headed fat-headed fatuous foolish fruitless futile glaikit gormless gullible half-baked halfwitted harebrained idiotic ignorant ill-advised ill-considered imbecile imbecilic inane indiscreet inept injudicious insane intelligent irresponsible lamebrained laughable loony loopy ludicrous lunatic mad meaningless mindless moronic muttonheaded naive nonsensical not the full shilling nutty obtuse off one's head off one's trolley Opposite: out to lunch peabrained pig-ignorant pointless potty prudent ridiculous risible scatterbrained screwy senseless sensible short-sighted silly simpleminded slow slow on the uptake slow-witted soft in the head thick thick as two short planks thickheaded unintelligent unthinking unwise vacuous vapid View 2 vulgar slang words witless wooden wooden-headed zany We've found something starting with almost every letter of the alphabet! What do you think of the "view 2 vulgar slang words" that is in there - I wouldn't have noticed this if it wasn't sorted.  And then check out the chart below showing the use of the word stupid over time. I think this is a Google Ngram. More on this feature HERE.  Is this worrisome?  What does it signify?  There certainly are a lot of people asking questions about other people being stupid.   Peter Kaufman's article on the sociology of stupidity proposes how "stupid" actually works: "let’s not forget that the phrase “stop being so stupid” is often followed-up by “because you are embarrassing us.”   We have snow every year rain the last week of March.  This is picture is from 2021 when there was a huge snowstorm in April while the Magnolias were blooming.  The snow melted, and they bloomed.  There isn't any news so far in March on the state of the tender fruit crop.  We had very warm weather and then very cold weather.

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Jan 12 2024 - Winter Wallop vs Snow Disruption

Last week's weather forecast said we were in for a winter wallop.  This morning the news is that Quebec is in for disruptive snow.  How is snow disruptive?   There are headlines of snow disruptions in various places - Italy, Austria, Slovenia, in parts of South Africa.  There are snow disruptions forecast now for Britain. It looks like major winter storms are what makes for "disruption".  For Quebec this weekend, it will be a combination of snow, ice, and rain.  Not only will Quebec get some, but the UK weather report warns of disruptive snow and temperatures of -10C and Britain is on flood alert.  Even Northern Ireland is "braced" for disruptive snow showers.  I didn't know that snow "showered" - I thought that would be rain.  They are also getting ready for a 200 mile wide arctic blast.  In another ominous article: "a mammoth band of snow will first hover over the north of Scotland on Sunday..." We in Canada can look to  Environment Canada for all things weather and the website has this matter-of-fact sort of summary:  "Canada has one of the most severe winter climates of any country in the world. We experience a wide variety of dangerous weather conditions including extreme cold, blinding blizzards, and treacherous ice storms. Even conditions more typical of the warmer months such as heavy rain and lightning are possible in winter." Environment Canada has over 20 different types of alerts for various weather hazards - but none of them are "disruptive snow".  Our cross-Canada alert for this week is extreme cold. That sounds unfriendly but not as alarming as disruptive snow. Here's a snow load in the making.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca