Jan 26 2024 - Obituary Pirates

 

Remember that song's lyrics - money for nothing and your chicks for free - wasn't that Dire Straits?  Isn't that the dream?  Not having to work and being admired and wanted by millions of people? I think that accounts for the bizarre industry of YouTube obituary pirates. Here's the introduction from the Wired.com in 2023: "A FEW WEEKS ago, a friend of mine found out that a childhood classmate had died unexpectedly. They hadn’t stayed in touch, but he was sad and curious about what had happened, so he did what people do when they hear that someone they know has passed away: Googled her obituary. What he found was odd—so much so that he texted to ask if I’d ever heard of such a thing. Along with pages hosting her official obit, he saw 10 separate YouTube videos of different people casually reciting information about her death." This is a continuation of a trend that's gone on for years - obituary rewriting is good business.  Piracy websites work at  search engine optimization to rise to the top of the search results, and then charge a premium for digital ads that appear next to the obituary text easily copied from funeral homes, local papers, etc.   That it has moved on to YouTube videos tells the story of how much money ice to be made from the ads. Videos get uploaded every few minutes - aligned with people dying all the time, probably at a regular and predictable rate.  So there are now YouTube obituary channels dedicated to cloning obituaries.  YouTube doesn't seem to mind - the requests for comment from the journalist were ignored.  In the meantime, other more legitimate sources have noticed how much money there is to make. Newspapers now post facebook obituaries to drive traffic to their news sites.  That's because obituaries are big business.  How many pages are published in the Globe and Mail in the Saturday edition?  I've often thought that they are mostly knock-offs of a predictable format.  The names and relationships changed for these Captains of America who ran vast companies but somehow lived  "for their families" and love of the outdoors, etc. etc. Could you guess on such an easy way to make money?  You don't have to write any songs, just republish obituaries.

Here's another bark/wood abstract - this one is driftwood on Salt Spring Island.  Or is that Salt Springs Island?   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

March 30 2020 - It's Hendrix with a Right

There haven't been any sports games for months now.  The CBC did an interview with Colorado Avalanche commentator Conor McGahey.  That's because he has been recording play-by-play of fans' pet fights.  He says its is harder than a hockey game:   "[Cats are] a little less predictable because hockey fights, you know the sequence … and it's a little bit easier to predict," he said. "With cats, you have no idea what they're going to do. Maybe they don't know what they're going to do either. "They got paws, they got tails, they just stop in the middle for 30 seconds and stare at each other, and they just bring the punches back out of nowhere."  The hashtag is #Keepinghockeyalive - scroll down to see Moxie and Sagan, then Indy and MJ, and go down to Hendrix vs Jack - that's the one that the CBC played on the radio that got me interested. It's all here   Today's picture is a driftwood log on Salt Spring Island.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://www.blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Eugene and Delilah

The name Eugene and the the field of eugenics trace from the same origin - Greek - to be 'well-born'.  This seems like a vintage name to me. Baby-naming trends remain somewhat stable: Liam and Emma continue to be the most popular names.  Noah, William, James and Oliver and then Olivia, Ava, Isabella and Sophia. But "vintage" names are moving up. Arthur has jumped back into popular names after almost 100 years since it was last listed.  There's Calvin,  Emerson, Amos, Edgar, Chester, Tucker for boys. What about Ada?  It started a comeback in 2018. Then there's Delilah, Ayla, Zoe, Margot and Felicity. Supposedly researchers had found that names influence the choice of profession, where we live, whom we marry, grades achieved, and so on.  The original study took place in 1948 and was widely repeated, always finding that unusual names were more likely to have 'flunked' out of Harvard or to have exhibited signs of psychological neurosis, and so on.   But the link between names and longevity, career choice and success, geographic and marriage preferences, and academic achievement has been questioned and disproven.  What has been proven is that names 'signal' things - like ethnicity, wealth, and country of origin and give a sense of economic status.  And then the receiver treats the person as such.   So the likely question parents should ask is:  What signals does this name send and what does it imply?    That would be useful for parents who name their daughter Delilah. Today's images are of driftwood on the beach in Salt Spring Island.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com