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

Esperanto Pirates Flying the Flag

How to design a flag...that was one of Ronnie Hoffman's upcoming ideas. We can combine that with his interest in conlangs:  the Esperanto community has its own flag - a Green Star.  It was first proposed as the symbol of mutual recognition among Esperantists in 1892.  The colour green was considered a symbol of mutual recognition. There seem to be three major steps in flag design: 1. Choose the shape of your flag.  Most flags are either rectangular or square.  Triangular works well for a pennant flat, while a rectangle works for a sports flag. 2. Choose a simple design. Some of the most common flag designs are bicolors, tricolors, and quarters, or use stripes, panels, and borders. The flag can also be a solid color with a unique symbol in the center. Alternatively, you can place a rectangle in the upper left hand corner called a canton (like on the American flag) that includes a symbol. 3. Use 2 or 3 colours. The most common colors found on flags are black, blue, green, red, white, and yellow. Do you know that the Gilbert and Sullivan musical "The Pirates of Penzance" has been recorded in Esperanto?  Which flag would we choose in this situation?  The Esperanto or Jolly Roger flag - the one with a skull and crossbones? There were actually numerous pirate flags.  That happened during the Golden Age of Piracy in the 1700's.  This seems an odd way of describing stealing and killing.  You can see the famous flags, their originators, and information about them HERE.  The two pirates who are first attributed with naming their flag "Jolly Roger" were Bartholomew Roberts and Francis Spriggs.  Because their flags were so different, it is thought that the name was in common use before them.  The wikipedia entry HERE has even more flags.   The custom of Piracy ships was to not fly the Jolly Roger.  They used a variety of different flags, and would fly false colours or no colours.  The Jolly Roger would be raised, often with the warning shot.  The flag was flown to given warning so that ships could surrender without resistance.  A number of sports teams have the Jolly Roger symbol as part of their flag - football team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for example, and numerous other teams have also adopted the symbol for their flags.  What about this?  The early development team of the Apple Macintosh used a pirate flag to maintain a "rebellious" spirit. Our picture today is a a more calming and reflective one - a close-up of plants at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Officially Playing Pirates

Wikipedia is a great resource full of encyclopedic information at our fingertips.  As an open publication, it has all kinds of entries. Today we find an extensive entry on September 19 - International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  This is a parodic holiday created by pirate enthusiasts who proclaimed this a holiday in 1995.  There are official acknowledgements of this occasion - the US states of Michigan and California are listed as having officially recognized it.  Krispy Kreme gies out free doughnuts to people who talk and/or dress like pirates on this day, and Google search and Facebook both have the option to choose "Pirate" as a language choice. So find out more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day