Mairlyn's Photos - July 7 2025 - Pinks and Quarts

 

Those little pink and quart boxes are the standard for fruits - especially tender fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, and cherries for as long as I can remember.  And I know they were made of thin wood prior to being moulded paper or plastic. The original approach was called a pottle and it was a conical wood chip basket with a handle.  Wikipedia has a picture from 1688.  What were they replaced by int he mid-1800s?  Punnets - that was the name for our current little square wooden box.  Beamsville had a punnet factory - but it was called the Beasmville Basket and Veneer Company. "Logs were soaked in boiling water, and then peeled strips were dried and assembled into various sizes of baskets. The factory's output was crucial for the region's fruit industry, enabling growers to transport their produce to market." "The Beamsville Basket and Veneer Company operated until December 1981, when a fire caused its destruction. Despite the fire, the company's impact on the region was substantial, particularly in shaping the fruit-growing sector and the town's economy. The factory's history is intertwined with the growth and prosperity of Beamsville and the surrounding fruit belt." And we haven't mentioned six-quart, nine-quart, and 11-quart baskets.  That's for stone fruit - peaches, apples, pears - things that are bigger or are not tender.  What about those tough little blueberries - they can handle a big basket. And didn't I forget bushel baskets?  There they are filled with pumpkins and squash.  From beginning to end of the growing season, baskets are with us.

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Marilyn's Photos - Driverless Vehicles vs Stupid Drivers

 

We are skeptical of driverless vehicles.  Perhaps it is because we are comparing their driving to our own, rather than to the driving of stupid people.  No one considers themselves stupid, so it is about those other people. What do we mean by stupid people? And is that different than the worst drivers?  It seems that worst drivers is a more popular topic than stupid ones.  Stupid implies lack of intelligence, and worst points to their driving results.  Worst is so much easier to observe.  So on to the worst drivers. I found an article HERE that ranks the best and worst drivers in the world.  The best?  Japan, then Netherlands, Norway, Estonia and Sweden.  The worst? Thailand, Peru, Lebanon, India and Malaysia.  Where is Canada?  In the worst list.  Where is the U.S.? Also in the worst list.  The factors used for the rankings were road quality, speed limits, alcohol limits and traffic fatality rates.  Thailand is head and shoulders above the rest - known for speeding, reckless passing, and failure to obey traffic laws. Russia is known for the most viral videos of accidents.   Another article looked at male vs female statistics, age statistics and country statistics and amenities up with this conclusion:   "...if you’re a male teenager in Thailand thinking about driving, find you’re running late and start to feel aggravated…it’s best to just stay home." In comparison, driverless vehicles live a mundane life.  They don't pass on the right, speed above the limit, and so on.  The "worst" scenario is mostly missing.  Perhaps it is the notion of  "stupid" that applies.  Driverless vehicles seem to have fewer accidents under routine conditions.  They have higher crash risks when turning, or in dim light like dawn and dusk.  And this scenario? Driverless cars "roaming" the streets empty of passengers or cargo?  That was one headline.  I couldn't guess this future scenario.  And when I give it some thought - could it be that there's no honking, squealing of tires, cutting each other off, passing on the right, and all the myriad of human aggressions on the road? that was a tiny moment of bliss.  The futurists seem to think it is that time between the all driverless and the all human driver period that we have to watch out for.  They expect the human-drive cars to get more aggressive.  Here's the last paragraph of an interesting article tackling the topic: "Meanwhile, if you see a self-driving car coming down the street, be prepared for not what the self-driving car will do, but instead for what the human drivers nearby the self-driving car will do. Those pesky and inconsiderate human drivers will do what they do, including and especially when they come upon a self-driving car."

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Marilyn's Photos - July 5j 2025 - Pilotless Jets vs Driverless Cars

 

A pilotless jet is more compelling news to me than a driverless car.  However, a pilotless jet is less likely to directly impact my life.  MSN covered this news in the Daily Aviation youtube channel - it is a jet that has been modified into a full-scale target drone for the US Air Force.  The retired F-16s are converted into full-scale aerial target drones used for training to "help naval personnel practice air-to-air engagements."  They mimic subsonic cruise missiles in fleet training and weapons testing.   MSN makes things sound new but it turns out that this isn't new stuff:  "Other U.S. jet fighters, including the F-100, F-102, F-106, and F-4, have become target drones. Air Force experts use converted jet fighters as target drones to test sophisticated missiles and electronic warfare systems." "Although some of these retired jet fighter target drones are destroyed during weapons tests, often the drones rely on onboard sensors to calculate the point of missile detonations to record "kills" without destroying the target aircraft." That all seems like very expensive practice equipment.   Closer to home, the news announced in May that 20 driverless delivery vehicles are coming to Toronto as part of a pilot program.  It started at the end of June!  They will be under the observation of humans in cars.  The vehicles are operating within an area roughly bounded by Eglinton Avenue to the north, College Street to the south, Avenue Road to the east, and Parkside Drive to the west, with an additional deployment in the Junction neighbourhood.  Now that they are here for a few days, is there any news?  Only one headline from the Toronto Sun which requires a subscription.  Oh well.

I went to a Hamilton home show one March and this was out front on display.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 4th 2025 - Prison Wear

 

I wondered about the prison wear that Diddy Combs would be wearing during his upcoming short stay in prison. It made me think of the prison wear from long past - the big wide horizontal stripes.  They were more circus wear than prison wear to me. However, their intent was  to create humiliation. Articles in May 2025 said that Diddy Combs was allowed to receive non-prison clothing for his trial.  "The singer, 55, can have five button-down shirts, up to five pairs of pants, up to five sweaters, up to five pairs of socks, and up to two pairs of shoes without laces."   We won't see pictures of Combs in neon orange jumpsuits. Orange jumpsuits are for high risk prisoners.  And he's no longer a high-risk prisoner, is he?  The orange suits are also used for court appearances, but not Combs with his special privileges.   Famous and infamous have similar exemptions.  I might be cynical, but I think the view is that the sex trafficking was really just a bit of prostitution, that the "victims" must have consented.  Victim consent is still the norm in the public's mind. The tradition of giving of privileges to criminals is long-standing.  The U.S. is given to idolizing criminals. Think Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, John Dillinger, and so many more. They have been romanticized over the many decades. Is that all in the past?  What about these criminals right here and now?  The consensus is that Diddy Combs will stage a career comeback.  Donald Trump just recently did this.  All those criminal charges and being convicted were found to strengthen his political position.  But there's a difference between a comeback and being idolized as a criminal. Diddy Combs will likely fade from view. Donald Trump?  Given Americans know he is a criminal: a YouGov survey found that 2/3 of Americans say Donald Trump has definitely or probably committed crimes, then what?  Hie is in the "line-up" for idolizing and adoration. It is just a matter of time.

Isn't this great!  A picture from the past when we were in Toronto and I took pictures through the glass block window in the dining room.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 3 2025 - Eye Contact

 

There's been constant coverage of Anna Wintour retiring at 75.  The picture in all the articles is remarkable - she looks to be 50 years old.  The world of cosmetic surgery and medical interventions has fully arrived. She isn't wearing her signature dark glasses in the photos. Supposedly in her younger days, it was said that she wore dark glasses because she had bags and dark circles under her eyes.  Much later she said it was "to hide what she's thinking or feeling."   She wore sunglasses "since the beginning of her career"  or maybe it was in the 1990s, according to another writer.  How attached is she to her glasses? She was so attached that she wore them while telling the staff of the Pitchfork that they were all being fired. “One absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour — seated indoors at a conference table — did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned,” Allison Hussey, a former staff writer at Pitchfork, wrote on her X social media account."   Such a powerful person in the fashion news world, and so much attention on something other than her accomplishments. Maybe her "caricature" in the movie The Devil Wore Prada was truer to life than one would like.

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