Mairlyn's Photos - Oct 28 2025 - The Funniest Movie of All Time

 

It took a study in 2016 to determine that the funniest movie of all time is Airplane!  How is the decision made?  It is based on a laugh-per-minute metric. This is very interesting that there is an objective measure for determining how funny something is. The articles say that a comedian should be able to consistently generate an average of 18+ seconds of laughter per minute for every performing minute on stage. So it is easy to find out the funniest movie using this sort of measure.  And the winning movie Airplane has been calculated to get 3 laughs per minute.  The next movie is The Hangover and it gets 2.4 laughs per minute. The third place finisher is Naked Gun with 2.3  laughs per minute.   Here’s the list from Forbes: 1. Airplane! - 3 laughs/minute 2. The Hangover - 2.4 laughs/minute 3. Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! - 2.3 laughs/minute 4. Superbad - 1.9 laughs/minute 5. Borat - 1.7 laughs/minute 6. Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy - 1.6 laughs/minute 7. American Pie - 1.5 laughs/minute 8. Bridesmaids - 1.4 laughs/minute 9. Shaun of the Dead - 1.3 laughs/minute 10. Life of Brian - 1.2 laughs/minute Now that’s the kind of list that should be on everyone’s “bucket list.” We’re coming to the end of the flower season.  Here’s a picture of Butchart Gardens from a few years ago.

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Marilyn's Photos - Oct 27 2025 - Convict vs Convert

 

Convert and convict seem like similar words.  They have a base verb form a noun form. It seems strange, though, that once convicted of something a person is a perpetual version of it - a convict.  It never goes away.  One can only be a prisoner or inmate during incarceration.  A person will always remain a convict once convicted of an offence.  As for converts, it seems like a one-time event - converting to a religion or political belief.  The Justice system or the Criminal system - so interesting how we perceive crime and violence. Compare it to other parts of living and it remains a troubled area. Here’s a picture of some barbed wire at the Kingston Penitentiary, now a sort of museum and tourist attraction.

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Marilyn's Photos - Oct 26 2025 - Costco News

 

remember when the President’s Choice Insider Report would come out  - a newsy, interesting newspaper insert with everything Dave Nichol has been up to in getting new food products into the Loblaws store.  I worked at St. Clair and Yonge where the flagship store was located so it was a lot of fun back then.   For a bit of nostalgia one can see his 1991 infomercials on YouTube - it has 10 key moments in the video. That tells us a lot about where our attention spans have gone since then. Does Costco have a something similar in terms of promotion?  It seems to me it has the kind of loyalty that Loblaws had back in the 90s.  But then Loblaws was promoting exclusivity and elite products.  Costco is promoting price savings on anything and everything.  And it is everything - flooring, progressive eye glasses, cookies and cream protein shakes, and so on in the weekly flyer..  There is a “box” of Quaker quick oats - it is 5.16 kg - I don’t wonder where that would fit in my kitchen cupboards. It won’t fit anywhere.  That seems to be where we are as a society now - focused on buying as much as we can for as little as we can - and we call it cost savings.  It makes sense as we are in a society that is inundated with products to buy.  Costco has taken care of this with its flyer approach. You can see the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day flyers now.  You can plan all your savings until the New Year.   On the other hand, Forbes says that part of Costco’s attraction is that it makes the in-store shopping fun with “treasures” to be discovered when walking down the aisles as things are placed randomly.  It is called “friction” in shopping.  While the PC Loblaws house brand is cheaper, the Kirkland brand is considered premium. Things like this give Costco the top rank in customer loyalty.  There’s nothing like an Ontario lake with the sun sparkling on the waves.  Memories Of… that’s what Dave Nichols would say about the products he discovered during his travels.

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Mairlyn's Photos - Oct 25 2025 - Earth's Two Moons

 

The Earth will have two moons until 2083 - that’s the headline. It is an asteroid named 2025 PN7 and has been called a “quasi-moon” because it shares a similar orbit with Earth around the Sun.  Will we be able to see it?  That’s my question.  The answer is - get a telescope.  Too bad.  It would be pretty amazing to be able to see two moons.  It has happened when a near-Earth object is “temporarily captured by Earth’s gravity and appears as a mini-moon.   It isn’t really a moon because it isn’t orbiting the Earth, it is orbiting the Sun.  And it was first observed this year.  The guess is that it has been synchronized with Earth for 60 years.  There have been other quasi-moons - 469219 Kamo’oalewa is another near-Earth object.  It was discovered in 2016.  Near-Earth objects are distinct from Trojans. That is an asteroid that orbits the Sun having a similar orbit to the Earth. An Earth trojan is located at one of the two gravitationally stable points along that orbit.   There are leading and trailing versions and two have been discovered in 2010 and 2020.  It is very complicated up there with Near-Earth Objects being Near-Earth Asteroids, and Near-Earth Comets and then there are subtypes within these groups. It seems to me there is still lots to discover. What about this picture?  It is the moon over Lake Ontario turned into an abstract painting.

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Marilyn's Photos - Oct 24, 2025 - The New Brain Rot

 

There’s old brain rot and new brainrot. Is it two words or one?  That’s how fast the rot is happening.  The old brain rot is the word of the year by Oxford Dictionary - it means: consuming low-quality, repetitive content of social media and the resulting mental fog that accompanies it.  The new brainrot?   “Taco Tuesday brainrots like “Chips and Queso” and “Quesadilo Vampro”  were released in October 2025.” Got me on this - it seems that there is a lot of work needed to describe and explain these. Something more straight-forward is Brainrot Skibidi toilet.  Here’s the description: “The animated YouTube series Skibidi Toilet has become the epicenter of modern language brain rot. Alexey Gerasimov's bizarre series about humanoid toilets fighting camera-headed people has racked up over 65 billion views and got more than 36 million subscribers.” The pictures like the one below are everywhere once you start to look.  The great chasm is between those immersed in the online world and the rest of us - that would be older people.   What’s going on?  “Ultimately, brain rot words aren’t just a symptom of digital distraction—they’re a window into how young people connect, joke, and express themselves in an era of endless content and constant change.” You can find a list of brain rot words HERE.  You will need to “scroll down” the article to get to them. Here are a few:  skibidi, rizz, no cap, bussin, goblin mode, yeet, goofy ahh and fanum tax.

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