My father has put energy into a venture during his retirement called Maple Lawn, a cemetery. With help from family and friends, including me, the cemetery makes a good impression on visitors. We began in the fall of 2012, nine years ago, and I’ve been blogging on WordPress in this space of time, kind of about whatever.
July 2014. Having put in nearly two years at Maple Lawn Cemetery, behind this church, I had more of a practiced hand in whatever I did there
We’ve always had a Facebook page, so we can be contacted by means other than the phone, and what Facebook is doing now has been almost mindboggling for me, in a good way, but strange, too.
Again, today, news reports indicated that Facebook is continuing to combat efforts by Russians to have control in the Presidential race, efforts by Russia that already took aim, in 2016. I am trying to keep my interest in social media sort of unbiased, but I am perplexed by how Facebook is represented in the news.
In his lifetime author Kurt Vonnegut wrote the novel Bluebeard, he says in the foreword, to reflect on how it was to feel he was starting to get old. The novel has an ironic, but serious, tone. When I read it, I felt better about my passing regard for abstract expressionism.
When I was a kid, I had the good fortune to see abstract expressionism. While I didn’t know anything about it as a kid, I was impressed that an artist could make works like that, and people would admire it as art. When I was trying out an image to cover my blog, I thought that, in the style of abstract expressionism, the colours blue and green, arranged in solid lines and similar shapes, might prove adequate for the purpose I wanted to blog.
In the very early 2000s, a girl I’d met while she was panhandling for spare funds indicated she had an interest in Livejournal, and to understand her life journey, I needed to “visit” her on both mySpace, and on Livejournal. That’s where I got a start on the ideas I have about social media, especially blogging (and microblogging), thanks to her.
Both of my grandmas painted. Before I was adequately brilliant to comprehend, the grip I had was that my grandma, on my mom’s side of the family, painted, and that made her creative. I didn’t think to separate earning enough money to pay the rent from having a grandmother do some painting, for a diversion.
Not too many people take photos with a camera these days. It is usually with a phone. Or else people are more interested in video.
I am glad I can take reasonably intelligent photos. If I shoot a video I am never as pleased with it as when I take stills. When I place pictures in the blog, regardless of whether they are messy stock photographs or pictures I save from Google, or photos I have taken myself, I like doing that part especially, adding in the pictures.
November 22, 2014. An empty grave and my father, Peter, who’s the first operator
The odd time I include a photo by family, and as a matter of fact, on the weekend, my godmother left me a comment that made me wonder if she was thinking that I need to do Facebook posts a lot better than I currently am. I am wondering a little what people make of Zuckerberg’s new idea about the metaverse (and Meta).
There is a very decent possibility I will grind away for the year ahead–it is my intention. I do what I can with my time. If you want, you can like this post or follow or comment.
You can also email me at patrickcoholan@hotmail.com
“Most of us really aren’t horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us.
“Put ’em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature.”
–Herbert Simon, 1916–2001, market analyst
Simon was an American financial expert who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 for his commitments to financial matters. Simon set the “bottleneck,” which limits both what we can see, and what we can do. Current financial matters are generally founded on Simon’s thoughts.
Simon was granted the prize in financial matters for his examination into the interaction inside monetary associations. Fast forward to 2021, and the Internet is sometimes summed up as a whole with the phrase attention economy, and the expression arguably was begotten by therapist, market analyst, and Nobel Laureate, Herbert Simon. In a compelling book, Administrative Behavior (1947), Simon tried to supplant tradition, demonstrating—in an idea—a methodology that perceived different components.
As I understand the industry of Big Tech, in 2021, web designers often work on websites that advertise banners for revenue.
A phone call this week, the two of us in a small Canadian town, surprised me with the news that a downtown building, closed since 2018, had burned to street-level. An active Internet user, who has a blog that shows ads to readers, recounted what happened in his blog.
I am sorry that the building burned down, but that I was quickly clued up by social media, I am happy to indulge in feeling is the bee’s knees.
If you don’t know a lot about data privacy, and you wonder how your web searches seem to translate into similar ads on websites you use, it is because you have been observed searching, and advertisers wish to help you spend your money. There are steps you can take to reclaim data privacy, but you should be aware of where and what you do on the Internet, so that you can own your progress, if you liken browsing the Internet to, say, an adventure game.
I’ve thought about data privacy before. Facebook has had a scandalous history of data privacy betrayals, as when they employed Cambridge Analytica to help them unfairly sway the result of the 2016 run for the White House. The effort to cheat didn’t succeed, but the vote was a very narrow divide.
The deceit delivered by Cambridge Analytica led a giant blow to Facebook’s reputation, and was very hard on Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica had been trying to manipulate voters into thinking as the manipulative computer firm was paid to lead people to think.
Many computer users, you probably know, use VPN technology to disguise their location, by relaying their decisions on the Internet through a route that presents a fake location that an uninformed spy might take as your actual physical location (and not the location that you have).
Another retrofitting solution is to use a software scan, like Superantispyware, to detect tracking cookies, which show you ads that have targetted your behaviour on the Internet. Superantispyware deletes those cookies and shakes that control the advertisers have on you.
⦁ Getting personal
Something as simple as resolving to speak honestly can have profound and upbeat results. Herbert Simon was a therapist–I spoke with more than one caseworker when I was living out my twenties, and what guidance they provided, I still remember things they said to me, to this day, years later.
Inspired by those, like Rick and Tony and Pam, I am for this post listing what might help “counsel” individuals who are perhaps new to the attention economy, so they are not shorted by their own expectations.
⦁ Observations about the world (propelled by Herbert Simon)
Nature is flourishing
We have enhancements in medication
Significant development is happening all the time
Expanded digitalization is happening just as fast
Distant, working, is a clear reality
Enhancements in instruction abound
Another gander, at the powerless and oppressed individuals from our general public, needn’t give us pause
Promising circumstances favour us
Co-operation and social support enable us
Co-activity and social help assist us
Picking who is imperative to us is a potential reality
Working on psychological wellness through helping other people is good for your wellbeing
Collaborations between regular citizens (not government nor police) is becoming a mainstay
Feeling of appreciation might be a new unique norm
Discovering delight has never been more possible
Having an effect is, straight up, a reality
The world is a strange and wonderful place. When you consider, for example, co-activity, you might reflect that every person is truly an individual, and many people have talents that really help highlight other people’s strengths. While there are of course powerless and oppressed individuals, if you can get a smartphone and learn how to effectively use it, you are as powerful an individual as ever walked the Earth, in some regards.
Even with only a few social accounts, your potential is rather excellent. A philosophy of industry isn’t always discussed with words you could charactertize as “holistic,” but someone with an adequate command of many many realities about life, and how to do right, for both themselves and others, can be completely excellent.
Check out Canadian musician and recording artist Rick White’s new album Where it’s fine
⦁ Contrarily bound by confusion (to contrast)
My pinned tweet describes how AI has become an excellent tool, in many applications, for providing useful content recommendations. AI can look at what you’ve done before, on a specific service, and can guide you to more good content, to be enjoyed, and that you want to share.
My aim in circling data is to be helpful, to arrive at information relevant to what you might be searching for now, and I am additionally marginally important for my dad’s business, the Maple Lawn burial ground he focuses on all year, with some assistance from family and friends.
Good hobbies should be cultivated. I feel the attention economy is awesome. In particular, video, both big-budget presentations and little user videos, is widely available. A little music can help, too.
When AI is employed for reasons that include helping to provide good content recommendations, as, for example, when you are on YouTube, quality YouTube videos, though controlled with measures that can feel extreme, are recommended to viewers, by an AI algorithm.
YouTube launched in February 2005.
…”In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
–‘Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World’ in Martin Greenberger (ed.) Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (1971), 315 pages, index, sources
You’re kind of lucky if life’s been luminescent for you. That’s today WordPress daily prompt, the word luminescent.
Luminescent is a word that has a lot of connotations. I can think of a few with ease.
You’re kind of lucky if life’s been luminescent for you.
Think of the stellar skyscape–the myth that when the moon is full, lunacy runs rampant.
Do you like monster movies? You probably know that the wolfman transforms in the luminescence of the full moon.
This month’s full moon is the twenty-ninth and the thirtieth. Tonight’s moon is a waning crescent.
Belief in the power of the full moon can be a devilish outlook, which I’d assert is unfortunate in the season of Easter. We should be celebrating spring.
I am a Canadian, and while I live in the southern parts of the great nation of Canada, it is here, you might say, a short growing season. I’m certainly envious of the good fortune of people living in more idyllic parts of the world.
The work I do, year-round, is to carry out operations in a small not-for-profit cemetery (in a junior capacity), and at times I see luminescence when I am there (usually accompanied solely by my dad). Effects of that kind can be creepy, but there is often a benign atmosphere there as we care for the grounds and for the church. It is generally serene.
Just past Maple Lawn Cemetery
I’m inclined to see luminescent as peaceful, which is what the cemetery really is. I know about grief and I know people go to cemeteries to pray for the departed, but it doesn’t need to be an uncomfortable experience. When it’s luminescent, I find the ambiance comforting.
You know I’m expected to be solemn. I’m not one for a pint with the lads, shall we say. A stab at art or writing or pastimes of that kind in a state of mind that’s luminescent is apt to be rubbish.
You have to approach creative endeavors from a point of view that’s solid. At least do your editing sober. It is up to you, all the same.
Jackson Pollack, for example, painted while very drunk, I believe. Something he said on the subject is
Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn’t have as far to fall.
If I look at something I’ve posted or photographed or the like and it’s terrible, I wonder what my poor beleaguered mind was set upon. It is easily unflattering. More frankly, you can make a fool of yourself quite readily. I know I have.
What I think, though, on whether you’re proven a fool is that mistakes happen–shit happens. One takeaway from college that I have is a theatre axiom.
A little foolishness is genius. Too much foolishness is madness.
I am not sure you should repeat that.
Youngsters if they’re inclined to creativity should have their own time to discover what’s art and what’s merely luminescent. Time really does speed and any sane person should fully know the weight of what’s in store in the decades of adulthood and never worry about how it is luminescence plays on the heart and on the mind.
I know it’s less than profound, but you can get the same impact on yourself from drinking a basic coffee and watching a good film, like The Shawshank Redemption for example. I don’t think it’s any better to probe personal depths and pour it out to feel your art than it is to passively and alertly watch something like a good film bringing with you a philosophical bent.
Don’t tear yourself apart. The full moon will rise every single month of your life.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 