Calming Adrien Mauduit Timelapse

Still reeling from forced WordPress block editor assault, I need to calm down. What better way than Milky Way timelapse by Adrien Mauduit at Night Lights Films?

Take a deep breath Notes, you’ll figure this out. So what if adding a “classic editor” plugin requires upgrading to a $33 monthly business plan? Nice try WordPress, who do you think you are? Has WordPress forgotten millions of users like myself? Think users thirst for layers of bloated navigation? Fancy itself a social media influencer? Is nothing sacred? Nothing spared pressure to monetarize, distribute click bait or promote private enterprise for personal gain?

Milky Way timelapse represents hope. Hope I figured out how to post a video using block editor, hope I’ll learn intricacies of WordPress Gutenberg block editor and hope WordPress doesn’t forget what made it special.

Blocked

Americans in particular are quick to froth constitutional freedom of speech. Trouble being it’s become increasingly evident they only want to hear themselves or their miniscule gang of devotees speak. In the past week I’ve had comments deleted, access blocked and content reported over a dozen times. My transgression? To dare contradict, however polite or reasonable the manifesto of opinionated closed minds. Geez, what was I thinking?

It’s alarming, consider the magnitude of free speech silenced by the click of a block icon.  Reasonable attempts to initiate dialogue muzzled by knee jerk block bravado. Typically I’m chastised for ignorance. Ridiculed, mocked, sworn at or warned to mind my own business before the block hammer strikes. WTF? It’s fascinating. These are the same people who spew constitutional freedom of speech. Silly me, free speech is their right, anyone taking exception will be blocked.

Not once have I blocked a site. Last week I reported a particularly venomous wing-nut for promoting home remedy coronavirus cures, a first in 8 years of blogging. In my mind deleting comments, censoring content, including dialogue out of context excluding verbal abuse prompting such dialogue and aggressively blocking those who dare take issue is cowardly. Blocking doesn’t prove anything other than spineless ignorance. We can ignore content, mark it as spam, read it for perspective or choose not to follow the author, but the moment we block it is the moment we surrender the right to free speech.

29 Cents And Counting

Drove home at 2 am, couldn’t say what day it was and didn’t care, work wasn’t expecting me back for 11 luxurious hours. Eleven hours reminded exhaustion there’s more to life than work. Noticeable layers of dust cloaked my laptop, all I wanted was time to catch up on WordPress. Forcing hindsight to explain how I let work topple my love for daily ponders could wait, I had eleven hours – two at my laptop, one to wind down and fall asleep, seven at rest, another to wake, shower and get myself back to work.

I didn’t need hindsight wagging her finger to know I’d stretched myself too thin. I might have happily opened WordPress and left it at that, but no, I had to open Quora and ruin my life.

For perspective, WordPress is my first love, Quora a dangerous affair. WordPress feeds my soul, Quora delivers esteem building strokes, strokes in the form of Top Writer affirmation and more views in a day than WordPress musters in a month. I hate myself but can’t stop. Trouble is, there aren’t enough hours for WordPress let alone Quora.

Back to eleven hours and a dusty laptop. I wanted to ponder October meteor showers on WordPress. Opening my laptop for the first time in days created a maelstrom of conflicted direction. Best guess being checking Quora stats before settling into WordPress stemmed from innocent desire to get it out of the way, who knew a private message would ruin my life.

Quora moderation invited me to enroll in the Partners Program. What Partners Program? I only have eleven hours and you’re choosing tonight to personally invite me to enroll for paid content? Register a PayPal account, keep asking great questions, blah, blah, blah. What fresh hell is this? I don’t have time!

Cosmic ponders went unspoken, my laptop slammed shut, I crawled into bed. One week and 72 work hours later I dusted off the screen, what choice did I have but to play along with Quora? Enrollment took a few minutes, my first question took a few more. As of tonight I’ve earned 29 cents, 29 convoluted cents awarded to an overworked caterer who only wants to ponder the cosmos. I need my head examined! Sigh.

First Page, Second Result

Mine is a predictable blog world. Daily views hover within expected constants. Every few weeks views spike sharply, an anomaly driven by a random viewer browsing hundreds of posts in one go. Followers, views and statistical analysis mean nothing, but search term directed traffic is fascinating. Specifically – why “core 7” generates more traffic than all other search terms combined.

This afternoon blog views went crazy, hourly visits grew in hundreds rather than familiar dozens. “Hey, cool” I remarked to my husband, “looks like someone is blitzing my blog again”, then promptly forgot about it until a few hours ago.

Usually rogue view spikes subside within a few hours, this one was anything but normal. For the first time in Notes history a investigation took shape.

Looking for anything abnormal, Reddit leapt off the list of search referral engines. Not now or ever a Reddit member, I watched as referrals jumped from 10, 20, 30… A click on Reddit took me to “What is Core 7?”, followed by an answer comment with nothing but a link to this blog. Wow, OK, curious but explains a lot. On a whim I Googled “core 7” – there I was, first page, second result – https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/tag/core-no-7-ancient-egypt/

I don’t know what it takes to appear on the first page of a Google search, but there I am courtesy Reddit and my top traffic generating search term. Go figure.

 

 

1,000

When I  “publish” tonight, Notes celebrates 1,000 ponders. Agonizing all day over how that feels, what I’ve learned, how I’ve grown and people I’ve met, struck me as cheesy. Then it hit me – 1,000 doesn’t want a parade, 1,000 feels like pondering Lego videos.

Things I’ve Learned on Quora

Almost a month ago Quora became somewhat of an obsession. I wrote of Quora with the giddy, naive and glowingly childish enthusiasm of an optimistic fool. First glance promised instant gratification delivered via an untapped source of critical thinkers. Oh man – not so fast notes.

It isn’t Quora’s fault – allowing myself to dabble in places fraught with the perils of unbending logic was an obvious exercise in futility. As with anything we reap what we sow – 3 1/2 weeks, and 100,000 views later – some things I learned on Quora….

First – I’m only human, I like stats, views, and upvotes. Hardly a surprising admission although one that never matters in my wordpress world. Allowing my “knee jerk” rantings to froth corners of better judgement was captivating. WordPress epitomized polite reason – Dr. Jekyll to Quora’s Mr. Hyde. Jeckyll knew better, Mr. Hyde threw caution to the wind.

A week or so in, I posed a question asking why Americans considered freedom of speech license to speak hate. Yikes – I’m either stupid, delusional, or hopelessly Canadian. I knew the answer, fully grasped America’s perspective, understood the fundamental stance of free speech in America, yet couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t understand it would bring 40,000 views, complete with a litany of arguably the most venomous personal attacks imaginable. Bottom line – 99.9% of respondents reacted without an iota of comprehension other cultures might see distribution of hateful propaganda as harmful.

Answering questions proved satisfactory. My answers to why Petra was a wonder of the ancient world, and contribution to a question on the most astounding “tricks” by armies or nations at war kept me out of trouble for a while. This was a place reserved for positive exchange of ideas – a place void of accusations, yet I wasn’t content to behave myself.

I knew better than to respond to preposterous religious stupidity, or ask those same people why they thought Atheists lacked morals or committed more crimes. Several weeks of hating myself for spouting sarcastic jabs finally ended with a self imposed intervention – it’s out of my system, along with sincere vows to be a better person.

A few minutes ago I asked (with http://geneticfractals.wordpress.com/ in mind) how someone would explain the 4th dimension. That was 15 minutes ago and with nearly 500 views, 6 followers, and 3 answers on the record – I’m back to seeing Quora as it was intended. For anyone curious, the first few “answers”…..

Jens Adler Nielsen, PhD in solid state physicsSuggest Bio

 

We have 3 spatial dimensions, typically revert to as height, width and depth.The 4th dimension is time.Basically in order to meet somebody you need 4 coordinates or you will miss each other.On earth, these 4 coordinates are typically longitude, latitude, floor and date, but it could be another set of coordinates, however there will always be at least 4 and if there are more, you can reduce them to 4. Hence the universe is 4-dimensional.

Brenton Milne, electrical engineer

If you want to visualize it, you can try imagining a fourth dimension as colour or brightness, like how you might present four dimensional data in a graph.Think of a point in 3D with x,y,z coordinates, now give it a brightness as the fourth dimension. Extend this to straight lines (interpolate x,y,z,brightness between two points). Imagine how other primitives work, like continuous curvy lines etc.Note that one you try to imagine solids you will find that there are multiple values of the fourth dimension present at each x,y,z location. For solids the movie analogy in the other answers may be more helpful (and more reflective of our universe where our fourth dimension is time)

 

 

 

Notes Turns Two

I almost forgot Ponder’s birthday – Mother’s Day 2012, my daughter sent me an email asking that I log in to a wordpress account. Never having heard of wordpress, knowing only that she had my complete trust, I obliged by clicking on the link and entering our trusty old family code word to pass the gates of ho-hum into “where have you been all my life?”.

I can’t take credit for my first post – it met me at my wordpress gate,  posted by my daughter based on a story I told her a few days earlier. It stoically boasts one “like” and seventy five “views”.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/transactions-of/

My daughter claimed there was far too much rattling about my head and I needed an outlet. Wading cautiously forward, I had the advantage of exploration – no expectations, preconceived ideas, or notion of grandeur. I wasn’t plotting a path of clicks and views, didn’t contemplate strategies aimed at monetary gain or methodically increase my presence. My “about” page, kept brief, vague and on point – simply a post a day, something to think about, talk about, learn more about. Reluctant to divulge personal information, self consciously I began to write for the first time in thirty years.

Shaky at first, not sure where it would take me, I posted meat and potatoes snippets I found fascinating. Clinging to my knowledge of ancient history – Gobekli Tepe, Derinkuyu, Peri Reis, Hypogeum of Malta, and Mica lined Pyramid of the Sun. Terrified I might be “pegged” a bat shit alien conspirator or crystal fondling numerologist, I tested the waters of space weather wing nut by posting on the Carrington Event, meteor showers, and to cascading groans of my family – solar flare alerts.

Six months later, not a soul outside my family knew about my blog. One night, well into a bottle of wine I found the courage to hit “publish” on something terrifying – a personal story. I held my breath, briefly paralyzed by second thoughts. None the least of which – it wasn’t particularly well written. I’ve left it alone, resisting the urge to fuss and polish the rather childish story because it was the turning point. I relaxed, told friends about my blog and never looked back.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/regret/

I never know what I’m going to write, don’t apologize for who I am and care little for pointless mud slinging. What astounds and warms the tip of my toes are the remarkable people I’ve met along the way. I consider myself lucky to have found a little rut to run in. People who know me only through wordpress likely know me better than those who have known me for years. This is who I am – I’ve grown immeasurably in two years and can only daydream of where it will take me. Thank you wordpress.

 

Note To Self

Tonight I find myself pondering impressions those who don’t know me might extract from some of my posts. To my dismay, it’s been brought to my attention that at times I come across as “preachy” or creeping far to close to “looking down my nose” . I find this notion extremely disturbing; this is not who I am, or how I wish to come across. As a result – not only in my defence, but as a reminder to myself – I’ve come up with this “Note To Self”.

* Ponder before you write, don’t write before you ponder.

*Another point of view is just as valid as yours.

*You’re not as smart as you think you are.

*Avoid the following….

http://thesaurus.com/browse/biased

* Stay calm and carry on.

* You’re a kind person with a big heart and open mind – don’t embarrass yourself.

Absent Notes

As much as I would rather ponder than leave my house at 4:30 AM every morning this week to oversee catering at a luxury car launch 75 Km. away, sweltering at a race track in 30 degree heat – it’s my job, and I do love it. On the upside it’s a luxury 120 foot yacht this weekend for the fireworks, with a reception for a few hundred people in between.

While going to bed ridiculously early prevents ponders; I’ve discovered the wonder of mist rising from the river and valleys at the crack of dawn. Absent notes will be back in a few days.

Regret Large Tomahawk Vanity in Leningrad

Tonight I ponder my favorite posts. Impossible to explain why – they just are. “Regret” is not well written, but is the first time I hit “publish” on personal thoughts. My intention was to nudge the reader, as there is a message in it that we can all relate to.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/regret/

“Worlds Largest Tomahawk” – nothing more than a couple hundred words; reminding me of a perfect day driving across Canada.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/worlds-largest-tomahawk/

“Vanity” hit me on the head one night after a glass or two of wine; extremely pleased with myself for writing such a clever observation.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/vanity/

“Leningrad Symphony” represents a holy crap moment – I knew nothing of the siege of Leningrad; a testament to the human spirit.

https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-leningrad-symphony/

As with any proud mother, I could list favorite after favorite – my blog year, close to a first anniversary has taught me volumes about myself, and opened my eyes on the world. A hearty thank you to those who liked or followed me along the way.