Is everyone having a busy, merry holiday season? Not overdoing the busy to the point of losing the merry? I hope so.
Health News
Another vaccine comes up for reconsideration:
Movie
Why are people still watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas"?
Poetry
As youall probably know, I have a Substack. Some readers might prefer it to this blog. It consists of one poem by me, once a week, plus whatever poems, stories, etc., readers care to contribute in the comments section. Poems (by me) are pretty strictly "light verse," though not all of them are about the weather.
And I myself don't download apps, so I've not even tested this, but some people may think it's cool. To hear the audio version of this blog online you need your own reading app, but the Substack app supplies a selection of robot readers. If you use the Substack app you can hear my poems read aloud by a robot called Cora.
I don't know whether people were paid for the robot voices, the way Susan Bennett was paid for the voice of Siri, or whether voices can be synthesized by mashing up the real voices of unsuspecting people. Still, it's only sound, not actual work for which people ought to be paid.
So far the choices for robot readers are US and UK. I'm sticking with a US one but it'll be interesting if they offer robots who speak Indian, Australian, Liberian (dig!) and other varieties of English. Substack is global.
Word Study
Ethan Faulkner analyzes internet words to which he's sensitive. The only one of them that's ever bothered me is "user" (acceptable for people who visit other people's sites from public-access computers, but not appropriate for Microsoft to use with regard to COMPUTER OWNERS)...but it might be worthwhile to think about all of them.
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