If you spend any amount of time online these days, you’ll hear about two things ad nauseum: The meltdown of Twitter and the wonders of AI (artificial intelligence), specifically text generated by tools like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. I haven’t had a chance to use ChatGPT because it’s always overloaded with users when I try and I’m not inclined to pay a subscription for a service that I want to test. Google’s Bard has a…
Big, complex ideas take a significant amount of thought. Such is the case with the Grand Unified Theory of Preservation I’ve been working on for years. The thinking has continued since I shared the post I wrote about the theory a couple of weeks ago on this blog. Friend and history colleague David Grabitske sparked fresh thinking about the theory with a question he left on LinkedIn: “Where does Language Preservation fit? Just curious.“ Yes,…
One of the key points I keep making about history is that it is part of our infrastructure. Each community has a foundation of history, as does each state, and the nation as a whole. The unique history of each community, the events, people, organizations, and even its geography, gives the place its special character. These are the features that affect how the community develops. They also draw people to the community. The history of…
Welcome to my childhood trunk. Inside of this ragged trunk, I stored papers, letters, and other mementos gathered from middle school through college. The trunk when new was covered by white wicker and was given to me by my Grandma Florence. As you can see from the photo, most of the wicker on the lower portion of the trunk is gone, revealing particle board. Thank our various cats for that. They enjoyed scratching the corners,…
Here is an amazing fact of life that younger people may not realize until they have a good number of years behind them: You never stop learning interesting, fundamental things about yourself. My husband and I are in our early 50s and Erik (that’s my husband, in case you didn’t know) just learned that he is aphantasiac. Here is the BBC article about aphantasia that brought this realization to him. Basically, people who have aphantasia…