Amber Diva Lady you are very intelligent

Andrew Morgan That's so fascinating. I learned that the Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object the human eye unaided can see. A smudge that looks like an olive in a martini glass not far from the constellation Pegasus (that big square of four stars). 2.5 million years away. I wish I had known this when young while my eyes were sharp but I was able to find it some years ago with a pair of binoculars. Exciting!

E. Writer It is very exciting. And just think, when you saw it through the binoculars, photons/ light from Andromeda galaxy permeated your eyes, was processed by your brain, and sent through your body as an electrical signal.

Andrew Morgan Just like a martini :)

E. Writer Indeed lol

Amber Diva I remember watching Mike Tyson fights with my father when I was a little girl. Those are some good memories.

E. Writer Same here, I grew up watching it with a house full of adults so it's a bit nostalgic.

Frank Hutton With respect, there's nothing you can tell me about the degradation of intellectual property values as regards imagery. I worked in the 1st commercial digital imaging dept. in a major city. Used the 1st Macs, 1st Photoshop, etc. It was mid-late 90's when in a camera store I saw for sale (10 bucks if I recall) a CD of 500 royalty free images and knew in terms of earning any kind of respectable income off my work, I was royally screwed.

I mean, images propel every sort of commercial endeavor on the face of the earth. Billions of dollars generated yearly, basically all of it kept in the master's hands.

Which is why when every dog & his brother @ Zoe jumped on the self-publishing bandwagon, I knew writers were screwed too. Fact is, the 'democratization of all media' merely granted more wealth, power & influence to new gatekeepers, not less.

I yelled and yelled and yelled @ Zoe how writers & other wannabes dreaming wet dreams of almost always illusory fame & fortune should be careful what they wished for, because they were really just begging to get a sharp stick up their collective punk ass.

But...alas.

E. Writer Images, print, and film... people, particularly young people don't watch movies anymore. They watch tiktok. I remember people on Zoe refusing to jump on the bandwagon and dismissing it as vanity publishing. When they finally jumped, it was too late, the industry was oversaturated. Fast forward to today, AI Books flooding authors out of the industry, generating images, and videos.

Frank Hutton I dunno. The new Spiderman movie's made like a zillion dollars in it's 1st couple weeks and I'd bet most of those seats were filled with young folk. Yeah, it's Spiderman. But it's also a film. In theaters, no less.

E. Writer Oh of course some blockbusters are going to make money. Michael Jackson biopic did well, too.

Frank Hutton Also of course, a pretty big chunk 'o that great big pile of change has to be particularly due to those young people that don't watch movies anymore going to the movies. Just sayin.

Also, just to tie the bow…

While one could traditionally make a decent living shooting stock images all along if you were really good and worked tirelessly @ it, perversely the halcyon days of shooting stock was mid-80’s, when deep pocket clients finally paid extra for quality. which was just prior the great collapse brought by digital ubiquity, when ‘good enough” proved well worth the pittance one had to pony up after all.

Lots of old timers up & retired. Me, I’d just bought my Linhoff.

E. Writer It's odd how much time can change how we think. A decade ago I loved writing romance novels, now I'm embarrassed that I wrote them.

Frank Hutton A few years ago I went through some archival writing, looking one last time for anything of value. Found a bit Because as it turns out, my basic prose proclivities were there from the start. Nascent for sure, but there. And multiple times when reading a piece I'd not thought of in maybe 40 yrs., I recalled where/when I penned it and why.

E. Writer I often link my old material to a time and mental place I was in at the time it was written. With maturity and growth I find that my views have changed such, that I don't recognize what I was writing, or why. Like the article above, I was in my 30s when I wrote it. I'm in my 50s now. I like looking back and thinking about how much we grow and change with time and wisdom. That's my takeaway I think, I hope I am not in the same mental space as I was as a thirty-something year old woman.

Frank Hutton Whereas the poetry I referenced was mostly still on point. Not including the occasional attempts @ epic romantic fantasy, ugh. That's even despite 50 yrs. of continuing personal, intellectual and creative growth. Nothing's the same of course because life's not static, except @ base I'm still me. I find real contentment in that throughline I mentioned. It's foundational & I still benefit greatly from it.

E. Writer Poetry is very timeless.

Amber Diva Being cautious is very important.

Andrew Morgan That's a beautiful illustration. We're all ciphers to each other. What you see that disturbs you is the lesson. Or to quote a license plate I saw a couple years ago: "Life is the school. Love is the lesson."

E. Writer Beautifully stated. That is very close to how I ended my last two books, that in the end, for humanity, love is the point of it all.

Amber Diva You’re a very intelligent woman

E. Writer Thank you, you too ! 🥰

E. Writer That's going a bit far because every country has rapists, even in canada and Europe. There's trafficking and other issues in every country around the world. The difference here is that you have people here who think it is perfectly acceptable to preach and indoctrinate young men into thinking this type of behavior and believe this ugly type of speech is ok. The difference with other countries is something very simple, which is respect. These men and their followers respect nothing, or anyone. Not even themselves.

Alex Morton Of course there are deviants in every country, but the difference, as you state, is that in the US you have people believing misogynistic hate speech and that goes as far as advocating violence against women, is acceptable.

E. Writer There has been a movement to oppress people at many levels. This sort of disturbed demonic thinking is permeating all levels of society because we gave it a platform under the free speech Trojan Horse, and it is coming for everyone. It doesn't stop at the groups people decided they don't like. But I dont want to wade into those reeds, not here. I don't want it to become a stage for those voices to spread their views. I recall a mutual acquaintance of ours (I'm sure you know who I'm talking about) who was running a controlled opposition campaign, and when he discovered that politics will not be discussed on Neighbahood, he ended his acquaintance with the group as Zoe disbanded. He was never there as a writer, never produced any work, he was there to run counterarguments and controlled political opposition. I believe he was employed or deployed to say the things he was saying by a group at a higher level. These people were professionally trained to run counterarguments. They believe they are at war and the most powerful move one can make is to silence them through lack of engagement.

Alex Morton I agree that it's time to draw this discussion to a close, lest we dive into political waters and in the process destroy the peace that prevails on this site.

What I just wanted was to assure everybody living in the vortex that there's a whole world out there that is not part of the decline of decency and democracy. I know it feels to Americans that everything is falling apart and everything wrong is happening, but it's primarily endemic to the US right now, and the rest of the world is just humming along as usual. It should give you hope.

E. Writer Your message cut off.

Alex Morton And there's nothing else on the way out there that I'm aware of. I think that there was a long period of time in which US administrations viewed NASA's space program as a huge amount of money for the occasional stunt and they choked off a lot of funding and attention. The first time round for NASA, in the race to the moon and the advent of the shuttle, there was a certain amount of elan to the program, a true spirit of adventure and a certain amount of doing a thing because it was worth doing for its own sake. The current renewed interest in space is strictly financial and military. There isn't a bit of soul to it. And I don't see it stretching out beyond our solar system again.

E. Writer Which definitely stinks. Even if NASA was given the funding to pursue interstellar travel again (they were not aware that Voyager I would make it that far), we would not see the results in our lifetime. Right now, Voyager I is traveling over 38,000 mph and it still took almost 50 years to make to interstellar space.

Alex Morton With the speed of light being the ultimate barrier ...299,792,458 m/s there's still plenty of room to go and so it is possible for something to be developed that would provide a speed for interstellar travel that could show results in our lifetime. But, with military might being the meme emanating from the White House, and that not dependent on much greater speed than we currently can achieve, I don't see much happening in that regard. At least not from the US. Just four times the speed they can now achieve would do it, easily.

E. Writer The only problem is that matter or anything with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. Also, that much of space exploration has been privatized. Unless there's money to be made i don't foresee it happening 😔

Alex Morton Yes ... I know that we can't travel at the speed of light, but even half that speed is enormous. That was my point.

Alex Morton Re your post, I get a message that it is age restricted and only available on youtube and when I go there, the link doesn't work. Regardless, the entire movie is available on youtube, and I plan to watch it. Sounds like a winner.

E. Writer Yeah it won't even show a preview. But when you click that link under "Learn more" it takes you directly to the movie. If you click anywhere else, it doesn't work.