This is quite something:
As the Women’s World Cup approaches, a clever marketing video employed the latest deepfake technology to challenge gender stereotypes.
An ad by telecoms company Orange shows an epic sizzle reel of the French men’s soccer team displaying their skills, featuring huge stars like Kylian Mbappe, Antoine Griezmann, and Olivier Giroud. Except, it’s not actually them.
The twist comes halfway through the video when it is revealed the footage viewers have just watched is doctored. The soccer players performing the scintillating skills belong to the women’s team, not the men’s team.
Many thanks to Micro.Blogger Gunnar R Johansson for the link.
Heh heh. This Nike ad featuring footballer Megan Rapinoe as a superhero is pretty cool.
It's hard to take photos of Tīrairaka | New Zealand fantails — they flit and flutter so fast.
Photos often end up like this.
But occasionally you might get lucky.
They're so cute with their white eyebrows and necklace. They're friendly too. One of my favourites!
Stayed up too late last night reading Dana Stabenow's A Cold Blooded Business (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 4). 📚
Kate went undercover at the oil drilling site on The Slope to learn who was bringing in drugs. She made herself a bit too comfortable. But that didn't last long …
I know that Musk's and other multitudinous satellites are wrecking astronomy and are bad in all sorts of other ways too. This morning though, while looking at the stars before dawn I thought I saw a meteor streak.
Looked closer and it was maybe a 40 or 50 unit Starlink train. Quite a sight!
Blackbird. 🐦
Number 169 asked for a photo. I obliged. 🐄
I’m having a phase of unfollowing or blocking as relevant nincompoops and nitwits in my online life. Feels great! I wish there was some way to do the same in real life…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E05 continues the excellence. I'm loving this series so much. Lots of exploring the nature of who we are and how we interact with others. This episode: all the feels. 🖖🏼
Wow! Dead in the Water (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 3) by Dana Stabenow went by so fast as I had to keep reading. 📚
I wouldn't last 2 seconds on the crab boat Kate has to work on for weeks to solve this mystery. The smell! The heaving seas! The ice! The gruelling work hours! The killers!
Today we moved the (very heavy) sofa bed out of the way and I cleaned all the accumulated gunge off the floor — dust, dead flies, a couple of mouldy dog biscuits!
Window frames got washed, windows cleaned — I'll be able to see the birds so much better!
Finally, a floor wash.
Sparkling!
Dana Stabenow's consummate skill as a storyteller is evident in A Fatal Thaw (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 2). 📚
With lesser writers intensely descriptive passages make me (metaphorically — Kindles are expensive) throw the book across the room. Her descriptions draw me in, involve me…
We went down to the Ōtaki Pottery Society Star Glaze show at the racecourse and came home with a couple of items. I bought two bowls and a mug. The blue bowl and mug are by Harriet Bright (Facebook link).
I've started entering a few photos in competitions. This is a local Capture Your Horowhenua competition. Photos are put online and also displayed in the Library for folks to vote.
My two are the birds.
It was … invigorating … at the beach on this winter morning. To my west the energetic waves and a definite breeze. To my east, my buddy Willow. 🐶
A Cold Day for Murder (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 1) by Dana Stabenow sets Kate on the trail of a missing Park Ranger, and the missing guy who went looking for him. 📚
I love the way Stabenow somehow makes the reader an inhabitant in the culture and landscape rather than just a tourist.
I started my Dana Stabenow Kate Shugak reread with the short story called Nooses Give
. It introduced Kate and the setting well. We learn Kate is dogged and determined, clever and sometimes ruthless.
Her constant companion Mutt, a part-Husky part-wolf, is loyally fierce. 📚
So cool; indigenous sports — How ripped ears are preserving a rare culture in Alaska:
Kakaruk says she imagines her ancestors playing the same games hundreds of years ago, watched by village elders assessing who to include in their next hunting party. Each event has its own story and background in that history.
"I have learned a lot more about my culture and the origins and background of the games. Each event has a specific meaning behind it. For example, the scissor broad jump was to tell if you could jump across the ice caps.
After finishing the latest Kate Shugak book I wasn't ready to leave the world so effectively created. I've downloaded all the books in the series to my Kindle to start again at the beginning. I began buying these books in May 2011. That should be long enough for me to have forgotten everything.
Folks who enjoy magnificent photos, astronomy, auroras, Aotearoa, I recommend you follow @iangriffin@mastodon.nz. Check out his latest amazing shot.
Flashback to #Matariki last year. Here's a panorama I shot showing the famous star cluster rising over Otago Harbour during a dawn impacted by aerosols from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga #astronomy #NewZealand
