Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Icon Meme

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:21:35 GMT

Reply to this post saying 'icon', and I will tell you my favorite icon of yours.

Spread the love: copy this to your own journal, showing one of your own favorite icons.

I love icons -- I've purchased extra slots so I can choose among my 220 versions.

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boost: Hand-drawn Digital Artwork

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:22:38 GMT

My favorite Apple-oriented publication celebrates 36 years and 1800 issues this month. Their well-moderated forum talk.tidbits.com provides excellent tech support for thorny issues. This week I learned about a super-cool article for us old graphic geeks:

How a poster that morphed Hokusai’s Great Wave into The Wave of the Future, showing its original woodblock changing into bitmaps then raytracing was actually created by hand, because in 1981 it would have been too expensive to do it digitally.

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Strength within Sorrow: minoanmiss’s Online Memorial

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:55:27 GMT

I attended minoanmiss’s online memorial yesterday afternoon. It was strengthening to share our sorrow. Witnessing the depth of our online connections bolstered my resilience. The children she co-raised loved her and knew her. I’ll link to the recording when it’s public.

~~One mourner~~ werpiper worked in public health for 40 years, and made it very clear that

minoanmiss had asymptomatic COVID which caused her death
that wasn’t documented in the hospital record and there’s almost zero chance to change that
many people are still dying due to COVID, which is systematically not being reported
continuing to mask is a fundamental contribution we can make to the health of our communities

The full text is at archiveofourown.org/works/82932386

There were lovely stories and slides and recipes — a poem and a song in the cut.

Many thanks to ororo, who read a stunning poem by Ursula K Le Guin:

Every Land

(From a saying of Black Elk)

Watch where the branches of the willows bend
See where the waters of the rivers tend
Graves in the rock, cradles in the sand
Every land is the holy land

Here was the battle to the bitter end
Here's where the enemy killed the friend
Blood on the rock, tears on the sand
Every land is the holy land

Willow by the water bending in the wind
Bent till it's broken and it will not stand
Listen to the word the messengers send
Life like the broken rock, death like the sand
Every land is the holy land

— Ursula K. Le Guin, November 2006

Copyright 2025 The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation

Cat Faber (half of Echo’s Children) performed their hymn to the work of human hands ”Acts of Creation”, which you can stream here:

<a href="https://echoschildren.bandcamp.com/album/a-dancing-world">A Dancing World by Echo's Children</a> Full lyrics

ETA 21 April 26 to add in werpiper's pseud and text

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Shadow: Collar & Leash Meet Dog

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:32:02 GMT

Short update on our new dog Shadow, who’s getting really really bored. He’s starting to move quickly around corners — there’s an energetic pup in there who has been healing all this time. Hasn’t tried zooming yet, and we’ll be screwed if he takes off inside. I hope that if he has the urge to zoom it’s proof he’s well.

He came with an (ugly) collar, and MyGuy found a very spiffy hot red collar with retroflective threads, a sliding D-ring that can be opposite where the tags depend, and white reflector. But because he’s so wary of things happening on top of him, we’ve needed to making snapping on the leash less traumatic.

Today I’ve gone through this routine four times:

get a handful of treats, shake the container
call his name
treat 1 when I can reach my hand to his mouth
pull back my hand and come! plus kiss-kiss to get him closer, with a treat for each stop along the way.
when I can readily reach the D-ring, I snap on the leash and dispense 2 treats
I rotate the collar around his neck clockwise and counter-clockwise a few times.
another treat
unsnap the lead
2 more treats
speak all done! & ASLsign FINISH

MyGuy’s leash always leads somewhere very high-value: today he's been taken around the block twice and for three backyard excursions.

Eleven days left until FREEDOM where he can run in the back yard.

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Trans Duet: “Yellow” — Soprano and Tenor Eight Years Apart

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 17:44:39 GMT

The musician explains:

In 2018, I recorded and filmed a cover of "Yellow" by Coldplay under my former name, Lots Holloway. In 2026, I returned to the exact same place to film it again, this time as Dylan Holloway (Dylan And The Moon). What you're watching is both versions, woven together.

Lyrics at the band’s page: https://www.coldplay.com/song/yellow/

Watch on YouTube or

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Shadow Update: Hosting & Bedding

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:46:25 GMT

We were delighted by Shadow’s response to his first visitors last night. We kept him crated until they’d seated themselves ready to watch the first two eps of Slings & Arrows. He made not a peep when they arrived nor during our typically uproarious dinner. Once we let him out of the crate, he observed them closely. One guest had recently enjoyed a hot-and-sour sauce on her egg roll. She invited him closer and he licked her hands! He permitted the other to pet his back. He curled up in his bed (immediately below the TV) and peacefully admired the assembled multitude.

Early this AM MyGuy placed one of Shadow’s beds on my side of our bed. Around 6AM he tip tip tap tipped into the bedroom and curled up in it, keeping me company for 45 minutes.

He was in the breezeway with MyGuy 20 minutes ago, having just come back from his evening constitutional. Just as his lead was unhooked, the leonine March wind blew open the door to the backyard. Shadow was out like a shot. MyGuy called him back, but he kept backing up. At last, MyGuy leaned on the garage holding the door open, and Shadow scooted right back in to the breezeway.

The wisdom around rescues is a rule of 3: 3 days to decompress, 3 weeks to learn routines, and 3 months to feel fully at home. We’re on track.

(Got to get some Shadow icons!)

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The Friday Five: Journal History

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:23:57 GMT

From that reliable source of journal prompts, thefridayfive

1) What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?

Volunteered for WisCon in 2007, clearly LJ was where everything was Happening. Took me a year to figure out the culture. Moved to DW on 1 May 2009.

2) How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?

79! Most are evidently dormant. (DW comms never die.)

3) Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?

I love the questions and answers at little_details, where writers seek specifics about an infinite assortment of facts: paint manufacturing, historical Chinese tornadoes, NZ slang for three examples.

4) How did you pick your user name?

It’s a riff on my wallet name which I’ve been using it since 2001.

5) If you could change your user name, would you?

Nope.

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Day 21: Shadow Continues to Mellow

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:16:29 GMT

While he was quite surprised to walk out for his morning on-leash ablutions into heavy snow above his knees, he's really starting to relax.

This morning I reached down to stroke his back and he didn't flinch.

Just now I was resting on the floor by his bed, petting his back. I started to scritch the scruff of his neck, and he relaxed even more, his dark eyes shining up at MyGuy behind the camera. (I'm reclining on my tripled-up exercise pad just behind him, shockingly without glasses.)

Only 28 days of enforced rest to go!

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We Have a Tail Wag!

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:27:46 GMT

On his second day, Shadow wandered into our bedroom and leapt up on the bed. I made my creaky crane eh-eh sound which is the closest I get to saying "no" to a dog and he hopped right off. (Clearly, he's had some training.)

This morning we were resting in bed and he stood in our bedroom doorway. I said "Shadow come!" and he stepped inside! And wagged his tail! and then immediately turned around and went back to his crate.

But his tail can wag.

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We Welcome a Shadow

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 01:52:55 GMT

A dozen days ago we brought home Shadow from Underdog Pet Rescue (where we found Bella ten years ago).

Shadow’s had a hard life: not only was he abandoned by his family to live in the street, he got heartworm. Underdog has been treating him, and we have to continue to enforce rest for another 5 weeks. We must walk him on leash even for quick potty trips in the back yard.

He's a skinny minnie — around 40 pounds. He's got super-sleek short shiny black fur — unlike our previous dogs, he's single-coated. He's got maybe 47 white hairs at various spots around his body. There’s a clumpy stripe of white on his chest, but he hasn’t felt comfortable enough to show us his belly yet. Between his ears he’s got the wide head of a pitty, but his nose is long and thin.

We're looking forward to buoying Shadow with the love he needs, and grateful that retirement offers the time. For the first few days his muscles were always tense, and when we moved a hand anywhere within ten feet he'd flinch. He's beginning to unclench, and we've even seen his tail wag a couple times. While we're all bored without romping and long walks, it's a good time to shower him with stinky treats for learning his name and beginning to trust us. He walks pretty well on lead and already knows leave it, ignoring a treat sitting in the middle of my flat palm 6 inches from his nose.

His triangular ears have floppy tips — the left one is always down. His back has two shaved bare squares where the vets injected the second and third doses of arsenic to kill the heartworm parasites. His soulful eyes were so tight in the first week we saw nothing but deep brown iris. Today when Shadow and I were hiding from The Evil Vacuum Cleaner in my bedroom, I finally saw some white in his gaze.

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Music Monday: Two Rockin’ Videos

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:50:06 GMT

The singer and the band are all on roller skates performing Bend Your Knees by Henry Mansfield & Digital Velvet! It’s an NPR Tiny Desk contest entry. Lyrics on bandcamp, video on YouTube or…

Thanks to clevermanka for sharing Fabulous, an absolute banger in both fashion and music from MEEK. Not work-safe since the chorus repeats “fucking” 42 times. Video on YouTube with accurate captions and lyrics in the description or …

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Amusing YouTube Video on Rare Bird Facts

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:18:35 GMT

HGModernism, aka Hendry, offers a soothing yet informative 30 minutes on the theme

I found even rarer bird facts

Hendry shows illustrations and video of the birds under discussion, sitting in a well-appointed room with fascinating wallpaper, all while holding a tea cup that's as big as a plant pot. They appear to have four white devil horns thanks to the impressive antler mounted behind Hendry’s head.

Hendry is clearly a firm believer in factual content: corrections appear in the first comment; citations are in the description as well as all the links in a Github Gist. They have 28 other YT videos on divers topics plus more on Patreon.

Access

Accurate captions, except from 9:20 to 10:23, where Hendry sped up audio to get full value after splashing out $10 for the research paper defining the correct Latin gender nomenclature — Strigops habroptilus — NZ kākāpō.
The first link here and the listed video on YouTube go to the version where there’s an operatic music bed during the research paper recitation. My “stream here” is the no-music edition Hendry provides for “for my fellow auditory processing disorder strugglers”
No image descriptions
No flashing lights but lots of picture-in-picture video of birds.

via “We’re Here,” John & Hank Green’s good-news-and-links for Nerdfighteria every Friday

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Why I love being an English language partner

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 17:26:16 GMT

Every week for most of the last 30 years, I have volunteered as an English language partner. Since 2024, I’ve treasured my time with two people who’ve learned English as a foreign language. I get to spend time with people who have weirdly requested that I correct their pronunciation and grammar. It’s a pleasantly zen task: listening carefully then offering precise feedback about a language I love. In return, I’ve enjoyed learning their stories from Chile and Taiwan/Germany/hiking world-wide.

I needed no formal TEFL qualifications since many orgs here are eager to connect me to learners wanting to practice their conversational and reading skills. I’ve worked with four:

UW-Madison enrolls many international graduate students; their families want to learn.
Our local technical college
Private school serving young adults from wealthy families world wide
Local non-profit providing free education for immigrants and under-resourced citizens

I am so lucky to be a native speaker of this Farkakt language, which is becoming (thanks colonialism) the global lingua franca while hellish to learn. The horrors of spelling! The 20 (or more) vowel sounds! The vocabulary stolen from hundreds of languages (note 1) resulting in multiple ways to express the same idea. The only constant is that no rules always apply.

Note 1: james_david_nicoll’s 15 minutes of fame:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

James D Nicoll 15 May 1990 in rec.arts.sf.written on USENET

Going on disability gave me more time to volunteer, and I’ve learned so much and met so many intriguing people. If you have time to volunteer, tell me about it.

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How I Bulk Prep Swiss Chard

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:46:13 GMT

I love some green veg at lunch. Commercial frozen green veg are hard as rocks and nastily overcooked. Here’s how I bulk prep fresh swiss chard for my lunches

Before

one large bunch of chard
sharp paring knife
sharp chef knife
salad spinner
wax paper
pan that fits in your freezer
freezer

During

Cut the leaves away from the stems
- place face down, slice along the stem with your paring knife
- cut away any low-grade portions you don’t want to eat
- cut away any veins which are white and sturdy
- set any full length leaves to one side
Chiffonade leaves into 1/2-inch wide strips
- Lay down a full length leaf, which becomes your wrapper
- Lay short pieces along the wrapper with small overlaps, until 4-6 leaves thick
- Pinch the lowest edge together and roll up until the top, like a cigar. In winter your cigar will be ~3-4 inches; when you have access to local chard, it may be 7-10 inches
- Hold the leaves together with one hand, and slice crosswise into 1/2-inch wide strips
Thoroughly wash these cut-up ribbons (One bunch fills the spinner)
- Add lukewarm water to ribbons in spinner, let soak 5 minutes, pour out water, check for grit in bottom. Repeat soak & pour until grit free
- Spin out remaining water
Parboil ribbons — I place in large covered casserole in my 1200 watt microwave, cooking 3:33 at 70% power
Set aside to finish cooking and let cool at least 15 minutes
Using salad tongs / chopsticks / whatever portion chard on ~5-inch wax-paper squares. I measured them first in 30g packets and now I can eyeball it. 1 bunch yields 4 to 6 packets.
Fold the squares in half do not squeeze tight, array on pan
Freeze these chard-lets for at least 90 minutes
Pan to counter for 5 minutes to thaw enough to
Pack in gallon zipper slider bag

After

When it’s time to eat, pull a packet from the bag, let it sit for 5 minutes, peel off the paper, slice into bite size, heat up with rest of your meal. (Because you didn’t squeeze when you made packets, they’re readily sliceable when frozen.) I find them edible when nuked as briefly as 00:00:30 at full to 12 minutes simmering in a soup. The extensive rinsing and quick parboil cook off almost all the bitter chlorophyll.

You don’t have to use an Oxo Salad Spinner but your life will be better with one! Starting this prep routine motivated me to replace my 20-year-old one—

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Satire Site Makes Me Giggle

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:37:00 GMT

BugsAppleLoves.com summarizes 17 long-standing bugs in the Apple computing ecosystem, and calculates entirely bogus yet entertaining cost estimates for the time we Apple users waste -- while trying to select text on an iPhone or trying to maintain window sizing in macOS' Finder.

(At least it confirmed the iPhone text selection issues was not just me).

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Pithy Realization

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:14:22 GMT

Since we met in 1977, MyGuy has always eaten the spongy white stuff which dwells between an orange and its skin (whether he picks it off the whole peeled orange or nibbles it away from the cut-open peel).

Yesterday I tried it. It's delicious! Michigan State University claims it also has as much vitamin C as the fruit.

What else am I missing?

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Rosie Heydenrych Crafts A Guitar for Martin Simpson

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 21:28:30 GMT

Boost! marina's well-informed meta on Heated Rivalry

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 22:23:44 GMT

I've observed hockey RPF fandom from an immeasurable distance, and I still got a kick out of this post:

https://marina.dreamwidth.org/1576715.html

marina was in hockey fandom, spent her childhood in Ukraine, knows much about filing serial numbers, and has definite opinions about vodka.

I'm reading reading reading.

Hi!

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If you're required to deploy AI

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:04:16 GMT

...here's an excellent use-case: feed your strong passphrase text as a prompt to an image generator

from the passphrase string "fabulous tattoo Harvey", Reddit user u/waydomatic and ChatGPT made

The LLM thinks Harvey is a muscular white guy wearing a skimpy purple Speedo; arms, shoulder and upper chest covered in rose tattoos. He flexes his right arm and flashes a big white smile under his handlebar mustache. Of course he's wearing a rose crown.

Saving the generated image would certainly be more secure than writing down the password.

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boost: Adam Engst Learns Seven Agentic Web Browsers Can't Count

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 22:05:41 GMT

from someone who's a realist-for-now yet also wants to believe.

Adam Engst on Can Agentic Web Browsers Count?

tl;dr No, given a readily available data set on a webpage, they can't.

The sweetest and scariest part was his sympathy for Copilot's very anxious inner monologue as it tried to come up with answers while working to a deadline that nobody had created.

When it comes to system prompts, the anxious tone of Copilot’s internal responses suggests a “ship now, apologize later, if you’re caught” system prompt that, if reflected in a real-world workplace, would be problematic. Obviously, AIs don’t have feelings that can be hurt and won’t complain to HR, but such a culture tends to encourage people to cut corners and make poor decisions that compromise quality and customer service. If Copilot is any indication, the same is true for AIs.

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rave: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:13:23 GMT

Robert Bringhurst's remarkable reference work, The Elements of Typographic Style, provides a full semester of type history in less than 400 pages. It's not just the book's elegant design nor well-chosen exemplars that so thrilled me I read both the 2nd and 3rd edition, dropping more than 50 stickies along the way. The current edition, version 4.3, is out of print and still focuses exclusively on printed material.

Bringhurst is a poet and translator. That last vocation has brought him into regular contact with non-Latin alphabets, and the Elements of Typographic Style provides the best advice I've ever seen in English regarding how to set type with accents, diacritics, and other "analphabetic characters."

I have loved letters all my life. From crayon scrawls to two handwriting styles (Johnson Foundational and Palmer Method) to the scores of italic hands I taught myself (and later deployed as a calligrapher-for-hire). I began pounding typewriters for fun before I could read. I went on to set type on EditWriters and LaserWriters and one early Linotronic 300

Foundational Hand (+FREE Worksheets)

EditWriters

ImageWriter

LaserWriter

Bringhurst’s Elements reviewed

I drafted this review a decade ago, and I still believe it, so it’s a proof of life post.

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music: Windborne Sing "The Grey Funnel Line"

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 22:02:39 GMT

sonia introduced me to Windborne, the acapella group from Massachusetts. Their version of "The Grey Funnel line" makes my head go sproing in a pleasant fashion.

I’ve loved this 20th century ballad since I first encountered it on Silly Sisters in 1976. I recently learned that Cyril Tawney wrote the song as he was leaving the UK’s Royal Navy, called "Gray Funnel Line" by those who toiled there. Full lyrics at that link.

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Why More and More of Us Are Using Captions/Subtitles to Understand Dialog

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 18:36:58 GMT

Just found a great episode on 20,000 Hz, a favorite podcast of mine.

SUBTITLES ON: WHY IS MOVIE DIALOGUE SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

Answer at access_fandom, a comm I co-mod where we talk about making sure the full fandom experience works for all of us, no matter how our bodyminds work. Like many DW comms, it hosts useful knowledge going back a while, and is always ready to be revived.

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Neural Text to Speech and an AFB AI Survey

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 23:02:17 GMT

The American Foundation for the Blind is researching AI:

As artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and apps become more commonplace, the American Foundation for the Blind want to hear from you! We invite you to fill out our survey to tell us whether or not you’ve been using AI, what you use it for, what you think about AI, and any problems you have had with AI systems. We want to learn how AI experiences differ between people with and without disabilities. We’ll use what we learn to inform AI companies and policymakers, so they can make AI as accessible as possible to everyone.

Anyone in the United States who is at least 18 years old can fill out the survey. You do not have to have a disability to take the survey. The survey should take about 30-45 minutes to complete. You can take breaks while completing the survey. It will close on September 30, 2025.

Fill out this form to receive access to the study:

afb.org/AISurvey

If you have any questions or need more information please contact Dr. Arielle Silverman, AFB Director of Research, asilverman@afb.org or 202-469-6832.

In addition to the environmental and ethical violations which LLMs/AIs depend on, the endless hype and inaccurate performance make me shudder and growl. Yet I admit I’ve used neural text-to-speech voices for casual audio reading. The neural voices require an internet connection and they lose intelligibility at speed. They’re best as substitutes for human readers.

Blind computer users set their on-device system text-to-speech (TTS) at high speeds. Three hundred to five hundred words per minute are often cited. For screen reader applications, a robotic voice is a feature, enabling bits to flow from device to brain with minimal interpretation.

Neural voices produce much higher quality than system-level TTS. When fed appropriately coded input, they can laugh, whisper, and sound sarcastic as well as "analyze" an essay to produce a "podcast" dialog between two synthetic discussants. Some samples here: https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/

But I know well the expertise that skilled human narrators bring to their work—whether it’s commercial audiobook production, volunteer alternative-format creation, or podfic elves making magic. I don’t want a world where those jobs are outsourced to computers.

On the gripping hand, I remember when skilled Linotype operators--many Deaf--were obviated by computerized systems where reporters keyed their own copy. I used the bridge technology of phototypesetting, as well as pioneering desktop publishing. It's expected that admin workers now create flyers and graphs and charts.

Have you tried neural voices? Recognized them on YouTube or TikTok or your recent tech support call? Do you have thoughts for or against?

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Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Icon Meme

boost: Hand-drawn Digital Artwork

Strength within Sorrow: minoanmiss’s Online Memorial

Shadow: Collar & Leash Meet Dog

Trans Duet: “Yellow” — Soprano and Tenor Eight Years Apart

Shadow Update: Hosting & Bedding

The Friday Five: Journal History

Day 21: Shadow Continues to Mellow

We Have a Tail Wag!

We Welcome a Shadow

Music Monday: Two Rockin’ Videos

Amusing YouTube Video on Rare Bird Facts

I found even rarer bird facts

Access

Why I love being an English language partner

How I Bulk Prep Swiss Chard

Before

During

After

Satire Site Makes Me Giggle

Pithy Realization

Rosie Heydenrych Crafts A Guitar for Martin Simpson

Boost! marina's well-informed meta on Heated Rivalry

If you're required to deploy AI

boost: Adam Engst Learns Seven Agentic Web Browsers Can't Count

rave: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

music: Windborne Sing "The Grey Funnel Line"

More Soothing YouTube Videos

Everyone is calm and competent and cooperative

Ocean Creatures

Admire Our Planet from Space

Why More and More of Us Are Using Captions/Subtitles to Understand Dialog

Neural Text to Speech and an AFB AI Survey