Ozymandius Plays Through

I don't think Mankind has ever really accepted the concept of Mortality.  Throughout history we have always been painting on the cave walls and chiseling our names into stone.  We want the record of our existence to stand forever.  In fact the classic format for this in ancient times - an inscribed upright slab called a Stele - derives its name from a presumptive proto European word element "stel-" that means to stand or to put in order.  It gives us all manner of derivative words:  pedestal, stalk, apostle and oddly, stallion.

But just because you put up a monument does not mean that your fame or the works of your hand will endure forever.  

On a recent family trip we stayed in an interesting accommodation....the bottom floor of a former country club.  It was actually pretty nice.  I mean, who can't be happy living in a bar?  Out by the driveway, partially hidden by foliage I saw this:

 Here's a closer look.

The unsightly plastic remnant must have been a sign.  It seems the place came across as a bit too posh for its rural surroundings and it changed its name from "Country Club" to "Deer Trail Golf Course".  In the general decline of golf courses in recent years this was not a sufficient move.  The course is returning to nature rapidly.  I think the deer prefer it this way.

I suppose there were over the course of this place's existence thousands of golfers and hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of strokes taken.  The good ones were celebrated for a while.  The bad ones forgotten or lied about.  Eventually like Ozymandius all is forgotten and only the archaeologists, and their grand kids out looking for toads and bugs, can see any trace of their passage.

Forgotten Brewery Caves - A quick visit to Bloomington Illinois

A while back I wrote about a Forgotten Brewery Cave in Bloomington Illinois.  I opined that a keen eyed observer might well find traces of it.  On a recent road trip I noted that we were passing within a few miles of the site and decided to test this theory.

A few basics.  The location is in Forrest Park, which seems to have had the second r added in recent years.  Prior to that it had been called Stein's Grove or Stein's park after one of the owners of the brewery there.  The cave was known to still be intact in 1947.  In fact I was able to show a few low resolution newspaper photos one of which showed the caretaker E.R. Burnett giving a tour to a couple of anxious appearing children.  As part of my follow up research I discovered high resolution versions of a series of pictures taken this day.  They appear courtesy of the McLean County Museum of History:

The kids by the way are listed as Carol Tudor and Ron Stutzman.  The guy with the lantern is E.R. Burnett.

I was also able to pick up a few more tidbits of information.  The caves - actually brick lined tunnels - were said to be 200 feet long.  And the creek running through the park was called, logically, Brewery Creek.  An old bridge going across it is no longer in use, but is said to have once been the site of a road running through the park.

So....what is there to see in 2022?

OK, I'm going to say something obvious here.  Just because the tunnels probably still exist under Forest Park does not mean you should take a shovel and start digging.  This style of "cave" is not stable.  So the nice people in uniform who will come to have a word with you, and they would do so very quickly, would be doing you a favor.  Have a look but leave this cave alone!

My usual starting point is Google Earth, but it does not show elevation well.  There was no good location near Brewery Creek although I did notice a lot of old bricks laying around, likely the remains of the brewery.  But if you go to a somewhat higher point of the park......

Pretty clear evidence of a sink hole with bits of exposed brickwork.  One of several in fact.  I'm guessing that the sealing of the caves mentioned in local sources consisted of a front loader bashing in the arch seen in the last photo and dumping a bunch of dirt on top.  The tunnel extends some distance out into the center of the park.  I think I see a small depression corresponding to one of the vent holes.  Clearly the structure has not collapsed as that would leave a big trench.  And filling something like this from back to front would be ridiculously difficult.

I really wanted to learn more about E.R. Burnett.  He looks to be around 70 in the 1947 picture.  My best candidate is a fellow named Ellis Retis Burnett who is buried in a local cemetery.  With dates listed as 1893-1956 he'd only be 54 years old in these photos.  But he may have had a hard life.  So far I've found little else.  He probably was in the Navy in World War One.  If my ID is correct he was married to a woman named Odessa and did have children of his own.

One Man Against the Noise Farms

A while back I did a post on YouTube and the odd recommendations their algorithms were sending me.  Subsequently I did hear from people who had similar experiences but in a departure from my usual policy I decided to not post comments and make their discontents potentially visible to the Google Masters.  But my curiosity was stirred.  Could I actually make You Tube stop sending me nonsensical suggestions?

Now lets be honest.  You Tube is great.  If you want to learn about a specific subject or need to get the basics of an unfamiliar task in front of you it is the place to go.  I like it.  But there is the matter of all the useless dreck that goes along with it.  It's just getting in my way, in fact it is making it harder for YT to live up to its potential.  I also don't like to be told what sorts of things I should find important.  I'll make up my own mind, thanks.

After about three weeks of "interaction" with the algorithms I got to the point where YouTube surrendered and instead of suggesting specific videos they just sent me this:

Now that I consider fair.  It asks me what I wish to view instead of pushing various gaudy trinkets on me.   

After about two weeks it reverted to the status quo antebellum and began recommending things again.  So I started a second campaign.

To get rid of nonsense recommendations you of course must turn off History on your YT account and any linked accounts.   Don't make the bots non-life too easy.  You'll still get suggestions based on Channels you follow but that's fair game.  So I see and will occasionally watch videos relating to robotics and Roman archaeology.  But there are entire universes (and metaverses!) of other interests, and absent guidance from deplorable meat puppets the Silicon Overlords unleash a torrent of things they think you should be interested in. 

These include:  music compilations, 12 hour white noise and/or rain videos to help you sleep, endless "gamer" videos ranging from the infantile Minecraft up to abominable first person shoot fests, stupid people doing stupid things on TikTok, political screeds albeit only from one end of the ideological spectrum and a bunch of really odd stuff.  I got pretty grossed out by some veterinary surgery videos.  I had no idea there were so many bulldozers sitting in a shed for 30 years ready to be fixed up.  I am considerably better versed in the cuisine of Japan and local news reports from, I think, rural Pakistan.

So, how to reduce these?

When a video is suggested you can click on the little line in the right lower corner.  It gives you options:

Not Interested

Don't Recommend Channel

Report

Report further breaks down into categories.  Sexual Content, Violent or Repulsive Content, Hateful or Abusive Content, Harmful or Dangerous Acts, Spam or Misleading, Child Abuse.

These are the tools you have, and each deserves comment.

I read somewhere that Not Interested was the most feared feedback to YouTubers.  But it really does not serve my purposes.  Sometimes YT just sends the same video right back to you.  Sometimes sites have an entire array of similar nonsense and will just send you the next one in line (See Noise Farms below).  I still use it for things that are legitimately not of interest to me but otherwise inoffensive.

The Report function initially took a video off my feed with one click.  Now I have to double click the same report, or two different ones, before it goes away.  This is a new since my initial victory.  I try to be fair.  Making kids enter beauty pageants seems like Child Abuse to me.  And I'm repulsed by many things including execrable grammar.

It would seem that the ultimate weapon would be Don't Recommend Channel.  You click on that and YouTube promises: We won't recommend videos from this channel to you again.

Ah, but do they keep that promise?

For a while I was not sure.  So many Youtube sites just swipe the same music and video clips and if the name of the site is in Urdu I won't be able to read it.  But, alas, after many times hitting refresh and nuking a fresh batch of sites I saw old (non) friends reappear.  A gaudy young lady styling herself Lena Slime has a weird make over channel I've dispatched several times.

Because the YouTube algorithms appear to be cheating I don't think they can be defeated.  Oh you can drive them into a corner now and then, forcing them to send you peculiar videos.  I'm actually worried about a Muslim cleric from Indonesia who always appears with his hands held to his face in distress.

But mostly what you get as a last ditch from YouTube are things like this:

Compilations of hours long videos of harps, rain, white noise, Native American flute music,  bootleg soft rock classics, healing Tibetian gongs, etc.  And they just keep coming.  There are entire sites that crank this stuff out.  I call them Noise Farms.  

They never stop coming.  Their name is Legion.  Endless variations on genres, so many variations on phrases like lofi, Ambience, Chill.  Some variants are religious.  Some are Goth.  Some defy description.

Oh I suppose if I were willing to commit to a grinding Western Front war of attrition I might get them all perhaps at the cost of tendonitis in my mouse clicking finger.  But YouTube has a final card to play.  Intermittently they send me recommendations from YouTube Music.  Slightly less bizarre than Sufi Ambience Chill Vibes for Villains to Study By,  these recommendations only come with one available option:  Not Interested.

I'm pretty sure that whatever subroutine of the Youtube algorithm I've been shunted off into already knows that.  And does not give one digital damn.

OK.....who went and blabbed?

Luridly descriptive back cover of a book noticed but not purchased at the $5 a bag old book sale.  Tip of the cap to my author friend Sue (who writes much better stuff!)

BANNED!

 Banned books?  That's nuthin......   I have a Banned Bookmark!

And a close up.  Avert your gaze!

Change of Seasons - Mushroom Fort

An odd time of year.  Sure it can still get pretty hot but the trend is for cooler, wetter weather.  Mushroom growing weather.  

Mushrooms have gotta be among the champion growers of nature.  Mow the lawn and they'll be fully grown in it the next day.   On a recent stroll through the park we ran across a place where a mushroom had pushed up the pine needles so fast that it made a little fairy fort.  In a couple of days it will be as if it had never existed.

Change of Seasons - Metamorphosis

 A Story in Three Pictures

We've been seeing the Monarchs quite a lot in recent weeks.  They are fluttering here and there but southward, ever southward.