Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Small Step

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L-R Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, but from our (non-alternate) reality. Prompt - Alternate Reality (500 words) : Alterna...

AI's storytelling has improved, but it's still pretty weird.

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Image source: UCLA Newsroom        About 2.5 years ago, I tested to see how well ChatGPT would handle a writing assignment. I fed it a chapt...
Monday, June 23, 2025

1946: When four letters tell a bittersweet story of post-war life

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    TLDR: Because I am nothing if not wordy, verbose, and even garrulous, you can totally skip my commentary and just read the translations ...
Tuesday, June 17, 2025

1991: The disappointment was thick in Grandpa's silence

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Real life vs Alternate Reality (Click to enlarge) Back in 1988, when I was recording my grandfather's war stories, he said this:       ...
Saturday, June 14, 2025

1940s: Deciphering 80-year-old "immaculate and illegible" handwriting ...in French

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       A couple of years ago, a historian friend in France went to the Drôme Department Archives, and photographed about 50 pages of corresp...
Wednesday, June 11, 2025

My blood is not for the likes of Ixodes scapularis

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I hates ticks. I hates them, I do. I keep picking places to live that are the Grand Central Stations of Ticks. Hell, I even grew up in Misso...
Monday, June 9, 2025

1945: Arthur's Bicycles

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French bicycle troops making their way to the front, 1939  Source: The Atlantic     I've been working through about 50 pages of correspo...