Category: Travel and Places

I go to a lot of places, usually for work. I have a “ritual” of filming in them after hours, and some of the series of films I have made, as well as other writings, are in this section. These vlogs will be subcategorized by country and visit.

Thule, if you think it over… (Friday AI-Day series #3)

Two distinct prehistoric Arctic groups—Dorset and Thule Inuit—cooperate around a wide ice hole on a frozen landscape. The Dorset figures wear simpler pale furs and use older tools, while the Thule group wears layered parkas and stands with sleds, dogs, and advanced harpoons. Both groups gesture toward a live beluga whale surfacing in the ice hole, which remains alert and able to dive. Multiple polar bears appear as tiny silhouettes on the far horizon, observing from a safe distance. The scene is set under low winter light with long shadows and distant ridges, evoking a rare moment of peaceful interaction.
Two distinct prehistoric Arctic groups—Dorset and Thule Inuit—cooperate around a wide ice hole on a frozen landscape. The Dorset figures wear simpler pale furs and use older tools, while the Thule group wears layered parkas and stands with sleds, dogs, and advanced harpoons. Both groups gesture toward a live beluga whale surfacing in the ice hole, which remains alert and able to dive. Multiple polar bears appear as tiny silhouettes on the far horizon, observing from a safe distance. The scene is set under low winter light with long shadows and distant ridges, evoking a rare moment of peaceful interaction.

This is the first post of this year 2026, and of the second quarter-century of the 21st Century, as I view it at any rate, although few people seem to be focusing on that, maybe they are not accountants.

I obviously intended more posting this year, but the year did kick off in a predictably busy way.

Thankfully there is always AI.  Thanks, or maybe rather “due” to which, whereas before we were all crying out for content, it now seems that the boot is on the other foot and content is crying out for us, like in the Russian reversal jokes. (“In Post-AI internet, content creates you”, etc.)

Clearly not all my exchanges with AI would necessarily interest my readers, so I do need to be selective but in this “Friday AI day” series, of which this is now the third, we at least have the chance to look together with AI (I mainly use Copilot) at some topics.

The topic for today is indeed topical as we are mainly focussing on Greenland, which dominates the news. The aim here is to try and understand better the country and its people but also a little bit a couple of aspects of its wildlife, we do meander off into that at one point, do keep scrolling if that is not your bag, we come back firmly into the linguistic topic and explore a little bit the mystery of Paleo-Eskimos such as the Dorset peoples and their possible intercations with the Thules who are the ancestors of modern Greenlanders.

The main aspect we are going to be exploring below is the area of language. We won’t be learning any Greenlandic, not today anyway, but we are going to be trying to understand what the linguistic landscape looks like and how it fits with other Northern countries.

I will be adopting the simple convention that my questions are in Italics and the AI’s answers the way it gives them, which has sparse use of Italics thankfully.

If you want to find out more, then you can always ask your own AI.  Sometimes minor variations on a question can produce different answers, or the same one, in defiance of Einstein’s maxim, rather different answers depending on the mood the AI is in on a given day, it would seem.

Please respond and let me know what you think.

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The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
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Leviathan Wakes
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Puerto Rico’s Waste Management Situation

Recently, a comedian named Hinchcliffe took time off from tapping on Catherine Earnshaw’s window in order to come and sabotage Mr Trump’s presidential campaign with an off-colour joke about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage”. Not exactly the sentiments ascribed to John of Gaunt about England, not saying we deserve it more, and resulted in Joe Biden overwhiteknighting the omelette by calling Trump supporters “garbage”.  This was a step in the too far direction, given that even the agent saboteur had not so condescended in the wuthering heights of his humour, as to accuse Puerto Ricans themselves as garbage, even Ocasio-Cretez, but rather to infer that they have a waste management challenge.

I have never been there so I decided to ask AI about whether there is any truth in there being Waste Management issues in Puerto Rico, and this is what the AI said:

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Rites of the Starling: Shield of Sparrows, Book 2
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The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
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Vladimir Khailo at Wem Baptist Church

01 March 2022

Original YT playout date: 23 September 2010
Duration: 1:20:45

A response to militant atheists who think it’s ok to fight religion by any means

 

The Amazing Atheist, an extreme anti-religious commentator on You Tube at the time this was originally

Vladimir and Maria Khailo during that trip to the UK.

posted, says that violence is sometimes the answer. Well, the recording in this video I’m appending is of Vladimir Khailo, a leader of the Independent (ie. unregistered with the state) Baptist Church in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1980s. Someone who knows all about what happened when the atheist regime of the Soviet Union decided to try to “heal” belief by the use of neuroleptic drugs and other psychological “treatments” – he was one of the more famous of their guinea pigs among the leaders of the persecuted Baptist Church. What happened to him and thousands more was violence perpetrated by a savagely zealous atheist state disguised and dressed up as medicine and social intervention.

A harrowing account

 

This is his harrowing story, well worth the listening. The guy in the high pitched voice translating for him was me. Thirty four years ago, I was his translator when he got out of the Soviet Union. This he obtained at the personal request to Gorbachev by Sakharov. One of the first things he did when he was freed was to come to Britain and thank the British churches for sticking up for him and remembering him when he was going through that hell. I had the great privilege of spending ten days in the company of this strong Christian leader who had faced the nastiest, cruellest things that communism had threatened believers with. Witness in his own skin to some of the worst systematic abuses perpetrated outside of wartime by a country on faultless citizens.

Everything changes, but anything can happen again

OK, in Russia, this tribulation pretty much stopped 34 years ago and the prayers of the church were answered. These days it is going strong in other parts of the world. And as long as atheists in America and other parts of the free world believe that violence is the answer, we can never be sure that it won’t be us in Vladimir’s position 34 years from now. Once again is it likely to be violence done to us in the guise of a moral State healing and having an ethical explanation for every piece of violence it will do to the believers.

Here we go again?

I am preparing this post on the day when Russia invaded Khailo’s country again, so we simply do not know what sorts of things now lie ahead for Ukrainians, including the believers of that country.  It looks like it is set to be a long conflict. And while this time it is not specifically Christians who are on the receiving end of the persecution, there are going to be the usual horrible effects that always happen when people place their political ideas above the Gospel truths of God.

Church details here: http://www.wembaptistchurch.co.uk/howtofindus.htm”
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Ravage: A Dark Why Choose Asylum Secret Society Romance (Dance with My Demo...
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The Night We Met
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On foot from Podbaba – Prague Vlog #38

Original YT playout date: 16 September 2010
Duration: 1:03:57

On foot back home from Podbaba thinking about Creation and Evolution, among other topics.
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Full-Cast Edition)
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Full-Cast Edition)
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Do Polish people know that in the Islamic world, Poland was, and is still in some countries, named as Lehistan?

The Legend of the Slavic Brothers

“The Three Heroes” by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926)

They certainly do know this. Usually they would spell it Lechistan, though. It hearkens back to an old legend of three Slavic brothers Lech, Czech and Rus. They were having a drink of local beer in Poznań when they realised that they each wanted to father a nation. In order not to get in each other’s way they decided Czech would go south and Rus would go east. Lech on the other hand would stay in Poznań and look after the local brewery, which bears his name to this day.

Protoplast

He regularly would become plastered on his own product, and thus became known as the “protoplasta Polaków”. Among his achievements is setting up a capital city in Gniezno, a form of the old Polish word for a nest, and from this nest the Polish nation was fledged.

Czech and Rus fathered the nations named after them, while Lech fathered the Polish nation. He became the patron saint of Polish beer, and of big moustaches, and of smashing up invaders such as Islam or Communism.

Various Lechs and Leszeks

As well as a full-sized Lech you also get diminutive ones, namely Leszek, although linguistically speaking, Leszek is a lexicalised diminutive of Lech. You can add it to your lexicon, or Lech’s icon if you happen to be honouring the Patron saint, whose saint’s day is on the 28th February with another go on 12 August if you missed the earlier one.”

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The Testaments (TV Tie-in): A Novel
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Carl's Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 2
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