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Audiobook Narrators

A narrator can make or break an audiobook. This is a list of exceptional narrators, in no particular order. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Please suggest other narrators worth listening to in the comments.

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Tracing Quotations

Quote Investigator is a website that fact-checks the reported origins of widely circulated quotations. According to Wikipedia, the website was started in 2010 by Gregory F. Sullivan, a former Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who runs the site under the pseudonym Garson O’Toole. Many of the quotes examined on the site are emailed to him by readers.

O’Toole is also the author of a book entitled Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations. The New York Times reviewed the book in 2017 and confirmed that Gregory F. Sullivan is indeed the author of the website.

Sullivan “tries to track down correct information about the provenance of sayings by utilizing the massive text databases that are being constructed right now along with other quotation history resources.”

The site reports that it had more than 4.2 million visitors between June 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022. It’s a free site.

The Library of Congress also hosts a list of quotation reference websites. However, many of these websites, unlike Quote Investigator, do not cite an original source. Even so, it is a good resource.

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Photos of Pittsburgh

These websites display many interesting photographs of Pittsburgh:

It’s not clear who is behind these useful websites.

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Visiting Washington, DC

Places to Visit

Learning About Washington

Places to Stay

Four Seasons: Best Hotel in Washington

Events and Activities

Last updated: November 3, 2024

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U.S. Ambassador’s Residence, Paris

A video tour of U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Paris, known as the Hôtel de Pontalba.

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Washington Post

Three decades of beautiful snow scenes in the Washington, D.C., area

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A cold and cloudy Sunday morning in Washington

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Sunrise at the Washington Monument

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Quatre lieux interdits prisés par les photographes à Paris - RadioFrance

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Candid Photography

The great majority of my works are candid, meaning I don’t ask people for the photo nor do I tell them that I took their photo. I do this because I want to keep the moment pure as I saw it. The moment a person knows they are being photographed, they either get self-conscious or their behavior becomes more exaggerated than normal human behavior allows. It’s all about capturing that ‘unguarded moment’ and trying to make the people in the photos look as true to that moment as possible.

thegirlwholeftthefridgeopen

Also on Flickr

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‘A Touch of Magic’

My goal is to document the ordinary moments of life that we too often take for granted that are simply part of the human condition. I try to capture not only the authenticity of the ordinary moment, but the precise moment when the ordinary has a touch of magic associated with it.

James Rice

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I reckon I’m not alone in having trouble understanding passkeys: Michael Tsai’s Tech Blog. Are they practical, reliable and trustworthy?

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If I knew what the photograph was going to look like, I wouldn’t bother taking it. It’s the voyage of discovery that fascinates me.

– Lois Greenfield

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On Intimacy

Manuel Moreal:

Maybe it’s just me but the more time I spend online the more I enjoy consuming content from people who are not afraid to share content in a very honest and sometimes vulnerable way. People who share without an agenda, people who share because they think it’s important to communicate both the ups and the downs of this shared experience we’re all going through called life.

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Why Photograph?

Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.

— Anonymous

Source: Sam Benari.

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What Makes Paris Special

There are few things more beautiful in life than sensuality, with the word being used in its’ most elegant sense-and of all of the cities in the world, few offer such splendor more than the omnipresent scenes of daily life in Paris.

Peter Turnley

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Being a Friend Means Being Truthful

You can’t be a friend if you are not willing to tell the truth. This doesn’t mean that you are right. Being right and being honest are not necessarily the same thing.

— Paul Ferrini

Source: Annie Mueller

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Constantine Manos - A Great Street Photographer

Constantine Manos (1934-) is among the great street photographers of his time. I was a student in one of his workshops in Maine and learned so much about composition. He offered his students candid and fair critiques. Manos was born in Columbia, South Carolina of Greek immigrant parents. This video does a nice job of summarizing his work.

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A Peek Inside Patek Philippe

SWI:

Together with Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille, Patek Philippe is one of the “Big Four” watchmakers, the four independent brands that generate around half the profits of the Swiss watchmaking industry.

Founded in 1839 and owned by the Stern family since 1932, Patek Philippe employs around 3,000 people worldwide, including 2,050 at its Geneva headquarters. It is run today by Thierry Stern, who joined the family business in 1990 and took over as its president in 2009. 

Unlike the directors of Rolex, a watchmaking company that has based its success on the cult of secrecy, Stern regularly speaks out in the Swiss and international press. SWI swissinfo.ch met him at the recent Watches and Wonders trade fair in Geneva. 

We have a complete manufacturing facility and 95% to 98% of our added value is produced in-house. Of course, we purchase screws and straps from external suppliers and, for safety reasons, we duplicate certain production lines – dials, for example – with outside companies. 

But I don’t see the point in outsourcing more, because the best way to control quality from A to Z is to do everything in-house, even if it is more expensive. We go so far in terms of craftsmanship, development and research that we really can’t contract these tasks out.

Since our founding in 1839, we have consistently produced watches and maintained an unchanged strategy: making Swiss watches entirely in-house. Our customers and retailers, who have known us for several generations, bear witness to this constancy. 

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Fifteen very useful tips from Christian Möhrle for using Lightroom masks.