Jonygilborn - Jony Gilborn For Now

I have been a long time supporter of Google and they are very entwined into my online existence. I realize my voice is probably of very little consequence, but this enrages me.

After writing to them to express my displeasure, I am going to start the process of disentangling myself from them. My phone is a Google Pixel, but there are things I can do. I am already using Duck Duck Go as my default browser and email address. I am investigating Proton.me as an alternative email and storage client.

I have already divested myself of Amazon (except for my Kindle), and Instagram. I have stripped all my content from Facebook as I need to use Messenger to be in contact with relatives. Now Google. It is a sad world today.

Seriously, Google? You actually changed Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America on Google Maps?

What the fuck?!

Sometimes we must blur the world to endure it.

Thinking scenes from the film Crimson Peak

[muttering feverishly] I need to chase that man around my gothic manor in a silk nightgown

Rex Whistler, self portrait 1934.

This is how it was for me too. I sacrificed my family, health and personal life for years. Then COVID hit and I found out that the company did not prioritize me in the same way that I did them. I crafted my exit plan then and was retired within a few years.

It took me most of a year to relieve my body of the work stress and loosen my joints that were in a permanent state of hunched over a computer.

Now in my second year of retirement, I have started going to the gym and taking classes. There was never time for that before. There was always a crisis.

film diary - ✰ 8/? howl's moving castle (2004) dir. hayao miyazaki

knowing you'd be there gave me the courage to show up. that woman terrifies me. i can't face her on my own. you saved me, sophie. i was in big trouble back there.

One of my favorite portrait painters ever, Giovanni Boldini.

Boldini, Giovanni (1842-1931) - 1902 Portrait of the Artist Lawrence Alexander Harrison (Sotheby’s New York, 2004) by Milton Sonn

Oil on canvas; 126 x 101 cm.

Giovanni Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter, belonging to the Parisian school. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the “Master of Swish” because of his flowing style of painting.

Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and went to Florence in 1862 to study painting, meeting there the realist painters known as the Macchiaioli. Their influence is seen in Boldini’s landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known. He attained great success in London as a portraitist.

From 1872 Boldini lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Impressionist influence but which most closely resembles the work of his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu. He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment. He died in Paris in 1931.

JONATHAN BAILEY as FIYERO in WICKED (2024)