CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

It's now sixteen people, which does not include the original writer, but who has now been smoked out

[Mick Harper]

Gaza and Ukraine continue to skew my Medium stats. This morning I was super-pleased to get 137 new views and 86 new reads for my stories but, upon inspection, this consisted of 79 and 54 for the elderly Gaza piece and 13/10 for a Ukraine piece of two days ago. Leaving forty-five views and twenty-two reads for the stuff I actually want people to read.

Mind you, that's way more than normal so I mustn't complain.

[Mick Harper]

My newly awarded power of being First Responder has had an unexpected side effect. I have grown used to slinging in diverting snippets knowing I would be hidden away down the lists. Being primus inter pares is a whole new ball game.

[Mick Harper]

Sorry to be a cracked record but I'm at my wits' end. It is only 2 pm in Britain on the 20th November so the main US market isn't on stream yet, but my Medium stats page reports I've got 174 views and 92 reads already today for all my stories. So I look up Don't Worry About Gaza and it says this got 188 views and 103 reads today.

That discrepancy can be accounted for by algorithmic time lags but what I don't get is where this unaccustomed avalanche is coming from. It is all overwhelmingly from 'non-members', but via 'e-mail' not Google (which gets me traction occasionally). What does that actually mean? People out there are emailing one another about me and Gaza? Hardly likely. Any theories would be welcome.

[Mick Harper]

Things have really gone mental now. My Gaza story from September got 314 views and 175 reads yesterday. Compared to 367 and 205 for all my stories combined. And my Ukraine story of the day before yesterday accounts for most of that.

What I care about--my series on the existence of Dark Ages--continues to get the usual single figures. Low single figures.

[Mick Harper]

My newly awarded status as a Top Responder (which is not quite as top as I thought, I sink quickly) has resulted in getting a rash of 'Your response has ten fans' messages. In the dark old days, one hand clapping was a relative rarity. They continue, however, to be not the ones I was hoping for. Today, there were two

[Mick Harper]

A few hours later. Your response has got ten fans:

[Mick Harper]

Yesterday broke new records. I got read by 521 people. Trouble is 512 of those were accounted for by my last two Israel/Ukraine stories. All they get me is abuse and a dribble of money, two things I'm not short of. The AE stuff continues to get single figures.

But one possible strawlet in the wind is a Trojan War piece that followed on from the Ukraine piece has amassed 29 views and 18 reads. So maybe, just maybe, there is collateral damage.

[Mick Harper]

My latest 'your response has got ten fans' triggered quite a lively exchange which will be of interest to Ishmael anyway. Somebody had put up a paean to Canada's contribution to World War Two which got this from me

Mick Harper: Sorry, but Canada's record in World War Two was woeful. Though I agree it was remarkable in WW1. Perhaps the two are causally linked.

Marcus113, aka Marc Dauphin, MSM, CD, MD.: Hi Mick. That's an opinion and quite an all-encompassing one at that. Would you care to explain? Thanks.

Mick: It was mainly the Canadian government's insistence on a separate Canadian army -- after Britain's exploitation of their soldiers in WW1 . They rarely got into action and had too little experience when they did. There's a paragraph here but it's a big subject. https://medium.com/@mickxharper/a-bridge-much-too-far-1486d5b649d0

Marcus: Thanks for the reference. But I don't understand your opinion, "they rarely got into action." Seems to me the Canadians were the first 'Western Army' to get into action when they landed at Dieppe in August 1942. Before that, they had been in action in 1940 and at the end of that summer, the First Canadian Infantry Division was the only fully equipped force defending England.

Then, in November 1942, they landed in North Africa alongside their other allies. And inJuly 1943, they landed in Sicily at the same time as the Brits and the Americans and since the ship carrying their transport had been sunk by a U Boat, they slogged the whole campaign on foot. The onus of the British effort was transferred to the Canadians when their (Brits) push along the coast failed. The Canadians also participated in the Campaign up Italy, becoming the first of the Western allies to fight it out with the Wehrmacht in urban warfare (Ortona, December 1943).

Canada, in spite of having only 9% of the combined population of the three Western allies (less if you count the Free French) was given 20% of the D Day landings (ie one beach out of five) and its troops were the ones who advanced the most on that day. At the end of the war, Canada had the third largest fleet in the world, and the fourth largest Air Force.

BTW, Canadians were in action long before the US ever got attacked. With all respect, your opinion does not seem to be based on facts, sir.

Mick: With all respect, sir, my opinions are more objective than yours in this narrow area.

Marcus: Well, I do have some reservations about "objective." In my part of the world (medicine X 40 years, in the military X 39 years, the study of history X 50 years, and the practice of criminal law -- coroner X 12 years) we have a saying that opinions without the backup of facts are worth nothing and are usually met with contempt when not outright derision. I have provided you with lists of verifiable facts. You have not. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Mick: Yes, but I am (a) a military historian and (b) not Canadian. I'm not saying I was not impressed by your list of Canadian achievements, which I knew about in detail but had not fully appreciated in the round. It is only at the sharp end, boots on the ground, where the difference between the two world wars was so marked. So I trust we will trust each other's expertise on this relatively small focus.

[Mick Harper]

My very first

[Mick Harper]

My new found status as King of the Responders continues to shower me with 'you've got ten fans' stickers. They're now searching out obscure ones of yesteryear like this one (in response to a 'meeting actors you recognise' story)

[Mick Harper]

I've decided to make a record of my 'your response has got ten fans'. I want to see if there's any rhyme or reason to it. Here's today's

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The furore prompted by my posting up The Ukraine War is winding down is winding down. It got 825 reads on Nov 27th and 289 reads on Nov 28th. Unless it's Americans taking a day off from Medium because of Thanksgiving. Tomorrow will tell. Unless they're all at the mall celebrating Black Friday.

[Mick Harper]

My Thanksgiving/Black Friday theory appears to have legs. On Thursday my Ukraine story got 289 reads (down from 825), by Friday it was back up to 438. It has now acquired eighty-three different clappers (that's nice, a record) and 44 responses (nearly all nasty, quelle surprise).

Meanwhile my ongoing series about ancient Dark Ages--the kinda stuff I'm interested in--continues to get single figures in all categories. Where's the James Robertson in that?