social media

The sky is blue; the tree is green

Looks like everyone is moving to Bluesky – it’s a better version of X/Twitter.

I already had an account, I don’t know when I opened it, but sometime when it was new awhile ago, I think I got an invite and I opened the account then. It sat dormant but now I am interacting and have three accounts.

Here are the three accounts:

Tomversation, where I post mostly my blog and cartoons:
https://bsky.app/profile/Tomversation.bsky.social

Tom Falco, where I post personal things and interact with others:
https://bsky.app/profile/TomFalco.bsky.social

10 With Tom , where I post things related to my 10 With Tom blog:
https://bsky.app/profile/10WithTom.bsky.social

It all feels so new, like when Twitter was new so many years ago. I’ll go onto people’s profiles to see what they are all about and they have maybe two or three posts. That’s it! So new and fresh.

I am still on X/Twitter, but I’m trying to build up my Bluesky readership, so if you are there, let’s follow each other! And the same names/handles are on Threads, if you are so inclined.

On another note, I put up the Christmas tree yesterday. I know, I know, too early.

I’m going out of town until December, so I wanted to get it up so I don’t have to deal with it when I return home. I only lit it to take this picture, I’m not lighting it until mid-December. That’s when I’ll bring it alive.

I’ll be in NY for Thanksgiving – leaving early, coming home late, you know, stretching it out.

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I got this custom printed pen at TheDiscountPrinter.com

Less is more

I’m still feeling FOMO about the Paris Olympics. I want to be in Paris. The 2028 summer Olympics are in Los Angeles – meh. For me it’s about the Olympics and Paris as a combo, not simply the Olympics, so LA has no allure as far as I’m concerned.

I started up my Tomversation single panel cartoon again, along with the final week of Ollie And Jacomo in Paris, so they are overlapping. My single panel had been on a two week break while I concentrated on Ollie and Jacamo.

I’ve been playing around with Substack, the blogging platform, but it seems to be overwhelmed and hogged by a few other cartoonists. I don’t follow them, but they seem to be dominating the platform in an annoying way. One cartoonist is very thirsty, he posts something every few seconds it seems, which is really being too extra. It’s all about him it seems where Substack is concerned.

He draws in the park and announces it. I’ve seen so many people drawing in the park in NYC and I don’t think any of them announce it. It’s sort of like these street musicians, they just appear and play, I don’t think they announce it to everyone, “Hey, I’ll be in Madison Square Park by the fountain playing at noon.”

This one guy drew something on a stain on the wall in a public restroom and had to post that image.

It reminds me of when my condo board was doing things around the building but not telling everyone about it as a courtesy. One person said, “I’ll tell you the next time I sneeze or pick my nose, Tom!”

I guess less is more. In every situation.

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Facebook’s suggestions

Facebook made some group suggestions for me to follow. I’m not sure where Vintage Kitchens came from, I barely boil water. Cinema Treasures, maybe.

Not sure where Vintage Mobile Homes came from and Vintage Sewing Patterns. I don’t think I’ve ever sewn anything in my life, nor do I want to.

Historical Vault, yes, I would like that. Old, Seedy Motels? Maybe, every time I see an old abandoned motel I like to think of the history of it. I sometimes think about staying in one of those old seedy 1960s motels you see in the Florida Keys. They are quiet, feet from the Gulf and look interesting. Perfect for a writer or cartoonist to spend some time. But I never stop as I’m driving by on my way to Key West, and I never end up seeing what those motels are about.

This reminds me of some years back when Visa called me. They said someone was using my credit card and they needed to cancel it. I asked them how they knew it wasn’t me. They said one charge was for Avon. A few weeks later, AmEx called and they said they knew it wasn’t me because someone charged motorcycle parts. So that’s me – somewhere between Avon and motorcycle parts.

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iPhone SOS

I was one of those people with the dead iphone yesterday. It wasn’t totally dead, I could use the wifi to do things, I just couldn’t make phone calls. Which actually, was a good thing. I don’t like talking on the phone. I prefer texting, which was working.

I woke up early and looked at the phone and I saw some messages regarding my cartoons had popped up on the screen. When people comment, it alerts me. The top comment said something like, “Phone hack.” It was on a cartoon that had nothing to do with a phone or a hack, so I checked the phone again and saw the SOS at the top of the phone where the signal bars should be.

I went to a website and it wouldn’t load and I tried other things and the same thing. I panicked. Was my phone hacked? How was that done? When I went to bed the night before, all was well. If I hadn’t seen that “phone hack” comment, I would not have thought much of the whole situation.

For about an hour I tried everything, I downloaded the latest update and I looked up things on google and You Tube, using my computer. I tried this, I tried that, I tried everything, panicking for an hour.

I’m usually good at fixing electronic or internet problems, but nothing worked.

I then thought that it could be AT&T and not just my phone, but of course I couldn’t call AT&T since the phone was down.

I turned on the 6 am news and there it was – it was a national outage! Phew. Relieved.

I made it through the early morning calmly then, since I knew there was nothing I could do. And before 8 am, the phone was back up to it’s usual self. I suspect many people slept through the whole thing. While many of us went crazy in the dark, needlessly. First world problems.

Someone posted this image on Twitter with the tagline, “AT&T customers this morning.”

I wondered about things like Apple Pay or using the phone’s boarding pass option at the airport. I’ve seen articles that say to download the boarding pass at home or print it out at the airport, rather than just have the app passport, and now that makes sense.

And what about the NY subway, where it’s “tap and pay” with the OMNY system? Will lines back up at the vending machines with people buying metro cards if this ever happens midday?

Also, of course, have cash or credit cards if you are an “only apple pay” user or other tap and pay users, which I suspect many Gen Z users are.

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Saying ‘ok’ is okay

I saw this quote and it’s me! I do this all the time. But I didn’t know it was a sign of maturity. I do it so that I don’t have to have a long conversation. It seems easier to just say, “Ok” and leave it at that.

I say “ok” a lot on texts. I also do it because I don’t want to type, or dictate a text. A couple of my cousins sort of mentioned it. They sort thought it was rude for me to just respond, “ok” to their texts.

I do it to be agreeable and to answer a question or statement concisely. There’s a thumbs up thing now, so I can do that rather than even type “ok.”

For instance, I’ll get a text that says, “We’re meeting at such and such place at 2 pm.” And I respond, “ok.” Or they text, “We want Italian food, so we are going to such and such restaurant,” and I respond, “ok.” They have said, “Take the R train because the M train isn’t running,” and I respond, “ok.”

But seeing that they don’t care for those “ok’s,” I’ll sometimes answer, “Ok, looking forward to it,” or “That damn M train is always out of service!” or things like that, just not to be “rude” which I don’t think I’m being, I think I’m being economical.

One interesting thing is that two of my brothers type “okay” when they respond, they spell the whole word out, which I find interesting. I don’t think I have ever done that.

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Cloudy with a chance of faces

I started this thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces. It’s images I see in clouds.

I’ve been posting pictures over the years and a friend suggested I make a thing of it. I add a few outlines to show what I’m seeing and there it is.

I live in Miami, right on the Bay, that combination makes for interesting visions in the sky. The clouds here move very quickly, if you see a formation, you have to capture it quick or it’s gone.

Every morning when I wake up, I look outside and there is something staring me in the face. Many times the clouds look like mountains, other times Snoopy or a lady or whatever.

You could get addicted. I could literally stand in one place and get so many images in a short amount of time. Now that I’m doing this Cloudy project, it gets a big hard not to be obsessed and just be staring at the clouds all day long, waiting for the next image to appear. But oddly enough, when I’m deliberately looking, I don’t see anything. It seems to be an organic thing, you know, it just happens when you least expected, you look up and something is staring down at you.

A friend visiting from New York once said that our clouds have layers. I take that to mean they are very expressive. And they are.

If you’d like to follow my venture, I have set up two social media sites. I have the website CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces.com, too, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. I just wanted to get the name while it was available.

Here is the Instagram account: instagram.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces
and Facebook: facebook.com/CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces
Also Tumblr: tumblr.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces

Hope to see you there!

Madonna, Marilyn Monroe or Mae West? You choose!

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I’m being used for clickbait!

I find it amazing at how many people don’t mind stealing others’ intellectual property and think nothing about it.

When this cartoon was published earlier today, people started commenting on social media. Some said due to Netflix’s new policy of no account sharing, they would be dropping their account. It’s sort of cutting off their nose to spite their face. But they don’t think it’s a good idea to support the streaming service they like.

This reminds me of some of these sites that are clickbait. I’m on on a few now. Not deliberately. And it’s happened before. The sites shall remain nameless here.

A guy reached out to me last week and asked if I would answer a few questions for an article, which I’ve done so many times before. Next thing you know, they placed 60 – not 6 – 60 of my cartoons on their site and sort of placed the answers to my questions in between.

When I complained, they sent me this long spiel about how this is their method of publication – basically that’s how they do it – they take your work and make it theirs. They didn’t say it that way, they said that’s how they “showcase” it. One bad part is that they are then copied around the internet and others do the same thing – they take a bunch of my cartoons and make clickbait out of it. The only difference is that they go on my site and pick and choose so the cartoons are different.

I’ve interviewed artists for many years and I’ve asked permission to use a few of their pieces to show off their work which was part of the articles. I also had them send me images when possible, so that they were in control of what was shown. But the text was the majority of the work, and a few of their works complimented it, along with a photo of themselves. Here are some on my 10 With Tom site – interviews I have done without stealing anyone’s work.

I’m fuming over this plagiarism by these other websites and I find it amazing that they have a link on them for “removal” of articles. When I brought that up to one of the sites, they said that is for people who post their own stories on the site and want it then removed, which I find to be B.S.

I sell some Tomversation items on Etsy. I saw my actual stuff picked up and being sold in Asia somewhere, they just snapped up the images and cartoons and are using them.

Many years ago, before I was an editor or writer or anything, I was taking photos at an arts festival and one of the artists yelled at me. He didn’t like me taking pictures of his work right out there on the street where it was being shown. I learned a lesson back then and I never again took people’s work for granted or took photos of it without asking their permission.

Yes, I’m guilty of taking Starry Night and other images whenever I’m in museums. I’m not sure where they falls into this. And my cousin goes to museums and draws the work. Not to sell, but to just practice his art. So I’m not really sure where to draw the line (draw the line, no pun intended).

I guess I should be happy that they like my work and they are keeping the copyright and my website part of the images intact, which is a good thing. I guess.

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Snowballed

Wednesday’s snowman/people cartoon really took off. It was liked and shared by thousands of people, it really went viral. You might remember a month or so ago I was having problems with social media algorithms, but it seems to have passed. Many people are back to seeing my work.

I got the idea about the snowballed kids really fast. I had a morning show on, I think the Today Show, and a guy was talking about how his social media post took off. He said it started slow and then snowballed.

And the word “snowballed’ just hit me. I heard the expression all my life, but in that moment, it struck me as something I could use for a comic. I thought of the snow people right away and I drew up the cartoon right then and there.

One of my neighbors and his wife go walking around the neighborhood daily, and I ran into them one day, we started walking together. I asked them if I was intruding and he replied with a funny quote that I think he made up himself. At that moment, I thought it would be good for a cartoon, but I just kept walking and talking and I forgot what the quote was.

A bit later, he asked where I get my cartoon ideas from. I said they just seem to pop into my head. I then mentioned the quote he had said a bit earlier and I said I thought that would make a good cartoon in some way, only I couldn’t remember it. So he repeated it and we laughed.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember it again and can’t use it. But that’s where I get my ideas – hearing things and twisting them around in my mind.

Speaking of the Today Show, Martha Stewart was on the other day, she was making her famous eggnog recipe and last week I ran that cartoon with the witches discussing Martha Stewart’s and Ina Garten’s eggnog recipes. It all comes full circle, I guess.

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