Tag: celebrities

Helping the COVID-19 fight

I have almost 15,000 photos under Creative Commons license on my Flickr account.  It’s always fun to see who uses them and how.  So far, they’ve made their way into hundreds (if not thousands) blog posts, articles, presentation slides, and videos.  Heck, they are even on more than a thousand of Wikipedia pages.  The last claim to fame was with the blog post on Forbes.

A couple of days ago, a friend shared with me a link to this YouTube video, where the same (sick?) photo of myself was used (around 26th second).  With more than 2.2 million views, I guess, that’s my contribution to the COVID-19/Coronavirus fight.

On the cover of Forbes … (not really)

I just accidentally discovered that one of my self-portraits (published on Flickr under Creative Commons) has been used in the article on Forbes.com website.   Wow!  This is the closest I ever got to the cover of the Forbes magazine (or any other magazine for that matter).

forbes

Ironically enough, I took this picture when I had a flu while working on my first startup.  And now it’s been used in the article titled “Why Entrepreneurship Is Killing Me”.

Update (August 26, 2017): I am also on the list of 10 things that can completely wipe out humanity.

Celebrity status : one person

My celebrity status was raised today to the level of “one person”.  Here is a quote from the Cyprus Mail article covering TEDxNicosia:

Perhaps the most apt response to that performance was from one person on social networking site Twitter who said, “Holly molly! Check the voice on that kid! Jaw dropped at #TedxNicosia”. Hashtags are used on Twitter to enable people, including strangers, to discuss a set topic.

If you missed the original, here it is:

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Via this blog post I came across this excellent photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy – a wife and widow of John Kennedy.

While she was definitely a very beautiful woman, I can’t think of anyone who would want to be her – there was so much grief and sorrow in her life, that it even seems unfair.  Assassination of her husband is not even the first one on the list.  By that time she already lost two children – her first daughter was delivered stillborn and her fourth child – a boy – died only days after he was born.  Then her husband was killed.  Then his brother.  Then she left the United States, fearing for the lives of her other two children.  She got married to a Greek guy, who soon also lost a son, after which got more and more sick himself.  Not long after that he also passed away.  Widow for the second time, she went through a bunch of legal arguments with the rest of his family.  And if all that wasn’t enough, she was diagnosed with cancer and died at the age of 64.

But from what I understood, she remained strong, kind, and caring throughout her life.  She did a lot of good for a lot of people and many still remember her with words of respect and gratitude.  That leaves me absolutely speechless…