Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)

You might be wondering why I'm setting at home instead of the Met Gala. I'm boycotting the Gala in protest of Jeff Bezos's sponsorship.

Also because I wasn't invited. Plus at fancypants events like that I end up sitting in the corner by myself looking at my watch every few minutes.

My taxi driver just now, who I neglected to photograph, was a 70+ gentleman resplendently attired in an immaculately tailored bright green zoot suit. I felt shamefully under-dressed the whole ride home.

@xenotar @SteveBellovin It also highlights the different design constraints for astronomy telescopes (where mirror designs are commonly used) vs general camera lenses. You don't care nearly as much about OOF rendering when everything is focused at infinity.

@xenotar @SteveBellovin Ultra-long "compact" mirror lenses seem to have fallen out of favor for still cameras. Back in the 80's there were zillions of them in the 800mm and up range, by both the system vendors and aftermarket companies.

Weird OOF rendering, but they have their uses.

@SteveBellovin For very small birds that are far away.

Last week I tried to make a donation, via my Fidelity Donor Advised Fund, to the SPLC, which I've donated to previously. Fidelity rejected the transaction.

SPLC is a 501(c)3 charity that is fully eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions. They are the target of a Trump DoJ investigation, but they haven't been found guilty of any crime, and their 501(c)3 status remains valid.

I'll be moving my DAF to one that respects my (lawful) wishes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/business/fidelity-southern-poverty-law-center.html?unlocked_article_code=1.e1A.4KUN.THtAW-W_bLYt [gift link]

Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) are essentially charitable clearinghouses that allow you to make lump donations that can be parceled out to tax-exempt charities from an account. They're a convenient vehicle for making non-cash donations (such as stocks), because they take care of converting the donation to cash for distribution to the charities. They work like a bank account for donating.

Except when they refuse to process donations, apparently.

The alternative to using a DAF is to donate directly to a charity. But there are advantages - to both the donor and the charity - to using a DAF. Not all charities are equipped to efficiently process non-cash assets like stocks, and they don't need to issue individual tax receipts for donations from DAFs. For the donor, you can bundle donations into a single tax year and parcel it out later.

But all these advantages are for naught if they refuse to send money to your preferred charities.

Background: The Trump DoJ is claiming that the SPLC's use of paid informants inside organizations like the Klan is somehow a fraud against its donors. I'm a donor. This is exactly the kind of work I WANT to support. Which is why I tried to make an additional donation.

Stone House (with Sofa), Harvard, CA, 2010.

All the pixels, but please don't show them to the vice president, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4611078542

#photography

It doesn't matter what you think of Comey. If he can be charged for posting a photo of sea shells on a beach arranged to spell out "8647", anyone can be charged for any speech that the president dislikes.

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116483846852208844

Interpreting this as a threat is obvious nonsense. But what's also nonsense - and all too common in reporting legal cases - is that the AP story (and the original CNN story) fails to identify the specific charge, the court in which it was filed, or link to the charging documents.

I did a quick PACER search and can't find the docket, but it's easy to miss stuff without knowing basic information about the case. Anyone have a cite?

@tinydoctor We have a fairly narrow view in that clip. Those may have just been the magnetometer operators in the frame, with other agents responsible for actually holding down the checkpoint.

The alleged shooter’s manifesto/farewell letter snarked about what he decided was lax security, but it was ultimately effective at preventing him from reaching the ballroom (or even the lower level on which the ballroom was located). And they apparently even took him down without harming him, despite his allegedly brandishing guns and shooting an agent.

Someone just announced that they're blocking me for "acting like a know-it-all".

(a) If you don't like reading what I post - for any reason or no reason - blocking me is a great solution. Seriously, I don't mind!

(b) If you expect me to apologize for knowing stuff, see (a), above.

To be clear, I appreciate, and have learned much from, people who share stuff they know. I am on team know-it-all!

One thing that is very clear is that I rub a small but still non-trivial number of people here the wrong way. I honestly don't know what it is.

I could approach this in a couple different ways.

One is deep introspection, explore what it is about me that some people react negatively to, and endeavor to change

Another is to recognize that you can't please everyone, and accept that that's just how life is.

At my age, life is too short for anything but the latter.

Block away if I bother you.

The FDNY assigns every location in the city to its nearest fire alarm box, which are (or were) every block or two apart throughout the city. If someone pulled the alarm box, the nearest available firehouse would respond.

(Until surprisingly recently this was done with a spring-loaded telegraph encoded in the box that would ring bells in a particular pattern in each firehouse identifying the box and which engines and trucks should respond).

2/

The box technology has changed (most surviving ones can do voice communication now), and many of the physical alarm boxes have disappeared, but every location is still associated with a box, which, even if the box isn't there, determines which firehouses are "first due".

When you call 911 today, the fire dispatcher first figures out the box number associated with the location and sends the first due engines and trucks for that box.

3/

The first due units are pre-determined, but are almost always the nearest firehouses, which makes sense to minimize response time.

But what happens when the fire is large enough to require more firefighters than the first due?

The fire chief on the scene can call for additional units (originally by tapping a telegraph key inside the box), but who should come?

You might think it should be the NEXT nearest firehouses, expanding outward as more and more are required. But that's a bad idea.

4/