Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social), page 2

@evan That's historical research, not grounds for a lawsuit.

I've been seeing photos and videos of crowds at the No Kings events around the country today. I'm just overwhelmed with a sense of "wow, that's a lot of people". It lifts my spirits.

Thank you, America.

A couple of things about these claims circulating that the 2024 election was "rigged":

1. The supposed "proof" is essentially the same nonsensical statistical gobbledygook that the MAGA people were claiming about 2020, with the parties reversed.

2. There is no legal mechanism to "recount" an election after the results are certified. None. The ship has sailed.

3. SHOCKINGLY, they need funds to continue their "work"

4. Nope, not linking to it. Not giving them oxygen.

OK, that was four, not a "couple". A quadruple, then.

An important difference between this and the 2020 fraud claims is that here, you don't see the supposedly "defrauded" candidate amplifying the BS. Harris wants no part of this.

Also, you don't get a discount on an overpriced pillow for donating.

In particular, a Faraday bag protects you from a very narrow and specific set of phone-related threats, at considerable usability and functionality cost. And they require a nuanced understanding of what they do and what your threat is to use effectively.

If you don’t know exactly what you need one for, you probably don’t.

Much discussion about “opsec” (a term I don’t love when talking about people exercising their rights, but whatever) at protests today, including about phones and Faraday containers.

A Faraday container is probably less useful here than you think it is, but if you do rely on one, make sure it actually works. Here’s a post I did a while back on the ins and outs of containing RF: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

There's been horrible news today, and some good news, but both seem to have crowded out coverage of the military parade, so there's that.

Sorry to be away and missing the NoKings events today. A little proud of my fellow Americans right now.

We now have a political assassin impersonating a police officer on the loose in Minnesota, which, aside from being horrifying in and of itself, underscores the danger of the proliferation of anonymous federal law enforcement deployments from a wide variety of unfamiliar agencies conducting aggressive immigration operations across the country.

Is that uniformed person who's stopping you or demanding entry to your home legit or a psychotic vigilante seeking to harm you? It's impossible to know.

@kims No-knock warrants upend this.

TIL that the “mobile lounge” shuttles at IAD are each named for a state.

This means that if they want to expand the fleet, DC and Puerto Rico have to be granted statehood first. I don’t make the rules.

This is a fairly conventional architectural composition, emphasizing the curved facade. To get a high resolution capture of the wide structure, this was made as a stitched composite of two captures with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens. The Phase One back was shifted left and right by about 12mm.

By using shift movements at a fixed perspective, the two captures can be stitched directly together into a panorama without needing to transform the frame geometry (as you would with panning).

The result here is about 170MP in 16x9 format, which is sufficient for very large prints that retain a great deal of detail (I've printed this at 6 feet wide).

Mid-Century Modernist architecture, and Brutalism in particular, is easy to dismiss as being superficially lifeless and uninteresting, but at its best (and with the right eye) these buildings can be seen as sculptures in the landscape. I don't always appreciate them, but they're often more interesting than they first seem.

Washington ("Hinckley") Hilton, Washington, DC, 2023.

All the pixels, but no room service available, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53007102796

#photography

Tree, Red Rock Canyon, NV, 2011.

All the pixels, with no risk of exposure to sunlight or fresh air, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/5766414314

#photography

This simple composition was made with a small FF mirrorless camera, 21mm lens, and travel tripod during a short hike.

I didn't have any ND filters with me, so ended up having to shoot this in the bright midday light at f/8. That yields too much DoF to allow focus to separate the tree from the background. But fortunately there was just enough haze to reduce the contrast of the distant hills a bit, yielding a high contrast subject with a lower contrast background. So it worked out in the end.

@fabio I think I was in the last generation where it was possible to have a career like this, and it gave me a huge advantage. There's no job I've held since then that has been as nurturing and protective of my time and energy.

@fabio Your point about the relative brutality of academia, especially for junior researchers, is very important.

I spent my early career (the most productive, high-energy years) at Bell Labs. The most important thing, aside from great colleagues and resources, that the Labs gave me was *freedom*. I spent my time actually doing research instead of writing grant proposals, teaching classes, serving on committees, and all the other distractions that eat the majority of a junior professor's time.

I just got a robo-text from the city about an emergency street closure being reopened and the little robot in my watch watch suggests I reply to the big robot with "good job!".

The robot uprising will be very polite.