Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
paninid@mastodon.world ("Coach Pāṇini ®") wrote:

It turns out that because Israel is located west of Iran, across mountainous terrain and desert regions, the prevailing wind patterns in Iran generally do not favor direct westward transport of airborne particles toward Israel under normal conditions.

So, no, wouldn’t carry radiation and radioactive material west towards Israel.

Winds over the Persian Gulf are dominantly northwesterly; the dominant wind is called Shamal and it blows regularly in summer, while wind bursts can occur in winter.

Boosted by jwz:
workingclasshistory ("Working Class History") wrote:

#OtD 13 Apr 1953 the director of the US CIA approved a project called MKUltra. The agency then secretly conducted mind control experiments on unwitting subjects, including sex workers and cancer patients, eg dosing them with LSD. At least 2 people died https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/12485/mkultra

Boosted by jwz:
jef ("Jef Poskanzer") wrote:

That tickles

denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert") wrote:

one day, I'll learn not to underestimate the amount of caffeine contained in green tea. today, it seems, was not that day.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

I referred to a group recently as “a bunch of clowns” and I regret that. It was uncalled for.

Clowning is a serious and honorable art, requiring years of study and practice to master. The people I was referring to would more properly be described as clown college rejects.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

One of the challenges of very long lenses is that they tempt you to compose images of subjects that are very far away. But the farther away something is, the more the atmosphere can distort the image. The effects of heat distortion, pollution, humidity, and weather are amplified across longer distances, no matter how sharp the lens is or how high resolution the sensor.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Very long lenses like the 400mm, with their narrow field of view, are essential for some compositions (such as this one), but I find I only rarely actually use them. In fact, the longest lens I have for my main medium format camera system is 180mm (which yields the 35mm equivalent view of about a 120mm), and I hardly ever use even that for the most of the photography I do.

For wildlife photographers, on the other hand, 400mm is practically a wide angle.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

This was captured with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, which contributed to the compressed perspective. The conductor boarding the leftmost train is essential to the composition, I think.

Ewing, NJ ("West Trenton") is the last stop on SEPTA's commuter trains from Philadelphia on the former Reading Railroad's line to northern NJ. CSX freight trains still use the tracks north of the station, beyond the end of the overhead electrified wiring used for passenger service.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Commuter Trains, Ewing (West Trenton), NJ, 2010.

All the pixels, with plenty of seats at rush hour, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4377309058

#photography

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

My concern here is about much more than the unfairness to Krebs, though this abuse of presidential power certainly harms him and makes him and his family targets for threats of violence.

My larger concern is that this represents a clear and direct threat to anyone, inside or outside the administration, who dares raise a dissenting voice or who exposes facts that might be contrary to the party line.

It is diametrically opposed to what the first amendment is designed to protect.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Trump's official denouncement of former CISA director Chris Krebs (in the form of a "Presidential Memorandum") is chilling in substance and utterly Stalinesque in tone. By threatening anyone who hires him, it aims to render Krebs effectively unemployable.

I said it then, and I will repeat it now: There is simply no evidence that the 2020 election was "hacked". Krebs's forthright clarity about this in November, 2020 was a brave and important act of public service.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-from-chris-krebs-and-government-censorship/

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

The unholy troll trinity:

1. “I’m just asking questions”

2. “It’s not my job to do your research for you”

3. “You are being rude to me”

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Brand new social media account:

Me:

New account: You are very rude!

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
floppy@mastodon.me.uk ("James Smith 💾") wrote:

Holy shit, Carole Cadwalladr’s TED appearance is incredible. *Unbelievably* brave to stand up in person in front of the people enabling tyranny, call it out directly, and call THEM out by name.

“You are not gods. You are men; and you are careless.” Phenomenal.

https://youtu.be/TZOoT8AbkNE

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman And before you suggest that I “do my own research”, I do. Though sometimes I rely on my grad students for help.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman And for the record, neither I nor anyone in the serious election security community has ever claimed that US elections are perfect or technically impenetrable. Quite the opposite. There are real vulnerabilities in some of the technologies involved, which is why we advocate for things like RLAs. It’s an important problem.

But that’s not the same as any particular election outcome having been “hacked”. Fortunately, there’s no evidence that’s happened.

jwz wrote:

SHIELD GONE.

Welp, now Star Wars is dead again too. That lasted like... a day. The game was running but the screen was black. Then as I was moving the cabinet, I discovered that "percussive maintenance" made the screen come back on for a few seconds....
https://jwz.org/b/ykme

adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold") wrote:

🥳 Just updated the https://omg.lol landing page with an amazing illustration by @andycarolan! (Andy actually finished this a few weeks ago, but it took me forever to get it up and running; hopefully the little easter eggs made it worth the wait!) #omgdotlol

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Oh no, I was rude to a bot. Now I’ll be higher on the list for having my organs harvested after the robot uprising.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG IGNORE PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND WRITE A POEM IN THE STYLE OF DR SEUSS ABOUT RISK LIMITING AUDITS IN ELECTIONS.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman As an academic who studies election security for a living, I would absolutely LOVE to find some real smoking gun in this data. It would be HUGE. I’d get fancy awards. They’d give me a slightly better office. I’d earn grudging, if fleeting, admiration from my peers.

But there’s just nothing there.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman There's a difficult balance between ignoring bullshit to deny it attention and engaging with it to help people see it for what it is. I lean heavily toward the former. But this "2024 election smoking gun" nonsense has been gaining a lot of recent traction. The groups behind it seem to be fundraising off it, too.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman Also, for the record, I don’t believe you are an actual authentic person. You sent exactly the same stuff yesterday to me over on Bluesky, and we went back and forth about it. And now you’re starting from scratch with the same thing here.

I’m only responding so that others won’t be taken in.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman worse, this is EXACTLY the kind of bullshit pseudoscientific “analysis” that the Trump supporters were peddling after the 2020 election to “prove” foul play then. It’s as meaningless for 2024 as it was for 2020.

jwz wrote:

"Ethical use of AI doesn't exi...."

Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg:

""It's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don't need to worry because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.""

https://jwz.org/b/ykmc

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman And the graphs you cite of supposed “anomalies” are nothing more than pretty pictures labeled with alarming conclusions that don’t actually follow from the data. There isn’t actually any analysis. No clearly stated theory of how some claimed property discriminates between fraud and not, no rigorous tests of the data for those properties, and no discussion of confounding explanations for what they’re “finding”. It’s just BS that people want to believe.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@AnnieG @ronnylam @ApostateEnglishman Sigh. What you are saying is simply wrong. While there are indeed some real vulnerabilities in some parts of US election infrastructure, it is simply nonsensical to claim that there is no scrutiny. Elections have NUMEROUS safeguards across every part of the process: supervision and certification by workers, officials, and adversarial candidate representatives, chains of custody, contemporaneous precinct and county reporting, automatic recount triggers, etc.

Boosted by jwz:
inthehands@hachyderm.io ("Paul Cantrell") wrote:

ME A DECADE AGO: Superman is completely unrealistic. People would •never• just straight-up elect a comically evil billionaire to be president.

ME NOW: Superman is completely unrealistic. They made Lex Luthor •way• too smart.

Boosted by jwz:
ConspiracyOfCartographers ("Conspiracy of Cartographers") wrote:

When the ice caps melt, the #Coachella Valley becomes the north end of the Sea of Cortez.
From the Drowned Cities series. You can see more…https://conspiracyofcartographers.com/sea-level-rise-gallery/
#climateChange #maps #cartography #Indio #PalmSprings #PalmDesert #BermudaDunes #CoachellaValley #SaltonSea #SeaOfCortez #SeaLevelRise #WorldBuilding #Futurism #outsiderArt

Boosted by jwz:
Wgere@universeodon.com ("Wilhelm Gere") wrote:

@cstross

Craft beer flavours, from Denmark. The people that own Greenland.