I’ve written so much complicated-ass CSS for this site it’s getting to be that I can’t remember what half of the older stuff does. My brain is too big for my brain.
Oof.
Day: August 11, 2024, 10:21 PM
It never occurred to me the shooting an entire picture in one room would be a problem. In fact I felt I could turn it into an advantage. One of the most important dramatic elements for me was the sense of entrapment those men must have felt in that room. Immediately a ‘lens-plot’ occurred to me. As the picture unfolded, I wanted the room to seem smaller and smaller. That meant that I would slowly shift to longer lenses as the picture continued. Starting with a normal range (28mm-40mm) we progressed to 50mm, 75mm and 100mm lenses.
In addition, I shot the first third of the movie above eye level. And then, by lowering the camera, shot the second third at eye level and the last third below eye level. In that way, by the end, the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie.
On the final shot, an exterior that showed the jurors leaving the courtroom, I used a wide angle lens. Wider than any that had been used in the entire picture. I also raised the camera to the highest above eye-level-position. The intention was to literally give us all air, to let us finally breathe, after two increasingly confined hours.
Boris Kaufman, photographer, in Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Energized
Nuclear power: no, yes, maybe, but not like this.
One of the few analyses I’ve seen that is not completely clownish. Gets a few things wrong but nothing that destroys the thesis.
China is able to build a nuclear reactor for under $3 billion, so there’s no reason a nuke in the EU should cost €10 billion-€15 billion+ to construct. Something fishy is going on there, obviously.
Here’s what 45 years of nuclear waste looks like:
In contrast, if you gathered all the waste of a coal plant it’d be a lake two miles around and two miles deep (-ish, this math is not exact). And it would’ve generated more radioactivity in that time (for no purpose at all) than an equivalent nuke plant.
Mid Mid
Even though we can easily afford it, it’s still shocking how much a simple dinner for two is out at a mid-range restaurant. It’s more than 2x as much as it was before the pandemic.
The inflation numbers are convenient lies.
Drummed
I see the Covidians are still banging on about Long Covid and all that other shit. Long Covid is real, but it’s much less impactful to many fewer people than they’d have you believe. Covid is basically just a mild cold for 99.8% of the population now.
But it’s a religion and thus doctrinal beliefs are organized around it. Such is the human condition. As with QAnon, it’s a way for powerless people to take back some measure of control from an indifferent, uncaring world. Sad to see in both cases.
Cratty
What puzzles me about people like Ian Welsh and many others who worship at the feet of autocrats like Putin and Xi is…do they really think the world would be a better place with totalitarian leaders like that in control? Do they think their own lives would be better?
What in the world is the damn end goal there? Having lived in authoritarian countries (Egypt, China) I can tell you that what they imagine would be some paradisaical existence almost certainly would not be. And I will never, ever understand the obsession with Putin and their worship of him. He’s a petty thug. He’s a weasel. He’s got more delusions of grandeur than Anakin Skywalker. Worshiping Putin is fucking embarrassing.
America is not perfect. But if I had to choose, I’d live here a thousand times out of a thousand versus Russia. I truly do think Ian Welsh and all his Putin-cozying compatriots should emigrate to Russia and sign up for some meat waves being spammed across the front lines in Ukraine. If they are true believers, it’d make sense to show Putin their true level of devotion.
Of course they won’t do that. Because it’s all the middle-age equivalent of being a 15-year-old edgelord. Except even more clownish.
Oid
And for anyone who says Ian Welsh is not a Putinoid:
Fuckin’ LOL.
Kursk
Good for them — though I still think the operation is strategically pointless from a military perspective. Politically, though, it’s been a rousing success. It shows that Putin is weak, Russia is overextended militarily, and that Ukraine can execute a meaningful op if they are not held back by absurd restrictions on their use of force against a brutal occupying enemy.
And not as important but still funny, it makes the Putinoids like Ian Welsh fucking apoplectic. That is a small reward, but a nice one nonetheless.
Pricks
You can tell Walz was a good veep pick because it’s causing the Republicans and conservatives to engage in even wilder and weirder conspiracy theories and attacks. This time, though, the Democrats won’t let Walz be swift-boated. That was one of the most dishonorable events I’ve seen occur in the history of US politics and if there had been any justice in the world, the Republican party would’ve been disbanded from the inside after that.
But swift-boating won’t happen again — the Dems are smarter this time. Walz was a solid choice that pricks the Republicans where it hurts. They froth at the mouth when he is brought up even though he is a middle-of-the-road Democrat. But their bizarre reaction doesn’t have anything to do with his policies or politics; it’s all about the fact that Walz represents and is what they pretend to be but in fact are not: normal, loyal, duty-bound, humble and patriotic.
That’s why he deeply offends them, as there’s no one hated more than someone who is what you wish you were.
ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing.
The New York Times Is An Arm Of The Trump Campaign.
Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by diet and exercise even in individuals with a high genetic risk. What remains of the Fat Acceptance movement is probably crying into their ice cream.
With US Chips Act Money Mostly Divvied Up, the Real Test Begins.
Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Blitzed Russia With Electronic Warfare And Drones. Great, and also I love things that make Ian Welsh types sad or have cognitive dissonance.
How Algorithms Keep Workers Under Their Control. Who wrote and put in place the algorithms?