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@cdarwin@c.im
2026-01-05 22:06:06

Posing as an ideological compatriot, John Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country.
He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers,
rifling through his files in the middle of the night.
He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials.
He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist…

The Militia and the Mole
Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.

@AccordionBruce@Mastodon.social
2026-03-06 19:28:01

The 🪗 #MarchingBand photo used on this week's @… podcast post (found by @…) is really something
From a story …

Hugo Helmer Accordion Band in the 1930s. Posed photo of the band of 30 players. Not marching, but like for a group school photo. Everybody with their big piano accordions. Big players standing at the back. Smaller one seated in the front. Hugo Helmer in the middle in a dark suit looking school-masterly.
Hugo Helmer Accordion Band marching down city street with uniforms including raked garrison caps. Majorette with no accordion in front.
Hugo Helmer's Accordion and TV shop (also sold pianos, organs, and Hi-Fi's). Man in business suit with hand resting on large old TV. Wall of shelves full of accordions behind him date this to the 1950s.
@compfu@mograph.social
2025-12-31 14:31:00

This video essay about the look of Sinners (which was shot on 70mm IMAX and Ultra Panavision) brought up something I hadn't realised until now: the large format gives you a wide field of view with the look of a telephoto lens! What that means is that you get shallow depth of field like in closeup shots with the framing of a wider angle lens.
Personal observation: there's also very little barrel lens distortion that usually comes with wide shots on 35mm.

Screen grab of the movie Sinners by Ryan Coogler. A black pastor is standing inside a room made of white wooden planks and beams. He's forming a silhouette in front of an over-exposed white window. A cross is hanging on the wall screen left and a church boy is out of focus in the foreground. Green lines have been overlaid onto the image to underscore that straight lines at the edges of the frame are actually pretty straight.
A very wide shot from the modern remake of Magnificent Seven, which was shot on 35mm film using anamorphic lenses. Outdoor scene in a wild west town with wooden buildings. A group of at least a dozen people in period clothing is keeping their distance around the central character. He is a middle-aged man with short hair wearing a black dress coat. He's pointing a revolver towards a person just to the right of the viewer. This shot is not the same framing as the one from Sinners but it demons…
@brian_gettler@mas.to
2026-02-28 00:46:31

Next week, the grad students and I will be discussing Don Wright's biography of my forebear at the University of Toronto and English Canada's national historian, Donald Creighton. It's an expertly crafted book that, while sympathetic to the famously cantankerous Creighton, doesn't pull its punches. It tells us much about how the academic discipline of history developed alongside a certain strain of conservative nationalism through the middle decades of 20th-century Canada.

The cover of: Donald Wright, Donald Creighton: A Life in History An older, bespectacled white man in a suit and tie (Creighton) looks off to the left of the book's cover.
@UP8@mastodon.social
2026-01-31 21:44:12

№ 3 Dalen Davis from the Princeton Tigers tries to block № 7 Anthony Nimani of Cornell's Big Red in Newman Arena this Jan 30, 2026
#photo #photography #sports

A black man wearing a black jersey with the red number 3 has his arms wide to obstruct a white man in a white jersey with the red number 7 while a referee right in the middle is behind and exactly between him with his whistle. Nike swoosh logos an be seen on the video sign behind them and above that spectators in red seats.
@mikebabyak@musicians.today
2026-01-01 21:31:18

Happy new year to all from Bev, Linus, and my bald self. Needless to say, 2025 was more than a bit on the dicey side—began with a fascist takeover of the US and leukemia on my part, followed by knee replacement and then hip replacement for Bev. Linus, knock on wood, has been fine. I’m in complete remission and Bev is fully recovered. We’re all up and running now, hoping for a healthy and less fascist 2026.

Head and shoulders shot of woman on left, longhaired chihuahua in middle and man on right.
@fanf@mendeddrum.org
2025-12-23 12:42:01

from my link log —
A Golang malformed HTTP POST mystery.
deliveroo.engineering/2019/02/
saved 2019-03-07

Go down the rabbit hole
Debugging a proxy that functions perfectly over the public internet, but fails when inside our Amazon VPC. Or how a friendly man in the middle sent me down a rabbit hole.

@leftsidestory@mstdn.social
2025-12-09 00:30:00

Urbanity - Urbana Decay ❤️‍🩹
城市化 - 城市的衰败 ❤️‍🩹
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford Pan 100
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Ilford Pan 100 (FF) English Alt Text: A black-and-white photo of a brick wall with a paper sign attached. The sign, written in Chinese, reads “Paint not dry. Please do not approach.” It’s placed near a doorway, with part of the interior visible, including a large container. The scene suggests a cautionary moment in a residential or public space, with the sign warning passersby to avoid contact with freshly painted surfaces. 中文替代文字： 这是一张黑白照片，展示了一面砖墙，墙上贴有一张纸质告示。告示用中文写着：“油漆未干，请勿靠近。”告示位于一扇门附近，门内可…
Ilford Pan 100 (FF) English Alt Text: A black-and-white image showing three large containers. The left container is filled with used disposable cameras, film canisters, and plastic packaging. The middle container is sealed with a lid. The right container is open and contains a liquid substance, possibly water or chemicals, with residue on its inner walls. The scene appears to document the disposal or recycling of analog photography materials. 中文替代文字： 这是一张黑白图像，展示了三个大型容器。左侧容器中装有使用过的一次性相机、胶卷罐和塑料…
Ilford Pan 100 (FF) English Alt Text: A black-and-white photo of a narrow alleyway with brick walls on both sides. The alley is paved with tiles and leads to a brightly lit exit in the distance. Several bicycles are parked along the walls, casting shadows on the ground. The lighting creates a dramatic contrast between the dark interior and the bright light at the end, emphasizing depth and texture. The scene feels quiet and urban, with a sense of solitude and anticipation. 中文替代文字： 这是一张黑白照片，展示…
Ilford Pan 100 (FF) English Alt Text: A black-and-white urban street scene. In the foreground, a large rectangular object with horizontal stripes sits on a brick-paved sidewalk. Behind it stands a tree partially obscuring a circular traffic sign. The background shows a busy street with moving vehicles, pedestrians walking and crossing, and tall buildings lining the road. The photo captures a moment of everyday city life with a mix of natural and man-made elements. 中文替代文字： 这是一张黑白城市街景照片。前景中，一个带…
@iam_jfnklstrm@social.linux.pizza
2026-01-22 09:13:24
Content warning: AI content

Ok, AI images is something some people avoid so I hide it. But this is todays feeling... nothing works out for me today.

An AI generated image of a middle aged man looking crazy/frustrated in a messy home office wiht a hole in the wall in front of him. There is a computer monitor in the background.
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net
2025-12-07 19:16:50

Series A, Episode 03 - Cygnus Alpha
BLAKE: You mean we crossed the anti-matter interface?
JENNA: That's impossible.
AVON: That's what they said about the light barrier.
JENNA: Well, which one next?
blake.torpidity.net/m/103/62 B7B5

Claude Sonnet 4.5 describes the image as: "This image appears to be from the British science fiction television series "Blake's 7" (1978-1981). The scene shows three characters in what looks like a dimly lit spacecraft interior or similar enclosed setting. The composition features a blonde woman on the left wearing dark clothing with lace detailing, engaged in conversation with two men. One man stands in the middle background, while another is positioned on the right wearing a dark high-collare…
@whophd@ioc.exchange
2026-02-24 10:23:08

Today’s rent-free image on YouTube
#jameshoffman #hamesjoffman

A tight close-up face of a young or middle-aged man dressed in a costume of a sea captain, or possibly lighthouse operator, sporting a dark hat that is part uniform and part cap, and holding a pipe (hand off screen). Most prominently is a fake white beard that has a tidy but generous thickness all the way up to the ears, obscuring them. The background is an obvious chroma-key of stock footage of the sea with a coastline a few minutes behind, trails showing departure.
@avstockhausen@fedihum.org
2026-01-10 08:35:02

Bookmarked: CoMMA: thousands of medieval manuscripts finally transcribed | Inria #HTR Transcribing thousands of medieva…

CoMMA: thousands of medieval manuscripts finally transcribed | Inria
Transcribing thousands of medieval manuscripts by hand would be a monumental undertaking. Fortunately, researchers in computational humanities at the Inria Paris Centre have been able to automate the task through the use of generative AI. Their creation is CoMMA, a giant, one-of-a-kind corpus that will now be available to specialists in the humanities, revolutionising the exploration of writing from the Middle Ages.

@Jyoti@mas.to
2026-01-12 02:44:17

In 2026, I'm gonna go to more #cons and do more #cosplay.
I had some amazing times at #DestinationStarTrek before Paramount nuked Euro cons.
I'd like MORE!

Jyoti Mishra, a middle-aged, bald, fat, Indian man, cosplaying as a member of the Star Trek Voyager crew. He is doing a goofy smile and throwing up a Vulcan greeting V-shaped hand sign. Background is a standard hotel room, daytime.
@pre@boing.world
2026-02-26 18:41:03
Content warning: Green Menace

Look out everyone, Zack and the Evil Green Menace are going to get you and give you free cocaine and cannabis. They're going to ban your landlord and allow refugees to earn a wage and tax you and they might even stop funding radical genocidal war in the middle east.
Vote carefully man! You should be scared!
-- The entire press.
Our media are entirely hilarious, threaten me with a good time.

@losttourist@social.chatty.monster
2026-01-25 14:32:16

We have a vegetarian haggis for #BurnsNight supper tonight. Not for any squeamish reason about eating offal, but simply because when looking at the nutrition information panel, that version was significantly lower in sat. fats and other bad stuff than the normal haggis.
Of all the things that as a young man I might have expected middle age to bring upon me, voluntary semi-vegetarianism was not one of them!