Sun. 05.26.19 – Today I went out and about with my cheap Amazon $12 extension tubes for Macro photography. I went out and explored yesterday to see if there are any flowers in Hyde Park that would work to take macro photos of. The answer was yes as late May spring has fully sprung in the London parks.
Thus, I took my extension tubes with a manual 24mm old Nikon lens along with my Nikon D850 DSLR out and took many photos up close. Very up close.
Here are a few of my favorites. Per usual, double click to see the enlargements.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 at Hyde Park in London, UK.
Hedgehogs, UK Politics, and general understated Amusement in this Metafilter post: “1566 seems very recent, but the hedgehog was around before then” Transcript of MP Rory Stewart’s hedgehog defense in Parliament in 2017.
Of all the possible Tory MPs possible to be the next Prime Minister, one can only hope that the Conservatives will vote for Mr. Stewart and not Mr. Johnson.
“The Wall Street financiers and C-suite lords-of-the-universe have made a Faustian bargain of their own, simply accepting that the President of the United States will have regular bouts of public insanity and upend the post-World War II geopolitical order because the Dow is up and taxes are down. This will not end well for them or for the Evangelicals, because everyone who gets in bed with Donald Trump ends up debased and disgraced. Often, he convinces them to do it to themselves. “
Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden
Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a “female thing”—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island. Unable to forge intimate relationships with other men, it’s women who are paying the price.
Trees of deep time are a portal to the past : The vanishing groves
A chronicle of climates past and a portent of climates to come – the telling rings of the bristlecone pine
May 2, 2019 – Here are some links for your pre & weekend reading. Enjoy. Photo above taken by Ms. Jen in early april while on a walk through Irvine Regional Park in California
Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction Into High Art
He worked as an engineer developing the technology to make Pringles potato chips before embarking on a prolific writing career. Known as the Melville of science fiction and celebrated for his inventive and challenging work, Wolfe died on April 14 at age 87.
Wed. May 1, 2019 – Happy May Day – be it of the traditional It’s Spring! style of May Day or the 20th Century Workers Unite! style of May Day.
Even with education, activism, and communities making an attempt to keep the skies in the American West dark, the switch over to more energy efficient lighting on and around homes and in street lights have made communities brighter than ever at night.
Two of the ‘rural’ dark sky spots that even a few years ago I could be astounded at how many stars I could see from a house or yard now are nearly washed out with too much light. Two days ago, I asked one of my brother’s neighbors to please turn off their front patio lights when they go to bed, kindly last night they did so but to little avail.
Rather than doing the currently fashionable photography trick of processing an astrophoto within an inch of its life to have an incongruous scene of lit foreground object with AMAZING Milky Way Photo, I have instead processed these photos as my eye saw them.
How did my eye see these two adjacent scenes last night? Bright street lights casting light domes to light up houses and to wash out the night sky to the point where one only really sees the bright stars in a constellation. While the asterisms were clear, but the detail was scrubbed out.
02.26.19 – Testing posting to this blog from my phone’s browser, as the official Android WordPress app will not save a post, it just throws error messages. Also, I am testing out an Android app, Photo Exif Editor Pro, that allows one to add exif artist/author data to a photo.
How are we at 2019 and I can’t set my name and preferred copyright into my camera phone’s camera settings to automatically write the data to the exif metadata? Adobe Lightroom for Android does not allow you to make a watermark, although they allegedly do for iOS.
Photo above taken on 01.13.19 at Huntington Cliffs, aka Dog Beach, California, by Ms. Jen with her Ssmsung Note 9.
Cory Doctorow: Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me
Technological disruption is everywhere from AirBnB to Uber to… Mr. Doctorow hits the nail on the head on the Silicon Valley’s obsession with disrupting industries as toxic, his solution though is a bit hand wavey. I personally never use Uber/Lyft or AirBnB for reason that Cory details out and my own reasons of objection to the disruption of the disruption that makes it worse for everyone. I will write my thoughts up soon.
“The Global Guides program at the Penn Museum hires recent refugees from the Middle East to give personalized tours. The leader of my tour was Moumena Saradar, a refugee from Syria who has lived in Philadelphia for two years.”
The Insect Apocalypse Is Here : What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?
I thought I had posted this link last autumn, but a search of my site has shown that I did not. Read it. Insect life is the second layer of foundation, after algae and plankton, on this whole planet. We can’t exist without them, and to kill them or ignore our responsibility in their collapse is horrifying.
Pre-wedding henna ceremonies have regained popularity in Israel’s Jewish Yemenite community, an expression of ethnic pride in their heritage and traditions.
Photo of unnamed succulent flower above taken at the Huntington’s Cactus Garden in late January 2019 by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 300mm f/4 lens.
