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jmoiron.net blog (Feed)
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The Pearl
I was asked recently what I thought about Graham Platner and realized that I hadn't really formed an opinion about him. I've not written anything about him, either on socials or on here, and it seems like the iron is rapidly cooling so I might as well have a strike. I live in…
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Big Tech Breaking Bad
The most hated people in America are leaders of big tech companies. This definitely wasn't true when I got into the industry, so how did we get here? Our current tech environment can trace its roots to the personal computer revolution of the 70s and 80s. There was a real DIY sw…
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Tehrant
In 1989, The Offspring released their self titled album. On it is a song called Tehran: In your plane in the blue sky You roam again Words that echo in your mind Make your heart beat faster This is no Vietnam…
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Wirth's Revenge
In 1995, Turing laureate Niklaus Wirth wrote an essay called A Plea for Lean Software in which he mostly gripes about the state of software at the time. Among these gripes is this claim which Wirth attributes to his colleague Martin Reiser1, though it's become to be known as Wir…
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Abolish ICE
Several days ago, ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. As is now customary, Stephen Miller interrupted his usual torrent of racist anti-immigrant abuse on Twitter to call Pretti an "assassin" and a "domestic terrorist" in an attempt to frame his killing as a justifie…
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On AI: Environmental Impact
Earlier in 2025, I started to poke around and experiment with using LLM-based AI. My purposes have largely been educational. While I absorbed the basics of machine learning during my general computer science education, I have never engaged directly with the topic and have not s…
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Sublurb
On Mar 30, 2025, Hank Green posted on BlueSky: Some of the critiques I’ve seen [of abundance liberalism] do seem to boil down to the old mainstay of “people should stop wanting the things they want” and I don’t really know how to handle that. “We don’t need more h…
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Politics is Real Life
Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah today, just a few short hours ago. As of this writing, the suspect is still at large. We don't know anything about their politics or their motivations. Kirk's body is not yet cold, but virtually everyone has already made up their mind about…
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Notes on "Abundance"
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance made a big splash when it landed in March of this year. I wanted to get around to reading this while on a train or a plane, but as luck would have it, I sleep incredibly well on both, so it's languished in my "to read" pile until no…
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Zohran Takes
A lot of us in NYC are basking in the glow of an unexpectedly decisive Zohran Mamdani victory last night. In addition to the happiness that an election night could be something to celebrate, there is some schadenfreude, or in the poetic words of Ashley Feinberg, an "incredible s…
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Long Hours in the Smithery
I recently came across "Odin: A Programming Language Made For Me." The author of the post has also written a book about the Odin language, and it's a really nice technical overview of aspects of Odin that he recognizes from programming practices he used at the game company "Our…
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Onshoring 996
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and formerly one of the richest people in China, has reappeared this week. It's not the first time he's managed this feat; he also reappeared in 2023. This time seems more impactful, because it was among a group of businessmen in the front row of…
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LLM Agent AAR: Recipe Management
I thought it would be useful to record my journey through various technologies on this blog, akin to Simon Wilison's TILs. Since my experience with LLMs has felt more like fighting a battle against their less desirable proclivities, I decided that calling it an AAR is probably m…
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Contact Light
I'm finally comfortable admitting that LLM no longer stands for Lunar Landing Module. After an 8 month break where my technical output was limited to updating this blog to use SQLite instead of MongoDB and creating a Minecraft modpack and a few mods, the itch to tinker and expl…
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Strawberries
If you travel in east Asia in the winter, especially to Korea or Japan, you'll find yourself somehow in strawberry season. This is because they grow short-day cultivars that flower and ripen in the winter. A few years ago, I bought some of the best strawberries that I've ever h…
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Twenty Twenty Five
My blog has been on hiatus for some time. I've not published a post since April 2022, which is nearly 3 years ago. I have been writing steadily in the interim, but I didn't manage to write anything that I felt met the bar that I had established for myself on this site. One of t…
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The Phoblographer (Feed)
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How a Photographer Lost a $259K Photoshoot to AI
I recently worked with a photographer to estimate and negotiate a project for a smaller sports apparel client. In our initial creative call, the client described the need for “dynamic and compelling” product images of their new retail line consisting of 100 items of athleisu…
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kottke.org (Feed)
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British political news: Nigel Farage is facing...
British political news: Nigel Farage is facing competition for his parliamentary seat from “a man with a trash can on his head, better known as Count Binface”. From the country that brought you Boaty McBoatface…
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City’s Beautification Initiative Hamstrung By Commitment...
City’s Beautification Initiative Hamstrung By Commitment To Local Artists. “I’m pretty sure when the mayor promised residents a revitalized arts district, he didn’t mean a couple of wonky fish sculptures haphazardly nailed to a tree…” Bwhahaha.
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First Image of the Sony RX10 V Shows a Major Design Overhaul
Sony has introduced some fantastic cameras for professional photographers over the past few months. It now appears that the company is keen on launching something that benefits enthusiasts who are on a budget. While there have been reports of the launch of Sony RX10 V, it has no…
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Is the Original Sony a7 Still Good in 2026?
Back in 2013, the Phoblographer reviewed the original Sony a7; our review can be found here at this link. In 2021, we questioned whether or not it's still good and I came up with a few suggestions on how to make it better if you've still got it. It's now 2026; and I still use my…
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Birding Photographers: This Will Protect Your Gear
Trust me when I say this, you're working your camera gear way too hard. That's why we created the Photography Care Program, in collaboration with Full Frame Insurance. Dust affects your camera and lens performance more than you think, and unless you're constantly cleaning the l…
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The Flashback 35 V2 Just Became one of the Best Compact Cameras
The Flashback 35 V2 is a camera that we said isn't just insanely fun, but we also rated it amongst one of our best travel cameras of the year. We say this even despite the cost of the camera rising and some issues with the DNG Raw file capabilities. Thankfully for the company, t…
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Medieval Wound Man
From The Public Domain Review, The Many Lives of the Medieval Wound Man, a diagram found in many medical texts beginning in the early 1400s. Living on today in libraries from Copenhagen to Munich, the strange figure of the Wound Man gives modern viewers a glimpse of the wor…
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If Only There Had Been a Sign That the Face-Melting Nazi...
If Only There Had Been a Sign That the Face-Melting Nazi from Indiana Jones Wouldn’t Make a Good Senator. “Marion Ravenwood said he trapped her in a room and physically assaulted her. But I decided to keep supporting Toht anyway.”
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Interviews with some of the dwindling number of...
Interviews with some of the dwindling number of survivors of World War II Japanese American incarceration camps, including George Takei.
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Why the Olympus XZ-1 Is the Comeback OM System Desperately Nees
Olympus has some wonderful cameras in their lineup. From the iconic GH series, to the newly launched S1 series, there is so much for users to choose from. However, the company has some fantastic cameras that were launched a decade ago, and some of them deserve a comeback. This i…
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Doc Searls Weblog (Feed)
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Will Apple Give Us Truly Personal AI?
A couple of weeks ago, in The George Carlin Model of AI, I said personal AI needed to work first on what George called a place for my stuff. Should Apple occupy that whole personal space, kinda like René Magritte visualized in a surrealist painting seventy-five years ago? I thi…
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World Cup Wallpapers for Your Phone
Marcos Paulo has been making all sorts of phone-sized wallpapers for the World Cup and posting them to Threads. You have to poke around to find them in his account, but here are a few direct links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Tags: design · fashion ·…
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How to talk about “AI” without adding to the...
How to talk about “AI” without adding to the anthropomorphization. Suggestions: “artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation” & “AI agent → probabilistic, unverified software manipulator”. Seems like the horse is out of the barn on this though…
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Mister Rogers visits Eric Carle’s studio and paints with...
Mister Rogers visits Eric Carle’s studio and paints with him (full episode). Carle wrote and illustrated The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other children’s books.
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Over the past few centuries, humans have decimated bird...
Over the past few centuries, humans have decimated bird populations — you can hear it in the thinning of the dawn chorus — but it’s difficult to notice sometimes because of shifting baseline syndrome.
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Hans Zimmer: Live in Concert
Martin Timko (aka matogolf) cut this video of the best musical moments from Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert. He plays a number of pieces from various soundtracks, including Dunkirk, Gladiator, Interstellar, Dune, and The Dark Knight. Great to hear live performanc…
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WANDRD Just Announced the Camera Strap of the Future on Kickstarter
Some camera accessories help one get the best of their device. An example is a trusted camera strap, which helps photographers to lug their gear around their shoulders with ease. A good camera strap is not just stylish, but also functional for various genre photographers. Ensuri…
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Sloan on Fable : “This is literally the core...
Sloan on Fable: “This is literally the core muscle of any/every language model: ‘I need to quickly and accurately understand what kind of document I am inside.’ Yet the sensitivity of that orienteering, the subtlety of it, has gotten so much better.”
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CIPA: The DSLR Made a Bit of a Comeback
The Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) has always been a beacon for the photo world's knowledge on sales. The agency's numbers have helped one to understand trends, and how those trends can affect our future. As part of the May data results, CIPA has revealed where we…
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New Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books: A...
New Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books: A Tradcath Wedding. “He pronounced the word ‘nuptial’ as noopt-see-all. If that’s correct, never tell me.”
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A Special Discount for Analog Film Photographers
We know that film photographers have wanted more of a price drop for a while. And we here at the Phoblographer have been working on getting the best things for our members. Today, we're introducing a new benefit: 10% off all film developing, printing and scanning services from B…
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35 vs 50 vs 85mm for Portrait Photography
Photographers who love taking portraits have most likely experimented with a variety of focal lengths; or they're at least curious about what each does for the genre. Popular focal lengths include 85mm, but in the past few years 50mm and 35mm lenses have become better and better…
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The Beauty of the Sigma Classic 85mm Lenses
This year, the Sigma 85mm f1.4 DG Art lens series turns 10 years old. This was one of the more highly anticipated lenses that came out after the company announced their global vision program. Now that most photographers use mirrorless cameras, they're probably reaching for the l…
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