Oozeday

I was overheard to have said Exhumed this from a Facebook comment to repost here: About advertising, there have been two state changes in the business. One I unpacked eleven years ago, here: https://dsearls.medium.com/separating-advertisings-wheat… The most quoted line from th…

Ring of Fire in the Sky

Portuguese photographer Rui Santos captured this shot of the recent solar eclipse. Stunning. Here’s what makes this shot look a little different from other eclipse photos; from APOD: Usually the solar corona appears white, and to some observers the corona of last week��…

How to make a good Star Wars movie for once ....

How to make a good Star Wars movie for once. “Stop making stuff that’s so self referential and start focusing on projects that once again are bringing things from the outside and putting them in a Star Wars container.” Fan service is bad storytelling.

And also a trailer for season 2 of Star Wars: Ahsoka ....

And also a trailer for season 2 of Star Wars: Ahsoka. Huh. Lots of Anakin, but where are the space whales?

On What Still Hasn’t Happened

I posted what follows more than twenty-six years ago on Searls.com, which now brings up a danger warning because it’s still http and not https. (Yes, I’ll fix it.) It makes interesting reading today for several reasons, one of which is that much of what it (and The Cluetrain…

The Golden Hour Landscape Photo Tricks People Forgot

Everyone who likes to call themselves a photographer these days tends to focus on the idea of fixing everything in post-production. But that makes the whole process of intentional photography pretty moot. So here is what so many photographers have forgotten about when they make…

Trailer for VisionQuest , the third leg of the...

Trailer for VisionQuest, the third leg of the Wanda/Vision/Agatha trilogy. Huh. “Ultron! Human avatars only!”

In Bourgogne, they’ve been recording grape date harvests...

In Bourgogne, they’ve been recording grape date harvests since 1354. This year’s harvest set a record for earliest start: Aug 8. “From 1354 to 1987 the average start was 28 September. Since 1988 it runs 13 days earlier.”

Karen O'Hara, a 17-year-old from Co Leitrim who helps out on her family’s firm, poses with an an…

Karen O'Hara, a 17-year-old from Co Leitrim who helps out on her family’s firm, poses with an an autonomous tractor which she is learning to pilot. [farmersjournal Instagram]

Post-pandemic vaccination rates of US kindergarteners...

Post-pandemic vaccination rates of US kindergarteners continue to fall and “nonmedical exemptions” based on “personal or religious beliefs” jumped 0.8% in just 1 year.

Whoa, Columbia House (12 cassettes for 1¢) is finally...

Whoa, Columbia House (12 cassettes for 1¢) is finally going out of business after 71 years and several pivots (records to reel-to-reel to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to VHS to DVDs to Blu-ray).

Voigtlander Has Two New Lenses for Fujifilm Bokeh Lovers and Street Photographers

Voigtlander, owned by Cosina, has been reviving some wonderful lenses over the years. From the lightweight 40mm f2 Septon to the exciting Portrait Heliar 75QAmm f1.8, one has multiple options to work with. As part of their growing portfolio, the company is introducing two new pr…

The area known as Tornado Alley continues to shift...

The area known as Tornado Alley continues to shift eastward (from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) due to “a warming climate that helps transport warmer and more-humid air farther north and east than in the past”.

Stroppa Review: The Best Strap for Digicams and Point and Shoots

Unlike several other millennials and Gen X, I'm totally into the point and shoot camera world and the digicam craze. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are totally justified in wanting something that doesn't feel fauxtoshopped or touched by a billion processing algorithms. And I'd bring one ar…

Amazon's Book Woodchipper Facility has a cartoonishly evil logo because of course it does

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon's book buying operation, which hasn't been previously ...

The Orwellian Company Behind ICE's New Electric Shock Gloves

We can only hope that these lead to an epidemic of ICE goons accidentally burning their own dicks off. "With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars." That makes it hard for victims to sue. "In today's society, you know, everybody's filming everything, everybody has a ...

Do Not Talk To Me About "AI"

I had some cards printed up. These are unlikely to change any minds, but they will defintely shorten some incredibly tedious conversations at the bar. Here's a PDF if you'd like some of your own.

Today in Clown Storage: PBS

Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data: Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman confirmed the station's lawsuit against Iron Mountain and its dedication to retrieving the archival materials and programming, which she says span over "70 years of our ...

"Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this"

It was never about the money, it's about the impunity. Google oligarch Brin has now spent $100 million to avoid paying $13 billion in taxes. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated another $20 million to Build a Better California, an organization advocating against ...

DNA Lounge: Wherein today is Zero Cool Day

38 years ago today, Zero Cool hacked all those banks across state lines. From his house. Crashed 1,507 systems in one day. Biggest crash in history. Front page New York Times, August 10, 1988. Naturally, that means it's time for our latest installment of CYBERDELIA. Yo, ...

Youtube's joke of a fair-use appeal process, Total Eclipse of the Content ID Robots Edition

"Good news! Your dispute wasn't reviewed within 30 days, so the claim on your YouTube video has now been released." Bonnie Tyler died last month, and so the glorious "Total Eclipse of the Heart, Literal Version" by Persephone Maewyn and dascottjr was making the rounds ...

Today in Mr. Choppy news

In what-is-now-traditional journalistic malpractice, none of the articles about this have a photo or video of the guillotine. But I found one. Salem Brought a Guillotine To Oppose New AI Data Center. Company Reps Left, Feeling "Unsafe". Someone brought a guillotine to a ...

Outside Lands

If you are going to Outside Lands and don't want to install their crappy app, here's a calendar file of the whole schedule. Also, if you are going and we actually know each other in person, lemme know!

Today in the scraperpocalypse...

You may have noticed that my various sites were nearly unusable for the last 4+ days, and are still maybe not doing great. The current attack by AI scrapers is somehow of an even more harmful character than previous ones. During the last storm, I was able to weather ...

Please keep this clown out of Congress, redux

Scott Wiener, Ladies and Gentlemen: Wiener employs Anthropic's tech for an interactive attack ad, but all Chan's campaign sees is desperation: The Wiener campaign was in part inspired to create the chatbot in order to "lean into the AI craze overtaking the city," Arellano ...

Bummer and Lazarus appreciation post

TLDs used to mean things. We used to be a society.

I would love to hear the reason that all San Francisco government email addresses and services are advertised as being on the sfgov.org domain instead of the sf.gov domain. I'll bet the reason is deeply, deeply stupid.

Trillionaire versus Lettuce

Elon Musk is the world's biggest loser ever, having lost $800 billion in 7 weeks. Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen supposedly became a "trillionaire" on June 12 and lost that status 12 days later as nearly half of that money [sic] evaporated. Yesterday SpaceX and Tesla ...

DNA Lounge: Wherein the Surveillance-Industrial Complex is asking for volunteers

I am currently incandescent with rage about something else entirely that I'm told I can't talk about yet, so let me sublimate that instinct with this unrelated story: The SFPD "Real-Time Investigation Center" is the surveillance nightmare funded by a $9.4 million "donation"

Googly-eyed Kremlin bitch loses defamation lawsuit

Patel and the Kash Foundation sued Stewartson over a series of allegedly defamatory statements: Among the statements at the center of the lawsuit were claims that Patel "attempted to overthrow the government," "planned January 6," was "guilty of sedition" and was a "Kremlin

Amnesty International UK Caves To JK Rowling

[ REENACTMENT ]The organization has stood up to dictators and death squads, but Rowling and the UK's anti-speech laws were apparently too much. On July 8, Amnesty International UK released a report titled "A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK." The report ...

Still no QR for you

It has now been over two and a half years since Google has updated their aerial imagery of -- checks notes -- the sleepy seaside town of San Francisco. Still no QR for you. I guess they've redirected that drone budget into feeding books into the plagiarism woodchipper.

The Eye of Pizza is, Once Again, Upon You

As you may recall, my beloved Gakken World Eye shit the bed during a power failure a couple weeks ago, after having been on 24/7 for nine years. Since these are going for almost a thousand dollars on eBay, my first attempt was to buy the cheapest desktop video projector I ...

Igor

Wait, which one of these bottle blonde dirtbags is Igor the Carpathian?

We should rely less on the Nazi Bar somewhat.

After outcry, Meta reverses suspension of The Stud's Instagram page: Meta Platforms initially suspended its Instagram account after the bar said bad actors flagged old posts with false charges of "human trafficking," striking down a crucial marketing stream ahead of ...

Neuromancer

So there's a Neuromancer trailer out and it's exactly the necrophiliac snore you'd expect it to be. I already watched this show when it was called Altered Carbon, and it sucked. Nobody listens to me, but the only way to make this work was to have gone full Lisa ...

This is fine.

Prosecuted for using a duress code

US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system: The interrogation, including the questions about child sexual abuse images, was "a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick's connections" to the movement against Cop City, according to the ...

SF Officials Will Arrest You for Partying in SoMa, Also Really Want You to Come Party in SoMa

Do it our way or else! Two inbox items from Thursday, presented without comment: July 23, 2026 Press release from San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins's office: 18 CHARGED IN CONNECTION TO UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY ON HOWARD AND WASHBURN STREET. Today, San Francisco ...

I see Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen is also getting into the Antichrist biz

Tesla swapped a solar owner's lease contract for the Book of Enoch: A Tesla solar customer went to pull up their lease agreement in their Tesla account this month and found something other than a contract waiting for them: the Book of Enoch, an ancient apocalyptic text ...

DNA Lounge: Wherein another artifact comes to light

Today's VHS find: Pam Doré posted a video of the first night of Club Q at DNA Lounge, back in the distant year of Two Thousand and Two. Wait, we were still using VHS in 2002? Yes. Yes we were. 2002, in case you didn't know, was 24 years ago. How dare it. The nerve.

Please keep this jackass out of Congress

Scott Wiener, Ladies and Gentlemen: Trans community, allies condemn Wiener for exploiting a march he was asked to leave: State Sen. Scott Wiener was not invited to the Trans March. He was really, really not invited: In fact, Gabriel Haaland, one of the founders of the ...

SD

A one day task turned into a two day task because I'm not buying $7 SD cards for $45, out of principle.

The Eye of Pizza is No Longer Upon You

Yet another casualty of last week's PG&E antics: the projector in the pizza eyeball no longer lights up. Honestly I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did: it's been on 24/7 for nine years. Sadly, the Gakken World Eye is now going for almost a grand on eBay. So I ...

How The Sony a7V is Proving Entry Level Full Frame is in Demand

Camera sales are often a great indicator of how some brands perform over others. In more recent months, Sony seems to be the one winning the crown, with Fujifilm following suit. If you are someone who is looking to a buy a new camera, here are some options that you can, perhaps,…

You can hear the squeak of sphincters closing

How Claude marks AI-generated content is the most self-destructive utterance I’ve ever heard coming out of an AI company. Wow: When a supported Claude model generates text, it weaves an imperceptible watermark directly into the text itself. You won’t see it, and it doesn’t…

Doneday

No, neither makes sense I had two posts titled Whensday. Now there is one. It is re-headlined Densday. And give gentle advice Trunkline, the least-written of the three WordPress blogs I run and write for, all with the kind assistance of the good folks at Pressable, has a new the…

Could Insta360 Revive the Micro Four Thirds Segment?

Insta360 earned its name in the action camera market, with many people interested in daring sports, often using the device to record their talents. While the company is largely creating smaller models, a new report reveals that they are keen on pivoting to digital cameras. What…

“ Sand temperatures above 29°C now produce 95–99%...

“Sand temperatures above 29°C now produce 95–99% female sea turtles instead of the historical 50–50 ratio, creating a reproductive bottleneck that could collapse populations within two generations.”

A.J. Jacobs recently interviewed “the Papa Bear of...

A.J. Jacobs recently interviewed “the Papa Bear of Puzzling”, Will Shortz and came away with seven lessons he learned from him. “Creativity is usually more about evolution than revolution.”

RainyAgainDay

On my way back to Bloomington from Santa Barbara on Saturday, while I sat in the first row of an Embraer short-haul vectored to Indianapolis but delayed while awaiting its pilot and parked at the far end of the strangely long jetway at O'Hare's Gate C6, everyone in the first fe…

Return of the Spec

Agentic development is bringing a resurgence of "the specification". Maybe you've been writing detailed specs all along, but I've been mostly following Working software over comprehensive documentation. To some it'll sound like I'm some combination of crazy and lazy but historic…

Is the Fujifilm X-T2 Worth Buying in 2026?

In September 2016, Fujifilm announced the release of the Fujifilm X-T2; at the time, it was intended to be the company’s flagship mirrorless, APS-C camera. It would be another two years before I finally pulled the trigger on picking up my very own and, shortly after, it became…

Unwinding the Great Tech Power Grab . “If tech seeks to...

Unwinding the Great Tech Power Grab. “If tech seeks to replace democratic governance itself, then the response has to be more democracy, not less.” Lots of related links in this piece too.

We live in a world of ordinary abundance & luxuries...

We live in a world of ordinary abundance & luxuries only dreamed of in centuries past: music on demand, photographs, books, eyeglasses, refrigeration, vaccination, bicycles, and the washing machine.

Ozu in Color (Every Frame a Painting)

For TCM, Every Frame a Painting’s Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou tell us how legendary Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu made the transition to color filmmaking. His first color film was Equinox Flower in 1958 and it took a couple of films for Ozu to work out how to best employ col…

If the Tamron 50-600mm is Real, Birders are Bound to Love It

Tamron has created some of the most-loved all-in-one zoom lenses. The company's designs are great, the focus works well, and they are priced well, which works in the favor of many photographers. It now appears they are working on a new zoom lens that can compete with Sigma's mod…

Two new episodes of Ric Burns’ 1999 documentary...

Two new episodes of Ric Burns’ 1999 documentary series New York will soon air on PBS. “Produced by the same team that created the original NEW YORK series, The Future of Cities presents a sweeping and dramatic portrait of New York since Sept 11th.”

Yale study : “A single-payer universal health care...

Yale study: “A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace.”

I Tried to Recapture the Golden Years of Fujifilm Cameras

This year, I've been shooting images with seriousness for 20 years. And so I've been doing work to consolidate my archives -- which has lead me down some paths that I get really emotional about at times. You see, we published our Fujifilm X Pro 1 review in 2012 and our X100 revi…