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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • The shadows look fine to me. There’s a floor lamp visible at the right edge. The curtains are close to, and higher than that floor lamp, so the shadow goes up the wall and away from the lamp. The bookcase is further away and close to the same height as the lamp, so the softer shadow goes up only slightly. The “bottles” on top are close to the wall and therefore cast a soft shadow to the back wall from whatever unseen light source is lighting the subject from the front.

    Totally agree about the identity of the objects on the shelves and the existence/placement of the mirror, though. It probably is AI, but I’m actually more impressed by the consistency of the shadows.





  • Even referring to them as “T9-letters” is a massive neologism. Those letters have been on telephones going all the way back to the very first rotary phones when you were first allowed to dial a number yourself without talking to an operator. Before, you’d tell the operator you wanted “Wabash 3 - 1234” and they’d connect you to number 1234 on the Wabash 3 exchange. To dial that same number when the dial telephone came around, you would dial WA3-1234, or 923-1234.

    Here’s a great film from 1940 introducing people to the idea of dialing on a telephone and explaining how to use the letters: Internet Archive Link




  • There’s a lot of bitter sentiment toward Talarico among Black voters in Texas who don’t think their interests can be represented by anyone but Crockett. Lots of “he hasn’t done anything to deserve my vote” kind of talk, if that sounds familiar.

    The primary result shows that he is hitting the mark with everyone from progressives to religious moderates, but he’s got an uphill battle with Black voters and he’ll probably be spending a lot of time on messages like the one in the article for the rest of the year. I would hope that Crockett gets on board with endorsements and campaigning for him, but I think you may be right that she didn’t have that in her.



  • Even 20 years ago I understood it was always at his expense. He’s such a self-aggrandizing, self-proclaimed “badass” and the jokes were always riffing off of that. It’s like the same way you’d make fun of Steven Seagal.

    I mean, Walker, Texas Ranger was a show made by Chuck, about Chuck, where the day gets saved every time because the bad guys are no match for Chuck. The whole point of the jokes is that nobody was taking this guy seriously but him.






  • Please stop spreading this myth. You and I had this same discussion last year.

    There was never any “uppercase/lowercase” distinction.

    For the sake of anyone else who hasn’t seen this, here is the number plate out of a 1943 Kubelwagen (Nazi military vehicle) with capital-V “Volkswagenwerk G.m.b.H” across the top.

    And here’s the number plate from a 1959 beetle with the exact same name across the top over 15 years later, long after the factory had been returned to German control after being restarted by the British. The company didn’t become Volkswagen AG until 1960.

    Even when referring to the car itself as “the Volkswagen,” it’s still a proper noun and Germans capitalize all of their nouns anyway.




  • More precisely, HOAs operate in deed-restricted neighborhoods. When you buy a house in that neighborhood, you sign paperwork granting the HOA authority over your property and the right to enforce rules and fines usually up to and including seizure of the property. It’s literally written into the deed to your house that they get to tell you what to do.