canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
There's been quite an uproar in the press over the last several days about a manipulated photo of Princess Kate and her kids. Kensington Palace released the photo a week ago to combat rumors that the Princess of Wales, who's not been seen in public since abdominal surgery, is in ill health or even dead. The picture shows her happy and healthy with her 3 children.

Manipulated photo of Kate Middleton and family from Kensington Palace (Mar 2024)The uproar over this seemingly innocuous photograph arose quickly. Numerous photographers and digital image editors online quickly spotted small artifacts in the picture indicating it had been manipulated— or "photoshopped", as many call it.

In this particular picture all the artifacts are small. There's nothing so obvious here as a person with a third hand (because one was digitally added to the picture) or a curved doorway in the background (where someone "bent" the image, e.g., to make someone look curvier or slimmer). But still, it's become a scandal. "Water-Kate," some are quipping. Everyone from celebrities to even The Onion are bagging on Kate. In fact The Onion offers satirical recommendations from celebrities on how to 'shop better (12 Mar 2024).

Lost in the shuffle amid all the jeering and laughter is the reality of just how common "photoshopping" is in photography.

The term "photoshopping", BTW, refers to Adobe Photoshop, a powerful image manipulation tool published by Adobe. Photoshop has been common in industry for a long time. I started using it personally 30 years ago as a graduate student in 2D/3D computer imaging.

Pretty much all professional images you see online or in print have been processed through Photoshop or a tool like it. A good many image shared by amateurs have been "photoshopped", too. Virtually every image I publish in my blog has been touched up in Photoshop. Does being literally "photoshopped" mean they're all fake?

Just because an image has gone through Photoshop does not mean it is fake. There have been a number of interesting posts about that on X this week by Pete Souza, a respected pro photographer who worked in the Obama whitehouse. Souza took some of the most iconic photos of Obama during his time in office, including the famous photo in the Situation Room of the president and his team receiving live updates of Seal Team Six apprehending Osama Bin Laden. His thoughts are nicely summarized in a recent Buzzfeed article (15 Mar 2024).

As Souza explains, it's pretty much de rigeur for photographers to touch up pics by brightening or darkening, fixing highlights and shadows, and adjusting color balance. BTW, these are all modifications that could be done back in the days of film and paper photography, though they were very time consuming and required more skill than needed today with software like Photoshop. And for decades publishers have, correctly, accepted these alterations as reasonable.

Where publishers drawn the line on "Photoshopping" pics is adding, removing, or changing content from the image. Well, some publishers do that. In photojournalism it's not okay to remove an unwanted person from an image or edit the subject to make them look taller, slimmer, or curvier. In advertising, though... well, it's pretty much the rule that parts of the image have been faked to sell better.

In my own pics I do all of the things Souza talks about as normal. I adjust brightness levels and color curves. I also sharpen virtually all of my pics. That's because I keep in-camera sharpening set low as I don't particularly like it. Moreover, I apply sharpening anyway after resizing pics for online.

I also occasionally do the things Souza describes as no-nos for photojournalism: I edit out, or alter the shape of, people in the pics! I did that in one of the pics I shared earlier today from our hike at Flag Hill. Hawk was in one of the pics, a small figure in a wide shot, and her appearance was both distracting and unflattering. Since she was a small element of the pic I was able to edit her out pretty easily— by knowing what to do with Photoshop— and we both agreed the pic was better as a result.
canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
Do you struggle to find an appropriate souvenir when you travel? One that will remind you of the place and fit in your bag to travel and not take up too much space at home? How about... money?!

I kept a few bucks from the Cayman Islands on our trip two weeks ago.

A few bucks I kept from the Cayman Islands (May 2023)

My habit of stashing a small bit of currency from other countries didn't start as souvenir-keeping. The first few things I tucked into my collection were things I found by chance. Canadian coins. A German Deutschmark. Spanish Pesetas. US $2 bills.

My stash of foreign money ramped up when I traveled overseas frequently for work many years ago. Then, it was part practical. When I obtained local currency I couldn't always spend all of it before I went home. I did have a strategy for using up as close to all of it as possible. For example, late in my trip I'd shift things I could pay with a credit card, like a simple restaurant meal, to cash if I needed I had too much cash. Though when I anticipated returning to a country soon I'd often keep a larger amount to start off my next trip. That was useful because some times in-country you need local currency before you can find a convenient place to get local currency. (ProTip: research ahead of time where to find low-fee/no-fee cash machines in the airport.)

But usually, if I spent my cash down to the equivalent of a few dollars US, I'd just keep the change as a souvenir. That's what I did here with this $2.55 KY. At the pegged exchange rate of 1 KYD = 1.25 USD it's worth $3 US and change.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King!

"Why is the Queen still on the money?" you might wonder. Queen Elizabeth II of England passed away months ago yet her face is still all over the place in the Cayman Islands, a country which is still technically part of the British Empire. She's in framed pictures in government offices, her name is still on buildings and parks, and her likeness still fills the country's currency.

For those wondering why England's former queen is on the money at all, it's because Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory. Their head of state is the British monarch, who appoints a governor for each BOT. One of our local guides explained that things like the currency are changed only when the governor receives official instruction from the crown to change them. That seems a little weird... but then again, so is still being a colony with a foreign king in the 21st century. Apparently bringing this up to date with 2023... or even 1953... hasn't been high on King Charles III's list of priorities.

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Have you ever played the game of responding to news headlines that pose a question by suggesting the simple, brief answer that could make up the whole article? I've been doing that with headlines about the coronation of Charles III, King of England.

For example, one headline in an American news source the other day was:

Everything You Need to Know About Charles III's Coronation

...And I'm like, ooh, that's easy:

  1. The coronation is Saturday, 5 May 2023.

  2. Your American forebears declared independence from this antiquated monarchy nearly 250 years ago.

  3. Stop being an idiot.


Then I saw the headline:

How to Watch the Coronation in America

...And I'm like, wow, that's even easier:

  1. Don't.

🤣

UPDATE: Now that it's over, here's the best one-sentence summary of it.

canyonwalker: Malign spirits in TV attempt to kill viewer (tv)
One thing that struck me as I started watching Andor, the latest Star Wars spinoff streaming on Disney+, is, "OMG, the Irish have colonized the galaxy!" At least one-third of the characters speak with obvious Northern Ireland brogues. Most of the rest have other various British Isles accents, including a lot that sound to my ears like northern English. It all felt quite familiar, though, because I've been hearing the same accents throughout the 4½ seasons of Game of Thrones I've watched so far. The mid rim is the North, and the Lannisters are the Empire! 😂

The obvious explanation, of course, is that these shows are produced in the UK with actors largely cast from the UK. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. While it sounds strange to my American ears, it's no stranger than Brits wondering why every other damn fantasy/scifi show they watch has most of its characters speaking with US accents. It is a bit disorienting in GoT, though, that some of the actors' accents wax and wane. For example, Petyr Baelish spoke with a flat, Home Counties accent in seasons 1-3; in seasons 4-5 he's got a noticeable brogue.

An interesting fact I read years ago is that English accents were a deliberate part of the original Star Wars trilogy. George Lucas intentionally cast English actors in most of the roles as imperial officers and US actors in most of the roles as rebels. He wanted to play to American audiences a sense of the American Revolution, that scrappy American rebels were fighting for their freedom from heavy-handed rule by the British Empire.


canyonwalker: WTF? (wtf?)
"King Charles: 'I'm a self-made millionaire'" was the title of an article I saw today on CNN.com (published 16 Sep 2022). Riiiiight. A man born into billions, the heir to the British throne since age 6, is "a self-made millionaire".

The king's obtuse boast, which dates back to 2004 when he was merely Prince Charles, is sadly not limited to those born into royal families worth tens of billions of dollars. The myth of self-made success is common to all sorts of people who grew up unaware of their privilege.

Perhaps you've seen the quip, "Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." It's comforting to assure yourself that everything you enjoy in life, everything you achieved, is not because it was given to you but because you earned it.

Baseball metaphors aside, what forms does this privilege take? Here's a great meme I saw elsenet years ago. The original seems to have been taken down but I do have a text copy:

Behind every "self made" millionaire is generational wealth, family investments, nepotism pulling strings, secret capital exchanging hands behind closed doors, someone moving you to the top of a pile, deals made at country clubs, and elite education, and/or some type of access.

Is this literally true? No, because not every millionaire is a result of extreme privilege. Some of us get there from modest roots through intelligence and hard work. Also, being a millionaire isn't the exclusive status it was years ago. Nowadays many educated professionals in lucrative fields (law, medicine, science, engineering) who manage their money wisely can expect to reach millionaire level after a few decades of work. But replace "millionaire" with, say, $20-millionaire ($20M being size of portfolio needed to provide an independently wealthy life of ease today) and "every" with almost every, and it's true.

BTW, in the article it's explained how King Charles considered himself a self-made success because a company he started had earned him millions. Look to every single thing in the quote above, though, to understand the help he enjoyed getting there. Oh, and when his company failed 5 years later and he was facing millions of dollars of losses... a major retail chain made a sweetheart deal to rescue him. Normal folks don't have angels pick us up when we fall.


canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Queen Elizabeth II of England passed away today. At age 96 she reigned for a record setting 70 years. She will be succeeded by her son, Charles, who will take the title King Charles III.

How much does it matter that there's a change in the UK's monarch? Not as much as some in the media portray. I remember asking British colleagues years ago what they thought about some particular scandal or another involving the royal family at the time. "A lot of us Brits really don't care," they said. They explained that the kind of people who follow news about the royals in the UK are the same kind of people who obsess over Hollywood celebrity gossip in the US.

Part of the insignificance IMO is that Elizabeth II was a carefully nonpolitical queen. Put another way, she really didn't do anything. She rarely made her opinion known on anything. Will Charles III follow in her anodyne footsteps? As prince he's spoken out forcefully on certain issues such as acting to stem climate change; but he's also indicated (in the past) that he would cease such advocacy if and when he became king. That's a shame.
canyonwalker: coronavirus (coronavirus)
Vaccines for the Coronavirus are starting to roll out. The UK's health regulator approved the Pfizer vaccine for general use last week Wednesday (see, e.g., BBC News article 2 Dec 2020). The first 800,000 doses have already been shipped with millions more on the way in coming weeks. Similar progress is playing out in other countries, or will be soon. Vaccinating everyone will take time, though— months, really— so governments are having to decide who's first in line, who's second, etc.

The UK has prioritized vaccinating residents in elder care homes and the staff who care for them. I understand the value in vaccinating these groups. The virus has raged through these congregate living facilities, where residents are generally in weak health to start with and have limited ability to isolate themselves from people who might infect them. But should they be the first group? I think I'd prioritize front-line health care workers first and maybe seniors in care homes second. The UK does prioritize front-line health workers, but only in group 2 and along with everyone 80+. This BBC News article has a great chart illustrating the priorities (article updated 2 Dec 2020).

Here in the US our CDC made recommendations last week on who should get the vaccine first. Per this article in the NY Times (updated 4 Dec 2020) they place all 22 million health care workers in the first group along with the nation's 3 million seniors living in care homes. It's a nice plan to prioritize all health care workers... but there won't be enough doses at first. States will have to do decide whom to prioritize. And yes, states will decide because under our national inaction plan the CDC is only offering recommendations.

Okay, so once there are adequate doses for the initial 1-2 groups, who's next in line? The UK's plan goes largely by descending age category: 80+, then 75+, 70+, 65+, 55+, and 50+, with some allowance made for younger people with serious preexisting illness.

I've seen a variety of ideas proposed for who should get priority. One is to prioritize 18-25 year olds because they're superspreaders. That way they can keep hanging out, going to bars and clubs, etc., and stop getting everyone else sick. Another idea I've seen is to vaccinate middle-age adults first. The idea is the middle-aged adults are largely employed, which is a risk factor; are old enough that they tend to have one or more health risk factors; and many also have young children, who themselves are a risk factor. (Kids tend not to get serious symptoms but when they're infected they spread it just like everyone else.) Of course, at some point not too long after Day One of availability, money is going to be a huge factor in who gets the vaccine.

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canyonwalker

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