ALWAYS REBLOG WHEN YOU SEE SOMETHING LIKE THIS PLEASE; ITS SO MUCH MORE THAN IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE. IT MEANS EVERYTHING TO SOMEBODY AND EVEN THOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT SEE THIS IN THE SAME LIGHT, SOMEONE MIGHT. INFACT YOU REBLOGGING THIS COULD STOP SOMEONE TAKING THEIR LIFE TONIGHT.
This article has a bunch of information about resources for Canada, broken into provinces and cities. https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/mental-health-in-canada-where-to-get-help-1.704877 Check it out, even if you aren’t in a crisis now, and find where you can go or call and WRITE IT DOWN SOMEWHERE! Make sure you have the information available if you need it someday. The national hotline is 833 456 4566.
You deserve to be here, you deserve to be happy, you deserve to be healthy, and if you aren’t there right now, just keep fighting for the day that you are
When I was first getting deep into photography, I kept running into lessons about the inverse square law. They would always tell you the effects and the math but they never explained the cause. Why does the light do this?
It's like when the doctor gives you a pill to fix something. You swallow it, wait a bit, and eventually you feel better. But you rarely know what the pill is actually doing.
So when it comes to lighting, you have to decide if you want to be the doctor who understands the why or the patient who just swallows the pill and gets the desired effect.
Every tutorial will say if you double the distance of a light from a subject, the intensity will drop by 1/4. They will give you a formula so you can do exposure calculations.
Sometimes they will refer to somewhat helpful diagrams with clues on what is happening.
But most just teach the easy version.
If you move the light closer, you will get quicker falloff into shadow and the background will be darker.
If you move it farther back, everything will be more evenly lit, but the background will be lighter.
The teacher will shoot some examples and show you something like this.
By the end of this post, I want everyone who reads it to *truly* understand what is happening.
Because if you understand it on that level, it will change how you think about light and photography. It will have the added bonus of explaining magnets and WiFi and even the sound coming out of your speakers.
If I am an effective teacher, this is something you will think about in your everyday life, even if you don't care about photography.
In a previous post, I talked about how light was a bit like a shotgun blast. The closer you are, the more concentrated the pellets. If you are farther away, the shot disperses.
But this wasn't the analogy I wanted to use. It was just the easiest to find visual examples of.
My preferred analogy was spray paint. And I'm hoping with some janky home-made visuals, I can do a better job of explaining the concept.
Let's start by explaining the humble photon. It's the fundamental particle (or wave) of light. Think of them like individual tiny globs of paint in a spray can. A photon is emitted when something loses energy. And unmodified light sources typically shoot out photon globs in all directions.
A point light source is a theoretical concept where a single point in space shoots light evenly in every direction. For our purposes we're just going to imagine a basic light bulb as the point source.
But our eyes and cameras have a limited field of view, so from here on out we are going to think of the light emitting from the bulb as having a cone shape. We are just concerned with what a camera can actually see.
Well, well, well... what does that cone of light look like?
I'm sure we have all used spray paint before. So let's imagine we are spraying a white ball against a gray wall. We spray for 1 second and hold the can at different distances.
In each scenario we are spraying for the same length of time and the exact same number of photon paint globs are emitted from the nozzle.
Let's think about what each scenario would look like from the camera's point of view.
Here is our unpainted ball and wall.
Here is the spray can held at Distance 1.
Note how the red paint is very concentrated and appears bold and saturated.
Distance 2.
Now the same amount of paint is dispersed over a wider area. The bold red spot in the center is more muted. And some of the paint is spilling onto the background.
Distance 3.
Everything appears to have a light red tint. The background and the white ball appear to have similar intensities of red. The coverage is very even. The same number of photon paint globs are being asked to cover a larger area so they are spreading out and diluting the color.
Okay, now let's exchange tiny photon paint globs for real photons.
I'm bringing back my baseball and showing these same 3 distances.
The nice thing about eyeballs and cameras... they can compensate for different light intensities. Our eyes have night vision and cameras have long shutter speeds, large lens apertures, and ISO amplification.
And if we compensate for the dimming caused by the dispersed light...
Photography teachers will tell you that if you move the light farther away, the background will get brighter. In reality, everything is the same level of dim and the camera exposure is brightened.
What if we wanted to spray the same area from far away without losing as much of the red saturation? We could add a super nozzle to our spray can that emits a bunch more photon globs in the same span of time.
This would be like turning up the power of the light. You have to emit a bunch more photons in that same time scale to compensate. Then you don't have to adjust your camera settings when you move the light farther away.
Let's look at a practical example of when you might think about the inverse square law to help solve a problem.
You have two subjects in a scene, and you put the light just out of view of the camera. You might be thinking that a larger light source is softer, so you want it as close as possible.
Unfortunately only one person is lit in the scene. She is getting the concentrated photons before they can disperse.
So if we want both people to have similar lighting, we can move the light farther away. You will have to comprimise a little softness. And you will have to change your camera settings or increase the power of the light.
Note that the intensity of light in the area they are standing in is very similar now.
By using a large light modifier, the photographer was able to move the light back and keep its general softness, but also evenly light both subjects.
And now I need to talk about one aspect of my spray paint analogy that does not work with the inverse square law. And it has to do with the specular highlight on the baseball.
Spray paint does not reflect paint. It just sticks to things. And reflection throws a tiny wrench into my explanation. Because parallel light rays do not obey the inverse square law. When you light something, the most central photons from the subject's perspective are going to be traveling in parallel. They have a direct path from the light to the camera lens or your eyeball.
Now if the reflection material is perfectly matte, the light will disperse and act as the inverse square law suggests. But if the surface is even a little glossy, the most concentrated parallel rays are going to bounce directly into your eye as a bright white spot.
And if you study this diagram a little closer, you might figure out why specular highlights are usually white.
If you look at the specular highlight on the baseball, even though the rest of the image gets dimmer as the light gets farther away, that spot stays bright.
Though the spot seems to disappear at Distance 1. Curious, eh?
It's still there. It's still reflecting directly into your eyeball. But the light around it is so concentrated and bright, the specular highlight blends in.
Which means if you have some nasty highlights on your photo subject, moving your light closer might make them go away. If someone has a shiny forehead, this can equalize the overall exposure and hide the shiny.
This guy has a bright spot on his nose. It is there in both photos.
But his face is so much brighter in the left photo that the spot blends in. It's a bit of a mind bender because the camera exposure is adjusted so the finished photos appear the same amount of bright.
You have to remember if you only move the light farther away and don't increase its power or increase the camera's exposure level, the photos would look more like this.
So if you make the rest of the face as bright as the highlight, it blends in.
Neat!
So, was I successful?
Does the inverse square law make more sense?
This is why WiFi gets weaker at a distance. This is why magnets lose their attraction when you pull them apart. This is why speakers get quieter when you move away from them.
I can't tell you how much knowing the why has affected my thinking about lighting. I see so many video and photo people talking about lighting setups who are just following memorized placements.
"Put a light above the subject at a 45 degree angle to get Rembrandt lighting."
But the second they encounter light doing something unexpected, things fall apart. They resort to trial and error and brute force the solution.
Knowing how the pill works can prevent that frustrating process.
I no longer care about the math. I can just visualize the cone of influence and predict what will happen. Understanding the behavior of light and not just the end effects has made everything more intuitive. I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to understand this. But, hopefully, this post has shortened that journey for you.
Here's the info from that article (with a lot of heavy editorializing from me):
Don't call or text; you want to leave as minimal a traceable digital footprint as possible and cellphones are extremely traceable. The Trump admin is committed to collecting metadata from journalists who receive leaks and that includes call history and who sent text messages; even if the message gets deleted there is a record of it with the carrier that can be subpoenaed.
If you are going to email, do so from a burner account created for the purpose of leaking/whistleblowing. (my advice: use a service like protonmail that allows you to encrypt messages and doesn't collect any data beyond what is absolutely necessary for an email system to function; email is inherently insecure you have to treat it as insecure, but a burner account at a privacy-focused company like proton that facilitates sending encrypted messages is the best option for email; here's some information about how to use protonmail as privately as possible)
When setting up your burner email, do not use your phone number for 2FA or include any accurate biographical information during the account setup. Set up the account while using a traffic anonymizer like Tor. Here's a PDF about what Tor is and how it works and here's the Tor project's manual explaining how to install and configure the browser for privacy. (The article advises to use Tor or a VPN but that raises the question of whether you trust your VPN provider; if you are going to use a VPN use one of the ones recommended by privacyguides; I know fuck all about VPNs but I know I wouldn't trust most VPN providers in this context).
Don't reach out to the person you're leaking to on social media. I feel like this should be obvious, but it may not be - don't reach out through meta or X or tumblr, these are not anonymous platforms and they can and will be compelled to share messages sent to journalists or data sent from your account. Don't follow the people you're leaking to (unless you already happened to be following them), don't interact with their posts. Do not make any kind of visible connection between you and the person you are leaking to.
Be careful about using encrypted messaging platforms. I personally wouldn't trust telegram or whatsapp, and I haven't heard of Session until now, but generally speaking Signal is one of your safest bets for sending messages. Signal collects the smallest amount of user data it can, and while it does require a phone number to sign up, the phone number doesn't have to stay connected to your username. If you don't already have a signal account, create one NOW because one of the things that they do track and can be compelled to disclose is when an account was created. If an account is linked to you and it was created shortly before a leak, that's suspicious. Create an account now and have it handy for when you need it.
IF you are using signal, be aware that people can still screencap your messages; don't share personally identifying data via signal chats.
Have good opsec about how you collect the data that you're going to leak. For example, don't email yourself a copy of the data from your work email account, take photos of the data on a non-work phone and then strip the metadata. If you require login access to get the info you're looking to leak, figure out if there's a way that you can make the leak more ambiguous about the access by making sure there's time between your access and the leak, or that the time of your access isn't included in the information that is leaked. Take a lot of time to think about how someone might track a leak back to you and take steps to mitigate that.
Don't save copies of the data that you've leaked; once you've passed the message on to people who can get it out there, destroy any copies that you had.
GlobaLeaks and SecureDrop are tools to securely share leaks with organizations that will publicize the information you're sharing while protecting you to the best of their ability. Do not access those sites through your normal browser when you are preparing to leak data, only access them through Tor.
Be cautious about who you leak to. (Look I love the team at It Could Happen Here but you don't share a leak with a podcaster you share a leak with a group like Distributed Denial of Secrets). Focus on groups that have a history of securely sharing leaked info and on outlets that might have some legal protection from sharing information about you. The Intercept and DDoSecrets are the two that spring to mind immediately for me. (In fact I got the screenshot at the top of this thread because I went searching for this intercept article to paste on to a reply to another post but then this happened so here we are). Both of those links have their tips for leakers, btw.
It isn't stated elsewhere here so I'll add it at the end: if you are using Tor, don't log in to personal accounts that are associated with your real name or your private data. If you create burner accounts, don't use them to communicate with accounts associated with your real name or private data.
Also don't tell people - partners, parents, friends, etc. - that you're going to leak something.
And, I cannot emphasize this enough, do not tell me or any other tumblr user if you have data you are thinking about leaking or a hack you think you've pulled off. Don't talk about doing crime on the internet and definitely don't talk to me about it. Don't send an anonymous ask, don't send a private message. "The hacker or hacker-adjacent person I parasocially know from tumblr" is not a safe recipient for your leak and tumblr is not a secure or anonymous platform EVER.
On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.
This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.
Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.
devonthenatureguy / devonthenatureguy has some good advice on how to write comments for this here (transcribed below):
"Start With Who You Are (1-2 Sentences)
Are you a student? A scientist? A nature lover?
Where are you from?
Why does protecting wildlife matter to you personally?
Example:
"I am a wildlife biology student from Minnesota who has spent my life studying and caring about endangered species."
State Your Stance Clearly
Use clear language!
Example:
"I strongly oppose the proposed redefinition of 'harm' under the Endangered Species Act."
Explain (2-5 Sentences)
Pick 1-2 reasons you care about.
Some examples:
Habitat destruction is the leading cause of species extinction.
If habitat loss no longer counts as "harm" species will be pushed closer to extinction.
The ESA has been successful because it recognizes how critical habitat is.
Weakening protections violates our responsibility to future generations.
Close with a Call to Action (1-2 Sentences)
Urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to withdraw the proposed rule.
Example:
"I urge you yo maintain a strong, science-based interpretation of 'harm' that includes habitat destruction, and to withdraw the damaging proposed rule."
Remember
Be respectful. Anger is valid, but agencies are less likely to count rude or aggressive comments.
Be specific. Even a few personal or factual details make your comment stronger.
One original comment per person. More thoughtful comments = stronger legal weight. Don't use template responses or sopy and paste text.
And remember, every voice counts. Spread the word!"
i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping
this also goes for aesthetic or -core titles. 'y2k tank top' is going to get you resellers and fast fashion brands advertising to people looking to meet a current trend. 'thin strap crop tank top' is going to get you a diverse group of results and not upcharge you to hell and back
additionally, shop second hand when you can, second hand and thrift sites typically organize clothes by the cut and color. theyll be more affordable than a depop seller curating you a style to sell you
if you or someone you know might need it in the next few years, purchase plan b. the shelf life of plan b is 4 years, and we might not be able to access it as easily as we can now in the days ahead.
if you are larger/plus size: go online and purchase ella instead of plan b. plan b is less effective if you aren’t under 160 pounds.
if you can, purchase books that project 2025 is looking to ban.
mass deportations are starting. if you see ice vehicles or agents, yell ice raid and la migra as loud as you can.
if someone asks who you voted for, keep your mouth shut. they’re fishing for traitors.
if anyone, anyone at all asks about your neighbors or their legal status in the us, you know nothing. don’t be the reason that their family is separated.
if anyone asks about your religion or lack thereof, keep it vague. this administration will look for any excuse to persecute you.
your friends are trans or queer? for the next four years they’re not. don’t expose anyone’s status as a trans or queer person to anyone else, even if you think you can trust them.
did someone you know get an abortion? no, they didn’t. they were never pregnant.
in short, don’t be a snitch, and keep to yourself these next four years. we’ll make it through this even if it seems hopeless at times.
we can survive this. we’ve survived before, and we’ll survive again.
1. Don't keep to yourself. Check in with your friends and your loved ones and your neighbours. Nothing leaves the room it's said in, nothing is posted on social media, but always remember to stay connected with the people who care about you. Isolation kills, and all of us need to help keep each other sane. (Obviously if people treat you like shit yeet them, I only mean people who respect you for who you are and reciprocate your care)
These are both good posts, though I'm not in complete agreement with all details of either of them. Here are some more additions.
Do not comply in advance. Project 2025 and the executive orders are meant to overwhelm and frighten people into giving up and making their own selves disappear or their causes be destroyed. Don't do that favor for the government. When your oppressors say they'll make it hard for you, don't make it easy for them.
Hiding one's religion, sexual orientation, and other marginalized statuses can help some people survive, but they aren't an option for all of us. There are counterarguments that being visible can be-- for some of us-- a more effective solution for surviving and standing against fascism.
Quit social media platforms that are run by fascists and could be used to snitch on yourself and others. As long as you’re there, you’re giving money to fascists by being a content provider, even if you’re not paying a subscription. You can’t fight the normalization of fascism by continuing to contribute to a fascist space. Build and use alternatives to them. Encourage your friends to move from Facebook, Instagram, and X to BlueSky, Mastodon, and private mailing lists.
Contraception: Project 2025 opposes all methods of preventing or ending pregnancy. Here are three resources from Scarleteen: Birth Control Bingo and the Pregnancy Panic Companion walk you through which options you have for your situation, and this list of abortion resources and crisis hotlines that won't call the police.
Book bans: Project 2025 wants to ban all books that have LGBTQIA or sexual themes by calling them pornography, and all books that have fantasy themes by calling them occult. This spreadsheet has a list of books that are banned or will soon be banned, and websites with resources about banned books. Learn how to preserve a digital archive of banned books.
Organize. We all need to survive and look after one another, even people who are difficult to get along with. Organize support groups, mutual aid groups, and worker's unions. Unions get targeted, but they are essential for standing against fascism, and a workplace without a union is dangerous anyway.
WHO tf keeping pads with no wings in production?? Put it in your draws and by the time you walk out the bathroom it’s down the street buying scratch offs at the corner store. Like girl
me clicking on a video from the silliest man in the world: teehee what wacky hijinks await me
world renown block clown mumbo Fucking jumbo: you ever think about how old technology seems to live forever in the suspended state of whatever the newest advancements were at the time. how most technology immediately and fundamentally tells you when it was important and when it was left in the dust. it’s suspended in its era forever, and in that it is perfect.
stagnation is a form of death but nostalgia is cruel immortality. still i find myself locked in pursuit of it until i finally stumble across the undeath of the mechanical. as my hard earned improvement truly begins to pay dividends, surrounded by my opus of change, i will freeze myself in eternal utopia. the only way to never die is to preemptively kill whoever you might become. i will not have a grave, i will not be ashes and dust. i will be a perfect, extant machine.
me: Ok. i dont think this will plague me at all actually. like video.
here's my analysis for anyone who was as puzzled by this as I was on first read:
When the iPhone 3 came out, it was the glorious cutting edge of technological advancement of its kind. Because of how fast tech advances, we can tell immediately from the shape of the device when it was made, how well it served its purpose, and why it looks how it does. In this way, its static form captures a singular moment in time.
(That’s something that makes tech different from, say, a particular chair, which could have been made whenever.)
Nostalgia, broadly, describes when an object (or a show, song, etc) carries with it a powerful memory. The iPhone 3 carries with it an image of 2008 that will last forever, giving it a sort of eternity which Mumbo thinks is equivalent to immortality.
In stark contrast, living things by their nature change constantly. We grow and learn, our bodies are constantly replacing bits, and our memories are altered by the very act of remembering them.
And so, the description of mechanical existence as undeath.
It’s like a wizard becoming an immortal Lich, ‘escaping’ death by becoming dead.
The "opus of change" likely refers to the masterwork that is the process of transforming himself into a machine, marking another juxtaposition of Transformation (characteristic of life) as a means to achieve stasis (comparable to death)
“Hard earned improvement begins to pay dividends” I don’t fully understand but I assume is the same (improvement, a form of change, used in pursuit of stasis.)
There's the old quote, 'You can’t step in the same river twice' (originally ‘Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow’, Heraclitus ~500BC)
You are not the same person you were five years ago. To be alive is to change, and to change is to allow your past self to die.
Mumbo turns this around, looks forward to see his future self allowing his current self to die. In order to prevent that change, you must kill your future self by becoming unchanging in the way that a machine is unchanging.
He sees the static, lasting memory (nostalgia) that old technology contains as a form of perfection (“In that it is perfect”) - and as the only form of eternity that exists - and so he tries to apply the same principle to himself. “Freeze myself in eternal utopia” “perfect, extant machine”
The principle isn’t transferable, because people are not objects. “Stagnation is a form of death” for living things. He understand this, but he decides he must do it anyway. That’s what makes nostalgia a “cruel immortality”.
Escaping death by forsaking life.
The choice of the word "extant", is very deliberate. 'Extant' is defined as 'still existing, not destroyed' usually used as the opposite of 'extinct'. He doesn't describe his goal as a 'living machine', nor enduring, everlasting, continuing. Just extant.
Because at that point, that's all that you can say about it. Machine Mumbo Exists. It has not been destroyed. But that's all.
It's a beautifully written prose poem. It tells a story of someone who only sees the world in a very specific way. A story of folly. Or, depending on your perspective, a story of triumph.
