pixel skylines
Game of Thrones Daily
Keni
Cosimo Galluzzi
dirt enthusiast
wallacepolsom
One Nice Bug Per Day
AnasAbdin
Kaledo Art
roma★
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
⁂
Xuebing Du
YOU ARE THE REASON
trying on a metaphor
🪼
Sade Olutola
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
$LAYYYTER
Janaina Medeiros
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Netherlands
seen from Spain
seen from Australia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from Mexico
seen from Australia
seen from Singapore
seen from Türkiye
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States
@jjmccullough
I recently made a video about all the food in Mario Kart World, and as part of that I captured and edited screenshots of all the foods from the game. These images only appear briefly in my video, but I thought they might be useful to other fans, so here they are if you want to use them for something. Help spread them around!
Trump second term portrait update!
So, every four years I do updates on the presidential portraits. People don't really understand some of the nuances on this topic, but I've been posting about it for eight years now, so I think I've gotten a bit of a handle on it all at this point.
In the lead-up to a presidential inauguration, invitations are sent out featuring black and white portraits of the incoming president and vice president. These days, the colored versions are often released as well, which can lead to some confusion. The colored versions of the black and white inauguration photos are often wrongly proclaimed to be the "official" portraits of the prez and VP. They are not. "Official portrait" is kind of a vague term, but in this context, it's generally understood to mean portraits distributed for sanctioned government use by the Government Publishing Office.
Anyway, though I'm sure the invitations to Trump's second inaugural have been circulating for a while now, given it's on Monday, today was the day that the man who took the photos for them, Daniel Torok, released the color versions to the world, promoting much reaction:
Here, for reference, are the black and white versions as they appeared on the invitations. You can see JD Vance's is a bit closer cropped:
Last time, it took Trump a while to release the government portraits.
Can't let British people have air conditioning because first they'd call it something twee like "the climate fixer" and then in 20 years they'll call it "the climb" or "the climmy"
French kids would call it "le climot", frustrating language officials who would prefer they call it "machine pour le contrôle du climat froide à l'interieure de l'édifice"
King Charles portrait watch IV
On this, the 242th of his reign, and the third day since his coronation, the official portrait of King Charles III was released. It was taken by Hugo Burnand, a friend of the royal family who has taken many pictures of Charles over the years, including the famous "relaxed" picture of him in the chair wearing the red uniform. The New York Times has a good profile of Hugo, and the task the taking of this photo represented.
I did not think he would take a photo of him wearing the crown. I think wearing a crown is an extraordinarily difficult look for a man to pull off while still looking masculine and serious, which is presumably how an official portrait of a king is supposed to look. The portrait does, however, project a kind of regal old-fashionedness. It leans into the idea of the monarchy as an anachronism, but a grand one, rather than attempting to portray it as something in any way modern or modernized. The portrait represents a conservative judgement that the monarchy's greatest strength lies in its appeal to tradition.
King Charles portrait watch III
The British government has confirmed that an official portrait of King Charles, suitable for display in "councils, courts, schools, police forces and fire and rescue services," among other places, will be released following the King's coronation in May.
"public authorities who are eligible will be offered the opportunity to request one free framed portrait once it is released. Further details will be provided in due course."
King Charles Portrait Watch II
It is currently conventional wisdom among royal watchers that there will likely be no "official" portrait of King Charles released until after his coronation on May 6 of this year.
That said, in the five months since Queen Elizabeth's passing there have still been circumstances in which a portrait of the king has been required for this or that royal tradition. So what portrait is being used in the interim?
Eagle-eyed royal watchers at People magazine are on the case. They have now found proof that the portrait below, of the King and his wife is being used in things such as the "Happy 100th Birthday" cards that the British monarch traditionally mails out.
As they note, the photo was taken in November, during a London banquet held on behalf of the visiting President of South Africa. Prior to November, the cards featured a portrait of the couple from 2018.
In New Super Mario Bros., if a Mega Mushroom is used at the end of Level 8-5 and Mario pushes the red exit pipe all the way into the wall, then carefully approaches the goal pole without touching it and goes back to look at the pipe, it will have become glitched, displaying the upper half correctly, but the bottom half as a rotated piece of a yellow pipe instead.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source
News I can use!
King Charles portrait watch
It does not appear that an official, "conventional" portrait of King Charles III has been released by the UK government yet. I have no idea how the protocol for king portraits work. Under Queen Elizabeth, new portraits were churned out all the time, to various levels of "official" status.
The UK government in general doesn't really treat the monarch as a political figure incorporated into the bureaucratic traditions of the state. Commonwealth countries do, however, and often used very formal, posed portrait photos of Queen Elizabeth as symbols of government authority. So I suspect if we ever get a very formal, government-y picture of Charles it will be primarily for the benefit of the Commonwealth.
NATO is currently using this portrait of the King on their "heads of state" page, which I have seen other sites use and credit to "Buckingham Palace." It's actually just a cropped image of then-Prince Charles speaking at the UK's Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham, July 12, 2019.
Biden portrait update 4
Well the day has finally come. President Biden and Vice President Harris had their official government photographs released today.
If you will allow me to do some light portrait analysis, the president is depicted with the American flag and the presidential seal flag, while the vice president is depicted with the lesser-seen vice presidential seal flag. Both seem to have been taken in the same place, and are thus a lot more matchy-matchy than is usual for president and VP portraits, which are often taken at different times. The directly forward-facing look is a bit unusual as well, though Trump and Pence's photos were done in a similar way, so maybe this is just some trend in portrait photography I am unaware of.
The portraits dropped this afternoon on social media and I haven't seen any news coverage of them yet. So I got no other details.
In releasing their official portraits on April 8 of the first year of the administration, the Biden folks got this done several months before team Trump, who didn't release their portraits until October of 2017. However, the Trump people did make their inauguration portraits (see previous post) available for mass use prior to that, which the Biden people did not. People who work at federal buildings have posted photos on social media of placeholder portraits being hung since there were no publicly-available Biden/Harris portraits of any sort to display until now.
Biden portrait update 3!
Evidence has emerged that President Biden and Vice President Harris did, in fact, get inauguration portraits taken, just like every other president and VP. These portraits do not appear to have been shipped with the actual inauguration invitations, but they were shipped with special commemorative invitations. As is tradition, they are in black and white:
The portraits also appear on a special inauguration commemorative envelope available from the USPS.
Biden Portrait Update 2
I contacted the Government Publishing Office, which produces the official photographic portraits of presidents. They say the White House has not taken one yet.
Biden portrait news
There is no Biden portrait news to report.
New president, new portraits
Four years ago I made a post about presidential photographic portraits I now realize was somewhat in error. While it is true that a new president should, ideally, have an official photograph ready to go by inauguration day, as President Obama did in 2008 but President Trump did not, it is also standard practice for there to be a distinct inauguration portrait (of both the president and VP-elect) released as part of the package of novelties that accompany an official inauguration invite.
The portrait that was used as President Trump’s de facto official photograph from Jan. 20, 2017 to Oct. 31, 2017 was actually his inauguration portrait. President Obama’s inauguration portrait, and indeed the inauguration portraits of most presidents, is rarely seen outside of the invitations. The Senate archives has a nice online gallery of them.
It is less than 24 hours until Joe Biden’s inauguration, and I have seen no evidence online that his office has released, or even taken either an inauguration portrait or an official one. I’ve seen numerous posts on social media of people sharing their invitations, but none of them seem to have come with portraits. I guess it’s possible Team Biden has chosen to retire this tradition, which dates back to Franklin Roosevelt. Perhaps there is some convoluted Covid-related reason.
Searching the official Biden-Harris transition website (where official portraits tend to be found), I found these portraits:
They are not the right dimensions for government frames, so it seems unlikely they’ll be used.
The Biden-Harris inauguration store is also selling this elegant joint portrait, but it also seems unlikely to be used in any official capacity:
You can rest assured that I will keep you abreast of any official portrait news.
For fun, here is a story from the Atlantic about Biden’s vice presidential portraits.
One of the most irresponsible things you can do is travel without medical insurance. There is this fantasy among many Americans that you can get expensive medical procedures for free, or super-cheap in foreign countries because they have “free healthcare” and America does not. Here are the fees you have to pay in my part of Canada to just be seen by an emegrency room doctor.
3D render of Tails, from ‘Sonic The Fighters’.
Too pointy.
