Trump is pretending to have talks to Iran, while Iran is trying to understand what this guy is even talking about. In reality, he’s deceiving the stock markets to lower the price of oil, while at the same time buying time for his Marine expedition team to assemble and arrive. I don’t even understand what he intends to do; in a 21^st century battlefield ridden with suicide drones, they are going to get wiped out within days, and then he’ll have to either run with tail between his legs, with losses too high to justify, or use nukes. Israel will certainly cheer for the latter option.

The insane ideologues of the EU are going to be completely incapable of dealing with the crisis that is going to hit, except by introducing more fascism, which has always been their solution to everything. Lock people down, tell them to eat cake if there’s no bread, introduce 256^th round of sanctions to Russia and preach bullshit to China. And by all means, keep virtue signalling something about windmills, solar, democracy and human rights.

Israel is trying to force God to send them the Messiah, instead of accepting the one he actually did send two thousand years ago. They actually seem to be working on enlarging their territory, as if that’s going to solve anything.

Trump’s people in the military seem to be thinking they are fighting the battle of Armageddon, trying to force Jesus to come for the second time and tell everybody that America is his chosen land or something.

All in all, in comparison, North Korea and Iran currently look like the adults in the room. The entire West has gone completely bonkers.

Me, I took a few pictures with my new camera last night. It felt so much like the Olympus Pen, that I actually thought “too bad that there’s no more light so the image is going to fall apart at ISO 1600”, and then I remembered that it’s not. Also, I keep expecting autofocus to suck, and it never does. Interestingly, I don’t think of it as a Sony, because the way I use it and the lens I have on it trigger different associations. For all intents and purposes, it’s A7RV in a different package, but the package matters so much that it feels nothing like A7RV; until I look at the images.

Both little lenses I bought are candy. No flare even with the sun in the frame, no CA, and crazy sharp. Also, composing wide and having everything sharp is interesting after a period of shallow depth of field.

The Iran war is going as expected – every day more things are burning, while Trump is trying to short oil prices in order to keep up the pretence. There’s a reason why people traditionally didn’t do that – I mean, go into more debt in order to be able to sell valuable assets under the market price. Everybody who tried, got to go bankrupt and starve. For instance, you hear there’s going to be a bad winter. Instead of hoarding stuff in the basement, you sell everything under cost, because no reality is going to tell you what to do. The winter came, you died and became a cautionary tale. Something like America is about to. Yeah, reduce oil prices artificially. That will make people buy your oil because it’s cheaper, and you’re going to run out, and the low prices will make people not ration, so your supplies are going to run out even faster.

Instead of making popcorn, I’m playing with photography. Specifically, with the small and light setup that I ordered. The A7CR camera is still in the mail, but everything else arrived. I tested the FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 lens; the small collapsible thing that comes in kit with A7C. It’s very good:

It also seems to work quite well on a macro extender, which is pocketable, so I can have both medium-range landscape setup and a closeup setup in very pocketable dimensions when I don’t feel like carrying the camera. Is it going to be as good as the A7RV? The sensor and the electronics in the A7CR are the same, and the FE 28-60mm, according to my test, is for the most part sharper than the FE 24-105mm f/4 G, except at 60mm, so yes, it’s going to be as good, at least on a sunny day when I work at f/8. Also, what can you do with some kit lens and extension tubes? Quite a lot, as it turns out:

Much more than I can do with an iPhone, that’s for sure. Those two were taken with Canon 5d, and EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 on macro extension tubes. I actually preferred that setup to EF 85mm f/1.8, because it was lighter, and the lens created a very nice glow wide open, which made the pictures look more magical.

So, that’s what I’m doing while waiting. Beats popcorn.