Category Archives: society

Misapprehension

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I was thinking about something in quite a roundabout way, so please bear with me.

I’ve heard photographers talk about “3D pop” effect of certain lenses, and initially I didn’t understand what they are talking about, because it’s stupid. Then I understood what they were saying, but I still think it’s stupid.

You see, the so called “3D pop” effect in a picture isn’t caused by the lens, it’s caused by the light and what it does in a scene. If the light is “flat”, basically if the weather is cloudy and the whole sky is a softbox, the volumes in the images aren’t being lit in ways that show their 3D nature. Also, lighting can help separate the planes; if there’s a vehicle in the mid-plane, and it’s lit horizontally by sunlight, and the mid-plane is additionally separated by the depth of field, it’s going to “pop”, appearing quite three-dimensional.

The effect is magnified if the lens is sharp and contrasty, so that the shadows and reflections are precisely defined, and there is no haze in the image.

The effect is reduced if the lens is not stopped down correctly, if the depth of field is too shallow or too great. If it’s too shallow, it doesn’t encompass the whole motive in focus; if it’s too great, it doesn’t allow the foreground and background to fade, isolating the motive and allowing it to stand out. So, basically, for the most part it has nothing to do with some magical property of Zeiss or other lenses; it’s about illumination of the scene and basic photographic technique. People who talk about this have noticed that something is going on, but they mistakenly think it’s about the lens.

3D pop with the most basic 50mm lens

Why am I talking about this?

I was wondering why the American Christians are so aggressively helping Israel, when the modern Jews are by definition the part of the Hebrew religious community that is defined by their rejection of Christ. One could say that the Jews accept most of what Christians call the Bible, which is technically true, except for the fact that they reject the part that matters most to the Christians because it defines their entire faith, and they accept the part which the Christians have included for the sake of historical context, to explain why Jesus was important, why his teaching is exceptional, and why there was no salvation without him. Essentially, in order for the solution presented by the Christ to be understandable, they had to show what the problem was, and the problem was exactly the part of the Bible that the Jews believe in, while the solution is the part they vehemently reject. By all rational standards, the Christians should not like the Jews very much, and historically that was exactly the case. They thought of them as slanderers of Jesus and Mary, as blasphemers and liars, and considering what was revealed to me recently, that seems to be exactly the case. So, why are the American Christians so intensely supportive of Israel?

From what I can tell, they think the world will end when the conditions described in the Revelation of John, also known as the Apocalypse, are fulfilled, and since it’s all about the events that are happening in the territory presently known as Israel, they concluded that a Jewish state needs to exist there in order for the battle of Megiddo to take place; the Harlot, Beast and Antichrist to be revealed and destroyed by the second coming of Christ, and the world to end.

The problem with the Revelation is that it’s part rehashing of the Old Testament, part insane rambling. It’s the part of the Bible most beloved by crazy people, and it’s obvious why. Some part of it might indeed be prophetic or inspired. Most of it, however, is raving madness. If you’re informing your worldview by that text, you have a serious problem.

A large number of people are doing exactly that, and they are going even further: they are actively working on making it come true, by setting up what they see as necessary conditions for the second coming of Christ. This unfortunately isn’t without precedent, because Jesus did certain things “to fulfil the scriptures”. Essentially, it’s like “predicting” that you’ll die on a certain day and then killing yourself so that you get to be a prophet.

Essentially, those people seem to think that God is somewhat stupid and can’t seem to get his shit together about the end of the world, so they’ll get out and push, basically. They’ll set up the conditions described in the Bible as preceding the end of the world, and they will even make the battle of of Megiddo take place. Not only that: they will even make other things described in the Revelation a reality, as if to bring reality closer to their religious framework, and then use that as an argument – “you see, it’s all coming true!”

You can see why I started with the story about the “3D pop” effect. People tend to perceive something real, but then confuse all sorts of things and derive all sorts of weird conclusions, and I see this sort of weird thinking everywhere. In this case, I’m afraid, we have a weird cult of American crazies who are trying to enact Armageddon so that their JeeeEEEzasss!!! would finally come, and they are used by another cult of Jewish crazies who are trying to enact the supposed conditions for the arrival of their Messiah. Both think God is stupid and senile and needs to be prodded a little because he can’t seem to get his shit together, so they need to get out and push.

Fejka

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I’ve been wondering why LLM fake-AI systems manage to be so effective, since they are essentially glorified autocomplete; basically, they are a neural network based probability engine that determines what’s the most likely next word in a sentence.

Maybe because most humans are a neural-network based probability engine that’s also very good at figuring out the next thing that’s expected for them to say. And then this crossed my mind:

“FEJKA artificial potted plants don’t require a green thumb. Perfect when you have better things to do than water plants and pick up dead leaves. You’ll have everyone fooled because they look so lifelike.”

That’s what most people are. They are a fejka. LLM systems merely stumbled upon this fact by accident. A fake artificial intelligence can learn to finish sentences, paragraphs and entire articles in passable ways because that’s what fake human intelligence does – finish sentences in a “correct” way in order to avoid ridicule and punishment. Everybody knows what to say and all their conversations are formulaic and predictable to the point where someone learned how to make a computer system that does the same thing.

It’s not just text. People learn how to take photographs in a formulaic way that gets them acclaim and avoids ridicule. They learn how to have spiritual experiences that will get them acclaim and avoid ridicule, because they are of the exact same kind as everybody else’s, which is what created the idea of religions having the same origin and goal and it’s all the same thing. It’s because everybody has been copying homework from others. They are all fejka plastic potted plants. Looks like the real thing, but even better, because you don’t have to water it.

Now that I think about it more, human brain seems to be very good at doing the human autocomplete thing on autopilot when there’s no soul in the driver’s seat. The corollary is that spiritual awakening is the point where a soul wakes up in the body and actually starts perceiving things, paying attention and controlling actions – “oh fuck, I’m driving a car”. That’s why actual souls can be perceived as weird compared to a fejka NPC – a fejka knows what it has to say next. An actual soul has to figure it out, and is likely to say the “wrong thing”.

Cringe

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I just watched a video from a famous photo YouTuber on how everything that resembles stuff that can be AI generated is now “cringe” – essentially, the highly polished, fancy stuff – and things that are lo-fi, such as film or photography that looks like it was taken with a phone, are “trending” now, and if you want to be “in”, you should do that now.

People who wanted to be “in” went to Epstein’s island to fuck children and worship Baal, or they waited in line to suck Weinstein’s cock. Makes you think that something might be inherently wrong with trying to fit in with the cool crowd, following trends and doing “whatever it takes” to succeed.

I hate fake people. I see them everywhere – in photography, politics, business, spirituality. They all know what you need to say and do to project a certain impression. Even “being authentic” is a thing that’s routinely faked.

So my answer to this newest trend of “avoiding cringe” and “being authentic” is “fuck you and the horse you rode in on”. Fuck everything about you. Go find a trendy cock to suck somewhere and shut the fuck up. There is nothing cringier than the vacuous trend followers trying to fake authenticity because it’s trending. Get fucked.

Dissatisfaction

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I’ve been thinking about something recently, how “better” isn’t really a simple metric; as mathematicians would say, it isn’t a scalar, where 5 is bigger than 2. For instance, I have a 50mm f/1.8 lens that I like a lot because it’s small and light and it’s something I can take for a walk when I have no expectations to get usable pictures, but it still has good minimum focusing distance, excellent sharpness and so on. It has issues – focusing motor is loud and slow, and it has lots of chromatic aberrations wide open on contrasty areas. Also, it doesn’t have a MF/AF switch to turn AF off quickly when it starts struggling. So, I thought about upgrading it, getting a better 50mm lens.

That’s where we encounter a problem, you see, because optically speaking nothing is that much better. If a lens is ergonomically better, it’s also bigger and heavier, not to say much more expensive, and that removes most of the reasons why I like a 50mm. So, I could get a 50mm lens that’s slightly faster, has better focusing and more mechanical switches and controls on the lens itself, but is half a kilo heavier and costs a really significant chunk of money, and let’s say I bought it. Would I carry that to a walk when I want to carry the lightest possible camera? No, of course; I’d still take the 50mm f/1.8, because it’s light and small, it’s sharp enough, versatile enough, and looks unassuming. I can get a 50mm f/2.5 G, or a similar thing from Sigma, which has better controls and it’s still small and light, but I’m actually losing aperture and therefore photographic versatility. So, basically, something that’s technically not the best lens is actually exceedingly hard to upgrade, because gains and losses don’t come in simple packages; essentially, “better” is not a simple scalar.

This creates a silly situation where my cheapest lens is apparently here to stay because it almost perfectly fits the role I have for it. It needs to be cheap, light, small and good. It’s not something I use for stuff where I need absolute image quality; I just need it to be very good, and still small enough that I still decide to take it when I go out and there doesn’t seem to be much to take pictures of. It also needs to be versatile because I have no plan and no idea what I’ll see, if anything. I want something that’s better than the iPhone, and not much more hassle to carry around. I could get some small compact camera, which is another thing to charge batteries for and with different menus I have to learn, or I could just take my old Sony, which is as small and light as a micro four thirds camera, and put the light 50mm lens on it. The image quality of that setup is honestly stellar. Versatility, with its close focusing distance and aperture, is also pretty amazing. It’s just that it focuses like shit and has no AF/MF switch on the lens, and has strong CA when I shoot into the light, which I tend to do. Slightly annoying, as flaws go, but they are soon forgotten when I open the images in Lightroom.

I already had situations where something like that would annoy me, and then I would “upgrade” to something that solved one problem by introducing five bigger ones; for instance, I upgraded the old 13” Macbook Air to a 15” Macbook Pro somewhere in 2015/2016. It was faster, had more power and memory, had much better screen, but it was bigger and heavier, and actually less usable for writing than the old Air. I actually had to get a second ultralight laptop for that, the Asus Zenbook, because the “better” machine was so much “better” that it was less functional for the main task I actually used it for. I also “upgraded” from a Mondeo to a huge Audi A6 estate once; bigger is better, right, and also the kids were small so I wanted a bigger car to carry their stuff. I got rid of that car as soon as it was practical and got something smaller and more suitable. Also, a bigger house is better until it’s so big it becomes a hassle to maintain and you actually spend time looking for family members around the place because you don’t know where they are.

If your shoes are too small, bigger is better, until they become too big, which is when bigger is worse. When you drive a car that’s a bit too small, bigger is better until you feel like you’re driving a bus.

Recently Biljana and I were buying new laptops; she got a 16” Macbook Pro, and I thought about just getting one of those for myself, and then I remembered how that ended the last time I “upgraded”, and said “fuck no”. What I got for myself is the 15” Macbook Air; I just loaded it with enough RAM and that was it. Why did I get a “worse” computer for myself? I actually didn’t, I got a better computer for what I need it for, and I got her the better computer for what she needs it for. It’s like multiplying two matrices, one of requirements and one of actual hardware specs; what you use it for, how you use it, what matters, and then multiply this with actual hardware properties of mass, size and performance.

It’s not just about equipment. Most things in life require balance, where you think you need more of something until you see what it actually means. All those ideologies that feed on resentment are a good example. Communism wanted “more equality”, and produced universal misery. Feminism wanted power for women, and broke civilization to the point where it would now be easier to burn it all down than to fix it. Inclusivity sounds great until you understand that it destroys criteria.

You see flaws and you think something has to change. Then you change it and see it’s actually worse.

Satan seems to have started this resentment thing first – oh, it’s not right that some souls are so incredibly large while the others like himself are pipsqueaks. Something should be done to make everybody equal. So he made a world that limits everybody to the same playing ground, and that obviously worked great for eliminating inequality. Oh wait…

The answer to his “Some souls are so much larger than everybody else” should have been “Good; that means we have someone to admire and strive towards.”

Women’s answer to “We live in a patriarchy” should have been “Great, we love powerful men.”

The problem with resentment is that it’s a problem that presents itself as a solution. It’s not. You can point at a laptop and say “oh, it’s so small”, as if that’s a problem, and the right answer is “of course it’s small, that’s the point”. The answer to arguments that try to foment dissatisfaction is to think whether something is actually problem, or a set of features you actually prefer. Everything comes with drawbacks. You think you could always use a few inches more of penis size, but your wife might say “please no”. She might think she could do with bigger boobs, until they start jiggling around while she’s running or exercising, at which point she’ll start complaining about that. We seem to be incredibly sensitive to dissatisfaction and inclined to think change must be an improvement, but in reality, it seems that the only thing we actually need to change in most cases is perspective.

Rotting away

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I had a walk this evening and took the camera with me in case I find some interesting motives.

I found a thin log that used to be there to mark someone’s private property, but it was there for so long without anyone actually maintaining it, that it rotted away and collapsed. I found that to be a very good visual metaphor for things that I see everywhere lately. Aspects of society that were put there centuries ago when they were important, but since everyone caring about them died, it all crumbled away into something derelict, something so far removed from practicality that nobody even knows why it was there in the first place.

It’s not just that, either. I found things in my memory that were there, just waiting for me to make some sense of them while they were crumbling away, because I no longer cared enough to even pay them a thought. Things related to my native family, that got somewhat revisited when my mother died. I let the last connections to those people rot away almost two decades ago, when it became clear that those people are so perpendicular to my path that keeping any contact with them is pointless. My mother was always a pathological narcissist who destroyed all lives she touched; I broke all contact, and didn’t even come to her funeral (was it this year, or the last…?) because I believed she was truly dead and didn’t feel the need to check. My father was concerned that maintaining connections with a scandalous son who has two wives and believes in things that are very non-Christian will cause him issues with his Catholic friends and patrons, so he basically gave me a phone number that went straight to voicemail, but he could call me from it when he needed me. I shrugged and stopped trying to keep in touch. I was recently “pinged” from above to inspect some things regarding my brother. I used to think that when I started on my spiritual path in 1993, he did so as well, but I was recently given access to astral prints created by him in this period, and that was a shock, because he did nothing but maintain impression that he did, and remained the product of our parents’ upbringing in every way. What he actually did was electronics, and he became very good at that. Spirituality-wise, he basically picked up the lingo form me, but no transcendental experiences, nothing. At some point he basically invented some fake buddhist nonsense, proclaimed himself a Buddha, proclaimed himself immune to karma, and is currently a fake guru to the cult of one; himself. I didn’t know that 20 years ago when I broke all contact with him – because he was an egotistical, jealous, snarky bastard without any sense of respect or propriety – but I didn’t realise he was a completely fake person, not just a weak and nasty back-stabber. What I did know was that I was done with his shit and no longer had time for this. He was always an energetic chameleon; when he was around me, he adopted my patterns, and when he was around total assholes, he adopted total asshole patterns. Also, he thought he’d boost his ego by being rude and arrogant with me, especially in front of my students, which confused and disturbed people without any good reason, and he would do his Muttley snicker of glee, happy that he made a mess which means he exists. After a few of those, I simply let him go his own way, not giving him much of a thought. I hear he’s slandering me behind my back, but since he has negative charisma, the only effect of this is destruction of what was left of his reputation among the people unfortunate enough to have to deal with him, or who had the misfortune of taking him seriously at any point.

So, all of that is in about the same condition as that piece of wood, that was once a ramp that performed a function, but since nobody cared for decades, it rotted away from lack of energy and care invested in its maintenance. That’s how many things in my life ended – I just no longer cared whether they are there or not, and eventually they just stopped being there, and I still didn’t care enough to check. I simply had more important things to do.