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To the rebels! https://petapixel.com/2024/06/12/photographer-disqualified-from-ai-image-contest-after-winning-with-real-photo/

Thanks for the thread Steve. I finally had a chance to read through it, and I appreciate the sharing. I wanted to share some thoughts from an event tonight. Every Tuesday night Communities of Belonging hosts a community meeting. Tonight was my night to host, and I wanted Pride Month as my topic. Last year when I hosted, I chose, How you were touched by Pride. Anyway: After the grounding, I led a discussion with the check-in question - What does Pride Month mean to you? (inspiration acknowledged) As host, I kicked it off. The main thing I think about, when I presented the topic was, freedom. I don't think of anything as boastful or other negative connotations with pride. I really see it as something deeper, more about a celebration of self. Being on a journey over the last three years or so in a search for self, I can appreciate and connect with it. Who doesn't want to be able to say, here I am, and be seen and heard? Others shared their personal experiences, from different orientations. I really liked one of our older members talking about it being like 'our' Christmas. I found one persons thoughts interesting, having a pretty strict religious upbringing, that it was drilled into him from an early age that 'pride' was bad/evil, in all its forms. He has had to unlearn that - and let it go, because it didn't align with his personal beliefs once he was grown. My second discussion topic was, how can we be better allies to the queer (I prefer this term) individuals throughout the year? With the concept of expanding the concentrated awareness during June to the everyday. I had not thought about this question until I posed it. My main thoughts are around acceptance and also calling people to task. I always think of the phrase 'Be careful who you hate, it could be someone you love'. This comes up in context of my extended family, in both directions, some are haters and some are members of a community that they hate. Also the sobering thought of 'Right now, someone is willing to take their life rather than come out'. All of this is just unacceptable. I work on the basic premise of acceptance. Oh that is who you are? Cool. But other discussions opened up the topic of Dignity. And the one that really stuck with me was being Affirming. To not just be accepting, but to let people know that you are an ally. Being accepting can be passive, the other person takes all the risk in trusting that there is acceptance on the other side. So that is something that I can take into my future, not to just be accepting and calling people out, but to be affirming. Cheers

Your post reminded me of my own coming out story. First off, I knew my truth very early on. But I really struggled with self loathing and shame. In the time period when I grew up, it was quite the norm to denigrate the masculinity of a gay man. If you were gay, you were also a sissy, at least in the minds of the ignorant. And I too was ignorant. Therefore I was actually afraid that I was going to morph into a much more effeminate version of myself. I'm not kidding. That's what I thought was going to happen. And that caused me enormous distress. It really wasn't until I was in college and really exploring the gay lifestyle and gay clubs, bathhouses and the like, that I started to understand that wasn't a reality. Actually the reality was that the stereotypical effeminate gay male was but a small subsection of the gay community. That discovery is what allowed me to develop a sense of self worth, as ridiculous as that sounds today. You had to grow up in that time to understand how denigrated we were then, and how we were perceived by the general public.

Nice stuff....! Did this all start with Frippertronics? I need to go back and listen to some of that stuff....

Reminiscence by Hélène Vogelsinger (2021) https://album.link/i/1682653342 Example: not on this album the the inspiration to listen to the album. If you like live looping - like I do - some good stuff here. Can get intense, but I really liked the album. There are a few more for me to check out.

I just watched a YouTube video on a newish product called Obsidian Ebony. True Gabon Ebony is expensive and not that easy to come by, as it's also endangered. This product is designed as an alternative, though I haven't compared pricing yet. This product is best suited for plugs, splines, decorative inlays and such. As in larger pieces it's not as passable due to it's lack of Brown streaks common in real Ebony. Ebony is quite brittle and this product is similar, though not quite as brittle as real Ebony. It seems to polish up to the same dull glow as actual Ebony. It's just more uniformly Black than real Ebony. It's generally made from Maple, though some companies are also using Birch. I think Maple would be better suited, as it's a denser, harder wood than Birch. It's made by thermally modifying Maple (or Birch) to a dark Black/Brown color throughout the entire thickness of the wood. This process is also known as torrefaction. After the heat modification, the wood is infused with colored resin under pressure. It not only gives a consistent color throughout the grain, but also stabilizes the wood to a large extent. I'm planning on building some game boards soon, and am thinking of trying this product out as an inlay strip. Hopefully more to follow. https://sustainablebiz.ca/thermalwood-canada-sees-obsidian-as-sustainable-alternative-to-ebony#:~:text=Obsidian is produced by taking,and tonal characteristics of ebony.

Just checking out the up-and-coming talent these days. Loved the interplay with the audience.

I’m perpetually impressed with this little camera.

This might be the last OS for Intel Macs. MacRumors started their annual unsupported Macs thread already: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-15-sequoia-on-unsupported-macs-thread.2428654/ Apple moved the cutoff for macOS to 2017/2018: iOS and iPadOS (2018 for the iPhone XR/XS and iPad Pro, 3rd Gen):

Guessing he had a heart attack. Nobody was flying that plane.

I'm sure the Mini Shangri-la is just a rehashed Jade II as they never sold in the quantities Hifiman wanted. I'm getting one though so I can laugh at hifiman some more. The Perun stuff is mehhhh at best.

There's no shame in being ignorant. There's only shame in staying ignorant.

RIP to Jerry West. Maybe (up until today) my favorite living athlete. Jerry lead the Lakers against the Celtics and Knicks in the finals 8 times before finally winning in his 9th time. That sisaphesian-effort alone makes him almost some kind of Greek tragic hero. To get near the top of the mountaintop that many times and still get back up and go again is inspiring. After retiring as a player he built not one but two great Laker dynasties, the Showtime™ Magic-Kareem teams and the Shaq-Kobe teams. He would later serve as a front office executive for other teams, including my Golden State Warriors during the Curry championship years. I think what allowed him to succeed in every era of the game was his respect for the current players and the changing game. Rather than insist things be done “his way” or the way it was done when he was a player, he adapted and respected the players as the skills the league valued and the style of play changed. There is no common thread to the championship winning teams he constructed, because he was the kind of thinker who evaluated and respected the tools he had at his disposal with fresh eyes and with a lack of deference to old dogma. He was able to build teams around many of the league’s most unique talents. Kareem, the great stoic. Shaq and Kobe, the best of frenemies, and Curry a one-of-one player who heralded a new era of three point shooting. We will miss you, Jerry.