Knuckledragger

Still trying to make sense of Sunny's murder and failing to do so. I knew her for just under 30 years. I actually remember the day I met her. It was August 31st, 1997, my first day at Bradford College. Also the day Princess Diana died. I've been a photographer for two decades at this point, but I have precious few photos of Sunshine. I had been meaning to catch up with her for years, but as tragically is so often the case, I kept putting it off. The last conversation I had with her was two years ago when her father passed. I sent her this photo: I look it in 2012 with the never-not-shit EF-75-300mm. I ran it though the Silver FX Pro plugin, which I favored at the time. Mark (Sunny's dad) was ...a piece of work, but certainly a character. In this shot he's a man in his element. The only photos I have of Sunny herself are from 2007 and 2008. I took this one on my back porch in October of 2007. When I remember is she had to leave early. That fall was marked by two things: some of the best foliage colors I've ever witnessed in scenic western MA, and the absolute peak of dubstep. Not brostep fart noises, but the original very sparse minimal reggae tinged sound that started in say 2003 and was dead by 2009. There was a big dubstep party that happned about two days after Sunny left. I did the lights and if memory serves, I DJ'd at the after party. Initially Sunny wanted to attend, but business in Maine called her back. Sunny was possibly the biggest extrovery I ever knew. She had no shortage of self confience. Yet she did not like having her picture taken. This shot and the following one are from July of 2008, just shy of 17 years ago. She wasn't pleased that I was pointing my SLR at her. As I have said many times, I always prefer portraits where the subject is reacting to anything but the camera. I mentioned the Silfer FX Pro plugin earlier. Prior to that, I used to make heavy use to two Photoshop scripts I found in the mid 00s. One was "holgafy" and the other was "lomofy." Both were more than a bit heavy handed, but I taught myself to reverse engineer and wrangle them a bit. I did to passes with said scripts on a photo of Sunny in 2007, but never published the edits. I found them yesterday while looking for photos of her. I don't particularly like either edit, but he lo-fi effects of the scripts take on an entirely new meaning in light of Sunny's passing. At the risk of repeating myself, if you have someone you haven't spoken to in entirely too long, do it today. There may not be a tomorrow.

Holy shit. One of my closest friends from college was murdered not far from where she lived. Sunny was one of the toughest people I've ever met. I can scarcely process this.

Ukraine accuses Putin of humiliating Trump with devastating attack on Kyiv. Russia launches record number of drones and ballistic missiles in seven-hour assault shortly after its leader spoke to US president.

File under: Exceeding the attention span of nearly everyone. Five hours of Gamers Nexus explaining why chaotic tariffs are a dumb idea and how they ruin everything. I watched the first installment over a couple evenings while grinding loot in an RPG. I haven't watched the second one yet.

In the parlance of our times, RIP Bozo. Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90.

A guy I've known on Discogs since like 2002 picked up some dream speakers. Kid for scale.

That's an expensive cat warmer.

ABC of AFX.

Iran says it launched attack on US forces at Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base.

More room porn than anything else. Via this real estate listing and /r/audiophile.

There's a web comic called beanytuesday. Way back in 2018 (almost 7 years ago to the day), he did a series of intentionally poorly drawn 2018 election candidates. One of them has had an enduring legacy. No, not ol' Hills. Gen Z loves to meme this one. It's newly relevant.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Jaws. It's kind of a big deal around here.

Y'all familiar with the legend of Pentagon Pizza? Also, Nimitz headed to the Middle East.

RIP Melissa Hortman, a state representative from Minnesota. Shot and killed in what was pretty clearly a targeted act of terrorism.

(OC) Don't ask me why I made this. It's arguably an insult to Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

I stayed up later than I should have last night watching news clips about Israel/Iran. It's fascinating what one can learn upon escaping the US corporate media bubble. I heard a fairly insightful take on Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi is not a long term strategist. He thinks very short term, he's just (A) been in power and in the public eye for decades and (B) gets a continual tongue bath from most US media. Bibi's MO is [impulsively do thing] -> [deal with the ramifications of his previous action by doing another impulsive thing.] The consequences for this pattern (besides regional instability, bloodshed an chaos) is that to stay in power he has had to increasingly align himself with formerly fringe far right elements of the Israeli political landscape. Bibi's prime directive is to stay in power so he can stay out of jail (reminiscent of a certain other political figure, but I digress...) I have read for years that to really get a proper sense of the true positions of Netanyahu and the Likud party in general, find their Hebrew language statements and run them through Google translate. The results paint a very different picture than what he says in English.

Yesterday, members of the opposition party were set to vote to dissolve the Knesset. That vote failed. Netanyahu remains in power. Also yesterday, the US did an emergency evacuation of personnel from Iran. Tonight Israel has attacked Iran. The news is still filtering out. Reports of large explosions in the Iranian capital. This can and will get ugly.

That statue is, as the kids say, caked up.

I have questions.

This shit is crazy. King of the Hill actor Jonathan Joss fatally shot in Texas after argument with neighbor. EDIT: The second page didn't paste for some reason: