Ironically, hard light is bad for recording sexy time.

It will highlight every pore, every vein, every wrinkle on your nutsack.

One day I will end this ring light fad. It is my ultimate side quest.

It seems my lighting advice has given people a mistaken impression...

These outtakes where the flash didn't go off are also AI generated.

I like this spooky dutch angle one.

I was just starting to learn flash and I didn't have all the equipment I needed. Since corgis are quite short, I had to put the lighting on the ground. The off camera flash was on a tipped over lightstand with a shoot-through umbrella to diffuse the light.

But I had no wireless triggers. And the only other way to trigger a flash, is with another flash. So I used the on-camera pop up flash to trigger the main flash.

But I had two issues.

First, I did not want that dinky on camera flash affecting my picture.

Second, triggering a flash with a flash is best done indoors. The flash will bounce all around the room and eventually hit the sensor so the main flash triggers. When you are outdoors, there is no bouncing.

SO... I took a little handheld makeup mirror and angled it toward my main flash. This blocked the dinky pop up flash and sent the beam of light towards the main flash to trigger it.

I was lying on the wet morning grass, holding a camera in one hand, a mirror in the other, trying to aim the mirror exactly toward the main flash, making crazy noises to get Otis's attention, and trying to get the focus point on his face so I didn't get a blurry photo. Also, Otis was much more interested in sniffing things than posing for a photo.

Here is an overhead view that might help explain.

I await all of your comments saying my amazing drawring is clearly AI generated.

Only 30% of the time did the flash actually go off. Aiming the mirror was tricky and I was doing like 8 things at once. I wasn't even sure I got the photo I wanted. But when I came back to the computer there was one that stood out and it is one of my favorites I've ever taken.

It was the best combination of monumental effort, great discomfort, perfect foggy sunrise light, and just pure luck.

Unfortunately, people like me who use advanced sculpting light techniques are getting accused of using AI more and more. Not really sure what to do about it—other than show the 30 awful photos it took to get the good one.

My 80s sunglasses photo and spoon photo get called out the most.

But it's just good old fashioned gradient lighting which has been used in product photography since the days of film.

So, no need to be suspicious.

Photography like sirfrogsworth's is what the fucken AIs were TRAINED on.

I love other writers so much because every writer I've ever met is genuinely and utterly deranged on a level only writers can achieve

Hey instead of just canceling your Paramount plus subscription, put that money you were spending to good use by donating to npr and pbs

Only about $1.60 per tax paying us citizen was being spent on public broadcasting per year.

Donating $1.60 per month would make up for the loss of budget from 12 taxpayers. If you donate your paramount plus subscription of $7.99 you are making up for the money spent on it from 60 tax payers per year!

If you had the 12.99 subscription? You are making up for the loss of budget that would have come from nearly 100 people.

If just ten people do a donation of 12.99 per month, that makes up for the taxes of 900+ people. Imagine if 100 people did monthly donations? And that's JUST if you do 12.99$ a month.

Consider donating.

Hell npr has a special bonus service if you do 8$ a month^^^^

Cancel some subscriptions you don't use and do this instead.

Also, PBS has a subscription service called Passport that's $5 a month and has lots of great stuff on it! Personally, I'm a fan of their documentaries, but if you're a music fan, there are a ton of exclusive concerts via Austin City Limits. There's also a lot of news and analysis and a ton of educational and artistic content in general. Oh! And the series Independent Lens is a showcase for indie documentaries, so it's a great way to support Independent filmmakers, especially marginalized ones, at the same time.

affirmations for writers: i know how to write. i have seen sentences before, and i know how to make one. i can identify up to several words and their meanings. i am not afraid of semicolons.

Obligatory AI hate post bc I intend to be even more annoying about this

housewives were not banging out spirk fanfiction in the 60s for you to be AI generating your fic

there are a lot of undiagnosed adults out there but i do think it's a shame that we've reached a point where having hobbies and interests past the age of 20 is seen as a touch of the tism. i know many older adults who suppress all their childish desires and throw out all their old toys and for what. are you scared of being 'weird' ? who give a shit.

i just can't convey the frustration and sorrow that it's been to grow up at first without the internet and then watching it bloom into this useful, fun, connecting force you sometimes spent time on, only for it to degrade into this constant oppressive waste of time and energy where people are constantly pumping out algorithmically designed content for max algorithmic appeal and even the most simple search generates either no results or an infinite abyss of ai generated slop none of which is usable or correct. we briefly had a library of alexandria and then fed it into a paper shredder so advertisers could sell a random mash of pulp back to us at a premium.

Daredevil | 1.11

Lewis Pullman in:

Thunderbolts* (2025)

Do kids today even understand why podcasts are called podcasts?

Well, you see, kids, almost twenty years ago Apple produced a portable audio player called – wait, I need to go back further.

Okay, so in the 20th century, the new inventions of radio and television were known as broadcast media – no, wait, that’s not really the start either –

Broadcasting originally refers to throwing, or casting, handfuls of seeds onto prepared ground, typically used with grain crops, which, uh –

– the Agrucultural Revoution, which begain circa 10,000 BC in the Levant, was when humans began preserving seeds for replanting –

this one goes out to all my daredevil girlies,,, ur the real ones

sometimes it’s annoying when your character can’t jump in a video game but how often do you jump in real life?

“Do you even remember the last time you jumped?” is a question I never anticipated leaving me feeling so hollow and terrified.