• March 13, 2024, 12:12 p.m.

    That's a problem of definition. What the questioner probably thought he was asking was 'does the photo have a good tonality'. What the respondent thought he meant was 'is the photo correctly exposed'. To find that out, in terms of the singular state of correct exposure, he surely would have to look at the exif data.

    So that's what he was doing, was it? And yes, I'm sure that if any normal American citizen takes home a load of highly classified documents, fails to return them when asked politely, shows those documents to people without security clearance, fails to comply with a subpoena to return them whilst misleading his lawyer causing him to make a false statement to the FBI, directs his staff to move documents in order to impede the investigation, then orders them to destroy evidence of that action, then I'm sure that they will indeed come ofter them. Well, probably not, if it was a normal citizen the Feds would break down the doors after the first failure to return them.

  • March 13, 2024, 12:15 p.m.

    OK, so you're open to them objecting on other grounds, you just don't agree with them on which 'other grounds' they chose to object. As I said, nothing to see here. Just a disagreement between yourself and the editors over what grounds they should be using. But they have every right to choose any grounds that they wish. That's how it works.

    Not sure what the 'it' refers to here.

  • March 13, 2024, 1:35 p.m.

    There's a key difference. Biden returned them at stage one, when asked nicely and hence didn't go through all the rest.

    Here's the problem with your narrative. You say Biden is insane. Anyone who watched the SOTU address, where he handled heckling effectively and with good humour, can see that he is cogent and alert. So, you're asking people to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes to buy into your narrative. You'll probably turn to Special Counsel Hur's statement that he was too senile to remember the date of his son's death, when the transcript of Biden's testimony shows that when asked the date he said 'Beau's death. Oh God. It was May 30th'. Hur claimed not to remember that part of the transcript until it was read to him, with the page and paragraph number. On the other hand, Hur also said "unlike the evidence involving Mr Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment against Mr Trump, if proven would present serious aggravating facts, most notably after being given chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment he not only refused to return the documents for many months but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it."

    So again, in creating an equivalence between the two you're asking people to ignore the evidence. Had Trump not made himself liable to counts 32-38, he would not have been charged with 1-31 for a simple reason. The law requires that the retention be wilful. That's hard to prove, unless the defendant does things like retaining them even after being asked to return them, lies and causes other to lie, engages in conspiracy to obstruct justice and the rest. That provides pretty good evidence that the retention is wilful. That wasn't available in Biden's case, because when asked he just returned them.

    So, as I said before, the problem with your narrative is that it just doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny for anyone who can assess evidence for themselves.
    Am I saying that Biden is the best possible presidential candidate for the US? No. But he appears to be one of only two who have any chance of winning - and if faced with that choice, I know which way I'd go. Your views are clearly different - but as I said before, descending to unsubstantiated insult, like calling him insane or saying that he cannot read any more (ironic, when the other guy seems to have real literacy issues - just watch him mangle everything trying to read from a teleprompter), etc, is not likely to convince anyone capable of thinking for themselves.

  • March 13, 2024, 1:38 p.m.

    Yes, it is. These journals are not state operations. They are owned by joint stock companies in a capitalist system. That is their right, whether or not you agree with it.

  • Members 878 posts
  • March 13, 2024, 3:24 p.m.

    'Way out of line' is over-egging it. Let's say companies independent of the state. The precise legal standing does vary, but I think that you'll find that when it comes down to it many are technically joint-stock companies, even if owned and identified with another organisation. Still, that's actually irrelevant. Whatever their legal basis they are not governmental organisations and have the right to pursue any editorial policy they choose, so long as it doesn't infringe the law. The fact that they may lose your respect by doing so is neither here nor there. If they are membership organisations, and you are a member, you have every right to pursue your preferences at through the available channels that members have. That's the simple case of it. They have no obligation to keep to your ideas on what is a correct editorial policy. There was such a case (of a faction of the membership trying to stop a charitable organisation being too 'woke') here in the UK. The outcome was that though the anti-woke people insisted that they were speaking for 'everyone', that turned out not to be the case.

    From my own point of view, the deprecation of Lena is a bit silly, because the offence depends on knowledge of the back story, which isn't apparent on viewing the image - so whatever negative connotation there maybe in the back story, it isn't in the image.

    That also was my view with the image in your OP, but no longer. They say every image tells a story, and now I've spent some time looking at the image, and see the obvious distress in the woman's pose - the rigidity and angularity of her body does not give the impression of someone being kissed joyfully by a loved one, were it my choice whether or not to use the image I would not do so. But it isn't my choice, and I'd understand others choosing either way. What I wouldn't be inclined to do is get involved in performative outrage about the particular choice someone else made.

  • Members 206 posts
    March 13, 2024, 3:30 p.m.

    Marxism isn't in itself a solution, at least not for me. I think of Marxism as an analytical tool. I believe in democracy and free enterprise, in part because I believe in humanity. I also firmly believe that capitalism is inimical to democracy and free enterprise.

    Capitalism is an economic system that promotes the accumulation of capital, and as practiced since the Reagan presidency (both by Republicans and Democrats) it has lead to the greatest accumulation of capital in the fewest hands in history. Is that a good thing? Some think so, but Marxism tells me that the dystopian consequences of relegating most of humanity to impoverishment will lead to the eventual replacement of capitalism. The success of an economic system will inevitably corrupt it and lead to its replacement.

    As a thought experiment, consider how a world without any labor would look. Under capitalism as it is being practiced in the United States a few people would reap all the benefits of that and everyone else would become reliant on the goodwill and generosity of a small ruling class. Marxism tells me that will not work, and people will struggle (and ultimately succeed) in replacing that arrangement with another one – socialism. With automation moving forward at every level in the modern world, this thought experiment is going to become a reality.

    Socialism is an economic system that promotes society. For example, under capitalism healthcare is all about profits, and that often comes at the expense of the optimal health of individuals; a socialist healthcare system is all about the overall health of society, and that is inherently better for the health of individuals. Bringing this discussion back to this forum for a moment – not unlike capitalism, socialism has the potential to promote personal enrichment, we can spend more time pursuing photography and other personally fulfilling activities if we choose to (and if social norms allow that, and if they don't allow the kind of photography I engage in then I will loudly protest that). The greatest camera is of little use to most people if it is unaffordable, and if it is too unaffordable to too many then no company will remain in the business of making that camera. Whatever activity you want to engage in will rely on a constituency, but at least that's a viable mechanism whereas a profit driven mechanism that is controlled by maximizing the accumulation of capital is capricious and I believe will eventually fail to deliver what is wanted by many constituencies (like serious photographers).

    Is socialism the end of history? I doubt it. I expect individualism, accompanied by anarchism is in the very distant future. As you said (in not so many words), for humanity to work people will have to think (i.e., be educated) differently. Education as well as technology are tools, and if the only tools you have are capitalist purposed, then you have a capitalist system; likewise socialism, and ultimately individualism will need tools to be implemented. I know a lot of people are saying that individualism and anarchism are too utopian to ever be realized, but look at the progress of women and minorities in the western world over the last couple of hundred years and how people who were once widely considered unfit to govern even their own affairs are now part of the polity.

    Capitalism wasn't much more than an idea five hundred years ago, same as socialism is today. History takes time, multiple lifetimes are just small increments of the timelines I'm looking at here.

  • Members 167 posts
    March 13, 2024, 3:48 p.m.

    That's not what he said. He only mentioned argument/discussion coming after opinions are formed. Nothing about opinions being changed by argument/discussion.

  • March 13, 2024, 4:03 p.m.

    LOL. Please do provide some evidence that the most important difference is political party. I think you're forgetting the process that has to take place in the US to even secure an indictment, yet alone a conviction. Indictments are brought by grand juries, not 'democrats'. The grand jury in this case consisted of a random selection of Floridians, not a demographic that would be expected to bend to the will of Democrats. So again, your narrative doesn't hold any water.

    That's not a statement that makes any legal sense. Simply taking something is not 'stealing'. In the US the definition of stealing is 'the taking of another person's personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property'. So if you return it when asked, it's very hard to be convicted of stealing, since the return suggests strongly that there wasn't an intent to deprive the use of that property. But in neither of these cases are we talking about stealing. We're talking about the law on Wilful Retention of National Defense Information, 18 USC 793. To secure a conviction it's necessary to prove that the retention was wilful (the key is in the word 'wilful') - that is, with intent. As with the case if it were stealing (which it is not), handing it back when asked makes it just about impossible to prove. If Trump had been sensible, he'd just have given it back, and it would all have gone away. That is what his lawyers apparently advised him to do. It's not surprising that so many lawyers in the end come to the conclusion that representing him is a fool's errand.

    Your problem is that you simply don't do your due diligence checking up the facts. Clearly you are not familiar with the law under which Trump has been charged, you didn't take the time or effort to find out. You just took your opinions from your favoured echo chamber. It's not my fault that you don't know the basics of the case, that you make statements that are easily demonstrated to be false, and then try to explain them away as 'sarcasm'. It's an MO I recognise. You know it well. Confusing Biden and Obama. That was 'Sarcasm'. As was confusing Pelosi and Haley. And so on. No one minds the odd mistake. But when it's a 'mistake' in the cause of spinning a malign, corrupt agenda, you expect to be called on it.

    I suspect you're on rocky legal ground here, once again. Firstly, anyone in the USA has the right to see government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, unless those documents are specifically excluded for reasons such as national security. That's as far as 'rights' go. The rest of it is based on a system of classification and clearance, not 'rights'. Do you have any evidence that Biden had any documents for which he didn't have clearance when he obtained the documents? Do you have any evidence that the clearances for the documents that Trump had were for him personally, rather than for the office holder of the President? If not, he should not have had them after he ceased to be president. But to be prosecuted it needed to be proven that he 'wilfully retained' them, and he would have had a cast-iron defence had he returned them when asked. Hence the grand jury would not have indicted him. As in so many things, he is his own worst enemy.

    Sorry, you've lost me again.

  • Removed user
    March 13, 2024, 4:14 p.m.

    Good to see you back on form, Bob. 😉

  • Members 86 posts
    March 13, 2024, 4:34 p.m.

    Correctly exposed, effectively exposed, creatively exposed, emotively expressive. That's the point, the correct exposure label is remarkably narrow and largely irrelevant/misleading in anything outside a technical context. In fact expressive photography relies on abstraction, or the way things are incorrectly recorded because you often correct or fill the gaps from memory and so create that personal link.

    Also interesting that the only proof of any meaningful scale of fraud in the US elections points clearly in one direction only.

  • March 13, 2024, 5:12 p.m.

    I don't care about the technicalities, I only care about what I see when I look at the image that you posted in the OP. Viewers will form their impression of the image on the basis of what they see with their eyes, not what kind of camera it was, not what different images in the series look like.