Epic rant by @jaketapper on Trump just now.
"Embarrassment"
"Outlandish claim"
"Wild accusation" pic.twitter.com/ZNJdbeFJKo
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 17, 2017
Interesting, if true:
I suspect that now that the campaign is over, & he’s no longer seen as the sure-to-lose candidate, those storylines are being picked…
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 18, 2017
…back up and there’s going to be big & damaging pieces dropping about Trump every week.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 18, 2017
@DanaHoule Do you think that was because of saturation or reluctance?
— Andrew Rostan (@AndrewRostan) March 18, 2017
Not much reluctance. Combo of saturation & belief that Trump would be old news by Dec 1 so resource-demanding stories were dropped. https://t.co/yvb96PxyNX
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 18, 2017
?BillinGlendaleCA
and there were her emails to cover.
jl
t think that the corporations would still strongly prefer to run the political beat by putting up the same graphic of a donkey and an elephant butting heads, and get some political operatives to spout cynical boilerplate, that’s a pretty damn cheap show. Good for profits and good for steady ratings.
I’ve held the cynical theory that at some point, the corporations and the anchors fear that people will switch off, because if they keep playing along with offensively stupid BS, people will start switching them off. Almost everyone has their price, that is true. But almost everyone has their limit too.
I don’t know if there is any evidence for my theory. But people like Tapper don’t want too many people laughing at him and turning him off. It’s not like he works at Fox News.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Researching stories about nothing is cheap.
It was easy to keep HRC emails limited to story about nothing. Probably, after it was clear it was about nothing, that really increased their interest in covering it. Just wait for the next injection of GOP/Russian BS and talk about how bad it was for HRC that more stuff was ‘out there’ that they didn’t have to bother to investigate, but caused problems for the Democrats. It was a great business model while it lasted.
Bart
Until the day when your press corps uses their access to the WH to actually ask relevant questions, they aren’t learning. The shock at that German journalist yesterday tells you all you need to know.
For feck’s sake, here’s the president citing a nincompoop on Fox News as his source, and not a single journalist dares to point out that this is insane because why would a Fox News contributor have better intel than the president? Why bother to even keep up with the pretense?
mai naem mobile
There was a fluff story about Steve Bannon’s dad in the WSJ around last weekend. Supposedly, Bannon’s turn to ‘economic nationalism’ was due to Bannon Sr losing $200k in ATT stock in the market in the 2008 crash and nobody on Wall Street going to prison for the Wall Street crash. It’s just such a BS story on so many levels. Bannon worked on Wall Street. He has a brother who works in finance. His 80+ year old dad didn’t call his sons when he sold the stock. He just freaked out and sold it, which also tells me he either didn’t think much of his kids’abilities or he wasn’t close to them or he was stupid. Also, his dad supposedly had all of his money in one single stock. His kids apparently couldn’t tell their dad to diversify. Beyond all that, what does voting for Dolt 45 have to with dealing with Wall Street?
Major Major Major Major
@mai naem mobile:
It’s actually entirely consistent with a racist person who was high-functioning conspiracy-minded crazy to begin with having their livelihood go tits-up, seeing a n****r get elected president, and hitting the bottle haaaarrrrd.
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem mobile:
Lower taxes, fewer regulations.
OzarkHillbilly
for Quinerly:
Don’t know if you ever frequented it, but Soulard’s burned yesterday
ericblair
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I think there was much more “let’s copy/paste the same stupid story again and use Clinton as a punching bag because we hate her and we’re lazy spiteful assholes and she’ll win anyways”. But it might need a little rephrasing I guess.
amk
forget ti, jake. you press pos built this pos.
TriassicSands
@jl:
IMO the most important word in that sentence is “almost.” However, in 2017 America I think it overstates the number of people who actually do have a limit. Or the limit is absurdly high — so high that if a certain candidate (or president) shot someone it wouldn’t cause the candidate’s supporters to reach it. (Possibly an exaggeration, but one that reasonable people today could not dismiss out of hand.) No rational person with a reasonable limit would have been able to vote for Trump after the campaign he ran. More than 60 million did. (Racists are not, IMO, reasonable people. Neither are xenophobes. Same for misogynists. And so on.)
amk
@mai naem mobile: Many bj’ers would make good journos. Unlike the current rotten stinking corpse.
OzarkHillbilly
Who said,
and what Trump policy were they talking about?
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: OK OK…. Totally unfair in that that is said about every Trump policy and is true of every Trump policy. The answer is
and he was speaking about
amk
@OzarkHillbilly: all of ’em, katie.
TriassicSands
@Bart:
Nincompoop? I beg your pardon…
After all, the world’s foremost authority** on the brilliance of legal minds has passed judgment on your so-called “nincompoop” and found him to be “a very talented legal mind.” Case closed.
On the other hand, the fact that Trump only used one “very” to describe the talent of the legal mind in question may mean that the mind isn’t all that talented anyway. Normally, Trump uses “very” at least twice in descriptions of things he thinks are good, and everything Trump likes is at least “very, very” whatever. Trump uses very so much that there is a danger he will outright kill the word before the 2018 mid-term elections arrive. No one knows how Trump will adapt to a situation in which “very, very” is no longer an option.
* Calling Andrew Napolitano a “nincompoop” is an insult to every self-respecting nincompoop in the world. They deserve better.
** Donald J. Trump is, by his own admission, the world’s leading authority on pretty much everything. I’ve never heard Trump say anything like “I don’t know much about that” if the subject is some business, economic, technical, scientific, etc. field or issue. He hilariously claimed to be a leading authority on the environment when questioned about environmental issues related to one of his golf courses. It turns out he knows more about the environment than the environmentalists who studied the impact of his golf course.
TriassicSands
@mai naem mobile: @Major Major Major Major:
Kevin Drum did an analysis of this claim about Bannon’s dad a few days ago and found it to be unconvincing. Or maybe I should say very, very unconvincing, believe me. Implausible might be a better word.
amk
A good piece on today’s journalism.
Today, however, the profession faces a graver danger, an existential threat: State-sponsored Internet-fuelled disinformation discreetly spread by countries such as Putin’s Russia; non-State actors such as WikiLeaks; and fake news Web sites that use Facebook, Twitter, BuzzFeed, and other social media that undermine the legitimacy, authenticity and trustworthiness of long-established news organisations.
Most bizarre, we have a gentleman in the White House who won the most powerful office in the world partly on the power of Twitter, thus, not only bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers but also making them look irrelevant and reckless.
President Donald Trump uses the bully pulpit to bully the press.
Since democracy cannot survive without a free, fearless, and robust press, what can news media organisations do to re-establish their reputation for authenticity, objectivity, impartiality, and trustworthiness especially after the US presidential election train wreck when all their projections and predictions went wrong?
Print newspapers organise themselves through sectionals, prioritising news as well as separating news from opinion pages. Today, however, most people get their news from smartphones.
But the smartphone has eliminated the space between news, opinions, and ads and sponsored news. In Google News, BuzzFeed and The New York Times are the same.
The brand does not matter for the hurried consumer of news.
ThresherK
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Bill, I’m looking for a decent online reference or just a cheat sheet about adjusting settings on a digital camera.
The camera is nothing special, and takes good pics for what it is, but I simply am at a loss when it comes to managing the lights indoors or.with flash ( which our old automatic nothing special 35mm film camera did very nicely). I end up with overbright or underlit pics.
Any suggestions?
PS I’m asking Bill cos of all the boffo photos he’s shared. Anyone else is welcome to chime in.
tpherald
Before getting all gaga over Tapper, let’s keep in mind that he was part of the problem, not the cure.
Here he is just a few years ago railing against supposed media liberal bias on the Trump buddy Laura Ingraham show: http://www.mediaite.com/online/jake-tapper-tells-ingraham-media-helped-tip-the-scales-in-2008-hopes-2012-coverage-is-serious-unbiased/amp/.
Here he is just this year celebrating outrageous false equivalency, saying Obama “went to war with Fox News”, saying it’s same as Trump calling all other media outlets “fake news”. http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2017/01/17/tapper-press-conference-kerfuffle-obama-also-went-war-against
TriassicSands
@tpherald:
True. Up to the final three words. The jury is out on those. Trump is like nothing these guys have ever confronted. His dishonesty is shocking and of a magnitude unseen and unheard of in American politics (among major political figures, anyway) in living memory. He makes Joe McCarthy seem like a minor fibber.
When faced with Trump’s constant idiotic lying any reporter with an atom of self-respect or desire to be taken seriously simply can’t ignore it. It is profoundly insulting to have someone lie to your face — lies that are obviously untrue and unsupported by even a shred of evidence — and expect that you’ll write it down and report it like it’s the gospel truth.
The old cliche is that this is the land of second chances — we can only hope so.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It is worth remembering Trump was celebrity and apparently still seen as a celebrity by a lot of his more idiotic supporters because of Trump’s TV show. So Trump gets to run under Kadarshan rules. Under those rules Trump’s lying, sexual depravity, lack of ethics and outright stupidity are part of the show. The Presses real fault was they were lazy didn’t push their audience to consider Trump as a politician.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ThresherK: A hour late and a dollar short…
I’d probably need a bit more information to give a complete answer, like what kind of digital is it(DLSR, Mirorless, or Point-n-Shoot).
In my Samsung cameras(mirrorless) there are two modes that do auto exposure, ‘AUTO’ and ‘P’. The difference is the ‘AUTO’ mode automates white balance and only captures images in jpg, where the ‘P’ mode doesn’t automate white balance and captures RAW. The kid’s Canon seems to work the same.
If it’s a Point-n-Shoot, you probably don’t have to worry about file format, it’ll be jpg. Just set it for auto and it should get the exposure right. The only problem I’ve had with flash is getting too close to the subject and getting overexposure or having my finger over the flash and getting underexposure.
Lurking Canadian
@TriassicSands: Anybody, with a few honorable exceptions like Eichenwald and Farenthold, who has a position of influence in the US media and ISN’T wracked by feelings of shame and guilt over their complicity in the election of Trump is a creature without self-awareness or conscience.
The philosophers of mind should stop theorizing about “zombies” and instead use “journalist” in their thought experiments.
ThresherK
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You are not late!
The output file is a JPG. It’s a Canon Powershot A590.
There are preset wheel options for things like Night, Portrait, Kids ‘n ‘ Pets, Landscape. Also there are options for Manual, Aperature, and Shutter Speed, where I can play with all the bits.
If left to its own devices indoors it basically has too much flash.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Asses, all of them. There was some guy on NPR just now who felt justified in stating that the media was distorting the health care bill. It’s not that 24,000,000 will become uninsured; it’s 24,000,000 who will choose not to have insurance. How these people live with themselves, I don’t know.
Yarrow
I said early on that at some point the press corps would realize that the best way to get viewers is to investigate Trump. Some of them are starting to figure that out. Someone said Rachel’s ratings are going up as she covers the Trump/Russia stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tapper’s ratings going up as well. That will encourage more coverage.
Sunny Raines
Ratings, infotainment, end of story, end of democracy (such as it is)
BretH
@ThresherK: Point and shoot models generally do fine with flash if all settings are neutral. Hard to say what is happening with yours, but it is possible to tell the camera to use less flash – it’s called flash exposure compensation. You can try setting it to -1,-2 or whatever works best for you. The settings are accessed by the menu – the instructions are on page 87 of the manual:
http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/6/0400000016/01/PSA590IS_CUG_EN.pdf
hovercraft
@amk:
It’s like suddenly they are realizing that Twitler is lying sack of shit who constantly spouts nonsense and doesn’t know his ass form a hole in the ground. Where were they last year when they convinced just enough people that both candidates were equally bad and that he was more honest than Hillary?
Fuck him, fuck them all.
Asshole!
Another Scott
@ThresherK: In addition to what Bill (and others) say above, be aware that pictures right out of a camera often aren’t very good in the real world because of limitations in the “dynamic range” of the sensor. The pixels only have a certain amount of capacity, so bright areas can over-saturate the sensor (giving too white an area), or dark areas don’t provide enough signal to see any detail. Professionals cheat by using “neutral gradient filters” to cut the excess light in bright areas while keeping as much light as possible in dark areas, but those are uncommon for point-and-shoot (P&S) cameras.
Modern P&S cameras can try to overcome their sensor limitations by using “HDR” settings in which they take 3 pictures of the same scene with different exposure settings and then combine them to make the final image. Early HDR looked artificial, but it’s getting much better every day.
If your camera can shoot “RAW” rather than .jpeg files, then you get much more flexibility in post-processing in Photoshop. But the files are much larger, you often have to convert them to .jpegs or similar to use or print them, and you have to take the time to mess with them later.
The best compromise in difficult lighting is probably to set your camera in “HDR” mode, in “P” mode if it’s available (“Auto” if not), and use a tripod to eliminate shakes and let the camera use long exposure if needed. And practice!
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
In the old days News was a loss leader for broadcasting rights. Part of the FCC letting them use the airwaves was that they had to provide a news segment. When the American (video) media became a profit center, it was only a matter of time that the companies went with where the big eyeballs go on TV. They went reality show. The entire 2016 election coverage was like watching the OJ car chase. Same mind frame/set. It wasn’t presented as ‘OMG how can someone be so putrid?’. It was ‘OMG what can Donald do to top this one next?’. That’s why you couldn’t pay them to discuss actual policy. They didn’t want or offer anything that wasn’t completely superficial. We elected the comments section of some of the worse parts of the web.
stinger
I’ve replayed that Tapper clip several times just to watch Merkel’s slow head-turning to look at the Leader of the Free World as he says, “It wasn’t MY idea, all I did was quote somebody else!” She realizes he’s actually going to try to weasel out of it just like a ten-year-old caught in a lie. This is so humiliating. Certainly the end of US leadership and maybe any role at all, at least for now. Germany, Britain, Canada, Mexico, all the rest — they’re going to get together behind our back and work things out without us.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: You mis-state the purpose of an ND filter. It uniformly reduces light in all areas of the sensor, and is used to enable you to shoot at a slower shutter speed than you otherwise would. This is often to get the “moving water” effect, like I did here, or, with very long exposures of a stationary object, you can make people walking around it “disappear.”
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Sorry I wasn’t clear. I meant a gradient filter like that 3-pack. The idea is to cut the light smoothly from the top to the middle of the frame. It’s handy for taking pictures of things like snow-capped mountains with a well-defined horizontal horizon where you can hide the edge of the filter. It might not be that useful indoors, or with flash, so probably wouldn’t help ThresherK much for his particular problem. But the general idea holds – if you have a scene with a very large difference between the brightest and darkest areas, then the camera is going to have problems making the exposure well-balanced without some trickery (HDR, filters, post-processing).
Tweaking the flash settings as BretH suggested may be the best solution here. :-)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Epicurus
Occam’s Razor leads me to believe that the reason both “her e-mails” and “Shitler” got so much press is that they drew more eyeballs. Remember, “Dog Bites Man” is not news. It’s too little, too late, and Maher was far too kind to Jake Tapper, but I’ll take it any time I can get it. The more ridicule and opprobrium heaped on Cheetoh Jesus, the better, imho.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Ah, yes, a graduated ND. You’re correct on that, of course. But it won’t help indoors. The problem with the built-in flash on point-and-shoots or even DSLR’s is that the flash illumination is on the same axis as the lens, so it will always look a bit artificial. Best to use a flash with a head that can tilt, so you can bounce the light – the illumination will look a lot more natural.
Jack the Second
1. Re: Bannon’s father, besides the point Kevin Drum made — you pretty much only lost money selling AT&T during the crash if you bought it during the boom of the previous two years — I’ll also note that AT&T remained “depressed” (mostly, back at pre-bubble levels) for two or three years after the fact. If you calmed down after your panic sell and re-invested in AT&T during that time frame, your losses would be minimal.
2. Re: Reporters not thinking Hillary would lose. Did reporters actually care if Hillary lost and Trump won?
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Good points.
BTW, that’s a beautiful shot you posted above. The stone reminds me of a certain famous lion in Lucerne.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
grandpa john
@tpherald: Fuck em. Where were these brave defenders of truth a year ago when trump was making up crap like this and spreading the same outrageous lies While the only topic of discussion was Hilary’s supposed blatant misuse of a server that was never hacked and contained no classified info.
bupalos
The correct phrasing would be “Are our press corpse learning?”
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Thanks. That was Maligne Canyon in Jasper, Alberta.
O. Felix Culpa
@stinger:
As they should, under the circumstances.
mapaghimagsik
@ThresherK: the comments on exposure compensation will help for sure.
Point and shoot flashes are usually pretty bad. Your best option is to try and make unnecessary.
If you can, provide bright, but indirect lighting.
I skimmed this. It might help you
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/2806187
BretH
If you really want to learn about how to use small flashes to make great photos this site is for you:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/?m=1
Warning! Major time-suck potential there.
J R in WV
I pretty much tell my camera not to use flash, but to be taking nighttime shots. It takes multiple exposures and combines them into one that looks quite well lit, even in the dark. Panasonic Lumix, at first an FZ-200 and very recently I got an FZ-1000 for the improved sensor chip.
Pretty complicated to use beyond just auto point-n-shoot, but I’ll copy the manual onto my tablet for reference and pick things up as I shoot with it. It can do almost anything, super zoom as well, though I don’t use the longest very often it is good to have it just in case. And the FZ-1000 is similar to the FZ-200, which I have several thousand of exposures with.\
I wish it was more weather-proof, but it is what it is. I like the photo processing it does on the fly, and I can fiddle with the RAW images later on, while having JPGs immediately. We sure have come a long way since I learned to wind film onto a reel before dunking it into the first chemical bath. Or use a 4″x5″ sheet of film in a view camera!
But so much detail in a big negative!