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Click on the shot to see it over black background !!!
Frankly speaking I'm an adorer of places like Edessa, because honestly there is a unique, beautiful and interesting shot at almost every place you may cast your glance at !!! It is practically one of the places that can be called a photographer's paradise ...
I honestly believe that it is a mistake to shoot at only alternative views of the main theme ... You should try to search for secondary, minor details that deffinitely exist around a major worth seen event, that make a positive impact on you and try to take them down by setting off the element that hit your eye in the first place !!!
Undoubtedly my friends a successful shot is a shot that initially makes an intense impression on the photographer ... This is, I believe, the third component of a successful photograph (the other two being proper lighting and interesting synthesis) ...
In other words, don't bother to try to impress others with a theme that basically you are not impressed by !!! It's simply not gonna happen !!!!
EXIF: NIKON D90 with Nikon Nikkor 18 - 55 lens, Shutter Speed priority (I was after the long exposure effect of the waterfall), f 32 (a very small f value chosen by D90 in order not so much to define the clarity of DOF but to normalize the exposure of the shot and to compensate for the large shutter speed), ISO 200, focal length 42 mm, manual exposure selection, cloudy weather adjusted white balance, center weighted average light metering mode, use of ND HOYA X2 filter, HDR made by only one original RAW shot with shutter speed 1/4 s, managing to accurately convey the scene's cloudy atmospere's lighting conditions to the viewer, flash didn't go off, no tripod ....
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I am having computer problems with my iMac. May be getting a new one. So please bear with me. I am using my notebook to normalize things a bit. Thanks for your patience. :-)
This narrowband image was made from my backyard mini-observatory in north central Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The bright star in the center is Sadr in the constellation Cygnus. The colorful region around the star is from nebulosity called the Gamma Cygni Nebula (which is actually behind the star Sadr) excited by bright stars in the region.
The night sky is very bright in my backyard from urban light pollution and the moon was half illuminated during the imaging sessions so my Sky Quality Meter readings were between 17.5 and 17.9 magnitudes per square arcsec - Bortle 8-9 ish.
Even so, I am somewhat amazed with the detail one can obtain in such an environment with the technology available to today’s astrophotographer. The nebulosity in the image is falsely colored and roughly follows the Hubble palette scheme called SHO where atomic emissions from Sulphur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen are mapped into the colors Red, Green, and Blue. In this case the overly green from strong abundance of hydrogen has been modified to be more yellow. The star colors are natural and even spectrally calibrated to be true color.
My equipment is an Astro Physics Mach 2 mount, Takahashi Epsilon 160 ED hyperbolic Newtonian telescope, Optec LEO focuser, Chroma 3-nm filters, and QHY 600 PH cooled, full frame CMOS camera. The image was constructed from 219 3 minute unguided exposures (70+ each for Ha, OIII, and SII filters) and 15 1 minute each RGB exposures for the stars. I imaged on 3 nights - one filter per night. I also collected darks, dark flats, and flats. I normally use sky flats but made do with LED panel flats in this case. Mount control was with NINA connected to the Astro Physics APCC software. I used Direct Guide in NINA so I could dither without guiding - works very well with the Mach 2’s absolute encoders. Image acquisition was via NINA running on a mini PC in the observatory but off the mount (the Mach 2 has through the mount cabling for power and USB-3). Filters are Chroma 3 nm narrowband and Chroma RGB and camera is the QHY 600 PH short back focal length version.
Processing in Pixinsight. Narrowband channels: WBPP-> Gradient Correction for each filter -> BXT -> NXT -> SXT -> HT stretch -> ChComb as SHO -> Narrowband Normalization to adjust colors. RGB stars -> ChannelCombination RGB -> Gradient Correction -> AutoColor -> SPCC -> BXT -> ArcSinh Stretch -> SXT -> HistogramTransformation stretch of SXT stars file. Narrowband SHO image and RGB-Stars Image blended in ImageBlend script using Screen blend mode. Save as .xisf then 16 bit Tiff for final contrast adjustment in Photoshop then export as jpegs.
There is a lot of detail in this image. It’s fun to drive around in the image and try to imagine what has been going on in this part of the universe. Another example of Mother Nature’s art.
This piece is really a culmination of the past year and so many thoughts and fears that it brought to the forefront on my mind. It feels to me like so many of our collective difficulties lately have been somehow rooted in apathy. We've gotten so used to seeing our planet in her worst possible state that it's almost completely normalized for so many. Our waste is out of control and it's killing all of us - not just the marine life filled with plastic bags and prescription medications. It's gotten too easy to ignore the damage we're doing because it's not constantly in our face. Can you imagine what would happen if someone picked up their 7 year old from school only to find they'd ingested plastic bags, or trash tangled in their clothes. But that is what our oceans look like and people are constantly releasing balloons into the air without a thought as to what will happen when a bird gets tangled in the strings. Plastic cutlery is used once and thrown away, and it's that thought that inspired this piece. We have become so accustomed to doing things 'the easy way' that we don't realize the impact of our waste on the planet. I'm really not trying to be cruel, it just seems like we don't pay attention to important things until it's an emergency and without a doubt, this IS an emergency. There is no question about it - we are strangling this beautiful planet and ourselves in the process. We are stripping the things away from her that she needs to survive and to sustain our lives. Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive to you? I constructed this piece from many, many shots of plastic cutlery to form their own 'murmuration' - sort of a 'bird's eye view' of the ocean's pillaging. People of planet Earth, we have to do better than this. We are bigger than this and can be compassionate with our world as well as each other. We are capable of that and SO much more.
Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.
The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.
The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).
Palace Bridge (Dvortsoviy Most), a road- and foot-traffic bascule bridge, spans the Neva River in Saint Petersburg between Palace Square and Vasilievsky Island. Like every other Neva bridge (except for Big Obukhovsky Bridge), it is drawn by night, making foot travel between various parts of the city virtually impossible. The bascule span was designed by an American firm, the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company, and built by the French firm Société de Construction des Batignolles between 1912 and 1916.
The total length of Palace Bridge is 260.1 metres, width is 27.8 metres. It is actually composed of five spans, the southernmost joining Palace Embankment between the Winter Palace and the Admiralty and leading to Palace Square.
The engine which opens up 700 ton of each bridge flights consists of motors, huge gears (some of which are still the original ones) and thousand-ton counterweights. The mechanism works reliably, but sometimes small incidents occur. In October 2002 one of the gear teeth broke off: consequently the drawing was halted in the middle, and ship passage was delayed.
Sh2-308 is the minor project of SHARA N.8, and this is my personal interpretation.
Minor only in the number of poses, in fact it has been a long time that I have hoped to get my hands on this deep-sky object that has always fascinated me.
Thanks to Bill Blanshan's formulas for the normalization of narrowband channels and the transfer of RGB stars to NB, I obtained a result that leaves me very satisfied. Hoping to be able to return one day to this object with a greater number of poses, I greet you and wish you clear skies
I don't know how many of you caught my BBC TV debate last weekend with Lord Trembath, President and Chair of the illustrious Moral Renaissance movement. Here I am captured getting ready to go before the cameras - and keen to look the part of a notorious high-society prostitute and Madame!
You can probably catch the whole show now on your BBC I-Player (if you care to trawl through all the Olympics highlights!), but for those of you in a hurry, here is an extract to whet your appetites!
💋💋💋💋💋😉
Lord Trembath: Surely, Lady Rebecca, you would not deny that your so-called Sodality is engaged in the systematic corruption of young women of the English aristocracy?
Lady Rebecca: I deny it emphatically. The Sodality approaches no one, seeks-out no one. On the contrary: we make entry into our Sisterhood as difficult as we can. We test all of our pledges most rigorously.
Lord Trembath: But you are testing them – and please forgive me if I misunderstand your purposes here – you are testing them for their degree of sexual and moral depravity?
Lady Rebecca: Your Lordship, you must understand that we are receiving enthusiastic applications week in, week out - from young couples of the English ruling classes. Both parties in the marriage are always mustard keen for the wife – typically a newlywed – to be admitted into the Sodality. It is seen by such couples as a mark of social success. My organization simply provides a platform and a network through which these couples are able to practice the lifestyle that they have coveted.
Lord Trembath: Your critics claim, Lady Rebecca, that you have normalized a lifestyle of adultery, cuckolding, prostitution and sex-work amongst formerly respectable aristocratic ladies.
Lady Rebecca: My understanding, Lord Trembath, is that such practices and pass-times were normalized two or three hundred years ago - if not more! The fact is, these young ladies of which you speak dream of becoming high-class courtesans, sex workers, cuckoldresses, dominatrices and XXXXX porn stars. Candidly, this is the only thing that their expensive education has prepared them for. I merely help to release their inner vixen. The rather more startling thing is the degree to which the husbands relish their own ruthless cuckolding. It seems that we have become a nation of “wife watchers” – at least within society’s upper echelons!
Lord Trembath: Then surely you admit that you are deliberately undermining the institution of marriage?
Lady Rebecca: The institution of marriage? I believe Simone De Beauvoir hit on the fundamental truth about marriage, when she observed that a wife "was simply a prostitute with only one customer." In the Sodality, we work to extend a wife's sphere of influence!
Toodle Pip!
Love and Kisses to All My Friends and Fans!
xxxxxx
Lady Rebecca Georgina Arabella Lyndon
Duchess of Basingstoke
Aristocrat : Disciplinarian : Horsewoman
Last night I finally met a long time Internet Friend (before Flickr even) from France in Shinjuku for an evening of photos and fun. We had a good time and talked about our experiences with Japan, the culture, language, etc. while having a beer and enjoying some Yakitori.
Since I have arrived here in Japan, life has been sooooo busy, but I think I have settled into a routine of sorts, so life is normalizing for me. =)
Currently Listening:
“That’s quite correct, Lord Hartlepool. All of the girls who work for me here at The Salon are married and titled aristocrats. We find that everything is so much simpler that way.
“Our husbands are – in every case – fully aware of our chosen profession, and are 100% supportive of our career choice. In fact, there’s usually a long queue of very excited husbands, waiting for a free space in our voyeur’s gallery. They love to catch a glimpse of their beautiful wives engaged in high-class sex work. It also seems that both my personal influence and the organization that I co-founded – The Sodality of the Sisterhood of Pleasure – have played a significant role in normalizing the cuckolding lifestyle and professional prostitution amongst ladies of the English upper class! One does what one can to make the world a happier place.”
“Now, my Lord, which one of my ladies would you like to be introduced to? Lady Alice Grainger will be free in about half an hour… Would you like me to tell you about her specialities – and her boudoir tricks?”
Toodle Pip!
Love and Kisses to All My Friends and Fans!
xxxxx
Lady Rebecca Georgina Arabella Lyndon
Duchess of Basingstoke
Here is the beautiful region around the Lagoon nebula embedded in the Mike Way near its core. I have seen it with my naked eye from the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, but this narrowband image is from my light polluted back yard in north central Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
The Lagoon Nebula (top center), approximately 4,100 light years from Earth, is a bright emission nebula in the constellation Sagittarius, spanning about 110 by 50 light-years. It appears as a glowing cloud of ionized hydrogen gas with a distinct hourglass shape at its core, where intense star formation occurs. The nebula contains dark Bok globules—dense clouds of gas and dust where new stars may form—and is illuminated by the hot, young O-type star 9 Sagittarii. Its bright core is visible to the naked eye under dark skies, with a reddish hue in photographs due to hydrogen-alpha emission.
The Lagoon Nebula was first recorded by Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654, who noted it as a nebulous object. Charles Messier included it in his catalog as M8 in 1764, describing it as a "nebula with a star." Its detailed structure was later revealed through telescopic observations and photography.
The Trifid Nebula, (left center), about 5,200 light years from Earth, is a striking combination of an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula. It spans about 40 light-years and is named for its three-lobed appearance, caused by dark dust lanes (cataloged as Barnard 85) that divide the glowing gas. The emission nebula glows red due to ionized hydrogen, while the reflection nebula appears blue from scattered starlight. A prominent open cluster of young stars lies at its center, with the triple star system HD 164492 energizing the nebula.
Charles Messier discovered the Trifid Nebula in 1764, cataloging it as M20. Its intricate structure, particularly the dark lanes, became clearer with improved telescopes in the 19th century, and its full beauty was revealed through modern astrophotography.
I used my Takahashi Epsilon 160 ED telescope, Chroma 3 nm filters and a QHY600M camera on a Astro-Physics Mach 2 mount to make this image. It was built from 17 hr 40 min of narrowband data and 45 min of RGB data (primarily for star color) Collected over 7 nights in May, 2025. The image is displayed as HOO blended with SII over an RGB background with RGB stars. The fits files were pre-processed with WBPP in PixIsight using sky flats and darks and included Local Normalization and Drizzle (not yet implemented for this image, however). The RGB files were edge cropped, combined, plate solved, color balanced with SPCC, stars extracted, ArcSinh stretched and saved as a 16 bit TIFF for screening in Photoshop. The starless RGB file was GradientCorrected, and stretched with HistogramTransformation using auto ScreenTransferFunction setting. The narrow band files were edge cropped (alignment to RGB maintained), deconvolved (BlurX), stars extracted, GradientCorrected, stretched by HistogramTransformation from auto STF, intensity balanced with HDRMT and saved as 16 bit TIFF files.
The TIFF files were opened as layers in Photoshop and each layer converted to a group enabling independent adjustment layers such as curves, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, luminosity masks, and a host of AI assisted tools like the Remove Tool for cleaning up residuals from star removal. The starless RGB layer was placed on the bottom of the stack and served as a fill in a BlendIF mode, the RGB stars were put on top, and the narrowband layers were sandwiched in between. All but the bottom layer were set to Screen Blend Mode. Levels adjustment layers were used to set the black, white, and midpoint levels of each layer. Hue/Saturation was used to colorize the narrowband layers. I like using Photoshop for the final tasks in constructing an image since it provides very fine control and non-destructive editing in real time. PixInsight is by far my choice for calibrating, integrating, RGB channel combination, gradient correction, sharpening, stretching, plate solving, and noise reduction.
RPO_Epsilon_M8_HOOS_RGBStars_18hrs_250530_RQFugate_Rev3_6400
A message to our players:
If you haven't noticed yet, Pride has come to RF. Please feel free to interact with the booth in the square to take photos, or roleplay around any of Denver Pride items strewn about the square, main street, and park. We would love to take this month to celebrate with you all both IC and OOC. One of the driving values of Riverside Falls roleplay sim is not just acceptance, but inclusion and celebration of people of all sexuality and genders. The roleplay community on SL has a long string of bias and judgement surrounding character gender and players behind them. I've spoke with a lot of you about this personally in the past, but it's something that is very important to us to address here on RF. Since we opened in January, we've worked to normalize and celebrate people exploring characters and stories that excite them, make them feel confident, and make them feel like they have the ability to truly step into the shoes of anyone they wish to be. We have strived to provide a community OOCly that is based on love, acceptance, and inclusion, to encourage all of you gorgeous faces and sexy voices to not be afraid to be who you are as the player behind the screen. It's been beautiful watching you all explore characters of different genders and sexualities, and learning to walk in the shoes of either the person you feel you were meant to be, or a person you'd like to understand more. Perhaps I am biased, but I truly see a community of people who have normalized diversity, embraced all different walks of life, and I feel incredibly lucky to have you all here with me. A build is just a build, but you all have truly made RF into not just a safe community, but an encouraging one. Thank you for all the time, effort, money, stories, and love you've poured into the sim, I hope you all enjoy our little Denver Pride, because it's truly all about y'all.
Minds erased, bodies normalized, blank faces: the soldiers who fight for The Void used to be human. Not anymore.
The Void's Infantry Squads feature 6 to 10 Body Units (i.e. soldiers). Squadron 777 is known for having been created after Squadron 776 and before Squadron 778.
From left to right:
The Leader , is Officer L-284. The device he's holding displays tactic maps and simulations, and allows him to override mental control over his subordinates.
The "Medic" , is Officer M-178. His job is to spray the Serum held in his container on the bodies of fallen soldiers, whoever they are. Their cellular remnants are reorganized to become new Soldiers for The Void.
The Comm Officer , C-355, carries a trans-dimensional device to receive orders and report to the entity leading The Void, Its Obscenity "The Unnamable", the Beginning and the End of Everything.
The Troopers are Privates P-2641, P-2642 and P-2643. The latter is riding a standard Light Support Antigrav Vehicle.
Built for DA4 www.flickr.com/groups/14677828@N25/
Please like and comment!
Israir Airbus A320 4X-ABG rolling on runway 23 at Glasgow to depart to Berlin. The aircraft flew the Israeli national football team from Tel Aviv to Glasgow to play Scotland at Hampden on 9th October. 4X-ABG wears a special livery marking the Bahrain–Israel Normalization Agreement.
'While you were sleeping'
Abu Dhabi, 24th Jan 2013 at 7AM.
I specialize in aerial photography and spend a lot of time shooting subject from helicopters. One thing I miss about shooting from a moving aircraft however is stability. I love HDR photography and to shoot 5 or 7 bracketed exposures where the longest one can last several seconds or even minutes, you need a stable, solid platform. Your camera has to be fixed to a sturdy tripod - plain and simple.
This is why I always wanted to shoot from the roof of the World Trade Center Tower 1 in Abu Dhabi when it reached the 98th floor! From its peak, I could have a true bird's eye perspective of the town below without the drawbacks of the aircraft as a shooting platform. (ok, I guess I'm a bit spoiled, lol)
It took a long time to secure the permit to access the construction site and when I set the date to shoot the town, another rare thing happened; low rolling fog. Any cityscape photographer will be able to tell you that there is NOTHING as beautiful as the fog over the city in the early morning hours. What an incredible blessing and lucky it was to be shooting from the tallest floor in town, as the only photographer ever to be allowed on its roof on the morning with fog which happens once or twice a year at most!
I was so excited when I saw the view in front of me that I completely forgot to look at the platform I was standing on; a wooden scaffolding on the OUTSIDE of the building, over 330 meters high. I was too happy to shit myself from fear! I used Manfrotto Magic Arms to fix the camera onto the scaffolding handrail as the ledge I was standing on was only 30 cm wide and there was no space whatsoever to spread the tripod.
I quickly snapped 7 bracketed exposure to created a dynamically blended cityscape of Abu Dhabi.
I've won several photo competitions worldwide with this shot but to me, what matters the most is the thrill which goes into producing a single frame such as this one. The greatest reward I get from photography is a sense of satisfaction and self fulfillment.
Gear: Canon 5dmk2 and Canon TS-E 17mm f4.0L. This lens is quite possibly the best piece of glass you can buy for Canon or any other DSLR maker. Promote Remote Control was used for quick and painless exposure bracketing.
Software: I started in Lighroom 4.1 where I pre-processed the bracketed exposures and exported them as 16-bit TIFF files to Oloneo PhotoEngine for HDR tonemapping. Once I got my HDR base image, I exported it as a 16-bit TIFF image to Photoshop 5.1 where the real work begain. I'm using dynamic blending technique where various patches are applied across the image in order to 'normalize' the dynamic range of the image. I strive for a natural, if somewhat stylized look in my work. I most definitely dislike the cartoonish, flat looking and overcooked HDR images.
Primary grading was accomplished with Color Efex Pro and Nik Software Viveza 2. To sharpen the image, I use NIK Software Output Sharpener which I highly recommend. It does what it's supposed to do without degrading your image with nasty halos and excessive texture structuring.
First part of the almost 4 hours long capture. This one is covering about 2h 46minutes. Start time at 10:59 PDT and end at 13:45 PDT. The clouds were interrupting it several times . Some post processing will be needed to normalize the frames.
82 frame animation.
It will take some time while the file is loaded!
When opened in full screen mode the animation automatically loops endlessly.
The drug trade destroys the vitality (moral fiber) of a nation. A great window into the activities of the New World Order cabal is viewed through the panes/pains of the opium wars. Indeed, the opium trade caused widespread addiction in China, wreaking havoc both socially and economically. The secret society Triad cult—the triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man—were recruited into the East India Company’s opium trade. Therefore, the notorious Triads helped the British aristocrats smuggle drugs into China. The Chinese emperor began to crackdown on the opium trade. Yet the British government came in with their military might to defend the opium trade. Oddly enough, the drug trade was backed by the guns of the British. Just think, the British government became the biggest drug dealer in the world. Organized crime: the British built extensive drug trafficking and black market networks. How gangster is that? British Intelligence also became an arm of the drug trade. Shocker: British Intelligence is also in the business of child sex trafficking. These criminal networks are run by wealthy families. This cabal is a network of wealthy families and secret societies. Can anyone one say, Illuminati? Out of the opium wars, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) was founded. “Who founded the Hongkong and Shanghai Corporation? The same circle of merchant banking, trading, and shipping families—centered around the British monarchy—who opened the East India Company’s opium trade as an instrument of British state policy during the previous century.” The earnings of the drug trade begin and end with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, from loans for buying opium seeds, to money laundering.
The British opium traders profited from the slave trade. They got into the cotton business. They bought slave-produced cotton, made it into cloth with the cheap labour of women and children in England, and then they exported it to India in exchange for opium.
British pharmaceutical companies began to produce morphine before the American Civil War. Both armies had large quantities of morphine. These pharmaceutical companies touted their morphine as a nonaddictive pain killer. They even claimed that it could cure opium addiction.
The opium cabal used the immigration system of America to bring in secret societies from various places, including China (the Triad gangs) and Italy (the Mafia). Many times, behind the scenes, Intelligence will be seen collaborating with the Mafia—to where they both look like the same entity. Al Capone was one of the cabal’s men. In the end, the cabal owned every mobster in America. If a gangster refused to work with the syndicate, they would kill him—the end. Saul Alinsky, who wrote Rules for Radicals, hung out with the Capone gang.
Prohibition in America made crime very profitable, and it was used to bring in large-scale organized crime. “Crime was reorganized from top to bottom into an integrated wholesale and retail distribution chain with well-defined marketing districts, quotas, and uniform pricing.” The same wealthy British families behind the opium drug trade in China, introduced prohibition and organized crime to America. They used the profits from prohibition to purchase gambling casinos, racetracks, and sporting venues. Prohibition was not organic. It’s the same old dialectic: problem, reaction, solution. Large sums of money were funnelled into organizations that produced paid agitators/protesters to stir the pot, like we see today. It worked, and they got their prohibition.
Clearly, World War I had demoralized society. America’s moral compass had shifted. It became more tolerant towards crime, even romanticizing mobsters. Organized crime caused tremendous corruption. The paid-off policemen, politicians, and other officials corrupted American institutions. So the institutions and officials became less trustworthy, which caused further demoralization in America. Moral decay had reached such levels that society was ripe for a climate fostering large-scale drug addiction. The cabal is also behind the push to decriminalize street drugs and to defund the police, which would greatly increase their profits. The legalizing of street drugs will produce more drug addicts (customers). From the Roaring Twenties and the rise of jazz, to rock ‘n’ roll, to rap music, from alcohol, to marijuana, to heroin and cocaine, the decline continues. Such a climate has increasingly fostered promiscuity and deviancy. Such a climate has also produced an increasingly adolescent population. What can be said about the British band, the Beatles, with their love of Eastern religion and LSD, which can be linked to British Intelligence and the Tavistock Institute? How many other rebellious bands/tools/pawns/poor role models could we mention? Too many! Just think: people have been conditioned to accept large amounts of occult symbolism in today’s music. The sheep just don’t care! Sway to the beat of the drums and to the rhythm of the music, open your subconscious to the lyrical incantations, dance repetitively, embrace the symbolism, partake in the sacred pagan drug ritual.
I read a book many years ago about a Canadian military chaplain. During World War I, he could preach deep scriptural messages from the Bible and the men understood them. During World War II, this all changed. He needed to preach simpler messages due to the men’s lack of Christian foundations. We can see this continuing into the 50s. Many went to church in the 50s, but they didn’t really live out Christianity. Their Christian foundations had further eroded. This became apparent in the 60s, when the population started down the bell curve of moral decline. The cultural upheaval of the 60s led to church attendance declining in the 70s and onward. The people lost their roots. The Vietnam War further traumatized and demoralized America. Many Americans lost their sense of national pride. The results have been devastating. Indeed, America is now a divided nation. The young people had never gone through a Great Depression or a Great War. They were softer and less resilient. When compared to the previous generation, they were spoiled. The Vietnam war caused them great despair, and they moved from their previous carefree lives into drugs and hedonism. The antiwar movement was not organic either, and it also became part of the drug culture. The dope cabal also profited off American soldiers in Vietnam.
The illegal drug trade is controlled by a single world network; it is “the best-controlled production and distribution system of any commodity in international trade, illegal or legal.” The worldwide drug trade is worth about 500 billion per year. It is the biggest business in the world. As a whole, offshore banking is under the thumb of the opium cabal. They launder their profits through real estate, hotels, resorts, and restaurants, before transferring them to offshore banking operations. The funds are then shuffled around the world electronically through various bank accounts and corporate fronts, where gold and diamonds are purchased, sold and converted back into a bank balance, eliminating all traces of origin. The London bullion market is basically a subsidiary of the syndicate. They are also behind the international gold and diamond trade. “It is obvious, by now, that an operation of this scope could not exist without the political approval of the British government, nor without the gigantic supporting facilities of the world’s off-shore credit markets, the world’s gold and diamonds trade, and ‘hands-on’ management of the retail distribution, or organized crime aspects of the operation.” The various groups involved are so intermarried, interlocked, and intertwined with one another that they appear to be one single family.
The Far East drug trade is a British-Chinese partnership, and the senior partner is Britain (they control the money). By Britain, I mean wealthy families in Britain. The most prominent of these families is the Rothschild family. Cecil Rhodes was a legman of the Rothschilds; it appears that George Soros may also be a legman of the Rothschilds. The Rothschild family helped to launch Soros’s career. “From the very first days when Soros created his own investment fund in 1969, he owed his success to his relation to the Rothschild family banking network.” Here is a question to provoke thought, how are Rothschild & friends connected to the Federal Reserve—how are they connected to the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank? (I may write about these things in the future). Oh, wait, we shouldn’t talk about conspiracy theories. There is nothing to see here!
Throughout the years, much of the British aristocracy has publicly professed Christianity. Yet their religion is a mixture of paganism, Theosophy, and Rosicrucianism, which revolves around ancient Egyptian occultism. Evidence points to “broad opium use in ancient Egyptian society.” Expert Andrew J. Koh said, “Our findings combined with prior research indicate that opium use was more than accidental or sporadic in ancient Egyptian cultures and surrounding lands and was, to some degree, a fixture of daily life.” Drug potions were also used for magic rituals in ancient Egypt. Some things never change! The high priests of the cabal are subtly seducing the world into their drug-related mysticism, by which their unsuspecting slaves wonder around in drug-induced delusions, controlled by the religious propaganda of the temple—the media arm of the cult. Build that pyramid, build that ziggurat, build that Tower of Babel! “As long as a population is organized around superstition, magic, hallucinogenic drugs, and animal-like pursuit of immediate sensory gratification (‘if it feels good, do it’), it will remain incapable of acting on behalf of its own interests.”
“Aleister Crowley initiated Aldous Huxley into the use of mescaline [a psychedelic] in Berlin in the 1930s” “Aleister Crowley was the tutor of Aldous Huxley, the prophet of mind control, who later introduced the LSD cult into the United States during the 1950s.” Both Aleister Crowley and Aldous Huxley were linked to British Intelligence. Huxley wrote a book called The Doors of Perception, in which he talked about his psychedelic experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.
The syndicate, with its global networks, created an International Assassination Bureau. This globalist cabal was behind the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy’s are tied to the British aristocracy through marriage. Meaning, they are in the family. Therefore, when JFK was in office, his mob-family expected him to help further the family business. JFK, however, started to go astray. JFK forced the resignations of the three highest ranking CIA officials, one of which was CIA director Allen Dulles, who was the cabal’s man in charge. (Dulles was a cousin of the Rockefeller family). Kennedy began to deal with Moscow on friendlier terms. In 1963, Kennedy started to deal with Castro in a more flexible way. “In the days before Kennedy’s assassination he told the French journalist Jean Daniel in a White House meeting, to send a message to Castro that he was willing to lift the economic embargo against Cuba so long as the Cuban government stopped supporting leftist revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. Around this time he had also made a speech to the Inter-American Press Association where he suggested that normalization of relations with Cuba was possible.” The powers that be did not like these things. JFK was double-crossing the syndicate, so they whacked him. The cabal also terminated Robert Kennedy. They obviously saw him as a liability.
New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison launched an investigation, which led him to a corporation called Permindex. Garrison’s chief suspect in the Kennedy assassination was Col. Clay Shaw. “Shaw was the financial backer and controller of Lee Harvey Oswald during his lengthy stays in New Orleans, Garrison had established, and the District Attorney also had evidence that Shaw had been the safehouse channel out of the country (into Italy) for several unidentified persons believed to have been the real ‘triggers’ in the Kennedy assassination.” Shaw’s associates, who were going to testify, mysteriously died before they could give their testimonies. James Earl Ray, the ‘patsy’ in the Martin Luther King assassination, also frequently visited Shaw. Garrison was able to pin another half a dozen mysterious deaths to Permindex. Of course, the powers that be shut down the investigation and swept it under the rug.
After an assassination attempt on French President General Charles de Gaulle, French intelligence discovered that Permindex was involved in the plot. Permindex was linked to several other assassinations in Europe. British Intelligence was linked to Permindex. “The Permindex Assassination Bureau was responsible for carrying out the most important political assassinations of the century.” Permindex was connected to a network of money laundering archipelagos. Permindex was specifically sent laundered money for the purposes of terrorism and assassinations. High profile assassinations would cost upwards of 10 million dollars. Permindex was one facet of the cabal’s system.
The death of Abraham Lincoln can be “traced to British-controlled and British-funded networks by American military intelligence.” Indeed, the British aristocracy also had Abraham Lincoln assassinated. Lincoln’s greenback was debt-free money, which “sent shock waves throughout the global banking system.” The cabal, being a cartel of bankers, did not like it! The American government eventually passed the Resumption Act of 1875, a law that would “restore the gold standard by requiring the Treasury to redeem paper currency (greenbacks) for gold.” Backing up currency with gold is not a bad thing. The problem is this: the cabal of bankers were into gold speculation. Meaning this: the system was built off gold speculation. The system was a scam! It’s no different today, with all the financial market speculation. Indeed, the same group is running the show today. The cabal is also behind our financial crashes, including the Great Depression—don’t forget the Great Wars! Do you think America is in war after war for no reason? The United States military industrial complex is an arm of the cabal. Moving on! House Banking Committee Chairman Louis McFadden said this about the Great Depression: “It [the Depression] was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence worked out as one works out a mathematical equation. The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as the rulers of us all.” Louis McFadden also stated: “When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is—the Fed has usurped the government.” America may have defeated the British in its revolution, yet America is run by British interests! Donald Trump himself is beholden to the Rothschild family. During his first administration, he appointed one of their men as Secretary of Commerce. Although the cabal is run by nerds, they are the original mobsters. If they help you, they expect a favour in return. When they come a calling, you’d better return the favour! If you don’t, they’ll kill you. This group of crooks are also involved in large-scale election tampering.
On account of the opium wars, China became the most established country in the drug trade. Besides China, numerous countries grow crops for the drug trade. Yet the British oligarchs at the top are involved with them all. According to End Time Bible Prophecy, there are three major players: The kings of the East (China and allies), the king of the North (Russia and allies), and then the Antichrist and his kingdom (Western Europe). There is a king of the South, but he is weak and not worth discussing. The Chinese Communist Party has made many blunders, thus China will eventually crash and burn. The CCP is backing itself into a corner, and it will need to do something drastic to retain power. They will have to go to war. When all else fails, go to war! The globalist banker cabal will eventually choose a leader, the Antichrist, to do their bidding. Two things are needed to take over the world: money and military might. First: the Antichrist will bring in a financial system, which the whole world will embrace. Second: the Antichrist will be a man of war. Ultimately, the three parties mentioned above will fight for world supremacy at the Battle of Armageddon. Of course, Jesus Christ will return to defeat them. Yay, team Jesus! In my next write-up, I would like to bring Russia into the equation. I hope to discuss the cabal and Russia.
America is where the drug trade makes its largest profits. However, money is not the only motive behind the drug trade in the US. From a Chinese standpoint, they want to utterly demoralize America. Their end goal is the destruction of America. The British elitists have various viewpoints. Some are still angry about the American Revolution. Therefore, they want to weaken America and take it back. Others are mad that Europe, through the Roman Empire, lost its empire. They want Europe to band together and retake its former empire. (The Antichrist’s kingdom is sometimes labelled by people as the revived Roman Empire). Of course, their end goal is to control the whole world. In order to usher in their New World Order, they need Americans to willingly give up their rights and freedoms. Obviously, by now, they know this will not happen. Therefore, they must destroy America. Although America has been a mighty superpower, no reference is made to it in End Time Bible Prophecy. Thus, America will be destroyed. It will be taken out of the picture. The cabal is old school, and their pecking order seems to be straight out of the Middle Ages. Interestingly, the Bible talks about ‘ten kings’ who will give their power and authority to the Beast—the Antichrist. Indeed, you would be wise to pay attention to these things. Repent and turn to Jesus Christ!
This view to the eyes and the chirping of birds in the background is indeed a therapy in itself... IMO, if that doesn't normalize your heart rate and blood pressure, then something is surely not right with you!
Hardly find time with my camera these days. Couldn't resist grabbing it with me while I took some visiting relatives for a stroll at Longwood Gardens.
h + chi, the famous double cluster in the constellation Perseus. The object was already know to the greek astronomer Hipparchus 130 B.C.
Object: h + chi Persei (NGC 869 + NGC 884, Perseus Double Cluster)
Optics: GSO Newton 8" F4 + GPU
Mount: Celestron CGEM
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MMC @-20°C, Gain=75, Offset=15
Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, ZWO 36mm Filters
Exposure: total ~1h, R 40x30sec, G 40x30sec, B 40x30sec, L (mixed from RGB), 200 Bias, 40 Darks, 40 Flats per channel
Date: 2017-10-16
Location: Schwaig
Capture: Sequence Generator Pro
Guiding: Off-Axis, ASI120MM, PHD2
Image Acquisition: Stephan Schurig
Image Processing: Stephan Schurig
AstroPixelProcessor 1.070: Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Integration, Channel Combination, Background Flattening & Calibration, Star Colors Correction, Auto Digital Development
Photoshop 20.0.1: Levels, Curves, Exposure (Gamma, Offset, Exposure), Masked Nik Dfine 2 Denoise, Masked Dynamic (Dynamic, Saturation), Star Shrink, Masked HighPass Sharpening, Levels
A cable-stayed bridge has one or more towers (or pylons), from which cables support the bridge deck. A distinctive feature are the cables or stays, which run directly from the tower to the deck, normally forming a fan-like pattern or a series of parallel lines. This is in contrast to the modern suspension bridge, where the cables supporting the deck are suspended vertically from the main cable, anchored at both ends of the bridge and running between the towers. The cable-stayed bridge is optimal for spans longer than cantilever bridges and shorter than suspension bridges. This is the range within which cantilever bridges would rapidly grow heavier, and suspension bridge cabling would be more costly.
Cable-stayed bridges have been known since the 16th century and used widely since the 19th. Early examples often combined features from both the cable-stayed and suspension designs, including the Brooklyn Bridge. The design fell from favor through the 20th century as larger gaps were bridged using pure suspension designs, and shorter ones using various systems built of reinforced concrete. It once again rose to prominence in the later 20th century when the combination of new materials, larger construction machinery, and the need to replace older bridges all lowered the relative price of these designs.
The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.
The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).
Let’s believe the dialectical faith of wokeism (woke Marxism), let’s join their dialectical cult! Since society is full of injustice and inequality, let’s tear it down and rebuilt it into a communist utopia—let’s Build Back Better. Let’s awaken to a higher consciousness, let’s awaken to a critical consciousness (critical Marxism)—to negative thinking (capitalism is bad). You’re a racist (a capitalist). The system (capitalism) is systemically racist. Let’s awaken the inner activist, let’s awaken the communist revolutionary. What will all this evolve into? It will evolve into the abolishment of private property. Communism: you will own nothing and be happy. Communism: equality for all! Communism: it’s for the greater good! Communism: the ends justify the means: murder, starvation, and the gulags! Marxism causes tribalism and division, because it’s intolerant of everything it doesn’t like. Get your reeducation: diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion): a precursor to a Social Credit Score System. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance): a Social Credit Score System for companies (Can anybody say: Bud Light!). The Green Transition: equality (poverty) for all! Climate communism: climate justice, climate equity, climate sustainability, climate lockdowns! Sustainability: the road to a good global citizen consciousness!
The fifth tenet of the Communist Manifesto: “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Three cheers for central banking…not! Lenin: “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Three cheers for fait money…not! Stakeholder Capitalism is Fascism. Why do you think the (WEF) World Economic Fascists like to talk about Stakeholder Capitalism? The Free Market is the enemy of Stakeholder Capitalism. Grover Cleveland: “Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.” Say what: corporate personhood? So, that’s nothing, the coming New World Order will obtain Beasthood—666 worship the Beast. The Metaverse Beastsystem: techno-spiritualism in which humanity will be free from the limitations of mind, body, and soul; a techno-spirit of oneness with the universe—universal collectivism: Mystery Babylon, Babylon the Great, and the Tower of Babel—antichristism.
Here is a report by Oxford University and Imperial College London for the UK Government:
Flying (page 6):
2020-2029: “All airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast close with transfers by rail.”
2030-2049: “All remaining airports close.”
Food (page 6):
2020-2029: “National consumption of beef and lamb drops by 50%, along with reduction in frozen ready meals and air-freighted food imports.”
2030-2049: “Beef and lamb phased out, along with all imports not transported by train; fertiliser use greatly reduced.”
Tacitus: “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.”
www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-...
The NWO commies at the United Nations have outlined an agenda to decriminalise ‘consensual sex’ between adults and minors in a report titled: “The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty.”
Principle 16-Consensual Sexual Conduct (page 22-23):
“Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”
Mark my words: pedophilia will one day become normalized (a human right).
share-netinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/8-M...
2 Timothy 3:13 “Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
Daniel 11:36 “Then the king (the Antichrist) will do exactly as he pleases; he will exalt himself and magnify himself above every god and will speak astounding and disgusting things against the God of gods and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is determined [by God] will be done.”
Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 3-4
After 3 three days of enacting a forced repetitive activity, I am starting to feel obsessive. I have a clear mind, however, I am annoyed by not being able to achieve other to-do duties of the day. Not that walking through Jingili Water Gardens is overbearing. I am finding it pleasurable. The oxygen is clean, birds are singing, people are greeting and the temperature is wonderful. What I am finding obsessive is that writing a reflection is time-consuming. So to alleviate this pressure I am restricting my reflection from a daily event to incorporating two days of walking through Jingili Water Gardens into one reflection.
Do I feel driven to engage in one reflection per activity? Yes.
Do I feel anxiety and guilt for not achieving my goal? Yes.
Did I underestimate the commitment? Yes.
In three days I lost control of my task and had to reprocess how I am to achieve purpose without re-purposing or letting go. My holiday intention was to not 'just do it' with the purpose of performing an activity that bridges yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That is a bridge I have identified to assist in gaining creative insight.
In regards to simultaneously observing my thinking and my thoughts about my thinking, I have realized a subset that underlies my problem. My day three and four walks around Jingili Water Gardens were more or less the same, however not exactly the same. The people involved are becoming real. Certain people appear at the same location every second day. Others appeared further along or behind their point of interaction. I even noted an individual's loop point. In each iteration, my behavior is normalizing. It is no longer a question on whether I say "good morning". It is now a question of whether I maintain expectations.
My Jingili Water Gardens walk now includes cognitive empathy. That is, I am thinking about my interaction and the third person's interaction. Does the push-bike rider evade me, or do I demonstrate prior evasion? Do I stand ground, step aside, smile, or frown based on their physical conveyance. Then once demonstrated, do we both accept the contract is as ongoing?
This cognitive realization gained by employing repetition, questions my good as well as the good of combined interaction and that of the third person initiative. Each small smile or frown can be quickly established as the norm, however, each interaction occurs in a slightly different place along the path. Does this mean that each interaction with the same person can be influence by where and when? Then if I alter my reaction to each location am I distorting my emotional empathy to confuse the comforts of repetition? Do I maintain consistency for the satisfaction of sameness disregarding the actual difference?
My thoughts are now questioning the identification of purpose. If I ignore the interactions I ignore my intention of gaining understanding through repetitive activity. Are fleeting interactions as important as the actual length and time of walk? Likewise, are the inhabiting people of the tourist location as important as the UNESCO world heritage site? Underneath this reflection is whether my cognitive gain of completing an activity of the intended activity or is it the minor and fleeting people interactions within the activity, the gained merit?
Thinking about this problem could be part of the creative problem I started with. In short, my problem could be someone else's perspective. Rather than trying to solve my problem through my cognitive questioning, I should apply my interpretation of other people's thinking of me.
If I am to stay focussed on repetitive behaviors I may need to self-reflect as someone else rather than being self-focussed. This could be a formal way of letting myself into myself as a third person. Can I become inclusive of myself through a base of problem-solving myself? Constructing a user-friendly approach that pays attention to my cognitive misunderstandings and emotional positioning on the service/products that I create. That is collaborating with myself as a third person(s).
www.jjfbbennett.com/2020/07/darwin-jingili-water-gardens-...
I’m interested in the silent shutter for lunar and planetary images because eliminating mechanical shutter wear could free me to improve the quality of my images by taking many more frames and getting better lucky images for stacking when atmospheric seeing isn't at it’s best. Because the extra noise introduced by the electronic rolling shutter used for silent shutter images is far below the eight bit resolution offered by compressed images, I decided to compare the quality of processed images taken with the two techniques as well as the original images.
These images are from my first night out with the a6300 which was at prime focus on a Questar f15 1400/89mm telescope. Images were take at ISO 200 for 1/50 sec. I took about 40 images each with the mechanical shutter (with the electronic first curtain shutter option to minimize vibration) and with the fully electronic silent shutter. The quality of the images was auto graded and the best 8 were selected from each batch. Because of the wide, half degree, field of view atmospheric seeing can cause mirage like distortions of the Moon’s surface. This isn’t a problem for small area shots of the Moon or planetary images because of the smaller field of view. For full disk Moon images, the results of stacking are improved if each image is geometrically normalized before stacking. I use Nebulosity’s 8 parameter affine transformation. The cost of this is that each frame takes about one hour to align. This translates to a practical limit of 8 images for an overnight alignment run. Processing consisted of deconvolution and wavelet processing in Lynkeos to recover resolution lost to the atmosphere and diffraction in the small, 89mm objective, telescope. The exposure curves are then adjusted to enhance contrast and slightly boost saturation in Photoshop.
One way to see the quality of the low intensity data near the noise floor is to examine the terminator region. You can see detail extend into the dark part of the moon in the processed images. The post processing of the two images was similar, but not identical. As you can see in the raw images there were slight differences in exposure although the camera settings were the same except for the silent shutter setting. These may be because of the silent shutter or differences in transparency of the sky between the two sets of exposures.
My current thoughts on astrophotography with the a6300 so far are as follows.
Measurements that I’ve seen of the images of the electronic silent rolling shutter on the Sony a7 series cameras show about a stop of increase in noise at low ISO speed compared to the mechanical shutter.
For dim targets like DSOs where noise must be minimized and relatively few, long exposure, images are stacked - the mechanical shutter is clearly a win.
For small bright targets like planets where resolution must be maximized and cropped video is frequently used, the extra noise in video capture (or wide FOV silent shutter shots) isn’t an issue. Stacking more images can reduce noise and the video codecs don’t capture the full raw dynamic range in any case. Video (or silent shutter for the widest FOV) works well to capture the thousands of frames that are preferred, without mechanical wear on the shutter mechanism.
Full disk images of the moon are an in between case. The images are bright and the number that I stack is limited by the long processing time for the affine geometric normalization. I’d like to have more full disk images to choose from, without wearing out my mechanical shutter. From my results so far it seems that to see a difference that silent shutter makes in quality of the final result takes pixel peeping and may be mostly due to seeing and transparency variation.
It's been a couple of years since I posted any photos from Vancouvers drug use mayhem.
2 of 2 from Chinatown.
There is an article by Vancouver Sun Reporter Peter McMartin about the situation posted in August 2025.
Every time I visit Chinatown and the downtown east side (daily) his article comes to mind so this is a way to share his viewpoint that I agree with.
In the 30+ years I have lived nearby, the situation has only deteriorated.
The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair
Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.
Published Aug 03, 2025
In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.
Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.
Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.
In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.
And the cost to taxpayers?
Over $360 million annually.
Article content
That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.
Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.
And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.
And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.
In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:
1. Give us more money.
2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.
I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.
In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’
The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.
Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.
Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’
But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.
Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.
Funny thing about that.
Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.
I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.
But this is how I feel:
My patience is Exhausted.
I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.
Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.
It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.
How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.
They are the system.
Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.
The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.
The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).
The historic architecture of Saint-Petersburg's city centre, mostly Baroque and Neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved; although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
I was at a bookstore yesterday, leafing through one photobook after another trying to learn something from the giants. It's a whole different kind of experience, holding a physical print in your hand, to the extent that you can almost touch the grains on the surface.
At the same time, I had a very 'normalizing' experience, in that in the film days, any noise you get on your shots was considered part of your work.
Now back to this shot. This is another one from the Hong Kong trip in the summer of 2011. Apart from the composition, there's not much to like, technique-wise. I basically let the camera decide how it wanted to capture the scene, which resulted in an extremely high ISO (for a 7D) while the shutter remained open for one quarter of a second.
I, however, decided to leave the noise produced in such a process. Now that I have been shooting for almost 2 years, I see a same image taken a while ago in a very different way (hence the title). What I mean is, some of the marvels that technology had allowed us may not always 'enhance' our photographic experience, either as a doer, or as a consumer.
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Identifying...
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...Welcome, agent 5QrZ6-D112Gb.
Please deactivate your vehicle's SEASDReD drive to normalize its net composite mass-net composite space ratio. The hangar will be temporarily unshielded and accessible once the normalizing process is complete.
_________________________________________________________
One more pic, showing the vehicle's open cockpit. (The function isn't very smooth but it looks really cool IRL)
I have more pictures from other angles but unless anyone reeeeally wants me to upload them I won't.
It's good to be back. :D
Nikon F80
AF Nikkor f1.8/50D
Agfaphoto Vista Plus 400
CineStill C-41
Plustek 8200i
I never got along with TLRs, even though I had very good results from my old Lubitel 2 and my early Yashica-Mat, I always felt queasy trying to focus and frame through their rectangular viewing screens and the shape and weight were somehow always putting me off.
So why did I buy this Flexaret you might ask. Well, having spent 8 years as a medical student in Prague throughout the '90s (a period when I was completely indifferent to photography) I recently came to realize that Czechoslovakia (as it was known back in the day) had a significant tradition in camera manufacture and the Flexaret series were probably the pinnacle of that industry. I also recently learned that one of the consequences of the Russian invasion in 1968 was the cessation of their production as the Soviets re-arranged czechoslovak industrial production as part of the "normalization" process. Nostalgia kicked in and I decided to buy one for old times' sake. I opted for the basic "Standard" model that lacks the frame counter and double exposure prevention mechanism which supposedly is the Achilles's heel of the Flexarets, the classic ruby semitransparent windows for frame counting off the film's backing paper at the back are more than enough. It's "windows" because the Flexaret comes with a small metallic film mask that allows you to shoot 6x4.5, so two different windows are necessary.
The camera sits somewhere inbetween the Lubitel and the Yashica-Mat in overall quality feel (but closer to the Japanese camera rather than the Soviet one as it is made of aluminium and not bakelite) and mine is in truly great condition even if it's an earlier model. It was supposedly CLA'd recently and it sure feels that way. I shot a test roll of expired Portra 160VC and images came out really great, the 4-element 3.5/80 Belar lens has a good reputation and it sure lived up to it. My major complaint has to do with the viewing screen which is rather dark and makes focusing somehow difficult in subdued light, even though it's classes above the one on the Lubitel and I survived that one, right? Another thing that needs attention when you first shoot with it, is the long excursion of the shutter button which together with the rather light construction makes it easy to get blurred images even at 1/60s if you're not careful. A soft shutter release button and a steady hand will surely correct this. Other than that, a very nice Eastern Bloc camera that doesn't really feel like one and shoots really good images if you get accustomed to its minor quirks.
"My Dear Lady Rebecca, I would give the Earth to kiss the lips that have kissed the Grand Duc de D'or Baleine!!"
"That is a secret piece of knowledge, Lord Hugh - which you must never divulge to a living soul! However, those lips are available to you - and to all men of substance - for a price!!"
The D'or Baleine visit has changed everything. We are besieged more than ever with enquiries from elderly rich males about The Salon - and applications from married aristocratic ladies to join The Sodality. That young fogey Lord Trembath had a point when he said that I had "normalized prostitution amongst women of the English Ruling Class."
Love and Kisses to All My Friends and Fans!
xxxxx
Lady Rebecca Georgina Arabella Lyndon
Duchess of Basingstoke
This statue, called Herons (Volavky) by Jana Moravcová, is one of the few still left in Prague since normalization times in end of 60's and 70's, when communists came up with so called 4th percent rule - visual artists was forced to donate 4 % of their art for beautification of cities they lived in. Most of them prefer to choose themes which have no political association whatsoever so they could not be persecuted for how it look like, which makes it quite timeless today - as far as cities takes care of them.
SH2-119 Clamshell Nebula in false color palette HOO on 2026-07-08, is a large emission nebula spanning about 2 degrees in the constellation Cygnus. Located roughly 2,200 light-years away. It is illuminated and shaped by stellar winds from the bright supergiant star 68 Cygni
Gear:
• Mount: ZWO AM3
• Main Cam: ZWO ASI294MC Pro @ gain 120 and -10C
• Guide Cam: ZWO ASI662MC with ZWO 30mm f/4 scope
• Telescope: WO RedCat51 111 WIFD
• Filter: Antlia ALP-T Dual Narrowband 5nm Ha and Oiii
Acquisition:
• 71 180 sec subs - 3h 35m total
• Session: 2026-07-08
• Location: Houston Backyard ~ Bortle 8/9
Processing
• Pixinsight Auto DBE, BXT Correct, BXT, SXT, NXT
• Pixinsight split starless channels - DBXtract
• Pixinsight NXT if needed
• Pixinsight Statistical stretch
• Pixinsight Perfect Pallet Picker - HOO
• Pixinsight Narrowband Normalization HOO, Curves for contrast and color
• Pixinsight NB to RGB Stars Combination script w/ star stretch
• Pixinsight Stars Saturation Curves
• Photoshop ACR contrast, black point, clarity, de haze
• Photoshop Selective Colors, ACR, channel D&B to balance colors
• Photoshop Screen stars
• Photoshop Final curves, watermark
The alarm sounds at 4:30 am shows a hurry I'm preparing camera equipment and I took the usual camera bag I put on closet adjacent to the tripod as I prepared last night before bed.
Month of January Sunday morning I went out, not forgetting first heat before leaving the vehicle so that the engine can normalize. Complimentary snacks such as bread, beverages, candy, and certainly I always carry cigarettes. I aim now is to go to the village Temon, Trowulan district, Mojokerto regency, East Java, Indonesia.
Why I chose this area because I did not explore with the camera and there are many relics of the Majapahit kingdom such as temples. Arriving at the destination I pulled out a pack of cigarettes for a smoke break while enjoying the beautiful scenery. I setting camera first so if you find the right subject I can directly grab without having to miss a moment.
The photo I took was "Archway Bajang Queen" or "Temple Bajang Queen". Bajang gate Queen or also known as the Temple of Queen Bajang is a gate / relic temple in the village of Majapahit Temon, District Trowulan, Mojokerto, East Java, Indonesia. Bajang Ratu in Javanese language means the king or nobleman small (dwarf) and the meaning Bajang is single. Since the time the young king crowned and given the title Queen Bajang which means "Little King".
According to local legend believed as a child or a king known as King Jayanegara this fall and cause defects in the gate his body so given the title King of disability or Bajang Queen.
The building was probably built in the 14th century was one of the big arch in the heyday of the Majapahit. According to the Archeological Heritage Preservation Board Mojokerto, temple / gate serves as the entrance to the shrine to commemorate the death of King Jayanegara in Negarakertagama called "back to the world of Vishnu" in 1250 Saka (circa 1328 AD).
But actually before his death Jayanegara temple was used as a back door of the kingdom. This assumption is supported by the relief "Sri Tanjung" and wings arches symbolizes release and until now in this area has become a cultural Trowulan if required mourn the dead through the back door.
* * * Copyright ©
All of which include an image is copyrighted, with all rights reserved please do not use, copy or edit any images without written permission from me Shantyrof (the rightful owner). If you want to use these photos please contact my email address: santirof@yahoo.com
An almost perfect day to be outside in the spring sunshine. The only thing better would be to have no more COVID-19 and have the shelves stocked with toilet paper. I was thinking of resorting to the day of a good corn cobb wipe before I pay price gougers on eBay $85.00usd for four rolls of toilet paper. Sorry for standing on my "throne" and expressing my opinion. LOL!
Now let's get down to what we need to do. The quarantine has already separated everyone, and that means showing love to those we care about the most. The one thing that heals is a hug. WE have the power to kick this virus. This Good Friday, there will be a worldwide fast and prayer. All are invited to fast and pray on Good Friday, April 10, that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, the economy strengthened and life normalized.”
Love to all! Stay Well! Hugs!
The hunger of Moloch, the god of child sacrifice, is never satisfied. Like the Mayan gods, he needs endless victims to devour. But who would sacrifice the children—the future? Planned Parenthood: the ones who also sell baby parts? Would this killing of the unborn be a modern-day sacrifice to Moloch? How about the sexual grooming of children? More woke sacrifices to Moloch? How about the slow normalizing of pedophilia? Is this the next sacrifice to Moloch? How about school books that depict pornographic sex acts between children and adults? Is this a type of sacrifice to Moloch? How about drag queen story hour in libraries? Is that also a sacrifice to Moloch? How about mother’s bringing their babies to watch drag queens dancing in a sexual manner? Could this be a sacrifice to Moloch? How about a drag queen shaking his booty in front of children, as parents give their children money to stuff in the grown man’s thong? Is this a sacrifice to Moloch too? How about allowing men/boys in the ladies/girls change rooms and washrooms? Is this also a sacrifice to Moloch? How about giving teenagers puberty blockers? Is this another sacrifice on the altar of Moloch? How about giving teenagers sex reassignment surgery? Is this yet another sacrifice to Moloch? Those who pervert the minds of children are evil and wicked! Common sense tells us that a child’s brain is not wired for this kind of sexual deviance. But as evil becomes more normalized, common sense goes out the window. The satanic hegelian dialectic continues to go round and round as society slowly goes down the toilet. The Bible is proved right again and again: people are sinners, and they follow the perversions of their evil/woke minds!
Life will continue to become less and less sacred until one day “being human” is considered a vile/useless thing. Eventually these hard-hearted people will sacrifice their humanity on the altar of transhumanism. They will count their freedom as nothing, happily embracing their enslavement. They will receive a 666-smartchip implant, and they will bring their children to get one too. In doing this they will reject their Creator, and their humanity, degrading themselves in the most despicable way. During this time, every kind of perversion and satanic ritual will be practiced in public. Transhumans will be controlled/programmed entities (zombies) who will bow down to worship Moloch—the Image of the Beast. The people of the world will sacrifice their future to the Beast. They will be slaves of the Beast. But remember this: the Beast is never satisfied! He will devour all that you have, even your very soul.
Mark 8:36 “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
Boeing 737-958ER W
El Al Israel Airlines
Cn.41555
A historic day for the UAE as the first EL AL aircraft LY971 a Boeing 737 is about to land at Abu Dhabi for talks to promote the peace agreement and normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
“The Snake Nebula” (Barnard 72) is our dark “S”-shaped friend just left of center and is located in the constellation Ophiuchus. Our snake’s neighboring inky splotches each has their own designation in the Barnard catalog (20th century astronomer E. E. Barnard’s catalog of 182 dark markings in the sky) and collectively they form a part of the much larger “Dark Horse Nebula,” which, to the naked eye under dark skies, takes on the appearance of a horse. These interstellar clouds of gas and dust obscure light from stars behind them, thus taking on this backlit appearance, as if resting atop a sea of stars. Relative to our vantage point on Earth, this view is looking toward the core of the Milky Way, hence the incredible density of stars.
What is particularly striking to me about these dark nebulae toward the heart of the Milky Way is their striking contrast with the density of stars at the heart of our galaxy—to me it almost looks like an undulating sea of stars—and I wanted to promote that in this image, so I went out of my way maintain and promote the light and glow of stars both resolved and too small to be resolved by my sensor, taking inspiration from the sort of light intensity you might see in a lovely, deep photography of the Milky Way.
Details: StellarVue SVX080T-35V with 0.8x reducer, ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro, Rainbow Astro RST-135E. 140x90s for about 3.5 hours of data. Calibrated with darks (optimized), flats, and bias. Edited in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop. Photographed on July 21, 2023, high in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, United States.
Commentary: Accomplishing the above was a bit of a tricky task, and I did a lot of experimentation with this image. Editing is a little tricky in a distinct way as you want to capture the stars in one image and the background stars/glow in another, and it becomes a pretty intricate balancing act of preserving noise (as all those little stars are represented at the scale of noise) and color when re-blending. And the general light levels make it a bit more challenging to re-blend bright stars and promote star color. I’ve improved the process with another image I have captured, and was tempted to re-visit this edit to impart small-scale improvements, but rather than be obsessive, I have just decided to share. This photograph sure is a delight whenever it comes up on my photo frame.
Editing: Primarily in PixInsight. Some very mild high cloud interference on a subset of session; integrated best frames for a master and used Normalize Scale Gradients script to mitigate. No Light gradient removal. SPCC for color calibration. For stars image used StarX (correct stars only with no reduction and tiny boost to halos; some spherical aberration on reducer), mild noise reduction with NoiseX (luminance mask), stretched and nudged saturation with GHS, small adjustments to color calibration with GHS and levels, and further refinement to color balance and noise. For “background” image applied color calibration, mild noise reduction (NoiseX, luminance mask), and removed stars with StarX. Stretched with GHS, color adjustments, and cleaned up some odds & ends in Adobe Photoshop. Re-imported to PixInsight, and removed stars from stars image with StarX. Iterated on applying the stars to the background stars/glow image and undoing, adjusting stretch and colors using GHS, curves, levels, and masks, until I found a happy balance (including adjustments to the stars layer as color blending was tricky). Other than a small curves adjustment, stars weren’t reduced, as they are essentially the star (heh) of the image alongside the dark nebula. Exported to Photoshop for final adjustment, cropping.
In God We Trust…buhahaha!
The cryptocracy (illuminati) are manipulating the minds of the masses. They use Revelation of the Method to program the group mind—the collective consciousness. Indeed, humanity must be prepared for the New Luciferian Age. They initiate you into group think—mass formation psychosis. It is a rite of passage in which you acceptance their plans for humanity. Welcome to the group! They use open and subliminal messages in order to condition society. They use their esoteric knowledge (the so-called deep secrets of Satan; Revelation 2:24 NIV) to move you toward their goals. They push society into every nook and cranny of immorality and filth. In the end this immorality dehumanizes society, thus breaking it down. They have dehumanized and killed millions of the unborn. In Canada they have been pushing Medically Assisted Suicides for ever expanding reasons, as they continually decrease the legal age and time limits. The value of life continually decreases. That’s why, when speaking about the (soon coming) Tribulation Period, the Bible says: “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God.”
The transhumanist tiptoe, the luciferian tiptoe—both will come to fruition under the Antichrist. You will be able to become a super human (a god) when transhumanism is normalized and openly accepted. You will be able to openly live out your lusts when luciferianism is normalized and openly practiced. At that time ritualistic orgies, rape, and human sacrifice will be done out in the public square.
Revelation 9:21 “Furthermore, they did not repent of their murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, and theft.”
Many people will take the Mark of the Beast (like many took the jab), because they have been demoralized. This ritualistic programming leads the public down a predetermined road, with a predetermined outcome; this not only dehumanizes us, but it also demoralizes us. Demoralized people end up being weak cowards. These people try to stay center of the road, as the road moves farther and farther down the road of depravity. This means: center also moves farther down the road—dragging you along with it. These people try to be virtuously nonjudgmental, yet they are immoral. They won’t stand up and speak for the truth, because they might get called a bad name. They don’t want to sacrifice their comfort or reputation to fight for the truth.
James 4:17 “So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin.”
All such people have been unknowingly programmed into these symbolic ritual ceremonies. Yes, indeed! Satan, through the esoteric cryptocracy, has planted his seed, and his harvest is soon ripe.
Matthew 13:25 “But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed WEEDS among the wheat, and went away.”
“We can differentiate between types of initiations in two ways: types and functions.”
This is one of the reasons for/functions of initiations:
“It reveals a world open to the trans-human, a world that, in our philosophical terminology, we should call transcendental.” (Wikipedia: Initiation; read what it says under the subtitle: Psychological)
One day you will be initiated (baptized) into transhumanism (the Beast—666).
When Jesus Christ returns, He will say, “Collect the WEEDS and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”
BTW Covid was an initiation into the Great Reset, and the Great Reset (Build Back Better) is a transitioning into the New World Order—2030: you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy (Just think: a nuclear war would fast track their Great Reset agenda). Do you see how covid has charged society thus far? The authoritarian tiptoe! Look at what’s currently happening in China. Do you get it? Do you choose to see it, or do you turn a blind eye and willfully fall into the trap of ritualistic cognitive dissonance (evil)?
Evil gains more of a foothold as wickedness increases, thus normalizing it.
Truth and freedom go hand in hand: if you lose one, you lose the other.
Authoritarianism thrives on lies and control.
If we trust in God, we will walk in His light.
John 8:12 “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world! The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”
In God we trust?
A leaf-mimicking katydid from Jatun Sacha reserve, Ecuador.
Several factors conspired on my trip to this reserve which led to more capture-releases, stressed animals and ultimately deaths than average. None of the following excuses are acceptable, but they are common, speak to a mindset, and a normalization of casualties ie. habituation. This is especially true in that grey area where research and photography overlap.
First was an abundance of arthropod life, much more than I had seen elsewhere, 2) the availability of research facilities and equipment like light traps which increased yields 1000 fold, 3) Wildlife found especially close to the cabins, allowing for assembly-lining of white background shots, therefore holding species for overly long as the queues began to back up, 4) The presence of other biologists which shared their subjects and thus increased the number of subjects (especially rare and interesting ones) still further. Essentially it was an oversupply, and I was too gluttonous too stop and consider. Rather than limiting the number and trying to photograph fewer and with better standards and care, I tried to do too much. This is a common theme, especially in insect, and reptile and amphibian photography, where both huge numbers and casualties (to a certain extent) are normal and treated cavalierly. When operating within this closed system, especially with others that bear the same mindset, it can become a negative cycle of reinforcement. Obviously I'm not proud of this behaviour, but it took retrospect to even see that what I was doing was wrong, and could and should be changed. I hope others can learn to question in the moment, and put aside their own personal wants as a photographer and prioritize the needs of the wildlife they photograph , as I failed to do in this instance.
-----------------
EE Legend
-Health injury/stress levels (scale 1-10-->☠️)
👣-Translocation
⏳-time in captivity
📷 - in situ - studio
🎨 - Use of cloning or extensive post processing
For those curious about the EE and scale you can refer to my earlier post tinyurl.com/y7vvoxv3
This is a view of the Cygni Nebula (IC1318) taken with a dual narrowband filter and rendered with a HSO-like pallet using Narrow Band Normalization routine in Pixinsight. The bright blue star is gamma Cygnus (Satr) and the bluish open star cluster is NGC 6910. The Butterfly Nebula and Crescent Nebula are part of this large nebulous region.
The image was taken from the middle of Idaho Falls (Bortle 7) with a RASA 8 and ASI2600 MC Pro camera.
This wide-field image of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) uses a HOO palette applied with the Narrowband Normalization process in Pixinsight. The image includes the Triffid Nebula (M20) on the left, the star cluster M21 just above M20, the small star cluster and associated nebulosity, Bochum 14 located between M8 and M20, and the star cluster, NGC 6544 on the far right.
This image was obtained with a RASA 8, ASI2600 MC Pro camera, and IDAS NBZ II dual narrowband filter from the middle of Idaho Falls (Bortle 7). Because of the 43.5 degree N latitude of Idaho Falls and the configuration of the roll-off roof I was only able to image this location for 25 minutes. This image was compiled from 24, 60 sec. images and processed in Pixinsight and PS. It has been downsized from the original pixel dimensions of 5830 x 4030 pixels for posting.
Well THAT Year Didn't Go As Planned - Sending good thoughts to everyone on this New Year’s Eve. Here’s to better things in 2021, even if they take a while to normalize.
(Original post located at www.pmkelly.com/2020/12/well-that-year-didnt-go-as-planned/)
Full Moon on May 29, 2026
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
A processing experiment with the Full Moon of May 29, 2026.
This image was obtained by composing two stacked panels of three images each, with a 127mm refractor + 2x (2280mm) and a DSLR.
On the left, the typical natural brightness. On the right, the normalized version with equalization.
Dinamarca - Copenhague - Ciudad libre de Christiania
***
ENGLISH
www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/culture/alternative-ch...
Freetown Christiania, also known as Christiania (Danish: Fristaden Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist district of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering 34 hectares (84 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen. It was temporarily closed to residents in April 2011 by the Danish government, but later re-opened.
Christiania has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. In the years following 2004, measures for normalizing the legal status of the community led to conflicts, police raids and negotiations.
Meditation and yoga have always been popular among the Christianites, and for many years Christiania had a theatrical group Solvognen, who, beyond their theatre performances, also staged many happenings in Copenhagen and throughout Sweden. Ludvigsen had always talked of the acceptance of drug-addicts who could no longer cope with regular society, and the spirit of that belief has still not diminished, even though many problems sprouted due to drug traffic and use (mostly of 'hard drugs', however, which are not tolerated in Christiania). These addicts enter and remain in Christiania and are considered just as integral to the Freetown ethics as the entrepreneurs. For this reason many Danes have seen Christiania as a successful social experiment. However, for years the legal status of the region has been in a limbo due to different Danish governments attempting to remove the Christianites. Such attempts at removal have all been unsuccessful so far.
Christiania is considered to be the fourth largest tourist attraction in Copenhagen (and it has half a million visitors annually)] and abroad it is a well-known "brand" for the supposedly progressive and liberated Danish lifestyle. Many Danish businesses and organizations also use Christiania as a show place for their foreign friends and guests. The purpose is to show something Danish that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Famous for its main drag, known as Pusher Street, where hash and skunk weed were sold openly from permanent stands until 2004, it nevertheless does have rules forbidding 'hard drugs', such as cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy and heroin. The hash commerce is controversial, but since the rules require a consensus they cannot be removed unless everybody agrees. Legalization of cannabis is one of the ideas of many of the citizens in Christiania. The region negotiated an arrangement with the Danish defense ministry (which still owns the land) in 1995. Since 1994, residents have paid taxes and fees for water, electricity, trash disposal, etc.
After bitter negotiations that temporarily resulted in the area being sealed off to the public, in June 2011, the residents of Christiania agreed to collectively set up a fund to formally purchase the land at below market prices. The community made its first payment in July 2012, officially becoming legal landowners.
***
ESPAÑOL
www.copenhague.es/que-ver/christiania/
La Ciudad libre de Christiania (Danés: Fristaden Christiania) es un barrio parcialmente autogobernado de unos 1000 residentes. Cubre un área de 34 hectáreas en el barrio de Christianshavn (puerto de Christian), en la capital de Dinamarca, Copenhague. Christiania se estableció con un estatus semilegal de comunidad de vecinos que se autoproclama independiente del Estado danés.
Christiania está organizada en torno a Pusher Street (La calle del Vendedor de Estupefacientes), calle, a tramos de asfalto, a tramos de adoquines, y a tramos sencillamente de tierra, en la que se encuentran algunos bares, tiendas, souvenires y centros culturales. Al salir de Pusher Street nos encontramos en un camino alrededor de un canal. Este caminito de tierra discurre entre las casas de los "christianitas", muchas de ellas personalizadas. Hay guarderías, puentes, y esculturas en el agua. Christiania es famosa porque en ella se permite el consumo y venta de drogas blandas. Por ello recibe el apelativo de "distrito verde" (green district). No obstante, desde 2004 el gobierno ha radicalizado su postura y se producen más redadas en la zona. Esto no impide que diariamente turistas y gente local transiten la zona para comprar marihuana o hachís, y que en los bares, terrazas y bancos se congregue la gente a fumar.1
El barrio de Christiania se ha convertido en interés turístico por el precio de las bebidas y alimentos (casi un 50% más baratos que en otras partes de la ciudad debido a que no hay impuestos), de sus tiendas de ropa, artesanía y recuerdos. En el pasado se podían contratar visitas guiadas por el barrio de Christiania, pero desde hace unos pocos años la comunidad decidió prohibirlas ya que se quejaban de que fueran expuestos o mostrados como si fueran animales en un zoológico. Igualmente puedes entrar al área sin problema por tu cuenta.
Al salir por la entrada principal de la ciudad de Christiania se puede leer «You're now entering the EU» (Está usted entrando en la Unión Europea), ya que los habitantes de Christiania no se consideran pertenecientes a la Unión Europea.
En septiembre de 1971 la historia de Christiania comienza con el derribo de una valla en un terreno militar abandonado por el ejército danés en 1971, por parte de unos padres que querían terrenos donde sus hijos pudiesen jugar. Luego de ese evento se plantea un debate en la comunidad gracias a un artículo en un periódico subcultural que plantea los diferentes usos que se podían dar al cuartel abandonado. El movimiento cultural y político incita a que el sitio debe ser el espacio para realizar las aspiraciones de vida comunal de su movimiento, logrando que un grupo de personas ocupen ilegalmente los terrenos y funden Christiania. El gobierno lo toleró, aunque ha intentado expulsarles de allí en numerosas ocasiones. En 1989 se promulgó la Ley de Christiania que transfiere parte de la supervisión del área de la municipalidad de Copenhague al estado danés, y que aceptó conservar el asentamiento supeditado a una futura legalización y normalización. Desde 2004 se dieron una serie de conflictos con el gobierno danés respecto a la propiedad de los terrenos y al mercado de drogas. En 2012 los habitantes de Christiania han reconsiderado su posición de ocupantes ilegales y han comprado gran parte de los terrenos del barrio con el propósito de mantenerlo comunal. La propiedad de estos terrenos no pertenece a personas individuales, sino al colectivo de Christiania, y no pueden venderse de manera individual. En caso de venta de casas o terrenos, las cláusulas estipulan obligaciones específicas entre el colectivo y el gobierno danés. Las personas que habitan las zonas que se han comprado pagan un alquiler comunitario que se estipula en función de las dimensiones de la casa. También pagan las facturas del agua y de la electricidad.
SIMPLE = T / file does conform to FITS standard
BITPIX = -32 / number of bits per data pixel
NAXIS = 3 / number of data axes
NAXIS1 = 5025 / length of data axis 1
NAXIS2 = 3272 / length of data axis 2
NAXIS3 = 3 / length of data axis 3
EXTEND = T / FITS dataset may contain extensions
COMMENT FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format is defined in 'Astronomy
COMMENT and Astrophysics', volume 376, page 359; bibcode: 2001A&A...376..359H
MIPS-FHI= 0.348013 / Upper visualization cutoff
MIPS-FLO= 0 / Lower visualization cutoff
BZERO = 0 / offset data range to that of unsigned short
BSCALE = 1 / default scaling factor
DATE = '2023-07-12T14:14:50' / UTC date that FITS file was created
DATE-OBS= '2023-07-09T20:29:44' / YYYY-MM-DDThh🇲🇲ss observation start, UT
INSTRUME= 'Canon EOS 600D' / instrument name
OBSERVER= ' ' / observer name
TELESCOP= ' 6 inches newtonian lxd75 ' / telescope used to acquire this image
ROWORDER= 'BOTTOM-UP' / Order of the rows in image array
XPIXSZ = 4.29 / X pixel size microns
YPIXSZ = 4.29 / Y pixel size microns
XBINNING= 1 / Camera binning mode
YBINNING= 1 / Camera binning mode
FOCALLEN= 762mm / Camera focal length
CCD-TEMP= 0 / CCD temp in C
EXPTIME = 299 / Exposure time [s]
STACKCNT= 35 / Stack frames
LIVETIME= 10465 / Exposure time after deadtime correction
EXPSTART= 2.46014e+06 / Exposure start time (standard Julian date)
EXPEND = 2.46014e+06 / Exposure end time (standard Julian date)
ISOSPEED= 800 / ISO camera setting
HISTORY mean stacking with winsorized sigma clipping rejection (low=3.000 high=3
HISTORY .000), additive+scaling normalized input, normalized output, no image we
HISTORY ighting, equalized RGB
HISTORY Extraction du gradient (Correction : Subtraction)
HISTORY Neutralisation du fond du ciel
HISTORY Étalonnage des couleurs
HISTORY SCNR (type=neutre moyen, qté=1.00, préserve=true)
HISTORY Réduction de la trame (niveau=1.00)
HISTORY Transformation asinh : (stretch= 80.0, bp=0.00000)
HISTORY Transf. histogramme (mid=0.069, lo=0.120, hi=1.000)
HISTORY Transf. histogramme (mid=0.430, lo=0.038, hi=1.000)
HISTORY Débruitage NL-Bayes (mod=1.000, CC activée)
HISTORY Débruitage NL-Bayes (mod=1.000, VST activé))
END
Subtle differences in shades of green in this animation reflect vegetation conditions worldwide. High values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, represent dense green functioning vegetation, and low NDVI values represent sparse green vegetation or vegetation under stress from limiting conditions, such as drought. The still image is a snapshot of the Earth created from a year’s worth of data from April 2012 to April 2013.
The information was sent back to Earth from the Visible-Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership or Suomi NPP satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Credit: NASA/NOAA
To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/vegetation.html
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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I continue my quest to normalize fat bodies on the beach.
Bathing suit - Accessorize
Sunglasses - Jag
It's been a couple of years since I posted any photos from Vancouvers drug use mayhem.
1 of 2 from Chinatown.
There is an article by Vancouver Sun Reporter Peter mMcMartin about the situation posted in August 2025.
Every time I visit Chinatown and the downtown east side (daily) his article comes to mind so this is a way to share his viewpoint that I agree with.
In the 30+ years I have lived nearby, the situation has only deteriorated.
The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair
Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.
Published Aug 03, 2025
In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.
Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.
Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.
In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.
And the cost to taxpayers?
Over $360 million annually.
Article content
That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.
Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.
And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.
And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.
In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:
1. Give us more money.
2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.
I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.
In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’
The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.
Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.
Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’
But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.
Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.
Funny thing about that.
Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.
I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.
But this is how I feel:
My patience is Exhausted.
I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.
Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.
It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.
How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.
They are the system.
The comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) has given us many incredible views in recent weeks, from Colombia we join these captures!
Images of the comet moving during the early mornings of December 4 to 8 when it was passing through the constellation of Boötes,
images taken from the Orion interstellar Camp in the Tatacoa desert.
Thanks to Jesus Mario Vargas Plaza for the images of day 5 and for all the support to capture this event.
Gear:
Canon 6D astromod with Astronomik MC clear filter
Lens Tamron 70-200 f/2.8
Tracking with Celestron Nexstar Mount
Images ranging fron 20 to 100 frames, 30s exposure ISO 3200 normalized and adjusted for brightness, software used: Pixinsght 1.8, Adobe Photoshop CC 2022
My first RGB Image from the Qhyccd 183M 20mpx Back Illuminated ColdMOS Camera, I will be writing part 2 of the review soon, so here's what I hope is one of many images taken with this awesome camera
Gear:
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8" F4 Imaging Newtonian
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M 20mpx ColdMOS Camera at -20C and DSO Gain
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II Mono
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher 50x90 Finder Scope
Filter Wheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium 36mm RGB
Coma Corrector: Sky-Watcher Aplanatic Coma Corrector
Image Acquisition: Main Sequence Software SGPro
Image Processing: PixInsight
Image Details:
Target: IC434 - Horsehead Nebula
Constelation: Orion
Red: 19x300S
Green: 19x300S
Blue: 19x300S
Darks: 51x300S
Flats: 101
Bias: 251 converted to SuperBIAS and deducted from Flats
PixInsight Image processing workflow:
1. Calibrated against darks and Bias Subtracted Flats
2. Star Alignment
3. Least noise frame from each colour chosen as Normalization Frame and Dynamic Background Extraction Performed
4. Normalization of all frames
5. Stacking of frames and generation of drizle data (for larger quality image in future)
6. Performed LinearFit using Red stacked image as reference
7. Performed MultiMedianTransformation to reduce background noise
8. Performed SCNR to remove excessive green in image
9. Stretched the image using HistogramTransformation
10. Performed a CurvesTransformation to bring out the star colour
Right now I have not performed any Sharpening of the image, nor have I added the Ha data to this image, I'll post an updated image when I get round to doing that