@npub1esha...5fqz you no doubt saw this story (or other reporting on it) about the hiker rescued via a satellite device after being trapped in quicksand(!).

Stuck in Quicksand, a Hiker in Utah Has His SOS Answered

Austin Dirks used a Garmin satellite device to reach emergency responders, who rescued him in a remote canyon in Arches National Park.

I'm happy Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from custody and will be getting his day in court, but that still leaves hundreds of other people we deported to extra-judicial incarceration in El Salvador for whom there is no clear path to either a trial or release. The plan seems to be that they eventually just die in prison.

They really do seem to be trying to kill us. House defense bill adds a provision to allow military aircraft to disable their civilian transponders (a basic anti-collision safeguard) when flying around DC. (You know, the place where a military helicopter collided with a civilian airplane in January.)

Defense Bill Will Make D.C. Skies Less Safe, N.T.S.B. Chair Says

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board warned that a provision in the new defense bill would worsen the risk of midair collisions ne...

KGEI Transmitter Building, Redwood City, CA, 2024. All the pixels, bouncing off he sky on their way to your radio, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54131707918 #photography

The late Tom Stoppard, in his play Hapgood, had some good advice for writers of scientific papers.

Just got a letter from a place I haven’t worked at for eight years (UPenn) telling me that my personal data was leaked by a company I’ve never done business with (Oracle), and so they’re giving me two years of credit monitoring with another company (Equifax) to make up for it. The future isn’t everything it was cracked up to be.

"CARTWHEEL" Tower, Fort Reno, Washington, DC, 2020. All the pixels, hardened for blasts and EMP, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49576247768/ #photography

I’m always amused when movies set in the present day have a scene with a crowd of press photographers and use the whirring of 35mm film motor drives as a sound effect.

Photo nerditry: Because of the kind of photography I do, I generally use a big camera on a tripod, and spend a long time fussing with exposure, focus, and composition before I trigger the shutter.. But I frequently carry around a small mirrorless camera, often without a tripod or multiple lenses. I use that as a sketchbook, to plan my "real" photos. Occasionally I end up printing and publishing them, but I try at the time to think of them as ephemeral. This gives me permission to experiment.

I'm just imagining what the reaction would have been if Obama had suggested renaming NFL football. They would have had to put him in witness protection.