Catfood WebCamSaver 3.22 released with the latest web cam list. Catfood Earth for Android now supports random locations.
New tool - this page is updated every hour with a video of the last 48 hours of global IR cloud cover. Useful for tracking hurricanes and atmospheric rivers.
One of two windmills in the Golden Gate Park near Ocean Beach. This was the largest in the world when it was built in 1908, but it was obsolete five years later in 1913 and replaced by electric pumps. The windmills were installed to irrigate the park. The Murphy Windmill pumped 40,000 gallons a day.
4K Time Lapse of sunset over the Pacific shot from San Francisco.
I made this with a Sony A7C, 40mm F2.5 G and a GR-120QD slider. It's taken a while to work with this combo as Sony decided to omit a wired shutter trigger from the A7C. It took a long time to come to terms with this - surely I just had the wrong cable or settings, but no, it doesn't support this super basic function. In case you're struggling with this Hypoxic sells a bluetooth to 2.5mm adapter, although it's actually the other way round - the 2.5mm port causes the bluetooth shutter to activate. It's a little baroque as you're working with a camera (and battery), a slider (and battery) and an adapter (tiny coin battery and no idea how much power is left...). It works though.
Open to Debate just released a podcast about the need (or not) for more parties in American politics: Does America Need A Third Party.
Andrew Yang argued in favor. In fact he thinks the right number is probably five - break the democrats in half, break the republicans in half and throw in his Forward party. There is a great case for the first four of these - see this WaPo article from last year. I've suggested forcibly breaking them up, antitrust style. Another approach would be term limits for parties. Yang is growing on me. Reforming the electoral system is a much better platform than universal basic income.
Daniel DiSalvo argued against the motion. Actually he mostly just said that even if everything is broken nothing is going to change so why bother. I think that's 99% right, but not really in the spirit of a debate.
Open to Debate is a rebrand of Intelligence Squared US, which debated the same issue in 2021. In that case the status quo won the day, probably as it was defended by PJ O'Rourke, however the actual vote was 50% more parties and 40% keeping two. Unfortunately I don't know who won this time because Open to Debate has given up on the competitive format and even spirited questioning. You have some back and forth, and some carefully chosen and curated questions like a Biden presser. The original (UK) Intelligence Squared seems to have given up on the big issues and puts out Burgundy vs Bordeaux and people with a book release to plug. Canada is the only real hope right now with the Munk Debates.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Does America Need A Third Party (Again) #politics#political reform Discussion of the debate between Andrew Yang and Daniel DiSalvo on the need for more political parties in the US.)
