Andrew Reid

By the way, the world needs a strong United States. Because the alternatives to our way of life are far worse.

We can deprogram ourselves very easily, just by using character and ethics as a guide in politics. Trump and his inner circle are unsavoury, unintelligent and many of them are convicted felons. BUT - apparently this resonates with the American public which I'm sorry to say is just fucking embarrassing for your nation - it shows to the rest of the world that quality of character, being a public servant, and ethical behaviour is of no interest to over half of your population and that you'd willingly vote for crooks if you think it's good for the economy. I have news for you, it won't be good for the economy. It'll be good for the 1% and the rest of you will be enjoying inflation in the region of 15% before too long. The media in the US is appalling, it is the most biased in the world, be it CNN or Fox, they're both completely incapable of taking a balanced objective view of politics. In the UK, the BBC has withered away, corrupted by the Tory party and hamstrung by the abuse of the BBC's impartiality rule. So we are in a bad situation here as well, and when you add Murdoch to the scene and his shitty tabloids which have somehow managed to cling onto relevance in the so-called enlightened age of the internet, it's no wonder people are distracted by all the arguing and less able to focus on quality of character and policy. Too many aggressive interviewers whose only aim is to pick holes in everything, whether it's a good politician or not, or a good policy or not... nobody is immune to the constant shit stirring of the media. It's not even real journalism a lot of it, and it brings the country down. It sometimes gets so depressing to see, that you start to think about emigrating to Russia to enjoy the more 'favourable' and 'patriotic' media 🙂 Yet in the end, what I am saying is... You don't need the media. The truth is out there for all to see about what kind of characters and ethics are on display with Trump and his inner circle. We need better journalism, yes... But you can make up your own mind whether it's sensible to have a convicted crook as the leader of the free world. There has to be a move away from the two main parties also - as they're both becoming corrupted in some form or another. The Democrats by vanity career politics and drab humourless political correctness, and the Republicans by a complete loss of sanity.

You're a free speech absolutist but a very poor judge of character. Are you not watching who Trump has around him, men like Steve Bannon and Matt Gaetz. The former is another convict, and the latter is an alleged sex offender under investigation from all corners, $10k payments to prostitutes, sex with an underage girl and there's even a witness for that. This is only just scratching the surface of the Trump circle jerk. They are terrible people. Absolutely terrible. You as an American deserve better.

You do seem to care about the facts. So why support Trump?

2025 going to be a bad time to be poor in the US

I watched the Joe Rogan / Musk podcast in its entirety and can see why they have the opinions they do on the progressive politics of the more extreme Democrats. But the extremists in that party are not a majority. You need to ask yourself also why the woke issues are being amplified and dominate the world's discourse and who is doing the amping and why. It is a point of failure and division in western society and the Russia/China-compromised social media engine is amping up the discourse around it to make us all fall out and get angry at our media, institutions, judiciary and government. Musk has his own valid personal reasons for switching side but it's mostly opportunistic... He sees an opportunity to get into government, pump up the value of Dogecoin and enact change which will favour his businesses. Trump and Musk are not going to be best friends, there's no substance to it. It's just a circle jerk thing. The trick is to fool the rest of us into thinking there's a genuine agreement and friendship that binds together all the people you mentioned prior. In fact, as the last Trump government shows they all hate each other and will barely last 2 months together, it will be like the Apprentice with a new firing every week just like it was in 2016-2020. Musk wants to wear many different hats at once... He is an environmentalist selling green cars. He is a MAGA guy and hangs out with the Murdochs and right wing mainstream media / press. He is a space rocket engineer and world's most clever guy, at the same time as buying a website for 44 billion and proceeding to destroy it, not a smart move really. He had an allegedly highly abusive upbringing and father, and has allegedly got some quite bad psychological issues because of it. And he clearly is an able talent and has an ability to get a lot out of his employees in terms of technology and achievement... but only because of huge government subsidies from NASA and the green car venture capitalism industry. He's a very complicated guy and so are his politics. But it's possible to judge someone not by their achievements but instead by the company they keep. And let's face it a mid-life crisis & divorce happens to the best of us. Wow really sticking it to the establishment there then. Men of the people! It will be right down once Trump and his team start to make material concrete decisions in government. How is the removal by force (with military involvement) all the undocumented workers from agriculture for example going to impact food prices and inflation? And a lot of these deportation victims will be well on their way to becoming valuable hard-working members of society with wives and husbands, families, jobs, paying tax... And Trump wants to end all those personal success stories before they've barely even got started. Is that what American is about now? Think about it. The threat to democracy was shared by both sides with both sides pointing the finger in the opposite direction. Can we have that discussion about democracy in 4 years when Trump has stitched up the entire judicial system in America, made himself a king above law and is holding Russian style elections for show? Pretty ironic you mention a "palace coup" when Trump had people literally storm the capital. They can choose who they want, it's their own party... yes a proper primary and much earlier dropping out for Biden would have worked much better for them in the end. It was all mishandled very badly. It's not about STARTING WARS it's about preventing them, that's what NATO and nuclear deterrence is about and as others have pointed out that's why we have American-backed security for other countries like Taiwan and why the UK and US work so closely together on intelligence and security matters. Trump is a trojan horse sent by Russia, North Korea and potentially other bad actors including allegedly China to weaken all of that security - for you in Australia included. No, America has a responsibility. They don't have the right to shy away from it under the guise of being all doveish all of a sudden. The impact on Afghanistan by withdrawing was horrific. Would you like to live under the Taliban? And why did we spend all those trillions of dollars and all those lost lives only to go and have that shitty outcome? It was a disgraceful decision by Trump, and bafflingly followed-through upon by Biden. The message we are sending to Taiwan at the moment is also very bad... That the security agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. That is laughable man... NATO exists for there to be peace in Europe and the West. Are you suggesting that military collaboration between democratic countries is a BAD THING? Who will come to help out Australia or Japan if you are attacked by communist China? Are you going to defend yourself on your own? I don't think so.

Monumentally stupid. (And the source of all this is Elon Musk on X, you just happen to parrot it). It is simply insane to suggest that the current Republican party is now closer to the Clinton era democrats. They are not even remotely similar and not even close to the Bush era Republican party or even 1980s Reagan. The Republican party of the past is dead. If you think the likes of Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz, Laura Loomer and Tom Homan are the spiritual successor to Bill Clinton you want your fucking head examining. It just goes to show how little you know about politics outside of social media BS. By the way, the values you are labelling far-left are nothing of the sort... They are centre-left neoliberal policies, not socialism or communism. They are not even really that unusual, and come from people's well meaning intentions in lieu of being less racist. That's not to say everyone has to agree with them and that there aren't major practical issues in terms of the implementation of it. You are free to want less immigration, not more. You are free to want less affirmative action and wokeness. But for fucks sake get your facts right before making your mind up.

With control of the entire judicial system from the top down, Trump could end democracy and he's already given himself criminal immunity. The clever thing is that he has convinced a lot of Americans that the "other side" are the real threat to democracy. I've lived through similar in the UK. We had a right-wing government promising all sorts of things like reduced immigration and a better economy and they never delivered. The only thing they were effective at was adding zeros to the end of their own bank balances. I know that Biden's term hasn't been easy for people but there was a global pandemic for petes sake. Had Trump not lost in 2020 he would be taking the blame for that now, and not Biden. When he lost in 2020 he gave the reputation of democracy a good kicking, for good measure. As a result many of his voters don't even trust the same process they used themselves last week which gave rise to their voice electing President Trump. If Trump believes so firmly that US democracy is corrupt and the votes rigged, he would be whining about it all the time and not only when he's losing. Project 2025, ending democracy, stitching up the justice system, removing checks and balances, abolishing department of education, destroying people's trust in gov. institutions and the courts, enabling Communist Russia and China to do as they please to the rest of the world is serious shit. And we have barely scraped the surface of the shit! Look at the character of those around him... Some of them are truly monsters. I think the people who voted for him did so for a variety of reasons... Some liberals believe that a majority of them did so out of sexism and racism. I don't believe that. I think undecided voters and swing state voters had good economic reasons to want change, and a change of government, but struggling people no matter where they are or who they are, are much more susceptible to con tricks and their critical thinking goes out the window in a social media age of mass rumour, misinformation and hysteria. They believe the wrong stuff but think that the other side is equally as wrong. As usual the actual truth lies somewhere in the middle and I dislike the extreme right / extreme left viewpoint, it is not the way to have a unified nation. Believe me I don't just watch the mainstream news and see the US from the outside - I am living the same shit in the UK, we are the same kind of society with the same kind of two party politics and the same interference from Russia, the same hybrid warfare and same problems brought about by globalisation, technology and social media. Good luck to US democracy you will need it, and good luck to the rest of us who are living ever closer to a time of world war or potential nuclear war.

This is certainly what will happen, and then we're really at the midnight hour as far as nuclear war or apocalypse go. China have been training their troops for years on the invasion, even so far as with replica Taipei streets built in military complexes around the country. Trump won't want the US involved in a defence of Taiwan, he won't want to pay for it. America first... Except in this case it will destroy America's AI and tech capabilities to lose TSMC and Taiwanese + Chinese manufacturing, and inflation will probably be up in the 50% region within 6 months. Trump could do what he and his Fox TV talk show host military commander deem to be a deterrent in place... Likely tariffs on Chinese imports. This only makes it even more likely a war will occur as the very productive economic partnership between China and the US is currently pretty much the only deterrent to war. Indeed... It was all being dealt with diplomatically for years and he drove a horse and cart through it all, and let's not forget Trump put the Taliban back in charge in Afghanistan. He lacks the IQ to win. All of his winner persona is fake. It's all showbusiness, no substance.

We are all on agreement on that one! There was a big escalation in the week following this phone call, with the attacks on Ukraine's power grid and civilian infrastructure including homes, so this didn't have any material impact on Putin. Putin is not the kind of person who is going to make a deal over the phone unless Trump does as Elon has suggested, and basically allow Putin to win a mid-term objective - that is, Crimea, territory in the east, and probably removal of the government and replacement with a Belarus style puppet. Then, out of that Russia will also get the added benefit of being able to rebuild themselves economically for a while, replenish their forces and weapons stocks, and first and foremost take a win instead of a loss. The fact is NATO and the US are stronger both militarily and economically than Russia... So ask yourself why does Trump want to give them the chance to take a victory? Because he doesn't care about NATO, he doesn't care about Europe and he has much more in common with dictators politically than a Kamala or Biden type politician. If Russia gain anything at all from this attack it will embolden them in the future to do even more damage and Soviet empire building. Equally with China, what sort of message does throwing Ukraine under the bus give to them? They will be straight into Taiwan knowing it will split NATO and the US down the middle. No, but he did feed Afghanistan to the dogs. Trillions of dollars down the drain and Taliban in charge. That is sheer weakness. Because he's a convicted felon on genuine (non-conspiratorial) fraud charges, who has a show-business flair for being an authentic con-artist, unburdened by any sort of moral complexity or nuanced world view, at the same time as being a refreshing antidote to the traditional career politician who we blame for all the lack of progress and bad governance. And he is willing to use tariffs to bully the world's second largest economy, which means he is willing to play Russian roulette with the price of your food and your job. His interests come first. America first is only a con trick. It's Trump first. He does have a lot of racist rich friends. I'd have thought this would be pretty obvious?

Correct. Although when you look at who Trump has appointed in the cabinet, you have to say that the majority of those Americans aren't a very astute judge of character, or perhaps they're simply unawares. Lesser of the two evils? Trump's tariffs will destroy the US economy and triple inflation, and it doesn't need a 'mainstream media outlet' to tell you that. It's simply logic. If he does what he says he will, and nobody stops him, then he could also crash the global economic outlook as well. The stock market has already fallen following his batshit crazy cabinet picks. I can't in any way deny that the Democrats completely messed up this election... Too cozy with corporate culture and lobbyists, ignored men, ignored Bernie Sanders, can't claim a good record on the economy when normal people aren't feeling it and only big businesses are... And involved in two depressing wars. But the fact that people think Trump is the lesser evil just seems completely wrongheaded to me. It's as if you folk have been brainwashed by a cult leader. I agree... Too much divide and rule in today's pre-war world. Absolutely... Shelter is unaffordable, food is a rip off, and society is becoming clinical, sexless, dull. In fact property prices, rent prices, food prices, are a big reason Biden lost the election. And he ain't responsible for any of it. Global population is growing, resources are not keeping up, and the US public will find out soon enough that whether they elect a politician or a celebrity, it won't make a damn difference in the long term. You have a celebrity apprentice government with unserious, inexperienced demigods and narcissist in it, and somehow they have been able to resonate with the public. That shows how vast the failure of the liberals are... That a convicted felon was able to resonate with the everyday American family better than the morally posturing vacant Harris. They didn't lie at all the polls were very accurate, it was a close outcome in the few key states where the voting mattered, 51-49% is a similar margin to Brexit referendum in the UK which was always on a knife edge, and in these situations even a Joe Rogen podcast can sway the result last minute. Why do you think Trump is the lesser of the two evils then, he is the ultimate divide and profit by media candidate. He is not out for you. He is not out for anybody but himself and his racist rich friends. I am all for it. No hardened personal feelings towards you at all.

It used to not matter once upon a time. Politics didn't even factor in dating... you had young people getting married with totally different opinions, yes shocking. And even today it's possible to agree with certain things that people say no matter who they are or what end of the culture war they belong to. It would be nice to have a bit more of that and a bit less of the divide and rule, but I am also equally fed up with the stupidity and naivety coming out both ends of the same toilet... from extremists on the far right (Trump cult) and far left (unrealistic ideologues) The cameraimage thing is quite sad really, it was a force for good as far as I can see and the festival organisers have done a great job over the years of supporting talent, and it's right that student films should be shown even if they're no masterpiece. Every talented person looks back at their earliest work and it's imperfect. I think where the BSC is right (but didn't say so) is that Marek has been really insensitive with his interview comments given he is hosting the debut screening of RUST at Cameraimage... Halyna's last work and she died shooting it. Whether it is tasteful to show it is a whole other debate. It's hard to square it being her last work behind the camera, and it being the film set that was incompetent enough to get her killed.

I wouldn't mind one internet for Trump cult members and one for the rest of us.

Not a bad lens as well. Is that cable up to the top handle going towards some sort of XLR / mic socket? There's a control wheel up there too. No chatter of RAW codecs I take it? Have you spotted Kazuto Yamaki making the rounds yet?

https://www.screendaily.com/news/backlash-to-camerimage-directors-misogynistic-op-ed-on-women-in-cinematography/5199103.article https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/camerimage-film-festival-sexist-editorial-change-1236059689/ https://variety.com/2024/film/global/camerimage-controversy-festival-director-1236207572/ Apparently, this is a story of intolerance, of good vs evil. The festival director is evil - he doesn't tolerate mediocre cinematography, and thinks that if you select for jobs based on gender, you encourage it and deprive somebody more talented (presumably a man) of an opportunity, and deprive filmmaking of meritocracy. The film industry replied - we don't tolerate this kind of free speech. It's against our rules on sexism. The festival director replied - sorry... let's have a discussion about it. The film industry replied - we doesn't tolerate sexism. And Steve McQueen replied... goodbye, I'm out of Cameraimage 2024. But does the festival director really have an intolerance towards mediocrity? After all a lot of what is shown is indeed mediocre. And even when it comes to a proven genius such as Deakins, he's involved with the occasional mediocre movie. And does the film industry really have an intolerance discrimination? After all the entire purpose of the industry is to be highly selective of to whom they give money. They are also very discriminatory in what they do and don't allow in terms of freedom of speech and editorial comments... and even more discriminatory when it comes to which projects they will fund and which ones they won't. And also, the film industry doesn't seem to like some groups (such as poor people) - and won't give them jobs, hence you nowadays only really hear middle class voices chattering on set. So in the end, perhaps the Polish festival director is indeed more tolerant of mediocrity and does in fact select cinematographer's work based on factors other than just talent. And perhaps the film industry is indeed a LOT less tolerant than they like to make themselves out to be. Because by the very definition of the world, tolerance allows for all sorts of different opinions and cultural views, even when it comes to Polish festival organisers. And that by definition, is diverse. Whatever the culture war victor in all of this... wouldn't it be a genuine shame however to lose an event like Cameraimage in Poland? It's the leading cinematography community and good for all involved, yes even women. So when Steve McQueen and others pull their support, perhaps they should think about whether this is truly a good thing for cinematographers or not, and if filmmakers can afford to lose yet another community event, in a rapidly more lonely corporate world, during a major industry crisis.

Risky is what’s needed compared to the Alexa 65, you have a much wider choice of lenses on this. The GFX ETERNA is 102 megapixel, and the drawbacks of that have already been made clear… however that actually has the upside of making all those crop modes available even Super 35. I don’t know much about the rumoured 1” camera but if they target the typical Instax customer with something like that it will be a big seller. I think Fuji will target videographers / Sony FX users not just Netflix and ARRI with the ETERNA. Price could be as low as 6k Either way it will certainly be a lot less cost than the closest alternative - 65mm film or an ARRI LF! And as a GFX 100 user with my full frame lens adapters it makes me proud that Fuji feels this format is ready to step into cinema officially, in a big way. The image is spectacular… even with a 50 quid 1970s lens on the front. i love the GFX format overall

It remains to be seen how much money is burning a hole in the pocket of the cinema market after the torrid last few years. You are right that the sensor is a bit on the slow side for a cinema camera, rolling shutter might be a dealbreaker especially in the 8K modes. But it makes sense in many other ways... GFX looks very different to full frame, it's cinematic as hell. And like you say we don't know how they have implemented the sensor, it could be running much faster with the extra cooling available. I agree with you on that, it doesn't really need 12K worth of unused pixels, and a native 8K sensor would have been a better fit but one doesn't seem to exist in GFX format, and making a new sensor for one new camera would make it all a bit economically unviable. If the ETERNA is a success maybe Fuji should give Blackmagic's sensor manufacturer a call for future cameras?

It's official https://www.fujifilm.com/jp/en/news/hq/11889 Very curious to see if you can get a look at the real thing!!

It's admirable how Yamaki-san looks after his factory, his employees. The temptation to hive off everything to China to please the shareholders isn't there in Sigma's case, which makes them unique in the industry.

Favourite COMPANY or favourite cameras? From a personal point of view favourite company is definitely Sigma... Family run, different, innovative, the best of all the companies at modern lenses, and best bang for buck too on those. The Fp-L may not be the best all-round mirrorless camera... this would be the Sony a1 or a Nikon Z8... But they're a proper thinking-man's camera company and embolic of what makes Japan so special when it comes to their family run companies. Sigma behaves the opposite of American anything-for-profit evil entities. Their APS-C primes are lovely on a Fuji body, and much better bang for buck than your Sony GM primes for example or Canon RF. In terms of favourite tools by one company overall - if I had to pick just one or two then these would be by Sony, the a7 IV bang for buck is very good, Sony a1 and a9 III are all-rounders with faultless capabilities in every area - there's very little you can't do armed with one of these Sony bodies... In fact ever since the a7r II and a7s II they have been on a very good incremental improvement path, starting with ergonomic improvements, then colour, but really in every single area of a camera spec they have not put many a foot wrong. Favourite company though? Not a chance. I don't agree with their hugely inflated prices on lenses and the higher-end bodies, I don't care for any of the top brands in terms of companies - not Sony, not Canon, they are a corporate shadow of their former selves in terms of philosophy and company culture. Fuji would be second to Sigma for me as a company - their strategy is unique and there's nothing better in medium format, APS-C or compact cameras than what they're providing in 2024... X100 VI, GFX 100 II, X-H2 - wow what a trio that is...in terms of the ULTIMATE power, feature-set and specs the GFX 100 II is better than anything, even Sony a1 II. Third favourite company would be Atomos... haha only kidding.

A bit of social networking and Google as one of the big 3 tech giants can have a high influence over appointees at all sorts of smaller companies. I'm not suggesting it's true in the case of Vimeo, we simply don't know, but it can't be completely ruled out either. It just seems very suspicious that the moment they became clear no.2 competition for YouTube, someone came in and took them in a completely different direction. And for very little rewards.

And people wonder why there's not more competition to YouTube, it's because of mismanagement like that seen at Vimeo. They had the chance to become the thinking man's YouTube but blew it, to become a failing business service for videography clients and pros. The price increase reflects that too, that they preferred to focus on a tiny niche rather than the huge community they used to have. At this point the mismanagement is so bad, you could even assume Google planted a covert CEO there just to absolutely make sure it would never become a valid competitor. And today I don't think it matters that much as YouTube provides a much better platform, and the Vimeo community has been dead for well over 6 years now.

If every Ai work is stolen then every human experience is a stolen one as well, because that's how we learn about the world. This technology can't be trained on the arts or reality by putting it out there with a pair of eyes, ears and arms, it has to be spoon fed, but essentially the result is the same and very human. Info goes in. Processing happens. Self expression comes out the other end in the form of observation, both personal and subjective, and arising from that - art in various audio-visual formats. So good luck to the lawyers on that one, lol. When it comes to Musk, certainly a very complex character who has gone from being on the cutting edge of two very good businesses (SpaceX and Tesla) to being on the sidelines of both with no real decision making power, having a midlife crisis mental breakdown where he spends 44 billion on a website (still can't believe I typed BILLION not million) and proceeds to wreak the business model of it. That to me is the act of either a very sick person or a stupid person and as we know he's not your typical stupid, it must be the former! Musk is behind in Ai and desperate to catch OpenAi which of course he had early involvement in before throwing his toys out the pram with Sam. Musk in terms of his recent politics has further taken him down a destructive path / rabbit hole, and yes he clearly has fallen out with his elite corporate Dem supporting buddies and venture capitalists somewhere along the way. But then drugs will do that.

Microsoft has the argument, that the open web is fair use and can be fed page by page into the machine. In same way Google indexes the WWW. If they decide against AI and the derivative works are not allowed to be neural network influenced by other works, it might have some unintended consequences - such as preventing human artists from using their influences. After all, ai and us are working in pretty similar ways. Maybe the difference here is that the data of the literal original is crunched. It is dissolved up into numbers and understood in terms of patterns and styles by the machine. So those original 1s and 0s are stored on OpenAI's server, in totality and their entirety. Whereas a human artist, never has a precise copy of the exact original digital work in our head... only the abstract version in working memory.

Apparently Tesla marketing boffins fed Bladerunner 2049 stills into Grok to come up with the close likeness, which they then proceeded to use for marketing purposes at the unveiling of the Robotaxi. What a world. Should be an interesting case to watch to see what precedent is set for ai-generated movies and photography. Can you really copyright a lighting style and colour grade? https://petapixel.com/2024/10/22/elon-musk-and-tesla-sued-for-using-ai-generated-blade-runner-2049-images-at-robotaxi-event-cybercab-alcon/