The power of metadata and the photo puzzle

I am not a very tech savvy person and so am constantly being surprised by what modern technology can do. Take for example, the current kerfuffle over the doctored photo released by the British royal family. I am amazed at what could be gleaned from the photo.

David McCoy, the imaging manager at the Guardian, said: “The first step in analysing this image is reading through the file’s embedded metadata to determine the photographic settings of the base camera image. In this case, we can see that a Canon 50mm f1.2 lens was used for this initial image, set to an aperture of f3.2, which will give moderately shallow depth of field.

That is pretty impressive, to me at least, but the article goes on to describe all the other things that were inferred.

The whole thing is a minor puzzle. I am not sure why the photo needed to be doctored at all and why, given their resources, they could not have hired a professional to do a better job that would not have aroused suspicions in the first place.

Michael Kosta of The Daily Show joked that he knew at once, even without any forensic analyses, that the photo had been doctored because you can never get three children to all smile at the same time for a photo.

Jon Stewart on who the ‘real’ Americans are

He discusses something that has also long irritated me, and that is the claims by GOP politicians that ‘real’ Americans are those that live in the middle parts of the country in rural areas, as if the vast majority who live in cities and the coastal areas count for less.

This is part of a more general pattern. GOP politicians seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to sneer at big cities and the diverse array of people who live in them as somehow being less worthy, while reacting with outrage if any Democratic politician even slightly disparages rural white America.

Katie Britt gets brutally roasted on SNL

Katie Britt has now essentially confirmed that the story that she told in her response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was misleading in all the key details, as was exposed by journalist Jonathan Katz, though in typical MAGA fashion, still claims that it is ‘true’ in some unspecified sense.

Actor Scarlett Johansson did a brutally funny takedown of Britt on Saturday Night Live, capturing all her manic, hyper-dramatized mood swings.

Jonathan Pie on what is happening in the UK

I have not been following events there lately but according to Pie, 14 years of conservative rule has resulted in the drastic reduction of nearly all public services and the degradation of life for ordinary people in favor of giving tax cuts to millionaires and big business.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak seems determined to stay the course even though the government lost two by-elections to Labour on February 15th, where the seats had been held by Conservatives, and is heading into a general election within the year with low approval ratings.

But then another by-election on February 29th saw George Galloway, formerly of the Labour Party but now head of the Workers Party, win a seat that had been held by Labour, with a vote share of 40%.. The race for that election was messy, to put it mildly, with the Labour Party withdrawing support for its own candidate, resulting in him coming in 4th, getting just around 8% of the vote. An independent candidate came second to Galloway with 21%, and the Conservative candidate came third with 12%. Given the peculiar nature of this race, it is hard to say what the result implies for the coming general election.

John Oliver on the lack of ethics in the US Supreme Court

After examining the blatant violations of ethical norms by justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, Oliver comes up with an idea to coax Thomas to leave the court by appealing to the one thing that seems to drive him: the desire to live like a very wealthy person who likes to drive around in a massive motor home. In public, Thomas talks about how he is battling the elites on behalf of ordinary people while in reality he loves to be the beneficiary of lavish vacations and gift from billionaires while ruling in ways that harm ordinary people. A really sleazy hypocrite.

Oliver offers him a contract where Thomas will be paid $1 million per year for the rest of his life and also get possession of a top-of-the-line motor home costing $2.5 million (that includes a bedroom with a king-size bed, 1 ½ bathrooms, and a full-size refrigerator) if he leaves the court. The offer is time limited in that Thomas has just 30 days from the date of the show (February 18th) to sign the contract. Oliver says that the money will come from him personally and that he has checked with lawyers and that, amazingly, making such an offer is legal.

I do not think that there is any chance that Thomas will accept the offer. Even though he loves to live the high life and would have no scruples about accepting it, like any person without a strong sense of ethics, he may suspect that others are like him and that the offer is not genuine and that if he makes moves towards accepting it, Oliver will unmask him, even though I think Oliver’s offer is genuine.

Nikki Haley is not a moderate

Today is the day of the South Carolina Republican primary where Nikki Haley is expected to lose handily to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT).

The Daily Show‘s Desi Lydic says that the media is describing Haley as a moderate when she is as extreme, and on some issues even more so, than SSAT. She even boasts of the fact that she is so conservative.

So. why is the media so quick to label her a moderate? Lydic says that nowadays to acquire the label of moderate in the Republican party is to merely acknowledge the obvious, that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Of course, that does not make you a moderate. It only means that you are not delusional.

Jon Stewart on gun control

Ever since Trevor Noah left as host of The Daily Show, the show has been having a series of guest hosts, seemingly trying out people to see who might fit the bill best. The results must have been unsatisfactory because they have brought back former long-time host Jon Stewart, the person who made it much more focused on sharp political and social satire until he retired from the show nine years ago. He will host the show only on Mondays, though, with the correspondents doing the next three days of the week.

In his first appearance, Stewart did an extended piece on the absurd lack of reasonable gun control measures in the US. (I am informed by commenters Bruce and johnson catman that this is an old clip that they see-released on the TDS website. His first appearance will be this coming Monday.)

(Almost) everyone is having fun with the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories

The ridiculous conspiracy theories that are circling around the singer and the Super Bowl are a source of great amusement to me and to a lot of others. I had thought that Swift had become a big star just in the last couple of years but it turns out that that was because I had not been paying attention. She has been performing for 17 years and selling out stadiums for a long time. But while that level of success made her a household name among those who follow popular music, her relationship with an NFL football player has thrust her in front of a much wider audience, people like me who had only been dimly aware of her.

The wild idea that she is a part of a ‘psyop’ operation by the Pentagon has clearly created amusement in that austere institution.

The claims by Fox News and far-right influencers that pop star Taylor Swift is part of a Pentagon “psychological operation” to get President Joe Biden reelected, and somehow rig the Super Bowl to benefit Kansas City Chiefs tight end (and Swift’s boyfriend) Travis Kelce, has been met with forehead slaps in the national security world.

“The absurdity of it all boggles the mind,” said one senior administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. “It feels like one of those ‘tell me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist, without telling me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist’ memes.”
…

Faced with an onslaught of journalist questions about the theory, spokesperson Sabrina Singh was ready for it.

In the name of being honest, Singh vehemently denied Swift is part of a DOD operation.

“We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight — Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period,” Singh told POLITICO.

Of course, that is what people behind such an operation would say, no? Don’t be fooled, sheeple!

(Jack Ohman)
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