More Lunacy

Last night, I brought out the Nikon D3500 Artillery Piece and shot at the moon for a while. This time, I allowed the camera to auto-focus and just fiddled with the shutter speed and the aperture. It worked out very well. This was my favorite from the evening's photo barrage.

Now I want to go out to the desert and try this. I suspect that there is some haze and light pollution at work here.

Other Lunacy

A conversation at our dinner party the other night revealed why Black Lives Matter has been a disaster and why it's going to keep being tried, just like the way the generals in WW I kept trying infantry assaults against barbed wire and machine guns.

Two of the people at the party talked about their experiences with blacks as young people in the 1960s and 1970s. They spoke of the outright racism and discrimination they observed. Neither would allow for changes since then and anyone who didn't think we were still utterly racist was simply blind. They had seen what they had seen and it traumatized them.

Neither of them have had significant interactions with blacks since then.

Meanwhile, I have professional interactions with blacks at all levels of society every week through my work. Some have college degrees, some only graduated from high school. Some are project managers, some are welders. Some come from the 'burbs, some from the hood. Some are married parents, some are single parents and some are childless.

I'm much older now than my friends were in the 1960s and 1970s. My conversations are naturally deeper and more sophisticated. We talk families, travel, hobbies, money, work and all kinds of other things.

If I handed you a transcript of my day's conversations and omitted the names, you'd have no idea who was black, Asian, Hispanic or white. That's the point. They're just people. There isn't a monolithic "black" population. There isn't a monolithic "black experience." There are only people who have various characteristics and life stories.

BLM has failed because it still thinks the first-order problems of 1965 dominate American culture. The solutions to those are the exact opposite of what the first-order problems of 2020 need. In 1965, white culture needed to change. In 2020, American popular culture in general and black culture in particular need to change. 

Screaming about racism only gives us excuses for our failures and stops us from eagerly searching for real solutions.

Last month's infantry assault failed because our artillery barrage was too brief. This time, we'll shell them for three days before we send the lads over the top!

It's a slaughter.