Leaning Into A Macro Lens

I stopped by our local camera store to look at macro lenses for my Nikon D3500 Artillery Piece and ended up walking out with a rented 105mm Nikkor Howitzer. After I got home, I threw it on my camera body, went outside and shot flowers in autofocus mode. These were among my first eight photos. I left them very large, so I think they're worth a click. Just based on these, I'm sold.

Leaning Into A Left Hook

I heard that our mini-summit with the Chinese in Alaska was a disaster from the get go, so I cruised over to YouTube to watch it. Southeast Asian channels covered it fairly completely and it was indeed a train wreck. Our representative, Antony Blinken, Harvard '84, some self-important inhabitant of the ACELA corridor bubble, greeted the Chinese with short list of accusations and complaints. This was done in the opening statements and on camera.

The Chinese then proceeded to open up on Mr. Ivy League Genius. It turns out that if you run around telling everyone how racist your country is, you've given ample ammunition to your international rivals. The Chinese Man Who Eats With Sticks used that ammunition and more. What was surprising was the depth of his anger and his contempt for the US. 

Blinken ended up cringing and whining about how confident countries could look at their own shortcomings and how everyone needed to know where the other side's perspective. That plays well with the US media, but it signals nothing but weakness to street fighters like the Chinese.

Whether or not it means anything to the rest of us remains to be seen, but it was pretty eye-opening to see the Chinese delegation jam the 1619 Project and BLM down the Americans' throats.