The camera on the iPhone 11 is wild. This is a handheld shot of the moon over the ocean. It automatically takes and blends multiple exposures.

A couple of hours earlier. Note the lights from a truck doing about 15mph on the beach. Handheld, again.

This is not actually true.

Atwood's inspiration was the People Of Hope.

The Federalist Society’s list of approved Supreme Court nominees, from which the nominee will be drawn, has a handful of youngish women wingnuts, two of whom seem to top the list for the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The two sucking up most of the oxygen in the speculation, and whom power-addled Donald Trump seems to be able to keep in his head, are over-the-top extremist and extremist: Amy Coney Barrett, representing The Handmaid’s Tale as societal model wing, and Barbara Lagoa, the quid pro quo choice.

Starting with Barrett: She does indeed belong to an extreme, charismatic wing of the Catholic Church called People of Praise, which actually did serve as the inspiration for Margaret Atwood in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was published in 1985 after Atwood “delayed writing it for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,” she told The New York Times Book Review in 1986. “Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.” Specifically: “There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids. They don’t go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book—sit down and shut up.” Yeah, that’s Barrett’s church. Except they’ve dropped the “head” moniker for male leadership and “handmaids” title for women who keep their fellow women in line because the television series based on the novel forced a change. They are now all called “leaders,” who direct such intimate life decisions of members as who they marry, where they live, and how they raise their children.

The autunmal equinox demands a song about the autunmal equinox:

Raleigh, N.C. — A pair of left-leaning activist groups said Friday that they uncovered a infiltration effort from a man with apparent ties to a Georgia congressional candidate backing a widely debunked conspiracy theory.

Common Cause North Carolina and Democracy North Carolina, two well established government watchdog groups, said a man calling himself "James Fortune" and a number of other out-of-state operatives posed as donors and volunteers, apparently in an attempted sting operation targeting left-leaning groups.

...

Common Cause, Democracy NC and two other groups – Advance Carolina and Fortaleza – were targeted, The News & Observer reported. They were approached about donations and volunteer efforts, but when they checked the source of those donations – a Georgia company called Blue Sky Med Labs LLC – things didn't add up, the newspaper said.

Incorporation papers for the company had been filed only a few days before Fortune showed up in North Carolina, and they listed a political consultant "whose many hats include serving as the registered agent for a political organization of a U.S. House candidate who supports the QAnon movement," the newspaper reported.

As one Black Lives Matter billboard is coming down in Pittsboro, another is going up in Raleigh, says a social-justice advocate involved in both projects.

Kerwin Pittman, founder of the nonprofit Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services Inc. (RREPS), said he’s not surprised the Pittsboro billboard erected last month next to a Confederate flag on U.S. 64 Business didn’t last long.

The contract with Lamar Advertising Co. was supposed to be for a full year, until next July, but Sam White, the owner of the Confederate flag, didn’t want the black billboard with the white letters spelling “Black Lives Matter” on his land.

White is ending his land lease with billboard owner Lamar Advertising after almost 16 years. The lease expires Aug. 31, he said.

“I told them the 31st of August that sign better be gone, because Sept. 1, if that sign’s not down, they’re going to hear my chainsaw running,” White said in an interview with The News & Observer.

Fuck Sam White.

What happens when you realize "music theory" actually means "the harmonic style of certain 18th century European musicians"?

And what if you then start paying attention to the explicit intentions of the 20th C's foremost music theorists and notice that they are, in fact, full of white supremacist cliches? And it's still happening.

Or if you like pictures:

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened.

What he actually built was a system to continuously monitor and harass Pasco County residents, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

First the Sheriff’s Office generates lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.

Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.

They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.

One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

iPhone

Some bit of software in the chain of things from my phone's camera to WordPress here has a terrible resizing algorithm.

The spot on my right foot, where the Achilles tendon attaches to my heel, has been sore for years. I've always suspected it was running-related. But, I even though I haven't run in over two months, the pain never went away. Then, I had hernia surgery and was left unable to walk without a walker for the better part of a week. And now the pain is gone!

Who knew the Achilles tendon was attached to the abdominal wall!?

Can’t believe I have to say this, but here goes. Black Lives Matter and “antifa” are not the same thing. Let me repeat. Black Lives Matter and antifa are not the same thing.

The antifa folks make every protest they attend become all about them.