Eric Lotze

@ericlotze.com

154 Followers 354 Following

American ex-pat living in Canada. (Very) amateur astrophotographer, professional forgetter of important things

Square picture of the Iris nebula, taken from my backyard in Kelowna, British Columbia. There is a very bright bluish white star in the center, surrounded by an expanding cloud of dust. The star is lighting the dust cloud from the inside and making it glow. In the background are more stars than I can count.
Expected delivery 1 to 11 business days
I've seen bad press make otherwise great products dead on arrival. For example, I have still yet to see a video-calling device as simple and delightful to use as Meta Platforms Inc.'s ill-fated Portal. Meta smart glasses are already being dubbed "pervert glasses." An OpenAl device risks becoming the Cybertruck for the body, the wearer's visible endorsement of a company's disruption: the threat to jobs, the pilfering of creative works, the energy-guzzling data centers.
SAM NEILL HELENA JOHN BONHAM CARTER GIELGUD RUTGER HAUER MIRANDA RICHARDSON ISABELLA ROSSELLINI MARTIN SHORT
CBC News push alert that says: 'Explosive' diarrhea parasite sickens more than 1,000 in U.S. Should Canadians be concerned?
The Association for Dressings & Sauces The Association for Dressings and Sauces (ADS) was founded in 1926 and represents manufacturers of salad dressing, mayonnaise and condiment sauces and suppliers of raw materials, packaging and equipment to this segment of the food industry. Its purpose is to serve the best interests of industry members, its customers, and consumers of its products.
A screenshot of Mox’s current website. It just says “Fuck ICE” in large letters, and then “don’t buy things today, to give money to someone who needs it.” All of the e-store links are gone.
A screenshot of Faine’s post immediately followed by one from Ai Jiang, who is trapped in the very situation being discussed and running giveaways for her work on Instagram
A sharpie drawing of Trogdor on the plywood of a boarded up window, saying “Dirty Trogdors Burned our City.”
The days leading up to John Rustad's resignation played out like a dramatic soap opera of secret meetings, legal gymnastics and even a gingerbread making competition. The climax came Wednesday with the party announcing Rustad's removal, and the denouement came Thursday, when an at times emotional Rustad bid his job as leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia farewell.
A weather forecast tile for Victoria, BC, Canada. It’s going to be 8 degrees Celsius there, and alarmingly there is something called a “Wreckhouse Wind Warning” in effect. This sounds bad to me? Unless it’s, you know, named after Sir William Wreckhouse, who was famous for evoking gentle, unseasonably warm breezes that remind one of their childhood. (It isn’t)
A crop of one of the covers, showing three green-tinted witch-like faces who look very very pleased with themselves
Screenshot of a text exchange between TMC and Pierce Presley about sex robots
Two headlines from Castanet, the local news outlet for the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The first one says “Tree of Hope festival returns”, and the second says “Porta-potty fire in Kelowna”
"This time, Ohtani was a little less careful. He fell into a 2-0 count, and that forced him back in over the plate. He went with a fastball in the low middle, and Guerrero was a little late on it, fouling off a juicy pitch. As Clayton Kershaw looked on from the bullpen like a divorced dad told to stay away from his kid's soccer game, Ohtani tried a breaking ball, higher in the zone, and Vlad Jr. pounced. He launched the ball over the left-field fence to deliver a 2-1 lead that the Jays would never surrender."
An Ngram graph of the phrases “I’m in this” and “and I do not like it”, which show both phrases trending up starting in the mid-2000s.
Three books by Premee Mohamed side by side: The Annual Migration of Clouds, We Speak Through the Mountain, and The First Thousand Trees
Crop of the OP image showing three of the soldiers on the right, one who looks bored, one of whom looks extremely dejected even though he got to hold a fire stick, and the other of whom looks as if he is about to kill a wild boar using only the ferocity of his gaze
JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE General Assembly of the State of Arkansas. WHEREAS, Confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our State; and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings; and, whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State Historical Society, and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history and the early usage of the American immigrants. Be it therefore resolved by both Houses of the General Assembly, That the only true pronunciation of the name of the State, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French word representing the sound; and that it should be pronounced in three syllables, with the final "s" silent. The "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables, being the pronunciation formerly universally and now still most commonly used; and that the pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable, with the sound of "a" in man, and the sounding of the terminal "s" is an innovation to be discouraged. Approved March 15, 1881. T. J. CHURCHILL, Governor of Arkansas.
A graph of the Google Books Ngram for “Amazeballs” and “amuseballs”. From this graph it is clear that this thread is the first time on earth that Amuseballs has ever been used, and a shocking number of people are still using Amazeballs although slightly off the 2016-2020 highs.
A screenshot of a Google Ngram search query. The search terms are boob job, tit job, and breast enhancement. The graph shows none of those terms were commonly used before the mid 1980s and then “breast enhancement” usage skyrocketing in the 1990s. The other terms are much less used.
A screenshot of Faine’s quote post above the OP, which is blocked, so it looks like blocked posts are inherently British
Screenshot of Baldur's Gate 3, where the player is talking to the demon Raphael in human form. Behind Raphael, a fire is burning in a huge fireplace, and the shadow thrown by the flames resembles an enormous demon wing positioned exactly where a real one would be.
A screenshot from The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf, which says: “His mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy.”
A photo of a Harvard Business Review story about AI, and why humans don’t like it, and how companies can make us like it anyway. The pictured section is about how people think AI is not good at subjective tasks like, and I swear this is real, DATING OTHER HUMANS. An excerpt is highlighted and says: “For example, people are just as open to financial recommendations from AI as they are from humans, because that task is viewed as subjective. However, when it comes to something like dating advice, which is seen as highly subjective, they have a clear preference for human input.”
The pedestrian bridge to the Seabus terminal at waterfront station in Vancouver. There is a bright orange reflection of the sunlit water on the glass and you can barely see people walking along the bridge thought the reflection.
A bird with a red eye patch, dark gray head, black wings and an orange chest. I am not sure what kind of bird it is, but it is very close and looking at me as if he’s about to try to eat me.
The bluesky 10M celebration badge, for which I am but a lowly number 616,966, but i guess counts as a bluesky elder in some kind of extremely generous fashion. I'll take it but it feels like stolen valor
Screenshot of this real estate listing showing the property repeatedly being offered for $500,000 and then removed from the market 3 months later. This happens 3 times in the screenshot view but more times in real life.
A wildfire advancing down the hillside outside Kelowna, BC, Canada. It is night and the city lights are bright but the sky is orange and full of smoke. The fire extends the entire width of the picture.
A Washington Post story called “who won the debate? We asked swing-state voters.” There are headshots of each of these voters in two groups, one for Harris and one for Trump. The Harris group has 23 voters, both men and women. The Trump group has only 2 women.
A picture taken from the top of a cliff, showing horizontal bands of ocean at the top, then beach, then running track, then train track, then the cliff at the bottom
Tweet that says "faramir: since you were robbed of boromir, i will do what i can in his stead; if is hould return, think better of me, father / denethor: this is so sad peregrin took sing despacito"
Picture of three palm trees silhouetted against a sunset, with lots of ragged orange clouds in the background and telephone poles and wires in the foreground
A clothing store sign that says “His N Hers ladies fashions”
Side by side photos of Biden and Trump, on a story about their upcoming debate. Biden looks old but human, Trump looks like an orange peel was left out in the sun for a few weeks and then applied as a mask over a cadaver
A close up of Alla Nazimova, who is leaning back and has (i think) one leg bent at the knee, so only one foot is visible. There is a chair leg where the missing foot should be, and it looks like she has one foot and one peg. If it turns out that this is in the play then I’ll just be quietly mortified.
A mobile webpage completely overwhelmed by ads so that almost none of the actual content is visible
A screenshot of a mobile web page from Gizmodo. There are three popover ads coming in from the top, bottom, and left sides of the screen, and a normal ad in the middle. Only the top right corner shows partial article text and it is unreadable.
In reality, though, the content is incoherent and almost certainly produced at scale with AI. A post titled "Top 5 Best Flutes 2024," for example, says it's written by "passionate musicians and educators in music." But when you scroll through the post, most of the "tested" products featured are cheap Amazon champagne flutes. Elsewhere, many post headlines, including extraordinary titles such as "Top 5 Best Pia%c2%blata Birthday Parties 2024" — this was supposed to say "Piñata" — and "Top 0 Best Ai Tools For Copywriting 2024" seem to be just the type of "automatically-generated gibberish" that Chou was bragging about in his video. (We reached out to Pixelfy to ask about the posts, but have yet to hear back.)
A marketing email from The Keg restaurant, with the subject line “Did someone say Bone Marrow?”
A screenshot of George Santos’ Cameo page. He describes himself as the “former congressional ‘icon’”! With a nail polish emoji, and you can message him for $13 Canadian which, for reference, is less than a deli sandwich at a mall.
Bags of “Roast Chicken” flavoured chips and “Fries ‘n Gravy” flavoured… extruded palm oil sticks or something
NGC 7380, the Wizard Nebula, which as far as I know resembles zero actual wizards. Still looks cool though.