Phil Ewing

Prolly an unpopular take in the "creatives" cadre but: Lightroom CC is great. Photos dot app is not enough. Brand-name Photoshop is the world's most infamous bloatware -- way too much. They've done a great job getting Lightroom juuuuuuuuust right.

Easy to understand why many are mad at Adobe and want competition for Creative Cloud, but I warn everyone tempted by the "Creator Studio" that Apple's track record is abysmal. When it abandoned Aperture back in the day it ruined my life -- unf*cking that shit took YEARS

a pikachu wearing sunglasses is walking down a dirt road ALT: a pikachu wearing sunglasses is walking down a dirt road

CAVU conditions in National Capital Region = DC ANG Vipers booming around overhead = spotters motivated

Advertising poster featuring an illustration of a man and a woman cycling in summer clothing and the text: Cycling keeps you fit and happy! -and leads you to the Beauties of the Countryside. The bicycle is still the world's most inexpensive, independent, enjoyable and healthy means of transport -- whether you use it to cycle to and from work, or for week-end or holiday touring to see the beauties of the countryside at home or abroad. "Goodbye, fares and queues -- I'm happy on my Hercules!"

"Goodbye, fares and queues -- I'm happy on my Hercules!"

Hercules
ca. 1950s

Normalize giving positive affirmations to your trusted steed 🚲

Could even "Black Hawk Down"-like or Iran hostage crisis TV images of captured Americans alter the political situation in the US today to the disfavor of the administration? We hope we don't need to test that -- but it's difficult to believe they would.

... one important caveat is that the political risks are lower than they've ever been, barring some terrible novelty that we hope doesn't happen. Americans tuned out of Iraq and A'stan and ignored Libya and Syria and so long as F-35 played pretty for TV in blowing stuff up in Caracas, prolly fine

We appear to be emerging from a Gunshy Foreign Policy Supercycle into an 80s/early 90s Aggro Foreign Policy Supercycle -- Mrs Thatcher and Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush loved them right up until the luck ran out with Mr. Clinton

With respect to the F-35s reportedly zorching down to Puerto Rico, future events are anyone's guess, but: we're downstream of raids against North Korea (as we learn) Iran and Yemen, and who knows where else, which, if inconclusive, also were unchallenged and unpunished. Why not Venezuela?

Easy to imagine, therefore, with a sense of Leadership Exigency about the whole NK nuke sitch back in the day, ppl at the head shed weren't trying to hear NSA and CIA and DIA be like, "eh, we can tap the comms switch (or whatevs) but we need to recruit and train some Korean shellfish divers"

But it's true on the spy agency side too. So much of Bob Gates' book is about Bill Casey reaching deep into the CIA org chart to find people who would do what he wanted, irrespective of their roles and responsibilities and the laws and Congress (lol) ... and winding up with Iran-Contra

... the CIA was like, no, if we send somebody it needs to be a real, Farsi-speaking Persian dude whom we recruit and pay and control -- that's how you run a human agent. Which is fine and correct but also takes much longer to set up and pay off. Principals find their own ways to get what they want

Tensions between the intelligence agency side of the Doing Secret Stuff House and the uniformed DoD side are an old story. David Crist has an anecdote in "The Twilight War" about Army intel's plan to send a man basically in costume, with a fake mustache, to try to pose as an Iranian business guy

Back in the day we'd have hearings to establish some of this 👇but in these times, will anything come of this extraordinary fiasco?

Two cents offered: either Other Agencies of Government didn't agree to play or wanted to do something leadership felt would take too long -- hence the action movie

... of course we start to run out of airspeed and altitude because so many of these operations were + remain secret. Is it actually the case, in our era, that 9 out of 10 go flawlessly and everything is fine most of the time? We can't know but when the 1 of those goes this bad that is cold comfort

Lionel Crabb - Wikipedia

Then there are cases like that of poor old Buster Crabbe, likely sent by UK Naval Intelligence to conduct surveillance on a Soviet cruiser visiting England back in the day -- another debacle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_...

Night-SSGN-sub-dive-snoop 'n poop incursions fire the imagination. They seem like a solved problem and they feel familiar from the movies. But history suggests your pWin is a coin flip at best. So many SBS mini-sub raids, even the famous one against the Tirpitz, were debacles. Often glossed over

SO stealthy, the helicopters -- look what a difference they make!

How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart

For those just getting read in, this is the NYT story: the SEALs raided North Korea to try to plant a surveillance tap but the op went bad + they killed a boatload of Korean divers. At least the *second* SEAL snoop 'n poop into NK, we learn! Congress not told. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/u...

I wish the whole thing had gone to plan and the US was collecting intel about NK leadership and none of this had ever happened but now we have not only a terrible international incident but yet more evidence for the juice-jock war criminal narrative around SpecWar that it desperately needs to shed

... and what do the professional fishers and divers in this area have? Professional fishing and diving capabilities! When they discover a boat missing that's a big deal and they have the ability to go down and find, good heavens, Smitty and Donny and Louie have been shot to hell and gutted!

... this would be the equivalent of Spetsnaz frogmen mounting a raid against Bar Harbor but not realizing there might be lobster boats, and then killing a sinking a lobster boat crew. Pretty soon all the other ole bois are going to say, "hey, what happened to Smitty and Donny?"

... maybe there was no choice but to drive their mini-subs into waters where small-boat divers were operating but they had no plan? And, when they discovered the poor guys were there, shot the sh*t out of them and stabbed their corpses so they'd sink ... in an area frequented by fishers and divers!

The North Korea thing is absolutely jaw-dropping for so many reasons but let's dial in on just one: Korean coastal divers and fishers are world icons. Mollusk, clam, pearl diving -- it's been in National Geographic and all the others. Yet JSOC and SpecWar, per that NYT story, were surprised by it!

Two photos. The first shows Bill Cunningham early in his career, shooting some fashionable subjects. The second shows one of his early photos. A woman in a dress and hat is standing on a ladder.

Two photos. The first shows Bill Cunningham in a blue chore coat, straddling his bike while he's taking a photo. The other shows him on his bike throwing up a peace sign with his hand.

Two photos of his studio. One shows a bunch of file cabinets on the ground floor. The other shows the upper floor, where he slept on a cot.

Bill Cunningham on his cot.

very few ppl are as talented and fortunate as bill cunningham. but i often think about how he was able to live an honest life doing what he loved because he lived simply. even at the height of his career, he slept on a cot. as he once said, "if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do."

… if all the world needs to be is some B-Roll of things you produced as an anchor reads the script establishing the next scene ((which is itself a movie trope)) than you can have your fantasy and millions will buy it too b/c it’s what passes for reality — an oppression montage

Much as the principal saw “Clear and Present Danger” and said, “let’s do that!” it’s as though he saw those old 70s crime-revenge movies and said, “great idea, somebody just needs to be tough.” And if the pictures are all that matter, done!

On the weirdness of the unreality of the Present Situation, vol. 2: it’s wild that the chosen simulacrum is a late-70s movie about the perception of urban violence. It’s 2025 yet our public affairs LARP is “Dirty Harry” or “Death Wish”

... literally the only hope for this Republic is that the ephemeral nature and impermanence of these and other scams mean they may someday pass away if these fever were to break -- and may that all come true as soon as possible! The downside risks are clear and dire

... the pageant of cruelty that has taken the place of our public life can't contemplate the real, old way because all it knows is itself -- in which nothing, including itself, is anything but a scam. So we get a scam for the rubes in which the rubes don't know and don't care