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npub1jslger4ddlhwe50rluftrw4k9rjvvz4e9lutj29g45acyl78uwxsty93xu

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Last Notes

2026-09-04 01:09:49 CEST

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So there are basically two ways for this to go, and I honestly have no idea which one it will be:
(sane option): Everyone recognizes that this can't happen, and the EO has no effect until the courts have ruled on the merits (after November)
(chaos option) USPS refuses to accept/deliver blank ballots in the coming weeks, despite having no mechanism for states to comply, and we end up in completely uncharted territory.
[@heidilifeldman](https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman )

2026-09-04 00:52:31 CEST

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And there are states (both red and blue) that rely on vote by mail as a primary voting method. Requiring those states to not send out their ballots until the USPS systems are ready is tantamount to telling them they can't hold elections in November, which is a position that even the most rabidly pro-administration court is unlikely to take.
[@heidilifeldman](https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman )

2026-09-03 02:51:03 CEST

It's been widely reported that former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a longtime Trump critic under investigation for sexual assault, had his electronics confiscated at an airport by the FBI last month. It's messy story in which facts are still emerging.
But what caught my eye as a surveillance nerd was this (paywalled) story https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/eric-swalwell-air-marshals-fbi/688489/ about his flight in. Apparently a team of Air Marshalls was assigned to watch him in flight and attempt to shoulder surf any passwords he entered en route.

2026-08-27 03:38:01 CEST

Got a small swarm of messages (all from strangers) telling me that I shouldn't have blocked a particular person, that I made a mistake, that I was being "unfair."
Maybe. I have a hair-trigger block button. I make mistakes. But I also deal with a lot of bad faith actors here.
Since my blocking someone has very little effect on the world, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

2026-08-25 04:08:00 CEST

I'm done engaging with the election doomers here. They're indistinguishable from an influence operation, but more smugly self-satisfied wallowing in their own fatalism.

2026-08-25 02:35:54 CEST

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A lot of the doomer comments I'm getting basically boil down to "WHAT IF VOTING DOESN'T MATTER ANY MORE???!!". Well, it better matter, because it's all you've got. And convincing you that it doesn't is exactly what the fascists would love nothing more to do. (And you can be damn sure THEY'LL be voting).

2026-08-24 23:11:51 CEST

RE: https://flipboard.com/@associatedpress/politics-h8vn14lnz/-/a-6QEA3m-7TFOMTVVebUH_Cg%3Aa%3A3199720-%2F0
This headline is misleading; the Court didn't "clear the way" for the vote-by-mail restrictions executive order, but rather dismissed one of two lower court injunctions currently blocking it, on relatively narrow procedural grounds. The court hasn't yet ruled directly on the legality of the EO's substance.
#note17u6…9hql

2026-08-24 22:22:59 CEST

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If, like me, you find it impossible to believe that this was 40 years ago, you're probably overdue for a colonoscopy.

2026-08-23 21:09:21 CEST

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I'm imagining a shady dairy with a bunch of goats in ill-fitting cow costumes.

2026-08-23 21:08:01 CEST

Just picked up milk and noticed the label says "100% milk from real cows". This wasn't something I was worried about before now.

2026-08-21 18:48:14 CEST

Spanish Steps, Kalorama, Washington, DC, 2023.
All the pixels, but please consult a member of staff for wheelchair access, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53335651417
#photography
https://cdn.masto.host/federatesocial/media_attachments/files/117/134/510/214/318/844/original/bd7838101bc92d10.jpg

2026-08-14 20:04:29 CEST

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Note, important safety tip: you can get closer to this tower without clearly trespassing or jumping fences than most other 50KW broadcast antennas I've encountered. I measured a field strength of over 80V/m a bit outside the tower fence, which is an incredibly strong signal (though still within OSHA limits at the frequency involved).
Resist any temptation to jump the fence and climb the (energized) tower. You'd be electrocuted as soon as you touched it.

2026-08-14 20:03:49 CEST

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AM broadcast is a technically interesting and somewhat endangered medium. The low frequencies mean that signals routinely travel well beyond their local coverage areas, especially overnight in winter. So there's a bit of mystery in tuning around the dial late at night; you never know what you might pick up.
Sadly, industry consolidation and the growth of higher bandwidth media (FM, satellite, podcasts) has greatly reduced the variety and local focus of programming. But it somehow hangs on.

2026-08-14 20:03:25 CEST

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The antenna field is in the final approach and takeoff flightpath for SFO airport's runways 28L/R (and 10L/R), and so the site has special markings to warn pilots of a collision hazard. In addition to the usual tower lights and red/white paint, 3-dimensional "HAZ" warnings were installed around the field. These are easily visible in areal photos; see, e.g., https://earth.google.com/web/@37.5471204,-122.23429544,0.73120256a,577.14725587d,35y,0.01179999h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBQgIIAEoNCP___________wEQAA

2026-08-14 20:03:03 CEST

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This distinctive stacked dual antenna arrangement is used to lower the radiation angle of the antenna, concentrating transmitted power to the "ground wave" and reducing energy that would otherwise be sent upward into the sky.
The smaller (300 foot) freestanding mast in the background left is not in current use. It can be used as an emergency spare antenna for KNBR during maintenance of the taller main antenna.

2026-08-12 20:54:42 CEST

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I'm confused. Do you think it's disrespectful to clap or express emotion at at eclipse? I found them to be a completely emotional, deeply moving, experience.

2026-08-12 19:55:52 CEST

Former SPLC CFO arrested for overseeng payments to informants embedded inside white supremacy groups. https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/exclusive-splc-fraud-cfo-charges?Date=20260812
The government is portraying this as a fraud against donors, which is absurd. As a donor, this is exactly the sort of investigative work I expected SPLC to use my money for.

2026-08-12 02:04:36 CEST

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You always have to have strong controls for ballots and records. If someone burns down a polling place or steals ballots, there's not much anyone can do.
But those controls are well understood and generally have been in place for decades. For example. pollworkers record the number of voters and the tallies from each machine when the polls are closed, and the ballots are sealed and sent back to county headquarters. If something went missing or was changed, it would be very hard to hide.

2026-08-11 20:58:59 CEST

Videos of this years #VotingVillage talks should be up in the next week or so, AV gods willing.
A couple people asked about my my "Intro to Election Security" slides. They don't make complete sense without the talk, but for the impatient, here they are:
https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/vv2026-blaze.pdf

2026-08-04 06:31:08 CEST

My hotel room has a very nice table that's perfect for setting up with my laptop. Except it appears to have been placed at the geometrically farthest point from any power outlet.
I thwarted them by traveling with an extension cord.

2026-08-04 03:40:03 CEST

If hackers are so smart, what are we doing in Las Vegas in August?

2026-08-03 22:19:12 CEST

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The kid wasn’t there when they raided the place, and presumably came home to discover his apartment was a crime scene. But I think in the end it was clear it was a mistake, it was just something he bought off ebay, didn’t know was illegal, and didn’t realize it was left on. He ended up with a strongly worded letter from the FCC and a good story.

2026-08-03 21:13:35 CEST

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It’s certainly fairly common to see NOTAMs about GPS jamming in that area, often at very specific altitudes.

2026-07-31 04:38:29 CEST

My enthusiasm for assembling my camera kit in anticipation of stealing some time to photograph the Las Vegas urban landscape is not being helped by the temperature forecast.

2026-07-30 21:32:20 CEST

RE: https://mastodon.social/@andreamm/117010585163840329
Welcome to the future, where the TV volume is controlled by "the corporate office".
#note1zr6…rlak

2026-07-30 20:53:53 CEST

AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA. 2021
All the pixels, but none of the long-distance charges, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51261791084/
#photography
https://cdn.masto.host/federatesocial/media_attachments/files/117/010/437/449/609/907/original/b5de5659a37dd85e.jpg

2026-07-30 04:26:20 CEST

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I don't think it's T-Mobile specific. I think we've been conditioned, over just a single generation, to have low expectations for communications reliability.

2026-07-30 03:41:18 CEST

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Sure enough: Nationwide, hours long T-Mobile outage was Monday. Today is Wednesday, and it's fallen completely off the radar.

2026-07-29 21:29:48 CEST

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Many of the senators harangued Fauci as "dishonest" because some of the guidance on COVID-19 was proven wrong and revised over time.
That's just how science works. NOT revising conclusions when new evidence becomes available would be dishonest.

2026-07-29 21:14:23 CEST

Schuylkill Co-Generation Plant and Arsenal Bridge, Philadelphia, PA, 2018
All the pixels, none of the jawn, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/42660696454
#photography
https://cdn.masto.host/federatesocial/media_attachments/files/117/004/855/131/685/531/original/63b9a2db94605b05.jpg

2026-07-29 16:40:27 CEST

Sen. Joe McCarthy notoriously smeared those who invoked their rights before his committee as “fifth amendment communists”. I suppose Rand Paul will talk about “fifth amendment scientists” now.

2026-07-29 09:58:23 CEST

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oh wow. This is either terrible or wonderful and I have no idea which.

2026-07-28 23:08:08 CEST

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That looks good, but I think you are giving short shrift to the venerable game of Cork and Towel.

2026-07-28 05:33:45 CEST

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I don’t see it.

2026-07-28 04:23:15 CEST

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What's the difference between 1990 and today? AT&T in 1990 was no longer a monopoly; there was competition in long distance, so some calls got through, just as calls went through today on T-Mobile's competetors.
The main difference was expectation. 1990 was still the era of "5 9's" of reliability (99.999% uptime). Telephone services were simply not expected to fail.
We expect phone (and Internet) service today to be MOSTLY reliable, but we're now conditioned not to expect it all the time.

2026-07-28 04:18:01 CEST

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36 years ago, on January 15, 1990, a software bug in the 4ESS switch triggered a cascade of failures that took down most of the AT&T long distance telephone network for about nine hours.
It was treated as a national crisis. There were investigations and task forces, both internal and external, and detailed findings were published and scrutinized. The case is still studied today in networking and software engineering courses.
Today's national T-Mobile failure will be forgotten by next week.

2026-07-28 00:43:54 CEST

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N the absence of any actual information, I’m going to baselessly but confidently assert that rogue voting machines are using satellites to hack the T-Mobile network.

2026-07-28 00:39:35 CEST

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Been completely dead on Amtrak in NJ (train WiFi works though)

2026-07-28 00:34:22 CEST

Major T-Mobile outage, started earlier in Western ststes, seems to have just hit NYC metro area.

2026-07-26 20:23:04 CEST

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I apologize. I was responding to you. I didn’t realize you didn’t want me to reply.

2026-07-26 20:14:33 CEST

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Yes. Only provides assurance if the voters reliably verify their ballots. An optical scan ballot marked by the voter has this property.

2026-07-26 19:57:21 CEST

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With this type of voting machine, you can never disprove a claim that a software defect or malware altered an election result. But in systems that retain a voter-verified and human-readable artifact of the ballots, you can (and can correct an incorrect outcome).

2026-07-26 19:51:51 CEST

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Those kinds of safeguards are helpful, but inherently limited. They can’t defend against attacks that involve malware that detects when it’s being tested or that restore to a clean state after the election. Worse, you can never be sure they haven’t occurred, or what the true election outcome is if they haven’t occurred, because everything about the election is under control of the machine software. This is why you want an independent artifact if the true votes for auditing.

2026-07-25 21:06:44 CEST

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So yes, Brazil (like the US) probably would benefit from improving its election technology and processes, with things like post-election risk-limiting audits on paper ballots. But that conversation needs to be bipartisan and separated from wild and unsupported accusations of fraud.

2026-07-25 21:02:31 CEST

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Making voting more secure and robust is important, but dishonesty conflating the mere existence of vulnerabilities with actual election rigging to cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections is utterly toxic, especially in an environment with a history of questionable elections and mistrust of institutions.

2026-07-25 20:58:58 CEST

RE: https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/116982022921976813
The administration’s politicization of election security is extremely unfortunate and unproductive, and now it’s spreading internationally.
I’m not familiar enough with Brazil’s election technology and processes to comment authoritatively, but it similar like the situation there is similar to the US: the use of insecure voting technology (such as DRE voting machines) introduces some real security vulnerabilities, but there’s no evidence of actual fraud.
#note1hle…6rv4

2026-07-25 04:29:38 CEST

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You keep finding yourself musically in XKCD's "lucky 10000", and that's pretty cool, actually.
https://m.xkcd.com/1053/

2026-07-24 23:50:24 CEST

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One of the worst sins of Hogan's Heroes was teaching a generation that it's called "The Geneva Convention", not "The Geneva Conventions".

2026-07-24 23:41:39 CEST

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The surveilance nerd in me wants to know if captured Nazi prisoners of war have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and if the FISA court would have granted a warrant.

2026-07-24 23:37:25 CEST

In the "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there aren't microphones everywhere" category, Trent Park, a mansion bugged from top to bottom that was used to house (and monitor) captured Nazi commanders, is now a museum in London.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/arts/design/trent-park-spy-museum.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0FA.1H9c.xpI3-LLc26tW
They did the same thing (af Farm Hall, a different mansion) with Nazi nuclear scientists. One of the first things they recorded was the scientists dismissing the possibility they were being listened to. "The British aren't that clever".

2026-07-23 18:58:55 CEST

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Thanks. On my list, and want to see it in IMAX if at all possible.

2026-07-23 18:49:41 CEST

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Where did you see it in IMAX?

2026-07-23 02:35:33 CEST

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They also seem to think I'm a journalist, so I think there's at last some possibility they have me confused with someone else.

2026-07-23 02:28:41 CEST

Someone just told me it's the fifth time they've blocked me.
Hopefully they'll get it right soon!

2026-07-23 01:31:37 CEST

I seem to be making a lot of people here very angry lately.
I honestly have no idea if it's me or them or something in the water.
I'm sorry if I've offended you, whatever the reason. It wasn't my intent, for whatever that's worth. Communication is sometimes noisy, and misunderstanding can spiral out of proportion.

2026-07-23 00:34:12 CEST

I recently was either URGED to read more "management self-help" books or ACCUSED of having read them. I couldn't tell which they were doing. I think that says a lot about the genre.

2026-07-22 21:37:02 CEST

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I’m sorry my posts aren’t of interest to you. That must be really hard for you. A good way to avoid my boring posts is to not follow my account, or mute and/or block it. Or just accept the fact that other people might be interested in things you aren’t.
I’m not interested in football. I didn’t expect the rest of the world to hide posts about the World Cup, because that would be stupid and unreasonable.

2026-07-22 01:05:35 CEST

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Yep. Regret it now. Sigh.

2026-07-21 22:13:34 CEST

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I have a passing familiarity with voting myself, too. I don’t understand what I’ve said to make you angry with me, but I wish you well.

2026-07-21 22:08:28 CEST

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Election law is generally a strong exemplar of Chesterton’s Fence. Not every rule or process might be currently necessary, but you remove rules only at great peril if you don’t find out why they were enacted in the first place.

2026-07-21 22:01:08 CEST

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Is requiring victims to take such action really sla sufficient remedy to be able to dismiss this out of hand? That seems rather glib.
Again, I don’t think there’s a problem with VBM, but it’s simply wrong to prevent there are no tradeoffs involved.

2026-07-21 21:54:26 CEST

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Again, that’s a public policy question, trading one setbof equities for another. And different states made different policy decisions here.

2026-07-21 21:49:38 CEST

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I didn’t say it happens. In fact, if you read what I wrote, I said that it’s inherently limited, and retail to the extent it happens at all. But it dispenses with the privacy of the supervised voting booth, which is a real safeguard.

2026-07-21 21:18:02 CEST

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That said, VBM DOES involve some real tradeoffs vs in person voting. It trades reduced assurance against coercion for increased accessibility. Is it the right tradeoff? That’s a public policy decision, and different states come down in different places here. It does seem to be very popular with voters, which is probably why we’re seeing more of it.

2026-07-21 21:11:39 CEST

Just had someone criticize me for working in “pretentious B&W”, which, frankly, is a breath of fresh air compared with other ways I’ve been yelled at recently (and could actually be an interesting substantive discussion).
Unfortunately, they seem to have blocked me before I could respond.

2026-07-21 21:06:49 CEST

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again, is there any evidence of large scale vote by mail fraud fraud? Because disenfranchising people in nursing homes and others who rely on vote by mail is a very real cost of such restrictions.
I’m personally focused on identifying and fixing known problems (of which there are enough to go around), especially those where doing so doesn’t involve tradeoffs that might degrade other important election requirements, such as accessibility.

2026-07-21 19:39:19 CEST

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California law requires a postmark by election day for ballots received up to (I think) five days after election day. Are you suggesting that there is some scalable way to inject fraudulently postmarked ballots into the US mail? That would be very surprising. I've certainly never heard of that.
Again, in no US jurisdiction are results announced while it is still possible to cast a vote.

2026-07-21 15:56:26 CEST

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I’m not sure what your point is. That looks like an Australian ballot , with a single contest. It’s large because there are a large number of ranked candidates.
US ballots typically have fewer candidates, but many, many contesrs, often with multiple voting methods represented.

2026-07-21 14:24:56 CEST

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Primaries are a complicated gray area between civil and private elections. Political parties can select candidates in a variety of ways, which vary by state. Primaries are elections for party candidates held by the government on behalf of a party in those states where the party wants them to. But not all parties in all states use them, and not for all offices.

2026-07-21 09:11:33 CEST

Trying very hard to show grace right now despite being nearly certain I will regret it.

2026-07-21 09:06:20 CEST

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I’m not aware of ANY voting machine that’s ever worked that way based on party affiliation of the voter. Instead, in some jurisdictions it’s possible to vote a “straight party ticket”, where you select a party and all votes are cast for that party’s candidate in some or all contests. But that’s always optional, and any voter can vote whichever party they wish if they choose to vote this way.
Have you ever voted in a US election? You seem unfamiliar with how they work.

2026-07-21 08:44:27 CEST

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I’m not aware of any tabulator used in the that has access to the identity of the voter. Checking in voters and receiving/scanning ballots are separate functions, and isolated from each other. The scanners/tabulators/ballot boxes are stand-alone. They process ballots from voters who checked in with the clerk and are then permitted to cast their ballots.

2026-07-21 07:54:16 CEST

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If you want to learn about how US elections work, the legal, logistical, and practical constraints they operate under, the various reasons elections use automation, andvthe ways to ensure accurate, secure election outcomes, I suggest the NASEM report I linked to at the top of this thread and the documents in the post you replied to.
Automation is used because officials who run elections find it necessary and useful under the constraints they operate under.

2026-07-21 02:06:07 CEST

Irritated that Apple is dropping updates for my perfectly functioning four year old Ultra watch. I’m on the fence about whether to just go back to my trusty Casio when it starts to get wonky, though I will miss the fitness’s tracker, EKG, SpO2, and transit payment features.

2026-07-21 00:53:22 CEST

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Newark Airport food court is a considerable step up here.

2026-07-21 00:21:42 CEST

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A few people have asked for sources for further reading on election security concepts, like Software Independence and RLAs. Here are few to get you started:
Rivest and Wack on Software Independence: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/RW06.pdf
Stark and Linderman, Gentile Introduction to RLAs: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2025/03/31/A_Gentle_Introduction_to_Risk-Limiting_Audits.pdf
Here's a brief overview, by me, of election technology and risks, from a few years ago: https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/4.2-p505-522-Blaze.pdf
And for those who like video, here's a short talk by me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzRSA_VDsdc&list=PLltrHIXltfGLotq79TBgIK9QK4O29Z2FF

2026-07-20 21:58:19 CEST

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One of the most important things for technologists who want to improve elections to understand is the *actual* problems election officials have and the constraints under which elections operate in practice. That’s one reason that becoming a poll worker is so valuable; you gain insights that are difficult to acquire any other way.

2026-07-20 21:26:33 CEST

Crazy possible LLM-generated account blocked, but I did want to categorically deny the over-the-top falsehoods it was spreading about me.

2026-07-20 21:10:09 CEST

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RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@alyx_woodward/116953849359945731
I'm afraid that the only thing this gets correct about me or my views is where they call me a doofus. I am, indeed, a doofus.
But the fact that computers are untrustworthy is a FOUNDATIONAL problem in election security, and one that, fortunately, we can now solve with statistically rigorous methods like risk-limiting audits.
[@alyx_woodward](https://eldritch.cafe/@alyx_woodward )
#note14ws…2987

2026-07-20 19:46:36 CEST

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In any case, my first suggestion for anyone interested in election security is to become a poll worker in your local jurisdiction. They need the help, you perform an important service to your neighbors, and you'll learn a TON about how elections actually work on the ground.

2026-07-20 19:41:19 CEST

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RLAs represent a HUGE breakthrough. It means we can enjoy the efficiency and accuracy benefits of automation without the risks that the machines are behaving incorrectly or even maliciously.
A big focus of current work in election security is helping state and local election officials implement RLAs as a routine part of their election certification process.

2026-07-20 19:39:38 CEST

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The details of risk-limiting audits are too involved to go into here, but the basic idea is that a random sample of ballots are compared, by hand, with the machine interpretation of those ballots. If the machine behaved correctly, after a surprisingly small number of samples, you gain a high (and measurable) degree of confidence in the outcome.

2026-07-20 19:34:44 CEST

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"Software independence", posed by Ron Rivest in 2007, formalizes a design goal for a voting system: A software error (even malicious software) anywhere in the system must not be able to cause an undetectable, unrecoverable change to the correct outcome of an election.
Risk-limiting audits, invented a few years later by Philip Stark, provide a practical way to achieve software independence with a type of existing voting technology (optical-scan paper ballots).

2026-07-20 19:30:55 CEST

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A central problem in US election security is the size and complexity of ballots in most jurisdictions make automation essential in practice for accurately tallying votes. But automation (especially involving computers and software) is inherently untrustworthy (software has bugs, and can be quietly replaced with malware).
This seemed like an impossible, unresolvable tradeoff until two recent breakthroughs: the notion of "software independence" and methods for practical "risk-limiting audits"

2026-07-20 19:06:22 CEST

Election security is hard, and US elections have some unique problems and constraints (we have, overwhelming, the most complex ballots in the world, for example). There are non-intuitive tradeoffs everwhere.
An excellent resource for understanding US election security, especially as it relates to technology, is this 2018 National Academies consensus study, "Securing the Vote". It was published eight years ago, but is still current.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/NASEM18.pdf

2026-07-20 09:59:55 CEST

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What?

2026-07-20 09:51:09 CEST

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No, that's not correct. The assertion is that non-citizens are not merely voting, but doing so in sufficiently large number to swing election outcomes. That number might not be large, depending on the margin of victory in any given election, but it's more than a handful.

2026-07-20 09:41:36 CEST

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I should mention that, professionally speaking, I would *love* it if these documents had shown evidence of exploitation of security vulnerabilities to alter US election outcomes. (Obviously it would also be very disturbing).
This is something my colleagues and I have been warning is possible for over two decades now. But, fortunately, it does not appear to have actually happened yet.

2026-07-20 07:17:38 CEST

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That's a real shame. They used to be so great. I was excited to notice they have one in Arlington, but now I'm less excited.

2026-07-20 06:50:32 CEST

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Ah, I see what you mean. I think I thought of this as a photo of a place rather than a building.

2026-07-20 05:10:43 CEST

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The light is very hard and directional, perhaps that's what you're noticing? I normally prefer less starkly extreme light.

2026-07-20 05:02:03 CEST

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What problem am I supposed to be solving here? I don't think there's a problem with my posts. Placating assholes is not a problem I'm interested in solving.

2026-07-20 04:58:13 CEST

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Solution to what?

2026-07-20 04:08:44 CEST

One of the tipoffs that make it extremely easy for me to brush aside the current brigade of people who insist that I CW all my posts is that they overwhelming lead with over-the-top personal attacks.
Not a single one has said "here's a post of yours that caused me distress because it lacked a warning; please consider adding them on posts like this". Instead, it's that my "bad attitude" proves that I'm a complete monster.

2026-07-19 20:08:42 CEST

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I think it was in making this photo that I understood better Picasso's famous comment that art is "a lie that tells the truth". I don't actually know the story of this little house, but in photographing it, I tell a version of it that is both literal and fanciful.

2026-07-19 19:53:48 CEST

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The natural landscape of the American west is has stunning and unique beauty almost everywhere you look, but when I'm out there I usually find my camera drawn more to the built world we attempt to superimpose on it.

2026-07-19 19:24:44 CEST

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Captured with a DSLR and a 24mm shifting lens, shifted vertically to preserve geometry.
The tiny ghost town of Harvard is one of a series of sometimes extravagantly named, but now largely abandoned, communities near the Union Pacific Railroad and former Route 66 in the Mojave, Most of these tiny towns became forgotten victims of an upgraded Interstate highway system that passed them by.
I think the couch may still be there, if you need one for cheap.

2026-07-19 19:22:10 CEST

Stone House (with Sofa), Harvard, CA, 2010
All the pixels, move-in ready, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4611078542
#photography
https://cdn.masto.host/federatesocial/media_attachments/files/116/947/777/848/217/291/original/2ec3dd8e54fe4b7c.jpg

2026-07-19 02:40:19 CEST

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Like, do other people get this simply for posting about normal stuff?

2026-07-19 02:38:42 CEST

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The gaslighting is really nuts, trying to convince me that my posts about current events and voting systems were somehow objectionable and harmful. One person told me they make me a "literal digital rapist".