thefrogman

[thefrogman]

First I want to thank everyone for their answers. You all did a great job. Almost every answer was wildly wrong, but that is not your fault whatsoever. Most of the people who responded were not photographers. But I want to commend you all on your bullshit instincts. You were all trying to work out the marketing angle in this, you just didn't have enough information to put it all together. Which is why your wrong answers were incredibly helpful for my future megapixel essay. You made me consider some aspects that I wouldn't have talked about otherwise.

I especially like how everyone mentioned their concern for storage space. I approach photography very differently. I want as much data as possible and I make it a part of my workflow to have a lot of storage available. But most people just want to keep everything on their phone. So that was particularly enlightening.

My megapixel post is going to be about how early camera marketing locked in "megapixels" as the primary determining factor of image quality and we've been stuck with it ever since. They did the exact same thing with TVs, monitors, and video cameras.

In fact, they made the metric even more nebulous by switching to Ks. At least with megapixels you have an idea of the total resolution. But with Ks you just get the number of horizontal pixels rounded to the nearest thousand. If you had a screen that was 3900 pixels wide and 20 pixels tall, they could still call that 4K.

This one variable, the number of pixels, was elevated to the single most important metric for image quality despite being one small part of the image quality equation.

The point of these questions was to assess the effectiveness of megapixel marketing. I wanted to see if using megapixels and Ks to sell products even works anymore.

In any case, my essay is probably going to take a while to write. I'm hoping even if you don't care about photography you will find it fascinating.

But I don't want to leave everyone in suspense, so I will give my answers to these questions.

Call it a sneak preview.

1. What advantage do you think having more megapixels gives you?

Your camera is a system comprised of a lens and a sensor. The lens collects and transmits the detail. The sensor captures the detail into little light buckets called photosites. Each photosite translates to a pixel.

More megapixels give you the *potential* for more detail but the quality of that detail is mostly dependent on the lens.

So... if you have a tiny plastic lens that cannot capture much detail (like those on a smartphone), endlessly adding megapixels is not going to amount to a huge increase in sharpness.

Let's imagine that water is visual information.

You have a camera lens that can hold 1 gallon of water.

You have a camera sensor that can hold 2 gallons of water.

When you take a photo, you pour the visual detail from the lens to the sensor.

Because the sensor has extra volume, you can be sure all of the detail will get captured. No information will get lost and spill out.

Now lets imagine the lens can hold 1 gallon but the camera sensor can hold 50 gallons of water.

That would be a very inefficient system. You'd end up with 50 gallon files with only 1 gallon of useful visual information.

It's good to have more megapixels than your lens can resolve. But there is no point in vastly overdoing it. An efficient camera system will try to make sure these two variables are not wildly out of balance.

More megapixels is always going to give you *some* increase in detail. But if the lens is low quality, the diminishing returns get more and more diminishing as you keep adding pixels. Eventually the increase in detail is something you can only recognize in lab tests.

TL;DR

If you have an amazing lens, more megapixels will help render sharp detail.

If you have a crappy lens, more megapixels will just give you a bigger file to view the crap.

2. When you look at specs for a camera (smartphone or traditional), are megapixels the first thing you look for?

For smartphones, no.

Physics limits the amount of detail a small plastic lens and a tiny sensor can capture. You are capturing less light, so there is less visual data. And you need to transmit that light through the lens. Only large, high quality glass optics can transmit that light efficiently with minimal loss of information.

Here is a smartphone camera module compared to the Zeiss Otus 85mm lens.

The Otus is one of the sharpest lenses ever produced. It weighs several pounds and has 11 perfectly engineered glass elements.

Smartphone lenses can only produce between 10-16 megapixels of effective detail. Which is why the sensors were only 12 MP for so long. As you will see later on, it takes a LOT of megapixel effort to squeeze out more than 12 megapixels from a smartphone camera system.

So, 12 MP is perfectly fine for phones as long as you like the look of the photos overall. Colors, contrast, low light, and image processing are all much bigger factors in quality.

For a proper camera, I personally do care about the megapixels, but only because I know how to leverage them.

First, you have to make sure you have a lens capable of resolving all of that detail. You have to buy heavy prime lenses with a lot of perfectly engineered glass elements (like the Otus). You have to shoot at the proper aperture where the lens is sharpest and use ISO 100 so the sensor will create very little noise.

Since I do a lot of studio photography under ideal conditions, I can make use of a lot of megapixels. There are other genres like macro, sports, and wildlife that depend heavily on cropping, so every gallon of detail is vital.

TL;DR

Yes, megapixels can matter. But if you need more megapixels, you already know you need them. Otherwise I would concern yourself with other aspects of quality like colors, skin tones, and processing.

3. If you are upgrading your smartphone and the new model has more megapixels, do you feel confident the camera will perform better because of the increased megapixels?

Nope.

Current smartphone photography quality is almost all dependent on the software image processing. There is no other way to make tiny lenses and sensors create high quality pictures. If you care about smartphone photo quality, the best thing you can do is head to Flickr, type in the model of phone you are interested in, and look at tons of samples of the photos it takes.

Do you like the colors? Do you like how it renders skin tones? Is the sharpening too chunky? Does it smooth out faces too much?

Smartphones have hit a megapixel bottleneck. Their hardware is unlikely to produce sharper images unless they violate physics or start putting giant sensors and lenses on the back of your phone.

Which is actually an idea a few companies are trying. You just put a whole camera and lens package onto your phone with magnets.

But unless the sensor and lenses get much bigger, all image quality improvements will continue to be done through software processing.

Your smartphone does not take one photo when you hit the button.

It takes a bunch of photos.

They take a dark photo, a bright photo, a medium photo, a black and white detail photo, a high shutter speed photo... I don't remember all of the photos. But they combine 12 different images to create a single super photo.

And now they are trying to incorporate AI to help with this. They can put pixels in between the pixels to increase the detail without making the lens bigger. They will give you generated megapixels.

4. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a smartphone?

I think I'd rather have physically bigger photosites than more pixels. Choosing bigger pixels over more pixels can improve low light performance. I'd prefer all the smartphones stick to 12 MP.

I was actually proud of Apple for sticking to their guns and not fighting in the megapixel wars. But then they caved and released a 48 MP sensor. Thankfully their low light is still really good so they must have engineered a way around the small pixel problem.

5. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a traditional camera?

I think 90% of people would be perfectly happy with 20-30 MP.

I personally want a 100 MP Hasselblad medium format camera. I'd love to do some crazy macro stuff like taking a giant photo of a bug's eye. I also do a lot of compositing work and it is much easier to make complex selections with higher resolution photos.

Like I said, if you need more megapixels, you already know you need them.

6. When you are comparing a 48MP Apple smartphone to a Samsung 200MP, does the fact that a phone has that many megapixels impress you?

The 200 MP Samsung is pure, unadulterated marketing hype.

You have to enter a special mode to even take a 200 MP image. Otherwise, all of the files are still outputted at 12 MP. And the only reason they can technically say it is a 200 MP sensor is due to cutting a regular pixel into 4 tiny pixels. It's called "quad Bayer" and it is a sort of megapixel loophole.

It's like making a sandwich, cutting it into 4 sections, and saying you now have 4 sandwiches.

In reality, it is a 50 MP sensor and the iPhone is a 24 MP sensor.

I am unimpressed by this marketing stunt.

7. If you were to guess a percentage, how much more detail can the 200MP camera capture than the 48MP?

I'd like to introduce you to a term.

"Effective" megapixels.

Sometimes called "perceptual" megapixels.

Every photo has noise and optical flaws that provide no useful visual information. Effective megapixels are what you get when you throw out all of the junk information in the photo. You take the pixels that aren't doing anything and toss them out.

If a photo only had the *useful* pixels, what would its resolution be?

That's effective megapixels.

Some examples...

A standard 12 MP smartphone can resolve roughly 9.5 effective megapixels.

That is about 81% of its potential. Very efficient.

A 48 MP smartphone can resolve about 11.5 effective megapixels.

That is about 18% of its potential. Returns are diminishing.

And a 200 MP smartphone can resolve about 16.3 effective megapixels.

8% of its potential. You are basically throwing away 183 million pixels. We've reached marketing bullshit.

Here is a graph comparing the technical specs vs actual capability.

People guessed 400%, 300%, and 100% more detail for the 200 MP.

The percentage increase in detail from 11.5 to 16.3 is 41.7%. 40% is still a nice little bump. But I would argue this 40% increase has little to do with megapixels and more to do with Samsung's aggressive sharpening. And without that I think the detail would be only slightly better than the top tier iPhones.

In real world viewing, the difference is negligible. At these resolutions you need to be zoomed into 500% to actually notice the added detail.

8. Do you feel like Apple is falling behind in their camera technology? (They only recently went above 12MP in their phones.)

My question was designed to see if Samsung's 200 MP marketing was effective. I probably should have made my intentions clearer because I mostly got a bunch of anti-Apple rants. I am wishing I had bluntly asked "does 'bigger number=better' marketing still work on you?"

I think the only reason Apple bumped up to a 48 MP sensor in their latest phones was to compete in this fake megapixel pissing contest. Lab tests show there isn't any benefit going above 33 non-sliced up megapixels. (Remember, the Samsung is actually 50 MP and the iPhone is 24 MP.) Aside from marketing, there isn't much reason to go through the hassle and expense of making your sensor photosites smaller and smaller. Apple was probably content with their 12 MP sensors and saw no reason to change them otherwise.

As far as the camera systems go, there isn't really a "best" smartphone camera. The top tier phones are all about equal in image quality. Some phones do certain things better than others. Samsung has better optical zoom options, iPhones have better video quality. But the differences are pretty marginal overall. It really comes down to which image processing "look" you prefer.

So if the camera is a huge concern when buying a smartphone, always check out sample photos. Again, I like going to Flickr because you can search by specific camera model and you get real people taking real photos and not carefully crafted marketing samples.

9. This camera set the current record for capturing the most detail possible (outside of scientific instruments). Without googling, how many megapixels do you think it has?

This is the Phase One IQ4 medium format camera system with a Rodenstock HR Digaron-S 90mm f/5.6 lens.

It is capable of 150 megapixels.

Several people guessed 1000 megapixels!

That would be a petapixel camera!

I'm afraid you'll only see that kind of resolving power on the James Webb telescope.

Those guesses are actually very telling. I think deceptive megapixel marketing has really skewed perceptions. When you have phones claiming they have 200 megapixels, I can see why you'd think a giant camera must have considerably more.

In any case, the reason the Phase One is able to capture so much detail is partly to do with the megapixels, but it has another detail gathering trick up its sleeve.

A big honking sensor!

So we have a full sized medium format sensor at the top. On the bottom left is the main sensor of an iPhone Pro Max. And the smallest sensor is the iPhone telephoto on the bottom right. (Smaller sensors make the lens more zoomy.)

Penny for scale.

Banana was too big.

The best way to get more detail is to make a sharper lens.

And the best way to make a sharp lens is to make a big lens.

But if you make the lens big, you have to make the sensor big too.

And then you end up with a chonky beast of a camera like this.

The Phase One camera with the Rodenstock lens was able to take an image that had 147 effective megapixels.

It used a stunning 97% of its 150 megapixel sensor's capabilities.

Only a 3% loss of detail from noise and optical flaws.

I want it.

Megapixel Survey - What do you know about them pixels?

I've been trying to write a post explaining megapixels (and Ks) for over a year now. I have had trouble gathering the data I needed to do it properly. But I just solved that problem and I want to start working on it. But I could use a little help.

Please answer the questions below. I'd ask that you not look at other answers before you give yours.

I'd like to hear from photographers and non-photographers. In fact, if you know nothing about cameras I'm most interested in your answers.

And please remember, I'm not trying to trick you or make you look foolish. And I don't want you to guess an answer based on what you feel *I* believe is correct. I'm not looking for you to impress me. I need your real answer.

Perhaps draw on your past impressions of megapixels when you were looking for a new camera or phone and what your thought process was.

I just want to know how educated people are about megapixels. And Ks for video (2K, 4K, 8K, etc). It's all the same thing.

You can answer all or none of these. Whatever you have the time or energy for. Any input is helpful. And if you do have extra time or energy, feel free to expand on your answers. Thank you!

(If you shoot more video than photos, you can answer the questions by substituting Ks for megapixels.)

Megapixel Questions

1. What advantage do you think having more megapixels gives you? (Not a trick question. There is an advantage.)

2. When you look at specs for a camera (smartphone or traditional), are megapixels the first thing you look for?

3. If you are upgrading your smartphone and the new model has more megapixels, do you feel confident the camera will perform better because of the increased megapixels?

4. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a smartphone?

5. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a traditional camera?

6. When you see the following image comparing a 48MP (4K video) Apple smartphone to a Samsung 200MP (8K video), does the fact that a phone has that many megapixels impress you?

7. If you were to guess a percentage, how much more detail can the 200MP camera capture than the 48MP? (Again, not a trick question, the Samsung does capture more detail.)

8. Do you feel like Apple is falling behind in their camera technology? (They only recently went above 12MP in their phones.)

9. This camera set the current record for capturing the most detail possible (outside of scientific instruments). Without googling, how many megapixels do you think it has?

That's it!

Thank you to anyone who answers. I am really hoping this will be my best photography post I've ever written. I've been collecting images and data for this for a very long time. It's actually a really fascinating topic. And I hope it will help you with your purchasing decisions.

[thefrogman]

Whenever I mention an expensive piece of gear I always try to offer budget solutions as well.

And if you already have a really bright light, you can DIY your way to lighting glory.

Got some white poster board?

That's now a softbox.

Though you probably want something a little brighter than a cheap desk lamp.

Umm... got one of these things in the garage?

And you're going to need a bulb.

This thing is 6000 lumens.

So if you have $40 bucks and a wall, you've got some soft light.

I call this the Hardware Store Special.

This can absolutely work. But I need to put some honest talk straight into your brain.

Don't cheap out on lighting if you can help it.

The actual purpose-built stuff is going to make your life a lot easier. Especially if you do video or studio photography on a consistent basis. A proper COB video light is going to give you good results without much effort. You can put on the reflector and bounce it off the ceiling. You can put on an umbrella and get some portrait lighting. It is bright and color accurate and you can control the power. Bi-color lights even let you change the color temp.

I love DIY. And if that is all the money you have to spend, DIY is better than nothing. But DIY solutions are much harder for amateurs to work with. I wish it were the other way around, but DIY requires a lot of trial and error and problem solving and experience.

When I visited Orlando, I didn't have any of my lighting equipment. Here I used sheets of tracing paper as diffusion, a terrible Amazon lighting kit Katrina bought to tape an audition, and a spare blank canvas she had as a background.

We were using chip clips and duct tape and a big piece of poster board as a reflector.

It was a lot of work and it made me grateful for my studio lights at home.

So my recommendation is to get yourself at least one proper light.

If you are a photographer, get a cheap TTL flash.

Just don't ever point it directly at things. It has a swivel head for a reason. That's to bounce it off shit. Otherwise, throw an umbrella on that bad boy.

This was taken with a $40 manual flash and a white umbrella.

If you do video, get the cheapest video light with a Bowens mount you can find. Check the used market if you have to.

Daylight balance will get you a brighter overall light, but bi-color will allow you to mix it with other lights. You can shift the color temperature to match room lighting or a few hardware store specials.

Okay, happy lighting!

Best light for streamers without a lot of space.

Amaran is the budget line of video equipment for Aputure. And it is surprisingly solid for the price. You can get knockoff versions of most of their stuff from Neewer or GVM, but if you want something reliable that won't break in a year or two, Amaran is a good medium budget option.

They just released what I am callng the anti-ring light.

The Verge Max.

This is a ring light where they fill in the hole and give you an entire light. You can read a long rant about ring lights here. But the short version is, you don't want one unless you put the camera in the hole and are doing a tight close up of a face.

If you aren't doing a close up of a face (like for a makeup tutorial) then you just have a normal light with a giant hole in it.

You will get no magical benefits from a ring light under any other circumstances.

The reason ring lights are so popular (outside of being a fad), is because they don't take up a lot of space. A lot of people are streaming from their computer desk which is usually up against a wall. And you just don't have a lot of room to set up a proper light with a modifier.

Before now, your best option would be an LED panel (with the hole filled in). This one by Godox is pretty good.

It has a little remote and you can add batteries to make it mobile.

But it is small and in order to get soft light, you have to place it very close to your face or set up two of them. And it might get uncomfortable blasting a small light source into your eyes for long streaming sessions.

This new Amaran light is just as thin as a panel light, but its lighting surface area is like a proper studio light.

And it is round so you will get nice catchlights in your eyeballs (if you care about that).

So you can place it a little farther back or against the wall and distribute the light over a larger area. It won't be as piercing and uncomfortable, and you get flattering soft light.

I realize $260 is an investment. You need to be sure you can make good use of this light. But if you are in cramped quarters and need a proper lighting setup, this is a great option.

Otherwise, if you do have a little space to work with, you can buy the Godox panel (or use any decently bright light you have), and tape a $10 umbrella in front of it.

Don't sleep on umbrellas. They work great. They just spill light all over the place, so you have to be mindful of that.

But I took this photo of Chris with a $10 umbrella.

All you are trying to do is make the light source bigger. You can even put the umbrella on a ring light if you already have one.

Or you can bounce the light off the wall behind your desk. If you have a big white wall, use it as a light source.

The gold standard for video lights is always going to be a COB LED light with a Bowens mount. That last part is important. The mount allows you to attach any light modifier there is.

This Godox is pretty good for an entry level continuous light. I like them as much as Amaran.

And then you can throw an octobox on there at the size of your choice.

It even has a grid to help prevent light spill.

This setup is also great for portrait photography.

The Verge Max comes out in June, but here is a video of it if you have any interest.

Good lighting is a superpower. You can be using a webcam or smartphone and lighting can improve your image much more than just about anything else.

Because I have to socialize mostly through video chats, I have a little LED panel set up near my computer. Makes a pretty big difference when compared to the regular room lights.

[thefrogman]

I know this might seem like a homework assignment, but it would really help me out.

Megapixel Survey - What do you know about them pixels?

I've been trying to write a post explaining megapixels (and Ks) for over a year now. I have had trouble gathering the data I needed to do it properly. But I just solved that problem and I want to start working on it. But I could use a little help.

Please answer the questions below. I'd ask that you not look at other answers before you give yours.

I'd like to hear from photographers and non-photographers. In fact, if you know nothing about cameras I'm most interested in your answers.

And please remember, I'm not trying to trick you or make you look foolish. And I don't want you to guess an answer based on what you feel *I* believe is correct. I'm not looking for you to impress me. I need your real answer.

Perhaps draw on your past impressions of megapixels when you were looking for a new camera or phone and what your thought process was.

I just want to know how educated people are about megapixels. And Ks for video (2K, 4K, 8K, etc). It's all the same thing.

You can answer all or none of these. Whatever you have the time or energy for. Any input is helpful. And if you do have extra time or energy, feel free to expand on your answers. Thank you!

(If you shoot more video than photos, you can answer the questions by substituting Ks for megapixels.)

Megapixel Questions

1. What advantage do you think having more megapixels gives you? (Not a trick question. There is an advantage.)

2. When you look at specs for a camera (smartphone or traditional), are megapixels the first thing you look for?

3. If you are upgrading your smartphone and the new model has more megapixels, do you feel confident the camera will perform better because of the increased megapixels?

4. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a smartphone?

5. What do you feel is a satisfactory amount of megapixels for a traditional camera?

6. When you see the following image comparing a 48MP (4K video) Apple smartphone to a Samsung 200MP (8K video), does the fact that a phone has that many megapixels impress you?

7. If you were to guess a percentage, how much more detail can the 200MP camera capture than the 48MP? (Again, not a trick question, the Samsung does capture more detail.)

8. Do you feel like Apple is falling behind in their camera technology? (They only recently went above 12MP in their phones.)

9. This camera set the current record for capturing the most detail possible (outside of scientific instruments). Without googling, how many megapixels do you think it has?

That's it!

Thank you to anyone who answers. I am really hoping this will be my best photography post I've ever written. I've been collecting images and data for this for a very long time. It's actually a really fascinating topic. And I hope it will help you with your purchasing decisions.

[thefrogman]

So, I'm a bit of a mess.

But I'm working on it.

I am always so appreciative to those who follow my story. I know it is long. And it is about to get longer. The memoir on caregiving I am writing might be the hardest and best thing I've written. And my hope is I'm writing something that will help caregivers get seen.

Just gotta get my life in order. And not lose my home and stuff.

Clinging to sanity

Summary of this post...

My brain is broken. My A/C is broken. My phone is broken. My computer is broken. My support system is broken. My financial stability is broken. My family is broken.

And the big finale...

Please give Froggie a Yelp review to repair his relationship with his estranged uncles.

Seriously, I need a whole bunch of you to say nice things about me in a convoluted plan to get back the money my brother stole from my dying father.

If you don't feel like reading all of my broken stuff and just want to read about giving me a good review as a person, you can skip to the bullet point list at the end.

Alright, here we go...

I sometimes get in these states where I feel like my sanity is compromised. My mental defenses are minimal and I lose the filter on my brain that tells me "this is a good idea" or "this is a bad idea."

This causes me to say embarrassing things. I overshare with strangers. I keep myself from falling asleep because I have some amazing idea. But when I wake up in the morning I can't believe I lost all of that sleep for such a ridiculous idea. I write weird posts that no one likes. Or I post about controversial subjects like A.I. and trans people and RFK Jr. that I *know* will result in contentious feedback.

And my insane brain says, "You can handle it! Besides, you are so factually correct about this, no one will dare question your meticulous research. IT'S ALL GOOD! SEND IT, YOLO!"

I have a rule. If I am not emotionally or mentally prepared to defend my point of view on a controversial subject, I should wait until I am ready to publish.

Insane Froggie Brain ignores this rule.

After I "send it" and the negative feedback starts to flow in (even though I was assured by my brain it wouldn't), I become afraid to look at messages and replies and reblogs. And a lot of times I need that sense of community. I need to talk to my cool little community so I don't feel lonely. But Insane Froggie Brain cuts me off from that. I give myself all of this anxiety that could have been avoided by just posting another time.

And because I have no emotional defenses, that anxiety is amplified. Mean comments hurt much more. I obsess over them and my OCD causes thought feedback loops where I cannot get something out of my brain. I once couldn't sleep for a weekend because someone said I was wrong about how light reflects off the moon. They were right and I was also right but they said I was "misleading." And that just lived in my brain for days. I kept trying to think of new ways to better explain my point of view. I used up energy I didn't really have to take pictures of a baseball in a dark closet.

It was silly. It didn't matter. It was just a small disagreement. But OCD doesn't do small. OCD makes everything BIG.

What I'm trying to say is...

People need their emotional defenses.

People need their filters.

It's weird because I still have full access to my logical brain. So sane thoughts get all mixed in with the less sane ones. Sometimes I am self aware and can shut down the less sane ideas. Other times I am oblivious. And I *hate* losing control of my brain in any way. It's one of the reasons I've never touched alcohol. Which is why I get very disturbed when this happens.

I remember one time I was positive I was going to move to Florida and start a pet photography business. I had an entire business plan worked out where I trained people how to take the photos so the business could run itself if I got sick. I made an entire PowerPoint presentation to show Katrina so she would be my business partner. I was looking up rent prices for office space. I was making equipment lists for camera gear. She was going on a trip so she told me I could talk to her about it when she returned. And I am so lucky she wasn't available at the time.

Maybe if I had a normal person's energy, I could make something like that work. But once I returned to sanity, I realized it was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I was actually capable of doing. I am still planning to do pet photography, but I have to come up with a more reasonable plan that does not involve Insane Froggie Brain.

I think it is just my ambitious mind trying to escape. Chronic illness is often heartbreaking because you have to temper all of your ambitions. And it is especially devastating when you are a very ambitious person, as I am.

I want to have all of these big ideas. But I have to filter them through reality. And when that filter is broken, I just unleash big ideas on all my friends. I once even held an official video chat meeting and we took notes and made plans. And I feel so guilty I wasted 4 people's time like that. None of those ideas happened. They had no chance of happening with my energy levels. But my friends and collaborators still did the meeting and nodded along like everything was fine. I appreciate them humoring me.

I also overshare. I overshare normally, but when I get like this I OVER SHARE. You are probably going to witness it in this very post. But I tell everyone everything about what is going on. I tell strangers. I tell a dog walking by.

"Hey doggie, my testosterone is returning and I'm struggling with having a libido again. I know most people would not complain, but it is very disruptive to my day! I have other things I want to do!"

Right now I am just not confident in anything I think or do. I wrote a post about social constructs yesterday. That literally took me all day to write. I was endlessly tweaking it and I thought it was going to be viral and helpful and win the trans debate for everyone.

It currently has 49 notes.

I'm afraid I did not fix trans rights.

Sorry about that.

And my rant about Christopher Nolan using IMAX is doing pretty well. I nerded out about film grain for like 2 paragraphs and it is getting way more notes than a philosophical perspective on constructs.

I just have no idea what people are going to like and I used to be pretty good at judging that. It's like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks but instead of a wall I'm throwing it into the void. The spaghetti just disappears into infinite darkness.

I'm clearly still recovering from the big house clean with Katrina. And I am more tired than normal. But I am also very stressed about losing the house. I'm trying to figure it out, but I may only have until the end of June before I have to make some scary decisions.

And also, my air conditioner is not working. It has a leaky evaporator. Last year, I had it recharged and that lasted the entire summer. If the leak is leaking at the same rate, I could just do that again. It would be expensive, but replacing the evaporator is so costly, I'd be better off getting a heat pump installed. I'm a good candidate, it could save me money in the long run, but I am nowhere near in a position to make that happen.

Also, my phone is falling apart.

Literally. The only thing keeping it together is the phone case.

And this laptop, which I love, was not meant to be my main computer. I bought it when my dad was sick and I needed something upstairs to manage his prescriptions and bills and appointments. It wasn't meant to be an image editing machine. And, to their credit, Apple has made a crazy powerful little computer. I admit it, I love an Apple product. It can handle way more than expected. But my photo restorations can sometimes end up with 5 gigabyte files. I can't even save them as PSDs. I have to use this weird "PSB" format. It stands for "Photoshop Big." When I fill up the RAM, my computer uses the main SSD. And when I fill that up, I think I can hear the laptop crying and saying, "I wasn't meant for this! Please use fewer layers!"

But I need to finish restoring these photos because I have delayed their completion by about 5 months (got sick before I could finish). And also because I need to pay for the A/C recharge.

You might be thinking, "Didn't you fundraise to get the big fancy powerful computer of your dreams a few years ago? Why don't you use that?"

My big fancy computer has been broken almost since I got it.

It was right before my mom got really sick and there is a major hardware problem. I worked with tech support for over a month and we could not figure out what the issue was. The computer is mostly unusable. Like, "can't even web browse" unusable.

It honestly has caused me so much depression. Like deep, deep, crying-myself-to-sleep-for-weeks depression. I still cry about it. I know it is just a thing, but I am genuinely heartbroken about it.

Why haven't I fixed it? I'm a good computer fixer, right?

Once I had to take care of my parents, I just did not have any extra energy to deal with it. After a month of back-and-forth emails from the manufacturer, I finally told them, "I'm sorry, my parents are sick. I will email you when I have the energy to revisit this."

If you know my story and how I took care of my parents all alone because I have a neglectful brother, then you can probably guess that energy never came.

I am good at tech support. I have been an expert in computers since I was a teenager. I have taken apart and built computers more times than I can count. I have never had a problem this frustrating before. It works fine for a few hours, and then it just progressively slows down to being unusable. I narrowed the issue to either the SSD, the CPU, or the motherboard. All things that are not easy to replace. (The SSD is behind the damn GPU.)

In the 30s, the Royal Air Force used to have issues with their planes that baffled them. This is where the term "gremlin" came from. No matter what they did, no matter how many parts they replaced, they could not get the "gremlin" out of the plane. These were professional mechanics who just could not fix something and it drove them nuts.

I have a computer gremlin. I've never experienced anything like it in all of my years of fixing computers. I was working with professional tech support people. I was on reddit forums. And the only thing left to do was start swapping out parts. I'd work on it maybe an hour each day with whatever energy I had and it eventually was too much. I just could not deal with it. They told me to send it back, but I could not take care of my parents without any access to a computer. So I just rebooted it every time I used it.

At that point, my parents were requiring 24/7 care and I was so overwhelmed that I said, "fuck it" and ordered this laptop. I figured I'd fix the computer when I had time or energy. But that time and energy never came. And I certainly didn't have the energy to haul a 60 pound computer upstairs, box it up, and then take it to UPS. So I just kept putting it off and putting it off.

And I let the warranty expire.

When I realized I did that, I cried myself to sleep for another few weeks. This material object has caused me legitimate emotional trauma.

Any part replacements are now on me. And there isn't really any way of knowing which part is faulty. I figured I'd buy a cheap SSD and start there.

I feel so fucking guilty because people donated money for me to have that machine. I feel like I let them all down by not getting it fixed. When I finish my recovery, I'm hoping I can sort it out. But that could be many months from now.

Recovery has been such a dark, lonely place. Trying to restore my health a millimeter at a time is a grueling marathon of misery. I have been struggling to keep Insane Froggie Brain at bay this entire time.

I felt like I was stuck in a hole.

And like a superhero with the power of friendship and puns, Katrina pulled me out of the giant hole I was in. My house turned into a biohazard. She flew from Florida to essentially clean and organize everything. How do you even begin to thank someone for that?

But also, she shouldn't have had to do that. I have a perfectly functional brother. But he hasn't spoken to me for nearly a year now.

I have other family in town. But I missed so many family gatherings over the years, they don't really know me. None of them have called. I'd have to rebuild those relationships if I want them to be a part of my life again.

And I haven't talked about this yet because it has been too painful.

But... my support system fell apart.

My aunt had to move away to take care of her father-in-law. A year before my mom passed she took care of my grandma as her end-of-life caregiver. And people should only have to do that once. But she has to do it again, and unfortunately, we haven't been able to speak much.

We were very good at keeping in touch in real life. But she is of an older generation and has trouble maintaining relationships on a smartphone. I mean, I get it. Some people are just better at meatspace than cyberspace. That was actually one of the things I liked about our bond. Almost all of my friendships are online. Having someone who liked to visit me and talk to me in person was special.

But, for the time being, I lost that. And it feels a bit like temporarily losing another parent.

I am struggling to even start writing the words for this next part.

I had two best friends. Katrina and I are great. Our friendship is probably better than it has ever been.

But my other best friend of nearly 15 years ghosted me without explanation.

I haven't talked about it because it has been too hard. Any time I try to think about it I get upset. My eyes are filling up with tears as I type this.

I have been pretending like it isn't happening.

Which is not working great.

I've been trying to hire a therapist.

They all have months-long waiting lists.

My friend just stopped talking to me and I don't know why.

They went from driving across the country and holding my hand at my dad's funeral to just not being a part of my life.

I'm so scared I said something terrible or did something terrible. I keep going through all of my memories trying to figure out what I could have done. But we had the kind of friendship where we'd talk about that stuff. If I screw up, they would tell me. We'd work it out.

This person who was in my life nearly every week for over a decade is just not there anymore. I keep losing people and I can't make it stop. And I am really worried that I am leaning on Katrina too much. She went from being part of a multifaceted support system to my entire support system. That isn't fair to her.

She has been very understanding. And she knows I am going to rebuild a support system as soon as I am able. But I don't want to overwhelm her and lose her too.

Weaning off this medication and living with no testosterone has been so miserable and she has been the only one helping me through it.

I'm doing so well with my recovery. I think I can be off the meds in 3 months and hopefully my testosterone will be fully back in range. I'm already more productive than I have been in nearly 8 months.

But I have 1 month of financial runway left and I am not going to get well enough before then.

Everything happens all at once. Every single time. And usually terrible things happen in my life at the same time terrible things happen in Katrina's life. She had terrible mold that destroyed her health for months. Thankfully it did not turn her transphobic, but it sure fucked her health for a while. She made all of this progress getting fit and healthy and BAM, the universe says, "You are doing too well, you need a challenge!"

So, what is my plan?

I am a problem solver and I have some doozies to solve.

Right now I am going to appeal to the family patriarchs on my dad's side. On his literal deathbed, my dad asked his brothers to "take care of me" and I am going to attempt to call in that favor.

I am going to ask them to talk to my brother and hopefully mediate a solution regarding the stolen inheritance. I want them to convince my brother to do the right thing and return the money he took from my dad.

Sorry, the money he "legally inherited" due to his wife "reinterpreting my dad's wishes" in the will.

Before you ask, I have no options to fight this in court. A verbal promise is not enough to overturn a written will. And the cost of fighting would be more than the inheritance. Please don't suggest any legal advice. I've talked to good lawyers. And unless I want to sue for emotional distress, there aren't any legal options available.

The best option is to appeal to my brother personally and ask him to keep his promise to my dad.

The only reason I am in this mess is because my brother repeatedly promised to give me the money. He said he didn't want it on multiple occasions. So all of my plans involved the expectation of this money. I was going to fix up the basement apartment and seek a roommate.

But it took over a year to just get it out of probate. A year I could have used to come up with other solutions. But he waited until the last minute and made his lawyer tell me he was screwing me.

I'm sure my brother will argue my dad knew what he was signing. But I know that is impossible. Before my dad passed, we were in the hospital and I saw the will for the first time. I asked him if it reflected his wishes. And I asked him if he meant to include my brother's wife in the will.

His response was, "Are you fucking kidding me???"

Readers, does that sound like a man that knew what was in his will?

Dad was so upset that he was about to have them cut off his leg just so he could live a few more weeks and fix the will.

You have to give my dad credit, he goes pretty hardcore when it comes to protecting his family.

I couldn't let him go through an amputation to protect me from my brother's shenanigans.

But I am pretty screwed now.

That said, my uncles are pretty hardcore too. One is *very* intimidating. So I feel like my uncles talking to my brother might carry some weight.

But I have one problem...

I mean, aside from the myriad problems already described.

How about... I have one additional problem...

My uncles don't like me very much.

They think I am a basement-dwelling loser who is faking his illness and was taking advantage of his parents for two decades.

One uncle even accused me of stealing from my dad.

They are protective of their brother. They loved my dad. Which is a good thing! As long as I can convince them that their assumptions about me are invalid, I think their love for my dad will compel them to help me.

They just don't have the context. They don't know me. They live in far-off lands. And due to some unfortunate timing, one uncle saw me at one of the lowest points of my life. This was maybe 8 years ago? He didn't realize I was thrown into the deep end and very recently took on the role as full-time caregiver for two very sick people.

My awful strategy at the time was "if I don't take care of myself, I'll have more energy to take care of my parents." If you are a caregiver, this is a bad strategy. It seems obvious you have to do some self care to give care to others, but when you are just starting out, that seems impossible.

My uncle showed up unannounced and I wasn't showered, I hadn't brushed my teeth in a week, and my room had a fun layer of trash on the floor. The trash can was overflowing and I literally did not have the spare energy to change the bag.

To make matters worse, my mom's medications and constant pain had broken the filter in her brain that prevents her from saying mean things. She was on this crazy chemo-like infusion that was basically using poison to fight her psoriatic arthritis. Her aggressive, blunt remarks were not her fault. That wasn't who she was. But she could not stop herself from saying hurtful things.

The kindest woman alive was suddenly Don Rickles without the "just kidding" subtext. And my uncle didn't know this and I got into an argument with my mom.

I probably looked like a pampered brat loser who just lies in bed and plays video games all day while arguing with his saint of a mother.

I don't blame him. Without context, that's exactly what it looked like.

So I am writing my uncles a letter.

It is essentially a memoir of the caregiving I gave to my parents. I hope to publish it publicly at some point, but right now it is just a letter to them. If it were a typical hardcover book, it would be about 70 pages long.

I am telling them everything.

If nothing else, I just need them to know my dad's story. I need them to know he was well taken care of. That I did everything humanly possible to make his last year as comfortable as I could. I need them to know he was *never* alone.

Sadly, because they probably think I am an unreliable narrator, I am my own worst witness. So I am asking 3 people in my current support system to write testimony to verify everything in my memoir is accurate. I even have a doctor's note!

It is probably insane to put this much effort into convincing my uncles to like me. But I'm pretty sure Sane Froggie Brain is behind the wheel of this endeavor. Sometimes the craziest, most desperate idea is the only option left.

Basically I am using my writing skills to try and save my Froggie butt.

I don't mean to be braggadocious, but people perusing my prose persistently pontificate that I am proficient at penning pleasing passages.

People say I write good sometimes.

And I think this memoir letter thingie is the best thing I've ever written. So I am hopeful I will deflate these dubious assumptions and tug on my uncles' heartstrings.

But there is something you all can do to help me.

A friend on tumblr is helping me edit this memoir monstrosity. And she gave me her testimonial to add to my 3 witnesses.

"I have been following The Frogman for well over a decade on his website. It was years before I learned his name was Benjamin! We all just call him Froggy. He was (and still is) one of the funniest internet guys out there. He is incredibly skilled at putting together humorous GIFs and photo sets, and his comedic writing is second to none. He regularly goes viral. Along with that, he was open and vulnerable about the toll CFS takes on him. I can attest to many folks over the years telling him that he has helped them as they dealt with their own health issues. He is so knowledgeable about so much--his posts are famous for being long, detailed, and wildly informative. And most of all, entertaining. They are a joy to read. We also followed along on his heartbreaking journey with his parents. He shared so much of them with us over the years that they felt like people we knew. It was so clear, from his long absences, how much he was doing for them. Our hearts broke when he told us his parents were no longer with us. Froggy has fans, and so did his parents. Otis, too. We love and support him and will always wish him the best."

It made me cry.

But it also felt like getting a Yelp review on... my entire deal.

And it gave me an idea.

What if I had a bunch of these as optional testimony for my uncles?

I'm not going to force them to read what a bunch of internet strangers have to say. But it could be a compelling way to prove my website antics were a serious attempt to build a livelihood for myself. My uncles were successful businessmen and respect a strong work ethic and trying to make your own way.

I was too early for monetization options like Patreon, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, but I ran a very successful comedy blog. If I had my 2013 success in the 2020s, I probably would've been able to retire and live off that for the rest of my life. I have several original GIFs that were downloaded tens of millions of times. Google said one of them was searched for over 100,000,000 times.

My blog was silly, but I took it seriously and I had sponsors and merch and an Otis plush.

They think what I did was like when you are at the family Christmas gathering and you ask your weird cousin what he's been up to and he says, "I run a blog about corgis from my parents' basement."

How do I relate the impact I had? They don't know what "Know Your Meme" is. They don't know what being on the front page of Reddit means. They don't know the amazing community I built. They don't know that I created one of the largest and most generous online support systems one could possibly have. I'm still alive and trying to make a life for myself because all of you continue to love and support me.

I was successful and I worked hard despite my disability.

I just had bad timing with the financial aspect of that success.

So, if you want to leave a Yelp review of The Frogman for my uncles, I'd appreciate it.

I came up with a list of things I need to prove to them. I'm just going to copy/paste the entire thing here. I'll strikethrough the ones you all probably can't speak to.

I am not a basement dwelling loser.

My website was more than a silly hobby.

I did not mooch off my parents for 20+ years.

I did not steal from my parents.

I am not the crazed, awkward mess [my uncle] witnessed.

I am disabled.

I cannot get a job.

I am a good person.

I am a likable person.

I was a good son.

I took good care of my parents.

My parents would not have been better off in a nursing home.

My parents would not have been better off moving closer to my brother.

My brother and his wife neglected and emotionally abused Mom & Dad.

My brother and his wife changed the will to benefit them against my mom & dad’s wishes.

My brother promised repeatedly the will was a mistake and I would receive the full amount.

I did not take care of my parents to “retain the house” or get money.

So, if you want to attempt to convince two elderly conservative Catholic men that my cat memes were lit, I would appreciate the help.

If you’ve been part of this community, and you’ve ever felt like I made you laugh, cry, or feel understood, a short 'review' of me as a person could mean the world.

Just remember your audience is...

Uncle #1: A stoic, but brilliant 80 year old who writes text messages like they are business emails. Complete with "Dear Ben" and "Regards, Your Uncle". He is still very sharp-minded and lucid. He thinks success is a high paying job, a house, and a family (my brother). He does not like weakness and consistently thought I should "be an adult and get a job." He is very loyal and respected my dad very much.

Uncle #2: A 60-something retired grandpa who thinks his constant dad jokes are genuinely funny. He is empathetic, but secretly judgmental. He will act like your best friend even if he doesn't care for you. He is an amazing grandpa. Very involved with his kids and their kids. He keeps every video of them getting a goal in sportsball on his phone. He will help you if you think you deserve to be helped. He is very close with Uncle #1.

So... kinda running the gamut there.

You can reblog this post or leave a reply or send a private message or email me at frogman54@gmail.com

I will be anonymizing your names for obvious reasons.

I fear my uncles might not understand why Tumblr user "PokemonAssBlaster69" is saying nice things about me.

Explaining "The Frogman" is hard enough.

Anyway, thank you in advance.

[thefrogman]

If you go to a 15/70 IMAX projection of a Nolan film and your first thought after the movie is "wow, that stalk of corn was so sharp!"

You might be focusing on the wrong thing.

I do not care how many Ks Batman is. I just like looking at cool Batman shit.

I think I like movies on film because it requires you to have a strong vision from the start. Film is expensive and time consuming and if you don't have the movie mapped out ahead of time, you are going to blow through your budget. Especially on IMAX.

There is also motivation to capture as much in camera as possible. No one wants to use IMAX when the frame is 90% green screen. It's less about the resolution, or the color, or the gradients of the film (which are all nice to have) and more about what using film inspires directors to do.

They don't want to waste it.

This happens with film photography too. You have 36 shots on a roll of film. You can't look at the picture after you shoot it. So you put more thought into your process. You are more deliberate and careful with your limited exposures.

Too many movies rely on post production to save them. Digital makes it too easy to shoot-and-shoot-and-shoot and figure it out later. When directors shoot on film they gotta have their shit together.

And I think giving yourself limitations can fuel creativity. There are a lot of things you just can't do with a camera like this. So you have to push yourself to figure out creative ways to film amazing things. Or you have to create some ridiculous expensive rig to film as if it is a normal camera, but it becomes more of a spectacle because you now have a near impossible shot up on a hundred foot screen.

Also, just to let you know, I am a huge hypocrite.

Because my next camera will be 61 megapixels.

I gotta have them sweet gradients, okay?

This man just loves shooting movies on "hard mode."

The 15 perf, 70mm film he uses is pretty special. In very limited circumstances, it can have the same detail as an 80 megapixel medium format camera. Roughly 12K if you average out the sharpness of the lens (the center is sharper).

It's gotta be the lowest speed film and on a tripod and *nothing* can be moving and there has to be plenty of light and the lens needs to be sharp enough to resolve that much detail and the air cannot be too moist or dusty... but yeah, sure... theoretically you can get a tiny circle in the center of the frame to be 18K. With the entire frame averaging out to be 12K.

And as you watch that 12K image on a 100 foot IMAX screen you can say to yourself, "Cillian Murphy should really try a pore cleanser."

But Nolan *rarely* uses it under those ideal conditions. So he is mostly preserving the resolution of the grain structure.

I know people go to movies to admire the high-resolution film grain structure. Right? Any grain nerds reading this?

So why is he doing this?

There is the "film look" that is a bit of a cheat code to reduce the need for extensive color grading. People just like the look of film. It has a nostalgic aesthetic that gives us comfort. All of the films of my childhood were on film. All of my childhood photos were on film.

But you can get film without film.

They have developed workflows that emulate film to a near-imperceptible level. There are filmvestigators who think they can always tell. But if it is close enough that only a few specially trained people can see the difference, it is imperceptible.

You can also hack digital to be film. Dune 2 took the digital footage and exposed it onto film and then scanned it back to digital.

Looked great.

Looked like film.

So he doesn't need to do this to get the film look.

WHY? What else could compel him to go through this considerable bother to capture his movie?

I could make an argument for gradients.

Any large format is going to capture very nice gradations. Gradations are probably the most underrated aspect of image quality. People get obsessed with Ks and megapixels, but 1080p is enough detail for most people.

Whereas having one color smoothly transition into another color is a very subtle thing that gives our brain an aesthetic buzz. It's that thing that makes people go, "Oh wow, you must have a really nice camera." It's that subconscious element in photos that helps differentiate snapshot from art.

This iPhone photo is great.

It is amazing this can be captured by a phone.

But a large format image just hits different.

And you can't always put your finger on why.

I mean, the why is because a professional photographer took the photo. (Unless that is one of those dentists with a Hasselblad.)

But if you account for the skill of the photographer, what else makes the photo special?

I think it is the gradients. The megapixels are nice. The color science is nice. But the way those tones just seamlessly shift into each other makes my brain tingle.

But the Arri 65 digital cinema camera is also large format. It has nicer lenses that weren't designed before the 90s. It doesn't cost thousands of dollars just to develop a few minutes of footage. It has more dynamic range. It can do the buttery smooth gradients. It weighs an entire 2-year-old child less than IMAX cameras.

And you don't need 4 dudes to deliver the movie to the projectionist.

And unless Christopher had them develop a silent IMAX camera, I guess all of the dialogue is going to be recorded in post.

I mean, IMAX claims they made them "30% quieter."

Which is a bit like when I inquired about an $8,000 treatment and explained that I had 0 money and the doctor offered me a 30% coupon.

So whyyyyyy?

It's heavy. It's loud. It doesn't offer better image quality.

I think it is just because film is cool and he doesn't want it to die.

I wish he would stop saying unscientific things about the magical 15/70mm film and just say "Because it is fucking cool."

I'm sold. That works for me.

By using the most extreme film camera, he brings attention to the use of film. He inspires people to learn about it and maybe even use it in their personal photography. (Film photography is very popular right now.) And he makes other big Hollywood directors think they can manage the pain in the ass of film as well.

I'm glad Nolan is this stubborn and willing to take on the challenges of using the heaviest and loudest cameras in existence.

The large format quality is good enough that it will be preserved well. We won't have a Star Wars crisis where people are trying to stitch together degraded 40 year old film to make sure Han shot first.

An 18K scan of IMAX will stand the test of time.

That doesn't mean IMAX is 18K or any other K.

The Ks don't matter! Stop talking about 18K! All you reddit r/IMAX nerds need to calm down about the Ks.

Talk about them sweet, sweet gradients.

Film is a variable resolution medium. If it is dark and you are using a Russian lens from the 50s, you might be getting 3K IMAX. You could have one scene from two angles be completely different resolutions. It's fine. No one is complaining that a movie isn't Kenough.

The only thing "scanned in 18K" means is that all of the detail will be well preserved, including that sexy grain structure.

Nice.

[thefrogman]

@distilled-prose

Let me repeat myself, "Placebo trials are an important part of developing vaccines and other medications."

I'll have you know I just watched several videos by people who have taken many college level science courses, so I am now properly educated to respond to your query.

(I also have a brain and am capable of doing quality internet research, but I just wanted you to know I checked with competent science people to make sure I know what I am talking about.)

Here are some study designs that meet your criteria without the need for a placebo...

Active Comparator Trials

The new treatment is compared to an existing standard treatment rather than a placebo.

For example, if they develop a new GLP-1 formulation, they might test it against Ozempic instead of a placebo.

Crossover Trials (Without Placebo)

Each participant receives the standard treatment and the new treatment at different times, serving as their own control. This can be beneficial because you can compare the current standard of care against the new one in the same patient.

Non-Inferiority Trials

This trial makes sure the new medicine is not worse than the current standard of care. This is often used to look for meds with fewer side effects.

A real world example would be testing oral antibiotics against IV antibiotics for bone and joint infections. The failure rate of the oral group was 14.6% and the IV group was 13.2%. They were about the same, so the study concluded oral meds were not inferior.

Historical Control Trials

This compares results from a new treatment group to documented outcomes from past patients trialed using the old treatment.

This is typically done with medications that already have years of trial data. We've been using Prozac since 1987, and it has been tested in myriad studies. So you don't need to have a "Prozac" group in your trial because all of the variables are widely known.

Adaptive Trials

These are "learn-as-you-go" trials. The study design is flexible so researchers can pivot as they learn new things.

This is great if you have very sick or terminal patients in your trial. If you are testing something and you learn the treatment can be more effective with a new dosage or combined with another medication, the patients aren't stuck with the initial treatment protocol.

Real-World Evidence Studies

This is an observational study that uses health records and insurance databases to collect a shitload of real world data for comparison.

This is like if you are testing a new car airbag for safety and you want to compare it to the effectiveness of other airbags. You could look at the crash tests of other airbags (Historical Control Trials), but there is actually a lot more real world data on them in actual use.

Sometimes lab tests can't account for everything in real world conditions, so you dig up accident reports and look at insurance claims to see how old airbags fared in accidents.

And then you compare your new fancy airbag to that preponderance of information.

Delayed-Treatment Design

This is where everyone gets the trial drug, but they delay treatment for some of the trial groups. Then they can compare early outcomes to new outcomes.

Everyone gets the treatment while still being able to compare the results.

_________________

I think that about covers it.

All of these approaches have been tried and tested and successful without a placebo.

I don't like metaphors involving the skinning of cats, so I'm just going to say...

There is more than one way to bake a cake.

In fact, there are at least 311,040 ways to bake a cake.

I will reiterate, double blind placebo trials are fantastic. They are probably the gold standard for brand new meds for non-life-threatening conditions and nothing to compare to. No one is saying placebo trials are bad or shouldn't ever be used.

But researchers are pretty smart. And they have developed many workflows to test the safety and efficacy of medical treatments. If you want to do "science" then trust the scientific specialists who actually develop these protocols.

If RFK Jr. is truly unsatisfied with the effectiveness of medical trials, he should put together a panel of research experts and ask them to assess study designs to make sure they are safe and reliable. He should not be making random declarations about how *he* thinks research should be done. By his own admission, he is not a doctor or a healthcare specialist. He isn't a medical researcher and does not have the experience to decide anything with confidence.

Like, if he said, "Can we do a study to see if more placebo trials would be beneficial?" And then he hired competent researchers to figure that out... that would be "doing science."

But I think he would discover that medical researchers have been developing these workflows for decades and they have gotten pretty good at it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to sign up for a college level P.E. class so I can win a square dancing competition.

I was trying to think of a way to explain why this is stupid and also ghoulish. I think I came up with something.

Imagine you are an engineer designing body armor. You are tasked with making sure the body armor can stop 10 different types of bullets. In your first attempt, you create body armor that stops 6 of the 10 bullets. You start selling those because that's pretty good protection. You can save some lives while you continue to improve things.

You already know how to stop 6 bullets, but you really want to figure out how to stop the last 4. So you do exactly what you did before, but add a few more layers of Kevlar and a steel plate.

Your boss, RFK Jr., says he wants a test of the new and improved body armor. But he says you have to give one test subject the real thing and the other test subject fake body armor that does nothing.

And you're like, "Hey, can I at least give them the body armor that stops 6 bullets? We already know that gives some protection. We only need to compare the new armor to what we already accomplished."

And RFK says, "No, please shoot a person dead. It's science."

[thefrogman]

The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) is a right-wing advocacy group promoting "conservative Christian values." They released this study to exaggerate the risks of mifepristone. The study is not peer-reviewed and was rejected by medical journals for failing to meet publication standards.

They classified expected effects like vaginal bleeding and follow-up appointments as serious adverse events. They included mental health symptoms without evidence. They counted cases where the drug was taken without doctor supervision and often without the needed follow-up meds (misoprostol).

The study tracked symptoms for 45 days after taking mifepristone and included many unrelated health issues.

If I take a Flintstones vitamin and 30 days later my ass starts bleeding, I'm not necessarily going to blame Barney fucking Rubble.

Do you want to know what is causing adverse effects like sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, and death?

Abortion bans.

Sepsis rates among pregnant women in Texas have risen 50%.

Josh Hawley is a putz. I want a new senator.

[thefrogman]

Late Night Hosts: A Retrospective.

After the success of this post...

I noticed people seemed interested in the history and personalities of late night comedians. Especially all the youngins who weren't around yet. These hosts were a big part of my comedy training. So I thought I'd share with you what I remember of my comedy analysis and some personal context showing what made them tick.

I will be covering Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien.

And if this post is successful, I will do Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel and all of the newest hosts.

Almost all of this is from memory, so a few details could be inaccurate. But I used to set up 2 VCRs so I could record Jay, Dave, and Conan each night. I watched Conan from show #1. That was 1993 (I was 12 then) and I did this for several years.

I would also get a bit of Carson Daly on the tape and just be flabbergasted someone gave him a television show.

Even Kermit was like, "How is this guy more of a fucking muppet than I am?"

I would watch my tapes and study them and take notes. I would do little comedy exercises. I tried to write a Letterman Top 10 List (I called it a "top 7½ list" because I feared the copyright police). I wrote monologue jokes about celebrities. And I tried creating silly characters like on Conan.

I was a big comedy nerd as a teenager, what can I say?

I even created an alter ego called "Bob the Frog" who was basically a ripoff of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Don Rickles. "Bob" wrote a comedy newsletter (I still have it somewhere) that I passed around to my classmates in junior high. This frog alter ego was my first attempt at comedy writing. (If you've ever wondered why I am "The Frogman", now you know.)

The first few were really bad. Then I got better and my friends started asking if I had written anything new. It was my first taste of making people laugh and I was hooked. I knew comedy would be a part of my life from then on.

I learned that I hated insult comedy. I felt too guilty. The only person I felt comfortable saying bad things about was myself. So "Bob" would say I was a lame dorktopus.

Eventually, I did stand-up until I was too sick to perform (1999-2003). I was just getting good so that was a very difficult period of my life. It felt like my dream was snatched away by my poor health.

On a whim, my best friend Tru McGowan convinced me to start a comedy Tumblr in 2009. At first I was really bad. I was used to stand-up where you had a new crowd each time and you could polish jokes until they were perfect. The hardest thing about internet comedy (much like late night comedy) is that everything is your *first* draft.

I'm not sure if people realize how difficult first draft comedy truly is. You can get decent at predicting what an audience will laugh at. But it is *never* a sure thing. Things you work on for days and are positive people will love... they will bomb horrifically. Things you write in 20 seconds and post on a lark... they go viral to a few million people.

But the greatest tragedy of all is when you post something with potential and it bombs. You know if you could workshop it with a proper crowd over a week or a month, you could make something amazing.

But it is already out there.

Your entire following saw it.

It is what it is.

That is some genuine 2009 Froggie comedy right there.

I just put text on a picture. I mean, this dude definitely wanted to bang that rancor and his dream was crushed just like its head. There is a joke there. And lolcat style text-on-a-picture was the comedy fad.

But "Gay for Rancors" got 15 pity notes and that was the end of my exploration of rancor fetish jokes.

Soon I started putting a little more effort into my originals. Somehow Photoshopping this bacon on a string got me 50 notes.

And I was never one to shy away from capitalizing on a current meme, so this accrued 143 notes (viral for Tumblr in 2009).

I got to know my audience. I started understanding what worked and what didn't. I did a lot of experimenting and eventually I started understanding this new comedy medium. If you are weird and put forth enough effort, people will reward you.

As an internet "first draft" comedian, I feel a spiritual connection to late night comedians. They have one day to write 15-20 minutes of material and once they send it out into the world... that's it. No second chance.

I think studying Conan and Dave helped prepare me for my blog. I still prefer polishing material over time, but I'm so glad I could rise to the occasion when circumstances demanded I "first draft" my entire comedy career.

So...

Let's get started.

Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!

Johnny Carson

I missed out on peak Johnny. But I have watched a bunch of those compilation videos with highlights from the show. I mean, I used to watch the 3am infomercial for those compilation videos. So I feel like I am still qualified to analyze him as a long-time student of comedy.

I started becoming aware of comedy right as Johnny was retiring. I literally studied it like a subject at school while not studying actual subjects at school. And the late night shows were some of the best learning tools available (aside from getting stand-up specials from Blockbuster). You got to see comedy every night and a variety of comedians with different styles.

Johnny was the best at the traditional late-night monologue. It's not that the jokes were funnier. Honestly, it is impossible to write 5 minutes of stand-up in a day that can give you anything more than a chuckle. But the audience knows that and it causes something I call "forgiveness comedy." People will adjust what they think is funny depending on the circumstances. If they know you had a day to write something, the audience will consider that and be primed to laugh more at less funny material. Especially if they like the comic.

The best example is improv. An audience will forgive the joke quality just because they are amazed it is coming straight off the dome (that isn't always true, improv is more magic trick than spontaneity, but that is another post). But if you tried to perform that same improv as a polished stand-up act, it would likely bomb. The brain adjusts to context.

Johnny took advantage of this and where he really shined was in between the written jokes. His bombs were opportunities. He would react with some self-deprecating remark and get a bigger laugh for making fun of his shitty joke. Basically, when Johnny was in trouble he was at his best. His reactions were what made him so loved.

His most famous reaction-style comedy was probably the tomahawk demonstration. I think this was one of the longest sustained audience laughs in history—which, sadly, the video cuts off. I think it was 4 minutes total.

Johnny was also a very good interviewer in the sense that he knew when to give people space. He didn't try to compete with all the funny people he invited on. He was a comedy support system and only stepped in when things went off the rails.

There were also his masterful softballs. (Sorry, I should explain I came up with my own comedy terms. They may or may not be actual comedy parlance.)

A softball is an easy setup for a joke (large balls are easier to hit). A conversational premise without a punchline. If you are riffing with another comedian and you know their strengths, you can set them up for a joke and let them take the punchline. This is a thankless comedy skill because you are giving away the glory to someone else. But being good at softballs often takes more creativity and skill than coming up with the punchline. Johnny knew he was speaking with some of the funniest people on the planet. And their success was his success. So he was always happy to set people up for hilarity.

Johnny was also a good sport. His friends would come on and make fun of him and he often laughed the loudest of anyone. Or pretended to be hurt for extra laughs. Rich Little and Tom Smothers would do impressions of Johnny in front of Johnny. I think this helped popularize the Friar's Club roasts around that time, of which Johnny was a roastee.

Johnny got along with everyone. I think the most endearing thing about his Tonight Show was that he was just trying to make sure everyone had a good time. It was fun. It was chill. It was comfort after a long day, like a television version of a warm hug. Many people would joke that is how they fell asleep each night.

There was one aspect of his show I have mixed feelings about. Johnny started the career of almost every comedian performing in the 80s. He would invite the new comics on the scene to do their "tight 5" toward the end of the show. It was a poorly kept secret that if he invited them to "the couch" for an interview, they were in. He was christening them a comedy star. Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, Louie Anderson, Roseanne Barr, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Steven Wright, David Brenner, Drew Carey, Garry Shandling, Eddie Murphy.

And we can't forget Yakov Smirnoff.

Johnny was basically the all-powerful comedy judge. It was seen as a huge honor to be invited to the couch. But if you had a bad night or a bad audience or just weren't ready, that could end or set back your career in a huge way.

You either got a sitcom or a job at McDonald's.

Jay Leno

Jay was known as a very good road comedian. He was a very hard worker who would perform *anywhere* just to get experience. He performed at strip clubs and crappy hotel bars and those weird corporate events where you have to come up with jokes for vacuum salesman or mortgage analysts. You have to use hyperspecific industry terms and include employees in the audience. John Mulaney recently made the news for one of these gigs.

Actually, let me give corporate comedy writing a try...

"Vacuum salesmen are the only ones who can start their pitch with how much their product sucks.

Suction, am I right, fellas? Good suction sells itself. Bob's wife knows what I'm talking about. She can hit 20 kPa, easy. Heyoooo!

She's still no Miele C3 canister vacuum with included HEPA filtration. That thing has more new attachments than the CEO's hair.

Your plugs aren't fooling anyone, Steve!"

Though Jay started out working mostly clean, so I'm not sure he would have rated the suction of Bob's wife in kilopascals. Working clean meant he could do his act just about anywhere. But don't confuse him with a "clean" comedian.

Froggie Comedy Tangent

A comedian who happens to work clean can be funny. But a "clean comedian" will make you wonder how you are suddenly in Branson sitting next to a youth pastor and his flock. If they specifically brand themselves as "clean," you're just going to get thinly veiled (or blatant) conservative comedy. It will technically be apolitical, but all the subtext is MAGA.

I call it "I remember that" comedy. Because every laugh is derived from "Hey, that's that thing I know! I remember that!"

There is a thing called "Dry Bar Comedy" and their entire deal is inviting clean comedians to do shows. The non-drunk audiences (Get it? DRY bar) are laughing their heads off and it is so confusing.

I keep going "Wait, when did he tell a joke?"

They don't have to tell jokes!

They just have to talk about the "good old days" and people will be like, "I remember Cabbage Patch Kids!" and laugh at something resembling a punchline. Or sometimes there isn't a punchline—just a declarative statement that sort of goes up at the end.

I could have a lucrative comedy career just saying things like, "Do you remember G.I. Joe? I sure do miss when toys didn't have pronouns."

*uproarious laughter*

Almost every comedian that performs at the Dry Bar has a bit about spanking and ADHD.

"Kids these days have it easy. If you talk back to your daddy, you get a time out. Can you believe that? When I talked back to my dad, he made me pick out my own switch!"

*uproarious laughter*

"We didn't have ADD back then. We just had misbehaving children and a belt."

*uproarious laughter*

Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno worked clean but it wasn't a moral thing. It just wasn't necessary for their material and was more marketable for gigs. They told real jokes with a premise and a punchline. They did the work and earned their laughs.

END OF TANGENT

It's weird to think Jay was once a respected and talented stand-up. Looking back, his material was... jokes for your dad. That's the best I can describe it. Not dad jokes, but jokes dads liked. Clever observations that would make dads go, "It do be like that!" Not really my thing, but he was good at it and he still draws decent crowds to this day. I mean, they all need walkers to get into the theater, but he packs the place with geriatrics wanting to laugh at Monica Lewinsky and OJ Simpson like the old days. Spoiler, Monica was a slut and Jay thinks OJ did it.

Jay did an adequate job on The Tonight Show. He was an okay interviewer and guests felt safe going on. They knew he wasn't going to talk about anything too embarrassing (with one major exception being Hugh Grant after he was caught with a sex worker).

Jay relied on bits that he knew worked and never really strayed once he had a working formula. He would read funny headlines. He would do his "Jaywalking" remotes where he found stupid people and used deceptive editing to make it seem like everyone he talked to was that stupid. Jay is really into things showing the decline of America in relation to the WWII generation.

Jay was the status quo comedian. He never really had "moments" that stood out and became legendary. Johnny had an entire DVD business just selling old clips from his Tonight Show. They were filled with moments that were so spontaneously and authentically hilarious that they stood the test of time. But trying to find a "greatest hits" compilation of Jay Leno's run will just leave you bored.

If you search YouTube for Jay's best moments, you just get a bunch of his "Headlines" segments. He's literally just reading clips from the newspaper.

As I mentioned in my other post, when he isn't in comedian mode, Jay Leno seems like a decent guy. He treated his staff very well and his work as a car historian is near academic level. When you hear him talk about old cars you feel like you are spending a weekend with your grandpa. So Jay's mean spirited monologues just seemed out of place and I think looking back, they ruined any chance he had at a legacy.

He just took cheap shots at celebrities and politicians and people in the news. And he did it relentlessly whether people deserved it or not.

Yes, every host at the time did this. But Dave felt like he was going through the motions and doing the monologue just because it was part of the format. His heart wasn't in it and he much preferred bantering with Paul Schaffer in the band than telling jokes about celebrities he doesn't actually care about. He was more interested in getting to the desk and doing his "real" comedy.

And Conan's jokes about celebrities were more silly than mean. He'd make fun of Tom Cruise or someone and then do the string dance.

But Jay would go dark. He had a smile on his face and it sounded like he was "just joking" but after hearing about Monica Lewinsky's story, Jay Leno's "just joking" was different. I remember Jay Leno making fun of that poor woman who had McDonald's coffee burn her vagina off. He probably got a few months of jokes out of that. He was such a nice guy outside of his comedy and looking back it seemed so out of place. But I think he did cheap shots because it was an easy laugh and he figured the famous weren't "real people."

If Jay was in head-to-toe denim, he was a solid dude.

If he was in a suit, he was an asshole.

Jay never stopped doing stand-up. You can catch a show this weekend if you want. Jay really likes to pepper in some classic 90s jokes about celebrities we have mostly forgotten. As I mentioned in my other post, I've heard him do Monica Lewinsky jokes as recent as 2019. They aren't part of his written material. They are usually ad-libs and callbacks. Like if Jay was fixing a car and someone said, "We need to suck the air out of these tires." There is a 90% chance Jay would respond, "Boy, where's Monica when you need her?"

He still does the "jokes your dad would like" material in his personal act. But they are much more like his Tonight Show monologues than his old stand-up. Easy jokes without much thought. Instead of his classic clever observations, he mostly complains about modernity, ad nauseam.

Actual joke...

"Have you seen these phones on your wrist? And you thought BUTT DIALING was bad!"

Get it? He's saying people are masturbating and accidentally calling people. Which completely misunderstands... no one talks on the phone, Jay. It's 2025 and we all have anxiety. Maybe you could do wank texting?

Okay, Jay. How about this as a joke, complete with a 90s reference...

"Have you seen these people wearing phones on their wrists? I guess they finally solved butt dialing!

But after they see a sexy picture of Cindy Crawford, Apple tells them they have 30,000 steps for the day!"

A famous fun fact is that he never spent any of his Tonight Show money. He lives off the interest and income doing stand-up. While he was host of The Tonight Show he still did stand-up just about every weekend. *I* think that *he* thinks that gives him working class cred despite his enormous wealth and caravan of supercars.

I'm glad his money allowed him to become the world's greatest car historian. I'm happy there is someone like him doing proper car conservation. His restoration of the Chrysler turbine car was fantastic. That is a neat piece of engineering and car history.

Jay never had a sex scandal and seems to love his wife. He's taking care of her as she battles dementia. I do feel sorry he is going through that.

Those are the nice things I can say about him.

But I think Monica Lewinsky and Conan O'Brien should be allowed one giant kick in the nuts.

David Letterman

Conan O'Brien wasn't the first person Jay Leno screwed over with The Tonight Show. David Letterman was actually Johnny Carson's favorite guest host. But he was quirky and experimental. The network liked Jay Leno's safer style.

It was a big controversy at the time and they even made a weird movie about it called The Late Shift. Pretty much every person portrayed claims it is horribly inaccurate. The actors they cast looked like when you draw from memory.

The big joke at the time was about the ridiculous chin prosthetic. Did you know Jay has a sizeable chin? Let's get Stan Winston away from Terminator 2 to make this bigass chin.

Dave started out as a TV weatherman. But once he got popular doing stand-up, they gave him a morning show. They tried to make him Regis Philbin. But he sucked at being Regis. Only Regis could be that excitable in the morning. Dave wasn't really a "morning" comedy guy so that was quickly cancelled.

In 1982, he got the Late Night show at 12:30am after Carson on NBC. No one paid much attention to him and he realized that. I think that excited him and he was just like...

Dave and his team created some of the most experimental comedy on broadcast TV up until that point. He was basically unsupervised in a comedy laboratory for over a decade.

He wore an Alka Seltzer suit and dunked himself in water.

He wore a Velcro suit and hurled himself against a wall.

Looking back I'm realizing he did a lot of suit based humor.

He had a very long running gag with character actor Calvert DeForest who Dave called Larry "Bud" Melman. He was a bit like a sidekick.

Calvert was this cute old man and would literally do *anything* Dave and the writers asked. He had no fear. He had no shame. He would often go to random places and interview people. But he was really bad at following the scripted material and would get confused and forget the jokes. He didn't understand how microphones worked. Any segment with him would go off the rails because he never quite understood the premise. Dave loved this tiny, elderly ball of chaos. The trainwreck was the joke.

Dave helped Super Dave Osbourne get his incompetent daredevil schtick out there. He let Andy Kaufman get in a fight with someone and no one could tell if it was a bit. (10:30)

Johnny and Jay's Tonight Show was where all the normie comedians went to get their big break. Dave was where the weirdos flocked to. And some of them were terrible, but they were *always* fascinating. I don't think Frank Zappa would have his cult following without Dave.

Dave was the first to regularly do "remote" humor where he'd just go out into the world and get into trouble with real people. The segments were great but Dave struggled with social anxiety. So that eventually evolved into Dave hiding in a van and making a Chinese-American deli owner named Rupert Jee repeat awkward things said in a hidden earpiece.

Dave's interview style was erratic. He was a very good host as long as he liked his guest. He loved having a real conversation with a fascinating person. He rivaled Craig Ferguson when those conditions were present. But if he didn't care for them, things would either get very awkward or very boring.

He didn't like pop celebrities who didn't have genuine talent. Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian would have driven him nuts and he would purposely seem bored when interviewing someone like that. Dave had trouble "faking it." And instead of Jimmy Fallon's cringe fake laughter, Dave would just appear utterly uninterested.

But if he didn't like someone and chose awkward over boring... hoo boy... it was *really* awkward. And Dave relished in the discomfort.

Madonna (who Dave acknowledged as genuinely talented) was unhappy about his monologue jokes. Essentially he alluded to her being a bit of a slut. It was typical Late Night comedy fodder at the time. I'm not endorsing it, I'm just saying everyone did it and society didn't have a problem with it at the time. She released a book about sex called... "Sex." Then she released an artistic softcore black and white erotic music video that most people felt was... more strange than sexy. She just kinda talk-singed to the same loop and made out with a dude while clips of a dancer in full body spandex came out of nowhere.

The Wayne's World parody was much better and somehow less weird.

Needless to say, people made fun of this pivot to weird erotic art.

In any case, Dave had Madonna on and she turned the weird up to 11. I think she was trying to get back at Dave, but it had the opposite effect. He saw where things were going and he just kinda... "let her cook."

He was delighted to watch the train wreck unfold.

I mean, she was right. She was being slut shamed—by everyone, not just Dave. But she was so overtly odd that it was hard for people to hear that conversation within the chaos. And the only thing the mainstream news cared about was her potty mouth.

On the other hand, he liked Drew Barrymore a lot. Drew was a very good actress and she was charming and funny. She was just as weird as Madonna, but it was not oppressively weird.

I think Dave saw her more as a daughter figure. Or maybe he wanted to and was ashamed he wasn't successful? Or she made it difficult for him to be a father figure? Because she saw him as a... umm... daddy figure? He enjoyed her company but was uncomfortable with her affection, so her interview was awkward in a different way. This was especially famous because she ended up flashing him for his birthday.

Dave was complicated. He was a former alcoholic. He suffered from social anxiety while having the world's most social job. He was the most private public figure you could imagine. He managed to have a sex scandal that no one seems to know about or talk about. He was involved with his personal assistant who regularly appeared on the show. Then her roommate tried to blackmail Dave for two million dollars by threatening to expose the affair. Dave decided to just fess up and helped the authorities with a sting operation to catch the extortionist.

Dave was self-conscious and neurotic. I don't think he liked himself for a very long time. Which is probably why he tried to blow up his life and family. But he loved his son and once that love took hold he seemed to get his shit together. He seemed like a different person. I liked Dave's comedy much more when his life was a hot mess. But I liked Dave as a person much more when he started choosing good behaviors. Much like Jimmy Kimmel, family seemed to make him a better person.

Dave pushed the late night format to the limit and inspired an entire generation of comedians. He encouraged them to try risky things and experiment and became the comedy mentor that Jay Leno wishes he was.

Also he loved his mom and sent her to the Olympics and it was the cutest thing ever.

I'm a sucker for people who love their moms.

Conan O'Brien

Conan was my comedy idol. If you have followed my comedy over the years, you might have noticed a similar embrace of... intelligent silliness.

Stupid smart?

He was a magna cum laude Harvard graduate and a clown without the makeup. He was originally a comedy writer and head of the famous Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. He went on to write for The Simpsons and SNL.

He wrote that monorail episode.

Every Conan fan who wants to share a fun fact will make sure you know he wrote the monorail episode. Kumail Nanjiani did a great bit about this during Conan's Mark Twain Prize ceremony (it's on Netflix).

After Jay took over The Tonight Show and Dave gave NBC the finger and left for CBS, the "Late Night" slot needed a new host. And Lorne Michaels decided this pale redheaded giant from the SNL writing staff might be a good choice. No one had any clue who he was. No one had any confidence in his success—including Conan.

And the only person who saw a spark of genius was... David Letterman. (2:20)

Conan just started cranking out as much weird comedy as he could. The Masturbating Bear, Pimpbot 5000, FedEx Pope. There was a pooping robot at some point.

They had a sizeable robot budget.

He was the true spiritual successor to Dave's 80s Late Night show. By this time Dave mellowed out and didn't have the motivation and hunger to innovate like he used to. So Conan filled that role.

I think the reason Conan appealed to me specifically was because I saw a lot of myself in him. I was good at a lot of different styles of comedy—I had this almost shapeshifting ability to customize my humor to the person or audience I was entertaining. But eventually I decided I just wanted to make people feel good. I had to pick a style and stick with it. I wanted to make comedy comfort food that wasn't dumbed down or patronizing. It could be stupid and corny but I didn't want my audience to feel like they were stupid for liking it.

I don't know if I'm making any sense.

Conan was a genuinely nice guy and a constant people pleaser. He didn't have an edge and he didn't need one. He could do innovative comedy without punching down, without trying to push any offensive lines, without saying fucked up shit just to see if he could get away with it.

I'm not even knocking comedians who are skilled at dancing on the line. Some of my favorites of all time played with the line. Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Chris Rock.

Louis CK and Dave Chappelle before they...

*heavy sigh*

But so many comedians at the time thought that was an easy path to success. They didn't realize you had to be incredibly funny in order to stand next to or jump over the line. You had to compensate with amazing jokes to get away with it. But that takes effort and talent and finesse. They preferred laziness and brute forcing edgelord material.

And that is how we got a gaggle of Joe Rogans.

Hmm, we need a better collective noun.

That is how we got an ivermectin of Joe Rogans.

Conan was unapologetically silly. But it had this foundation of intelligence in the subtext. And every once in a while, he'd let an Abe Lincoln fun fact slip out (he could be a legit Lincoln historian if he wanted to). He made comedy for smart people who needed to turn down the volume of their brain for a bit.

Thinking is exhausting sometimes, but you can't shut it off completely.

Conan struggled for several years to find an audience. I think he was on the verge of cancellation every few weeks. I watched him every night from the first show. I started to see what Letterman saw. It was really neat to watch him learn and grow. He taught me that comedy was a journey. And eventually people found him and loved him and the rest is history.

My favorite running gag was definitely the Walker Texas Ranger lever. He'd randomly pull a big red lever and all it did was play a clip from the show. Everyone knows the Haley Joel Osment AIDS clip, but that was not my favorite. (2:40)

Walker was an egalitarian karate pugilist.

It was such a brilliant bit that relied on Conan's setup and reaction. If he just played the clip without the antics, it would not hit as hard. It would be Jay Leno reading the newspaper.

And... I don't have the energy to fully explain Jordan Schlansky.

I wouldn't even know where to start.

The short version is... Conan doesn't quite know how to handle intense nerdy metrosexual autism and hilarity ensues.

I encourage you to go down the Jordan Schlansky rabbit hole. I promise you will start watching and suddenly it will be tomorrow and you'll look at the clock and not be sure if it is AM or PM. If you are wondering, yes, he is really like that. But he pretends not to be self aware to make it funnier.

And then there is Sona. Conan's Armenian assistant who doesn't do a lot of assisting. They are basically siblings. You can tell she became part of his emotional support system. At times she matched Conan's comedic brilliance without any experience or training. She has perfect timing and can hilariously devastate his self esteem like an emotional assassin. (2:45)

There is so much more, but you get the idea.

Conan is a brilliant, silly comedian. And he is a solid dude. Just like Leno, his staff stuck with him. He was a great boss that inspired fierce loyalty. They even moved from New York to Los Angeles for him. And when he lost The Tonight Show he started his own company just so he could keep everyone employed and paid. That eventually evolved into his successful Team Coco podcast network.

Before his TBS show, Conan was contractually obligated to not appear on television for a year. He went on a grueling tour across the country performing a live comedy musical variety show. This was mostly to maintain his staff until they could find a new TV home.

They made a documentary "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop" about this live variety show. Some people thought this revealed Conan to be a bit of a dick. But he just lost his dream job, his entire staff had no source of income, and he was going from city to city working 18 hour days, including a 2 hour, high energy stage show—all while trying to stave off his deep depression. (Also Jack McBrayer was an old friend, and that was an ongoing bit between them.)

I don't think I've seen Conan that vulnerable and that human and you could see his staff doing their best to keep him from imploding. He felt responsible for the livelihoods of hundreds of people. They loved him and knew he was doing it for them.

(And because he needs constant attention and validation, but what comedian doesn't?)

To end things I think I'd like to try one of my comedy exercises.

I'm going to do a Top 7½ list in the style of David Letterman Bob the Frog. I can only promise junior high level comedy.

(Also, if you have never seen Dave do one of these, number 1 always has a drumroll and is purposely bad.)

Top 7½ signs you are in a "clean" comedy club.

7½. The headlining comedian was cancelled for...

7. You ask for the drink specials and the waitress says they might have Diet Sprite in the back.

6. The comic was once ratio'd on Twitter after being called "Temu Jeff Foxworthy."

5. "Back in my day we had Transformers not transgenders. The Autobots' pronouns were roll/out."

4. The comic takes off his belt, holds it up to the crowd and says, "This was what we called Ritalin in the 80s."

3. Your seat has a gun holster next to the cup holder.

2. The comic assures everyone that he "found God" so there is no reason to google his name and "me too."

*drumroll*

Annnnd, the number 1 sign you may be in a clean comedy club is...

1. Thursday is "Free Tennis Balls for Your Walker Night!"

[thefrogman]

I want to give an example.

Some may think it is a small thing compared to the bad behavior we are witnessing in the world right now. But I think it illustrates the point I'm trying to make.

A small scale moral quandary...

I was trying to make a funny pope post. And my research found there was a single pope named Pope Lando. He was the last pope to use a unique name that had no previous religious significance.

He just liked Lando and went with it.

No pope since has taken his name because he only pope'd for 6 months and it was during a very bloody and corrupt period of history. People think he did a piss poor poping job and some historians have even omitted Lando from the pope ledger.

And I just wondered how Lando's pope cred got so damaged.

I wanted to make a joke about Billy Dee Williams being a 10th century pope, but he was disgraced for making ads about a 40 ounce beverage with a slogan that has murky implications about inebriated consent.

That was a real ad campaign in the 80s and probably the inspiration for Sex Panther.

I thought, "I just need to put a pope hat on Lando and that would be a solid joke."

But it was 3am and I was getting sleepy and I didn't feel like opening Photoshop.

So I generated this in ChatGPT.

It looks fantastic. It took 30 seconds. And if I didn't say anything, people would think I Photoshopped this because I have a reputation for that sort of thing.

But doing this kind of high level work would take hours. I don't know if any of you have tried to re-clothe someone from assets, but it sucks. A lot of brute force warp tooling.

But until there are regulations protecting artists and the environment, I am ethically opposed to using Gen AI in this way.

I made rules.

I only work on my own art using Gen AI as an accessibility tool for my fatigue and concentration issues.

I do not generate anything from scratch.

I only use AI that has been trained on licensed images (Photoshop and Topaz Photo AI).

I use it for non-artistic tedium and things that are impossible through traditional methods.

For example... I use it for complex selections (hair/fur), repairing damaged photos (replacing missing areas of faces or bodies), dust/speck removal (can still take hours with AI), erasing complex objects (drunk uncle photobombing wedding), fixing out-of-focus areas (literally impossible otherwise), and upscaling (brand new pixel information rather than pixel repeating algorithms).

In this case, the pope assets were generated from scratch and the training used internet scraping. I did no artistic work so the final product would not be my art.

These tools benefit my art. They benefit my clients. They save me hours and hours of energy that would give me horrible post-exertional malaise. And in some cases, they allow me to fix previously unfixable shit.

This restoration still took many hours. Most of the impressive color correction was done with traditional tools and my years of training. AI didn't do this for me. It improved clarity, generated sections of the boy's face, and a few hours of zapping artifacts with a Gen AI powered remove tool.

I don't feel I directly hurt any artists using the tools the way I did. I didn't adopt their style. I didn't take a job from them. And while licensed images are not a perfect solution for ethical training, they are better than straight up stealing from people.

I thought a lot about this.

I considered what would hurt fellow artists the least while still benefiting from these tools to aid my disability issues.

This was the ethical standard I decided to hold myself to.

But I was tempted.

The easy thing was so... easy.

I could probably get away with it. I'm sure there are several people reading this, hearing me ramble, and saying "WHO FUCKING CARES? It wasn't even that great of a joke!"

I had all of these justifications for why it wouldn't be bad. I was trying to make it a neutral choice.

I wanted to give in to the bad behavior.

I was almost ready to post, but I kicked myself in the brain, and my stupid conscience woke up.

I opened Photoshop and threw a pope hat on Lando.

Doesn't look as good. But it was all I needed for the joke.

Sometimes choosing good behavior is exhausting.

It's not always pretty easy for me.

I wish it was.

(In reference to this post)

I'm going to be honest, this kind of attitude concerns me.

I've been going over my past lately. I'm writing something about my relationship with my brother. And I found a letter I never sent him.

Here is an excerpt.

-----------------------

I was not a good brother to you.

I took you for granted and was an ungrateful jerk. You used to do so much to help me. You did all kinds of manual labor because my stupid failing body could not. You built me things. You helped me fix things. You drove me places I needed to be. When I first got sick at college you came to Kansas City and scooped me up and brought me back home.

I remember one Christmas you even went back to the family gathering and stuck up for me. They didn't understand how sick I was and you explained it to them. I never told you how much that meant to me. I should have hugged you and thanked you profusely on the spot. You believed me even when some doctors refused to. And you used that big heart of yours to defend me.

That was an amazing act of courage. Find that same courage now. Stand up for Mom & Dad. Stand up for yourself. Put your foot down and fix this.

It took me way too long to figure it out, but it is my regret of being a bad brother that helped me realize why you don't like my humor. Why you are one of the very few people I can't make laugh. It's because I used that humor at your expense. I made fun of you. I teased you the same way those betraying bastard fake friends did in high school. At the time, I probably thought my jokes were harmless fun. But I'm sure you felt they were cruel and hurtful. We are such different people and I had a hard time understanding you. I used humor as a weapon to highlight our differences. I have no excuse. I have no justification for being a jerk to you.

All I can do is say I am sorry. Truly and deeply sorry.

-----------------------

I didn't send that letter because he was too far gone. His wife read every email and text and I had no way of getting through to just him.

My brother used to be a much better person than me. I often failed to be the good person I thought I was. I didn't realize I was being hurtful at the time. And I didn't do this to just him. I thought I was just making jokes. It was not "pretty easy" for me to realize that. It took years of growing and hindsight.

He used to be nothing but good behaviors all the way down.

And I struggled to limit my bad behaviors.

I was bullied in grade school and realized that if you are funny, people don't bully you anymore. So my brain thought I needed to make people laugh at all times. And it didn't matter if my jokes were at someone else's expense.

Bad behaviors are often easy. They can be tempting. They can require less effort. They can have greater rewards. And sometimes they can protect you. They can be a defense mechanism. Your brain trying to avoid trauma. "I'll hurt someone first so no one hurts me."

There is a reason so many people struggle to be good all the time.

Good behavior requires constant vigilance. You can't do a certain number of good things and then just call yourself a good person. And you can't just not do bad things either. A good person isn't necessarily just "not being evil to other people." That is neutral, at best.

I've learned that being a good person isn't something you just are. It is an ongoing choice. You have to maintain it. You have to actively keep it going. You have to consistently choose good behaviors and limit the bad.

And we all choose bad behaviors from time to time.

Don't kid yourself.

If you know the story of my brother, he let bad behaviors win. He let someone influence him to abuse and neglect his own family. He did it because he was traumatized. He was humiliated by a girl in high school. She said she was his girlfriend. She let him take her to prom. Then she wrote a one-act play called "Prom Nightmare" and performed it in front of the entire school. He was a laughing stock to 2000 classmates.

He is terrified of being alone but he is also terrified that any romantic partner is faking their affections. So obedience is his tool to prevent that. He will do anything his partner instructs to make sure her affection is real. His unmanaged trauma has run amok and led him to dark choices to keep his relationship intact at any cost.

He was such a good person. And now he is not. He has the potential. He is so good with his daughter. He is capable of good behaviors. And I think that is why it upsets and angers me so much. I can still see what he could be.

If you want to see people as just good and bad, that's up to you. I can't do it anymore. I think humans are too complicated. And I worry about getting complacent. I need to check in on my ratio of good to bad behaviors constantly. It would be too easy to say I am a good person and not think about it again.

I mean, sure, I don't kick puppies. I don't taunt the elderly. I don't assault random strangers.

Being good is easy!

Right?

[thefrogman]

This is my favorite comedy that I've written in a while but I posted it in the middle of the night and no one is validating me.

Maybe I've lost my mojo.

Those are real pope names! They're Hilarius!

Also, a thurible is a dangling incense testicle.

Pope Facts

Pope Leo is the 14th pope to go by Leo.

Which is disappointing because I was hoping he'd pick a fun new name that hadn't been used before.

Like Ralph or Onarope.

The last pope to choose a unique name was Francis. He was the first pope in over a thousand years to choose a fresh pope name.

The previous was Pope Lando.

He was disgraced after making a Colt 45 Malt Liquor commercial.

He was pope in 913 but only lasted about 6 months.

There were 43 other popes who had the thuribles balls to choose a unique pope name. Some of them include...

Hyginus the Fragrant Donus the Round Conon the Barbarian Innocent the Guilty Cletus the Inbred Felix the Cat Hilarius the Unfunny Simplicius the Complicated Sisinnius the Trans

Sadly, they were not popular enough to have their names repeated.

Did you know there were antipopes?

They weren't like super evil Sith popes or anything. Though we did have one of those.

An antipope was a disputed pope. Apparently, picking popes has not always been so smokestack-y.

Before the white smoke chose the pope, rich families and corrupt governments would try to get their chosen pope picked and people would be like, "We don't recognize your pope. That's an antipope!"

Some antipopes didn't even know they weren't the pope. They'd go to church and be like, "Hey, I'm the pope!" And then someone would cough, "ANTI!" And he'd be all confused.

I almost met a pope.

Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis and there was a big line to say hello. I was in a Catholic youth group because I had a crush on a girl and hadn't figured out Catholicism was a corrupt institution full of abuse and bigotry. And I thought the girl would kiss me if I liked the pope as much as she did.

Narrator: She did not kiss him for pretending to like the pope.

Anyway, we wen't to peep the pope and she stood in line for hours to get a papal blessing. I looked at the line and figured I'd rather just observe.

The only other thing I remember was seeing the Popemobile. Pope John Paul was nearly assassinated so they started pimping his pope ride to protect his pope-ness. He looked like he was in a traveling fish bowl.

Them gold wheels, tho.

Francis would have been like, "Take that shit off and put on some used bicycle spokes."

[thefrogman]

Been following for... well like over a decade. Love your wit and your masterly skills with photgraphy and how you explain it in ways we can understand.

But I wanted you to know that you being so open about your life with ME/CFS meant that when I got sick, I was able to recognize what was happening to me. Your blogging saved me from what could have been years and years of doctors and more testing with no answers. I was able to know what to talk with doctors about, some of what to expect, and that I wasn't alone. And I've never said thank you for that, so I wanted you to know- Thank you.

I remember you consistently being a long time supportive follower. Your name always sticks out when you like or reply or reblog. Like waving at an old friend you notice on the other side of the supermarket.

I've always tried to find the balance of openly talking about my chronic fatigue without making it my entire deal. I think that is a big mistake a lot of chronic illness sufferers can fall into. I had to figure out how to live a life despite my condition. And I hope if my story communicated anything to fellow spoonies, it was to do everything possible to find some quality of life. It may not meet your ambitions or what you imagined for yourself, but it's an important part of living with a chronic condition.

It is very fulfilling to hear that my story helped you. That was always my goal. When I started this health journey, there was so little information. They thought I had depression for years and even electroshocked my brain. I hoped I could spare others from a similar experience. And while I'm saddened so many others now have post viral fatigue, it does seem this influx of people has put a new spotlight on these conditions. Perhaps this will lead to new treatments.

I always live my life with the assumption I will not get better. Waiting for the next miracle cure got old very quick. My current strategy is to isolate aspects of my health that I can do something about. I'm going to fix my testosterone. I'm going to fix my diabetes. And I'm going to lose weight so it takes less energy to move around.

I had to make some huge health sacrifices to help my parents in their final years. I feel like I owe it to them to undo that damage and get back to living a life. I hope to also share that journey as I go.

It makes me sad to hear you have struggled with similar things. But stories like yours feel very validating. It can be hard opening up about these things publicly. Especially when faced with nonbelievers who think I want to lie around and watch movies all day. That idea sounds nice until it is your only choice and you cannot make another without terrible consequences.

I'm sorry it took so long to respond, but I appreciate you. I appreciate your long-time loyalty as a follower. And I appreciate all of the support and kindness you've shown me over the years.

[thefrogman]

I feel like this post isn't doing as well as my other lighting posts because "Inverse Square Law" sounds like homework and not fascinating photon shit.

But I really feel like I figured out a more accessible way to explain this effect and I hope you'll give it a chance.

Understanding the Inverse Square Law

(Without Math)

When I was first getting deep into photography, I kept running into lessons about the inverse square law. They would always tell you the effects and the math but they never explained the cause. Why does the light do this?

It's like when the doctor gives you a pill to fix something. You swallow it, wait a bit, and eventually you feel better. But you rarely know what the pill is actually doing.

So when it comes to lighting, you have to decide if you want to be the doctor who understands the why or the patient who just swallows the pill and gets the desired effect.

Every tutorial will say if you double the distance of a light from a subject, the intensity will drop by 1/4. They will give you a formula so you can do exposure calculations.

Sometimes they will refer to somewhat helpful diagrams with clues on what is happening.

But most just teach the easy version.

If you move the light closer, you will get quicker falloff into shadow and the background will be darker.

If you move it farther back, everything will be more evenly lit, but the background will be lighter.

The teacher will shoot some examples and show you something like this.

By the end of this post, I want everyone who reads it to *truly* understand what is happening.

Because if you understand it on that level, it will change how you think about light and photography. It will have the added bonus of explaining magnets and WiFi and even the sound coming out of your speakers.

If I am an effective teacher, this is something you will think about in your everyday life, even if you don't care about photography.

In a previous post, I talked about how light was a bit like a shotgun blast. The closer you are, the more concentrated the pellets. If you are farther away, the shot disperses.

But this wasn't the analogy I wanted to use. It was just the easiest to find visual examples of.

My preferred analogy was spray paint. And I'm hoping with some janky home-made visuals, I can do a better job of explaining the concept.

Let's start by explaining the humble photon. It's the fundamental particle (or wave) of light. Think of them like individual tiny globs of paint in a spray can. A photon is emitted when something loses energy. And unmodified light sources typically shoot out photon globs in all directions.

A point light source is a theoretical concept where a single point in space shoots light evenly in every direction. For our purposes we're just going to imagine a basic light bulb as the point source.

But our eyes and cameras have a limited field of view, so from here on out we are going to think of the light emitting from the bulb as having a cone shape. We are just concerned with what a camera can actually see.

Well, well, well... what does that cone of light look like?

I'm sure we have all used spray paint before. So let's imagine we are spraying a white ball against a gray wall. We spray for 1 second and hold the can at different distances.

In each scenario we are spraying for the same length of time and the exact same number of photon paint globs are emitted from the nozzle.

Let's think about what each scenario would look like from the camera's point of view.

Here is our unpainted ball and wall.

Here is the spray can held at Distance 1.

Note how the red paint is very concentrated and appears bold and saturated.

Distance 2.

Now the same amount of paint is dispersed over a wider area. The bold red spot in the center is more muted. And some of the paint is spilling onto the background.

Distance 3.

Everything appears to have a light red tint. The background and the white ball appear to have similar intensities of red. The coverage is very even. The same number of photon paint globs are being asked to cover a larger area so they are spreading out and diluting the color.

Okay, now let's exchange tiny photon paint globs for real photons.

I'm bringing back my baseball and showing these same 3 distances.

The nice thing about eyeballs and cameras... they can compensate for different light intensities. Our eyes have night vision and cameras have long shutter speeds, large lens apertures, and ISO amplification.

And if we compensate for the dimming caused by the dispersed light...

Photography teachers will tell you that if you move the light farther away, the background will get brighter. In reality, everything is the same level of dim and the camera exposure is brightened.

What if we wanted to spray the same area from far away without losing as much of the red saturation? We could add a super nozzle to our spray can that emits a bunch more photon globs in the same span of time.

This would be like turning up the power of the light. You have to emit a bunch more photons in that same time scale to compensate. Then you don't have to adjust your camera settings when you move the light farther away.

Let's look at a practical example of when you might think about the inverse square law to help solve a problem.

You have two subjects in a scene, and you put the light just out of view of the camera. You might be thinking that a larger light source is softer, so you want it as close as possible.

Unfortunately only one person is lit in the scene. She is getting the concentrated photons before they can disperse.

So if we want both people to have similar lighting, we can move the light farther away. You will have to comprimise a little softness. And you will have to change your camera settings or increase the power of the light.

Note that the intensity of light in the area they are standing in is very similar now.

By using a large light modifier, the photographer was able to move the light back and keep its general softness, but also evenly light both subjects.

And now I need to talk about one aspect of my spray paint analogy that does not work with the inverse square law. And it has to do with the specular highlight on the baseball.

Spray paint does not reflect paint. It just sticks to things. And reflection throws a tiny wrench into my explanation. Because parallel light rays do not obey the inverse square law. When you light something, the most central photons from the subject's perspective are going to be traveling in parallel. They have a direct path from the light to the camera lens or your eyeball.

Now if the reflection material is perfectly matte, the light will disperse and act as the inverse square law suggests. But if the surface is even a little glossy, the most concentrated parallel rays are going to bounce directly into your eye as a bright white spot.

And if you study this diagram a little closer, you might figure out why specular highlights are usually white.

If you look at the specular highlight on the baseball, even though the rest of the image gets dimmer as the light gets farther away, that spot stays bright.

Though the spot seems to disappear at Distance 1. Curious, eh?

It's still there. It's still reflecting directly into your eyeball. But the light around it is so concentrated and bright, the specular highlight blends in.

Which means if you have some nasty highlights on your photo subject, moving your light closer might make them go away. If someone has a shiny forehead, this can equalize the overall exposure and hide the shiny.

This guy has a bright spot on his nose. It is there in both photos.

But his face is so much brighter in the left photo that the spot blends in. It's a bit of a mind bender because the camera exposure is adjusted so the finished photos appear the same amount of bright.

You have to remember if you only move the light farther away and don't increase its power or increase the camera's exposure level, the photos would look more like this.

So if you make the rest of the face as bright as the highlight, it blends in.

Neat!

So, was I successful?

Does the inverse square law make more sense?

This is why WiFi gets weaker at a distance. This is why magnets lose their attraction when you pull them apart. This is why speakers get quieter when you move away from them.

I can't tell you how much knowing the why has affected my thinking about lighting. I see so many video and photo people talking about lighting setups who are just following memorized placements.

"Put a light above the subject at a 45 degree angle to get Rembrandt lighting."

But the second they encounter light doing something unexpected, things fall apart. They resort to trial and error and brute force the solution.

Knowing how the pill works can prevent that frustrating process.

I no longer care about the math. I can just visualize the cone of influence and predict what will happen. Understanding the behavior of light and not just the end effects has made everything more intuitive. I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to understand this. But, hopefully, this post has shortened that journey for you.

[thefrogman]

Alright, let's address this point by point.

@khorneschosen said:

if I have to choose one or the other kind of existence I'm picking the one in which I'm fat unhealthy but I ain't starving.

I would choose that too, but that is a false choice. Our country has plenty of food. No one has to starve.

But the cheap, calorie-dense, high-fat, soft, and easy-to-prepare foods are killing us. Heart disease is the number one cause of death. And commercial food industries are trying to engineer this unhealthy food to be as addictive and easy as possible. We have these ancient food-motivated drives telling us to eat as much as possible so we don't starve. And for many, it is difficult to ignore that instinct. And we shame folks for succumbing to that survival adaptation.

People get hung up on the "processing" of it all. They think industrial process is tainting the food in some way to make us all sick. But it is so much simpler than that.

It's full of fat and calories and it's soft.

Don't sleep on the softness. It is easy to eat quickly before we feel full. And many working class people gravitate towards these foods because they are so tired from the grind of capitalism, they never have the energy to prepare their own food with individual ingredients.

If you're happy our society solved the problem of not starving and want to call the issue resolved, that is up to you. But man-made food processes have long stopped caring about feeding people and moved on to overfeeding people for profit.

@siryouarebeingmocked said:

If the choice is between fake sugar that tastes bad and real sugar that tastes good, and both are just as bad for you, why is it wrong to say "I'd rather have the good tasting stuff? Which should also be cheaper?

High fructose corn syrup is not fake sugar. It is just very concentrated sugar. But chemically they are pretty much the same. In fact, when the body breaks it down, it is functionally identical to cane sugar. Our body sees it all as fructose and glucose.

As far as it "tasting better," that is a myth. People are biased toward the "organic" version always being better, but blind tests do not show a huge difference in taste and it usually comes down to a preference of how sweet you like your drink. The American brands often pump up the sweetness in soda and candy—probably to make it more addictive.

When people do a blind taste test, they often pick the American version as "better" most likely because they prefer it a little sweeter.

He got it wrong.

And so did he.

Both preferred the US version.

This video busts the myth of cane sugar being superior due to its "natural" chemistry.

And this video is full of comparisons and experiments on this issue. In the end he eliminated all variables and tasted sugar against HFCS and found no difference between them.

As far as cane sugar being cheaper, that is just not true either. It is cheaper in Mexico for Mexicans. It is more expensive in the US. Switching to cane sugar would increase the prices of soda for US consumers.

I think lobbying for lower sugar versions might be better.

Or we could stop demonizing aspartame. Because, guess what, it's fine.

All forms of sugar are the bad thing people are over-consuming. There is no distinction in their overall badness.

Spending our tax dollars on resources to legislate a pointless switch from sugar to sugar is wasteful.

It is... inefficient.

>Eliminating food deserts

How, exactly?

A food desert isn't 'people are starving', it's 'lack of access to healthy food'.

Do you want the government to force supermarket companies to open branches in unfriendly neighbourhoods? Subsidize those stores with taxpayer money?

Or just to give out free food?

There are plenty of experts with great ideas for how to reduce food deserts. Here is a handy list I smooshed together from a few different sources.

Subsidize Grocery Stores Offer tax incentives and grants to attract full-service grocery stores to underserved areas.

Mobile Markets & Food Trucks Fund pop-up farmers markets and food trucks that bring fresh produce and healthy foods directly into low-access neighborhoods. Ya know, like the ice cream truck, but with tomatoes and shit.

Urban Agriculture Support community gardens, rooftop farms, and local food co-ops to increase local access to fresh produce. Vertical farming and hydroponic technology offer a way to grow fresh vegetables at scale in an urban setting.

Improve Public Transportation Enhance routes and reliability so residents can easily reach grocery stores outside their immediate area. Trains and buses and subways, let's go!

Cooking and Nutrition Education Teach people how to cook nutritious food. Focus on low cost meals with accessible ingredients that can be prepared with minimal effort.

Free Food Yes, free food. We should expand SNAP and make school lunches free. There are 14 million kids living in food-insecure homes. Kids should have access to nutritious meals.

@beardedmrbean said:

Never thought I'd see the day when people on the left started to defend HFCS, guess all it took was the right person suggesting reducing it.

No one is defending it. It's bad. But it is not *worse*. Our understanding has evolved. We realize that replacing sugar with sugar is not going to solve our sugar problem. Eliminating HFCS and replacing it with an identical amount of cane sugar will not have any noticeable health improvements.

@robert-the-foul said:

Another big thing to end food desserts is for fucking junkies and assholes to stop stealing. Then, stores won't close due to a huge money loss.

Poverty is a huge causal factor creating drug addicts and desperate people who have to steal to eat. Right now this country is trying to treat its addiction issue by sending kids and grandmas and pesky protestors to another country.

That's the strategy for the opioid crisis.

Deporting migrants is going to solve everything... because reasons.

*whispers* Most drug smugglers are American citizens.

People are always going to have access to drugs. If you want less addicts, we need to treat them. We need to keep them out of severe poverty and desperation. They need Narcan to stay alive and healthcare to get better. We've tried rounding these people up and putting them in jail and it doesn't work. It's time to take a different approach.

As for the stealing, Universal Basic Income could really help with that. When people aren't desperate, they don't feel compelled to do desperate things to survive and stay fed.

@libertarianbean-plz-dont-step-sh said:

A year ago they were the ones bitching (quite rightly, in my opinion, they were just annoying in the way they did it) that the US didn't have enough restrictions for harmful ingredients in the food industry.

They would also bring up how much different it is in Europe (it is) a lot of studies keep being made every year (they are) and all the chemicals that are discovered to be dangerous are banned (tis true). These people would point out (whine about) how in the US, soooo many of these chemicals are allowed without any sort of restrictions, and said (cried) that the US should be more like Europe.

Everything is chemicals. Chemophobia is an unhelpful approach to food safety. There are plenty of chemicals that are great and plenty of natural ingredients that will kill us.

Europe and the US both have their own food safety systems. And both are pretty good when they are well run. The US does some things better. Europe does some things better. But this idea that Europe is banning more harmful ingredients while the US allows them is mostly wrong. It's complicated and nuanced.

The gist of it is that Europe regulates more with an "abundance of caution" approach. If there is a small chance that something might be harmful and people won't miss it much, they will try to ban or limit it. Sometimes they will ban something just because of public demand despite little evidence to back it up. Which is what happened with food dyes—as there isn't much evidence to support that they are actually harmful.

Food scientist Ann Reardon breaks it down well.

Oh woe is the poor innocent multi billion dollar company! Why would anyone force them to use something that won't cause kids to develop diabetes at an early age!!!

Switching to cane sugar will not prevent diabetes in kids.

Less sugar will.

@siryouarebeingmocked said:

"you only know what the right wingers want"

Not even that. They regularly hallucinate sinister motives for right-wing people.

There are plenty of sinister motives on the Right. I don't have to hallucinate extras.

In this case, RKF Jr. is a conspiracy-brained nut job. He thinks scientific consensus cannot be trusted and will only entertain dubious evidence that goes against that consensus. For him, the truth must always be hidden or hard to find. He needs to be the hero who uncovers it and saves the day. He spits in the face of millions of working-class researchers who have spent their lives building up preponderances of evidence and data to help create the best medicines and treatments in human history.

He wants to burn it all down and have his every conspiracy theory entertained as if it is valid and worthy of consideration. He is cutting the funding of vital research and prioritizing solutions that are either pointless or will make such a small difference that the beneficial health outcomes will be imperceptible.

Spending time, money, and resources switching seed oils to beef tallow is stupid.

If you are deep frying French fries and chicken wings changing to beef tallow isn't going to make them any healthier. You are far more at risk from the fat and calories than what oil is used.

Spending time, money, and resources changing sugar to sugar is stupid.

Spending time, money, and resources banning food dye is also stupid.

Spending time, money, and resources removing fluoride from the water is *very* stupid.

But it gets worse than RFK Jr. wasting time with his pointless crusades.

Many of his crusades are very dangerous. He has already laid off thousands of people in important healthcare roles. He has cut funding for important research.

And he is handling the measles outbreaks about as well as you might expect. He is recommending people take Vitamin A as a treatment.

Whoops!

This isn't the first time his advice has harmed people.

And now he is talking about scouring the private health data of autistic patients to come up with some magical cause for autism in September.

@lordascapelion said:

But holy shit is OP retarded?

“I think we should do X.”

“UH WHY ARE YOU DOING X? YOU SHOULD DO A, B, C AND D YOU FUCKING MORON DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?”

But honestly at this point political propaganda blogs are fueled by retard logic

No, I am not retarded.

Though I am very tired of people trying to force that word to have a comeback. I know you think it signifies you are rebelling against the woke crusade to censor language. But in reality you just immediately let everyone know you are a cringe-lord dipshit.

I think my logic is sound. The government has finite resources. They only have so many employees. They only have so much time to accomplish important work. They only have enough budget to address a handful of major issues.

A good leader of a government department will triage. They will figure out which problems are urgent, which are easy, which are near impossible and then adjust the department's goals and priorities to efficiently address what needs to be done.

Spending time, money, and labor on pointless endeavors robs resources from the more important causes. He's fixing hangnails while the country is bleeding out.

I want him to fix things that are actually broken. I want him to take action that will improve health outcomes on a population scale. We need more research, not less. We need the 5 million kids without health insurance to get care. We need drug costs under control. We need more nurses in hospitals. We need a pandemic response team.

The list of needs is sooooo long and he wants to waste time adjusting the hue/saturation of Froot Loops.

RKF Jr. is picking easy performative actions that will do nothing except satisfy those who believe in conspiracy over actual evidence. Many people are convinced that all of our health issues are due to these inconsequential factors. So when he addresses them and these fools give him a big "attaboy," he will increase his political capital and feel emboldened to tackle bigger conspiracies...

His white whale.

Vaccines.

Actually his white whale was an actual whale that he beheaded.

Okay, vaccines are his OTHER white whale.

He wants to disrupt the most successful medical treatment in history.

Did you know we used to have constant dead babies? Before 1900 people just assumed a few of their kids were gonna die. People think the average lifespan used to be 40 and no one ever made it to old age. Nope... there were just so many dead babies it skewed the statistic. If a person survived childhood, they had a very good chance of living until they were old and gray.

"Vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives over the past 50 years. This includes 146 million lives among children under 5, with 101 million being infants under 1 year. Increased access to crucial vaccines means that infant mortality rates are 40% lower than they would be in a world without vaccines."

So... am I hallucinating?

I can think of a hundred things we could do to improve our collective health a hundred fold more than replacing sugar with a slightly different sugar that breaks down to be the same sugar in our bodies.

Free cancer screenings.

Eliminating food deserts.

Free vaccines.

Free birth control.

Drug treatment.

Naloxone to anyone who wants it.

Okay, I am too tired to do one hundred. But I'm sure I could.

[thefrogman]

Otis would do something funny and then we would laugh at him and then he would be very insulted and sulk until we gave him cheese to cheer him up.

Wait, was he just manipulating us for cheese?

Corgis are the Pagliaccis of the dog world. They desperately want to be taken seriously, but no one can get past their goofy exterior. Which means they will go to extraordinary lengths to show they are serious business.

"I am vengeance. I am the night. I am... keeping your sock."

[thefrogman]

I remember following you back in high-school! It was the giant chapstick or dog toy post from Amazon. I honestly can't 100% remember, but back then I was so depressed and considering ending it all...and that post made me laugh so hard that I followed you. Your cute corgi and your frog hat made me so happy.

I didn't know you still were active on here!!!! Here I am 13 years later and seeing you active post. Sorry if this is weird or strange but thank you, I'm so happy to see one of my favorite blogs still posting. Plus your photography looks amazing too!!!! You're the best Frogman!!!! I hope you're doing well friend!!!!

I'm guessing you are remembering the giant squeaky duck.

I can't believe that was 13 years ago. Otis still had one floppy ear!

I'm so glad you stuck around. And I'm glad I had some part in that.

And thank you so much for following me. In a way, you saved me too. When I first got sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I thought my dreams of doing comedy were dashed. I had similar thoughts of giving up. It was all I ever wanted to do. But I figured out how to do comedy a different way. But to do comedy, you need an audience. That's the most important part. And I don't think I would have made it if I didn't find that audience. You and my other followers sustained me through the most difficult times. You laughed at my jokes and helped me realize my dream.

You are not just a number in a follower count for me.

Stay safe and take care. Thanks again for writing.

[thefrogman]

You don't know me and I don't expect you to, I have never been popular on this platform other than a relatively popular homestuck ask blog back in like 2013. But what I do remember from the olden days is you. I dont exactly remember why you were especially popular back then, but you were. In the years that followed, I came out as a trans woman.

In the last few weeks, I was suddenly reminded of you for some reason, a post I saw or whatever. So I refollowed you and was honestly surprised to see you're still relatively active. I don't think many of the people I followed back then stuck around.

And. I was admittedly worried. Maybe you'd followed the trend of some less accepting popular accounts from the olden days™️

But in the recent past I've read accounts of you being cool. And I appreciate that. So thank you. I, and many others, appreciate you.

A large percentage of my followers are trans. And I have a very close friend who is as well. My followers have been a huge support system for me over the years. When people are that loving and compassionate, one tends to feel indebted. I've lost my dog, then my mom, and then my dad—all in a very short time. And I don't know if I could have survived without the support from my friend and my followers.

The picture of trans people that so many people are fed through conservative media just does not match what I've experienced. With the trans people I know and interact with, I often forget about their trans-ness. They are just folks and that is a small part of their multitudes. They have jobs and friends and hobbies. They like Star Trek and Dungeons & Dragons and cosplay.

I saw the entirety of my friend's transition. And when they got to a place where they were finally comfortable with themselves, I just thought, "That makes much more sense." I finally got to see them as they saw themselves and it was beautiful. They weren't delusional. They weren't pretending to be something they were not. That was them, through and through. It always was.

I want everyone who needs that... to have that.

My friends and followers are under attack and I feel helpless to help them. My health isn't great right now and I barely have the energy to take care of myself. But I try to fight for them when I can. I'm good at researching and constructing persuasive arguments. I know how to put things in the proper context. So that is my contribution for now. I wish I could do more.

I started on Tumblr as a comedian. I made silly GIFs and comics. Then I got a corgi and let people experience vicariously what it is like to have a furry goofball. When comedy required more energy than my body could produce, I found a love for photography. And I guess for writing too. I thought folks would abandon me when I pivoted away from comedy, but many stuck around. I guess they like me or something.

Tumblr has been a home for me. I'm here until it implodes or I shuffle off the coil.

I will do my best to stay cool. I don't like letting people down. Especially those who have meant so much to me.

Thanks for the appreciation. I wish you the best.

[thefrogman]

I should note that lighting from a distant source will not always give you the most dynamic photos. It works for the Moon, but may be a bit bland or sterile for photos of people. Shadows add contrast and interest and shaping. And hard light can reveal harsh texture on faces. Which is why you should try to make the light bigger (softer) if you place it farther away.

There are exceptions.

There is a style of product photography where you want to get the sharpest shadows possible, so you set the light as far away as you can. You also want the smallest light source possible, so no softboxes or umbrellas.

And a small or distant hard light is often used to recreate those old Hollywood style photos.

You'll notice sharp shadows under the nose and chin. But there is also falloff on her lower body and arm. How did they do that with a hard light?

Trickery!

They use a spotlight modifier (a grid or fresnel lens) to collimate the light. Essentially you create all parallel light rays and physically restrict them into a focused beam. The edges of the light are then physically blurred with diffusion or a defocused lens to simulate the falloff of a closer, softer light. If you have ever done theater lighting and played with the spotlight, there is usually a lever to make the beam fuzzy or sharp. Same idea.

When working with very hard light you just need to make sure you have someone with good skin or a good makeup artist or a good skin retoucher (or all 3).

If I were in charge of cosmic lighting, I would do a 2 point lighting design for the moon. A nice rim light from behind so the edges look like they are glowing, and a raking light from a steep angle to enhance the surface texture and make the craters pop.

I'm going to need two baby suns and a really big reflector.

The original image is stupid. That's a given. I guess they are trying to ask why the Moon doesn't have a bright spot and dark edges.

But the Community Note isn't much better.

The short answer is... the Moon is bumpy and the Sun is far away.

The long answer requires me to do some math. So I apologize in advance if I get some numbers wrong. But I promise you will learn some neat things about light if you are into that.

First, I have no idea why they brought retroreflectiveness into this.

Retroreflection is when light is reflected back at the angle of incidence. Meaning no matter what angle you shine light from, it will always reflect straight back to you.

It's a bit of an optical magic trick. It is how street signs and highway markers work.

Weirdly enough, astronauts placed a manmade retroreflector on the Moon which people can use to reflect lasers and disprove the fake Moon landing theory.

The Moon may have retroreflective properties, but that effect would only really be noticeable if you were to shine a tight beam of light like a laser or something. Retroreflection would be more apparent from the perspective of the Sun, not the Earth.

You know what, I should just read the source and see what they are talking about.

"The edges of the full moon seem as bright as the center, without limb darkening, because of the reflective properties of lunar soil, which retroreflects light more towards the Sun than in other directions."

Hey, I was right about the Sun.

But this is a bad explanation. A rare L for Wikipedia. I even checked the primary reference and it doesn't even talk about retroreflectance. It does seem to be a factor, especially for the very outer edges, but looking at other sources my initial answer of the Moon being bumpy and the Sun being far away is much better.

So... let's learn some shit about light.

First we should talk about surface texture as mentioned. You have glossy surfaces and matte surfaces and a spectrum in between.

A glossy surface reflects light very directly (specular). A matte surface scatters light in many directions (diffused). This has to do with how smooth or bumpy the surface is.

The Moon is very rocky and bumpy and dusty, so it has a very matte surface. And I'm guessing since some rays bounce back toward the Sun, we don't get as many direct reflections that would add specularity. Perhaps there is a Moon expert who can weigh in on how much that actually diffuses the light beyond the matte surface texture.

And the reason the Moon is so evenly lit has to do with the distance of the light source. Again, the Sun is super duper far away.

When light is very close to something, it falls off very quickly.

When light is far away, the falloff is very gradual.

From the camera's perspective, the edges of the sphere are farther away than the center. When the light is closer, the edges of the sphere appear darker. But when the light is farther away, the edges of the sphere appear to have a similar intensity compared to the center.

The surface of the Moon is not a consistent distance from us. It is a spheroid so the edges are nearly a thousand miles farther away than the center. But the edges don't fall off into shadow from our perspective.

This is a property of the inverse square law.

Let's say you wanted to light two people and the light was very close—one person might end up in the light's falloff.

But if you move the light farther away and crank up the power, the two people will seem evenly lit.

You can think of light a bit like a shotgun in a video game. When you are close to something the shotgun has a very tight spread and is more lethal. When farther away, it has a larger spread but the lethality is decreased.

The first shotgun blast is very intense directly in the center but has no effect on the edges. The second blast has more even coverage, but the intensity is spread out and diminished.

From a point light source, light starts out very concentrated but the photons spread out over a distance. This dilutes the intensity of the light. The inverse square law says for every doubling of distance, the light becomes 1/4th as bright.

You have the same amount of photons but a larger area to light up. So coverage increases but intensity decreases.

Check out the background in these images.

In the first photo, the light is very close to her face. The intensity of the light is very concentrated. From the perspective of the camera, her face is super bright, but the background is very dim in comparison.

But as you move the light farther away, the photons spread out. If you leave the light on the same power and the camera at the same exposure, the photo on the right would look very dim—probably just pure black. So you'd have to compensate by increasing the power of the light (more photons) or adjusting the exposure of the camera (higher sensitivity) or both. But once you make those adjustments the background and her face seem very evenly lit.

In the first photo, relative to the light source, the background is far away compared to her face. The light might be 5 feet from her face but 10 feet from the background. It has to travel double the distance to hit the background so the intensity of the light hitting the background is 75% darker than the light hitting her face.

The majority of photons are hitting the face and only a few are escaping to the background.

But if the light is 20 feet from her face and 25 feet from the background, the light only travels 25% farther to hit the background. So the background is only 36% darker than the light hitting her face.

To achieve the same exposure the number of photons is increased substantially, but they are spread out and not concentrated in one area.

If you increase the distance enough, the difference gets less and less perceptible.

Now imagine the light is 93 million miles away. The background would only be 0.0000000004% darker than her face.

From the Earth's perspective, the edge of the Moon is roughly 1000 miles farther away from the center of the Moon. And about 0.001075% farther from the Sun. The falloff of light would be impossible for our eyeballs to detect.

To review, the Moon has edge-to-edge lighting with no specular highlights because the surface is bumpy and scatters light and the Sun is ridiculously far away. I'm sure there are other optical effects at play due to the atmosphere and reflective properties mentioned, but by and large, that is what's going on.

It's the same reason the face of a large boulder in direct sunlight doesn't have any bright spots or quick shadow falloff.

Can you use this knowledge to help your photography?

Yes!

Lighting indoor group photos can be very tricky.

You often have several rows of people. If your light source is too close, you may have difficulty getting a good exposure on all of their faces because of the varied distances involved. The back row of people may appear very dark. But if the light is too far away, you may end up getting harsh shadows.

Large light sources produce softer, more flattering light.

Small light sources produce harder, harsher light.

Distant light sources produce even light.

Distant light sources have a smaller apparent size.

Which means you need really big modifiers so you can put the light far enough away to get soft AND even lighting. You have to make the light sources bigger to compensate for the distance.

If all you have is a flash, you can bounce it off the ceiling or a large white wall to increase the size of your light source. Just make sure it is far enough away from everyone to get a proper exposure of all their smiling faces.