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Data source: https://pmc19.com/data/

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The short answer is... a tilt-shift lens.

The slightly more complicated answer is... Mister Rogers.

Depth of field is the area in front and behind your chosen focus point that remains in focus and then slowly gets blurry as you get farther away.

Shallow depth of field only has a narrow slice of the image in focus and gets blurry super quick. This is caused by a large lens aperture and being close to the subject.

Deep depth of field can extend through the entire picture if your aperture is small and you are super far away.

Usually the depth of field lines up with the image sensor of your camera. So if it is tilted forward, the plane of focus matches.

The stuff outside the green area would be blurry. The edges of the green would be slightly blurry. And the dashed green line would be the sharpest area of the photo.

But the tilt-shift lens allows you to create chaos with your plane of focus. In most cases, you would use this to flatten the depth of field so you can get a 2D plane entirely in focus.

If you were to use a normal lens, the bottom left and top right would be blurry.

But with a tilt-shift lens you can do this.

The green area is taking a little nap on the floor.

However, there is an unintended side effect created by this lens. (The "Scheimpflug intersection" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.) You can choose absolutely wacky planes of focus that create a very narrow depth of field over a geographically large area.

Believe it or not, this is when psychology comes into play.

And possibly Mister Rogers.

Our only reference for such a large area having a shallow depth of field is our memories of miniatures on TV. So Mister Rogers and Thomas the Tank Engine trained our brains to see this effect as... small.

Depth of field shrinks the closer you are to something. And when filming miniatures, you are placing the lens close to the scene. But the scene represents something big in our minds. We buy the effect, but not 100%. That blurriness wouldn't be there at a regular scale. So our subconscious remembers we are watching small things pretending to be big. It just files that away in the back of our mind.

And then when we see something like this...

Our brain is all, "Look at all that tiny shit!"

Without Mister Rogers, our brains may have never made these connections and tilt-shift photography may just make us wonder why everything is all blurry. That connection to past experience is vital for this effect to be convincing.

Brains are neat.

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i do think that the funniest i've ever been was entirely on accident one christmas when i was little. i'm a lifelong animal lover and left out carrots and water for the reindeer each year because they were doing the real work, and my poor parents tried to make a magical memory for me and left one carrot on the plate with a bite out of it as if the reindeer had left it.

unfortunately little me had the reasoning skills of a little sherlock and surmised based on my experience with horses that the teeth marks were WAY too small to have been from a reindeer and HAD to have been from a human.

which led to baby pen being PISSED at santa's greedy ass for getting at the carrots that were NOT for him.

the entire christmas morning was derailed because of my fury at santa claus. we didn't even open presents immediately because i had to write a letter IMMEDIATELY to let him know those carrots were NOT for him and it was NOT NICE to not share with the reindeer especially when EVERYONE was leaving cookies for him and-

needless to say, my parents did not EVER try to manufacture christmas magic again for fear of setting off a tiny reindeer union leader.

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Moooola!

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October 14, 2022 - Alex stopped to help save a gunshot victim from bleeding out, he was then given Saint Paul Police Chiefs Award for Valor. He then gave this small speech. [video]

“I feel like I did what anyone would have done with a little bit of training that they have, that I have. I’m a certified firearms instructor, work in a high school in Minneapolis, dad and husband, and a wonderful community member. That day, nine of your squad cars raced past us as I was flagging them down (was said in the letter you sent me), and that was a potential of 18 people. 18 people could have stopped to preserve life, but 18 people chose to go to a potential threat, and I recognize the man had a pistol and we didn’t know what he was doing. I do appreciate the recognition. I won’t keep this stuff. This will go to my mom, this will probably go to my son because I am very uncomfortable being here with you guys. I do not rock with the police, but I do appreciate you giving me the opportunity to say these things. I just want folks to know they don’t keep us safe. We keep us safe. Riots work. Thank you.”

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Had a dream where I somehow convinced the school principal that sports teams shouldn't be divided by gender.

He decided to open this change up with a boys vs girls basketball match.

My fellow smart kids members and quasi friends who were on the boys basketball team were so upset with me but wouldn't explain what the issue was.

Later we managed to talk a bit. They didn't want to be beating up girls and didn't want to lose having weaker shorter girls on their team.

I pointed out that they were playing a sport, and basketball doesn't even get very physical between players. They're not beating up anyone. Also they'd had short guys on their team before.

Yes the girls were probably going to lose the exhibition match. They'd be playing by boy rules. Longer periods a bigger ball. I don't actually know how much of this is real other than the basketball size.

That kind of thing will throw anyone off. But they're skilled players and they'll learn and adapt and having a wider variety of people and skills can only help the team.

One of them was starting to come around. The other was clinging to me and crying.

I left almost crying myself. Then the head of the girls basketball team comes in asking where they're supposed to go and ask how the boys team is doing.

When someone near me tells her they're upset. She says "why? This is my game to lose." Then heads off to the match.

I finally started crying. It was a very emotional dream.

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What are your thoughts on this?

bruh Mewtwo knows what’s up 

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Gather around, my young friends and fellow dinosaurs, let me tell you about some BULLSHIT no one ever tells you about. I'm talking about menopause and perimenopause. Now, menopause has a very stringent medical definition. You have to not have had a period for exactly 12 months and a day to be considered in menopause. All the bullshit before that day once you start going through The Change is considered perimenopause. Here's some bullshit you might experience that people actually talk about when you're in perimenopause:

- shorter time between periods

- irregular periods

- hot flashes and/or cold flashes

- fucked up sleep

- OMG NIGHT SWEATS

- Vagina as dry as the Sahara desert

- lighter periods and/or endless bleeding like it's The Flood but it's in your pants

- lack of interest in Adult Fun Times

This time of joy can last anywhere from a couple of years to a god damn decade and there's no medical way right now to predict it.

Here's some of the REAL bullshit they don't tell you about but your dinosaur aunt is here to let you know:

- You can start perimenopause in your 30s, don't listen to idiot doctors who tell you you're "too young" because they don't know your body like you do.

- Perimenopause will make you HELLA DUMB. Seriously, I'm talking Bigly broken brain. Brain fog? Check. Short term memory? Wave goodbye to it. Ability to make words form out of thoughts? Yeah, good luck to you.

- Perimenopause can cause horrible fatigue because in addition to losing estrogen, you're also losing testosterone. Oh and that also leads to muscle wasting, cool cool.

- Things might suddenly hurt more because estrogen is known to be neuroprotective.

- If you're super lucky like I am, and like to collect rare illnesses, you might even get Burning Mouth Syndrome 💀

- And meanwhile, while you're going through this bullshit, you'll be getting gaslit by doctors who are operating based on 30 year old debunked data about how HRT causes breast cancer (not really) and that they shouldn't put you on it until you're in actual menopause. (Data shows starting HRT early can potentially prevent Alzheimer's in later years.)

- There are entire online clinics right now (I use Midi Health) focused on providing care for peri and menopausal patients and they will happily prescribe you HRT even if your regular PCP or OBGYN do not (if you meet the criteria). I've been pretty impressed with how holistically they view the patient. For full disclosure, I learned about them from my integrative health doctor and they do not accept Medicare (yet).

I'm 46 years old right now and I've been symptomatic for perimenopause for the last 8 years, although it's gotten the most dramatic in the past 2 years or so, which I hope means I'm almost done, holy hell. Yeah I was on the early side, but if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, so it's never too early to think about these things. And I hope to at least spare some of you the mind-fuckery I've been through because no one told me about most of this stuff, including my own mother who just DOESN'T REMEMBER what happened to her and now I completely understand why. And because I also have a connective tissue disease, I used to just dismiss my pain and fatigue as being caused by that illness rather than the loss of hormones.

Anyways, this is why we need Elders in our lives, so they can do Grandma Story Hour like I just did and validate you when the entire medical field tries to gaslight you. I hope you've found some or all of this educational/useful. Please share with your friends because we really do NOT talk about this stuff enough. (Ewwww Moon Blood!)

Stay well, and don't let the bastards grind you down!

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I've been real busy lately because it's December and I work at the post office, so of course I am

But that doesn't mean I can't show up with an unprompted PSA

Hey! Have you ever mailed a letter to Santa Claus? Have you ever wondered what exactly happened to that letter? Well wonder no longer! If it had a stamp and a return address, then odds are that it ended up on the USPS's Operation Santa page!

Every year, the USPS collects letters to Santa Claus, and processes them to black out any identifying information. Last names, addresses, things like that. Then, the letters are posted on the Operation Santa webpage and people can adopt the letters.

Once you adopt a letter, you can buy gifts for them, wrap them up, and package them. Then you get a barcode from the website, and bring them to a post office. The clerk there will scan the barcode, which prints out a label with the address on it, and sends out the gift.

It's anonymous on both ends, and is generally just. A really nice thing to do.

I highly recommend it if you have some money to spare this year and want to give a kid a moment of magic this year

It's one of those things that the post office just happened to be positioned to do, and ended up knocking it out of the park. Unfortunately, I don't think they advertise this nearly well enough, and most letters end up going unanswered

Hopefully, a few more will be answered this year

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TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

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They found the workprint for Fantasia II (which eventually became Fantasia 2000). The one with the sequence with "Pomp and Circumstance" bc Michael Eisner made them include "Pomp and Circumstance" bc his son had just graduated college and Eisner's first idea for the sequence, as shown here, was the Disney princesses "graduating", by being shown with babies, which were delivered by storks, so it's fine that they're all underage I guess. The one he was so proud of he invited all the surviving members of the Nine Old Men to come to the studio to watch it in the hopes they'd agree to un-retire and animate it, only for them to all tell him to his face it was the worst thing they'd ever seen. That one. Cinema history right here