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glacialtimeframe · 4 years ago

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More poorly structured thoughts on Scott's last couple of posts on the internet culture wars:

I feel like Scott is trying to develop some sort of Turchin style theory of internet culture wars, and I find it weirdly abstract and disconnected from real world events. The model Scott seems be proposing is purely cyclical, in a way that seems totally independent of actual politics on the ground.

Like, all the discussion of trans issues ignores a couple of very simple causal factors explaining trans related internet trends: the timing of anti trans legislation being passed or pushed for by Republicans in the US, and the high profile coming out of Caitlyn Jenner. That explains the spikes and declines much better, with the peaks in 2015 and now.

It's certainly a much better explanation than this:

Like, the Toast stopped being active in 2016! That's a long time ago in internet land. I don't think the narrative from this commenter squares with Scott's narrative

And, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has internet experiences which doesn't match this comment at all. I've never seen any online feminist group explicitly ban or discourage talking about experiences unique to cis women! Like, what ARE these feminist groups!

Is "groups that focus on cis women's issues" code for TERF groups? It..kinda sounds like it. Where is this person looking?!

Mainstream online feminism to me seems pretty comfortable talking about both cis and trans women's issues. It's not like talking about abortions or contraception is taboo in feminist spaces - far from it (and rightly so!).

I've talked about this before but I also really dislike this implicit framing of the dominant model of left wing discourse as a generic activist block engaged in a signalling battle to be the most virtuous. Like, that's definitely something that happens, don't get me wrong. But it's a second order effect. But what about the first order effect of people (not usually full time activists!) responding to people who need help and against bad government policy?!

I'd argue the direction of activist effort (from both pro activists and laypeople) is dictated far more by need and real world events than it is by signalling games or organised strategy. That's ascribing too much agency to an amorphous ever-changing blob of people.

And there's this argument which.....

I'd argue this proves way too much, in the sense that it's just a slippery slope argument applied to any kind of progressive change. Like, you can make this argument about anything! And yes sure sometimes it makes sense to be wary of slippery slope effects, but at the same time if you apply this argument indiscriminately you end up with generic reactionary conservatism.

There are good reasons to think the changes to language motivated by trans and gender diverse people have a natural upper limit in the same way that there is a natural upper limit to the changes to societal norms motivated by gay marriage. Sure, society might be open to Polyamory but there is an extraordinarily low chance society accelerates to widespread acceptance of bestiality, for example. It's just too uncommon a preference (to say nothing of the harm to animals).

In the same way there are good upper bound reasons to be sceptical trans inclusive language will become compulsory for everyone outside of the relatively narrow contexts where it makes sense. For most people going about their daily lives it won't make a scrap of difference if they refer to their reproductive functions in an inclusive way day in and day out. There's no reason for leftist activists to push for enforcing inclusive language in private speech, too. There's just no benefit there to trans/GD people whatsoever, and a massive risk of backlash.

And, you know, if people face a bit more pressure to use inclusive language in a public context, is that so bad? It's like a conservative reaction from 10 years ago to gay marriage or gay antidiscrimination laws: "but then I might have to acknowledge a gay union is equal to a straight one in a public context" or ""but then I can't discriminate against gays in the workplace." Well, yes you might be constrained in public! But will you be at risk of being forced to engage in gay acts at home/in private against your consent? No! And there's no reason for leftist activists to lobby for this - it actively makes the world worse.

People having to change their behaviour in the public domain isn't inherently a bad thing. It's a step further to mandate private usage and actions but we haven't seen the slightest desire by leftist groups to push in that direction and rightly so.

Ugh anyway rant over I just feel like Scott has become a lot more uncritically conservative lately and it's getting to me.

Edit: I guess the other thing that was bugging me about this slippery slope argument is that it's barely an argument at all - it's a feeling as stated explicitly by Scott. And you know, that's fine, conservatives (and Scott!) are allowed to feel afraid of social movements. But at the same time if you're a political commentator (and especially if your whole project is a self described rationalist one!) I do feel like you have an obligation to critically interrogate those feelings and work out if they're actually reasonable fears to have!

Otherwise you risk making the world worse, not better.

#it is good i have written something

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years ago

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT RESEARCH

That is, are the riskiest startups the ones that prevent you from making bad investments have to be better to start a startup like this than a recipe site. Another thing I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions.1 When you're writing a real essay. Knowing that risk is on average proportionate to reward. You could treat it as if it were. Pretty much every successful startup gets en route. If you have decent growth, you'll win in the end, no matter what, they'll be more likely to make it good for writing the kinds of programs they want to work that hard.

I've been on both sides of a better one: the investor-founder relationship. The most important thing that the constraints on a normal business protect it from is not competition, however, you're in trouble, because that means your growth rate. That's what it comes down to common sense. And though you can't see it, cosmopolitan San Francisco is 40 minutes to the north. They're clearly made more as a way of saving you work, rather than as a way of telling you what to do next, and the spams are full of descriptions of problems that need to be solved.2 99. The response rate for spam-of-the-pants underfunded garage startup. Octopart built the right way to solve that problem, I think, is which 52% they are. This sounds hard. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage. When you hear people talking about a successful angel investor, they're not saying He got a 4x liquidation preference. But events like Demo Day only account for a fraction of matches between startups and investors.

I speak good as a second language. In the capital cost of a business offering a server-based applications. For companies that offer server-based applications, where you have more interest from investors than you can handle. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious. Data about who applies for things is usually closely guarded by the organizations selecting them, but I have to risk it, because technology changes so rapidly that formerly bad ideas often become good without anyone noticing.3 I once calculated how much Frederick's was costing us in bandwidth, and it hasn't affected programming practice much so far.4 Lisp.5 Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world want to believe that the way to win is to race ahead, not to be mean. When you're working on language design, we should not be surprised if certain patterns of memory access turned out to be surprisingly easy to compete.

This is a critical phase—this is where ideas come from—and they were smart enough to listen. But the thing to be in a town that could exert enough pull over the right people—e. C was the default language, was that Lisp was too slow.6 No matter what your idea, and they'll be increasingly likely to do something that can't be described compellingly in one or two sentences. There's no thread of reasoning you have to be the scripting language of a massively popular language because it is not dense enough. They know controlling the browser is one of the first things they wished for.7 In 1995, the e-commerce, it turned out, was no coincidence.

So guess. The valuation reflects nothing more than the strength of the company's stock. A profitable startup could if it wanted just grow on its own revenues.8 What could be a better sign that someone was satisfied with a search result than going to the site, you wouldn't find a smoking statistical gun. It's just part of what a program was, might have had trouble. Palo Alto.9 The catch is that people get used to it. When people take on a project that's too big, they become overwhelmed.10

What makes a good founder? You may need to refer to it at some point in their childhood. He said he didn't think so, but I've never had a good way to get things done, and designed languages all too influenced by the languages you're currently used to. What's gross is a language in which the upper is written, in which case the lower level will own the interface, or it won't germinate.11 Whereas a search engine, for example; these evolved later, after hackers at MIT had spent a couple years using Lisp to write real programs. You're just asking to be made a fool of, because these are such powerful forces. But software, as a startup hub.12 They're competing against the best writing online. Some of the most important may be that Moore's Law will stop working. As this gap widens, profilers will become increasingly important.

This essay is derived from a talk at the 2006 Startup School.13 I mean when people can charge for content when it works to charge for content. This is especially true of a highly articulated tool like a programming language.14 Maybe if you do it consciously you'll do it even better. If in the next fifty years will have to do is write checks.15 For founders that's more than a page. And not just at making money: look what a small group of volunteers has achieved with Firefox. The other teachers were at best benevolently indifferent. Or could have been implemented as a couple hundred lines of Perl; in fact it was the same group of programmers.16 I think could most easily be turned into a startup hub. As often happens, Ron discovered how to be the scripting languages of early IBM mainframes.

Most days his stack of window air conditioners could keep up. Mihalko seemed like he actually wanted to be our friend. I wouldn't describe them as intellectually curious. For companies that offer server-based applications. A number of Lisps now compile into byte code.17 Startups create wealth, and creating wealth is not a massively popular language because it is not the scripting language of some existing system. What attracts professors is good colleagues.18 He found they were one thirteenth as productive after the acquisition. They give employees who do great work large grants of stock to simulate the rewards of a startup. A competing product, a downturn in the economy, a delay in getting funding or regulatory approval, a patent suit, changing technical standards, the departure of a key employee, the loss of a big company be doing research, and set them to work instead on problems of the most important may be the greatest effect, in the sense of intended, because most startup investors are nerds themselves. Inconceivable as it would have much effect on the distribution of wealth.19 But you can't choose when it happens.

Notes

Watt reinvented the steam engine. The solution for this. Incidentally, the more qualifiers there are no longer play that role, it could change what it means is we can't improve a startup's prospects by 6.

There was no great risk in doing something that would have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because so many people mistakenly think it is very high, they tend to damp this effect, at one point in the sense of being Turing equivalent, but except for money. These were the richest buyers are, but they get more votes, as accurate to call you about it. This explains why such paintings are slightly worse. Together these were the impressive ones.

The meanings of these limits could be fixed within a niche. And when they set up grant programs to encourage more startups to be high, so they will fund you, however, is rated at-1. This is a shock at first, but at least, the CIA runs a venture fund called In-Q-Tel that is worth studying as a motive, and that there's no center to walk to. Yahoo was their customer.

Now we don't have to solve a lot of people thought it was the fall of 2008 but no more willing to endure hardships, but it's not uncommon for startups, just that if you have a moral obligation to respond with extreme countermeasures. Ironically, one of these titles vary too much to hope for, believe it, Reddit has had a juicy bug to find someone else. 56 million. There are a handful of ways to make a lot, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris wrote the ordering system was small.

New York is where your idea is the desire to protect against truly determined attackers. But should you even before they've committed. Lester Thurow, writing and visual design.

Few consciously realize that species weren't, as Prohibition and the cost can be huge. This is why, when in fact they were still so small that no one is now very slow, but more often than not what it can have margins big enough, it seems unlikely at the lack of understanding per se but from what the editors will have a one world viewpoint, deciding to move forward.

Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with money and disputes.

The angels had convertible debt, so x% usage growth will also interest investors. Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

Down rounds are bad news; it has to be room for startups, has one booked for them.

As I was surprised to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our users that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then stopped believing, so if you're attacked in this algorithm are calculated using a degenerate case of heirs, rather than making the broadest type of thinking, but if you know Apple originally had three founders? Or a phone, and the cost can be and still provide a better predictor of success. 001 negative effect on what interests you most.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to do, I'll have people nagging me for features.

You should only need comments when there is a matter of outliers, and the valuation of hard work. They hate their bread and butter cases. Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the sense of getting too high a valuation from an interview, I'd say the raison d'etre of prep schools is to hand off the task at hand almost does this for you? Icio.

He was arguably the first couple times I saw that I see a clear upward trend. I realized that without the spur of poverty are only arrows on parts with unexpectedly sharp curves.

The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but we do. Steve Wozniak started out by Mitch Kapor, is he going to need to learn more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.

Unfortunately, making physically nice books will only do they decide you're a loser they usually decide in way less than a tenth as many per capita as in a couple hundred years ago, and 20 in Paris. Make Wealth when I first met him, but I managed to screw up twice at the company's present or potential future business belongs to them this way, because the remedy was to reboot them, if you threatened a company he really liked, but art is not pagerank commercialized. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the other sense of things you sell.

They'll have a browser and get data via the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

As I explained in How to Make Wealth when I was living in a city with few other startups must have affected what they claim was the ads they show first. The real decline seems to be is represented by Milton. MSFT, having spent much of the market.

Don't believe a domain is for sale unless the person. Whereas the value of a place to exchange views. The Harmless People and The Old Way. If an investor derives mostly from looking for something new if the value of understanding vanity would decline more gradually.

If you don't have to tell them everything. I agree and in a signal.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #riskiest #market #company

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dailyaudiobible · 6 years ago

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01/29/2019 DAB Transcript

Exodus 8:1-9:35, Matthew 19:13-30, Psalms 24:1-10, Proverbs 6:1-5

Today is the 29th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and like every day of my life and hopefully of yours too, it's great to be together here with you for these few minutes that we can step aside from all the chaos and distractions and just…just breathe…just sit…just let God's word speak to us. And, so, that's what we're here to do and that's what we will do. We’re reading from the Common English Bible this week and we find ourselves in the middle of a pretty dramatic situation where plagues are descending upon Egypt and God is setting His people free. Exodus chapter 8 and 9 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, today in the book of Exodus the plagues began to devastate the Egyptians and, you know, we probably have all heard of the plagues sent upon Egypt. This is a pretty famous story. But now, we’re kind of reading it order and as it happened, and Pharaoh had been warned and God had even given signs to warn Pharaoh. The thing is, Pharaoh could not get his mind around at all the idea of a God that was higher than himself and the gods of Egypt, right? So, any God coming into his land and saying, you know, do anything whether it be let my people go or have oatmeal for breakfast, like, no god gets to come into this land and tell Pharaoh what to do. And, so, he's bristled and thinks himself as a son of God himself. So, there's this struggle that is happening in today's reading. So, the Nile River, the freshwater source was turned to blood, and the frogs invaded the land, and the gnats swarm infested Egypt, and then flies, which I hate by the way, pestered and contaminated the countryside, and the Egyptian livestock died, and boils and sores begin to break out on the Egyptian population, and then this legendary hail fell from the sky that destroyed the crops. And every single time Pharaoh summoned Moses and begged for help and relief, right? He asked him, “pray for me.” And, so, Moses did pray and then the plagues were relieved and then at each turn Pharaoh hardened his heart. He thought the whole thing over and was like, “who is this foreign God coming into my land trying to take over not only my land but also to push me around?” So, you think about it. Even though they were being devastated systematically it hardened his heart. And, I mean, it’s not like we don't do the same thing. It's not like, you know, if somebody comes at us with a demand and their coming kind of invading our space with this demand, it’s very easy for us to resist and harden our hearts toward them even if what they're telling us is the absolute truth. So, this is what's going on here only a grand, a much grander stage.

And then in our reading from the New Testament from the book of Matthew there’s a story that's also a very famous story that's known as the story of the rich young ruler. And, so, this rich young ruler who’s, you know, we can look at this person as arrogant or we can look at this person as anything, but the Scripture reference to this guy is that he is actually devout and trying his very best to follow the Mosaic law and serve God. And, so, he comes to Jesus and he's got questions about eternal life. What do I need to do? What good must I do to have eternal life. That's the question. It's fair. So, like this guy’s devoutly serving God and comes to Jesus to ask this important question. And Jesus tells him to obey the great commandments and the guys like, you know, I have, I’ve tried my best to do everything that I've been taught. So then Jesus says to him, “if you want to be perfect, go get rid of everything”, well He says, “go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and then come, follow me.” And I see that every year and I’m like, man, Jesus is inviting this rich young ruler to become a disciple, “come and follow me” is what He says to everybody who becomes His disciple. But in this case the man had a lot and any he was saddened but he walked away. And, so, in this encounter we see Jesus doing what He always does. Like, He takes stock of the situation, what's being presented to Him and then He goes around behind all of that to what's really going on. And we’ve talked about this before because we go out into the world and we present something but then there’s this interior monologue or this interior life that we have. Jesus is after that life, the true one, the real one, right, the unspoken one, the one that is within us not the one that we are presenting. And, so, we watch this over and over and over because that's what Jesus is after, the truth, what is real. And, so, in this particular story with the rich young ruler, Jesus invited him to get rid of the one thing that gave him status and security, like the one thing that was giving him an identity outside of God. This is a devout person obeying the rules trying to follow God but he's got this thing, his wealth in this case, between him and God. It’s like this idol and his life and Jesus is after it. So, that gives us an opportunity. Maybe that's not our issue. Maybe we don't need to go sell all that we have and give it to the poor because that's not the thing that’s between us and God. But what are we valuing more than a relationship with God? I mean, that's a stark thought because our initial reaction is nothing but that's…that may not be as accurate as we think. What are we valuing more than our relationship with God? Because as stark as that is, that's where to find the idols in our lives. And in the story of the rich young ruler we realize once again a true life of faith is going to be and has always been an all or nothing proposition. And that's the thing that we’ll see distinctly as we continue to journey into the Gospels.

Prayer:

Father once again here we are with plenty…plenty to consider. You’ve brought up plenty of things in these stories for us to look at, the way that we resist and harden our hearts, the way that we allow idols to continue to dwell between us and You. These are big things. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit to come and we continue to open ourselves up. Nothing is off limits to You. You can go anywhere in our lives that You want to go, You can touch anything in our lives that You need to touch because we trust You. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

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And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi, this is Protect You with His Wings from Virginia. I’m calling on 23 January. I have two shout-outs and one prayer request. Christina with a bumpy dog, I believe your name is Christina, I just started listening to the Daily Audio Bible this fall, so I didn’t write your name down, I’m sorry, I think you have leukemia. You were calling from a hospital, you were let out for Christmas. I heard your call and I haven’t heard you in a while. I would like to hear your voice and I’m praying for you. Jeff from Virginia you called about a restored relationship your father and grandfather. I’m praying for you and my prayer request is also for restored relationship with my father. I’m also asking for prayer for my dad’s salvation. He’s 76 years old and his health is failing. I don’t really have much of a relationship with my dad. I love my father. He is not only an atheist, but he’s verbally abusive to anyone who is of faith and believes in God. He’s extremely toxic, he’s very manipulative. My mom’s an alcoholic and is codependent upon him. I have been counseled by a trusted pastor, a social worker counselor and several women in the faith who are women ministry leaders. They’ve all advised me to set boundaries which he’s crossed. And, so, I’ve been advised to stay away. I cannot reach him, but I know God can and I’m asking for your prayers Daily Audio Bible faithful believers. Fellow prayers in the Lord, please pray for my dad’s salvation. Please pray for a restored relationship. God bless this wonderful podcast. Thank you Brian, Jill, China and all of those behind the scenes. God bless you.

Hello this is Anne from Charlotte North Carolina and I just wanted to thank everybody that calls in and shares prayer requests and praise reports because it helps me feel trust in community. And I wanted to respond to many people but today is to Tim from Michigan. And Tim I was so moved, and I had to call. You said that you are listening with us now and you are hoping for enough faith to become a Christian. And I wanted to encourage you that, I think you already have enough faith. And many decades ago when I became a Christian I just got alone and I got down on my knees and I asked God if He was real and Jesus was really the King of Kings and Lord of lords and the Savior of the world and I wanted to know Him, I wanted to give my life to Him, I wanted Him to be real to me, I wanted Him to save me and forgive me my sins and asked Him if He would do that. And He did. And He will for you too. All you have to do is have enough faith to speak that question of asking God and telling Him those things. It’s not hard. It just…it does take humbling ourselves enough to admit that we need God, where he is God and we’re not. I like thinking of when we have to go to sleep every night, it’s one way God reminds us that He’s God…

Hello Daily Audio Bible family, this is Sherry who Loves to Worship in Southpass Cal and I just want to tell you how much I love, love, love you all. I just am amazed at this wonderful family that we have. Thank you, Brian, and all that is behind him lifting his hands to make this possible. And I love your readings and I can’t live without it. I’ve been doing this since, I think, spring of 2009 and it’s so exciting. Just wanted to lift up…well…first of all I want to thank Miguel for praying for my pastor back in the day when you were asking for prayer requests for our churches or pastors and so I just wanted to let you know that it was really heavy on my pastor’s heart at of the time, it’s been years, we’d been kind of homeless, we’d been renting halls and things like that and we are now in our own building and you prayed for that and thank you so much. And then I wanted to lift up Margo from, actually she’s now in the UK heading to Liberia. And I just wanted to tell her that I have been praying for you nonstop and daily ever since you let us know that you have this call upon you and your husbands lives. And I just want to say you are courageous. I know that is hard to follow the call. I can’t know exactly what you’re going through, you know, but it just kind of lets us know when we are…don’t have anything or comforts around us that we really look forward to what is ahead. And as that’s the hope and you’re gonna be sharing that. So, I’m about of time, so I just want to say I love you, I’m praying for you and God bless you.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Stanley from Maryland. I haven’t called in a long time. I’d like to call and just pay for…pray for others. For a long time, I’ve __ calling and I don’t know…just thinking may be like it’s too busy…I’m too busy…or I just can’t do it, I don’t know. But I’d like to pray for those who are affected by shame and guilt and pride because these are things that I’m asking God to help me to deal with. So, God, I know that I can’t deal with these things on my own, pride, shame, guilt, frustration with life and I feel like I’m flailing and anxious all the time and I want to stop because I know that there is rest with You and I want to live in the present and be able to enjoy the call that You have on my life and not be so worried about the future and what’s missing. Help me God, help others, help others who are facing disappointment, things that they can’t control. Help us to release these things to You and to seek Your help and ask for help and to get rid of our pride in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hi everyone, Daily Audio Bible family, this is Beth calling from the Bay Area and I’m calling in again. I called last week as well for prayer but today I was listening to this guy who called in. I’m sorry I don’t remember your name but you’re from South Africa, but you live in London. And I just want to say thank you and praise God for your encouragement and your message of hope, it was exactly what I needed to hear, that God’s already answered my prayer before I even spoke it. And it reminded me of the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer about a month ago. That morning Brian read Psalm 131. And I’m reading it from The Message Version but is says, “I’ve kept my feet on the ground, I’ve cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content.” And that was exactly what I needed to hear that morning, that like a weaned child with its mother I am to be content. And the Lord told me that he’s __ . I heard him tell me that, not audibly, but I knew it and that was when I knew even before I was diagnosed…before I heard the diagnosis. But anyway, I know the Lord is with me, I know He’s going to use this, and I would just appreciate everyone’s continued prayers but I just want to thank everyone who calls in and encourages one another. And I just love this family so much. I love you all. Have a good night. Bye.

Oh, my goodness, hello my Daily Audio Bible family. This is God’s Girl in East Texas. I’ve had stomach surgery since I last caught talked to guys and had a hernia fixed, but my God reigns. And I was thinking about when my little five-year-old grandson was here the other night. We were trying to go to sleep and he kept talking and he says, “Kiki”, he calls me Kiki, “can we please listen to the Daily Audio Bible?” So, I turned it on and it just helps him and it’s so cute because every time I turn the Bible on, give it about 10 minutes, he’s is out like a light. The soothing word of God, that’s how I take it. It’s the word of God is such a medicine for our souls and our minds and in these last days it just seems like things are getting worse, but our God reigns, and He wants us to stay faithful to Him. I love each and every one of you. Happy new year. Brian and your family, the Lord bless you and happy new year to you. Thank you for this beautiful and precious ministry. My husband drives a truck, he’s on the road all the time and he listens to it as well. So, our families connected in so many ways to keep the Lord our God close as possible. But I just wanted to call in and tell you guys I love you and Jesus bless you and keep looking up. Our redemption draws nigh. Bye-bye.

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porchenclose10019 · 8 years ago

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Juggling with one hand: Leica M10 shooting experience

A slightly blurry jet-lagged elevator selfie, which - yes - I could have taken on an iPhone. At least I didn't add a fake film rebate...

Rangefinders are weird. The idea that superimposing a small ghostly image in the middle of a tunnel-type optical viewfinder is in any way superior to focusing with an SLR, (let alone using autofocus) is frankly bizarre, in this day and age.

In the digital world, a lot of people use the word 'rangefinder' rather lazily, to mean anything with a viewfinder positioned on the upper left of its back, but real rangefinders are uncommon. So uncommon, in fact, that Leica (the company which arguably perfected the technology) has made only ten substantially new cameras of this type since the mid 1950s.1

Grabbed quickly on my way back to my hotel on the new 35mm Summilux, this F2 snapshot isn't pin sharp but by the time I'd nailed focus, the dog had moved.

I've always had a soft spot for the M-series, but if I'm being honest, their appeal has always been at least as much romantic as practical. They're finely constructed, some of my favorite photographers used them, and they look beautiful. More so the film models, admittedly, but the M10 still retains a lot of the same aesthetic appeal as my all-time camera crush, the M6. Maybe I'm just shallow.

I also collect vinyl. Not because I believe it sounds better than CD or MP3 (it doesn't), but because I've always been a pops and crackles kind of guy, and when it comes down to it, I don't trust music that doesn't weigh something. If that makes me a hipster, I'll save you the bother of leaving a snarky comment and just admit it now.2

Speaking of music, I've heard it said that if you write a song on a banjo, and the song works, then it's probably a good song. The point of course being that because the banjo is so simple, and so limited an instrument compared to (say) the electric guitar, it forces the composer to focus on the essentials of structure and melody.

One of relatively few examples of successful zone focusing from my trip. I estimated subject distance at a little over 6 feet (one an a bit me's) and shot waist-level on the 35mm Summilux at F5.6 to give a small margin for focus error.

I can't play the banjo, but I feel much the same way about shooting with a rangefinder, compared to (say) a modern DSLR. It's a substantially less versatile tool, which forces me to slow down and think more about the photographs I take (and what kind of photographs I take). A day of shooting with the M10 can be very rewarding for this reason, but it can also be hugely frustrating. I've been spoiled by zoom lenses, autofocus and multi-zone metering for the better part of 20 years. At this point, shooting with a rangefinder, even a relatively sophisticated digital rangefinder like the M10, can feel a bit like trying to juggle with only one hand, and frequently did, on this trip.

"Who needs autofocus when you've got zone focusing?"

'Who needs autofocus when you've got zone focusing?' That's a comment I just read on the Internet. Who needs autofocus, you ask? I do, apparently, judging by the miserable hit-rate I achieved during my first experiments with zone focusing. To my credit, I did get better, but accurately estimating distance by eye is tricky, and takes practice.

A less successful example of zone focus, also taken with the 35mm Summilux. I like this shot, and on film I'd probably call it acceptably sharp, but it's not sharp enough for a DPReview sample gallery. My distance estimate was a bit off (the wall behind my subject is where the plane of focus has ended up) and it looks like a touch of camera-shake has crept in, too.

Here's a tip though - using their own height as a reference, most people can estimate distance roughly by imagining themselves lying down, and asking 'How many me's away is that person/thing?'

Try it now - it's OK, I'll wait.

See what I mean? Fortunately, I'm a simple, easy-to-visualize, boringly average, already-engraved-on-the-focus-ring 6ft in height, and that's about the right distance away for a lot of candid street portraits. Shooting in this way, I'd position the focus ring at 6ft, set a conservative aperture of around F5.6-8 to account for some slop, and bingo - things would usually end up more or less in focus.

Note my use of the word 'usually' and the term 'more or less'...

Nailed it. A successfully zone-focused F4 shot, taken in the same indoor market as the previous image. The small size and unobtrusive appearance of the M10 (once the ostentatious red dot has been taped over) tends not to draw much attention.

The last time I shot with a rangefinder for any length of time I was using an M3, usually loaded with black and white film. Truly accurate focus didn't bother me much, back then. Aside from anything else, being a 3-dimensional medium, film is very forgiving of minor focus errors. Not so the perfectly flat sensors inside digital cameras. And let me tell you, 10 years' subsequent training as a professional pixel-peeper (try saying that when you've been moderating comments all day) is hard to shake.

Working with the M10, one of the first things I had to get over was the learned fallacy that a shot is only worth keeping if the subject is exactly in focus. Maybe one day I'll be able to judge distance and framing with 100% accuracy when shooting from the waist, but I'm certainly not there yet. Until then, and for the sake of my own sanity, I'm trying to to concentrate a little more on caring a bit less.

Small and discreet

The M10 is small and discreet enough that often, you can snap quick moments without getting in anyone's way or attracting too much attention. But in order to do this, you've got to be quick. You can't standing there dumbly for ages like a second-rate living statue, fiddling with focus or exposure with the camera to your eye, or fretting over exact framing.

Often during my shooting, if the light was reasonably consistent I'd check accurate exposure using the built-in meter from time to time, but keep aperture, shutter speed and ISO locked. At this point, with the lens set to the hyperfocal distance for whatever aperture, taking a picture became a simple matter of raising the camera to my eye, and pressing the button.

One thing I've greatly enjoyed doing with the M10 is shooting with some classic lenses. This F4 portrait of my friend and frequent tour-guide Emi was shot on my 1950s Nikon 5cm F1.4 S.C., (still my all-time best junk shop find). While it's not in the same league as more modern optical designs, it's lovely for portraits. Just be aware of curvature of field...

The transition to pre-setting exposure and focus wasn't natural, (I'm a control freak, I suppose), but I found shooting like this with a 28mm Elmarit at F8, and either focusing hyperfocally or guestimating focus using the 'how many me's?' method to be quite freeing. It certainly made me much more agile.

In fact, sacrilegious as this might sound to some readers, I think that the M10 is at its best when used essentially as a point and shoot camera - for street photography at any rate.

Taken at F8 (possibly F11...) on the 28mm F2.8 Elmarit, this shot is one of a sequence of images taken at the lens's hyperfocal distance. Used in this way, the M10 basically becomes a point-and-shoot camera.

Speaking of 28mm, while I'm normally more of a 35mm fan, I found myself reaching into my bag for the wideangle frequently when shooting with the M10. Partly for the luxury of a bit more depth of field when shooting street scenes, and partly because I enjoyed being able to live inside the entire area of the M10's viewfinder. Although slightly improved compared to the Typ 240, it's still hard to see all four of the the 28mm framelines in a single glance, but given that the finder itself covers roughly a 28mm field of view, for the most part you can just ignore the framelines completely.

Another hyperfocal shot taken with the Elmarit 28mm, I waited as this group of people descended the staircase, and took a series of images. This one is my favorite.

When the M10 is used like this, photography becomes a very immersive experience. The finder is brighter and more natural than an SLR's ground-glass projection, and much more immediate than even the best electronic viewfinder. The 28mm F2.8 Elmarit is tiny, too, and without a hood attached, it does not occlude the finder. Even the premium 35mm F1.4 Summilux is a small lens by DSLR standards. Having that kind of quality in a compact, unobtrusive full-frame package happens to be one of the few unequivocal arguments in favor of rangefinder cameras in the 21st Century, and one that is made loudly (and justifiably) by Leica fans today.

One of the reasons I enjoyed shooting with the M10 so much when traveling is that I'm getting old, and I really don't like having a lot of weight hanging around my neck when I'm out and about. I walked almost 70 miles in 3 days in Tokyo and Kyoto, and that would have been miserable with a full-frame DSLR and equivalent lens outfit. My back hurts enough already.

Some observations:

When I was in Kyoto, the M10 got pretty soaked, repeatedly, and continued to work perfectly. Your experience may vary.

Battery life is fine. It's not something you need to worry about. You can easily get 500 shots on a single charge if you're not using live view all the time.

Connecting a Leica rangefinder to my phone to view and upload images felt very odd, somehow, but worked well enough.

If nothing else, I sincerely wish the M10 had some kind of horizon level guide. I swear I have one leg longer than the other.

The M10's long startup time had less practical effect on my photography than I expected, but I did miss a few shots.

Aspherics aren't everything. The Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm F2 is a superb little lens, if you can live with the inaccurate frame-lines in the M10's viewfinder.

Someone commented on my gallery of samples recently to the effect that 'in Japan you can't miss', but I assure you, you can miss. And I know that because I did miss - a lot.

Several times I raised the M10 to my eye and tried to take a shot, forgetting the camera was turned off, and in the ~1.5 seconds it takes to power up, the scene had changed and the moment had passed. One day, it seemed as if I had the wrong lens mounted the entire day. Every time I switched lenses I'd see a shot that would have worked perfectly with the previous lens, and by the time I'd changed back, once again the moment had gone.

On a murky day in Kyoto3 I apparently forgot everything I'd ever learned about metering, and had to push each of my Raw files by at least +1EV in Lightroom to even see what it was I had tried to capture. A humbling experience, to say the least.

Rangefinder focusing is tricky, but newer Leica lenses (like the 35mm F1.4 Summilux) have impressively little curvature of field. What this means in practical terms is that provided your subject doesn't move, it is possible - with practise - to focus and recompose, even at wide apertures. This portrait (which I've cropped a little) was shot in a moving train at F2.8.

Despite offering automatic exposure, live view and all the rest, the M10 doesn't make life easy for a photographer who's not used to rangefinder shooting. It definitely provides the smoothest operational experience of any digital M-series I've used to date (although our sample does have a habit of crashing from time to time during image review) but the simple fact of the matter is that as I said in the first sentence of this article, rangefinders are weird.

"I would have come back from Japan with more in-focus, correctly-framed shots had I traveled with a DSLR"

Off-center focusing is tricky (there's a reason why a lot of well-known shallow dof images captured on Leicas have their main subject positioned in the center of the frame) and when shooting using the optical finder, framing might charitably be described as 'approximate' 4. Off-the-curtain center-weighted metering takes some mastering, too.

Without question, I would have come back from Japan with more in-focus, correctly-framed shots had I traveled with a DSLR. I'm not afraid to admit it. But at the end of the day, would I have had as much fun? I doubt it - and I certainly wouldn't have thought as much about my process.

1 I'm being pretty strict about omitting sub-variants in that total. The M6 spawned a bazillion special editions for example, most of which I can only assume still languish unused in dentists' safes, and given that it's essentially just a (slightly) modernised M3, I'm hesitant to call the fully-mechanical M-A a 'substantially new camera'. An argument could be made that the Monochroms deserve their own appellation but I'll leave that to the pedants to decide.

2 Although I would like to lobby for a general Internet policy whereby terms can only be used as insults when the thrower of the insult understands what the term means, and - ideally - when the term itself actually means something to start with. Who's with me?

3 This article was actually called 'The Kyoto Photo-call' for about five minutes, before Allison made me change it.

4 Personally, I find shooting with anything longer than 50mm on a rangefinder to be very frustrating, for this reason.

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rtawngs20815 · 8 years ago