Dennis Schrader

Good morning! A big news story this week has been wildfires in Oklahoma and Kansas, with one burning about 300,000 acres and the towns of Englewood and Ashland being evacuated in Kansas. This picture is taken in Big Basin Prairie Preserve looking south into the area where this fire took place. The far horizon is about 8-10 miles away and Englewood about 5 miles past that.

Some people use the Force… 🤨 I prefer a well-timed toast and a five-year mission. 🥂 May the Fourth be with you… if you must but let’s be honest; I’ve been boldly going since before it was cool. 😉🚀

May the fourth be with you

California Homelessness Executive making $430,000 per year, funneled million of dollars into her husband’s NGO three separate times, and has taxpayers pay for open bars at her parties. She paid $800,000 to silence whistleblowers @5149jamesli “Her name is Dr Va Lecia Adams Kellum. She's the former CEO of the LA Homeless Services Authority” - She paid herself a monstrous salary, $430,000 a year. - Then she funneled millions of dollars into her husband's sham organization, allegedly three separate times - She also really tried to booze it up at her holiday party by demanding that taxpayers pay for her open bar, and when an associate of hers said that, hey, that is an improper use of public funds, she got visibly angry and then terminated her employment “This is not only very petulant behavior, but also very illegal. After that, she started hiring her friends with whistleblowers, alleging that she pushed out staff in experienced staff to hire unqualified friends and former subordinates from her previous job into high level, high salary positions within the LA Homeless Services Authority. And when people caught wind of this and started reporting, she tried to cover her tracks by destroying public records and also arranging to pay hush money, $800,000 to silence whistleblowers.” This is why the homeless problem in LA will never get solved. It’s a business and the people who run the business, the politically connected NGOs, are all getting filthy rich. They are quite literally paying themselves half a million dollar salaries and living like kings How have no Democrats who have allowed this gone to prison

@Kristin_Mae That's a gorgeous shot, no reason to be bummed other than it wasn't what you planned, but sometimes that works for the best. I don't know if I have seen a moonburst like that before.

I'm kind of bummed that I sacrificed sleeping in on a Saturday for this. I had planned to shoot the full moon setting inside Garden of the Gods. I didn't account for the mountains being in the way (silly me), the timing wasn't right for the shot I had planned, it was really dark. To top that off, there's an event happening where vehicle traffic isn't allowed in the park until 10 AM. (Awesome for pedestrians, sucks for me). Anyway, I had to rush up to a different lookout above the park and I had less than 5 minutes to set up. My camera settings weren't ready, I couldn't see a thing. I brought a headlamp, but I was rushing to get my tripod setup and kept using my phone flashlight instead, which is ridiculous because a headlamp would have been easier so I could use both hands. But, despite all that rushed chaos, I managed to get this dreamy shot. Even though the moon is a ginormous light burst... it's kind of cool how it's nestled on top of the mountain. The fact that Pikes Peak has fresh snow on top makes it even better. I guess it's okay.

Mark Cuban just compared the most powerful AI on earth to a two-year-old in a high chair. The toddler won. Cuban: “A two-year-old on a high chair with a sippy cup knows that when she pushes that cup off, Mom’s going to come running and the baby’s going to be laughing its ass off. It knows the consequences of its actions.” Then he named the thing no one building AI wants to say out loud. Cuban: “If you ask ChatGPT or any of them something and it gives you bad advice, it has no idea what’s going to happen because you took that bad advice.” A system that passed the bar exam. Aced medical boards. Still can’t grasp what a child who can’t tie her own shoes already knows. The child understands cause and effect. AI understands pattern and prediction. They sound similar. They are not even close. A pattern tells you what comes next in a sequence. Consequence tells you what happens to the person standing at the end of it. One is math. The other is meaning. Cuban went further. Cuban: “If you were blind at an intersection and had the choice between your seeing-eye dog or holding up a phone with AI, I’m taking the seeing-eye dog every time.” Because the dog understands something no language model on earth understands. Stakes. The dog knows a wrong step means its owner gets hurt. The app knows a wrong step means a revised output. Hundreds of billions spent building systems that can write, reason, and diagnose. Not one of them loses sleep when the answer is wrong. A toddler pushing a cup off a tray runs a tighter feedback loop than every foundation model combined. The child doesn’t just predict the outcome. The child wants the reaction. Pushes the cup off the edge, watches it fall, watches Mom come running. Laughs. Because the child knew what would happen before the cup ever hit the floor. That gap between prediction and consequence isn’t a bug. It’s not getting patched in the next update. It is the unsolved problem of artificial intelligence. We didn’t build minds. We built mirrors. Mirrors don’t flinch when you walk into traffic.

People don't realize how absurd this view actually is. A camera. On a robot. On Mars. Built by humans on a planet 140 million miles away, launched on a rocket, landed using a sky crane, and now driving across an alien desert taking pictures so detailed you can count the rocks. 100 years ago, your great-grandparents thought airplanes were a miracle. You are scrolling past Mars on your phone.

Like a painting...

“You can see the surface of the Moon…we just went sci-fi.” On flight day seven, images from our @NASAArtemis II crew amazed, turning science fiction to reality. From the lunar far side to a solar eclipse from the Moon, the views are EVERYTHING. No pressure to pick a favorite.

@Grampa1950 Thanks!

@zodeman Good morning!! Beautiful pictures

GM everyone. Here's a few shots from morning drive a few days ago.

@8ntmuch GM Garrick! I have to disagree with your quote to a degree. Yes, absolutely you will get self esteem with achievement. However, that's putting a big burden on yourself every day. On a much smaller scale on an every day basis, just make sure you are making progress on your plan!

Good morning friends!! 🌞🙏🏻 “Self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do.” How will you be moving today? Heading out to run for about 12 miles with Loki, decent vert day! Then back out with the family and some solo miles with Olly.

@donrisi @DividedSkyDC @NikonUSA Excellent advice. I would add the Z5ii in there. I got one last year and it is amazing. I also have a ZF. Between the two the ergonomics of feel, weight and balance with a long lens go to the Z5ii. And it costs less.

A 🧵 @DividedSkyDC asked my advice on what @NikonUSA gear I’d recommend for someone wanting to get more into photography. Without knowing where they are in their photo journey, their budget, or their commitment to photography, it’s a hard call, but here are my thoughts.

The value of a single tree. Share yours.

Reset your X feed: The algorithm watches dwell time — how long you pause, read, or stare. That pause tells it: "Show more of this." (No like needed.) Drop an eye-popping image below to create pause & retrain the algo!