Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Deset Gled]

If you tacked on an appeal to lived in experience, this is exactly the track a bunch of people took in an internet discussion I stumbled into a few weeks ago.

I joke because it's real and it hurts me.

Anti-intellectualism is hard enough to deal with. But there's been a growing trend of pseudo-intellectualism that I often find to be even worse. You'll find it on this site, too.

 

[CleverNickName]

My brother-in-law: "Oh yeah?! What makes you think you know so much more about engineering than I do?!"

Me: "Um...my engineering license?"

 

[payn]

My brother-in-law: "Oh yeah?! What makes you think you know so much more about engineering than I do?!"

Me: "Um...my engineering license?"

Been there. Everybody been staying at Holiday Inn Express lately.

 

[soviet]

Who you gonna trust though? The 'expert' who had to train on this stuff for years to understand it? Or me, who understood it completely after just thinking about it for five minutes? It's called common sense people!

 

[Ryujin]

My brother-in-law: "Oh yeah?! What makes you think you know so much more about engineering than I do?!"

Me: "Um...my engineering license?"

Guy who took a film photography course 20 years ago: "I don't like the pictures that I bought from you. When I zoom in to 100%, I can see the individual dots that the picture is made up of."

Me, with almost 20 years of digital track photography experience: "You do know that digital isn't the same as film, right? You do know that you're zooming into the image on a monitor, not using a magnifying glass, right? How often did you look at pictures at '100%' in that film class?"

 

[Deset Gled]

Guy who took a film photography course 20 years ago: "I don't like the pictures that I bought from you. When I zoom in to 100%, I can see the individual dots that the picture is made up of."

Me, with almost 20 years of digital track photography experience: "You do know that digital isn't the same as film, right? You do know that you're zooming into the image on a monitor, not using a magnifying glass, right? How often did you look at pictures at '100%' in that film class?"

I will partially blame digital cameras and/or software that still uses "ISO" settings, or "F" numbers on cameras that don't actually have an F as being part of the problem here. I get that it's there to help people transition, but at some point it's just teaching lies.

 

[trappedslider]

one of my local news stations has no chill
they posted the following:

New Mexico Gas Company officials say a "third party" cut a gas line at Elm and Silver yesterday evening. Gas company crews, while trying to fix their line, severed the Comcast Xfinity line... which is in the process of getting repaired. Thousands still without internet service in ABQ. We're still trying to confirm which "third party" started it all.

 

[J.Quondam]

one of my local news stations has no chill
they posted the following:

View attachment 411528
New Mexico Gas Company officials say a "third party" cut a gas line at Elm and Silver yesterday evening. Gas company crews, while trying to fix their line, severed the Comcast Xfinity line... which is in the process of getting repaired. Thousands still without internet service in ABQ. We're still trying to confirm which "third party" started it all.

Given what part of the country you live in, the answer is pretty obvious to me:

 

[gnarlygninja]

The probing must have gotten a little out of hand if they severed the gas line.

 

[Ryujin]

I will partially blame digital cameras and/or software that still uses "ISO" settings, or "F" numbers on cameras that don't actually have an F as being part of the problem here. I get that it's there to help people transition, but at some point it's just teaching lies.

ISO is still a handy notation for light sensitivity and the "F" rating of a lens is the ratio between the lens's focal length and the aperture size. It would be nice if it was a linear arrangement, but nature tends to like a logarithm. Photography is mental math or, perhaps more appropriately, mental guesstimation when done on the fly. I'm lazy and typically use aperture mode because I know the depth of field I want in a given situation, and have it in my head what ISO I'll need for a rough shutter speed (for motorsports). ISO takes precedent in stills because I want the lowest ISO I can manage, in order to reduce noise.

There is still utility in the "old ways."