John Dowdell

Aspiring Recreator of Lost Worlds & musical synesthesist. Survivor of San Francisco Suicide Club, Real Foods Produce, Macromedia/Adobe. Ad astra, do not comply.

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

If they’re fighting so hard to not prove their elections are honest, they must at least suspect their elections are not.
Which implies their authority is unjust.
Which means someone somewhere, or likely many such someones, sees going Full Luigi as the only option.
Such a waste….

[SCOTUS Wire @scotus_wire]

BREAKING: The full Ninth Circuit has vacated a panel ruling issued just hours earlier that allowed the Trump administration to pressure election officials to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens under threat of prosecution. An 11-judge panel will now rehear the case.

[Conrad Black @ConradMBlack]

It has been a nasty and disappointing midterm election campaign, and few will be unhappy to see the end of it.

The irrational and almost sociopathic hatred of President Trump, even in ostensibly Republican circles, reveals less about Trump than about the intellectually corrupt and mediocre Republican Party whose headship he seized ten years ago. The Democrats have been reduced to an incoherent pantomime horse of anti-American extremists and exhausted hacks.

More disappointing is that surviving Reaganites are so hostile to Trump that they serenely overlook the blight of wokeness, the bottomless corruption in places like Minnesota, and the ambition to turn the United States into a one-party state. They want his last election to be a “rout,” in Peggy Noonan’s words, so they can return to business as usual. It won't be.

Trump has produced strong and rising economic growth, cut taxes, drastically deregulated, closed the border, deported over two million illegal entrants, mortally assaulted DEI, and prevented Iran from becoming a nuclear power. He has done the last at a cost of fewer combat deaths than occur every couple of weeks in many Democratically governed American cities.

His methods are irksome at times, and his public personality is an acquired taste. But he has pierced the pomposity and complacency of the bipartisan system he displaced. He has been a very effective president.

[Meditations in Color @MeditateColor]

Ruskin said this painting was like flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. Whistler sued him for libel and won one farthing.

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket. 1875.
Oil on panel.

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

@thomashawk Bernstein’s Fish Grotto was at 123 Powell, maybe just beneath that “Camera” sign… has a Wikipedia entry now.
Woolworth’s took over Owl Drugs in 1952.
Up until the 90s those blocks smelt strongly of rotisserie chicken, & cigars.
Vivian & Marian Brown were indeed wonderful people.

[Marryjing （互fo互赞互评） @Marryjing173531]

宫保鸡丁之山里江山图🤣🤣

[Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke]

This would be comical if it weren’t so depressing. FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides were caught dead to rights. Anyone with two functioning brain cells who has read the documents can see that they flatly denied to Congress what they were openly discussing in their own emails. The failure to do anything about the completely out-of-control DC courts, or to at least try to start fixing a system that makes it impossible to hold Democrats accountable, will be the most damning legacy of these past two years.

[Senator Ron Johnson @SenRonJohnson]

So holding Democrats and leftists accountable for weaponizing the FBI and DOJ against Republicans and obstructing my investigation is now considered weaponizing the government?

How do you obtain justice in a judiciary populated by leftist judges?

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

Projection-mapping a room & “make a model from an image” are two sides of the same problem. How many projectors are needed to color an object? how should an AI predict hidden surfaces?
Stereoscopic vision helps, spot/fill/key lighting helps too, but a tetrahedron minimizes error.

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

What will happen when home lighting systems are sophisticated enough to projection-map a room with AI-generated imagery, realtime on-demand?

[lusso @luusssso]

Fully support the trend of massive, colorful, wall supergraphics making a comeback

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

Astrologically, both Mercury and Venus are in retrograde until mid-Nov… LLMs characterize it as “a concentrated window for introspection, review, and emotional reckoning… not a curse but a time for correction… use this time to process, not act, to prepare for the next phase.”

[Gain of Fauci @DschlopesIsBack]

Reminder that the same FBI agent who led the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping entrapment hoax in Michigan magically became the "assistant director in charge" in DC right before January 6th and later was also in charge of the raid on Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home.

His name is Steven D’Antuono.

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

Today Mexico celebrates the #DayOfTheDead. Skeletal imagery features heavily, influenced in no small part by the work of José Guadalupe Posada, known for his satirical and politically acute broadside prints called "calaveras" (skulls) — https://t.co/N55l4yRvo8 #diademuertos

[grandma zoomie @ravenousreader]

I lived without running water or grid power for 18 months- 2 years (I can’t remember exactly).

I promise you: you don’t have enough water. There isn’t enough water, you can’t store enough water. You have drinking water, maybe cooking, but dishes, laundry, bathing, cleaning your house…

Things you don’t think about until week 1 ends.

Anyway. Ignore the fear mongering and start learning skills, like how to identify clean water sources where you can restock your water supply because you cannot store enough water. (Watercress aka “micro greens” is a good tell)

Or learn how to collect and purify water safely.

You need skills, not preps.

Stop doom scrolling.

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

Other factors I don’t recall hearing much about are party-crossers (big in Michigan even before Haley crossed, NY too) and whether Independents will show up on Election Day, what they might do.
Seen many anecdotes, little analysis, and not really factored in by prediction-makers.

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

Midterm predictions, many detailed models out there.
I don’t recall people quantifying how cleaning up voter rolls in most states might have an effect this year, or how dirty-state resistance might change voting pattern. The prosecutions, tip-off bounties, USAID, fraud… ignored?

[Jennifer Van Laar @jenvanlaar]

LATEST FILING in CHIRLA vs. DHS shows that CHIRLA really screwed itself, and CA and LA County - and it could result in DOJ getting both a current full CA voter file and CHIRLA's list of citizen members and clients.

As @shipwreckedcrew and others predicted, DHS is now requesting the current full voter file CHIRLA's experts relied on in comparing the DOJ/DHS list of 20,000 likely noncitizens on CA's voter roll.

Yesterday the CHIRLA experts claimed that 40% of the ppl on the 20k list weren't on CA's voter roll at all when comparing it to the CURRENT voter roll, which DOJ/DHS have no access to: Judge Carter ruled in January that CA didn't have to give it to the feds. The voter roll DHS/DOJ has is from August 2025, according to sworn declarations filed in the USA vs. State of CA case.

AND, CHIRLA's experts (from UCLA Voting Rights Project) compared the 20k list to CHIRLA's "citizen members and clients" list and claim at least 22 matches and potentially hundreds. They don't want to share their "citizen members and clients" list with DHS/DOJ, but still use that list as part of proving standing.

That's not how any of this works . . .

[John Dowdell @jdowdell]

Blender 5.3 adds significant features… “Animation Layers” updates NLA for blending motion… compositing integration too… first splat integration may be most dramatic. Changes things.
Here’s background how raster/tracer engines turn a cloud of warped little ellipsoids to images:

[Blender Developers 🔶 @BlenderDev]

Blender 5.3 introduces initial support for 3D Gaussian Splats.

Learn how this project came together and what to expect next in the new article on the Blender Developers Blog: https://t.co/PL1t1rKKXr

#b3d

[Abhay Giri @Abhayaitech]

Robots are evolving fast—ETH Zurich just taught a disembodied robotic hand how to crawl like a spider and type on a keyboard! 🤖👇

- The Core Innovation: ETH Zurich's Soft Robotics Lab successfully taught a disembodied commercial robotic hand (WUJI) to crawl on its fingers and type on a keyboard without an arm.

- Fingers as Legs: Equipped with 20 powered joints, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and motion sensors, this 818g wireless hand operates completely untethered.

- Real-Terrain Movement: Tested across 14 different indoor and outdoor surfaces, including grass, gravel, and metal grating via gamepad steering.

- Precision Control: Achieved 29 correct key presses out of 33 commands on a keyboard without visual feedback or realignment.

- Why It Matters: Opens up potential applications for compact robots to navigate tight, confined spaces where full-sized robots or humans cannot reach.

Source: The rundown Ai

#tech #robot

[Gwynne Shotwell @Gwynne_Shotwell]

Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!

Our initial gift (shares transferring to escrow as we speak) will go to 11 to 17-year-olds who live in zip codes with median family income (MFI) of $57,000 or less, and to those who live in zip codes with too few residents for an MFI to be reported in the census. These families should receive a notice by Monday. 

In a few weeks, an additional gift will be finalized for eligible 11 to 17-year-old children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more children whose MFI is $90,000 or less living in counties near our home in the great state of Texas.

Thank you to the incredible team @SpaceX, @Treasury, @IRS, @DellFdn, @GreaterHorizons, @InvestAmerica24, and the legal firms of Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for working over the past few months to make this happen.

We are deeply grateful for the groundbreaking work that Brad Gerstner @altcap and @MichaelDell have done for the long-term financial security for millions of kids.

God Bless America!

[Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton]

Happy birthday to this future president.