#historic

aliceamour@sysad.org

Originally #banned in the United States for its graphic #sexual content, Henry Miller’s classic #novel, Tropic of Cancer (1934), follows an unnamed narrator on his travels throughout Paris in the 1930s. The narrator is now widely accepted as being Miller himself, the book based on his own encounters in the French capital. The book is considered one of the #most #important #novels of the twentieth century. Best known for #challenging conventional #restraints on free speech in literature, Miller’s works are graphic and reflective in nature.

Now hailed as an #American #classic Tropic of Cancer, #Henry #Miller’s masterpiece, was #banned as #obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a #historic #court #ruling that #changed American #censorship standards, ushering in a new era of #freedom and #frankness in modern #literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction...

Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller that has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was #banned in the United #States. ... . In 1964, the U.S. #Supreme #Court #declared the book #non-obscene. It is regarded as an important work of #20th-century #literature.

#book #books #novel #TropicofCancer #HenryMiller

escheche@diasp.org
theaitetos@diaspora.psyco.fr

Big Happening You Missed: India and China Agree to Pull Troops from Border

This week, we witnessed a moment of #monumental #historic #importance which is just being brushed over by the mainstream media.

RT:

#India and #China have agreed to #withdraw soldiers stationed along a #border friction point near the former’s #Ladakh region, #deescalating a #military standoff which has erupted into violent clashes on several occasions since May 2020.

The two sides issued similarly worded statements on Thursday announcing the decision, which will see Indian and Chinese forces...

steelnomad@diasp.org

Israel starving Palestinians

During the #Nakba in 1948, #Palestinian #refugees lost some 4.6 million dunums of #farmland, which the #Israeli state quickly appropriated for Jewish-only agricultural settlements.
The Ongoing Nakba continues to take a heavy toll on farmers, fishers, and pastoralists across #historic #Palestine.
In besieged #Gaza, 35% of agricultural land is inaccessible due to Israeli #military measures.
In the #occupied #WestBank, 63% of agricultural land is under complete Israeli control in Area C, with #Palestinian rural communities in Area C being some of the most vulnerable to Israeli policies of forced #displacement.
Israel’s wall cuts off more than 10% of the West Bank, forcing thousands of Palestinian farmers to constantly petition Israeli authorities for permits to access their own land beyond the wall.

https://www.visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/food-sovereignty

#violence #evil #colonialism #colonization #apartheid #genocide

petapixel@xn--y9azesw6bu.xn--y9a3aq

The Story Behind Los Angeles’s Rare Lightning Storm Photos

image

My name is Emeric Le Bars and this is the story of how I captured some insane, extremely rare photos of a lightning storm in Los Angeles, without really planning anything.

You don’t need to be familiar with Los Angeles to know that the city has an average of 300 sunny days every single year, which makes it one of the sunniest locations in the country and eventually the world. Even though the city usually gets very dry summers, rainy days do happen between the months of December and March. Additionally, lightning storms are historically quite rare in the region. But this year, it was different…

On October 4, 2021, Los Angeles experienced an insane thunderstorm that even a 50-year-old inhabitant born and raised in the area told me had never seen before. Southern California, including Los Angeles, was hit by over 4,000 lightning strikes in a 24-hour time frame. Even if this happened in Florida, a state that experiences year-long thunderstorms, that’s a lot of lightning in such a short period of time.

It was probably not the safest time to go out and shoot, I should tell you. But what’s crazy about my story is that nothing was really planned. I was light-years away from thinking that a storm like this could happen in early October in Los Angeles. Two days prior, it was still 90-degrees out!

I went out shooting only because one of my friends, Craig who was visiting from Chicago, had a few hours to spare before his flight back. Since he was staying in Los Feliz, I suggested we go to Griffith Park nearby because it offers amazing high vantage points of the downtown Los Angeles skyline, Hollywood, the Griffith Observatory, and many other iconic locations when the weather is clear.

This also happened to be the day Facebook and Instagram were down for several hours and the only way to get in touch with him was through Instagram messages; I did not have his number saved in my phone. Around 3 PM, when the app slowly started to work again, I received his message saying he was ready to go at any time. Sunset was only three hours from then, so we had no time to waste.

As I was driving from my apartment to Los Feliz to pick him up, I started seeing some very scary-looking dark clouds approaching from the south. Once I reached his location, I decided to check the radar and noticed that some heavy rain and lightning was coming towards us. Going to Griffith Park, which is mostly hills and required hiking suddenly became a bad idea. So, we decided to go grab a beer in a local bar while we waited for the storm to pass.

Between Instagram being down and the storm approaching, it felt as though everything was against us that day.

After 30 minutes of enjoying a cold one and catching up, the rain calmed down a bit and we decided to drive to the entrance of the park. That said, it was still raining a lot and the constant lightning definitely did not make us want to go hiking and so we decided to wait another 20 minutes in the car. We didn’t want to give up as we could clearly see that the storm would pass fairly quickly; looking South, the sky was mostly blue. At that time, it was only half an hour before sunset and I did not want to miss the good colors if there were any. Speaking from my experience from the last nine years shooting timelapses, after-storm sunsets can be very, very colorful. I did not want to miss it!

And I am glad we didn’t give up.

Even though we didn’t get a colorful sunset, I came back with some of my favorite photos I have ever captured.

We started hiking to our spot in Griffith Park when the rain stopped. Our goal was to capture the downtown Los Angeles skyline at sunset, but once we reached our spot, we noticed some crazy huge lightning strikes to the West, right above the ocean. We could clearly see the Century City skyline and the Griffith Observatory. The visibility was really clear with all the rain and wind from the past couple of hours, so we decided to change our plans and capture this view instead of Downtown Los Angeles, where nothing was really happening.

I want to explain that I know nothing about capturing thunderstorms and lightning. I specialize in timelapse photography, mostly city skylines and other cityscape subjects, and have only shot one or two storms like this in the past.

The only detail I was aware of to capture a great timelapse of a thunderstorm is to reduce the amount of time between each photo as much as possible. This technique will raise the chances of capturing a lightning bolt since the “dark time” is reduced to the minimum.

After setting up my camera, composition, and settings, I decided to shoot a first timelapse with a 2.5-second shutter speed and three-second interval. This will give me only half a second of delay between each photo. Luckily for me, I did not miss a single lightning strike during the 15-minute timelapse.

The park was mostly empty because of the weather, and we were the only two around aside from a few hikers we saw in the two hours we were shooting up there.

As time passed, the storm started to get even bigger. I changed location, only 100 feet away, and tried timelapsing the downtown LA skyline, but wasn't happy with that since nothing was happening in that direction. We had to leave soon as my friend Craig had a flight to catch in a few hours, but agreed to try one more timelapse.

“Once last one,” we said.

And I am glad we did.

The storm had moved just behind the Griffith Observatory. It seemed closer and bigger than when we started, yet it was super clear right above us.

I started shooting a last timelapse aimed at the Observatory when we witnessed the biggest lightning strikes of our entire lives -- I am not exaggerating. The fact that this was happening right there, right then in a city known for its dry and hot weather all year long, was just out of this world.

Since we were over an hour after the sunset, it was really dark around us and I had to use different settings. I went with a five-second shutter speed and a six-second interval. One second between each shot is not much, and even then I did miss a few strikes. Eventually, I did capture a few that turned out to be some amazing photos of the Observatory.

Since I was shooting a timelapse, I could not look at the photos directly, but I knew I captured some unique shots. We were both super excited and could not believe it!

The timelapses in video form are actually not that exciting since the lightning bolts happen on one single frame -- It’s just too fast! But I am okay with this and am just really happy about the stills I got.

What was supposed to be a fun timelapse session with a friend turned out to be the most exciting shoots of the last 10 years. Besides the location, nothing was planned at all and we even had to change our plan a few times. Even at 3 PM, I didn’t even know if we were still going out or not since I couldn't communicate with my friend Craig.

This story was a way to remind you that sometimes, just going out at the last minute can turn out to be the best session of your life! I tend to overthink everything before going out shooting: Are the clouds moving in the right direction? Are those low, medium, or high clouds? Should I go to this spot or to that one? Where do I park? It’s always impossible to fully predict the outcome and sometimes what you expect never happens, but something better might take its place.

Of course, planning is always good and often safer, but some of my favorite timelapse videos and photos ever captured were actually not really planned. This was the case for my SpaceX Falcon 9 timelapse from October 2018, or La Tuna fire in September 2017 (and countless amazing sunsets).

What a crazy session I will not forget anytime soon!


About the author: Emeric Le Bars is a French timelapse photographer who has been based in Los Angeles for the past nine years. He has created over 700 clips of the City of Angels and more than 500 of Atlanta, San Francisco, New York City, Las Vegas, Chicago, Paris, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver, Miami, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Montreal, Quebec. His work has been used by multiple companies including Adobe, Facebook, OPPO, Google, Netflix, LG, STARZ, Microsoft, Mastercard, Red Bull, and Nike. Today, he teaches timelapse photography through online classes in both English and French on his website.

#spotlight #travel #emericlebars #historic #landscapephotography #landscapes #lightning #lightningstorm #losangeles #nature #rare #stormphotography #storms #thunderstorm #timelapse #weatherphotography

sylviaj@joindiaspora.com

Register for the Belmarsh Tribunal: Free Julian Assange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7rBuTphpcM
https://act.progressive.international/belmarsh-tribunal/

The #HighCourt will hear the #appeal on #October27-28 in #London, which will decide #JulianAssange's immediate fate. He remains #imprisoned in #maximum #security #Belmarsh #prison for two and a half years, despite #winning his #extradition #battle in the UK’s #DistrictCourt last January. For now all eyes must be focused on the appeal at the High Court at the end of October. #Public #pressure is the only thing that can end the deliberate, punitive #incarceration of #Assange. This is, when all is said and done, the most #important #press #freedom #case of the 21st century.

Just a few days before the extradition #hearing in Julian’s case (October 27-28) and inspired by the #Russell-Sartre #Tribunal that put the US government’s #war-crimes in #Vietnam on trial, we are bringing together leading #lawyers, #politicians and #journalists to put the US government on trial for its crimes in the 21st century — from #atrocities in #Iraq, to #torture in #GuantánamoBay, and the country’s huge #surveillance program.
Talking about the Russell-Sartre Tribunal, #Russel said that the tribunal “represented no state power; it had no capacity to sentence the accused”. But he added something important: “I believe that these apparent limitations are, in fact, #virtues. We are free to conduct a solemn and #historic #investigation, presented to the #conscience of #mankind”.
You are already part of the conscience of #humankind. Become part of the #struggle to #free Julian Assange and #protect other #whistleblowers and #journalists. Protect what is #right and #fight what is so obviously wrong.
Members of the Belmarsh Tribunal, named after the prison where Assange has been imprisoned for more than two years, include #DanielEllsberg, #YanisVaroufakis, #RafaelCorrea, #StefaniaMaurizi, #RenataÁvila, #JeremyCorbyn, #KenLoach, #TariqAli, #SelayGhaffar and many others.

#SrećkoHorvat, cabinet member of the #Progressive #International and one of the founders of the #BelmarshTribunal, said:
“After the #revelations about the #murderous #CIA #plans to #kill a #publisher and #journalist on #British soil, not only the current #US #government but also the #UK government must be held responsible for still keeping Assange in #prison.The #Biden administration should #dropthecharges against Assange and the UK government should #free him immediately and end the #suffering and #torture of a #courageous #man who has #committed #no #crime. In a #society in which telling the #truth becomes a crime, we are all #accomplices of crime as long as Assange is in prison.”

#join #mobilize #organize

#Organized by #TheProgressiveInternational the tribunal will hold its first #physical #proceedings in #London at the #ConvocationHall, #ChurchHouse, #Westminster at 3pm BST, #22October. #register #attend-online

“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth." - Julian Assange.

#freejulianassange #diem25 #noextradition #weareallassange #23october-marchforassange

mchat@diaspora-fr.org
mchat@diaspora-fr.org

Hi! I come here to discover other personalities, to get out little by little of the traditional social networks and to share my work with you elsewhere if you allow me. It's hard to be anonymous in these conditions. Too bad, that's how it is! ,-) In short, thank you for welcoming me in your community. I look forward to reading you and seeing your creations.
#newhere #nouveauici #diaspora #welcome Alicui salutem !

1924 Miss Elizabeth Ramey. Alexandria, Va.
2021 © Marie-Lou Chatel Restored & Colorized - Photographer © Not mentioned. - Library of Congress Washington N&B LC-DIG-npcc-12377. No known restrictions.

#photorestoration #colourised #colorized #colorization #colorizedphoto #historycolored #photography #oldpic #oldphoto #history #historic #historical #oldpicture #pic #photo #history #historic #historical #picture

sylviaj@joindiaspora.com