Tezz' Low Quality Shitposts

Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.

Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.

Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.

The best part is the local city council's reaction.

Oh @hyena-bro my sweet summer child, allow me to tell you the story of Mesperyian, the goddess who never was and never will be.

So it all started with this tumblr post, right?

And obviously people mentioned the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone, and the benefits of answering such goddesses as the most beautiful. But then Tumblr user 28weekslaterhater mentioned to answer the goddess Mesperyian (most beloved daughter of Hades) as the most beautiful. According to them, “jealous ho” Aphrodite burnt half of Mesperyian’s face off in a blind rage for being more beautiful than her.

This post began to spread to the fact-check-less masses of Tumblr, and more mythology sprouted up about this so-called “Mesperyian”, how she was the goddess of torture and punishment (even though a goddess of punishment already existed) and had to wear a cool mask because of the aforementioned face burning.

Everyone took it as gospel for years until various Tumblr users pointed out “hey if you happen to just… look up this goddess, the only thing you’ll find is this Tumblr post”. After that, it had been exposed that Mesperyian never fucking existed and that Tumblr user just completely made them up on the fly.

Corksniffing losers have to sully an awesome new space photo just to erroneously claim film is inherently superior.

I think this version is the original color processed version, which is still not as saturated or contrasty.

That's still an amazing result just from darkroom processing, but the deep blue version in the tweet definitely needed some help from Photoshop. And, personally, I think they overdid it.

The new photo was actually taken in darkness. It is a moonlit photo taken at extremely high gain (ISO 52,000). They did a long exposure to make it appear as if it were as bright as day. But without significant editing, that is going to make the colors less saturated and reduce the contrast.

The same thing would happen with film.

This is another version they did with a more accurate-to-eyeballs exposure.

Film is great.

Digital is great.

But it was not a great medium for space.

Most astronauts are fighter pilots. And there are only a few who are genuine photographers. You can train a fighter pilot to competently use a camera, but becoming a good photographer during the days of film usually took years of practice.

During the Apollo days they would send them up there with the best camera available. Usually a 70mm Hasselblad medium format. But the astronauts proved that the only way to get amazing photos without being a photographer was mostly down to luck.

We see the best photos they took, but those only amount to a handful. And as you saw above, NASA often had to do a lot of darkroom magic to make them aesthetically pleasing.

If you look at the Apollo archives, you can find hundreds of photos like this.

I'm fond of this one.

There was no instant feedback. They didn't have any instincts for settings or focus or composition. Most of the time they were just collecting visual data.

But every once in a while the stars aligned and they took absolute bangers.

That flag one is amazingly composed. But it took them a few tries.

Digital cameras give you a better baseline of quality. They can focus for you. They can meter for you. And they have high ISO gain that film could never touch.

They are... fighter pilot friendly.

With digital, they can look at the back screen and see if they bungled the exposure.

If they take a photo like this...

They get instant feedback and can be like, "Houston, where is exposure compensation?"

There is an undeniable ineffable quality that film sometimes delivers. But the medium is far less important than the skill of the person taking the photo.

Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut photographer. A true artist.

He really makes you forget about whether film is better than digital. He makes one remember that the person taking the photo is the paramount variable.

There is a great interview from Smarter Every Day where Don talks about how he captures amazing photos from space.

>Implying nationalism is bad