Worst Photo Portrait Photoshopping EVER Goes Viral

Photoshopping can be tough.

It can be especially tough if you're dealing with the harsh light of bright sunlight, and shadows if you're photographing in glorious sunny summer weather.

The Zaring family found that out first hand.

They hired a photographer to take family pictures on a bright, sunny day. It took forever to get the photos back, and when they did, Pam Dave Zaring burst out laughing.

You can see why in the photos in this post.     Click on the photos to make them bigger and easier to see.

The Zarings said their photographer, Lesa Hall, said the shadows were pretty extreme on that bright day the photos were taken, and that her professor never really taught her how to retouch photos. 

The worst part about this is the Zarings say the photographer won't return the $250 they paid her. Still, the Zarings say they hold no ill will against the photographer. My guess it was worth the laughs, and worth the traffic it got on social media.

The photographer might have started a trend, though. PetaPixel now has a tutorial on how to photoshop your portraits in the style that Hall seems to have perfected.

NSFW: I Wouldn't Trust This Saint With Kids

Something is a bit wrong with
this statue's design, don't you think?

The Blackfriars Priory School in Adelaide, Australia thought it would be neato to have a statue honoring Saint Martin de Porres.

This particular saint spent a lifetime helping the poor and downtrodden in Peru during the 16th century. The statue would depict Saint Martin de Porres handing a loaf of bread to a needy child.

Sounds lovely. But judging from the rather NSFW photo, maybe the school should have reviewed the statue's design before installing it.

Because of the obvious mockery, the school has covered up the statue and have not decided what to do with it.

My suggestion is to give it to embattled Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused of having sexual relations in the past with people as young as 14 years old.

Moore was famously kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court twice when he was a judge.  Once for refusing to get rid of a statute of the 10 Commandments.

However, I wonder if maybe this statute is more towards Moore's taste.

Facebook Post Turns Misunderstanding Into Ridiculous False Outrage

Demonstrators at a Michigan gas station
inadvertently protesting an incident that didn't happen.  

We have a little bit of a parable from Michigan today.

People are up and arms and protesting a gas station because someone on Facebook said the store clerk, of Middle Eastern descent, would not sell gasoline to an American serviceman.

Such an incident would of course be an outrage. How dare anyone disrespect someone who has risked his or her life and served our country! I'd be pissed, too.

The only problem is, the gas station didn't refuse to sell gas to our military guy.

It all started with a Facebook post from the military guy's wife, according to the web site MLive

It read as follows. (The Flint Journal had to file a Freedom of Information Act demand to police to get it. The Facebook post had been deleted.)

"Jason had to report to army reserves yesterday, on his way home he stopped to get gas, a drink and some jerky. When he went into the gas station, and got to the counter, the Arabic man looked at Jason, then his uniformand told him 'we don't serve gas here.'"

It turns out the clerk would have loved to sell the military guy gasoline. But he wanted Premium gas, and the station was pretty much out of it. So no sale, since the gas didn't exist, at least not at this particular business.

The owner said there was probably a misunderstanding. The clerk speaks with an accent, and the clerk and the would-be customer probably didn't understand each other. So the story morphed into an account of one of these Evil Muslims disrespecting America. Or something.

Snopes.com says Jason's wife said in a subsequent post that she wanted the original one deleted to the television station to where she posted it, that she didn't get the full story from her husband, and it turned out they were just out of Premium.

But once you start something on the Internet, however unintentionally, it's next to impossible to get rid of it. Especially when people have an agenda. To eradicate those Evil Muslims. Or something.

So the misinformation spread like wildfire on the Web, and drowned out any attempts at spreading accurate information about what happened.

Some of the reaction was just incredibly violent. Someone on Facebook suggested burning the gas station to the ground.  Guys with guns (all the better to advocate for open carry) protested at the gas station. The people who owned it and work there are understandably afraid.

And people are digging in, refusing to believe there was a misunderstanding. On the MLive page, a typical comment was like this one:

"I'm not buying that excuse. This store owner has bit off more than he could chew... and this was the best he could come up with. My opinion."

A lot of people also were outraged, OUTRAGED at the store clerk's English skills.  You know. Those Evil Muslims. Or something.

They're demanding he learn English. Actually the clerk does speak English, but it's tough to lose your accent even years after moving from your home country.

Frankly, had the gas station clerk or owner been white, not Middle Eastern, this probably would not have gotten so out of control. But it fits the narrative of some people, who believe all Muslims are terrorists and out to get America.

Yes, some Muslims ARE terrorists and out to get America. (See: Third beheading by Islamic extremists yesterday)

Just like some Christians want to kill the gays, subjugate woman and establish a theocracy. But most Christians are totally reasonable. And so are most Muslims.

But that doesn't matter. A misunderstanding fit the narrative. You know. Evil Muslims. Or something. So a stupid moment of communications failure that could happen to anyone turns life miserable for the owners of a gas station.

And a woman who momentarily didn't get what her husband was saying, which again, could happen to anyone, feels terrible that this is happening. And no matter how she, the media, the gas station owners and everyone else try to set the record straight, the original, incorrect narrative thrives.

Because of the Evil Muslims. Or something.

    

Thought This Would Happen: Tornado Chasers Run Over by Tornadoes

I heard some sad news today that three professional storm chasers were among the nine people killed by the tornadoes that swept through Oklahoma Friday.

A big Oklahoma tornado about to send a vehicle
containing a Weather Channel chase team flying  

Three other storm chase vehicles got caught in tornadoes, including one with the Weather Channel's Mike Bettes, who suffered relatively minor injuries.

I knew this would happen eventually. I think everyone who knows anything about storm chasing realized this would happen.

There's been an arms race of sorts, with people getting closer and closer to tornadoes,  or even inside them, taking more and more dramatic videos that the public eats up, thereby making plenty of money from their videos.

As a weather geek, I admit I'm one of those who loves those storm videos.  But the whole concept of storm chasing has gotten out of control in recent years. Dozens of chasers regularly converge on large tornadoes, causing traffic jams that would make it hard to escape if the tornado changed directions.

And tornado chasers have been getting involved with increasingly volatile weather situations. Friday's Oklahoma tornadoes were especially sudden and erratic, popping up abruptly and changing directions without rhyme or reason.

Interestingly and tragically, the chasers who died, Tim Samaras, 55, his son Paul Samaras, 24, and Carl Young, 45, were reportedly some of the more safe chasers, a trio who didn't take as many chances as others.

Details on what happened are sketchy. The tornadoes were acting so far out of the ordinary that they might have been caught off guard. Or, they had an escape route but the roads were so clogged with cars that they were trapped.

Cars tossed around in Friday's Oklahoma tornadoes.
Cars are the worst place to be in tornadoes.
Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman.  

Adding greatly to the traffic woes was some very bad advice some Oklahoma City media outlets gave to the public:  Try to outrun the tornado in your car.  That's the worst thing you could do, as vehicles are easily flung by tornadic winds, and cars stuck in traffic jams surely are not going to outrun a tornado.

Even a building with no basement, which is common in Oklahoma, are much safer than cars.

We were also subjected this week to the aforementioned Mike Bettes of the Weather Channel being tossed about by a tornado, a another storm chaser being smashed up by a farm disintegrating in a tornado and a local television station's storm chasers getting caught in 100 mph winds on the edge of another twister.

The YouTube video of the chasers getting hit by the farm debris had racked up 500,000 hits within two days of it being posted, which demonstrates the popularity of these dramatic videos.

There have been other close misses among storm chasers in recent days. One chase team got themselves caught inside a very strong Kansas tornado last week, but survived to give triumphant television interviews on the morning news and talk shows.

Television networks eat up these dramatic tornado videos, too. It's great for the ratings.

I don't know if this will change the risks tornado chasers take. It's big business, and money talks. You can take vacation trips in which the general public can chase tornadoes for a week.

I chase the admittedly much milder storms where I live in Vermont myself.  I don't think I take too many unnecessary risks. I won't drive over flooded roads. In the rare cases when we have potentially tornadic supercells, I try to avoid getting myself in the middle of these storms.

But, like so many others, I'm fascinated by big storms, both the garden variety ones in Vermont or the giant ones in Oklahoma.

We have to remember to be careful, but human nature makes it such that some of us will get too close. To our great peril.

Lawsuit Says FedEx Delivered Pot to Wrong House, Then Told Intended Recipient Where To Get It

Ohh, this is messy.

The first sin is forgivable: FedEx delivered a package to the wrong address. It was sent by drug dealers and contained seven pounds of pot.  FedEx didn't know about the drugs, of course. They just screwed up the address a bit.

Every once in awhile, FedEx doesn't delivery
what you want, apparently.  

OK mistakes happen. So FedEx got the wrong address. Everybody makes the occasional error now and then.

But if allegations in a subsequent lawsuit are true, FedEx really dropped the ball. They just told the intended recipients of the pot to go to the house where it was delivered and ask for it back, according to Courthouse News Service.

So the woman, Maryangela Tobin,  who inadvertently received the pot got a visit from some very shady people, wanting the stuff back. She'd already given it to the cops, so that didn't work.

According to Courthouse News:

"Tobin says police kept constant surveillance on her home for several days and that though three smugglers were arrested days later, 'an unknown number of smugglers remain at large.'

According to Detective Mason, even if the three arrested smugglers are convicted, they would likely be back on the streets within several months."

Tobin says her daughters 'are now too scared to be alone in their own home for any appreciable period of time, which has had a significant disruptive effect on the Tobins.

She seeks damages for violations of Massachusetts privacy laws, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress and negligence."

FedEx has so far said they have no comment on the lawsuit.

Idiot Posts False Sandy News Updates, News Outfits Annoyed

Chaotic disasters like Hurricane Sandy can make it hard to figure out which reports about the catastrophe are true, which aren't.

It didn't help when a New York financial worker and campaign manager for a Republican congressional candidate decided to spread false stories through his Twitter feed, ComfortablySmug

And it didn't help that the guy, identified as Sashank Tripathi,  thought it would be harder for people to unmask hin than he thought.

Happy Halloween, Sashank!

Yes, they did put sandbags in front of the NYSE, but
unlike Tweets the media bit on, it didn't actually flood.

He was Tweeting all these storm updates during the worst of Sandy that the New York Stock Exchange was flooded out, or that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was stranded in New York City.

None of this was true, but he apparently hoped some news outlets would bite and report this stuff. A few actually did.

Um, you can't always believe what you read on the Internet, right?

Tripathi's ComfortablySmug was what The Guardian newspaper described as a friendly troll. He often posted over the top remarks, just to be snarky and fun. Unlike a lot of trolls, he usually didn't aggressively attack people.

Problems started during the storm when some of his Sandy Tweets seemed plausible, like the Stock Exchange flooding. And the rush to be first, and the struggle to get news out, prompted some retweeting, which ended up in places like the Weather Channel.

Which, as the Guardian article points out, shouldn't have happened. A quick check would have shown that ComfortablySmug was unreliable, but this of course is 20/20 hindsight.

Maybe part of the reason why we in the media are mad at ComfortablySmug because some of us got hoodwinked?

Yeah, ComfortablySmug, aka Tripathi, was irresponsible and stupid for Tweeting falsehoods in the middle of a crisis, but this is a lesson for us in the media: Even when things are happening at a breathless pace, does every bit of information have to go out immediately? If it's a life and death situation, maybe. But if the public had to wait five minutes to learn whether it was true the New York Stock Exchange was a giant bathtub, we would have all survived.

Our buddy ComfortablySmug was one of many people to post false images and statements in social media during the superstorm. Especially during a crisis,  they crave attention so intensely that they have to make sure they get it.  There were an incredible number of photoshopped, misleading or photos that had nothing to do with Sandy posted on Facebook and Twitter during and after Sandy.

During disasters, people quite naturally pay attention to storm victims, the news, the destruction. They don't care about some loser Tweeting in his basement. And the loser in the basement resents everybody turning attention away from him.

Well, our guy Sashank sure got attention once Buzzfeed figured out who he was and blabbed it to all of us. 

Once he was unmasked, he apologized, I think mostly because he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He never did explain why he posted false stuff, though.  Maybe  he thought he was committing harmless jokes. That was his M.O, after all, and he probably didn't think to switch tactics when people were in the middle of a disaster.

The whole episode really screwed up his job as a consultant for a Republican congressional candidate though. He resigned from that gig after this came out.

On the bright side, when there is a lot of false stuff swirling around out there, a lot of self appointed fact  checkers go through and tells us which is true, which is not.

So inaccurate information gets out there and spreads far and wide. But if at least if we pay attention, we can get the right story.

Sometimes.

"Violent Duo" Look Friendly to Me

The newspaper where I work, the Burlington Free Press in Vermont, recently went through a major change in layout, looks, philosphy, presses, and more.

Such wholesale changes, happening all at once, are bound to cause a few glitches, and they did. But in our case, due to some good talent and a little luck, the glitches were minor and easily fixed.

On the other hand, I don't know what the excuse was in the paper pictured in this post, where somebody really wasn't paying attention to the photos and the stories as they put the paper together. Or maybe the violent crime duo in the story were masters of disguise. You decide: