Dreamwidth Styles

I take a lot of pictures of three classes of things:

• Cats: This pictures are good on any camera, including my agéd single-lens SE.
• Birds: These pics are shit on the aforementioned handheld phone.
• Moss and lichens and bugs: These pics are fine on the phone, but could be much better.

My real constraint is my hands and arms. I can't hold my arms above my head, I can't hold a phone still very long, the non-ergonomic controls and shape of a phone are shit, I realistically can't carry a tripod on a hike, and I can't bear weight on my shoulders or the back of my neck for any length of time. (I recognize that this collection of constraints means my pictures will never be great, and that's okay.)

So, questions:

• Are there any cameras that have particularly good ergonomics, are particularly light, or have a good reputation for accessibility?
• I believe I could get a remote shutter trigger & a remote focus, so I could prop the camera somewhere and get a good pic from a less painful angle; do you know how to choose a hand-friendly one? (Not finger-fiddly, easy to attach & detach, easy to click buttons.)
• On a modern camera, is it possible to get lenses good enough for bird pics that are not, you know, heavy? Last time I had an SLR I was taking pictures on film, so that tells you how out of date my knowledge is.
• What's the lightest tripod that works well for people with shit fine motor control and no finger strength? I can sort by weight on hiking sites, but hikers put up with a lot of fiddly controls that I can't handle.

(I'm only looking for advice from your experience or from the experience of people you trust. Please don't GoogleKagiGoPT it for me!)

Maura Healey on state agreements with ICE: “I support them” (via the_mass_dump_feed):

At her January press conference, Healey said she was “prohibiting state agencies from entering into any new 287(g) agreements unless there is a clear and imminent public safety need.” But that part of her executive order contains so many caveats as to be completely meaningless. By only prohibiting new agreements, Healey is keeping the existing one.

“I actually support that agreement,” she said. “When you’re incarcerated under … the custody of the Department of Correction, that means you’ve done something pretty bad.”

The whole post is worth reading. It's a complex situation for activists to respond to because the current situation is an improvement over the pre executive order status quo, and the activist groups need to encourage the governor to do more. And yet also, what an absolute trash human.

All my reactions to "when you’re incarcerated under the custody of the Department of Correction, that means you’ve done something pretty bad" (eg. "no it doesn't oh my god" and "as a society we've agree upon a term of incarceration for certain crimes and when that term of incarceration is over we consider the person to have paid their debt to society" and "the DOC operates multiple minimum security facilities where people work in town and there aren't even walls" and "this is what happens when your governor was the attorney general" and "I guess that's why you don't care about the deaths of Ayesha Johnson and Shacoby Kenny who were only in the county jail" and "ugh the worst east Arlington lesbian is the worst") but mostly my reaction is just flames on the side of my face and also I know you all can say it better than I can.

So, you know. If I were a good person I'd get involved in the fuckery of the Massachusetts Democratic Party but I ain't got the juice. (Tarik Samman is running against Katherine Clark, at least.)

Anyway, support BIJAN, Maura Healey sucks.