"Elections, My Dear Sir, I Look At With Terror" — John Adams

Thoughts on JD Vance, his Indian American wife, Musk and more.

Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson (@zachprague). Digimentors Tech Tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob). Our sponsorship kit.

🗞 @Sree’s #NYTReadalong: Recent guests include Anna Pakman, disability rights activist, Ali Velshi of MSNBC, Steve Herman of VOA and Justin Nobel, author of “Petroleum-238: Big Oil's Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It.” Here’s the recording of Anna’s episode; here’s Justin’s; here’s Ali’s; here’s Steve’s. You’ll find four years’ worth of archives at this link (we’ve been reading newspapers aloud on social for 8+ years now). The Readalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.

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THE 2024 MAGA EDITION OF DEPLORABLES IS NOW SET. Set to take its extremist, white Christian nationalist agenda to the next level. With JD Vance as his VP pick, Trump has upped his MAGA credentials. So much for “healing the country” after the disturbing assassination attempt. As Aaron Blake wrote in the Washington Post from the Republican Convention last night: “For the second night running, the GOP’s purported effort to turn down the volume ran into the reality that is: Red meat sells… apocalyptic language was more than back, just 72 hours after the Trump rally shooting.”

I’ve been warning about Vance for years (see my tweets below). Here’s a summary of things he has said on the record (see Alex Aronson’s detailed compilation. He:

• Believes Trump won in 2020 and has said that if he had been VP then, he would have blocked certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

• Believes Trump should “fire every civil servant” and “replace them with our people.”

• Doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

• Wants a national abortion ban with no exemptions for rape or incest.

• Doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage.

• Said the UK may now be “the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon... since Labour just took over.”

• Believes presidents can disregard every Supreme Court ruling (not a problem in this 6-3 Trump court).

• Acknowledges he is outside mainstream conservatism and that, in 2025, they will “go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

• Was “honored to have Marjorie’s endorsement. We’re going to win this thing and take the country back from the scumbags.” Being a fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene should itself be disqualifying

This is the guy who might be one feeble, McDonald’s-fueled heartbeat from the presidency.

For anyone impressed that his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was a huge bestseller and made into a movie, don’t be. In 2017, Sarah Jones mocked Vance as "the false prophet of Blue America," calling him "a flawed guide to this world" and wrote that the book says “all hillbillies need to do is work hard, maybe do a stint in the military, and they can end up at Yale Law School like he did.” Read her review in The New Republic.

In Indian circles, there’s much excitement about Vance’s wife, Indian American lawyer Usha Chilukuri. But someone who would voluntarily clerk for John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh and stand beaming next to her husband’s extremism is an extremist at worst and an opportunist at best.

Meanwhile, look at the Trump base trying to make sense of their VP nominee’s wife:

One more note before you see my tweets about Vance over the years: Mr. Centrist, Mr. Free Speech, aka, Elon Musk, has done the most predictably Musk thing ever (no, not postpone his promised robotaxi again, which he did; or claim that he’s survived two assassination attempts, which he did; or move his businesses from California to Texas, which he did). He has announced his full-throated embrace and endorsement of Trump.

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WATCH SOMETHING

Prof. Walter Greason, historian and co-author (with Tim Fielder) of “The Graphic History of Hip Hop,” says my #NYTReadalong is the “best streaming news show every Sunday.” This week, we interviewed Tom Jolly, NYT’s Print Editor, 14 hours after the Trump shooting to talk about how the Sunday frontpage evolved between and noon, 4 pm and evening editions. We also interviewed Anna Pakman, a wonderful disability-rights advocate, as part of our regularly scheduled programming. Want to get alerts about our shows? Write to neil@digimentors.group to be added to our low-volume mailing list.

— Sree

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DIGIMENTORS TECH TIP | Pentax 17: Oh Snap! Film Photography is Back

By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob on Twitter and check out his 1.1 million followers on Pinterest!

For those old enough to remember drive-up Fotomat booths and flashcubes, there’s good news. Film photography is alive and well in the form of a classy new 35mm film camera: the Pentax 17.

The half-frame 35mm film camera has been a long time coming. Last year we reported that Ricoh, which owns the Pentax brand, was working on a new compact, noninterchangeable-lens film camera aimed at young film photography aficionados. After years of teases and public input, the company finally unveiled the Pentax 17, which makes no attempt to dazzle users with glitzy, high-tech features but seeks to deliver a true throwback experience.

For example, while the designers of the camera could have easily incorporated an electric-motor-driven film-advance mechanism, it was felt a manual, thumb-driven film advance lever would bring back muscle memory with those who grew up with 35mm film rangefinder and single-lens-reflex cameras.

Instead of automatic focus, the Pentax 17 offers a zone focus selection on the top of the lens which can be seen even when looking through the optical viewfinder. And no, there’s no LCD preview screen on the back, but there is an old-school holder for the cardboard box top from your roll of film.

The easily pocketable camera shoots a half-size (17mm by 24mm) portrait-mode image at a time as opposed to a full landscape-mode frame (36mm by 24mm). Thus, instead of getting 24 or 36 photos from a 24- or 36-shot roll of 35mm film, you get 48 or 72 images per roll.

While there’s an inherent loss in resolution by shooting a half frame at a time, some early reviewers of the unit have yielded quality images, even when moderately enlarged thanks to today’s fine-grain films.

The Pentax 17 comes with a fixed 25mm F3.5 lens (equivalent to a 37mm lens in a full-frame 35mm camera), which provides a 61-degree angle of view, a reasonable choice for home or street photography. A small flash unit is integrated into the front of the camera but there is no hot shoe or other connector for external flash units.

While the top of the unit echoes the look of old 35mm cameras, the seven automatic and manual shooting modes allow for only moderate exposure tweaking. There’s a separate exposure dial for manually over- or underexpose an image up to two stops.

While the Pentax 17 offers shutter speeds between 1/350th and 4 seconds, the camera handles the settings—there’s no manual shutter-speed dial. Around the rewind crank (yes, young folks, you need to rewind 35mm film once you shoot a roll) is the ISO dial, which supports films with ISO ratings between 50 and 3200.

So how do you share your film photos with, er, less-analog-minded people without sending them prints? Most of today’s film processors can scan your negatives at the same time they make prints from them. Or you can do without the prints and just order scans.

Yes, the $500 price is stiff for a camera without many electronic amenities, but the build quality, the optical strengths of the lens and the ability to shoot film again without blowing dust off something moldering in the attic might just be enough for some.

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