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Bud Light marketing executive takes leave of absence amid ad controversy – report
Judy Blume tweets support of trans community amid J.K. Rowling controversy
Famed coming-of-age novelist Judy Blume has publicly expressed support of the LGBTQ community, in a response to a recent Sunday Times interview that appeared to align her with the anti-trans statements of fellow author J.K. Rowling.
The Sunday Times quoted Blume as saying, “I am behind her 100 percent as I watch from afar.” The story’s headline reads, “The bestselling children’s writer has shaped the minds of millions, just like the Harry Potter author — and she’s every bit as controversial.”
In a statement posted to Blume’s Twitter account on April 16, Blume said the comment was “taken out of context” and that she was merely expressing empathy with those who have been harassed online.
“I wholly support the trans community… I stand with the trans community and vehemently disagree with anyone who does not fully support equality and acceptance for LGBTQIA+ people. Anything to the contrary is total bullshit.”
Blume, known for her best-selling stories about sexuality, puberty, and other topics once seen as “taboo” for young children, is back in the press cycle for the newly released adaptation of her book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The book follows the story of an 11-year-old girl who is navigating the perils of becoming an adult, like growing apart from friends, sex-ed classes, menstruation, and even her own faith.
Following the story’s publication, some Twitter users came to Blume’s defense, noting that the article’s author, Hadley Freeman, has been criticized for her “gender critical” stances and even previously accused of interviewing literary icons to garner support of anti-trans rhetoric. In February 2022, Freeman profiled The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood for The Guardian, questioning whether her anti-cancel culture stance was contradicted by her expression of support for the trans community in response to comments from Rowling.
Freeman issued a response to Blume on Monday, tweeting, “I don’t normally respond to nonsense like this because it’s absurd. But here are screenshots of Judy Blume’s and my conversation. For the record, my quotes are accurate and not disputed. I did not ask Blume about the criticisms against J.K. Rowling — she brought them up herself.”
In light of the controversy, Blume also posted quotes that reiterated her stance against book-banning and censorship, specifically noting her thoughts on the rise of anti-LGBTQ legislation while speaking at Variety’s Power of Women luncheon in April.
“I would like to end this on a sweet and positive note but the reality is, we are right back where we were in the ’80s except it’s the ’80s on steroids,” Blume said to event attendees. “This time it’s not the moral majority or only the religious right. This time it is coming from our government. Lawmakers, drunk with power, with a need to control everything. Sure it’s still sexuality, but it’s gender, it’s LGBTQ+, it’s racism, it’s history itself that’s under fire.”
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Samsung responds to the recent Moon-camera controversy
Samsung ‘Fake’ Moon Shots Controversy Puts Computational Photography in the Spotlight
Samsung introduced a 100x zoom feature with the Galaxy S20 Ultra in 2020, becoming a mainstay on recent flagship handsets from the company. Since its debut, Samsung has touted its devices’ ability to take impressive pictures of the moon. Unlike brands such as Huawei, which simply overlay a PNG of the moon on such images, Samsung says that no overlays or texture effects are applied.
Yet on Friday, a Samsung user on the subreddit r/Android shared a detailed post purporting to “prove” that Samsung’s moon shots are “fake.” Their methodology involved downloading a high-resolution image of the moon, downsizing it to just 170 by 170 pixels, clipping the highlights, and applying a gaussian blur to heavily obscure the moon’s surface details. This low-resolution image was then displayed on a monitor and captured at a distance from a Samsung Galaxy device. The resulting image has considerably more detail than its source.
Samsung devices seemingly achieve this effect by applying machine learning trained on a large number of moon images, making the photography effect purely computational. This has led to accusations that a texture is functionally still being applied to images of the moon and that the feature is a disingenuous representation of the camera hardware’s actual capabilities, triggering heated debate online, even bringing into question the iPhone‘s reliance on computational photography.
This article, “Samsung ‘Fake’ Moon Shots Controversy Puts Computational Photography in the Spotlight” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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