Weather or Not

Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

Wartime in the Era of Social Media: Watch What You Share!

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As you’ve likely heard by now, Russian forces have entered Ukraine. One nation’s invading a much smaller, less-powerful neighbor is nothing new historically; it’s happened countless many times. But it is new to the cell-phones/social-media/fake-image era.

Real and bogus images and videos will abound, flooding the internet from true reporters, propaganda bots, and well-meaning but ignorant Uncle Bubbas. Without first-hand knowledge of the situation, you are unlikely to know, with absolute certainty, which is which. You also are likely to overestimate your own ability to judge what is authentic.

This message below is nonpartisan, wise advice right now for all: self-discipline and restraint.

Don’t share emotionally manipulative war images and stories without independent verification — preferably from multiple credible media sources. [Mainline media has been caught sharing fake images hastily before.] Even then, choose prudence over impulse, and wait awhile.

It’s easier for most humans to react with reflexive emotion than self-discipline, restraint, analysis, logic, and reason. We meteorologists have seen this ad nauseam with frequent sharing of old, misdated, manipulated and/or outright fake storm images. Far more is at stake here than some old or fake storm image passed off as yesterday’s event!

War images (real, fake or old) will be shared widely without verifying authenticity — sometimes even by “credible” but duped media. For the sake of all, don’t be the fooled fool.

And for those thirsting for some formally published science on the issue of sharing fake, manipulated and/or misleading imagery, here you go. It really does cause social and psychological damage!

Not with My Wife in There!

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Let me explain some basic genetic science chromosomally:


XX = female (homogametic)
XY = male (heterogametic)

There’s your gender. Anything else is science denial. Regardless of what one wants to be, or pretends to be, that fundamental, biological truth is inescapable. [I’m not interested in entertaining minuscule-fraction XX/XY genetic syndromes either; that’s beside the point here, a tangential straw-man, not at all relevant to the argument.]

Genetically, you are as you popped out of the womb, no matter your act, no matter your appearance, no matter your presentation. The XX or XY with which one is born stays in every single cell regardless of any cosmetics, desires or pretending to the contrary. Thus, since trying to be something you’re not is fundamentally dishonest, pretending womanhood when you’re male (or vice versa) is a big, fat charade–a lie. Yes, lie…which makes every “transgender” (get ready for it)…a liar, a pretender, a poser, inauthentic as a $3 bill. That completely inverts and falsifies their claims to being “true to oneself”, and is a foundational self-contradiction.

To really be true to oneself, go into your own private bathroom, undress, look between your legs, take careful note of what’s there…and act like it. If you want to pretend to be something you’re not, do it at home, an acting stage, or a drag-queen parade…not in a bathroom with my wife.

    “Two men say they’re Jesus, one of ’em must be wrong.”

      Dire Straits

I love that line, because it fundamentally calls out fakers for who and what they are. On some days I may wish I were a ghost, invisible! That doesn’t make me one. When I was a kid I wished I were a flying superhero. That didn’t happen, no matter what costume I wore and how much I yelled about saving the world. I put on a football uniform and threw passes really far for a little street-rat punk; that didn’t make me Roger Staubach no matter how much I pretended to be him. Perhaps I wish I were a holy man, a prophet, a savior to the world. Some people are delusional enough to think they are; but there was, is, and will be only one Jesus the Christ.

Wishing or behaving or dressing as a woman wouldn’t make me one, period. Nor does it anyone else on earth. And if “gender” is just an “identity” and not physical, why bother with the ‘nard-carving, the hormones and the makeup? Therein lies another basic self-contradiction in the whole deal.

Still, does that mean one can’t carve up one’s gonads surgically and pretend to be something they’re not? No. I don’t understand that mentality; it’s bizarre and twisted, but in the libertarian sense, one has the right to do with one’s own body as one chooses. [This, of course, excludes abortion, where the life of another complete genetic human being within the body is at stake in a potential homicide situation.] One even has the right, under the same document I cite below, to play-act like they’re a dudette when they were born a dude, at that drag parade.

Invert your organs, shave your legs, put on dresses, wear heels, splash on the Eau de Fakerie Parfum, whatever. You have that right and I will not deny it. I also have the right to criticize it, to call it a forgery, a delusion, a lie. I will continue to do so, and there’s nothing anyone can or will do about it. Why? It’s something the purveyors of perversion might not know about called the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s the supreme law of the land. Freedom of speech, folks: learn it, live it, love it.

Nevertheless, let’s now assume for argument’s sake that no surgical or wanna-be “transgender” person ever did anything wrong in a bathroom, anywhere. Let’s consider the other posers: those pretending to “identify”. It is their very existence, above all else, that nullifies any and all arguments for “gender-neutral” bathrooms.

Yet under “identity” rules and laws spreading nationally like a contagious mental disease, anybody can decide he is a woman (or a girl, if in K-12) for the day, and stroll unquestioned into the women’s latrine or locker room. Postal-poster perverts and pedophiles the nation over are foaming at the possibilities. Genderless bathrooms elsewhere already have encouraged voyeurism. Peeping Toms now only need to “identify” as tomboys to succeed at peeping. Just call oneself “transgender” or “I identify as…”, and you’ve got license to leer. How far into the toilet have we gone, as a society, to allow lecherous leeches to have lawful access to their targets by means of “identifying” as something they’re not? All of that is batshit insane! What about the rights of the women and girls in that restroom?

If you’re a dude, and my wife, daughter or sister are in a public restroom, you’re not going in there, period. No man is going to be exposing himself around the ladies I love, if I can see it coming. I don’t care if you think you’re a woman at that time. I don’t care if you think you’re a dog and start barking on all fours. I don’t care if you “identify as” Mork the Alien and start chanting “Nanu Nanu”. It doesn’t matter what delusion of otherness you have. It’s not happening.

If “the law” says you can go in there, that’s a bad law; I’m still keeping you out until my loved ones are done. Like Rosa Parks on the “colored section” of that bus, I’m not morally obligated to follow an immoral law, an inverted Jim Crow statute that allows anyone to access any restroom if they feel like it. The safety and well-being of those I love matters more than somebody’s delusional “identity”.

Further reading, from a woman who has been raped:
A Rape Survivor Speaks Out about “Transgender” Bathrooms

Example of A Common Copyright Violation in Storm Photography

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Back in the early 1990s, Fred K. Smith of Okeechobee, FL, took one of the most dramatic weather shots ever known–a tornado over Lake Okeechobee, adjacent to a bright, forked lightning strike. [The lake was behind some trees.] The WeatherMatrix BLOG, among other sources, legitimately reports on and properly credits the image. However, they have the date wrong–it actually was 15 June 1991 (not 1993). I actually was out the same night, attempting with much less success to shoot lightning with different storms, about 100 miles south of Fred’s position.

I have a signed print of the photo sent by Mr. Smith himself, a souvenir of a photographic exchange that Fred and I had in ’93, shortly after I moved to Kansas City from South Florida. All the evenings I spent photographing storms in the heat, humidity and mosquito clouds of the Everglades never yielded anything like that! The image ended up in National Geographic and several other legitimate publications, surely earning Fred some well-deserved shekels for his retirement.

Unfortunately, illegal scans of Fred’s iconic photo have been circulated around the Internet in countless forms over the years, including e-mail relays with an oil rig faked into the photo and passed off as being in Texas. About.com has an urban legends page devoted to that incident. All manner of bogus “facts” have been assigned to the image.

It just keeps happening. I’ve blotted out names and avatars of all but the person who is propagating Fred’s image without his consent.

No. No! No!!! NO!!!!!

This is NOT yesterday night’s North Platte tornado. Whomever first claimed it as such is a bald-faced liar. And everyone underneath the photo, in the comments section, has been jobbed too, by being misled into wrongful attribution of the image.

Let’s not rush to conclusions and blame either Jim Logsdon or his son yet. Both of them could have been played like a fiddle by somebody else passing off this Florida tornado as being from North Platte. Still, nobody should pass along photo claims without verifying their authenticity; and that’s where Mr. Logsdon definitely erred (along with six of his Facebook followers). Let me be clear: Ignorance is no excuse.

This photo, at some point, was stolen from its owner and propagated without his permission. Credit needs to go where credit is due, and that is to Fred Smith. As a fellow storm photographer, I feel a rightful duty to call out this kind of untruthful garbage. Far more of this happens than I notice; but when it does, I won’t hesitate to bring attention to it.

I also will alert photographers I know to unauthorized uses of their imagery, online or in print. I am grateful or other storm enthusiasts who have afforded me the same favor. I have given, and will continue to offer, monetary reward from the copyright-violation settlement to anyone who finds a photo of mine that turns out to be used without permission.