Leo R. Comerford
LightNews LightNews
leocomerford.bsky.social
Leo R. Comerford
@leocomerford.bsky.social
230 followers 54 following 260 posts
I am Leo Richard Comerford. Did you know ... rats *cannot* be *sick*?
Posts Replies Media Videos
leocomerford.bsky.social
The free tier of ChatGPT currently also gives /Marching into Darkness/ as the first (and in fact only) recommendation in its initial reply to the same prompt: chatgpt.com/c/68d40707-f...
Some chat text (taken from the September 2025 ChatGPT page). On top is a right-justified light-grey chat bubble with the text > What is a good book on the Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus? Below that is the response: left-justified text saying > A very good book on that topic is Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus by Waitman Wade Beorn (2014). [Wikipedia + 2] > Here are some of the strengths of Marching into Darkness: > It focuses specifically on **Belarus** in 1941, looking at how Wehrmacht units (ordinary German army formations) became involved in genocide. [Wikipedia + 1] > Beorn investigates the motivations, decisions, and “unit culture” of the German soldiers—not only the orders from the top, but how soldiers reacted, whether they refused, etc. > Uses a wide range of primary sources: German court testimony, archival records, survivor testimony, etc. > If you like, I can suggest some more books on the Wehrmacht + Holocaust in Belarus (or more broadly in Eastern Europe) so you have a reading list. Do you want those? The page background is white, all text is in black. The text shown in square brackets is actually instead in a light-grey roundrect; it is displayed in small print.
September 24, 2025 at 3:13 PM
leocomerford.bsky.social
/Bilboard/ 3 Apr 1982, p. 65:
The following text, in black text on a white (faded to yellowish) background: "What was the price of stock in AT&T on April 1, 1944? ☎ Do men waste more time on the job than women? ☎ Do eskimos really rub their noses? How nutritional are TV dinners? ☎ How many bones do dogs have? ☎ Have a question? Call your library! ☎ American Library Association" The final ☎ is greatly increased in size, reaching up to the previous line of text. The final line with "American Library Association" appears in very small print, on the bottom left. All the text except the last line is in a very bold weight. The font looks (roughly, at least) similar to Helvetica. The last line is not bolded.
August 16, 2025 at 2:13 AM
leocomerford.bsky.social
Thank you for this! The beautiful, character-filled pixel art isn't mine: it's the Infantry Huscarl (on the left, w. a slight pixel glitch) and the Thane (on the right) from Astros Productions' www.mobygames.com/company/1241... old ZX Spectrum wargame /Vikings/ worldofspectrum.org/archive/soft....
A 40×25 grid of wooden blocks held between horizonal slats. They rotate horizontally: some are rotated to show a black face, others a white one. It is lit with a direct light. Two 16×16 pixel-art images appear side-by-side on the grid: they both have a black border and show two 13-pixel-high human figures facing right: the Infantry Huscarl (on the left) and the Thane (on the right) from Challenge Software's 1989 game /Vikings/ https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/games/vikings-challenge-software . They are both stylised images which seem to show men with large round shields and long pole weapons walking right. The Infantry Huscarl on the left appears to hold a two-handed axe vertically, at about the middle of the shaft, while some kind of spear or javelin appears to be leaned back resting on his shoulder. (A couple of pixels at the middle of the axe head are off when they were on in the original pixel image.) There seems to be a diagonal stripe running top-left-to-bottom-right running through the middle of his shield. The Thane seems to be holding a two-handed axe forward at a 45° angle while maybe holding some other kind of halberd or other pole weapon vertically behind him. There seems to be a dot, or maybe a boss, off-centre on the shield. The arm which manipulated the blocks is just visible at the bottom right of the image.
August 6, 2025 at 10:52 PM
leocomerford.bsky.social
What ever happened to Google's celebrated "Night Walk in Marseille" Street View experience? www.martinkool.nl/cases/google... Looks like it's been
@killedbygoogle.com?
A photographic image of a pedestrian bridge in Marseille at night, with text and UI elements superimposed on it: the (former) start screen for Google's "Night Walk in Marseille" pedestrian Street View experience. In the centre of the image there is white centred text with two buttons underneath. The text says: NIGHT WALK IN MARSEILLE Explore the sounds, streets and soul of the city [Start from here] [Start from the beginning] The "Start from here" button has a bright blue background indicating it as the default choice. Different lines of text have different font sizes, "NIGHT WALK" being very large. The photograph is taken from standing eye level, looking straight across a narrow (maybe 3m wide?) pedestrian bridge. At the far end of the bridge there is a narrow street, slightly wider than the bridge, which separates two terraces of apartment buildings, built up about five stories above the height of the bridge. There are large amounts of messy, unattractive graffiti at ground level on the walls. Soon after the bridge gives way to the street, the street turns into stairs, a split pair to the left and right leading up with a central stair in the centre apparently leading down. It seems (it's hard to make out in the grainy image of a darkened street scene) that the street then recombines and leads up, through one or more additional fights of stairs, to something which is marked by large, wide and narrow blue-and-white sign on top of a long pole. The buildings are in a nineteenth-century style, with outer walls in a light-greyish stone. The scene is lit by somewhat harsh street lighting: two sodium lights are visible on the left side of the street after the stairs, mounted high up on the left-hand-side building. The buildings nearest the bridge also have a facades facing out onto the street (or perhaps canal or stream?) which the bridge crosses: these take up the left and right part of the photograph (except where they are covered by the handrails of the bridge).
May 27, 2025 at 5:37 PM
leocomerford.bsky.social
It happened again.
A photograph from above of a messy desk with a cheap light-wood veneer. On the desk are two fairly large mugs, both full of yellowish tea (green tea). One is an insulated mug made of stainless steel, with a plastic handle and a brushed exterior with a logo just visible. The other is ceramic with white glaze and a red pattern just visible on the side. Below, at the bottom of the photo, there can be seen a floor with a dirty, faded grey carpet with a diamond pattern. The front of a left slipper with a grey tartan upper can be seen on the floor. The front edge of a black plastic ATX-sized PC case can also be seen there jutting out in front of the desk, as can the left part of a cheap plastic Dell keyboard (in an AT layout) which sits roughly on top of the PC case. At the left of the image, to the left of the cups, on the desk, there is the right edge of the detachable keyboard of convertible laptop/tablet. Held to it by a band on the right is a computer stylus. Close behind the cups (above, in the photo) a USB-SATA adapter: a small black rectangle of plastic sitting roughly on its side as it is propped up by red SATA and black USB cables coming from it. Behind that is a stack of messy papers and books, including many sheets of used A4 (some lined, some printed, some with spiral-binding strips) and a DVD box with a studio photo of a man holding a mechanism up to his face (/Secret Weapons for the Modern Drummer Part 2/). To the right of the cups there is another small stack, with a large book with a brownish colour-printed cover underneath a large (12”) drum practice pad (grey, with the words “DRUM” and “SINCE” visible—part of a licensed Gretsch logo). On top of that is a small white ceramic rice bowl containing orange segments. The corner of another plate with an orange ring on its rim is also visible there.
December 7, 2024 at 1:18 PM