Matt Blaze
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Contacting Matt Blaze

Federation handle:

@mattblaze@federate.social

Matt Blaze's Information

Matt Blaze's Bio

Scientist, safecracker, etc. McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown. Formerly UPenn, Bell Labs. So-called expert on election security and stuff. twitter.com/mattblaze on the Twitter. Slow photographer. Radio nerd. Blogs occasionally at mattblaze.org/blog . I probably won't see your DM; use something else. He/Him. Uses this wrong.

Matt Blaze's Posts

Matt Blaze has 155 posts.


Matt Blaze

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@obrien_kat Barcelona is so consistently and uniquely beautiful!


@mattblaze indeed it is ☺️

by Kat O’Brien ;

Mentions: @obrien_kat@mastodon.world

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Matt Blaze

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@argonaut Of course, this isn't a criticism of the buildings themselves, which were stylistically products of a much larger movement, but of exactly the larger context you're talking about. Plazas and other features around living- and work-spaces are great, but they largely precluded letting people organically evolve how we use precious urban space.


Mentions: @argonaut@mastodon.social

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Matt Blaze

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The skyscrapers along Park Avenue in the 40's and lower 50's are all minor engineering marvels. They're built atop the rail yard for Grand Central Terminal (an early adopter of the modern real estate concept of "air rights"). Many of the newer buildings are much taller than was anticipated when the terminal was constructed more than a century ago. This heavily constrains their foundations and anchor points, leading to unusual load-bearing designs such as the steelwork shown in the photo.


@mattblaze I always assumed those buildings were just Transformers that got tired and sat down on Manhattan, and might at some point wake up and leave Earth.

by Michael Richardson ;

@mattblaze Thanks for saying this! I was struck by the odd looking steelwork, but didn't have that context.

by Luke Ryan ;

@mattblaze I love architecture. I now live in Barcelona (formerly in NYC for many years), and marvel at the architecture here.
Yesterday I had a meeting in Casa Sayrach.

by Kat O’Brien ;

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Matt Blaze

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Captured with the Phase One IQ4-150 Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 138mm/6.5 HR Digaron-SW lens, which, unusually for large format lenses, employs a floating element integrated into the focusing helical.

This photo is a literal image of a construction site (to become the new JP Morgan building), but also an exercise in abstract precisionism and cubism. We see the new skyscraper, and the buildings in the background, essentially as a Mondrian-esq deconstructed tangle of lines and rectangles.


The skyscrapers along Park Avenue in the 40's and lower 50's are all minor engineering marvels. They're built atop the rail yard for Grand Central Terminal (an early adopter of the modern real estate concept of "air rights"). Many of the newer buildings are much taller than was anticipated when the terminal was constructed more than a century ago. This heavily constrains their foundations and anchor points, leading to unusual load-bearing designs such as the steelwork shown in the photo.

by Matt Blaze ;

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Matt Blaze

Skyscraper Under Construction, 270 Park Ave, NYC, 2021.

All the pixels, probably over-budget, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51


Captured with the Phase One IQ4-150 Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 138mm/6.5 HR Digaron-SW lens, which, unusually for large format lenses, employs a floating element integrated into the focusing helical.

This photo is a literal image of a construction site (to become the new JP Morgan building), but also an exercise in abstract precisionism and cubism. We see the new skyscraper, and the buildings in the background, essentially as a Mondrian-esq deconstructed tangle of lines and rectangles.

by Matt Blaze ;

@mattblaze that is so freaking cool

by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, PhD ;

Tags: #photography

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Replies: 2

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Matt Blaze

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@argonaut While I agree that this is hard to photograph, I disagree that this helps vindicate him. The widespread adoption - untested and as an article of faith - of the "flow" theory that he promoted was responsible for several decades of disastrous, neighborhood-destroying "urban renewal" projects in NYC and elsewhere in the US. It also cemented the need to have a car in many previously walkable places.


@argonaut Of course, this isn't a criticism of the buildings themselves, which were stylistically products of a much larger movement, but of exactly the larger context you're talking about. Plazas and other features around living- and work-spaces are great, but they largely precluded letting people organically evolve how we use precious urban space.

by Matt Blaze ;

Mentions: @argonaut@mastodon.social

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Matt Blaze

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@HankB A (younger) me reflected in The Bean.


Mentions: @HankB@fosstodon.org

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Matt Blaze

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@CosmicTraveler She died in well-deserved obscurity.


@mattblaze 503junk.house/@rose/1138020250

by The Flight Attendant ;

Mentions: @CosmicTraveler@mastodon.social

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Matt Blaze

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@mcr314 That would be Googie, I'd think.


Mentions: @mcr314@todon.nl

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Matt Blaze

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@spv Anita Bryant.


@mattblaze was she that motherfucker opposing the ERA in that LWT segment? FUCK YEAH!

by spv ;

@mattblaze @spv
Good riddance to that hateful homophobic wench.

by Cat Herder 💔 🗽 🇺🇲 ;

@mattblaze @spv I am 46 years old and I ONLY recognize the name Anita Bryant because of Airplane. Learning now who she was, I’m glad she was just the butt of a joke to me for that long. And, after decades of watching Airplane, I’m glad I’m still learning new ways to appreciate it.

by Randy Widell ®️ ;

Mentions: @spv@mastodon.spv.sh

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Replies: 3

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Matt Blaze

Though I don't live in the target region (Western US), and the free version is completely fine, I've been a paid pro-level subscriber to Watch Duty since something like 5 minutes after I first used it. It's an important, life-saving public service, and also an extremely clean, usable design supported by a non-profit.

federate.social/@anildash@me.d


@mattblaze @anildash Just downloaded and subscribed. I have friends and family who have relied on Watch Duty for alerts in these latest fires and in previous fires and am happy to help support them, thanks for the heads up on their funding model!

by Greg Whitehead ;

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Anil Dash

Matt Blaze Boosted

We’ve been watching the Watch Duty team do absolutely *unbelievable* technical work all week (they’re members of the Fast Forward open source program that my team at Fastly works on), handling a surge of millions of people trying to see where the LA fires are in real time. Amidst the hopelessness of the fires causing so much destruction, there’s hope in seeing people taking care of each other in this way. There are still people who do such good on the internet. gizmodo.com/watch-duty-hits-1-


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Matt Blaze

I had no idea the orange juice spokesbigot was still alive, honestly.


@mattblaze

She and Kissinger both really reinforced that the good die young.

by Fi 🏳️‍⚧️ ;

@mattblaze Same. So it's a bonus that bigot is gone

by OtownKim ;

@mattblaze who? i'm so behind

by spv ;

@mattblaze yep, hachyderm.io/@petrillic/113801

by The Flight Attendant ;

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Replies: 4

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Matt Blaze

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Matt Blaze Boosted

I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.


@mattblaze Speaking of, Robert Moses secured the land for the U.N. building. It was a dicey thing. In an alternate universe close to ours, the U.N. building is in Boston

by Misuse Case ;

@mattblaze we visit my in-laws in Chandigarh every year and that is about Le Corbusier as it gets.

chandigarh.gov.in/know-chandig

by Ian Brown :verified: ;

@mattblaze I watched a movie couple nights ago - Mister 880 - with a scene at the interim UN building in Flushing Meadows. The movie only showed a few interior scenes so I looked up the exterior. Totally generic Euro-bureau-palace, like the League of Nations but smaller. So that's what the current building was reacting to.

by Jef Poskanzer :batman: ;

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Matt Blaze

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Matt Blaze Boosted

Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.

Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).


The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.

Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.

by Matt Blaze ;

@mattblaze My concern with those are the bird deaths.

by Carolyn ;

@mattblaze

> Reflections of the surroundings

Reflections are what make Cloudgate (AKA The Bean) in Chicago so mesmerizing. It's interesting in pictures but on an entirely different level in person. I hope if you get to Chicago you get a chance to view it (if you haven't already.)

by HankB ;

@mattblaze as an architect and a photographer, one thing photography seems to be challenged by is to fully show the spaces that architecture creates for people. photography unfortunately flattens everything in one single rectangle, and all the wonderful spatial dimensions and relations tend to get lost. that is why architectural photography is so difficult, and why architects have to make a myriad of drawings and models to explain their creations

by Victor Zambrano ;

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Matt Blaze

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Matt Blaze Boosted

The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.

Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.


I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.

by Matt Blaze ;

@mattblaze Took me three tries not to read "Oscar Meyer" (as in weiner). [Yes, I'm that immature]. But then I started to wonder if "hotdog architecture" is a thing.

by Michael Richardson ;

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Matt Blaze

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Matt Blaze Boosted

Captured with the Phase One Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR-Digaron lens, with the back shifted down 8.5mm to maintain the building's geometry. I brought out contrast in the sky with a polarizer, but otherwise used no color contrast filtration. The camera was positioned across the avenue about 10 meters up from the plaza level (at the bottom of the "canyon" of the skyline reflected in the bottom center of the building).


Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.

Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).

by Matt Blaze ;

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Replies: 1

Boosts: 1

Matt Blaze

Matt Blaze Boosted

United Nations Secretariat Building, NYC, 2021.

All the pixels, none of the motorcades or protests, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51


Captured with the Phase One Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR-Digaron lens, with the back shifted down 8.5mm to maintain the building's geometry. I brought out contrast in the sky with a polarizer, but otherwise used no color contrast filtration. The camera was positioned across the avenue about 10 meters up from the plaza level (at the bottom of the "canyon" of the skyline reflected in the bottom center of the building).

by Matt Blaze ;

@mattblaze I love the reflections.

by Michael Richardson ;

Tags: #photography

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Replies: 2

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Matt Blaze

In response to this post

I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.


@mattblaze Speaking of, Robert Moses secured the land for the U.N. building. It was a dicey thing. In an alternate universe close to ours, the U.N. building is in Boston

by Misuse Case ;

@mattblaze we visit my in-laws in Chandigarh every year and that is about Le Corbusier as it gets.

chandigarh.gov.in/know-chandig

by Ian Brown :verified: ;

@mattblaze I watched a movie couple nights ago - Mister 880 - with a scene at the interim UN building in Flushing Meadows. The movie only showed a few interior scenes so I looked up the exterior. Totally generic Euro-bureau-palace, like the League of Nations but smaller. So that's what the current building was reacting to.

by Jef Poskanzer :batman: ;

Likes: 0

Replies: 3

Boosts: 1

Matt Blaze

In response to this post

The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.

Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.


I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.

by Matt Blaze ;

@mattblaze Took me three tries not to read "Oscar Meyer" (as in weiner). [Yes, I'm that immature]. But then I started to wonder if "hotdog architecture" is a thing.

by Michael Richardson ;

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Replies: 2

Boosts: 1