Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Night-time in America's small towns

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 66 posts

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#51

Post by 67726e »

simonsarris wrote: post #24
treve wrote: post #14

Having grown up in a country where nationalism kind of harks back to nazism, it's always weird for me to see all the flags everywhere. It's just not something I can get used to, even after all these years of seeing US flags everywhere.

Some countries are just really into their flag. Denmark is a good example.

Is that a Scandinavian thing, perhaps? My brother married into a Swedish family and his mother-in-law definitely loved that Swedish flag. Depending on the time of year you'd find she had Swedish flag tinsel, Swedish flag cocktail napkins, clothing, probably earrings and whatnot as well.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#52

Post by brudgers »

aclimatt wrote: post #39
oftenwrong wrote: post #28

Many of those charming small town main streets like the ones in some of the photos, and the independently owned businesses along them, are in decline, if not already dead. Wal-mart and other big, chain businesses, often located down the highway, are getting all the business, so the small businesses in town cannot survive. Recently, I saw an incredible video about a main street in Mississippi that was basically dead,…

You're absolutely right. I recently took a road trip through the South, having never been before, and felt the overwhelming death of these small towns. Cities like Selma, Alabama once had vibrant downtowns, but now almost all of the buildings are boarded up and most people (and businesses) have moved to the suburbs, seemingly driven by Wal-Mart et al. I'm working on a piece like the OP's actually to show more of thes…

Selma's current economic condition is a function of the decision to terminate Interstate 85 at Montgomery. Its isolation from the interstate highway system makes it unattractive to regional or national businesses and industries.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#53

Post by 67726e »

empath75 wrote: post #36
mullen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the one thing I really love about American culture; once you become a naturalized citizen, you are on Team America. Does not matter where you are from or what you look like, once you take that oath to the Constitution, you're in.

Unless you're brown. Or gay. Or Muslim. Or don't speak English.

> Unless you're brown.

Yup, that's why we've never had a brown president.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#54

Post by dcolgan »

I'm attempting to start do the whole solopreneur online make your own business passive income thing, and it hit me one day that I was spending a whole lot of money in expensive places to sit in front of my computer and type. So this year I moved back to smalltown Indiana. I have a relatively giant apartment above a storefront in one of these small town main streets. It is mostly quiet and costs a whole $360 a month.

There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet here is better than many large cities I've been to.

My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.

Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.

The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly working for me so far.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#55

Post by Isamu »

ska wrote: post #13
Isamu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, now it's called HDR (for high dynamic range) but really you are compressing the "dynamic range" to make details visible that otherwise would be washed out or too dark. This has been a regular part of photography from the darkroom days, manipulating the exposure time, masking parts to selectively reduce exposure, "burning in" other parts. Especially with BW photography. The sort of other-worldly crispness,…

The "high dynamic range" refers to the input range, not the output range, so it isn't a misnomer as you suggest. This also what separates it a bit from techniques like masking which don't change the underlying range available, but rather tweaking the exposure in an area. Dodging and burning are dark room techniques, which is a whole different kettle of fish. As you note though, people used to do similar things with e…

> it isn't a misnomer as you suggest

Just saying HDR should refer to the process. The output photo, as you say, only has a normal dynamic range, compressed from the inputs.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#56

Post by threatofrain »

rayiner wrote: post #22
treve wrote: post #14

Having grown up in a country where nationalism kind of harks back to nazism, it's always weird for me to see all the flags everywhere. It's just not something I can get used to, even after all these years of seeing US flags everywhere.

People have a really basic need to bond over shared characteristics. Throughout the world, countries are glued together based on ethnicity, religion, or language. E.g. Pakistan separated from India over religion, and Bangladesh separated from Pakistan over language. Americans' proclivity for displaying the flag is a way of expressing unity in a country that doesn't have a common ethnicity, religion, or language. Nati…

Put up a flag, and boom, you're an American? Will that persuade 2017 Americans as they discuss who's an American? Membership into the American group is not obvious, and most certainly not defined by mere citizenship, least of a decorative flag.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#57

Post by rayiner »

threatofrain wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a really basic need to bond over shared characteristics. Throughout the world, countries are glued together based on ethnicity, religion, or language. E.g. Pakistan separated from India over religion, and Bangladesh separated from Pakistan over language. Americans' proclivity for displaying the flag is a way of expressing unity in a country that doesn't have a common ethnicity, religion, or language. Nati…

Put up a flag, and boom, you're an American? Will that persuade 2017 Americans as they discuss who's an American? Membership into the American group is not obvious, and most certainly not defined by mere citizenship, least of a decorative flag.

In the U.S. right now, we are exploring the limits to the American accommodation of immigrants, but it's important to keep in mind that those accommodations as they exist currently are more generous than pretty much anywhere else in the developed world. The trend in the rest of the world (New Zealand, India) right now is to get rid of birthright citizenship. But here, only the right-wing nuts are even talking about that. In Germany, the U.K., France, etc., learning the local language is a pre-requisite for citizenship. Here, saying English should be a pre-requisite for citizenship will get you labeled a racist.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#58

Post by theandrewbailey »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #41

One thing that sticks out in my mind is how utterly empty small towns feel late at night. I grew up in a rural area but have lived in larger urban areas since going to college. Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong, there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a 24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely abandoned. During th…

Several times I've driven into the small town where I grew up at 4 AM. Aside from the odd semi or car on the major roads (even near the chain stores), it looks like it's abandoned; or maybe a huge empty basement with most of the lights broken.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#59

Post by dwe3000 »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #41

One thing that sticks out in my mind is how utterly empty small towns feel late at night. I grew up in a rural area but have lived in larger urban areas since going to college. Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong, there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a 24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely abandoned. During th…

> Small towns seem like another world after midnight. ... there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life.

What I loved about growing up in a town with less than 300.

Re: Night-time in America's small towns

#60

Post by ska »

throwanem wrote: post #40
ska wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need a number of lights to get some of those. But all of that is no less "trickery" than the photoshop and bracketing/HDR is - not that I would call any of it trickery. It's an aesthetic choice, and it's fine to disagree with that, also.

Well, sure; I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm also not trying to argue aesthetics in any direction, but rather to make the point that - however hard some may find it to imagine that such photographs can be achieved purely with a camera, a tripod, and a careful use of light - they absolutely can be, and there's not really anything here to suggest they were not. Perhaps "trickery" was a poor choice of words. Until very…

That seems to be projecting rather a lot onto a comment that boils down to "looks a bit too much like a render for me"
Post reply on HN