I found another photo from my Afghanistan days that probably needs to be run through ChatGPT to clean it up (left). I'm posting it just to show you that even one of those early days cheap digital cameras could screw up photos. And to share them we usually had them printed out, which didn't help matters.
So, okay, here's what ChatGPT did with it (right). If you look closely at those trucks on the right they look kinda weird, don't they? But you can see the Danger Ranger on the left pretty clearly.
Why did I take this dumb photo? I don't know, man. Something must have been going on over there. But I don't remember what anymore.
This photo (right) is also messed up. Why I took it I have no memory. Again, something must have been going on that caught my attention.
Here's another photo (left) that came out better, but why I took it I have no idea. Maybe I was just trying out the camera to see how it worked. Ya know? Notice those HESCO barriers have done their job. Probably shrapnel from a mortar attack. Anyway, it looks like marines and Brits, probably from 40 Commando, planning some fuckery.
Here's yet another photo (right) I have no idea why I took. It's the interior of a C2A, used for COD -- Carrier Onboard Delivery. I think they've all been replaced by V-22s now. I've lost so many photos over the years. They've been on laptops that failed or have gotten lost in all the moves I've made. Ditto cameras and thumb drives. Maybe the old film cameras were better. I can find photos from a hundred years ago that relatives took, but I wonder if a hundred years from now any of these digital photos will have survived. A natural disaster or war could bring down the internet, or wipe out all electronic storage, formats could change so that even DVDs could no longer be read. I remember the trouble I had helping my newsman relative transfer his old articles from 5¼ - inch floppy disks written in Xywrite to thumb drives in Open Apache Writer. In a century....
Now here's a photo (left) one of my relatives took when he was in the army back in the 1930s. Clear as a bell, just in black and white. It's survived in perfect condition for some 90 years, perfectly viewable without any need for hardware or software.
And you know what I notice about it? Two things: rifles in the barracks unlocked and unguarded, with no worry that someone would steal them or grab one and start shooting up the place. A memory of a now-lost high trust society.
The other thing is that the rack appears not to be made up. Oh, boy.
