Friday, January 28, 2022
Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (1037-1040)
See the previous post in this series here.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
None of these are labeled or dated but I'm guessing they were taken some time in the 1970s. The first is a picture of a house while the other three seem to show various stages of construction of a house.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
Monday, January 24, 2022
Amiga Force (March 1993)
Amiga Force was a relatively short-lived Amiga gaming magazine published in the U.K. Publication began in 1992, fairly late in the life of the Amiga. It only lasted 16 issues before ceasing publication due to the bankruptcy if its publisher.
The March 1993 issue includes:
- Read All About It - Editorial and various news bits. Some items covered include a new joystik from Konix, upcoming games for the Amiga 1200, and more.
- Master Blasters - A top 20 list of shoot-'em-ups with ratings and descriptions including Apidya, Blasteroids (I had this one for the Commodore 64), Blood Money, Llamatron, Project-X, Midnight Resistance, R-Type, SWIV, St. Dragon, Silkworm, Star Ray, Turrican, Wicked, Xenon2 - Megablast, Turrican 2, Venus the Flytrap, Z-Out and more.
- Trouble in Vangoria - Battlecards, a computerized card-based strategy game included free with this issue.
- Just Around The Corner - Previews of upcoming and recently released games including The Chaos Engine, Captive II, Alien 3, Euro Soccer, Soccer Kid, Chuck Rock II, Battletoads, and more.
- Budget Bargains - A look at inexpensive games that typically consisted of older releases that have been reissued, shareware, or games issued by small publishers. This month the list includes Robocop 2, Galactic Warrior Rats, Super Cars II, World Championship Boxing Manager, Smash TV, Pit-Fighter, Switchblade II, and more.
- Rich Pickings - Reviews of new full priced releases by major publishers (usually). Games reviewed here include Caesar, Gobliins 2, Premier Manager, Paladin II, Nick Faldo's Championship Golf, Joe and Mac, Trolls, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Waxworks, and more.
- Play It Again (And Again) Sam - A chance to win one of the Miracle Keyboard systems detailed above.
- Force 9 Main - Questions from the readers, including requests for buying advice, color problems, a request for more competitions, and more.
- Going Public - An overview of public domain and shareware games that are available. Some titles covered include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Act of War, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Qbic, Amigoids, Weltrix, Spacemaster, Trailblazer, and more.
Table of Contents from the March 1993 issue of Amiga Force
Table of Contents from the March 1993 issue of Amiga Force (continued)
Read more: https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2022/01/24/amiga-force-march-1993/
Americans Fled High-Tax States in 2021, New Analysis Shows
For many people, the start of a new year is an opportunity for genuine self-reflection. If Democratic lawmakers take an honest look at 2021, the inescapable conclusion is that voters chose with their feet — and rejected high taxes.
A new analysis from the right-leaning Tax Foundation reaches this conclusion. Analyst Jared Walczak broke down U.S. Census Bureau data and reports that while the United States overall saw only minor population growth in 2021, there were very significant shifts in state populations as people relocated.
The five states (counting Washington, D.C., for analysis purposes) that lost the most residents on net were Washington, D.C., New York, Illinois, Hawaii, and California. Meanwhile, the states that saw the biggest net gains in population were Idaho, Utah, Montana, Arizona, South Carolina, Delaware, Texas, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina.
Notice a pattern? The states with population losses tend to be higher-tax states, while those that saw an influx of new residents tend to be lower-tax states.
This isn’t just intuition — Walczak ran the numbers. Analyzing data covering April 2020 to July 2021 and including the district, the analysis concludes that in the bottom third of states (the ones with the biggest population declines), the average combined state and local top tax rate is 7.3%. In stark contrast, in the top-third of states (the ones with the most population growth), the combined tax rate is just 3.5%.
The trend here is clear as day. When voters put their money on the line, they chose lower-tax states and rejected high-tax, blue-state policies.
“People move for many reasons,” Walczak said. “Sometimes taxes are expressly part of the calculation. Often they play an indirect role by contributing to a broadly favorable economic environment. And sometimes, of course, they play little or no role. The Census data and these industry studies cannot tell us exactly why each person moved, but there is no denying a very strong correlation between low-tax, low-cost states and population growth.”
Don’t be surprised if some progressive politicians, who love to spend (and waste) our money, try to deny it anyway and stick with their bad tax policies. But the truth is clear to any honest observer. Yet, there’s more than just a lesson on tax policy here.
This trend toward lower taxes and freer economies reminds us why the U.S. system of federalism — decentralized governance — is so effective and worth preserving. When Americans can choose between different policies at the state and local level, more people get to live under policies that embody their values. And, more importantly, the best ideas win out over time.
When the federal government enacts one-size-fits-all policies on the entire country, this opportunity for customization and experimentation is lost. Remember that next time you see politicians on the national stage who want to override state sovereignty and push their ideas on the entire country.
WATCH: AOC’s 5 Worst Economics EPIC FAILS (Reaction)
This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.
Brad Polumbo
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Americans Fled High-Tax States in 2021, New Analysis Shows
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