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Home » The Bidens visit the Carters in the uncanny valley

The Bidens visit the Carters in the uncanny valley

The New Neo Posted on by

Excuse me but – is this size differential bizarre or what?

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The Bidens visit the Carters in the uncanny valley — 46 Comments

  4. @Aggie:

    Not being Catty, but Dr Jill is Built like a Brick #@$%house as we Antipodean Bards are wont to say.

    Neo is bang on right about the Uncanny Valley aspect of that photo. It reminds me of the fun house sets which have been experiencing a resurgence since selfie-culture became a thing.

  5. I saw a post on this picture on twitter. Somebody was making fun of it and assumed it was photo shopped. Jimmy was 5′ 10″. At 95 he may be 5′ 7″. Plus he’s slouching in that chair. Rosalynn was 5′ 5″ so she might be 5′ 3″ or 5’2″ now. It does look bizarre.

  7. I suspect that the size differential is something odd because maybe a wide-angle lens was used? Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Biden are both somewhat the same height; but, Mrs. Biden is on the outside of the frame like Joe and she looks taller than President Carter (President Carter’s slouching is helping either)

    But, I question why the Bidens can visit someone whom they do not live with and NOT wear masks?

    I would assume because of their ages alone President and Mrs. Carter are in a high-risk group for COVID.

    So, here, once again, is another example of rules for thee not for me from the democratic politicians.

    And, Aggie, I don’t think you’re being catty at all. I suspect that Mrs. (excuse me I should say “Dr.”!) Biden is wearing that dress so that poor ol’ Joe will be able to remember that his wife/handler is always the one in the unusual dress. You know, if case he gets lost or doesn’t know which way to turn he can remind himself that the lady in the unusual dress helps me. (Now, I am being catty)

  8. Sexton Beetle (11:08 pm), I imagine all four have been vaccinated.

    (So tell me, do official CDC protocols / guidelines permit unmasked indoor visits with very elderly but vaccinated non-household members?)

  9. Charles makes a good point. Definitely a Wide angle lens with some cropping at the sides and top, I think. Less so at the bottom, because you get that uncropped wide angle effect of Doctor (for that is what she is) Jill’s Dress and Jimmah’s legs being sucked outwards towards viewer. Rabbit Slayer-in-Chief’s apparent shoe size is dead giveaway.

  10. But Roslyn and Jimmy know where they are and who is visiting. Joe, not so much. Jill? Who cares.

  11. Left unexplained is why would anyone sane release this photo. It is mindful of the movie “Freaks” with Joe & Jill as the normie bad guys.

  13. We could all do with some Tolkien analogies after the Great Nazi Thread of May 4.

    Supposed to be doing some work, but I’m busy on eBay making Gollum noises at any and every HP41CV/X or 15C in good condition.

  15. Jimmy was 5’9.5″ officially, but photos of him with his blow dried bouffant next to Gerry Ford’s honest 6′ suggest that he was more like 5’8″. At 97, he has probably shrunk to 5’4″. (My late father in law shrank from 5’10” to 5’6″ at age 96.) Roslyn could well be down to 5′, which is where my late mother in law ended up at age 98 (starting from 5’7″). So, although the wide angle camera and Jimmy’s slouch exaggerate the height differences, Jimmy and Roslyn really are “peanuts” these days. If “Doctor” Jill were a real doctor she might prescribe Fosomax or calcium injections for the Carters.

  16. Gold-plated medical care and all, but still… Good Genes FTW.

    Still, that Rabbit…

  17. Wow Jackie Moon seems older and balder than I remember

    The Flint Tropics have not been the same since

  18. It’s not just the shrinking Carters. Unless the Carters are sitting in mini-chairs, the Bidens look like giants compared to the chairs.

    As though the Carters live in a dollhouse.

  20. I guess it’s Sweet Revenge. Apparently Trump and his epiphenomena drove *them* down a madness spiral. Now it’s our turn.

  21. This looks oddly or badly photoshopped to me…
    Roslyn’s head?
    There’s an ‘outline’ around Creepy Joe’s left shoulder.
    Why is the cabinet door open behind Joe’s left shoulder? Couldn’t someone have shut that thing, as if Joe needs another head trauma…is it hiding something they don’t want us to see?
    Like I say…bad photoshop.

  24. Zaphod – ya made me look!
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)

    Very informative about all sorts of things.

    Is this what Neo was referring to?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
    “In aesthetics, the uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.[2] “Valley” denotes a dip in the human observer’s affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica’s human likeness.[3]”

    I thought first of the Ames Room illusion.

    https://partsolutions.com/the-ames-room-engineering-a-human-giant-or-an-optical-illusion/
    The videos of the effect are amazing.
    And listen to the second narrator: “Does what we see correspond to what is really out there….?” and recall the war cry of the Chauvin trial: “The video speaks for itself!”

    https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/explainer-courtroom-technology-display-chauvin-trial-76951337
    “Lawyers arguing a case involving critical video evidence cannot assume that everyone views it through the same lens. Silbey said. They have to focus jurors’ attention by slowing footage down, circling or highlighting an event, and narrating what is happening.
    “Lawyers make a mistake if they assume people see what they see and that the video speaks for itself,” Silbey said.”

    Scroll down for the Ames Room, but the rest of the post is very interesting.
    http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/depth/depth-size.html

    Personal Note: When Six Flags Over Texas opened in the 1960s (the original one-and-only pre-PC super-fun theme park), there was a “tour” of a “miner’s cabin” that employed a similar illusion, making us think that water was running up-hill. (read quotes as “IIRC”; that was a long time ago!).

    Of course, the Internet allows us to learn how they work – it’s the next-to-last picture, and was called “Casa Magnetica”! The size illusions are also part of the generic “mystery shack” attraction.
    http://www.dafe.org/articles/miscellaneous/tiltHouse.html

  25. From Hot Air – AP covers most of the commentariat’s speculations.
    Yellow Brick Road cross-over connection on the Open Thread.

    https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/05/04/whats-up-with-this-photo-of-the-bidens-and-the-carters-n387674

    Carter’s parting advice to Biden after their visit was to follow the yellow brick road.

    No, really, what happened here, photographers? Is it as simple as using a wide-angle lens to get everyone in the frame, with the two people at the outer edges appearing enlarged as a result? We should try to solve this mystery before Tucker invites Alex Berenson on to try to puzzle out why getting vaccinated seems to have made the Bidens grow and the Carters shrink.

    The other reason is more substantive. It was just five days ago that Biden was asked by NBC why he continued to wear a mask outdoors when the CDC had just announced that vaccinated people didn’t need to. Biden countered that there are situations in which even those who’ve been vaxxed might continue to take precautions around others as their “patriotic responsibility.” Why, look how far away we’re sitting from each other even though we’ve both been immunized, he told Craig Melvin.
    Melvin’s just 41 years old and seemingly in good health. The Carters are … both in their 90s and frail. And yet there’s Joe, mask off, within a foot or so of Rosalynn Carter. What?

    To be clear, since the Bidens and Carters have all been vaccinated, there was no reason for the president to mask up around them. He and FLOTUS were following CDC guidance here, holding a small indoor gathering with friends who’ve been immunized. Face coverings aren’t necessary in those circumstances according to the official rules. But according to the Biden code of conduct, one should take care to limit transmission around others *even after* vaccination, whatever the rules may say.

    So why no mask? Did he change his mind within the past week? Or is there a “photo op” exception to placing nonagenarians at minuscule but marginally greater risk of infection by unmasking around them?

    I’ll leave you with this exchange from CNN this morning, in which John Berman grills the health director of Brookline, Massachusetts, on why they’re still keeping their outdoor mask mandate in place despite the CDC saying it’s no longer necessary. You can’t be too careful, he says, especially in colder weather. I … think you can be too careful.

  26. Four of the most odious people on the planet.

    Huh? Carter is a nuisance and fantastic disappointment, that’s all. His wife has never been a problem. The Bidens actually are odious.

  27. Jimmah is smilling because he knows that Big Lie Biden will take the title of Worst President Ever away from him.

    Pray for Ashli Babbitt!

  28. @Art+Deco:

    If a rabbit got the better of him, don’t you think his wife could have reined him in, too?

  29. Big Lie Biden will take the title of Worst President Ever away from him.

    Jimmy Carter made a number of policy mistakes. He actually attempted to improve the intramural culture of the Democratic Party of that era. Placing to one side the odious opportunist George Wallace, Carter’s opponents in the Democratic nomination donnybrook in 1976 were Henry Jackson, Morris Udall, Frank Church, and Jerry Brown. Jackson would (one might wager) have made better judgments on affairs of state. On domestic policy, the smart money says all of them would have been at least as bad (with the proviso that they’d have been better at building relationships with members of Congress and the media).

    Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson all presided over disasters an order-of-magnitude worse than any for which Carter could be called responsible. As an exponent of economic policy, Carter compares unfavorably to his successors, but not unfavorably to Richard Nixon.

  30. Reminds me of the old game “What’s wrong with this picture?” And one could go on for hours coming up with answers.

  32. The “how it was done” is not the important part of this story. Every President, but especially a Democrat, has an entire section of their staff devoted to ensuring that any image released officially is just exactly what they want it to be.

    When Clinton did the “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument” proclamation his optics people had an entire stand of old growth fir trees removed because they interfered with what the optics people wanted the shot to look like.

    What we have to think about is the why not the how. Why is this image what the people who control the Presidential imaging want to be seen by the public?

  33. Every President, but especially a Democrat, has an entire section of their staff devoted to ensuring that any image released officially is just exactly what they want it to be.

    I’ll betcha the main effect of that is to provide employment for image-meisters.

  34. I’m with Aggie – can’t get past Dr. Jill’s awful dress.

    Only Melania could pull off such a print.

  36. One of the most bizarre and visually confusing pictures I have *ever* seen — and as a photographer hobbyist for close to 50 years, that’s saying something.

  39. I think it’s a reasonable wager Jill Biden has had ‘work done’. Unless you’re a burn victim or some such, that’s just tacky.

  40. Biden’s mask rules. Must wear masks outside at all times. Even though vaccinated, the POTUS and FLOTUS should wear masks in the presence of vaccinated non-family members (The Carters). Oops!

    Note how they put masks on immediately after leaving the house. It makes no sense except as theater. Or maybe they got a dispensation from “Pope Fauci.” 🙂

  41. Art+Deco,

    Yes – Dr. Jill sports the Hilary dyed blonde helmet hair.

    Not sure where she gets her advice on dresses.

    I do think that dress would work on Melania though. But she has an a actual waist and would have added a belt.

  43. I do think that dress would work on Melania though.

    Anything works on Mrs. Trump. But ’tis not her style. Mrs. Trump is enigmatic and elegant.

    It belongs on a married woman with children still of an age to have more children. Like one of my mother’s gal pals, ca. 1968.

  45. tend to agree w/ those who suspect that lens choice, perspective, lighting and cropping are contributing to the surreal scale distortion we’re seeing. Still it’s a very odd choice of photos to distribute publicly. But that’s in keeping w/ Joe Biden’s typical choice in photos, wherein he tends to look laminated and oddly brightened.

    But this is only going to contribute to suspicions that the UFO’s we keep hearing about have already landed and have a hand in all the weirdness going on. The fact that the Dems are behaving like pod people certainly doesn’t help.

  46. Heard it was the camera angles. Just the press trying to make Biden look good. Ain’t nothin’ new here. Also no masks. Not sure if that’s a violation of the new CDC rules.

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