This is yet another panoramic photo. In order to get the whole thing, I pointed the camera toward my feet and snapped a picture, then pointed it higher, then higher, and finally pointed it up toward the houses in the background. Put all these shots together and you get the full shadow.

But! As you can see, I attracted company, which means the first photo has a cat in it. But where is the cat’s shadow? The answer is that it was there in the first shot, but in the second shot it wasn’t because the cat had moved away. When Photoshop merged all the shots, it chose the second one for the middle part, and the second one had no shadow. So you end up with a person with a gigantic shadow and a cat with no shadow. Weird.

Alternatively, the cat is actually a vampire. They’re the ones that cast no shadows, right?

August 27, 2020 — Garden Grove, California

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ONLY HOURS LEFT—AND EVERYTHING RIDING ON IT

A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With just hours left, we need a huge surge in reader support to get to our $400,000 year-end goal. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters. All gifts are 3X matched and tax-deductible.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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