[HN Gopher] 10 Years of Pomological Watercolors
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10 Years of Pomological Watercolors
Author : fanf2
Score : 150 points
Date : 2025-06-27 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (parkerhiggins.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (parkerhiggins.net)
| sorokod wrote:
| Thank you Parker Higgins, these are quite lovely.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| There's a related story from the USDA about these:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44287019
| smidgeon wrote:
| Nice apples.
| esquivalience wrote:
| > " This was my first ever project in Python, and in many ways,
| the start of my life as a programmer. The domino effect here is a
| little mind-boggling for me."
|
| I can certainly relate to this. I started scripting for very
| obtuse reasons, and quickly started seeing things everywhere
| which I could apply a little code to and improve my life.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Became friends with Parker during my time at the Recurse Center.
| He's even more obsessed (in a good way) and funny in person! Glad
| to see his post on the top of HN.
| thisisparker wrote:
| Blog post author here! Always happy to see people looking at and
| reading about these paintings. Happy to answer any questions or
| job offers people here may have!
| ksherlock wrote:
| Thanks for your work. I used one of the pomo pictures in a
| project a few years back.
| biker142541 wrote:
| Echoing the same thanks! I have used as well personally as
| technique references and in several projects directly.
| parkerhiggins wrote:
| incredible, impactful, and authentic read!
| thisisparker wrote:
| lol thank you other Parker Higgins, always a pleasure to run
| into you here
| interroboink wrote:
| If anybody just wants to download the hi-res images, Internet
| Archive is your friend: https://archive.org/details/usda-
| pomological-watercolor-coll...
|
| You can have fun with 'em since they're public domain (:
|
| _Note 1:_ The metadata, such as title, author, etc. seem to be
| missing. If anyone knows of a collection with all that included,
| let me know (it 's not in the EXIF either, I spot-checked).
|
| _EDIT:_ aha! Here is metadata, which you can correlate to the
| image files: https://github.com/Wumms/pomological
|
| _Note 2:_ I saw this in the MARC catalog record:
| Use of the images in the U.S. Department of Agriculture
| Pomological Watercolor Collection is not restricted, but a
| statement of attribution is required. Please use the
| following attribution statement: "U.S. Department of
| Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special
| Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705"
| biker142541 wrote:
| I'm also noticing there is no explicit license on the official
| page. If it's public domain, attribution is not required. If it
| is not public domain, they should clarify the license (pretty
| sure this is indeed public domain).
|
| Ambiguity like this is way too common...
| interroboink wrote:
| Yeah, agreed it's weird.
|
| For another data point, this catalog.data.gov site[1] lists
| the license as "us-pd" (ie public domain in the USA). But
| then yeah, like you said the attribution demand is invalid.
|
| [1] https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/u-s-department-of-
| agricultu...
| msla wrote:
| I wonder how the USDA can demand anything regarding images
| created well before the copyright cutoff of 1929. I strongly
| suspect that's boilerplate text with no actual force.
| biker142541 wrote:
| Oh definitely no force behind it, but just annoying to see.
| These kinds of issues don't exactly block usage, but can
| plant a lot of confusion or hesitation for potential users. I
| wish agencies proactively embraced "please go use this
| awesome stuff" mentality vs gatekeeping by default.
| biker142541 wrote:
| Oh wow, it's been a decade! I remember this, and was excited to
| see these released. Nice work!
|
| This actually inspired me to go out and start (slowly) cataloging
| mostly historic 100+ yr old landscapes that were locked behind
| mostly non-US pay-to-access ( _cough_ British museums _cough_ ),
| and write a flurry of emails to institutions encouraging
| uploading high res versions. I'm contemplating a project to put
| historic paintings "on the map", depicting their geographically
| represented locations (when applicable), giving a window into the
| past. Maybe I should circle back on this effort to get more
| paintings released...
| CodeLikeHell wrote:
| I would absolutely love to see that project come to fruition.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| I think I'm going to print a few of these for my office. Thanks
| thisisparker
| snug wrote:
| I was scrolling the page looking for links so I could see them
| all, until i realized the links were just slightly in bold,
| rather than a different color and underlined. Would be good to
| highlight the links a little more on your site.
|
| Awesome work either way!
| thisisparker wrote:
| good shout, I think some recent typography changes made the
| bolding more subtle on mobile. I've pushed an update
| underlining them and it should be live momentarily!
| snug wrote:
| Ahh yes, much better
| anothernewdude wrote:
| What on earth is Pornological about these?
| Cerium wrote:
| Bad keming joke? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomology
| winstonrc wrote:
| Thanks to your collection, I had an absolute blast going down a
| silly rabbit hole of compression.
|
| https://www.winstoncooke.com/blog/rotation-based-compression...
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(page generated 2025-06-27 23:00 UTC)