I thought I would give a try to explaining some photo manipulation as done above, with Mathew Silverstone, said to be a victim in the 9/10/2025 shootings at Evergreen High School, Evergreen, Colorado. It takes a minute or so to acclimate yourself, but it is a matter of perspective. Right off I can see that the head is too big for the body. Its width, cheekbone to cheekbone, is 45% of his shoulder width. I have a large head, size 7-3/4 hat size, but my width is only 35% of my shoulders. Same with my wife, on a smaller scale, of course, 35%. Try the measurement on yourself and see if you get something similar. This is one big noggin we are looking at.
So I reduced his head size to what I considered to be normal. We have many different body types, and a lineman for the Denver Broncos weighing 330 pounds would obviously be an extreme example, but Silverstone is not atypical. Do you see what I mean above? His head is now normal size for that body, and it is very easy to manipulate head size in Photoshop, which is all I did, reducing it by 15%. It now looks proportionate to the body.
But if you look at the top photo again, there is more to notice. If you allow it to normalize in your eyes, you’ll see that the body and head are not the same distance from the camera. It’s two-dimensional, I realize, but I would place the body six inches behind the head, which is really extended out towards us.
OK, I am going to run the original photo again so you don’t have to keep moving up and down.
The hat is a a Platchige hat, also known as a flat beaver hat, and is a type of black, flat-crowned hat worn by Hasidic Jews during the week. It might also be called a pork pie hat. The point of the hat is that it distinguishes Mathew as Jewish, which I suspect was important for this psyop, this fake shooting. Desmond Holly, the alleged shooter, was said to harbor antisemitic views. Either Silverstone is really Jewish, or had to look Jewish. In either case, he had to wear that hat or a skull cap like a yarmulke, something to make the point: He’s a Jew! The photo had to tell the story, as in TV news, the photos are the story.
This morning at Fakeologist, I ran across a comment, “What is antisemitism?” My answer, maybe not good enough, was “I love it when someone asks the right question! As I see it …antisemitism is an imposed sentiment imputed on certain people living among us and used to demonize them. Once you give a dog a bad name, you can beat him. For the vast majority of us, we don’t hate people we live around, and even accept them as they are. This includes Jewish people.”
Hatred of Jews is being fanned right now in the Hamas/Israel conflict. I’ve not looked into it at all, not even in the beginning, as I’ve been around that track too often, and know that Hamas is supported by Israel. But I harbor no hatred against Jews. On college campuses where, wokeness is more prevalent, there is hatred. But most people don’t hate others that easily. In fact, I find Jewish people hard to dislike, as my general impression is that they are cultured, well educated, and smarter than average. Jewish women are often very beautiful. And, Jewish comedians own the book on humor.
Anyway, the hat, which could have been added in Photoshop or worn naturally, was essential to the story this photo is telling.
Lighting: Typically it is inattention to lighting details that gives away a fake photo, but this one is not obvious. Ask yourself the simple question, where is the light source for this photo? If you say from his right, as indicated by the shadows on his shirt sleeves, I would agree. Both his left ear and the dimple on the right of his nose indicate lighting from the right. The shadows on the shirt do too, at least on his right arm.
Why, then, is there a shadow under his chin that extends lip level to either side of his face? Lighting from the right should eliminate that shadow on the right side of his face. But I think this is easy to explain. It’s a Photoshop effect, that is, to place this head atop someone else’s body required that blurred line to join the two. It has the effect of blurring the border between the face and neck. Also, the face itself is a bit blurrier under the mouth than around the eyes. Compare the area under the lips to the areas around eyebrows and ears. It’s been retouched, I think.
Finally, notice about the face the smoothness of texture. It’s a soft photo, to be sure, but I see no blemishes. The lips are full and pink, as if light rouge has been applied. The shoulders are delicate and sloped – this is not a person who works out. It could be that the hat was added to hide … a woman’s head of hair? Mathew” is said to be 18 years old, and by that age, he should at least be developing some facial hair. Not much, but some. I think this is a photo of a girl, age 18-30. The qualities are all feminine.
Is the photo computer generated? I cannot say. I can say this: This could be a woman or a highly effeminate man, one who has perhaps taken drugs to make him more feminine? The Evergreen shooting happened on 9/10/25, the same day that Charlie Kirk was (supposedly) shot and killed. As we know now with the CK event, they brought antisemitism and transgender into the picture, saying Kirk was victimized by an antisemite and his partner who is a transgender woman.
What if the Evergreen event was meant to be a backup to the CK one? What if, had the CK shooting not gone off as planned, that they needed a backup shooting using the same elements? This could explain why the Evergreen shooting has received virtually no coverage outside our area. It’s all Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
Anyway, fun with photos. Set me straight if you must. We all have different sets of eyes.
Piece of Mindful 
Have you seen men when they take puberty blockers, what happens to their body? One way to spot a transgender woman, vs. natural born woman is the size of the head. Mens heads are almost always signficantly larger. This does look like someone on puberty blockers, or better still a Photoshop as Mark deduced correctly.
It is odd how this psyop was a backup – I even read someone on Facebook, as I sometimes scroll the comments on stories to see what people are yakking about, that complained this school shooting story did not get enough press! Because every time there is a school incident with a gun it must be front wide news nationwide.
Hate to say it but we used to bring guns to school in our backpacks for shooting at our buddies house after school back in the day, and nobody ever cared or caught wind. And I don’t know a single person shot by a gun. People don’t go around shooting people who are raised correctly, just like you wouldn’t run someone over in your car for fun. Random shootings just don’t happen except maybe inner city gangs.
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This photo appeared on the day of the shootings, 9/10/25. At that time, the family was supposedly in grief, and yet media hit on them for photos of their boy. They would have been doing a hospital bedside vigil at that time. That is, if there were any Silverstone’s in our area. There are not.
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I’ve a hard time with heads growing bigger … our daughter-in-law claimed one night that anorexia causes the skull to distort, talking about Karen Carpenter. It does not, they merely stretched out her face in the darkroom somehow to make her into a grotesque photo. Anyway, the whole premise behind what I do with photos, which I know is controversial, is that our skulls are formed of bone material that does not change in shape as we age*. I’ve seen it borne out a thousand times where young person and same old person still have the same facial features, since the skull shape has not changed underneath.
They also stretched out the face of the Holly kid, the alleged Evergreen shooter, same as they did with what became Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook fame. And I remember Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey on a talk show during the Dumb and Dumber rollout, and Daniels said that one of the reasons actors succeed is that they have big faces, bigger than normal and easier for the camera to work with.
It makes me wonder if they enlarged Silverstone’s head because they knew it would be on TV news. That would explain that.
*Stephen Hawking died in the 1980s and was replaced by an actor, but I could never give photographic evidence to this because Hawking’s facial features and skull had been so distorted by ALS.
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I see a blur filter effect of say 3% to smooth out any lines that give away the cut and paste joins. What I don’t get is the POV of the photographer. He/she/it/they/them is below the subject, looking up. It’s an odd position, though not impossible. It doesn’t immediately signal a readable context. The subject seems to have entered the room and the photo taken, but why? Why not back up and get an eye level shot like most people simply recording the image of someone with a pose. The face seems to have set itself into a waiting mode while the shot is aligned. But the framing is more like an impromptu surprise shot. But not quite. With the head shrunk to normal size, it looks more natural, but still the POV is of someone either sitting in an odd spot in the room for a chair or footrest or it’s a dwarf taking the picture. The head has been enlarged and centered for maximum emotional connection.
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I think the skull changes through childhood but gets more or less set in adulthood. The facial proportions of children are very different, you can see the standard ratios described in any basic book on figure drawing.
Head to body ratio is not a constant – head size is more constant, ie it has to be a certain minimum size to be normal, whereas body size can vary widely. This probably explains the “big headed actors” to a large extent, ie they don’t have especially giant heads, they have especially small frames and body size. Again from drawing books, they will tell you that a regular person is about 6 or 6.5 heads tall.. whereas a “superhero” (or Greek god or biblical figure by Michelangelo or something) might be 8 or 9 heads tall.. because heads are “read” as a certain minimum size, so they can be used to imply the scale of the rest of the figure.
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I agree, there is no standard for adults compared to children. I first realized this when I was working on JonBenet Ramsey, thinking she was a real child and that I would be able to find her working in media as an adult. My first idea, Megan Kelly. No chance. The human skull is fully formed by age 18-22 or so.
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To me it just looks like a young woman with narrow shoulders (normal for females) and small frame. (She could be “transitioning” of course, on whatever drugs.) She might be only 5.5 heads tall, so has a “big head” relative to her body… Heads are not proportional to height/ body size. Maybe slightly, but your head doesn’t continue to grow proportionally larger for every inch of height. A basketball player could have about the same size head, but be 7.5 heads tall or something. Also most consumer cameras are just incredibly distorting with a bit of fish eye distortion – a comparison was posted here once, of all the different focal lengths and the huge difference it makes in fidelity to what we see in life.
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Well, it’s all about perspective. MM claims that by his superior perceptions he can easily spot who’s alike and who’s different, but he is wrong quite often. (Don’t tell him!) With Mathew, I can easily see that a larger head was placed on a narrower body, and the chin line blurred to hide the border. Sometimes, as when you have stared at photos as long as I have, things fall into place. If that head on that body were walking down the street, it would be a freak show, Halloween.
Fauxlex left here in a huff (or was it a Subaru?) because he had two photos of MM’s mother that he claimed to be two different people. They were the same woman, which is the value of what I do, to overcome perceptions caused by different angles of the same person. She did look like two different women, but facial alignment as I do it said otherwise.
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He also has trouble judging Asian women on their beauty. There was a recent article he posted on the Chinese spy who was caught here, and he claimed she was an agent in part because of her looks, which he claimed were 100 out of 10, or something like that. To me she looked like an attractive nerd-type Chinese student. Nothing special. I see Asian women all the time that look more attractive than her, it seems like he’s never spent time around them.
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Years ago MM openly confessed to being attracted to what most guys would label homely plain Jane types, not that there is anything wrong with that. I’m not qualified to use a term like “narcissist” but he has an elevated opinion of his looks and some people don’t want competition from their significant others in that regard.
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I read that article and thought the same. I was like WTF! No way near a ten or even that attractive in the photo he posted. Maybe she had other photos Miles looked at and he just posted the worst one of her or she was a ten in his opinion. Looks don’t make anyone an agent. Which makes me think there are more than one person posting as MM. If MM has humble means like he says then he shouldn’t be posting or worried about his looks. He’s an alright looking dude for his age if that’s really him or one of the MM’s. Of course I read his webpage for the blowouts, but it’s his page he can post his opinions and irrelavent stuff if he wants.
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Jill Claybergh … when I was in high school, I thought she was the biggest turn on ever, so much so that when I mentioned this far distant unattainable image to my girlfriend, she got jealous!
What was it about her? I don’t understand now but when I see her photo, it is still an arousal, especially when she wears glasses. I now read where she had two back alley abortions when younger, died young of leukemia, and had a career that fizzled in later years, and dated Al Pacino!, well, she ain’t so hot. But to an 18-year-old, she was smoking beauty. Makes no sense, attraction.
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Really funny coincidence – I was going to ask what was it that made Jill Ireland, drop dead beautiful and classy, and one of my favorite actresses for looks, marry Charles Bronson? Maybe because most actors are gay but he wasn’t? They acted together in 16 films! Maybe he wanted to keep her on a short leash, as I would.
So the coincidence is Jill died of breast cancer, and guess who played her in a biopic? Jill Clayburgh, who I had never heard of before
In 1991, Ireland was portrayed by Jill Clayburgh in the made-for-television film Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story.
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Ireland goes way, way back into the 1600s, of descent of Eburn, and Clayburgh’s paternal lineage is scrubbed, maternal very short. The thing I was looking for is Jewish heritage, but I’m not much good at that stuff. I don’t care about “Jewish” other than I have this notion that Jewish women tend to be very attractive. Also, the maternal line is where it comes down, which might mean we live in a matriarchy. My last name is Jewish, but my mother was Irish, so I cannot enter the club.
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Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, Taylor Swift, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lawrence … make your own list. Women I find unattractive for various reasons.
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Yikes! Penelope Cruz?? Really? Maybe this day (I haven’t checked), but her and (also now ancient) Rachel Ward… stunning perfection to me.
We’re talking looks… appearance, right?
Probably dummer than a bag of hammers beyond the beauty – given their profession.
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Must be something about Mexican woman and me.
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“Mexican” Yikes! Spanish, my good man.
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I grew up on the South Side of Billings, Montana, which was heavily Mexican, that is, indigenous and hispanic. When Spanish influence came through, it was strikingly handsome young men … in girls, I did not see much of that, but rather the stocky girls that had no appeal to me at all. However, as I look back on that early part of my life, I see the white kids were no prizes either. We were all the products of bus drivers and people making a living doing hard labor. My own dad was a neon sign man, but could not turn a profit as he drank it all up. I guess when I say “Mexican” I reflect my upbringing. Penelope Cruz must be mostly hispanic with just a touch of indigenous. The girls I grew up around, if you see them now, whoa! Mack Trucks.
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Cruz is in one of Allen’s better imo movies (speaking of him) kind of an outlier in his ouvre.. Woody writes and directs but has no role. It’s a steamy passionate love triangle between Cruz, another famous actress and maybe it was Antonio Banderas. Or del Toro maybe. Kind of an interesting character study, but focused just on “the beautiful people” rather than Allen’s usual fare of his type being the male lead.
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It was Vicky Christina Barcelona, and it starred Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem. Excellent flick!
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That’s it, thank you.. it’s been years since I saw it, but it was very compelling. It starts out with Bardem charmingly but aggressively putting the two women on the spot in a bar, challenging them to jump into a sudden passionate love affair and roller coaster ride, join him in his sun drenched life of passion and adventure or something. He’s almost the opposite of the neurotic, self deprecating Allen..
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