Pattern Ghost

11 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I would need to see some credible stats before I agreed with, "most of humanity." In today's world there seems to be a lot of inhumanity to go around.

If my premise were wrong, organizations (military, police, gangs) wouldn't have to train the reluctance to kill out of people. You'd be far harder pressed to find any credible stats indicating that "most people" are inclined to kill each other. The global murder rate (2019) is 6.2/100,000. So is 6.2 "most" or is 99,993.8 "most"?

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

What happens when tempers get a bit frayed, and guns are present?

 

And when the morons with the guns have grown up in an environment that encourages solving problems with violence.  Thankfully, most of humanity hasn't had its humanity beaten out of it.

Even if Biden's cognitively impaired, I'll take him over a (much more) cognitively and morally impaired Trump. 

The oral arguments in the Colorado removal of Trump from the ballot case were today (yesterday now). Here's an interview with Colorado's lawyer:

I watched the thing on YouTube. I think the above video covers the main points well, but if you're morbidly curious or have too much time on your hands, here it is:

I shared it to a time stamp after the talking heads, but if you have even more time to waste, you can wind it back to the beginning.

1 hour ago, tkdguy said:

He has too many enablers in power.

Now, but he's been a criminal his entire adult life.

/---- Divider for unrelated post that's been mashed together ----/

This is awesome:

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/02/republican-senators-who-walked-out-of-oregon-legislature-cant-seek-reelection-state-supreme-court-rules.html

Consequences. Who'd a thunk it?

This man practically convicts himself, I can't believe he's evaded prison for so long:

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-briefly-admits-january-6th-was-an-insurrection

I tried tapir, being something vaguely elephant shaped with a shorter trunk. Didn't go well. I might try the pre-elephants later, but I'm going to snooze now.

/imagine chaotic hellbeast that looks like a cross between an elephant with no trunk and a warthog --v 6.0

This one landed closer -- sort of -- but 3/4 of the generations had trunks:

Seems like "chaotic hellbeast" shifted the context enough to allow more of a hybrid, maybe?

Here's one with the prompt: illustration of animal that is a cross between an elephant and a warthog in sketchnote style --no trunk --v 6.0

Again, ignored the --no trunk. I like sketchnote style a lot. I tried to erase the trunk with vary(region), but it really, really wants its elephant hybrids to have a trunk.

For the elephant/A-10: /imagine an A-10 Warthog crossed with an elephant

For the elphant/warthogs: /imagine illustration of a huge animal on the savannah that is a cross between an elephant and a warthog that has four majestic tusks and no trunk --no trunk

These were on MJ.

I just noticed it was set to 5.2 for those. Going to try the elphant/warthog on 6.

It really leaned into Elephant on version 6, but added bristly hairs. Ignored the --no trunk completely:

1 hour ago, Ternaugh said:

 

You're absolutely right.

That one got some interesting results:

13 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So...a rhinoceros?

Not quite, but I picked one with a horn for Christopher.

The AI doesn't like mashing different things together still.

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah see that's the kind of thing I keep getting, the AI doesn't seem to know what a Warthog even looks like

I had some where it had a bit more of a side view on the head, and it was getting a general warthog shape, but the elephant elements express excessively. Sorry, had to. But it seems like in mash ups, it really likes to have one of the things dominate more of the features.

Here's one pass:

But neither one of those has horns. 😁

So, this is how SkyNet starts . . .

On 1/25/2024 at 10:39 PM, Lord Liaden said:

Could you cite a source?

Local radio news. I'll see if I can find a second source.

OK, here you go, from a TX newspaper site:

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/24/texas-border-wire-supreme-court/

Quote

The Texas National Guard and state troopers are still rolling out concertina wire and preventing Border Patrol agents from accessing most of Shelby Park, a 47-acre Eagle Pass park that sits on the bank of the Rio Grande where thousands of migrants have crossed.

Seems like Abbot is using his state police and NG troops to block Border Patrol access to the park.

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Insurrection would not apply, unless Abbot tried to oppose federal law enforcement or military with state officers using force.

He has/had Texas National Guard blocking border patrol agents' access after the SCOTUS ruling. I'd say that qualifies.

Maybe it's time to let Texas have that independence they crave so much, and pull all federal funding.

Writers and artists have some growing concerns. Musicians . . . might have more reason to worry about AI:

No, they're pirate servers. That's what they're called. Now, one of them isn't. It's still software piracy. "Private server" is just sugar coating piracy. PotAYto, poTAHto.

I'll grant that in this case, they're more Robin Hood than Captain Hook.

2 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

The IP holder is well aware of their existence, appreciates their efforts to revive the game, and was largely content to stay hands-off. 

Of course they're aware. Homecoming has been trying to negotiate this for years. But I think it's a huge stretch to say that NCSoft appreciates their efforts without a direct quote from NCSoft. They shut the game down while it was still profitable, they have a history of doing so, and they've never indicated that they care about anything other than their bottom line. If they did, they could have kept the game running for quite a while with the steady player base it had.

15 hours ago, Grailknight said:

City of Heroes has been back for 4 years. I've been playing on Rebirth since May of 2019. 

 

The point is that it's licensed now. I don't play on pirate servers for several reasons, not the least of which is that they can be shut down at any time by the IP holder, and you lose all your progress. 

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

JFC that video is an hour long, what is the tl;dw?

There isn't. They cover several topics. If you don't have time, maybe you can feed the transcript to ChatGPT or another LLM for a summary. If it doesn't grab your attention, then don't watch it. If you're a busy person, it's honestly probably not worth your time.  I don't really like the Adam guy, but the other guy makes some interesting comments on the history of the modern conservative movement.

Interesting conversation in this video:

On 1/17/2024 at 5:30 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

City of Heroes is really feeling its age though, could do with a graphical, gameplay, and setting update.

All true, though you just described creating a new game. 😃

I think a reskin with higher-resolution textures and the option to use either the old or new textures would be worth doing. I think even that's unlikely given that it's run by donations.

I'm still having an inordinate amount of fun, though. And it even runs on my 13 year old laptop, which is cool. It's also one of the two AAA MMOs that runs on Mac that I know of. (The other being WoW).

If you like supers, it's the best MMO in town for me. Champions Online is a ghost town these days, and I never really liked DCUO much.

The slower paced combat is a relaxing change for my aging reflexes.