Pattern Ghost

Aziza's secondary domain is . . . Truth. Only when one understands themselves fully, may they understand their place in the world, and in so understanding reveal larger truths.

The God of Forums has decreed that I am out of likes for the day. But know that these are also liked.

Aziza stirred from her meditation. Echoes of her siblings' stirring powers reverberated through her Hall of Mirrors. Something was afoot. So much divine intent could only mean one thing . . . a world was being birthed! Aziza focused her attention toward a dusty little corner of the cosmos . . .Masque, Rancor, Crax . . . Crax? . . . Nagus Sterling, Nadiya, Oeneus, Ceass, Alitheon, Strangecharm. Big sibling Etterskell! What a motley crew to undertake such a thing. Someone would have to ensure everyone properly reflected on their decisions . . . Aziza, Goddess of Reflection

Sniped! /putting on thinking cap /fueling thinking cap with Chinese food Still in, but will post a God/dess later this evening.

Life on a cricket ranch is tough, so it doesn't pay to nitpick over such things. Bug businesses appreciate getting candidates who are willing to do hard work. 😁

I'm in!

That law's actually being challenged in court, so they kind of are. It's the provision against drug addicts buying firearms that's on the firearms transfer paperwork, FWIW. Apparently, his date of purchase lines up with his time as an active drug user, meaning he would have had to lie on the ATF Form 4473, which is a crime. The fact that charges were even brought is pretty unusual. Lying on a Form 4473, and possession of a firearm by an addict aren't typically prosecuted. One article I read noted that the Justice Department has been using that one to go after White Supremacists lately (which I presume is why the recent court challenges have happened, to protect the interests of those same White Supremacists). Being charged after the fact for failure to pay taxes -- after the taxes are paid off -- is absurd, IMO. The main thing the IRS is interested in is getting your money. People have gone decades without paying taxes, then decided to pay up and been given payment options with no charges brought. They're typically satisfied with levying penalties and interest on the money. Seems like an attempt to appease certain noisy people who really should not be appeased.

The rationalization runs strong in MAGAland.

Here's a far more disturbing prospect than Biden's weird turns of phrase (from Politico): Can Trump run for president from prison? Yes, and it's been done before. While part of me would be darkly amused by the ensuing chaos, the more rational part is fairly terrified at the prospect of a win by an imprisoned Trump.

That way lies madness.

I guess. Better than the usual news. Makes sense.

Someone needs to remind Biden that we won that whole Revolution thing: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/16/biden-god-save-the-queen-man-remark/70332100007/ I'm not sure if he's suffering from slipping mental faculties or this is just the usual we've seen over the years. Either way, I don't think an American head of state should be signing off any speeches with "God Save the Queen," as lovely a sentiment as that is. Apparently, he said it after certifying Trump in 2017, so he may just mean "God help us all" or something similar. 🤷‍♂️

I hope you didn't mistake what I was saying for tone policing. I'm the last person to bother with tone. What I was talking about was pure hate and racism. Just to be clear. It's fine to be angry about an injustice, it's not fine to commit the same injustices yourself.

lol Let's let this one lie, guys. The "good enough" does not apply to the original circumstance, at least IMO. More to the point, I was attempting to bow out of the discussion with DrDevice gracefully. I'm just trying to avoid getting sucked back in. (Edit: But do feel free to PM me any time. I enjoy chatting with you both.)

I've always found that to be sound writing advice, but I'd caution against applying it too broadly. For example, I've never given that advice to a surgeon about to operate on me. 😉

I'm just very firmly in the "a lesser evil is still an evil" camp, but I understand where you're coming from. I gave your response a "thank you" emoji, but that's because there isn't (but should be) a virtual hug emoji. I'm on your side, and I'm sorry for what you're going through right now.

Judging by how upset you seem in your post, I don't think this would be a productive way to proceed, so I'm not going to provide any. It's not so hard to find, if you look. Here's the thing: I'm not on the side of the people you're so clearly -- and rightfully -- offended by and upset by. I'm not going to do anything further to present what may be seen as that side of any equivalency argument. You might notice that I never said that there was equivalency, or made such an argument. What I said was that it exists. I will also say that it isn't productive, healthy or something that should be tolerated. The fact is that elements on BOTH sides have become quite a bit too heated lately and that's not good. It leads to boiling points for violence. It doesn't need to be a large number or the majority of a group that's extreme to create very bad outcomes. Look at it this way: In the old days, every village had its idiot. Now the Internet has made it not only possible for these idiots to form their own villages, but also to mobilize. We live in an age of instantaneous communication (and miscommunication) and convenient fast travel. Not a great recipe considering how easy it is to radicalize any given number of people. I already agreed with you on this point in the post you were responding to. But see above. It only takes a small number of influential people putting out hate-fueled rhetoric to cause issues. Those issues then tend to snowball, causing an impact on both sides, and pretty soon we get to see the effect. It does nobody any good to say "our side isn't as bad," or "they deserve it," or whatever excuses are made for hateful behavior, regardless of the righteousness of the cause. It does nobody any good to give their "side" a blanket pass on bad behavior. So, while I agree with you in principal, vote in favor equality for all people, and generally respect you as a person (or as a presence on this forum, at least), I'm just saying that we shouldn't overlook what might seem like lesser evils being committed by people adjacent to our causes. If, after this, you would still like me to find examples of the people I'm talking about, I will. But we'll take it to PMs, as I have no desire to pollute the thread with it.

I think this depends on your definition of significant. If you mean politicians with significant policy-making power, then I agree. However, if you extend this to people who have the ability to influence large numbers of people, then those exist. There are certainly influential people in the activist and academic circles who are preaching their own brand of hate.

I'm pretty sure this would convince nobody. Most conservatives (more talking heads, less so rank and file citizens) I've seen expressing an opinion agree that these intersex conditions occur, and express varying levels of sympathy toward these cases. What they don't like are people born with normal genitalia who say that they're of the opposite gender than goes with their genitalia. They get further confused with the vast spectrum of circumstances that are now being taken in under the transgender umbrella by trans-rights activism. IMO, a better way to use the atypical genitalia argument is this: There have been many cases where a person was born with ambiguous genitalia, and a doctor made the call to assign a sex to the infant based on what the surgeon felt they could best "correct" the genitalia to, regardless of chromosome. This caused a problem later in life as these children often didn't feel "right" in their bodies. A genetic male assigned female at birth, and raised as a female, for example, would eventually figure out something was up, and be caused great emotional trauma as a result. News pieces and news magazine shows were devoted to this topic as far back as, say, the 80s, and the debate continues to this day. (I remember them coming up at least in the early 80s time frame on shows like 60 Minutes.) So, get the person to agree that this is a messed up situation. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully, they will sympathize with stories of a boy being surgically altered and raised as a girl (or vice versa) and this causing problems. Then say that this must mean we have an innate sense of our gender. Once agreement is reached, flip the script. Talk about a boy who's born and raised as a boy but has a strong innate feeling that he's a girl. This causes great emotional distress. What's the solution? Well, you can't fix the thing that tells a person what their sex is, since nobody knows what it is. So, you take steps to make them comfortable in their body, and to treat them as the gender that's appropriate. That might include purely social things, or hormone replacement therapy or various surgeries up to gender confirmation surgery. Probably also wouldn't work, but you never know. Good luck on convincing them that any of the other categories of people that fall under the trans umbrella are acceptable, though. Baby steps, I guess. *As far as I know. I label this thing as "gender" based on some older thinking of one's gender being in your head and your sex being in your chromosomes. When those two don't align, it causes issues. Still seems to hold up, such as in the case of intersex/atypical genitalia children above, though it's a pretty simple model that doesn't address many other areas of gender identity.

I haven't used it since they upgraded to 5. It seems like they've improved it over-associating characters to the generic terms. You could give a super detailed description on MJ 4, but if you put "superhero" in it, then it would skew it into copyright land.

So, are you just leaving the word out of the prompts? Also, which AI model are you using?

"Until he was fired out of the blue . . ." Yeah, no. I'm 99% sure that Blizzard is in such a risk-adverse posture right now that there is no way their HR and Risk departments are going to let them fire someone without cause. Would love to see if this goes to court and if there's any evidence supporting this guy's claim. =====/ LINE TO SEPARATE TWO UNRELATED RESPONSES /================================ You know how they say that if you help a baby bird back into its nest, the parent will reject it? Turns out that's nonsense. I wonder how true it is in this case? Maybe the calf was stuck in the river because it had already been rejected? I'd love to see a bovine behaviorist analysis of this. Are those a thing?

One of the biggest shortcomings I found with trying to do superheroes with Mid Journey was that it wanted to straight up swipe Batman or Superman instead of come up with something more original. Some other models are better about not associating superhero with only those two characters, but most of the them I've tried will churn out bat ears or S shields with regularity. What AI did you use to generate the above?

This autoplayed after the last one. Shows how fast this AI image generation/manipulation is advancing:

What's a sense of humor got to do with it? 😁 If you've been to both coasts in the US, there's a stark cultural difference. That was a joke playing on that difference. This casting could work, but I'm not expecting much. Heck, you can put perfectly fine actors in the roles and give them garbage to work with, and have a movie be garbage. The franchise does seem Doomed, though. One interesting bit is having the thing start in the 60s, so maybe they'll play up the SF adventurer/explorer aspects of the team, which would be a cool approach. Keeping my fingers crossed. I don't pay much attention to word of mouth. I speculate, ponder, get hyped, or worry . . . but I just watch stuff and see if I like it. I tend not to watch anything on the big screen these days since it's all going on streaming pretty fast post-pandemic, so even the theater/wait choice is kind of null these days.