Sociotard

Let me see if I've written this up correctly,

3d6 Minor Transform (classified documents into unclassified documents) +1 BoECV, +1/4 Invisible Power Effects (documentation-related skills), -1/2 No Range
45 points

Kind of weird and I'm not sure I'd allow it. I'm not sure documents have an Ego stat, even top secret nuclear ones.

Reservists aren't just conscripts. They are civilians with prior military experience.

And Russia has loads of weapons. They have logistical problems, but the reservists won't be unarmed.

I want you to imagine it is winter. Supply lines are disrupted and your unit hasn't eaten well. It is 3 AM and you were assigned sentry duty. This is your partner.

Oh, piss nuggets.

Russia announced a partial mobilization, which means 300,000 reservists.

https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-717706

In better news...

On the 17th Russia tried crossing the Dnipro with a barge loaded with soldiers and weapons. Ukraine sank it. On the 19th Russia tried it again. Ukraine sank that one too.

I assume Russia has had successes too, that weren't listed, but it still gives me hope.

https://en.defence-ua.com/events/ukraines_military_sank_the_second_barge_with_russian_troops_during_their_attempt_to_force_the_dnipro_river-4280.html

Catholic priest resigns after falling in love with author of Satanic erotica novels.

https://www.irishpost.com/news/catholic-bishop-resigns-after-falling-in-love-with-satanic-erotic-fiction-novelist-219653

40 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

which guy?

Trump. Sorry, I was reading the classified document comments when I wrote that, before I got to the stabbing

I still say Biden should just pardon the guy. Any prosecution will appear political. Reality does not matter; rather perception creates reality.

No matter how merited, any prosecution will lead to actual politicization of the Justice Department by Conservatives, because perception will say Liberals did it first

Round and round the widening gyre.

Stop the dang widening.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/pearson-textbooks-nft-blockchain-digital

Pearson, one of the world's largest publishers of academic textbooks, wants to turn e-book textbook into NFTs, so it can make money every time they are resold.

5 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

We need to send MREs. They'll likely defect to Ukraine for them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Varolampi_Pond

Russia is bolstering its ranks with prisoners offered suicide-squad-style sentence reductions. Everybody knows that.

Russia is bolstering its ranks with a dad-bod army of men in their 50s and 60s. Old news. Chechens? Mercenaries? Same.

So what is new? The possibility of 100,000 North Koreans.

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/100000-north-korean-soldiers-could-be-sent-to-bolster-putins-forces-fighting-ukraine/news-story/1126782c8c5e6fe08a8ad2d9fa38dff0

Fresh, well trained troops are known for changing the course of a war. This is North Korea. How fresh, well trained?

Context: I'd been using a text-to-image generator based on machine learning called Midjourney. Someone asked to see "Mulder and Scully in the style of Gary Larson". Midjourney failed. Badly. 

It failed at every comic strip artist I could think of. But then I thought, what if I just entered "Mulder and Scully as a newspaper comic"

"Why do you look at my neck like that Agent Mulder? I assure you I am a normal human agent like you."

I didn't say anything in the prompt about scully being a gray alien failing at its disguise. the bot came up with that on its own. And the comic is still pretty far from the style of a comic strip. At least it was funny.

I suggest a new strategy Chewbacca. Let the Droid win.

Russian chess robot breaks a seven-year-olds finger.

Rather than waiting for the machine to complete its move, the boy opted for a quick riposte. Apparently unsettled by the quick responses of the boy, the robot unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger. “It has performed at many opens. Apparently, children need to be warned. It happens.”

Idle thought: would "Holy Day" be a fun slot?

'Day' being flexible: Lent and Hanukkah would be acceptable. Draft Beltane, Día de Los Muertos, or a Flower War.

I had a favor to ask about this actually. I enjoy the world creation draft enough that occasionally I talk to people on Reddit and so forth. It made me wonder how it would be to put the game into a format that could be readily shared, like a pdf.

So I made one.

The favor is, could you review it?

Fantasy World Creation Draft.pdf

Yeah, Dall-E 2 can do photorealistic pretty well.

I think AI generated art could augment the work of a graphic artist. It couldn't replace it. Hands are still bad. Certain comic book styles don't seem to work. Action scenes are trash.

It is plausible that future AIs will be able to speed train on existing art. "This is Seeker. Now draw Seeker breaking a robot"!

Ferris Bueller

Mulder and Scully. First as the Far Side, which I can almost see, and then Calving and Hobbes, which I have no idea ...

here is the interpretation of that photo of the Carina Nebula

Bear in mind, putting one thing in the style of another is handy, but not always required.

ancient mesopotamian city :: beautiful landscape :: act of god :: miracle :: creation myth :: --aspect 8:13 (I had the World Creation Superdraft on my mind)

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

I wonder how far we can push this.  Would any of these work?

 

Calvin and Hobbes in the style of Erol Otus

Mad Max: Fury Road in the style of Bill Sienkiewicz

Hello Kitty in the style of Simon Bisley

Doctor Strange in the style of Picasso

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the style of Frank Miller

Avengers: Endgame in the style of ukiyo-e woodblock printing

 

The Gigerburger makes me hungry.

Some did ... not.

I can see bits of pattern from Calvin and hobbes, but this is not Erol Otus at all

Mad Max Fury Road in the style of Bill Sienkiewicz worked better

Hello Kitty in the style of Simon Bisley is a maybe

Dr. Strange by Picasso is okay

These stills from Star Trek II do not capture Frank Miller

Not horrible, but the faces need cleaned up a lot.

25 minutes ago, Pariah said:

How about in medieval tapestry in the style of MC Escher?

Douglas Adams once wrote: "The results were more often surprising than they were accurate, but it was worth it for the times when they were both." That's how I feel at the moment. Giving it just the right prompt is an art, and the joe biden fight is not proving easy.

This comic has been on my mind as I've been playing with MidJourney.

I don't know about Dall-E, but I've already seen some codelike specialization creep into the prompts for Midjourney.

:: separates phrases 
-aspect lets you set an aspect ratio for the output
image URLs can be used as a prompt input. that isn't particularly codelike but it isn't intuitive either.

I just thought that was interesting.

I find it oddly comforting that text-to-image AI is bad at hands. Really bad. Every novice artist I've ever listened to has complained about the difficulty of hands and feet. I see so many pictures on this site where the hands look like they belong on a gibbering horror. AI has the same problem we do.