Sociotard

some prompts are complicated by word associations. I wanted some fantasy images with giants, but using the word "giants" tended to get me creatures with football helmets, because some of the images captioned giants were of the New York Giants. I tried "titan", and the results were clearly influenced by the monsters in "attack on Titan"

I'm still having fun. Any requests? Playing with what style you ask for is great, but there are obvious holes. I tried asking for some in "precious moments" and it had no idea. Same for Ringerike Norse art. Anyway, here is a double quarter pounder cheeseburger in the style of H R Giger. As with quite a few of these, I could see using it as a launch point for photobashing, but not an endpoint. the middle has a piece that looks too much like a bun, and the meat could use more beef texture. Also, there is no cheese. I asked for a cheeseburger. Same for "Zen Geometry in Celtic style". The symmetry needs corrected.

I've been binging on this topic and I want to start a thread to talk about it. For an article: OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 is a new illustration of AI bias - Vox. These programs are similar in a way to Jukebox for music or GPT3 for text. They don't photobash existing pictures, but they draw on patterns they've learned to associate with certain words. And they're fun! just pop in a few words and get instant gratification. I don't have access to Dall-E, but Midjourney just went to open beta, and I've been having fun with that. Questions: Will this be impactful at all? I saw a few musicians 'collaborate' with Jukebox, taking inspiration from Jukebox output but fixing and improving things. And that was when it was new and fun; I haven't heard of anyone using it recently. It just kind of died. Is that what we should expect here? I've already seen videos of artists drawing inspiration from the machine's output, but still needing to put in a lot of work. Iron Man selling george foreman grills in the style of Jack Kirby Lines at Comic Con in the style of War Photography

Switzerland goes ahead with underground cargo freight system https://spectrum.ieee.org/cargo-sous-terrain

So, any action in July?

CNN reports that Secret Service agents are willing to dispute the SUV story, and do so under oath. That intern only claimed second hand information about it. Pity. It was a funny story.

What pops out to me is that Trump did want to join the mob, but not if it meant walking.

Just in case we were focusing too much on one bad decision The Supreme Court overturned a New York state law on Thursday that required anyone who wanted to carry concealed firearms in public to show they had "proper cause" indicating they had a specific need. The justices in the 6-3 ruling said the law violated the Second Amendment. And, coming soon, a ruling that (could) gut the ability of the EPA (and other agencies) to regulate pretty much anything. The Supreme Court case that could gut the EPA’s power to fight climate change - Vox

My favorite counterfactual is no Iraq II. Not only do we not see ISIS (and the refugees it created) but also the Arab spring is less likely (and all the refugees it created). Far fewer refugees, and there likely IS no Brexit in the first place.

Feng shui? The interior design thing?

A spider monkey wearing fatigues and a bullet proof vest was found dead after a shootout between police and a cartel. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/monkey-bullet-vest-dead-mexico-cartel-b2105250.html I gotta say, this Dark Champions game looks wild.

It doesn't really seem to be a conservative/progressive problem. Cory Booker was famously in the pocket of big pharma.

Scientists wrap robotic finger with 'living human skin' that can heal itself No word if they used Austrian bodybuilder skin cells.

I had thoughts of a Shakespeare Recast draft, where players would draft a play, then draft characters to fill the roles.

In other news, there was a mass knifing incident in an LA hospital. This is just a few days after that spree shooting in Tulsa. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/stabbing-critical-conditional-la-hospital-b2093758.html Was there ever a breakdown of mass-killing events by method and country? Comparing spree shooting, knifing, bombing, and vehicular slaughter?

What I found interesting was that the 5 generals were from internal affairs. Does that mean they were in charge of rooting out corruption and Putin is angry they let said corruption do so much damage to army preparedness? Does that mean they were in charge of morale, and Putin is angry at the number of defections, men shooting themselves in the leg to go home, or refusing to go to war in the first place?

US agrees to send Ukraine long range missiles after getting promised the missiles WON'T target inside Russia. That may be asking too much. Knocking out a few rail bridges would do a lot more than, say, the same number of tanks. I am concerned about attrition here. As near as I can tell, Ukraine kills about 3 Russian soldiers for every 1 soldier Ukraine loses. But, Russia has 3 soldiers for every 1 Ukraine has, so that math is fine by Russia. Ukraine kills a bunch of tanks, but Russia doesn't care because they have loads of them. They can accept the loss.

"Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree In which an adventure-hardened orc tires of slaying monsters and looting treasures, and decides to settle down and found a coffee house. Very fun. If you want a cozy, slice of life with low stakes, but you still want high fantasy tropes, this one is for you.

Color was named for the fruit. Before that it was yellowish red.

Atwood responds to book bans with ‘unburnable’ edition of Handmaid’s Tale

Why the H*** is CPAC in Hungary?

Is a stoned laser cat attack better or worse?

I look forward to the Ruin vs Beast-of-Blair-Mountain kaiju fight.