Don – Page 8 – Zoopraxiscope

Tune of the day #116

Something I would not have expected from Richard Thompson.

Tune of the day #115

The lyrics are from the medieval Carmina Burana. The music is somewhat more recent.

Further fun with the art machine

Working with AI image generators is both addictive and frustrating. You can get pretty pictures, but it takes persistence. It’s like working with an idiot savant, emphasis on “idiot.” If a model can misinterpret your prompt, it will. It generally takes between six and twelve tries to get a satisfactory image, and the final result is always a compromise.

I mostly play at NightCafé. Sometimes I take part in the “challenges,” in which participants submit pictures they “made” and vote on the entrants. Consequently, I need to quickly evaluate a lot of pictures, too many of which look exactly like other pictures. I’ve developed some criteria for scoring:

Catches my attention: +1
Holds my attention: +2
Is a generic headshot: -1
Includes a kitten: -1
Includes a fox: -1
Includes a dragon: -1
Includes fairies: -1
Includes pointy ears: -1
Includes angels: -1
Includes Batman: -1
Includes Wonder Woman: -1
Includes Catwoman: +1
Is a generic landscape: -1
Is a generic cityscape: -1
Is a generic dystopian cityscape: -10
Features a knight in armor standing on a precipice looking out over a vast wilderness under a dramatic sky: -1
Includes islands floating in the sky: -1
Includes women in boob-plate armor: -1
Is imitation Klimt: -1
Is imitation Art Nouveau: -1
Is imitation Thomas Kinkade: -10
Relies on vulgar humor: -10
Is intentionally grotesque: -10
Includes Donald Trump: -10
Has a message: -10
Has a political message: -100

The astute will notice that many of my own pictures would be down-voted by these criteria. Don’t ever accuse me of consistency.

Continue reading “Further fun with the art machine”

Tune of the day #114

It’s impossible to be too paranoid — true in 1973, and in 2026.

Tune of the day #113

The Cuban composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer composed much music for classical guitar of varying degrees of listenability. These include his Beatlerianas, such as this.

Tune of the day #112

The ending tune of the curious anime Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita/Humanity Has Declined, by Masumi Itou. The lyrics are translated here. You can follow the score here.

Tune of the day #111

Someday we’ll get there ….

Hooray for Captain Spaulding

Animal Crackers is in the public domain as of yesterday.

For discussion of copyright and the crimes of Sonny Bono, see Dr. Boli and Another Movie Channel.

Tune of the day #110

Jehan Alain: “When the Christian soul no longer finds new words in its distress to implore God’s mercy, it repeats incessantly the same invocation with a vehement faith. Reason has reached its limits. Alone, faith pursues its ascension.”

Fans of the band Renaissance might recognize this.

Tune of the day #109

Celebrate the new year at Marconi’s Prize-Winning Bakery.

Tune of the day #108

Here’s a little Chabrier to end the year.

Timely note

If you reuse old calendars, those from 2015, 2009, 1998, 1987 and 1981 will work for 2026, though the dates for Easter will probably be wrong. Those from 2020 and 1992 will work from March on.

Quote of the day

Severian:

As we say around here, infinite Information Velocity effectively = zero IV. You have access to all the information, instantly… but it’s all AI slop and none of it can be trusted, not least because AI is just Reddit but faster (probably trained on Reddit).

And actually this is great from a Dissident perspective. In a world of nothing but AI slop, what can you trust? Nothing but what is told to you by a real person, whom you know well, with an ironclad rep for honestly. The endpoint of Globalization is, as it turns out, extreme localism.