… mostly from the garden.
Balloon flowers are easy from seed and can bloom their first year, as can Silene regia.
Recent snapshots …
Category: Whatever
Just wondering
If June is Pride Month, then is July Envy Month and August the Month of Wrath?
Today’s quote
Grim:
The good argument in favor of billionaires — trillionaires, now — is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world’s richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.
… and Bland
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.
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.
Machine-made art
Intrigued by J Greely’s work with pinups, I’ve been experimenting with AI art generators. Rather than struggle with SwarmUI, I tried some of the many free online toys. The results were interesting enough to warrant further exploration, and I eventually ended up at NightCafé. I’ve been seeing what the various models can do and what their limitations are.
As far as capabilities go, they can imitate almost any style to some degree. AI “photographs” are convincing as long as you don’t count the fingers, and sometimes the models get those right, too — one more reason not to believe anything you see online.
Miscellany
Noise comes in colors. There are white noise, pink noise, red noise, brown noise, blue noise, grey noise, etc. The various shades are most easily perceived by acousticians and sound engineers.
While wandering around an airport earlier this summer, I realized that there music playing throughout the building. It was light, watery jazzish stuff, difficult to pay attention to. There was a trumpet in the mix, but the sound was bland, not bold. The melodies were trivial and the chords hackneyed. It may very well have been AI slop. What I was hearing could be called “beige noise”: music intended to be ignored.
*****
Joseph Epstein on a biography he never wrote:
In my early thirties I signed on to write a biography of John Dos Passos, who was still alive. I wrote to Dos Passos to ask if I might have his cooperation in writing his biography. He replied instantly, saying that he would help me in any way he could, on the condition that I “put my liberal ideology in mothballs” and pledge never again to use the word “explicate.”
*****
Atomic Fungus shows how to talk to machines:
Mrs. Fungus was trying to get a tech on the phone, and was stuck at the recalcitrant AI prompt. After hearing her say, “I want to talk to an agent!” fifty-odd times, I took the phone from her.
Machine: “Do you want to try to restart your cable box now?”
Me: “NO! BIB GOBBLE WAGLE BAG GAG HANGLE!”
Whenever the clanker would ask me a yes/no question, I’d answer it, but then add random gobbledygook. And I kept making the tone angrier and angrier.
It gave up and shunted us to a human.
Mrs. Fungus: “How did you do that?”
The algorithm that translates what the user is saying into something the computer can understand has a limited capacity for literal nonsense. In theory, after a sufficient number of errors, it should crap out and send the caller to a human.
That was my theory. I’m glad it worked!
*****
A thousand years ago I discovered three records in the University of Dallas library that would determine much of my musical activity over the years to come: Augustin Anievas’ Chopin waltzes, the first disc of Isolde Ahlgrimm’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” and Songs by Tom Lehrer1. Lehrer died recently. A few years ago he released his music into the public domain. You can find all the songs here.
*****
One of the places I passed through in Alaska, southeast of Fairbanks. There is culture in the wilderness.
Today’s quote: God’s language
I’m sufficiently annoyed to facetiously propose an alternative: that a proper Christian education should be centered on abstract algebra (groups, rings, vector spaces, etc). Reasons:
- Deep exposure to math inclines students to the true philosophy: Platonism. Humanities pay too much attention to words, which inclines to nominalism.
- Ability to manipulate people (rhetoric) has greater moral hazard than ability to manipulate things.
- Unlike the classics, modern math has large contributions from Christians (Euler, Cauchy, Riemann, Cantor, etc).
- Scientists and engineers are hard-working nerds. Writers and artists are bohemian degenerates.
- Math does a better job than rhetoric or grammar in promoting clear thinking and rigorous reasoning. In math, one can’t win arguments by manipulating the meanings of words. True, classical students might study Euclid, which has the virtue of being proof-based. However, it lacks the breadth and profundity of modern mathematics, its training in abstraction, the recognition of identical structure in disparate systems, exposure to deep concepts like generators, homomorphisms, cosets, etc.
- The level of memorization required for a Latin-based education is an unnecessary barrier that math-based education evades.
- Math is God’s language.
Today’s quote
Kate McMillan at normblog twenty years ago:
Norm: If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be?
Kate: From the present – the American writer and conservative ‘hawk’ Mark Helprin, and rocker Ted Nugent. Helprin is on a lot of shortlists as ‘world’s greatest living writer’, but that’s not the only reason I’d invite him. I figure that given a few drinks, he could help me convince Nugent to beat the crap out of the third guest I’d invite – Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the socialist Canadian Prime Minister who set into motion the intellectual, military and political decay of a once proud nation.
Nonsense: the sequel
Reality gets sillier all the time….
Dated post
For those who reuse calendars: those from 2014, 2003, 1997 and 1986 will work for 2025. Calendars from 2008 and 1980 will work from March on. Calendars from 2020 and 1992 will only work for January and February and are probably not worth digging out.
Boo, etc.
While you’re waiting for the little freaks to creep up your driveway tonight, you might enjoy viewing the work of Demizu Posuka (ポ～ン（出水ぽすか)), one of the most distinctive and prolific artists at Pixiv. Demizu reminds me of a more macabre Arthur Rackham, but he has his own peculiar style.
Today’s quote: Weirdos
Great thinkers are often great weirdos; since every constellation of traits now constitutes a bona fide “identity” deserving federal protection and universal huzzahs, the weirdos ought to get into the act…. During Weirdo Appreciation Month, we’d celebrate novelist Marcell Proust (who lived in a cork-lined room), pianist Glenn Gould (who reflexively sang along to whatever Bach keyboard work he was playing), and literary Swiss Army Knife Samuel Johnson (an immense, lumbering figure who, owing to what would today be diagnosed as OCD, Tourette’s, and God knows what else, would alarm the uninitiated with his bizarre gesticulations and involuntary bird-noises). Mathematicians would be robustly represented, including Paul Erdös, who was challenged by a colleague to abstain from chemical stimulants for one month; upon successfully meeting the challenge, Erdös famously said to his colleague: “You’ve set mathematics back a month.”
Today’s puzzle
Here’s the conclusion of an article that I came across today.
After thoroughly examining and analyzing the distinct patterns detailed above, it is evident that each sequence forms unique combinations which can be utilized in various areas such as music creation, coding systems, or solving mathematical problems, among other applications.
The flexibility and diverse range of combinations reflect the broad applicability these sequences may possess.
This study underscores the cardinal role of permutations in numerous fields, bringing to light the profound connections and impacts these numerical sequences hold within our daily lives.
Ultimately, this highlights the significance of such distinctive patterns and their expansive potential in fostering innovative solutions and breakthroughs.
Can you guess the subject of this article? Read it here.
Notes from all over
Step 1: Be me
Step 2: Notice that all the numbers in my car’s odometer display are powers of 2.
Step 3: Work out that, expressed as powers of 2, my odometer reads 31210 (82421 miles).
Step 4: Realize: “WTF–did I just differentiate my F-ing odometer??”
*****
If you’re going to give someone a Nobel Prize in economics, shouldn’t the standard be “their economic policies were put into practice in a certain community and worked as intended to the benefit of the said community”? Because otherwise, isn’t it just judging who has the most appealing theory? Which is to say, fiction being written and judged by people who don’t realize it’s fiction?
*****
I’m starting to suspect that the whole “Pride month” thing is a conspiracy by a group of rabid homophobes.
*****
In the future everyone will get canceled for fifteen minutes
Historical-botanical footnote
Joseph Moore’s most recent post mentions the Iron Chancellor. That reminded me of a bit of horticultural history.
One rose I grew many years ago was a fine white hybrid perpetual called “Frau Karl Druschki.” That’s a bad enough name, but it could have been much worse. From an online discussion:
According to a reference, for some years from 1900 there was an annual competition for the best new seedling of German origin, to be named ‘Otto von Bismarck’. The rose described here is pink, from 1908. However there is an illustration dated 1900. Was that a different rose? (Or as a passing thought, a typo?)
1900 was the year that the rose eventually named ‘Frau Karl Druschki’ was entered in the competition….… ‘Frau Karl Druschki’, at the time still unnamed, had participated in the original competition in 1900, but the judges found no rose to be good enough to be called ‘Otto von Bismarck’. So, Lambert named his rose FKD and commercialzed it and was out of the game. The original prize money of 1000 Marks was increased first to 2000, then to 3000, to no vail – nothing was good enough! Finally in 1906 Kiese’s rose made it. The irony is that FKD went on to become one of the hottest introductions of the early 20th century, while Kiese’s ‘Otto von Bismarck’ almost disappeared.
You can call the rose “Snow Queen” or “Schneekönigin” if you find “Frau Karl Druschki” too clunky.
*****
Bonus foolishness: A note from the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting:
But amid the usual carnival of perversity there was one bijou we thought might interest our readers. No, it has nothing to do with, you know, literature. The denizens of the mla and indeed of the humanities departments of most of our universities wouldn’t countenance anything so retrograde. But how’s this, a session on “Vegetal Afterlives”?
“Advancing recent work in critical plant studies”—“critical plant studies”? alas, yes—“asking how plants offer vibrant models of resistance to environmental destruction through their persistent attempts to create a Plantocene, . . . panelists focus on the theme of vegetal resistance, considering how plants can offer models of resistance for human crises like systemic racism, unnatural disasters, and climate change.”
Leaping into the new year with Frieren
2024 is a leap year. If you save old calendars, those from 1996 will work again. Otherwise, you will need one calendar for January and February and another one for the rest of the year. For the first two months, calendars from 2018, 2007, 2001, 1990, 1979 and 1973 are useable; for March on, 2019, 2013, 2002, 1991, 1985 and 1974.
I like the format of Japanese anime calendars. Although they have only six pages, one for every pair of months, the images are poster-sized, 16.5 by 22.5 inches. It’s been several years since I found one worth ordering, though; the shows that catch my attention tend not to be extremely popular. This year I found one for Frieren at the Funeral2 Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. I am a little disappointed with it — the pictures are all portraits of Frieren and her companions, which are okay, but I would have liked more illustrations like the cover. Maybe next year there will be a calendar for The Apothecary Diaries.
Return to Paragon City
Eleven years ago NCSoft notoriously shut down City of Heroes, the first superhero MMORPG. I recently discovered that it has been revived, albeit unofficially. Someone obtained the code several years ago and ran it on a clandestine server. Word eventually got out, the code was shared, and there are now several Cities available online. I’ve been playing a little on “Homecoming.” Avatars I’ve designed so far include “Alpha Ralpha” and “MacCruiskeen,” with probably “Willy McGilly” and “Jirel de Joiry” to follow.3
This might be of interest to John C. Wright, if he doesn’t already know.
Update: NCSoft has granted Homecoming an official license to host City of Heroes. It looks like the game will be around to play for a while.