AI? More like Aiiiiiii!
Behold, the face of Loab! She was accidentally created by an artist called @Supercomposite using an AI art application. He doesn’t say which one. Or why he named her Loab.
According to his story, she popped out when the AI was instructed to create two ‘negative prompt weight’ images – that’s when you ask the AI to create an image that’s the opposite of a prompt.
He asked it to come up with the opposite of “Brando” – which, for some reason, rendered the image of a logo. Then he wondered if the opposite of that image would actually be an image of Marlon Brando.
Nope. Loab.
According to the urban legend-y version of the story, the recognizable face of Loab started turning up in this guy’s negative prompt weight searches of all sorts of unrelated things, like some kind of creepy demon..
That’s not what he’s saying. If you read his thread (and this Forbes article), he says he ‘seeded’ her origin story into all the subsequent images, so it’s no surprise she keeps popping up.
What is creepy as hell, though, is the more he worked with her, the more horrible and disturbing the images became. There are many in the link above. Some, he said, were so gross he wouldn’t publish them – dismembered child snuff pictures, pretty much.
If you start with a disturbing image and ask an AI to elaborate, it will pull increasingly disturbing content out of the ether to go with, I guess. Makes sense. But how did the AI come up with her in the first place, and how is she recognizably herself again and again?
September 12, 2022 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 7
It’s complicated
I know you can’t really read that. Click here for the graphic and the article that goes with.
The death of the queen triggered Operation London Bridge, the super-secret plan everyone knew existed but we didn’t know what was in it. They couldn’t really tactfully give us any hints in advance, could they? It’s released a whole torrent of ceremonies, regulations and suggestions upon the country.
So today was a wild scramble to find out if, like, our flag should fly at half mast.
Yes, today. No, tomorrow – Accession Day – then half again tomorrow night and it stays up at half mast day and night until the funeral. There is some sort of Accession ceremony tomorrow at town hall, but I don’t have to be there, so I didn’t bother learning more.
I keep trying to call Accession Day “Ascension Day” which is wrong. Funny and wrong.
Yes, BulldawgGirl wins another one. True story: yesterday – possibly at the very moment the queen passed over – I was at the post office, mailing BulldawgGirl a very overdue package. She will now go to the back of the shamefully long queue. I thank everyone for their patience.
Have a good weekend, and Happy Accession Day!
September 9, 2022 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 4
It’s going to be a rough while
At 6:30 this evening, the BBC announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Rumor is she died some hours before.
No, the picture is not a disrespectful Photoshop, it’s an actual portrait I found online. It’s a little eerie because the site it is from is mostly dead picture links. I can’t tell you the backstory.
I don’t know how to describe what this will do to British morale. Even those who were strongly against the monarchy will feel the loss of someone whose very public presence spread over eight decades – seven as queen, but she was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a teenager in WWII. She trained as a driver and mechanic, for real.
There have been storms all across Britain today. It’s suddenly cold. It’s symbolic as holy hell. We’re headed into what everyone expects to be a brutal winter of shortages and deprivation.
This is going to be hard.
September 8, 2022 — 6:05 pm
Comments: 22
The nights are getting longer
It’s really and truly Fall now – I picked the blackberries today. Just a couple of pounds. We’re short of freezer space.
When I was a kid, I hated it when Mother announced she was making a blackberry cobbler. It meant I was going to have to go pick blackberries and that’s where the rattlesnakes were.
I’m sure you know this, but for the sake of them in the back, there are no vegetarian snakes. Snakes it the little creatures who eat the fruit and a blackberry bramble is their favorite place.
To be fair, the rattlesnakes we get in Middle Tennessee are mountain rattlers – short and fat and shy. In all my years on that farm I only ever saw one, and it was sunning itself in the front yard. My boyfriend shot it and my mother the proto-hippie made us cook it and eat it.
But I’m sure I’ve told that story.
I saw a cottonmouth in the pond once, too. It was swimming with about six inches of its body stuck up out of the water, like the cobra on King Tut’s hat. Creepy.
But hoo my dad had some stories about aggressive copperheads in the mountains!
September 7, 2022 — 6:58 pm
Comments: 16
That you, bro?
If you want a walking stick with a portrait of Dante Alighieri on it, I got you. May be useful for hiking out of the Inferno.
It’s the second time this summer I’ve seen this stick – I assume it’s the same one. Dude sells horse brasses and leather riding tack and such. First time I saw it, I yelped, “Dante!”
…and everyone moved away from me on the Group W bench.
Dante’s death mask, from which this portrait derives, is apparently not a death mask at all:
…recent studies suggest that the mask was probably carved in 1483 by Pietro and Tullio Lombardo 162 years after Dante’s death. A reason why people did not believe that the mask was the true mask was because of the nose of the mask. A hooked nose is a sign of intelligence and mischief, and throughout the year Dante’s nose has become more and more hooked in representations such as Botticelli’s portrait of Dante.
Another weekend, another country show. The season is almost past now.
September 6, 2022 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 7
Holy astroturf, Batman!
When we came out of the supermarket this afternoon, this was parked next to us. Every inch of it was covered in astroturf. I blurred the license plate but not the phone number – I mean, it’s an ad, right?
Available in glorious green from my Twitter.
September 5, 2022 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 9
Go home, Joe Biden. You’re senile.
Eh. I’m trying to kick my art muscles loose. They’re mighty damn rusty.
Good weekend, everyone!
September 2, 2022 — 6:21 pm
Comments: 14
This one’s fambly
A village fête is not complete without the weasels. The ferret tent is a special place. A warm, smelly, special place.
Ferret keepers are of a type, too. I’m not sure how to describe them. Country people, for sure. They seem almost unaware that you’re there.
She described what was in the treat bottle…I don’t remember exactly, but it was a repulsive mix of fish oils and similar. She said he’d been licking at the upright bottle so long there wasn’t a scrap of the treat left.
He’s licking the distant memory of a treat.
September 1, 2022 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 5
I made another friend
Two, actually. A pair of lovely girls at a different village fête.
Brits are mad about donkeys. I’ve posted about it before. Uncle B says it’s because they began to go abroad and see the horrible lives donkeys led in faraway lands.
There are, like, twenty donkey rescues up and down the land and between them they’ve saved tens of thousands of beasts at home and abroad.
Donkey love long predates that, though. Donkey rides on the beach have been a staple of seaside holidays for little English children since Victorian times.
So very sad to hear our local donkey rides were closed down this year – I think she said because of insurance. I search tells me that they’re being cancelled all over the country for animal welfare reasons. Though one wag is blaming climate change.
Is there nothing it can’t do?
August 31, 2022 — 7:43 pm
Comments: 9
I made a friend
This cow! Sweet little heifer. He was leading her all around a busy country show and she didn’t flinch.
I asked. Her mother is a milk cow and her father is a meat cow, but they’re going to give her a chance to be a milk cow.
Weasel approves!
We’ve gone out of our way to buy their milk ever since. I mean, we often did anyway – it’s excellent milk – but like a lot of smaller dairies, their milk isn’t ultra-pasteurized, so it usually has a short date on it.
I suppose it’s time to check out farmer’s markets, too. The real ones, where farmers sell stuff in bulk. Not the twee ones, where middle class artisans sell specialty cheeses and bespoke gin to the middle class.
August 30, 2022 — 7:43 pm
Comments: 9