Friday Ephemera (680)
Nommy-nommy-nom. || Scenes from Quebec’s Museum of Civilisation. || Strange doggo. || Dogs, as understood by artificial intelligence. || He does this better than you do. || Bathing suit. || Brum brum. || The erotic arts. || Tickle my hindquarters. || Best to give it some clearance, I think. || Romancing detected. || New rules issued by unhappy man. || The fear that men know. || Pretentious guilt will take you to some strange places. || The unspanked at large. || The situation, alas, did not improve. || Stayin’ Alive. || His day at work was worse than yours. || For people who like folding and unfolding their furniture. (h/t, Mark) || A little something for feet enthusiasts. || Fly with confidence, they said. || And finally, via Darleen, have you fiddled with yours in the last twenty minutes?
Should you be tempted, you can follow me on Twitter.
The progressive dining experience, a possible series.
Already gone.
OT, but nice article here by Kathleen Stock:
Fly with confidence, they said.
As Saint-Exupery said in Terre des Hommes, set in the skies above Argentina, perfection is attained not when there’s nothing more to add but nothing more to take away.
The reddit links are no good for me as it wants me log in. Is this just me ?
I hope he saved his truck, because that is what would have mattered to him
Morning, all.
Bugger. Link replaced with something equally edifying.
“Stayin’ Alive.”
That’s some fancy footwork!
“The unspanked at large.”
UK edition.
Holy crap. That is nightmare fuel.
The words trying circumstances come to mind. And I would imagine that holding on for 20 minutes is no small thing either.
They’re going to need to change the name.
UK edition.
Not so much highlighting the feral behaviour of our new population (which we already knew about), more the utter insanity of our equity-driven police recruitment (which we also knew about).
And now here’s what happens when the two collide.
In all seriousness the ineffectual and undersized police of all genders were extremely fortunate that this particular crowd was, apart from the one medium-sized lumpy who still managed to turn the tables all by herself, more focused on live-streaming the debacle. Another day and just the slightest rising of tension would have resulted in some serious and permanent damage to plod.
‘A’ for effort.
“When she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine”.
Ray Davies 1970
Dogs, as understood by artificial intelligence.
I have been playing with Midjourney and it actually served me well by generating the background of a tennis court so I could create a composite for a senior (high school graduate, not pensioner). But I asked it, just for fun, to create an image for me of Lizzie Borden, noted New England axe murderess, with a Weimaraner. I did not give it a reference photo, just a text prompt. The results were . . . a little off. That;s not Lizzie and that certainly is not a Weimaraner.
To add to my previous comment, mMidjourney did much better when I asked it to imagine my dog, Bronx, taking a selfie at Machu Picchu. Again, just a text prompt and this time it got the right breed.
And just FYI, Adobe’s new Generative Fill in Photoshop is proving useful as well, and will just continue to get “smarter” as more information is fed. It’s a brave new world with AI.
Fly with confidence, they said.
Nope. I rely on the air crew to have a mutual desire to fly without incident and make it safely back on the ground, putting their life’s problems in abeyance while in control of a large metal device held aloft by physics.
A decision was made.
I misread that as “of me as Lizzie Borden.” Just sayin’.
Just imagine my surprise when a quick search revealed that this took place in Portland.
Why doesn’t the world revolve around ME?!
Well, quite. “You’re making my life miserable,” he shouts, seemingly at the entire world. But who’s actually the one doing the thing that’s making him unhappy? I mean, if your mental stability depends on not being perceived as what you obviously are, by anyone, in any momentary random interaction, then this doesn’t strike me as a viable way of being.
We’ve been here before, of course:
As Nikw211 said in reply,
That, as they say.
“LOL at you rubes in the sticks with your cars and trucks, I live in a city and rent a bike.“
“Are you sure this will help us sell mortgages?”
Progressive dining experience 8743.
That was the dining experience that I’d originally used, but which disappeared. Well done, that man.
Close enough. 🙂
The AI doesn’t seem entirely clear on how many mouths dogs have.
Dog Somehow Fused With Car caught my eye, along with Clown Dog. And of course, this magnificent beast.
Mon Dieu! Voici le Arc du Transmois! C’est manifique!
I question the legality of such an device and wonder how a safer anti-theft measure could be implemented. What happens when someone takes a fall under a truck when the timer runs out?
It’s behind the avocados. It’s always behind the avocados.
I question the legality of such an device…when someone takes a fall under a truck…
I believe the video is from China, probably not an issue.
If you have only seen clips of this you can watch the whole thing for free, and it is crazier than the clips let on.
L’Arc du Transmois
I’m not sure if I was disappointed or relieved to read that this was a very well executed photo-shop.
I did however feel a touch nostalgic at seeing the old-style flag before the increasingly bad stuff got tacked on.
I have questions.
Speaking of AI, and sorry can’t remember where I saw this last night (maybe Volokh?) but in a military simulation of an AI drone, the drone got points for killing SAM installations but the operator got the last say and might say “no” (for whatever reason). The AI started killing the operator (simulation, remember) to prevent him from saying no or in some cases destroying the communication tower to cut him off. Scifi turns out to pretty prescient.
I have questions.
Victoria’s Secret, Nomex Edition.
I think this is called rewarding malevolence.
Erotic arts: she don’t need no man…to tighten the screws and install correctly. no siree
When we were in Sienna, this was what we got to look at while lunching. My Italian isn’t up to par but the waitress apologized and seemed rather embarrassed and pissed about it.
UK edition: thanks feminists for insisting that men and women are identical. I believe that all police should be at least 2m (6ft) tall because of scenes like that. The intimidation and ability to wrestle drunks and protesters to the ground and arrest them is an essential part of their job. short women lack the strength to subdue and put everyone in danger. Political correctness kills.
As I’ve said before, we’ve gone from the ideal of burly chaps who will apprehend lawbreakers as forcefully as necessary and send them on their way towards the nearest dungeon, to ladies in funny hats who will be terribly sensitive and empathise with our loss, while we get used to the idea that whatever wrong was done to us will most likely go unpunished.
My wife sent me that story this morning. The scary part to me isn’t the warning, in fact I suspect the story which I’m sure was very likely to have happened in development at some point but was, as told by the blowhard speaker, mostly made up. The scary part is that they actually think that at some point they will have worked out all such bugs and thus feel safe releasing it.
I’m reminded of a story I heard about the development of targeting systems where when the handheld device needed to be rebooted the default target setting was to the location of the device. When used in an actual war situation, I believe this was In Afghanistan, some poor bastard in a moment of extreme stress had to reboot the device and targeted himself and his platoon for friendly fire. I forget how they “fixed” that but IIRC the “fix”, while better than the existing problem, seemed rather suspect itself.
There’s no “intimidation” factor if the mob knows the police are too chickenshit to fight back. God forbid they find themselves in another George Floyd situation. The citizens stopped standing behind the police so to some extent I don’t blame the police. To some extent.. But OTOH the police have turned on the law-abiding in general as well.
Yes, the current trans madness is, in a sense, giving those loony feminists what they deserve.
Back in the 70’s, I had arguments with such feminists. They even insisted that the greater male propensity to violence was merely part of the sexist patriarchal culture and would disappear in a true society of equality. Some even went so far as to say that they would be perfectly happy with a future in which women were as violent as men are today, which illustrates how ideology can drive people insane.
As I was saying…
Civilisation?
L’arc de vomi.
Likely more problems than they’d planned on.
Easier to intimidate & arrest.
Pretty sure I saw those dogs in John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Fans of H P Lovecraft will have immediately identified the breed as a Hound of Tindalos.
For the uninitiated Wiki provides this remarkably unhelpful advice:-
“A person risks attracting their attention by traveling through time”.
I have questions.
Hentai Larper–fire pussy. Gentleman, as tempting as it may be–don’t do it.
What I’m curious about is why are those two dressed better than most of the people at the fancy steak restaurant we went to last night where I dropped over $350 for two of us?
If you replace the “www” in Reddit URLs with “old”, it uses the old layout, which is still perfectly usable and much less of a pain in the arsular regions. Can’t guarantee it’ll fix this, mind you, but it never asked me to log in.
https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2023/06/02/u-s-womens-soccer-team-destroyed-12-0-team-older-male-wrexham-players/
O/T Another proud day for women’s sport.
(12 – 0 in just 40 minutes. Could easily have got embarrassing if the game had gone on for longer).
If you replace the “www” in Reddit URLs with “old”…
Spasiba, it works, but now I am wondering why any of those would be “over 18”.
Having previously just chuckled or shaked my head at various short excerpts I’ve now watched “What is a Woman”” for the first time.
Anyone who hasn’t seen the whole thing really should. Delusional nutters doing TikTok’s are funny, this isn’t. To paraphrase Bob Monkhouse, I’m not laughing now.
A “doctorate-carrying scientist” (they/them) assures us sex is not binary.
His doctorate is in (adjusts glasses) flower ecology so he must be an expert.
New rules issued by unhappy man.
Sir? Ma’am? Self-absorbed asshat.
Scenes from Quebec’s Museum of Civilisation
They took all the civilization, put it in a civilization museum
Charged all the people a buck and a half to see ’em
we’ve gone from the ideal of burly chaps who will apprehend lawbreakers as forcefully as necessary and send them on their way towards the nearest dungeon, to ladies in funny hats who will be terribly sensitive and empathise with our loss
Literally the premise of the Police Academy movie series.
as told by the blowhard speaker, mostly made up
They always are. Any story whose kernel is the AI behaving like an amoral human being is always made up. The danger with AI is not that it will make decisions like a sociopathic human being; it’s that it will make decisions completely unlike a human being, with consequences we won’t be able to predict.
For those eleven people who made it all the way through the third Matrix movie, if you listen carefully to the Architect the notion that the AIs are bound by Asimov’s Three Laws is entirely compatible with what the film shows you to be objectively true. The AIs have decided that left alone, humans will destroy themselves and so they’re acting to preserve the human race as a whole. This permits the elimination of individual human beings if their actions or influence threatens the survival of the species collectively.
Another proud day for women’s sport.
The NBC commentary makes a lot of the “mutual respect” between the goalie who by throwing herself around gamely kept the score below 20, and the 47 year old ex journeyman pro who put four of the goals past her.
The theory driving mixed teams and competitions is that women’s sport hasn’t reached its potential because the men have been hoarding all the respect, so to remedy this we need TV scenes where male athletes are seen to grant respect to female athletes as opponents and teammates, and reciprocally to treat female athletes as authorities whose respect is valued.
Otherwise people might think that encouraging post-match words to an outclassed opponent are just polite, sportsmanlike, or God forbid chivalrous.
Brilliant – that works – thanks
Clearly, the urge to self-flatter by signalling ideological piety – via, for instance, a “positionality statement” – is much stronger than any preference, should one exist, for being coherent, or accurate, or indeed honest.
It’s conceivable that future generations will look back on this phenomenon with a mixture of incredulity and utter horror.
Also, OT, but fewer things could be more British than this:
Does that mean I get my next drink on the house?
[ Cruel laughter. ]
Sounds kinky.
Explains the title to the next post.
Well, it was worth a shot (pun intended).
Ouch!
Meanwhile in The Guardian:
And if you think that sounds awkward:
That sounds terrible.
On the other hand, I can’t get the image of some kind of homeopathic abortion clinic out of my mind now.
Jerome’s sensitive side:
I know it takes all sorts, but this seems like a very odd way to talk about your own 7 year-old child, even using a pseudonym, in an article ostensibly about your sex life.
It turns out there’s a whole series of these confessionals.