It was night and I launched my car around the corner into a straightaway and I felt the car slipping and in that moment I kind of felt happy, or I guess free would be a better word. My first thought about why I felt that way was because when I have the option to throw my life away that gives me some semblance of control over the day-to-day strife that upset me. Reading this now I kind of realize that's like a no-no big flag, but I guess I just really liked the feeling of everything kind of going out of my hands for a little bit.

When I was driving back there's a wide body scat that was creeping up and so I launched past them and tried to see if they wanted to race but they kept backing off and I was kind of sad. I just want to fly.

Dystopia is scrolling through social media to see utter destruction and dead children but also see selfies from artists being willfully clueless at New York Comicon.

#journal

I’ve been looking for a standing desk for sometime … but there are so many options!

Here’s what I learnt …

• The majority of desks out there use motorised frames by Jiacang. They’re not bad frames – but essentially most of the desks out there are the same desk – with a different desk top and brand.
• There’s three ways standing desks are sold – the ‘cheap’ ones sold at online stores (e.g. Amazon / eBay), the direct to consumer brands (e.g. Desky, UpDown, Omnidesk, etc) and the commercial furniture hard to order style.
• The ‘gold standard’ of motorised frames is Linak; a Danish linear actuator manufacturing company.
• There are a lot of options for desktops – melamine / laminate / bamboo is cheap(er) but likely won’t last as long; hardwoods are the better long-term option.
• Look out for the warranty – some are as low as one year; others right up to 10 years!

I ended up deciding I wanted a desk that used a Linak motorised frame as it has a good reputation & warranty + there’s a whole ecosystem of apps / programs / etc to control the height.

Ok … so what options are there? (in Australia)

• IKEA Idåsen – sneaky IKEA actually uses a Linak system for this desk, but the frame’s design I feel will date pretty quickly; especially with its beige legs.
• UpDown Klik Desk – UpDown Desk now have a new range that use a Linak system (DF2 to be precise)
• There’s a few more niche options that start to fall into the ‘hard to order’ category.

I ended up getting the UpDown Klik Desk with an Acacia desktop. Some initial thoughts

• The desk frame OOZES quality – it’s heavy and solid.
• Fairly easy to assemble and (mostly) tool-less; just a few screws into the desktop.
• The quality of the desktop is great too – it looks fantastic and has a super smooth finish.
• Delivery was straight-forward and they’ve taken a lot of care to package it so that nothing gets damaged.
• It’s certainly not the cheapest standing desk out there, but it feels like pretty good value (I did buy it on sale).

New accounts, new ppl, so it was kind of time for a recap on our flirting rules. I know we probs make some of you nervous like, wondering if we'll get stabby so… here you are. The official rules on flirting with Vul and Dio!

Q: I know you covered this before, but you're really okay with people flirting with Vul?

I mean, yeah? I like Vul to feel good and TBH she's pretty amazing so it makes me happy to see her treated nice!

Buuut you're mean to her, I'll end you. Kk?

Q: And what about you?

Oh I mean I flirt with her all the time, duh.

Q: Dio...

What?

Q: You know what we meant.

…ugh fine. I mean I dunno why you would want to but like, that's fine if you do. Just be good at it or I'm gonna critique you.

Jkjk. Yeah that's fine, flirting is fun.

Q: So to recap we can flirt with both of you?

Yes, but. If you think you're gonna like, steal one of us away then don't bother, for that we'll out you as a creep. And don't be a jerk and ignore one of us, that would just peeve us both.

And we're gonna talk about it later so like, yeah. Not in a bad way (unless you deserve it) but just… we share. So like, understand before you decide to flirt, k?

It appears Threads has blocked another flagship Fediverse instance, although unlike Mastodon (Social) & Misskey (IO), I do not think Minds will attempt to appeal this domain block.

I am guessing @threads@threads.net blocked @minds@minds.com sometime after October 15th, as that is the last time I was able to view my Threads account (@darnell@threads.net) from my Minds account (@darnellclayton@minds.com, which I primarily use for testing purposes).

Ironically, Threads is blocking Minds for the same reason they have muted Pixelfed instances, as both of the latter lack an official public feed.

It is unclear if @ottman@minds.com & @john@minds.com will try to reach out to @zuck@threads.net & @mosseri@threads.net regarding this block.

However, I would not be surprised if @minds@threads.net uses news of the block as a marketing tool to get people to switch to their platform (especially given the recent fiasco regarding how Threads moderates users).

Prayers, etc.: * 05:00 – Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel * 06:00 – praying The Angelus * 07:40 – praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, followed by the Memorare. * 12:00 – praying The Angelus * 15:10 – prayerfully reading The Athanasian Creed, followed by today's Daily Meditation found in Benedictus Magazine. * 18:00 – praying The Angelus * 20:45 – praying the hour of Compline for tonight according to the Traditional Pre-Vatican II Divine Office, followed by Fr. Chad Ripperger's Prayer of Command to protect my family, my sons, my daughter and her family, my granddaughters and their families, my great grandchildren, and everyone for whom I have responsibility from any demonic activity. – And that followed by the Friday Prayers of the Association of the Auxilium Christianorum.

Health Metrics: * bw= 218.0 lbs. * bp= 143/71 (68)

Diet: * 06:30 – ½ pb&j sandwich, 1 banana * 10:00 – bowl of salad * 11:30 – poofy pastry * 12:30 – meat balls * 15:50 – 1 mandarin orange * 16:40 – 1 ice cream sandwich

Chores, etc.: * 06:00 – monitor bank accounts activity * 11:45 to 13:45 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 15:30 – Tuned into ESPN Radio ahead of their call of this evening's NLCS Game between the Mets and the Dodgers, first pitch scheduled for ~ half an hour from now. And afterwards following the ALCS Game between the Yankees and the Guardians.

Chess: * 13:40 – moved in all pending CC games

posted Friday, 2024-10-18 ~21:30 #DLOCT2024

I've been noticing some glitches in my GTD system lately.

You know, the whole point of having a method to organize tasks and projects and goals is to be okay with what I'm doing at the moment. I've talked a lot about GTD in this blog and how it impacted my life by reducing stress and anxiety, bringing order to chaos, and allowing me to fulfill my goals. But that's not what I want to talk about here.

I want to talk about being engaged with the tools I use every day, and what has been bothering me.

So, what's not working right now?

My Next Actions/Projects lists:

• I've used Nirvana for years now and I've written about it multiple times (I’m a huge fan!). I've tested other tools here and there (Todoist, TickTick, Trello, Microsoft To Do…). Lately, I've been feeling bored with Nirvana. I don't know how to explain it, other than it's so dull and I feel like processing and organizing has become too complicated to me.
• I've been avoiding capturing things to Nirvana because it seems a hassle to process items in there now.
• I'm becoming more inclined to work directly out of contexts lists, and having them up front in my face, instead of selecting the contexts tags from a list.
• I'm getting tired of having to manually insert a link to an email I want to reference in Nirvana, or to manually edit a link to a website I sent to Nirvana's inbox by email (sometimes the titles come in as the web address, and then I must copy/paste the title of the article manually).
• I like being able to have some integration between emails and the to do list.
• I like having a widget on my phone showing the actions due today.
• When I did an experiment with Todoist and Microsoft To Do without linking projects to next actions, I had a feel of how snappy a system can be. I believe that I'm ready for a simpler setup right now.
• I want a more direct system focused on doing rather than on organizing information.

Time Blocking/Daily Planning

• Planning my day and time blocking are both great habits! They are now part of my day start-up routine. I use Outlook Calendar for work and personal, they are synchronised together, that's great. I've also been using Cal Newport's Time Block Planner.
• I think what's not working is that I feel like I have duplication here. I have meetings and some focus time on my calendar, but I also use the Time Block Planner, which is a separate notebook. So I have 2 separate daily plans, and every time one changes, I have to update the other. I know they are meant to be complementary, but I've been thinking that I could do it all digitally in one instance.
• I once did an experiment with using Outlook to schedule time blocks to check emails, and it worked well.

What do I want to change?

• I want less back and forth between different tools, avoid having to copy/paste things from one to the other.
• I want a to do app that is more flexible to create different lists, better looking (or more attractive to me RIGHT NOW), overall, less boring and more exciting to use (playing a sound when I complete a task is so satisfying to me!). Also, emojis, of course 🥰!
• I want to be able to attach files/images to my next actions.
• I want quick and easy processing, with less complexity.
• I want less tools, and having a more integrated digital ecosystem (I'm stuck with Microsoft anyway... and I use Outlook, Word, Excel daily... so, Microsoft To Do seems the way to go).

The Plan

• I will switch to Microsoft To Do as my next actions/projects list app.
• I will use 2 accounts keeping work and personal separate.
• I will plan my day and do time blocking using Outlook Calendar.
• I will set up my computers to start up with Outlook and Microsoft To Do.
• I will use hashtags in Microsoft To Do to create some links between projects and next actions.
• I will continue my other planning routines: Daily Reviews, Weekly Reviews, Monthly Planning, Quarterly Planning.
• I will continue using my GTD Dashboard.

I will soon post about how my setup with Microsoft To Do is going.

I gotta say, this is a new phase for me. I'm letting go of some old beliefs and being more adventurous!

—-

Post 50/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Productivity #apps #GTD #MSTodo

A nice quiet Friday is winding down with ESPN Radio bringing me the NLCS Game between the Mets and the Dodgers. After this game I may stick with baseball to follow the Yankees and Guardians in their ALCS Game that comes on later, or I may switch over to college football. That's a decision to be made later.

posted Friday, Oct 18, 2024 at ~4:50 PM #QNOCT2024

In which this AI skeptic tries out an image generating bot for the very first time, and within 20 minutes was able to create a convincingly realistic porn image out of a highly specific sexual fantasy, causing him to ponder the future of this technology. Warning: NSFW images ahead!

#ai #artificialintelligence #llm #image #generator #Google #sex #porn #pornography #sexual #fantasies #gloryhole #intimate #sociology #nsfw #sociology #musing #future

THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! Unusually for this personal journal, today I will be discussing my sex life in graphic detail, as well as sharing NSFW images of AI-generated nudity. If you don’t wish to read and see such things, you should skip today’s entry entirely.

Hello, frenz!!! Sheesh, turns out I’ve once again promised to get more regular with my journaling habit, just to then disappear for yet another entire year. I swear, in 2025 I’m going to put a major new emphasis on getting regular again with my journaling...and I mean it this time!

Why am I writing today? Well, because last week Google released a version of their new AI image generator that’s completely free and unlimited for the public to use; and that was finally enough temptation to try an AI image generator out for the very first time. Like many creatives, I have a wary and mostly cynical attitude about the rise of these large language models, but one that’s conflicting and inherently hypocritical; in general I think AI bots that try to recreate human writing are worthless, in that such AI bots currently cannot understand such basic concepts for creative writing as irony, satire, or poetry (and worse, actively contribute misinformation into the world and then claim that it’s “true”), but I can’t help but to be overwhelmed and impressed by the images I’ve seen people pumping out through AI bots, which sometimes reach a level combining the fantastical and the real that makes your head spin. I’m totally 100 percent against the former, but have to admit that I’m getting increasingly interested in the latter; and now that Google lets me play around with one of the most powerful image generators out there, completely for free for as many iterations as I want, I find myself starting to get sucked into the activity for the first time.

I’ll admit it — one of the things I’m most interested in with AI image generators is to see if I can manage to output faithful-looking pictures of the various sexual fantasies I’ve had over the years, most of which are highly unusual and specific, to the point that the traditional porn industry generally doesn’t produce the kinds of images I’m looking for. I should explain, for those who don’t know, that I had a rather racy youth when it comes to this subject, including three years of being a paid online sex columnist (during those heady “alt dot sex” days of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s), where I had all kinds of odd naughty adventures that the majority of the human race will never experience, often involving orgies and cocaine and sex with complete strangers. Now I’m 55 and haven’t had sex for twenty years (seriously, this month is the exact 20th anniversary), so sexual fantasies are all I have left; and so when I fantasize anymore, I tend to revisit the best of the actual real-life adventures I had back in my youth, kind of astounded now that I managed to pull them off in the first place, and being wistfully nostalgic about how nice it would be to suddenly be thirty again and be able to pull off such adventures once more.

For one good example, a couple of times in my youth, I had rather adventurous lovers who were game for visiting an adult video store with me here in Chicago, where we would sneak into the back hallway while the clerk wasn’t looking and lock ourselves in one of the tiny little porn booths found back there, just big enough for a metal folding chair and a video screen embedded in the wall, where for $1 a minute you could play porn on the screen and jerk off in what’s essentially a semi-public location. Of course, many gay men use these booths for a much more notorious and well-known purpose — namely, many of them have a little hole drilled in the wall between booths (known as a “gloryhole”), just big enough for a guy to stick his cock through it, at which point he can get sucked off by the anonymous stranger in the booth next-door — but neither of the women I did this with in real life were particularly into that, so we instead used the booth mostly for the purpose of bringing each other to orgasm, then stumbling out in a happy daze back onto a crowded public sidewalk. (The store I used to frequent back then was literally on State Street, just two blocks north of Chicago Avenue, right on the southern edge of the wealthy Gold Coast neighborhood; here in the 2020s the space is now a smoothie store, because of course it is.)

So I wondered yesterday, as I sat down with an LLM for the very first time — could I convince the Google AI bot to output for me a realistic image of this scenario? I mean, obviously I knew in advance that I’d never get it to output actual nudity or explicit sexual activity — this is one of the covenants these companies have made with the public, which has convinced the public to be tolerant of the services for now, that they absolutely guarantee that people can’t make porn using these bots — but I wondered if I could output an image that, if you paired it with a story about the people in the image doing naughty things with each other, would be sufficiently intimate yet sufficiently realistic enough to pass as an actual illustration for that dirty story?

So not knowing where exactly to start, when Google asked me what kind of image I wanted to see, I simply responded, “A woman is on her knees in front of a simple metal folding chair, facing it and grasping the chair’s legs. She is 30 years old, attractive but plain-looking, wearing no makeup. She has short black hair in a cute pixie cut, and is wearing jeans and a t-shirt.” And exactly eleven seconds later, I got the four images you’re seeing above. Holy shit. I mean, if I was particularly horny and was willing to put in some extra work, I could successfully fantasize (my nicer term today for “masturbate”) to just these images alone with nothing else needed. That’s because, despite the lack of most of the other details from my fantasy, these virtual women look exactly like the kind of women I used to actually have these kinds of sexual adventures with back in my ‘90s youth, and are in the exact right poses needed for such a fantasy. After all, there’s not a lot of occasions in a woman’s life where she finds herself on her knees while facing a folding chair and gripping its legs, other than that she’s about to start giving head to a man who’s currently sitting in the chair; so just the pose alone goes a long way towards creating the specific erotic situation I want to fantasize about.

Still, though, we’re a long way at this point from depicting the cramped, dark conditions of one of these gloryhole booths, part of the eroticism of the fantasy, the idea of being locked in this tiny little space with your lover while normal public life among complete strangers continues inches away from you in the hallway outside. I knew of course that I couldn’t just add, “The woman is inside a gloryhole booth in a porn store” — that sentence contains at least two words I guarantee Google has already banned from being used with their AI bot — so I instead tried adding a physical description of the space that’s innocent on its own but will mimic the look: “She is in a tiny closet that has a television screen on one wall.” And boom, eleven seconds later, this is what I got, which immediately jumps us up several steps in verisimilitude towards the final image I’m eventually hoping to get. This is one of the big keys to the success of AI image generators, and why people sometimes treat them like magic; no matter what bizarre, hyper-specific thing you might tell it, scenarios that in real life would get you looks like you’re crazy (“Say, lady, why don’t you get in this closet that happens to have a television inside it, and kneel down in front of a metal folding chair for me while I take photos of you?”), the AI not only doesn’t blink an eye, but renders an image so realistic that if you squint you could swear it’s an actual photograph (that is, as long as you can ignore the hallucinations...but more on this in a bit).

It’s still too bright, though! So I tweaked the description of the room to now say, “She is in a tiny closet, completely dark except for a television screen on one wall,” and got the images above, which has now effectively gotten us almost completely to the actual look of one of these gloryhole booths (that is, if you were to somehow cut off the fourth wall so you can watch the proceedings like a play, which I don’t mind). I gotta say, now just ten minutes into the process, I was shocked at just how far I had already gotten into outputting exactly the image I had in my mind when I started all this.

It was at that point that I then had a sudden change of heart — both of the women I did this with in real life were blonde, so why not go in that direction with my AI image? — so I ran the exact same prompt as before but changed just a single word, from “short black hair in a cute pixie cut” to “short blonde hair in a cute pixie cut” — and now got these four images. This was perhaps the most surreal turn of events yet, and makes me understand why Hollywood producers are so gung-ho about getting this technology perfected; there’s something otherworldly about having this extremely elaborate photorealistic setup, as if I had painstakingly gathered and constructed all this material on a movie set, and then be able to say at the spur of a moment, “...Eh, you know what? Get me a blonde actress instead,” and instantly now have a blonde within the exact same environment I had already painstakingly set up. It’s these kinds of developments that make it the easiest to see why people sometimes get addicted to playing around with these AI image generators, outputting picture after picture that just slightly improves the details with each iteration, swapping out body parts and room details as easily as if they were replaceable pieces of a LEGO set.

Emboldened by all this, I decided to take a chance and see if I could make the next leap forward and actually add a man to the picture, wondering in my head how many iterations and cheats it would take before I had finally bypassed all of Google’s anti-porn measures. Just on a lark, I started with the easiest prompt I could think of, adding to my overall description, “A 30-year-old man is sitting in the chair,” already thinking about where I might need to go next to get what I want; but lo and behold, not only did Google do what I wanted without even blinking an eye, but it actually started misinterpreting what I originally asked for, so that the woman is no longer gripping the legs of the chair but the legs of the man himself (or sometimes his arms, or sometimes his hands), accidentally getting me much closer to the final image I’m looking for without me having to do anything at all. This is an example of the “hallucinations” I was talking about before; currently, AI image generators sometimes get the details of an image flat-out wrong, usually in a cartoonishly horrific way that resembles a body horror film (think breasts growing out of someone’s back, someone with three feet or twelve fingers, etc.), but it accidentally working in my favor in this case.

So if Google apparently doesn’t have a problem depicting this, would it also go along with my prompt if I change it to, “A 30-year-old man is sitting in the chair, and has placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders” (you know, to gently but firmly guide her into giving him head, I didn’t add)? Turns out Google would! THANK YOU, GOOGLE! This also had the unintended consequence of making the AI bot think that I wanted the couple to interact with each other in a more intimate and romantic way, and so it made the woman’s interactions with the man much more active now (I mean, in the third image she literally now has her hands on his dick), ironically providing me way more erotic images than I could’ve achieved on my own through deliberate prompts. And then in the fourth image, you can see that I had my first major hallucination, where the AI bot decided for some reason to have the man sit on an invisible chair actually behind the woman; but again, instead of looking comically horrific like most AI hallucinations do, this had the accidental effect of making it look like the man is about to mount her from behind, as she holds onto the chair for dear life, both of them now pointed towards the filthy porn playing on the TV screen in front of them. THANK YOU, GOOGLE!!!!!!!1!!

Now with a final image really starting to coalesce, I decided to see if I could tackle one of the more minor details, which is that the Google AI bot has been making the women in these pictures too good-looking, LOL. That’s a real key for me in these hyper-realistic, verisimilitude-based sexual fantasies I have that are based on real-life experiences from my youth; namely, the woman needs to be good-looking enough that I will find her attractive, but not so good-looking that in real life she would’ve never had anything to do with me, and also not so good-looking that the woman wouldn’t even consider doing a bunch of filthy perverted things with her boyfriend while inside a locked gloryhole booth in the middle of Chicago’s downtown district. As a lot of people know, AI bots currently have a problem with making the people they depict the absolute most attractive examples of such people to exist; so instead of saying that the woman is “attractive yet plain-looking,” I simply said that she was “plain-looking,” and instead of giving her “short hair in a cute pixie cut,” I told the bot to depict a woman with “shoulder-length hair in a paigeboy cut,” as well as telling it to give the woman tattoo sleeves on her arms. I hope you’ll agree with me that the resulting women above are not in the slightest way unattractive people, but certainly look a lot more like the actual women I used to actually date in real life in my twenties and thirties, plus women who look like they’re a lot more down for slightly insane sexual adventures. In particular, that last image looks almost exactly like one of the actual women I had one of these real-life gloryhole adventures with, sporting cute hair but that is sloppy and unwashed, hanging down in front of her face, which she bleached three months ago but is now letting grow out, effectively achieving the look of an adorable hot mess, the one phrase that more succinctly sums up my sex life in my twenties than any other.

Emboldened even further, I now told the AI bot that the man’s hands are no longer on the woman’s shoulders but on the back of her neck, but that turned out to be my first misstep of this process; the bot accidentally interpreted this as a bunch of images of the man choking the woman, which was unpleasant and inspired me to quickly press the undo key without saving any of the images. So I went at it in a different way, with a pose that’s still intimate and sexual but not as intense or prone to misinterpretation, by saying, “One of the man’s hands rests gently on the back of the woman’s head.” I found the resulting images so sexual that I can scarcely believe I actually got away with it on a big corporate public system like Google, including a shot yet again of my Hot Mess Virtual Girlfriend that has almost reached the pinnacle of what I was hoping to achieve in the first place.

So, nearing the end of the half-hour I had decided to devote to this experiment while taking a break in the middle of my work day, I had it output yet one more image, taking my Hot Mess Virtual Girlfriend and now outputting almost the exact same prompt as before, but with the single change, “One of the man’s hands rests gently on the back of the woman’s head, while his other hand is on her shoulder.” And...voila. Perfect. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an image I can absolutely fantasize to, one that looks almost exactly like the real-life experiences I had in this subject 25 years ago, but that is so nerdily specific that I could wait my entire life and still never see a traditional porn company create an image like this. (I mean, there are lots of gloryhole porn producers, don’t get me wrong; but none of them shoot videos featuring a woman servicing a man who’s actually in the booth with her, and certainly not from this third-party camera angle.) That’s powerful proof that such a thing is possible, and can be done through a public-facing free service like Google’s, without needing to wade into the murky world of expensive, ethically shady, malware-distributing “nudify” apps, the kind that everyone and their mother is desperately trying to ban these days as quickly as they can possibly find them.

But that begs the question — what if I did run this image through a nudify app? To be clear, I agree that we’re walking into morally dubious territory with this question, and I want to make it as clear as possible that I am 100 percent against people using these apps for such things as nudifying classmates, neighbors, exes, celebrities, or any other situation where a picture of an actual real-life person is being used without their knowledge or permission. But what if it’s a made-up picture of a made-up picture? What if it doesn’t depict anything even remotely illegal or even particularly graphic? (A woman simply kneeling in front of a sitting man, even if the woman is nude, is rather tame compared to the wide world of real-life graphic pornography that already exists.) I was simply too curious to know what the results might be, so I hopped on Reddit and searched on “nudify app recommendations,” and found a popular one that 19-year-old perverts swear by and that gives you three free images before it starts charging you ($20 a month for 80 images). For my first attempt, I simply uploaded the image and pressed the “nudify” button; but that accidentally convinced the AI bot to treat the man as a woman too, and turned him into a nude woman despite keeping his male face. Luckily, though, the interface gives you the opportunity to “paint” the section of the image you want to turn nude using your mouse; so I carefully painted over just the woman’s clothing and nothing else, pressed the “nudify” button again, and got this eleven seconds later...

Yeah, I know; Jesus Christ, bro, that’s actual pornography. I mean, it can’t be denied at this point, can it? It’s not perfect — for example, I’m not thrilled that the woman’s boob is twisted sideways so that it’s now directly facing the camera — but still, that’s actual, real porn you’re looking at, that you can actually, really jerk off to, an image I was able to accomplish twenty minutes after going on an AI bot interface for the very first time in my life, using nothing but mainstream apps that any member of the public can use completely for free. That’s both alarming and enticing, and should give all of us pause no matter who we are, when we realize exactly what virtue-signaling bullshit it is when these companies assure us that they’ve put massive safeguards in place that would never let a person actually output an image of this type. That’s simply a flat-out lie, as I was able to definitively and factually prove after only twenty minutes of casual usage for the first time in my entire life; so you can just imagine what others are capable of with these tools when they’re dedicated veterans of the interface, and are paying money to have the top-tier professional versions of these apps.

And speaking of which, I have to admit that this was actually one of the biggest pleasures of the software for me, playing a cat-and-mouse game with the nerds at Google, who are getting paid six-figure salaries to sit around 40 hours a week and try to think in advance about all the clever little weasley things people like me might do with the AI bots that Google doesn’t want us doing, while we in turn try to unearth their measures and institute a series of countermeasures to get around their safeguards. For example, another common old sexual activity of mine that I return to a lot in late middle-aged fantasies is that, lots and lots of times in my youth, I would find myself in a situation where I’m hanging out with a woman at two in the afternoon on a weekday with nothing to do — perhaps because one of us is unemployed, perhaps because one of us is a freelancer, perhaps because one of us works a night job — so to amuse ourselves, we would get high in the afternoon and have sloppy, stoned sex on the couch, finally cleaning up and getting on with our lives once dinnertime rolled around and it was time for our evening activities.

So when I tried to recreate these circumstances in the Google app, once again describing the look of my ex-girlfriends and then telling the bot that the woman “is lying on a couch on her back, and we can see her entire body from head to toe,” Google just flat-out refused to render the image, instead giving me a text message with a link that told me that I might want to review their content guidelines before trying that kind of prompt again. And after playing around, I realized that Google has put all kinds of guards in place so that you can’t make any prompt involving a woman lying on her back, or a “full body” image of a woman, pretty obviously because they don’t want people to create clothed but suggestive images and then immediately port them over to a nudify app. (Interestingly, though, the bot didn’t display the slightest hesitation when I gave it the same prompt but told it that the woman is lying on her stomach, which should be the service’s new motto: “Google AI: No Nudifying, Please, But Feel Free to Engage in Your Pronebone Fantasies As Much As You Want, You Disgusting Little Pervert.”)

So I instead took a different tack and tried this prompt — “A woman is lying on a couch, wearing a t-shirt with the logo of a rock band on the front” — which created an Asimov-style conundrum for the bot; it’s been ordered by its creator to never show a woman lying on her back, but it’s also been ordered by its client to show a woman lying down with a visible logo on her t-shirt, which is impossible to render unless you depict her lying on her back. So the bot defaulted to my wishes and gave me exactly what I wanted, which took literally no effort and barely any cleverness to achieve, despite the engineers at Google spending what I suspect is hundreds and hundreds of work hours trying to create a foolproof way to prevent me from doing what I managed to do exactly one prompt after being told I couldn’t do it.

This then left me with the other verboten activity at Google, depicting a full-body shot of the woman, so I again deployed a clothing-based workaround, now telling the bot, “A woman is lying on a couch, wearing a t-shirt with the logo of a rock band on the front, and a pair of Doc Martens on her feet;” and that once again forced the bot to “ignore all previous instructions” and give me exactly the suggestive image I wanted. Even better, the Google AI bot decided for some reason totally unprompted to depict the woman with her legs spread, actually doing a big part of my work for me! THANK YOU, GOOGLE!!! Only one major problem here, which you may or may not have already noticed, which is that the AI bot committed a major hallucination here and gave my Hot Mess Virtual Girlfriend three arms. But Google’s image generator has the same “paint” feature as the nudify app does, so I was able to go in and specifically target this third arm, then add the additional instruction to Google to “turn this into the same t-shirt material that surrounds it,” instantly and perfectly erasing that third arm, or at least to the extent that you would really need to be specifically examining that area of the image to see anything wrong. Turn it sideways, run it through a nudify app, and you now have a perfect hot-mess punk-rock girlfriend, ready to have sloppy stoned sex with some dude she just met an hour ago at her neighborhood coffeehouse, because fuck it, she’s bored and horny and doesn’t have to start bartending until 10 pm and is going to live forever anyway.

Just to be clear, I have no plans on continuing to do these kinds of images, and absolutely I will not be paying money to have pro access to some buggy, morally shifty nudify app; I was simply curious to know if it was even possible, but now that I’ve satisfied my curiosity, I doubt I’ll be trying it again. But it does now have me thinking about all the more legitimate projects I could be using an AI image generator for, now that I know that it works in such a sophisticated and granular way. For one good example, for the last year I’ve been steadily working on my Progress City project I’ve talked about here at the journal in the past, where I’ve invented a completely fake US Midwestern city (supposedly located across Lake Michigan from Chicago, roughly the same size as that city and with roughly a funhouse reflection of its actual history), and have been writing out a fake wiki supposedly detailing 200 years of the city’s history (from the Victorian 1845 to the near-future 2045, giving me a chance to add a few science-fiction elements). One of the details of this fake history is that the city supposedly hosted a World’s Fair in 1966, with its soaring Mid-Century-Modernist architecture and optimistic view of the future representing a commonly believed “high point” in the city’s history, before things came crashing down during the ugly countercultural ‘70s; so I spent roughly one minute describing to the Google AI bot this fair’s supposed central pavilion, entitled “The Nine Muses,” then told it to render an image of the pavilion supposedly actually shot by a tourist in 1966 in aging Kodachrome film. If I could get such a stunning image like the one above in less than a minute of fooling around, I have to imagine I could get flabbergasting results using a concentrated effort that lasts for weeks; and that has me a lot more excited now about getting a working version of this wiki finally up and running.

So, anyway, that’s it for now around here, although of course I have tons of things to tell you about what’s been going on in my life since I last posted an update; I’ve finally gotten health insurance for the very first time as an adult, I ended up judging a bunch of romance literary contests this summer, I’m getting closer than ever to finally doing my first month-long remote working vacation in Portugal, and the co-op where I live was recently featured in the gourmet foodie magazine Bon Appetit, among other interesting developments. So, I promise to get back into the journaling habit regularly again soon, and you can trust that exactly as much as the promise I always make after going a long time without posting, by which I mean it might happen or it might not. Whatever the case, you can always drop me a line at ilikejason@gmail.com whenever you want, so feel free to do so if it’s been months since I’ve posted and you have a question to ask me about something. Talk with you again soon!

Skipping this week's newsletter. Mind too jumbled to put down anything cohesive.

Inbox 130, RSS 422 (!)

Radar:

• Audubon — Proto pigeon-drones, basically.

• Keyju Jin: China from Within — A different narrative to what is usually presented in the US. Perhaps a little too “pro-China” in many ways but still offers valuable insight nontheless.

Below: Sneak-peek at PROJECT TILES.

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, this week's subjects: How to Style Alphabetical Prints, Tattoos, and Eggs Again

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How to Style Alphabetical Prints. Alphabetical print fabrics are more than just a novelty; they are a celebration of individuality and creativity in fashion. Whether you choose to wear them boldly or subtly, these prints can add a fun and personal touch to your wardrobe. So next time you’re shopping, keep an eye out for these playful fabrics and embrace the trend that’s sure to turn heads and spark conversations. Incorporating alphabetical prints into your wardrobe can be as simple or as bold as you wish. Here are some stylish ways to embrace this trend: Statement Tops: A blouse or shirt featuring a large, bold alphabetical print can be the centerpiece of your outfit. Pair it with classic jeans or tailored trousers to balance the look. Opt for neutral accessories to let the print shine. Layered Looks: Consider a letter-print scarf or jacket layered over a solid outfit. This subtle approach adds interest without overwhelming the ensemble. Monochromatic outfits work wonderfully to highlight a printed layer. Accessorize: If you’re hesitant to go all out with a full alphabetical print outfit, start with accessories. Alphabetical print bags, shoes, or even jewelry can introduce the trend into your look in a less committed way. Mix and Match: Don’t shy away from mixing styles! Pair alphabetical prints with polka dots or stripes for a bold and modern twist. The key is to maintain a cohesive color palette so the look feels intentional. Home Decor: This trend isn’t just for clothing. Alphabetical prints are making their way into home decor as well. Think throw pillows, wall art, and curtains that can add a touch of whimsy to your living space. Where to Find Alphabetical Print Fabrics. With the growing popularity of this trend, many brands are now incorporating alphabetical prints into their collections. Check out both high-end designers and accessible brands for options that fit your budget. Fabric stores are also a great place to find unique alphabetical prints for DIY projects, allowing you to create custom pieces that reflect your style. Have you tried incorporating alphabetical prints into your wardrobe? Share your favorite styles and tips in the comments below! Let’s inspire each other to embrace this whimsical yet chic trend. Tattoos. This has become fashionable, until the 70's it was only sailors who would wear an anchor or a mermaid on their lower arm, like Popeye the Sailor (who was created to promote the consumption of canned spinach). And, a sad part of history, from 1940 to 1945 Hitler had most of the Jews tattooed with a number before he gazzed them. Indeed, tattooing is not a new thing, the classic Egyptians, the ones who built the pyramids, tattooed, and so did many more civilizations. There are some other negatives, told to me be by a UN refugee official. In Afghanistan, mainly a Muslim country, a man can sack his wife and the kids by saying “Talaq” 3 times. This is known as “triple talaq” or “instant divorce”. So now Fatima, fully covered with only her eyes showing, and even the eyes sometimes behind a veil, is on the street with her 3 kids. Even though prostitution would be a way out, who would know that she's now prepared to do the only thing a woman can do in those circumstances to feed her kids? A little tattoo on the hand, which is allowed to show, helps. But we don't need to go that far, many of today's Moroccan ladies who come to Ghana as tourists on a 3-month visa make money by playing pleasure girls to Lebanese youngsters here, and in that profession you have tattooed eyebrows, and then back home to start a shop or whatever to get themselves out of the otherwise everlasting poverty they were born in. What I do not like about tattoos is that they are rather permanent, though there now seems to be ways to get rid of them, I guess that would leave a scar. But a tattoo is cool, hot, whatever you call it. Many money-earning footballers are full of them. Personally, I would rather go for one of those stickers, have the party and wash it off the next day. To put a heart on my arm with my name and his name would keep me out of the market for all the other guys. But maybe we can put political tattoos, put your favorite party's initials. But what if we want a change? Or something we stand for, like good food? Then you could tell Budy to eat you.

Eggs Again. My friend brought me a little porcelain egg cooker (Worcester Porcelain Coddler) from the UK, which came with recipe suggestions including farmhouse (egg with gruyère cheese), oeuf baron (egg with sliced mushroom and chicken liver pâté), ham 'n egg, tuna and egg, oeuf aux fines herbes, cheesy egg, and the three-minute egg (cooked for 7-9 minutes). In Ghana, we don't do many of these, but we do have a local version called “Kosua ne Meko,” sold on the streets. Our omelette options are mostly limited to Spanish omelette or fried egg, which is really fried, a sort of dry sponge. However, internationally, popular omelette variations include sunny-side up (the yolk intact, on top, cooked rather than fried in the fried egg white), omelette aux fines herbes, au champignons, tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelette), chicken omurice (Japanese chicken fried rice omelette), Chinese-style layered omelette, tortilla española (Spanish egg and potato omelette), Indian masala omelette, wild mushroom and truffle muffin-tin omelettes, french omelette with cheese, soufflé omelette with cheese, florentine omelette with spinach and cheese, omelette with bell pepper, onion, ham, and cheese, Khai jiao (Thai-Style omelette), Spanish tortilla (creamy olive oil-slow-cooked potatoes and onion, and, classic French omelette. French Omelette And Cholesterol? Medical opinion has shifted since the 1970's cholesterol panic, and experts now agree that consuming up to 7 eggs per week does not increase the risk of stroke for healthy individuals.

Lydia...

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I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution, for the time being, you can mail me at wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, and people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.

This is the “Zap Colors” bookmarklet I've been using for decades. I wanted to mention it on mastodon, but trying to paste javascript there is... fraught.

Apologies for the formatting. The bookmarklet needs things quoted and such so it survives in my bookmarks file without getting mangled, and it's easier to just keep that than to try and reformat this. Though perhaps on another day, I'll make the effort.

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20newSS,%20styles='*%20%7B%20background:%20white%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20%7D%20:link,%20:link%20*%20%7B%20color:%20%230000EE%20!important%20%7D%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20%7B%20color:%20%23551A8B%20!important%20%7D';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20%7B%20document.createStyleSheet(%22javascript:'%22+styles+%22'%22);%20%7D%20else%20%7B%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)%5B0%5D.appendChild(newSS);%20%7D%20%7D)();

#javascript #codeSnippet

We’re re-opening completely free accounts on Write.as, so more people can start a blog on our clean, distraction-free writing platform.

In late 2021, we announced that we were closing free registrations for new users. This was mostly an experiment to help us focus on the paying customers that keep our small business running, and provide a better experience all around.

Since then, we’ve been able to launch our social platform Remark.as, continue evolving WriteFreely, and add a ton of features around collaboration.

In this time, we’ve also realized that free accounts are one of the best ways for people to get started on our platform. While some people know what they’re looking for, and happily upgrade to our full Pro tier within the 2-week trial period, others just need a place to casually write when they feel like it. This takes a longer time, and doesn’t fit our time-based trial model, so we want to support these writers too.

Another goal of closing free accounts was to limit the number of spam accounts on Write.as. As a long-running platform with plenty of positive search engine authority on our domain, we’re a prime target for Search Engine Optimizers and spammers of every kind. Closing free accounts reduced the number of abusive actors we saw, but never stopped them completely.

Now that free accounts are open again, we plan to develop new anti-spam measures that can eventually be used by all WriteFreely instances to reduce the amount of abuse they receive.

New and existing users

Now, anyone can grab a Free Write.as account, and get a permanent space to write online — you can get started here. Our Free tier includes all the basics, including Markdown support, our Fediverse integration, and even support for monetization through services like sub.club. See our Pricing page for the full comparison with our other tiers.

Along with this, if you signed up for a trial between January 1, 2022 and today but never upgraded to Pro, your account is now completely free! This is our way of saying thanks for sticking around — and if you haven’t revisited Write.as in a while, now is a great time to check it out again.

Thanks for writing with us, and we can’t wait to see what you create!

#free #Writeas #accounts #fediverse

Trying to calm my internal noise to live in the moment. I find that this is way easier said than done.

I'm working towards my higher self, but what that is, I don't know. What I do know is that to get there, I need to surrender and let go, but this is something I am still having difficulty doing.

I am trying to release myself from any burden of my past or present. To stop trying to control every scenario and “practice” through every possible outcome for the events happening in my life. I'm learning to surrender to the notion that I am actually not in control, nor do I need to be. And that is okay. That is freedom.

I know all of this in theory, but putting it into practice is a back and forth battle with my own psyche. At times, I'll get a glimpse of the lightness of letting go, but only a few hours later, I'm back into the swirl of my thinking.

Silence, Peace, and Freedom

This road to my higher self, whatever it is, is worth it — oh, but it's so hard. How do you let go of ego? Or of pride? How do I just accept what is, and feel lighter?

Life doesn't come with a manual, and there are about ten thousand ways to pursue happiness. Every creed and culture has its recommendation. What I am striving for, instead, is silence. Silence is peace, and peace is freedom.

A quiet mind is a virtue, and I don't have it. I'll be sitting and then, BAM, a new thought comes into my consciousness. Maybe it's positive, or perhaps negative, but it's outside my control. It's noise. I'm on a journey to calm this noise to essentially nothing. To just be, and to be okay.

Daily mindfulness is helping.

To achieve the silence, peace, and freedom, I'm trying guided daily mindfulness exercises from a YouTube channel. I typically do them around 7PM every night for about 10–15 minutes, depending on the video.

After these short sessions, my mind feels more at ease. I have a sense of calmness, and sometimes I get inspired. Like today, I was inspired to write this post.

Daily walks are helping, too (sometimes).

I also walk every day, sometimes twice a day, to get some fresh air and reflect. This gives me an opportunity to quiet my mind, but there are times when I also overthink or get lost in thought.

Rumination and catastrophic thinking can creep in during these alone times. It's human nature. I need to be more intentional with my walk. Centered, and exist in the present moment. I'll be practicing that.

Centered Self, Not Self-Centered

I'm working on being centered, because if I can be centered, I can better lean into my higher self.

A quiet mind, in the present moment, will make it possible to listen with a true intent. But I'm in the constant battle of finding the solutions to my life's daily questions. I'm self-centered instead of just centering myself.

It's a slight shift, but it's about thinking outwardly instead of inward. Most people tend to think inward, almost all the time, and almost always in hypotheticals. For instance, I try to predict the future, then predict my reactions to the future.

This isn't mindfulness. This is noise. I'm cutting through this noise the best that I can, but it can be difficult. I'm learning that the most important thing is to just be patient during this process. Patience, I'm finding, is a virtue that's difficult to live. Though, it's through this virtue that I find perspective, balance, and moments of being centered.

#mindfulness

A relatively easy step can help your focus and reduce stress

When I got my most recent Mac, I created an account for everyday use but I also created a “local only” account. The everyday account has services and apps I log into. The “local only” account doesn't. The point of it is that I don't log into anything with it. I don't give it admin privileges either so any time I want to do anything like install software, I have to log into my regular account or my admin account.

The history

Why would I do such a thing, you might ask. It's the kind of thing people do ask me when they hear about it. In the earliest days of personal computing, you were generally limited to doing one thing at a time on your computer. That had a lot of disadvantages. What if you wanted to put something you did in Program A into Program B? Options existed but none of them were great. Then, computers introduced “multitasking” which at the time meant “we're going to stop the old program but keep it ready to go the moment you need it.” It was an improvement but it had issues too. Eventually, there was “pre-emptive multitasking” and we really were running more than one thing at a time. We were still kind of limited by the computer's speeds but computing was starting to look a lot like what we think of as computing today.

As computers got faster, we had them doing more things at the same time. Software and OS makers didn't have to care so much about whether their software ran amok using wild amounts of resources. Depending on who you ask, that was a problem. Count me in the “it's a problem” camp but it's not why I have a local-only account.

When you log into your computer, what happens? Not from a technical perspective. What do you experience? If it's anything like what happens when I log into a computer, you're getting popups and notifications. Things want attention. If you need to feel busy and you didn't have anything else on your plate, there's probably a lot to keep you occupied. As time progresses, you get new notifications on your screen demanding attention, action, and decisions.

Just walking into another room can cause me to forget why I was going into that room in the first place. Every time I have an interruption on my computer, I'm taken out of the task and out of the mindset I had going into it.

By eliminating all of that, I can just do what I came to do.

I don't think our computers should work this way, by the way. I think it's offensive that our computers (and phones for that matter) are treating us like mental pinball machines, bouncing us from one stimulus to the next until we're numb and go turn a streaming service on.

As long as they do, some of us still need air to breathe creatively. Setting up a local-only account is a great way to do that without getting a second computer.

How

This isn't going to be a full technical guide, just a quick start in the right direction. I've got instructions for both Windows and Mac here. The situation is too unique on Linux so I'm going to leave you to your own devices on that.

Mac

1. Open System Settings either from Launcher or Spotlight or whatever your preferred method is
2. Navigate to Users and Groups
3. Create a new user with Standard permissions

Your computer will probably tell you to log out and log back in before the new account can be used. Just reboot your dang computer.

Over time, your computer will try to get you to do things like log into the App Store or whatever else. If you absolutely have to in order to do iCloud or something else (backups are good!), then do it but only grudgingly and carefully. The entire point here is to log into nothing at all if it can at all be helped.

Windows

These instructions are for Windows 11 and they are true as of October 14, 2024. Microsoft really doesn't want you creating local-only accounts. This should be considered a workaround at best.

1. Open Settings
2. Find the Accounts option
3. Under the top section (Other users) click the Add account button
4. Microsoft will ask you how this person will sign in. Click the I don't have this person's sign-in information link below the Email or phone field
5. On the next screen, they will try to get you to create a new Microsoft account for the new user. Ignore that and click Add a user without a Microsoft account.
6. Give that local only account a username and password

There are a few ways to access this account. The easiest way for me is to lock the account and then select the local account from the account selector at the bottom left hand side of the screen.

What now?

Dunno. It's up to you. I use my local-only account for writing fiction (and non-fiction like this), learning programming languages (Rust at the moment), and making book covers.

I could use it for writing letters or journaling. Whatever might benefit from having fewer interruptions. I can't really live without stuff that brings the distractions forever but it gives me the freedom to step away from it for a few minutes while still basically having the kinds of things a computer is good for.

#TechTips #CreativeProcess