Tan Teen Oni Waifu, episode 7

This village is really going to the dogs. In a good way, at least for Our Loyal Sidekick, who doesn’t make it through “hello” before falling for Our Cute Canine Guide Gal. Fortunately, seeing him treat her charges as equals is enough to melt her heart, so there shouldn’t be any problems with this second interspecies relationship.

All is not simply slow-life in the middle of nowhere, however, as the plot once again raises its ugly head, in the person of the less-inept-than-you’d-expect fallen noble who’s been behind pretty much everything so far. This time, he’s persuaded Evil Princess to swipe power and authority to make another invasion attempt.

Fortunately, there’s a Good Prince, as well, and he tries to stop the mess before it gets out of hand. Next week, war!

Verdict: the sooner we’re past this conflict, the sooner we never see Princess Diane again. With luck, that’ll also be the end of The Gelded Noble, who kind of ruins any scene he’s in.

(no fan-art, as usual, so I had to gen up a cute white-haired doggy gal; not easy, since Krea2 tends to really go for breeds with long muzzles)

10 Years A Harem Lord, episode 7

I’ll give the show credit for one thing: the thugs terrorizing Our New Loli Housekeeper might want to sell her into slavery, but just as a general worker, not an underage sex slave; other shows tend to be less “wholesome”.

Anyway, apart from finding a loli and patching up a hole, things move pretty slowly this week, but end with the promise of a fight and a new maiden to rescue from shadowy villains.

Verdict: “hey, let’s leave the runaway loli out on a street corner, with a guard dog who’s kinda vague on the concept, so we can get her kidnapped again.” Also, still waiting on a definitive answer on Our Chicken Holder’s gender; s/he gets some very pretty closeup shots this week, but the subtitles using “he” are an interpretation, not a reflection of the Japanese dialogue, unless I missed a line.

(I may have to knock together a prompt for Our Devoted Wolf Girl, but meanwhile, here’s another cute doggie)

Gate novels finally available in translation

It took Amazon five months to inform me about a release from an author I follow, and only after the second book was released. Sigh.

Also Amazon

I am actually more surprised that Amazon delivered my latest order on the day promised than I would be if it were late. That’s how bad their logistics have been for me recently.

D is for Dragon-gal

I got some nice lizard gals in recent batches, so I decided to level them up.

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The Epic Poem of Tanya The Remarkably Effective 2, episode 6

This week, The Dance Of The Certifiable Badasses. Plural, because we get to see Russian mages tough enough to survive being purged and sent to “rehabilitation” camps, as well as a general who leads from the front. Also, Our Nimble Adjutant survives playing decoy.

Bumpkin & Harem 2, episode 6

They did not cheap out on animating The Big Duel. They used a few speedlines, but only to represent… speed, and put a lot of effort into the action and camerawork.

However, Our White-Knight Haremette’s crush has reached the point where not seeing Our Bumpkin Hero leads her to spend her evenings in drunken exposition with Her Red Rival. Short-Stack, on the other hand, is completely oblivious to her eligibility, with no reaction to hearing Big Daddy say “seriously, son, get a wife; maybe a nice swordswoman or wizard”. Personally, I’m still rooting for Our Hot Magic Teacher.

(unrelated swordswoman is a fully-qualified waifu candidate)

With fourteen you get catgirl

I understand why Our Tan Teen Oni Waifu is on the cover of every book in the Frontier Lord light-novel series, but why does it take until book 14 to reveal that there’s a catgirl in town?

Oura farming

I have an Oura ring, which started out with a roughly 7-day battery life. A while back, it started reporting “N hours” left after maybe 3 days, and updates and restarts didn’t help. Then it started saying “21 hours left” and just shutting off about 3 hours later. Device is just over 1.5 years old.

When placed on the charger, it immediately claimed to be about 40% charged. Thinking this sounded an awful lot like the old laptop battery behavior where one cell went bad and the device didn’t notice or adjust, I started looking at a new device. Coincidentally, there’s a new model of Oura ring that just came out.

I didn’t really want to buy another one, but then came the day when the device shut down and didn’t come back. The basic support advice was to reset it from the app, but you can’t do that when it doesn’t boot. Reading further, I found the last-ditch failsafe reset: place ring in charger, pick up charger, rapidly smack charger down onto table a bunch of times, wait one minute, repeat if needed.

That worked. Pity it still shuts itself off at ~40% battery life. I guess I’ll just put it on the charger after two days. If its life drops any further, I’ll think about a replacement. I’d prefer a ring to a watch for sleep tracking, but not if it has to be replaced in less than two years again.

Dear Adobe,

I have all notifications disabled for Creative Cloud, and yet just now you decided to cover the lower right corner of my screen with a custom oversized pop-up window informing me there was a new version of Illustrator, and asking if I wanted to update right now or later. The pop-up was missing a “fuck off and stop bothering me” button.

The worst part? I already installed that update yesterday.

X hates casuals

My new daily ritual is unlocking my xTwitter account by checking the yes-i-am-a-human box and acknowledging my understanding of the rules I somehow violated in my sleep. I’m guessing it’s pissed off at Brave, since I’ve almost never posted anything, and really only use it to keep up with a handful of people. Either that, or someone disapproves of the accounts I’m giving likes to…

Speaking of X

When a tweet appears in the “for you” timeline, the top choice in the “…” menu is “not interested in this”. When a tweet with a reply under it by someone you follow appears, the top choice is “follow this person”, and there is no “not interested” option, although you can still mute or block them. In both cases, misclicking the round “…” button by even a single pixel takes you to the tweet you were trying to avoid.

Infected Mexican jalapenos are Trump’s fault!

Taylor Farms, makers of fine products containing e.coli and cyclospora, have now recalled jalapenos full of salmonella. The Ars writer and the commenters make it all about Trump.

Elven Tradwives Of The American Midwest

Too elegant to just walk around barefoot and pregnant!

Fantasy Fox

I don’t usually go for the full furry type, but…

After all the buildup, they kind of cheaped out on the big reveal. And no, I don’t mean the gals taking a dip in the hot spring, although that could have been a longer scene. This diverges from the light-novel version of the story in a rather significant way, unless they spend more time next week dealing with what happens when Our Boney Hero gets not-really-his-body back. Careful viewing will reveal one secret that he of course forgot a long time ago, but the expert’s opinion on what happened to him doesn’t provide enough emphasis on a major plot point.

Verdict: I’ll forgive all flaws for Our Titty Elf giving in to her long-suppressed attraction, while Our Slightly Gay Ninja Catgirl eggs her on and then can’t believe she’s actually going to do it.

Stale alert…

I’m on call this week, and one of the services I support threw an alert for a file-pull cron job that hasn’t succeeded in 20,675 days. So, January 1, 1970 strikes again!

Engadget, For Dummies

Either there is no longer any volume of tech news or product releases, or the writers and editors at Engadget have all been replaced with AI slop. I can find no other explanation for recent stories like:

• Here’s how to pair your Roku remote
• How waterproof are AirTags? Here’s what to know
• How to use Claude’s voice mode
• Here’s how to format a USB drive on Windows
• How to hide and unhide an app on your iPhone or iPad (and why you may want to)
• The Apple Watch heart rate feature you probably didn’t realize existed
• Are USB flash drives becoming obsolete?
• PSA: Apple has released security updates for Mac

Honestly, all that’s missing are exclamation points and emoji.

Tell me you’re crazy without telling me you’re crazy

I got a giggle out of the Person Of Transitude who fled the evils of Imperial Trumpyland for a refugee camp in Enlightened Europistan, discovered that she was surrounded by violent bigoted third-world savages, and fled back to San Francisco, only to complain that it’s too expensive there.

Yes, dear, because it’s San Francisco, which hasn’t been affordable since before you were a little boy. Maybe do a little research before your next move, preferably not relying on GenAI?

The perfect waifu does not exi…

(all of these are sized for my Lexar Pexar photo frame, and I’ve been getting some really nice results mashing up the JSON prompts generated from my archives and then passing individual fields through targeted LLM prompts; I can’t use really fast models, though, since they tend to skip over large chunks of the instructions and just go wild on their own (z-image-engineer-v6 is basically hardwired to generate complete prompts, and sucks for anything else). gemma-4-e4b-it-heretic is working out nicely, and taking only a few seconds to separately flesh out the background and the subject’s appearance without generating tons of irrelevant details that end up contradicting other fields)

Magilumiere 2, episode 6

Last season, we met a loli broom-maker who had a crush on Our Oblivious Engineer. This week, we meet a cocky engineer with a crush on Our Oblivious Loli Miko (who grows up quite nicely when she transforms, like many old-school magical girls). Next week, The Safest Place In Kyoto is sure to need the attentions of Our Gals, as a sinister presence interferes.

Verdict: you pretty much have to accept this entire episode as a long-winded introduction for a new cast member, plus setup for a big fight.

(picture is not only unrelated, but one of my more thematically baffling mashups)

Isekai Ass-Guardian, episode 6

The good news is that the translated edition of the 9th light novel is finally coming out in December.

This week, a fight that makes more sense in the original source, but ends up looking kind of low-stakes here, with the surprise ass-pull of Our Best Lizard Gal’s get-out-of-death’s-door-free card. Our Lightly-Covered Former Boss shows off a useful power, too, but mostly gives us a better look at how much skin her new outfit reveals, and while the cleavage honestly isn’t much different from before, she must feel quite a breeze down there when she’s jumping around in combat.

In other news, Our Still-Only-Mildly-Besotted Gals encourage Our Ogling Hero to penetrate a sleeping beauty with his long hard… key that dropped from a treasure chest, awakening a literal Deus Ex Machina. With a self-disparaging, admittedly-kinda-broken goddess now in their back pocket, things are looking up.

Verdict: the official social-media account is pushing hard, but the show doesn’t seem to be finding an audience. I wish I could say that this episode had enough to offer to change that, but I still think they should have based it on the light novels instead of the manga.

(unrelated lizard gal and friends look like a party, the sort that offers many experience points)

Tan Teen Oni Waifu, episode 6

“Loli-Twin Powers, Activate!” As expected. Also, Our Hero is so manly that his scent is not only strong, but bright enough to light a dark room. There’s also some plotsposition, Our Educated Mouse begs for a home, and a pack of dogs arrives, pursued by a rather hungry snake. Don’t worry, though; the humanoid doggie gal is sure to survive, since she’s in the credits as Our Loyal Sidekick’s Future Waifu.

Verdict: sparkly stench is a bit silly, but the rest is fine.

(sometimes the genai doggie gals turn out just fine…)

10 Years A Harem Lord, episode 6

First rule of killing succubi: save all the parts. Sadly, the king dusted all three of them, so I guess he’s satisfied with just the one Deus Ex Waifu. Anyway, with the vampire menace removed for now, Our Haremettes have moved into Our Hero’s new mansion, along with a dog-shaped dog. We’ve also got a new Mystery Loli on the run in town, and a cry for help in the basement.

Verdict: the plot already thickened, so I guess now it’s being stirred and seasoned. I would appreciate some clarity on whether Our Chicken Holder is a boy or a girl, though…

(not even close to Our Live-In Wolf Gal, but still cute)

Shorter OpenAI press release

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “we can’t release our next model, because it’s too powerful to contain!”.

Translation: “we still haven’t hired any actual network security professionals, so we can’t build a sandbox to test it in, but it’s gonna be so good you’ll regret not investing yesterday!”.

Ask what, Alexa?

Seriously, what can I possibly learn from this? “Hey, Alexa, about that package that was delivered yesterday, was it good for you, too?”

It’s been added to every order going back to July 12, including ebooks and subscriptions. Also, every order-related page is now offering me a secured line of credit, like I’m a college student drowning in debt. Surely Amazon of all companies knows me better than that.

The Ballad Of Tanya The Inspirational 2, episode 5

The reward for good work is not “more work”, it’s “meat grinder”.

Bumpkin & Harem 2, episode 5

The boar hunt begins, and Our Mighty Short-Stack Haremette takes first blood, the hard way. If only her verbal tic were slightly less annoying, I’d cheer her on as a good (if a bit young) match. And then it’s time for duellus interruptus, as Our Disturbingly Similar Young Men face off to test their skills, only to immediately lose interest when offered dinner.

Anyway, boars and duels light a fire under everyone, although Our Darling Daughter really needs a more age-appropriate outfit for sword training than Daisy Dukes and a slit blouse.

Next week, The Daddy Duel.

Verdict: pretty solid.

(Miss Not-Appearing-In-This-Episode is at least from the right show)

Story seed…

Reverse-Isekai Trash Panda: Run Over By A Trog, The Beautiful Young Elven Princess Was Reborn In The US Midwest As A Raccoon, And Needs True Love’s Kiss To Regain Her True Form, But Her Constant Dumpster Diving Has Given Her Breath That Would Stun A Feral Pig, So She’s Searching For A Handsome Furry Fetishist With No Sense Of Smell

Avoiding the flock

If I take the back road, it is possible for me to reach the grocery, drug store, and post office without being recorded by a Flock camera. For now. All the obvious routes out of my house pass by at least one.

Asshole Amazon driver

Yesterday morning, I heard something hit my front door. Then my cameras reported a package delivery, and I watched as an Amazon driver came up the walk, flung the package ten feet onto the porch, and walked away.

This was not a gentle lob. If the bottles inside had been glass, they’d have definitely shattered. As it is, one of the lids cracked.

When reporting on delivery quality, the possible reasons for “driver was unprofessional” do not include rough handling of packages. It just ends up under “other”.

Also Amazon fuckery

“Alexa for shopping” is the new pop-in sidebar on Amazon’s web site that launches an AI chatbot pretty much any time you’re searching for products, moving the real web site partially offscreen so they can stop you from viewing products that you might want to buy without “assistance”.

It cannot be disabled.

Magilumiere 2, episode 5

The credits have been advertising it, so it’s no surprise that Our Little Startup has gained two new magical girls, with one being Our Underrim Glasses-Wearing Magical Engineer Gal, and the other being last season’s Ambitious Magical Go-Getter Gal. Now they just need another engineer to share the operational load. Next week.

Verdict: settling in nicely.

(technically these are magical girls)

Isekai Ass-Guardian, episode 5

Well, the Chest Cracker certainly lives up to her name. Also, she’s skilled at opening chests. Speaking of chests, if you’re going to make a fuss about how Our Former Boss’s new high-level armor shows off a lot more creamy skin, maybe draw some texture or color so we can tell where the outfit leaves off and the skin begins. The new bra at least has some color to it, so we can tell when it starts to fall off, although if I were the wearer I’d consider that a bit of a flaw in its construction.

Still ripping through the material at a rapid pace, although they slowed down to explain new skills and stat boosts, and actually created splash screens for major skill activations. Sigh.

Verdict: I’m not bored, but I really think this manga-based speedrun is making the whole thing feel like a more generic isekai. There’s so much more they could be doing with the source material.

(unrelated witch is clearly better-armored than Kyouka)

Skeleton Knight 2, episode 5

Our Big Bad and his organization have names now, and make no mistake, this is The Big Bad. I don’t know how far they’re taking it this season, but when they finally get to it, Our Boney Hero will finally not seem overpowered.

Verdict: holy crap that was a talky boss fight, but on the bright side, Our Titty Elf’s Big Sister had just the tiniest bit of jiggle animation this week.

(still no new fan-art)

The real downside of Amazon licensing anime…

…is that my FireTV box doesn’t have an audio setting for “original language”, so either I start an episode of Magilumiere and get terrible English voices, or I start an episode of Stargate: SG1 and get Japanese voices. Note that I did not say “terrible Japanese voices”; unlike the undersized US voice-actor pool, they seem to hire people who fit the roles.

(magical girl exploring new worlds; close enough)

Cats, horses, and mice

I took the JSON prompts from my 4K wallpaper and upcycled them with a consistent style (“digital illustration with detailed rendering, detailed worldbuilding, sci-fi aesthetic, and atmospheric depth”) and a random animal-hybrid description (“a beautiful sexy anthropomorphic X woman”). I think it says something about the available training data that “cat” and “horse” were the most successful, but I was surprised how often “mouse” worked out. Dog, fox, raccoon, and squirrel rarely worked, because they usually went too furry with full-on animal heads (also a training-data thing, I suspect). Some types rarely worked at all, adding no ears, tails, fur, whiskers, etc. Some simply didn’t match the human hair because the base animal had a limited color range.

A surprising percentage only got tails without ears, which I suspect is the prompt referring to human ears in some way, even if just describing jewelry. Lizard gals mostly got either a tail or some skin patterns that suggested scales without actually drawing any. Occasionally a gal would look completely human except for furry legs, which is not my fetish (“🎶 If you dare wear short-shorts, Nair for short-shorts 🎶”).

How The Retro-SF West Was Won

Everything a space cowboy needs:

Odd Apple ad placement

Reddit is flooded with ads claiming that Macs are #1 in enterprise environments, blah-blah-blah, and I really wonder who on the marketing team thinks that people reading the Palworld subreddit are making purchasing decisions at major corporations.

Fuck publishers

The Kindle edition of the original Dream Park novel is $12.99. This is just a touch outrageous for an SF novel released in 1981. Tor has structured the prices in a way that makes sense if you buy the complete series ($6.50/book), but sucks if you just want the first (best) one.

GenAI elf gals in space!

More from the batch of 4K wallpapers remade with Krea2.

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