The web is full of praise for Dolly Parton today, with the usual vicious bitter losers getting bitchslapped Left and Right for trying to soil her memory. Other people have explained her accomplishments far better than I ever could, and my only contribution to the bitchslapping was to speak bluntly to an asshole on one of the Discord forums I follow (who seemed genuinely shocked that no one praised him for his “contrarian” take).

A remarkable human being has passed.

The Lament Of Tanya the Practical 2, episode 8

In which Our Tiny-But-Fierce Heroine learns that you should never give ideas to a crazy man, and Our Long-Suffering Superior Officer learns that you should never give open-ended orders to a crazy little girl.

Bumpkin & Harem 2, episode 8

This week, two very different maidens gird their loins to do battle in another sort of arena, with Our White-Haired Haremette’s jealousy nearly going into overdrive as Our Noble’s Little Sister makes her intentions painfully clear. Just when we think it’s going to end in a glorious catfight, though, shit gets real.

Verdict: never mind the slow pans up from cleavage to face, it’s time for serious plotting!

(clearly I need to have the LLM design some more revealing costumes…)

Dear Apple,

Number of times I have taken a screenshot of my iPhone or iPad: ~753

Number of times I have wanted a screenshot of my iPhone or iPad: 0

(this is especially annoying on the iPad, where “swipe up from bottom” is overridden if you’re too close to the lower left corner, and replaced with a popup telling you that swipe-up-for-screenshot is disabled; YES, I KNOW; I’M THE ONE WHO DISABLED IT!)

AI Productivity!

Meta’s AI Facepalm:

On one hand, the company’s data showed that code changes to Meta’s AI software platforms and infrastructure were up 220 percent year over year. But that didn’t translate into equally dramatic productivity gains: new or improved features that actually reached users rose just 36 percent. And advancements in those areas were offset elsewhere, as the number of technical and security incidents rose 40 percent. The time employees spent on those problems grew by 70 percent.

WTF, Grok?

xTwitter’s automatic translation feature is generally useful, but far from reliable. It can’t reliably translate Japanese names, for instance, even if the correct reading for the name is in the username or profile.

But it also can make huge mistakes. Like this one:

😈🎉 Blu-ray Vol.3 On Sale Today 🎉😈

TV Anime “Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department Is a Total Pushover”
Blu-ray Vol.3 is finally hitting shelves today!!!

Featuring an original draw by nonco-sensei for the BOX design, this luxurious Blu-ray also includes a bonus CD <Serious ASMR by the Little Devil Sisters (CV. #Izumi Fuka & #Tono Hikaru)>! ✨

In episode 12’s beach volleyball scene, there is no white light for Lilim 💡

If you’re as baffled as I am by the mention of a beach volleyball scene in the finale, the “total pushover” added to the title, and the fact that Miss Kuroitsu came out four years ago, then you’ll understand why I switched it back into Japanese:

TVアニメ「カナン様はあくまでチョロい」
Blu-ray Vol.3 いよいよ本日発売開始！！！

nonco先生描き下ろしBOX仕様で、 特典CD〈小悪魔姉妹(CV.#和泉風花 & #遠野ひかる)による本気ASMR〉も収録された豪華なBlu-rayです！✨

第12話のビーチバレーシーンでは、 リリムの白い光はございません💡

▼詳細はこちら！

Yes, it translated “カナン様はあくまでチョロい” (Mistress Kanan is Devilishly Easy) as if it were “怪人開発部の黒井津さん” and added “is a total pushover”. Even without being able to read Japanese, you may notice that the original titles have exactly zero characters in common.

Krea 2 step count

With other recent image-gen models like Qwen Image, Z Image Turbo, and Flux.2-Klein-9B, the recommended step count is a minimum, and they continue improving and stabilizing for much longer than most people expect, with diminishing returns not setting in until 60, 90, or even 120 steps. Qwen Image, in fact, could keep tweaking small details at 300+ steps, which pretty much nobody has patience for.

With Krea 2 Turbo, just stop at 10. The quality doesn’t get worse at higher step counts, but it also doesn’t get visibly better. If you want to improve quality, add 2 refiner steps, and then feed it to SeedVR2 for final polish and any desired upscaling (there’s no reason to use any other method of upscaling; they’re all slower and/or lower-quality).

Fun with wildcards

All of my new fantasy wildcard prompt elements were generated with the following sysprompt, fed to gemma-4-26b-a4b-qat:

You are an orchestrator. Spin up 10 subagents to each create lists
of 10 unique, creative image-generation prompts describing $aesthetic
$things$class. Assign each subagent a different environment and
scenario. Do not use names of real places. Do not include people.
Do not include art style, medium, or depth of field. Describe only
the visual elements of each $thing in concrete terms, as a
self-contained paragraph of 25 to 75 words. Do not number the list
or include any text formatting. Once done, spin up a subagent to
review the total output and remove duplicates. Do not worry about
output length or truncated results; longer results are better than
shorter ones.

It’s not actually “orchestrating” anything or creating “agents”, it just pretends and generates 10 lists of 10, but that pretense makes it run 2-10x faster, complain less, and produce more creative results, to the point that I can run it multiple times with the same variables, and get maybe 0.25% duplicates.

The one instruction it doesn’t obey is the word length, usually stopping around 13-15. Enough for uniqueness, but not for flavor, so I run it through a different model with two different sysprompts.

more...

I’m really liking the results of the current LLM-enhanced sword/outfit/background wildcard sets, fed to Krea 2 Turbo. Apart from the occasional GenAI glitches (multiple hilts, multiple blades at different angles, etc), I’m getting a lot of great wallpaper out of it.

Daze Of Future Passed

In David Starr, Space Ranger, Asimov includes a foreword discussing that he based the conditions on Mars on 1951 science, acknowledging that by 1970 it was known that the red planet had a much less forgiving environment. Subsequent volumes contain the same sort of update about the asteroid belts and the surface of Venus.

Anyway, in chapter 1, in the year 7000 AD, the population of Earth is 5 billion, and it cannot possibly produce enough food, so it is utterly dependent on supplies from the offworld colonies to survive more than a few weeks, and most people still ended up eating fake food from yeast vats. Kind of a pity he didn’t revisit it again before his death to acknowledge the Malthusian assumptions that were so common in SF of that era.

File under peculiar that the blurb for the current re-releases claim the stories have been “out of print for 75 years!”, which is obviously contradicted by the 1970 forewords. I mean, I read the Del Rey paperbacks printed in the Eighties, and apparently there were book club editions in the Nineties as well.

Somebody else’s PoS

Went into a local store yesterday to pick up one of two items I ordered a few days ago. They called me to say it was in, they had it, and the label on the box matched the receipt in my hand, but the in-store system showed a completely different item at the exact same price. In fact, it showed that as the only thing I’d ever ordered through them. Pulled up their web site, and it showed both orders, plus correct history.

Unfortunately, their inventory controls would not allow him to just hand it to me, because he couldn’t reconcile it in the system. He had to send email to their helpdesk and mark it urgent, which means he’ll hear back from India today. Or maybe tomorrow.

Apple cut the price!

…on their $19 screen-cleaning cloth. It’s now only $9.

In other news, pre-orders are now open for the new M5/M6 Mac Mini and Mac Studio. Gold bars are the preferred currency. If you like surprises, you can use the new “Apple Upgrade” plan to lease one for 2 or 3 years of monthly payments instead; the final buyout price is not disclosed.

“Alexa, get your shit together!”

My mother’s lamps stopped working when “Alexa+” was released. All of the lights it discovered through the Philips Hue app work fine, but the Amazon Smart Plugs that are visible and controllable through the Alexa app on her phone are not visible to the Echo device that’s synced to the same account. Even reverting to the less-quirky “standard” Alexa didn’t fix it; the service is just hosed.

Not-At-All-Coincidentally, launching the Alexa phone app fills her phone screen with a chat interface for Alexa+ that can’t be disabled or hidden. It’s an extra set of swipes to see anything else in the app, which is a great experience for someone with Parkinson’s, thanks. Disabled Alexa+, restarted the app, and… it filled the screen with the same chat panel, now labeled “Alexa+ Preview”.

Fuck you with a rusty tire iron, Amazon.

So I ordered a bunch of Philips Hue wall plugs, and we’ll just throw out all the useless Amazon-branded ones.

Everybody gets to play!

Somali pirates seized a US-sanctioned, Eritrean-flagged oil tanker that’s part of Iran’s shadow fleet and managed by a UAE company. Gosh, that’s too bad.

This week, a new mystery: how in the hell did Our Megabusty Goofball Pony Gal ever fit into that ninja armor? Related, Our Slightly Gay Catgirl gets an extended flashback origin story, and I must say that she should ease up on the mousse and go back to a more natural hair style.

We’ve also finally reached events promised in the (wretched) OP animation, as Our Bony Hero tests his metal mettle against a sea monster. Time to get kraken! … okay, done; they didn’t even bother giving the poor thing a coup de grâce.

Verdict: there must be a law about Conservation Of Extended Flashbacks.

(still tinkering with sword-bearing fantasy cover-girl prompts; this first one, like Our Titty Elf, apparently likes sitting on bone)

Apple still struggling to find a use for AI

In iOS 27, Apple Intelligence will automatically rearrange your tabs by category. Apparently because it’s Yet Another Way To Move Things Around Behind Your Back, an Apple UI specialty in recent years.

Seriously, WTF?

Same article:

In the Safari settings accessible from the left of the URL bar, tapping into Create an Extension brings you to an interface where you can type in whatever you want an extension to do. Apple also includes suggestions in categories that include Boost Productivity, Improve Focus, Get Creative, and Develop and Design. Some of Apple’s extension suggestions:

• Create a citation for the current webpage and copy it to my clipboard
• Create a 3-minute focus timer for the page
• Set the minimum font size to 14pt
• Turn the page into pirate speak
• Style websites like 90s websites with bold colors and type
• Every time I open a new tab, draw me a different flower
• Highlight and show the dimensions of webpage elements when I tap on them
• Enter the design mode for a website so that I can edit the contents

…because I want to run down my phone battery and my data plan!

And more!

Safari can monitor a website for changes and alert you when new information is detected. Apple says it’s useful for monitoring when concert tickets go on sale or watching for a product to be restocked.

Magilumiere 2, episode 8

Our Shoulder-Chippy Loner grows up and learns to trust other people to be just as capable at their jobs as he is. Also, Our Cuddly Legal-Loli Miko has him so whipped that it doesn’t matter if he takes a job and moves to Tokyo. He’ll be back.

Verdict: thankfully, they’d used up their quota of extended flashbacks, and actually managed to beat the monster and finish the story arc.

(eh, close enough for winging it with just a prompt)

Isekai Ass-Guardian, episode 8

Bondage harpies, maid cosplay, deus ex goddess, and another teenage haremette who’s already thick as thieves with the other ones. Oh, yeah, and a battle so big that they even animated some of it. Not everyone is happy with Our Rump Protector’s decision to delay moving to the next district immediately, though; it seems Our Mighty Blonde Twintail is… impatient.

Verdict: Elitia’s going to be impatient for a really long time, since her goal is in district five, and the manga isn’t even halfway through seven yet. They’re doing things that suggest prepping for a future season, but I don’t see fan reactions that would support it getting green-lit.

(not as cuddly as Our Best Lizard Gal, but she’ll have to do)

Remembering code="R"

Back in the stone age, MasterCook had licensed recipes, automatic nutritional info based on a licensed database, flexible output options, recipe scaling, import from a variety of sources, and the ability to treat other recipes as ingredients and automatically print them alongside the main recipe.

No recipe manager app has added a significant new feature in at least 25 years. Most of them are less capable than MasterCook 6, with the possible exception of improved recipe-parsing from web pages, enabled by the common practice of cooking sites embedding JSON-LD on the page.

Pretty much everyone who claims to import Mastercook’s MX2 not-quite-XML export format simply ignores a bunch of the formatting, including the recipe links, which are simply ingredient records that have a code="R" attribute and a name that matches the name of another recipe in the same archive.

For reference, code “T” meant a text item like “or” or “(optional)”, code “S” was a section header for dividing ingredients by purpose, and the sometimes-omitted “I” was for normal ingredients.

A few Fantasy Sword Gals

I created a bunch of LLM-enhanced backgrounds, swords, and outfits, and mixed them together. Sadly, the LLM got a bit too creative, and I need to delete all references to mushrooms, jellyfish, moss, coral, lichen, feathers, birds, seaweed, thorns, and leaves. From all three sets.

more...

Tan Teen Oni Waifu, episode 8

FYI for the translator: not only does yoroshiku tanomu not mean “I hope this works”, what idiot thought that Our Mighty Hero would ever say “I hope this works” to his troops right before a battle? Have they watched the show?

This is far milder than the sort of localization errors that really set fans off, where woke morons are rewriting the scripts to change the point of entire scenes and the nature of major characters, but come on, even the still-mostly-broken online translator apps don’t mistranslate a simple phrase like “yoroshiku tanomu” (“I’m counting on you”).

Anyway, The Big Battle doesn’t go as either side expected, but if you were expecting things to go badly for The Good Guys, clearly you haven’t been watching the show, either.

Verdict: Boy Gets Doggy Girl. And I suspect Our Loyal Sidekick will be less reticent than his master, so I expect puppies soon.

(unrelated GenAI doggy girl is one of the few I got who didn’t have a muzzle)

10 Years A Harem Lord, episode 8

Okay, so they did cast the queen, and brought her on-screen this week, which means that they could easily have followed the source and had her show up earlier, both in locking down the vampire’s Big Magic Rock and in providing a bit of late-night fan-service when they opened the tunnel. Which makes it look like they just didn’t want the fan-service?

Anyway, no one should be surprised that the crime boss was easily defeated and that they found plenty of evidence he was Up To No Good, and also that there are still vampires running around behind the scenes.

Also, we have a new damsel in distress, and this one’s got red underrim glasses, so you know she’s worth rescuing. Speaking of haremettes, the loli redhead is going to be a real heartbreaker in a few years.

Verdict: Good Clean Fun.

(yeah, just throwing out unrelated pics tonight…)

Amazon fixed estimated delivery times!

By removing them! This week, none of my orders that reached the “out for delivery” stage has an estimated delivery window, and while the map view still gets loaded, it no longer indicates how many stops away the driver is or their approximate location.

Dear Apple,

Could you please unfuck the behavior of the “repeat” functionality in the MacOS Music.app? Eventually? If I select “repeat one”, I expect it to do two things:

1. repeat the same song until I choose another one.
2. stay selected until I select a different option.

This hasn’t worked since you replaced iTunes with this PoS that demonstrates that you don’t need vibe-coding to write garbage.

Playing with Obsidian

I’ve been having issues with Joplin’s sync (for a long time, actually), and a co-worker suggested I try out Obsidian, which has various sync options including an end-to-end encrypted service they run for a small fee, as well as a robust plugin architecture.

Which you need, because out of the box it’s kinda limited for the sort of things I want from a note app. To achieve rough parity with Joplin, I had to add:

• Importer - required to get your existing data into Obsidian.
• Note Toolbar - basic formatting buttons.
• Frontmatter Date Manager - update the “updated” field on edit; otherwise you simply can’t sort notes by recent edits.
• Fold Properties By Default - otherwise you lose a lot of screen space to note metadata.
• Vault Backup - export to compressed archive.

One thing that took a while to figure out was a reverse-chronological display of every note in a vault, regardless of where it was stored in organizational sub-folders. Turns out you need to use “Bases” and set up a list view that sorts by the “updated” metadata field (which is never… updated by the basic app). The results aren’t terribly pretty, but it works.

Pity it’s Yet Another Node.js App.

There are some recipe-management plugins, which might make it a decent alternative to the current crop of paid apps, and it’s apparently got a big following in the role-playing community, for setting up and running games.

(fun fact: the randomized prompt didn’t specify an animal species for this one)

Oh, look, more GenAI horseshit!

I was wandering through Amazon recommendations, because there’s a new release of Asimov’s Lucky Starr novels, and came across an “enriched edition” of The Stainless Steel Rat, with the following blurb. I shit you not:

In Harry Harrison’s book ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’, readers are taken on a thrilling journey through a futuristic world filled with advanced technology and cunning criminals. The book combines elements of science fiction and heist genres, offering a unique and engaging reading experience. Harrison’s witty writing style and fast-paced storytelling keep readers on the edge of their seats while exploring themes of morality and rebellion in a society governed by strict laws and regulations. The Stainless Steel Rat is a classic example of Harrison’s ability to blend humor, action, and social commentary in a thought-provoking narrative. Harry Harrison, known for his extensive work in science fiction, brings his expertise to ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’. His background as a military engineer and involvement in political activism provides insight into the themes of rebellion and social justice present in the book. Harrison’s rich imagination and attention to detail make ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ a must-read for fans of science fiction and adventure. I highly recommend ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ to readers looking for a captivating blend of futuristic technology, clever heists, and moral dilemmas. Harry Harrison’s masterful storytelling and unique narrative style make this book a standout in the science fiction genre, offering a thrilling and thought-provoking read.

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience:

• A succinct Introduction situates the work’s timeless appeal and themes.
• The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists.
• A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era’s events and influences that shaped the writing.
• A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings.
• Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work’s messages, connecting them to modern life.
• Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance.
• Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.

The so-called “editorial reviews” are about completely unrelated books. The release is from 2020, but I can’t help but think someone had their chat-bot “freshen” the blurb recently. Much as dog urine could be used to “freshen” a fine whiskey.

The worst part is that they reused the ASIN listing for the actual book, so Amazon thinks I own it, and likely would try to “upgrade” the copy I have if I re-downloaded it.

Magical Girl Lyrical Tanya 2, episode 7

What do you do when there’s no chance of winning? Change the game. But first you need to explain the lives of ordinary people to Our Heroine, who’s not known for her empathy. Then you recruit her into your conspiracy.

(the author was inspired by a piece of Nanoha fanfic that he read, but some earlier claims that Tanya’s story grew out of the author’s Nanoha fanfic apparently were the result of poor translations of Japanese fan sites)

Bumpkin & Harem 2, episode 7

While Our Bumpkin’s away, Our Dutiful Daughter has her routine upended by a temporary move into the dorms. Where she gets an unexpected lesson in discipline, but at least she’s with a friend.

Meanwhile, Our White-Haired Haremette is very unhappy to discover that a noble has assigned his pretty younger sister to “protect” him from other women.

Verdict: “why, no, I have no idea where your sister went; have you checked the disturbed layer of sod over by the midden?”

(I’m not even looking for fresh fan-art for this show any more; here’s my favorite recent GenAI mouse gal)

Seems like only yesterday I updated MS Office…

Oh, wait, it was yesterday. And the week before. And maybe a few days before that. Imagine how fast they could update it if Github worked!

(today I accidentally invented a timeline where Frank Frazetta did the cover art for gay romance novels)

Horse and Bridal…

Saddle ’er up!

Host: Mac Mini (2024, M4 Pro, 64 GB)

Model: google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-qat (MLX, 4-bit quantization)

Performance: ~60 tokens/second

Prompt:

Create a list of 100 unique, creative image-generation prompts describing scenic locations that present a high-fantasy adventure aesthetic. Do not use names of real places. Do not include people. Do not include art style, medium, or depth of field. Describe only the visual elements of each location in concrete terms, as a self-contained paragraph of 25 to 75 words. Do not number the list or include any text formatting.

Now, let’s see what sort of “thinking” process led to these results…

more...

Okay, whatever they’ve been feeding those beastkin to make them build that well that quickly, I’ll take a dozen bottles; I’ve got a lot of work that needs done around the house.

Also, I would very much like to see more of Our Busty Romantic Book-Loving Ninja Horse Gal.

Verdict: a very silly interlude. I approve.

(no new fan-art, so it’s back to the GenAI mines)

How it’s going…

The “top picks” on Amazon’s recommendations page for me currently include:

• Fahrenheit 451
• Animal Farm
• Lord of the Flies

Also, Logic for Programmers, but that’s because it was already in my cart.

Sold or stolen?

I should check to see if Dropbox has been hacked recently, since I’m getting a lot of spam to the email address I only used with them. Fortunately, I don’t use their service any more, so I can blacklist that address.