Last door not installed Monday, because half the crew was still recovering from Thanksgiving. That’s my conclusion, anyway, based on the fact that only one of the three-man team was available, and there was no way he was going to move a pre-assembled sliding door to the back of my house and hold it in place.

Now there’s snow on the ground and a cold front moving in, so by the time they show up on Friday, it will be about 15°F, and the only thing that’s going to get rid of that snow is, sadly, me.

swarmctl

I’ve sandblasted the rough edges off of my Python script for driving SwarmUI via its REST API. It’s now up on Github in my catchall repo as sui.py (name shortened because I got tired of typing it). I used it to generate 5,000 vertical 1080p sfnal pinups with the new Z Image Turbo model, as well as upscale some of the better ones. It also slices, dices, and makes julienne fries, or it will when I’ve worked through the TODO list.

(without a style LoRA, these don’t necessarily hit the “40s retro-sf” look, but Z is really good at detailed backgrounds and pulling things out of complicated prompts; this set averaged 195 words/prompt)

Dear Amazon,

According to you, the things I wanted the most in Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on were coffee grinders (26, with prices ranging from “burger and fries” to “car payment”) and phone/watch/earphone multi-chargers (49, ranging from “small delivery pizza” to “dinner date at nice restaurant”). Also about half a dozen fermenting jugs in different sizes, and four replacement USB boards for repairing Android devices I’ve never owned.

Dear Amazon Marketing Droid Soon To Be Replaced By Generic GenAI,

Cyber Monday is perhaps not the best day to sign someone up for marketing text messages without their permission, requiring them to opt-out. Please take the person responsible for this decision out behind the barn, insert an electric cattle prod to its full wide-base-to-prevent-loss depth, and set the power to full.

I mean, come on:

2025/12/1 18:40 EST:
Amazon: Starting today, you’ll now get exclusive Amazon offers from 48092, just in time for Cyber Monday deals. Reply STOP to 48092 to opt out.

(yeah, send out that “Cyber Monday special” when there are only five hours left in the day…)

Dear Apple,

Fuck your “News” feed. I use the Stocks widget to track stocks, not headlines from Mashable (whatever that is), that open in your subscription “News” app. Guess that’s one more piece of functionality you’ve buggered up completely on the Mac in your quest to monetize every pixel.

Dear Japan,

Never change. This time I mean it.

That feeling when…

…you realize that phone is older than her mom.

🎶 Thunder and lightning… 🎶

You won’t live through the first date, but it will be worth it.

(so, how has your X “for you” feed been today…)

Reasons Z-Image Turbo is better than Qwen Image

1. speed; like, by a lot
2. thumbs and big toes reliably on correct side
3. wider variety of faces and body types
4. extra, missing, and melty limbs quite rare
5. fewer EXTREME facial expressions
6. less weird shit in general
7. less censored (better than Barbie but not specifically trained on genitals)
8. apparently quite easy to make LoRAs for
9. lean, running on older hardware with less VRAM
10. Even Better Models On The Way

To clarify that last one, “turbo” models are generally very fast but less capable, converging in a small number of steps but lacking the detail and breadth of the corresponding full model. ZI’s turbo model is better than most full models, so if the relationship holds true, ZI-full should be unbelievably awesome.

So far, the only negative I’ve run into is that if you don’t specify the image style clearly, it will default to “photograph with terrible skin tones”. I actually get better “photographic” images by just asking for “illustration”, although that tag will also generate flat animation, 3D animation, anime, cartoons, and the occasional painting.

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Cleats don’t fail me now!

Went out to shovel 4 inches of snow off the driveway. Made it halfway down the hill before realizing my cleats had rusted out and snapped, and I had to walk carefully as I cleared a path with the Snowcaster and salted the ground behind me. I finished clearing the driveway after the new cleats arrived this morning, because they’ve moved the door work from Friday to Thursday.

Fortunately the sun and wind combined to mostly clear the rest of the driveway, so it went quick, but I had to at least clear off the pavers going around the house, so there’s no risk of ice ruining their day. (ICE won’t ruin their day because all the workers are Americans)

(Z don’t know grawlix, and didn’t use the emoji I included in the prompt, but it still managed to use relevant emoji)

(also, TIL grawlix is the word for pre-emoji cartoon swearing)

Catering to a certain audience

You know who you are:

I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!

AT&T knows their audience, too

Their fiber Internet service is now ready for installs, so they sent a pair of pretty girls around the neighborhood to make the offer. Unfortunately, I’d just finished clearing the snow and ice for tomorrow, so I had no energy for them, and was much more interested in a hot shower.

Which I’d have gotten arrested for inviting them to join. Maybe they were 18.

Dear Apple,

Take advantage of the departure of your “UI Design Chief” by releasing OS updates that revert Liquid Ass and Make Text Readable Again.

Spoiler alert

As expected, the “revised edition” of Freelancers of Neptune does not improve the story in any way. I’d much rather see Jacob Holo work on book 2, and the nicest thing I can say about this book is that he clearly didn’t spend much time on it, letting the co-author airdrop in her tab-a-into-slot-b erotica. I didn’t expect to finish it, and I did not, in fact, finish it.

Speaking of cheesy porn…

Does it count if you lose your virginity to an android? is next season’s lesbian-slave-waifu show. Sadly, the trailer shows that even women in their late twenties can freak out like a teenage anime boy when confronted with a nekkid chick in her bed. From the studio that brought us Yandere Dark Elf and Chuhai Lips, which is not the flex they might think it is.

Every dog eventually gets his Waymo

or vice-versa.

(although I’m reminded of the story about the Texas researcher who was testing how people responded to animals on the road, and when he put out a realistic snake, the first person to drive by was a state trooper who not only swerved to hit the snake, but backed up over it again, then got out of his car and drew his sidearm to put a bullet in it)