As expected, Ninja Gal and Crushing Crusher got dragged into the secret quest because they were still in Our Half-Naked Hero’s party. Bringing the funny, Rei accepted completely by accident, leading to a WTF she’s going to struggle to explain to her sister later.

Once the poorly-integrated CGI sailing begins, we get some brief downtime before… 🎶 It’s beginning to look a lot like fishmen 🎶 (classical reference)

Verdict: Rust’s SLF character design is growing on me and Akane is just wide-eyed and cuddly, providing a nice change of pace from Sunraku’s usual party. Sadly, I already know that Rei’s costume change will not put her into high-level bikini armor. Or this:

Dear Apple,

So how is it that Apple Music can’t grasp the concept of repeating the same song, even though the Mac Music.app has explicit controls featuring this functionality, which you just turn off after the song ends? Oh, you broke the fuck out of it while prioritizing iOS apps and recurring revenue, and don’t have competent QA teams any more? Gosh, I’m stunned to hear that.

By the way, you have shit-tier auto-generated lyrics in your paid-subscription library. No wonder you disable copy-paste functionality.

(loosely relevant if you remember the beginning of the second Squad Jam…)

Anyway, I was feeling doggerel-y again…

(with apologies to The Partridge Family)

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶
[sheeple noises]
Baa ba-ba-ba
    Ba-ba ba-ba-ba
Baa ba-ba baa
    Baaaaa

I’m sleeping
    And right in the middle of a good dream
A dream of a free country
    The kind we had when I was just a kid

At least I thought we did
    A pillow smothering my head
I woke up nearly dead
    Then I heard the words Trump said

I think I’m MAGA (I think I’m MAGA)

That morning
    We woke up with this feeling
We didn’t know how to deal with
    A happiness we could not understand

We’d drawn a winning hand
    We’d only dreamt about it
And didn’t we go and shout it
    When DOGE made our dreams come true

I think I’m MAGA (I think I’m MAGA)

I think I’m MAGA
    So what are you so afraid of?
You’re afraid the party’s over
    The thing we all voted for
I think I’m MAGA
    It’s the monster you created
Though you’re never gonna say
    It’s your fault we feel this way

(bridge)

You don’t know what you’re up against
    You don’t know what it’s all about
You’re told what not to think about
    Heyyyyyyyyyyy

I think we’re MAGA
    So what are you so afraid of?
You’re afraid the party’s over
    The thing we all voted for
I think we’re MAGA
    It’s the monster you created
Though you’re never gonna say
    Your fault we feel this way

Believe me
    It’s past time for you to worry
It’s only your fault you’re unhappy
    And if you say “hey go away” tough shit

‘Cause we’re not takin’ it
    We’re gonna stay around and taunt you
Until DOGE has made their case
    And ‘Big Balls’ is in your face

‘Cause you made us MAGA
I think we’re MAGA
I think we’re MAGA (I think we’re MAGA)
…

(meh, close enough for government work; Flux does a pretty good job with text, but it’s still generating it with diffusion, which doesn’t really know what “words” are (Grok was obviously using a conventional text-generator and compositing the results onto the “AI” picture))

SD 3.5 made a creditable showing… after around thirty tries.

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