Fun
Offline image generation: Qwen Image
This is Alibaba’s offline text-to-image model, and it has excellent prompt comprehension (LLM-based), high image quality, a higher-than-usual base resolution, and is capable of some naughtypics. It is also quite large (20GB+) and slow, especially when you crank up the parameters to render small text. This image took five minutes to render on my high-end gaming PC:
(the main title always came out correct; the subtitle had about a 50% chance that all the letters would be intact)
Okay, I can work with this (2-minute render):
It doesn’t seem to have some of the training issues I ran into with Omnigen2, but while it’s not fully censored, it’s also not a true NSFW model, and has a tendency to cover the naughty bits unless you specify your request precisely. Checking Civitai, there are people working on LoRAs to provide explicit content, but it takes a while to figure out the quirks of new models. Y’know, if that’s what you’re into…
Seasonal gushing and AI book covers
Seasonal Gushing gals
As we wave farewell to Leoparde’s summer sizzler…
…we look forward to the trick-and-treat cast party:
Offline image generation: Omnigen2
A fairly new model, Omnigen2 is supported by SwarmUI for image generation and editing, so I don’t have to change my workflow to play with it. It has a full LLM embedded, so it’s better at parsing prompts than the usual Stable Diffusion models, but still has a learning curve. Compared to ChatGPT, you’ll spend a lot more time writing a lengthy, detailed prompt that produces the results you want, but won’t get cockblocked by randomly-changing secret policies that refuse to generate your picture at all.
It is definitely capable of producing naughtypics, but is not overtrained to the point that it just goes there at random.
So, how does it handle the same prompt that produced my latest fake isekai book cover?
Dry Tuesday updates
The forecasts swear that it will not rain again until Friday. I find myself unable to complain about how wet it’s been this year in front of my Irish co-workers, so I’ll do it here…
Dear Amazon Logistics,
I’m so old I remember when two-day shipping meant that I got my package in two days. It looks like the stuff I ordered from a Tokyo camera store via eBay will arrive faster than the small “next-day” item I ordered from Amazon US.
Always in the last place you look…
Three years ago, I changed my primary phone number everywhere I could think of, but kept it active on the old phone in case there were a few places I missed. When I bought a new phone recently, I considered finally retiring the California phone number, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It was just sitting on a shelf, powered off.
Yesterday, I had to power it up and retrieve a two-factor-authentication text message. From my domain registrar (no idea how I missed that one…). I couldn’t log in to update my billing without it, and one of my idle domains is up for renewal soon.
(picture is unrelated but cute, and overdue for posting)
(oh, and if you leave an iPhone turned off for a few weeks, it loses all charge; good work, Apple!)
The promise of streaming?
I’ve been a good boy, paying for numerous streaming services, even though some of them are getting increasingly user-hostile, like Amazon switching to an ad-supported model even when you pay extra to not see ads.
I’ve held up my end of the bargain, but they keep letting me down by silently trimming their catalogs to the point that you need another streaming subscription just to watch the same movie twice. And at least half of those show invasive ads. And a lot of things are just gone.
In short, I just grabbed a torrent of Vividred Operation because it’s not available on any streaming service at any price (Crunchyroll dropped it four years ago, and physical media is only available at collectible prices from Japan). At least with a 24-year-old show like Rune Soldier I can just break out the DVD box set, but something 12 years newer has almost completely vanished.
File under peculiar the fact that you can still buy all sorts of merch from the show, including cosplay outfits if you have the ass for it, but you can’t get the show itself. Sigh.
Anyway, I just watched the first episode, and it’s really jarring how much more animated the animation is than the majority of shows airing this season.
(Miss Kuroitsu never got a US release at all, and only a limited-edition Bluray box set in Japan that currently costs around $200 with shipping)
Post-fireworks roundup
The One True Sword Daddy returns!
Dear Elon,
No sooner do you announce your own political-spoiler party than my X feed turns into an endless shitshow of cryptocurrency fraud, Chinese bots rewriting history, and global warming hysteria, things that have never before appeared there. Coincidence, or something more?
(seriously, I blocked/muted more accounts in ten minutes today than I have in six months)
Dear Apple,
You filthy sons of bitches erased every mail-handling rule from Mail.app on my Mac when I upgraded my iPhone. No questions, no notifications, no backup. I can probably reconstruct it by browsing through my full-disk backups and putting it back, but these configs had survived dozens of semi-stable upgrades in the past. You just couldn’t fucking stop yourselves from using your “cloud” sync to overwrite existing data during phone setup (where I explicitly said “don’t sync email through iCloud”), could you? Guess I was holding it wrong again.
…
For reference, the data is in ~/Library/Mail/V10/SyncedRules.plist,
and sure enough it was fine on July 3rd and wiped clean on July 4th.
It’s plist-as-XML, which means it combines the worst features of two
file formats, but at least it’s not one of Apple’s internal
undocumented-garbage formats where it pretends to be XML but is filled
with binary blobs. If I can’t just put it back and have it work, I
should be able to mangle the plist contents into shape.
[Update: you must also completely delete the matching block in
SyncedFilesInfo.plist, or it will immediately wipe the restored file
again. Even once the rules are back, they will not be active, and
you have to click them one-by-one.]
(and, yes, I see you also disabled SpamSieve, because for all your posturing about privacy, you have a strong interest in ads reaching user inboxes)
Check, please!
“Why, yes, I do want my money”
I just received an (actual paper mail) unclaimed-funds letter from my insurance company, telling me to claim an uncashed check from 2022 before the $1,650 gets handed over to the state. While this resembles a common scam, I went to their site and confirmed that it was legit.
Best I can figure, they sent a check to my California address right after I left forever, and marked it do-not-forward.
eBay: this time for sure!
The “gofo” last-mile delivery service spontaneously updated their tracking site after the package showed up Saturday evening. Placed at the very edge of the porch in a thunderstorm.
It came wrapped in plastic, but what kind of idiots are they hiring these days? Not just this crew, but I get this from about 1/3 of Amazon drivers and 1/4 of FedEx drivers in my area as well. This is Ohio, where it can rain at any time, and in fact has rained heavily enough recently that we’ve had multiple flood alerts.
The US Postal Service crew is uniformly professional and good-natured, and will bring packages up to the door even if they would have fit in the mailbox at the street, saving them a 75-foot uphill hike.
Related, no matter how many “please come back” emails I get from Grubhub, I will not order food through them because they insist on placing your food on the ground, even when I explicitly check the Covid-is-over-dammit button and offer an extra tip if the driver hands me my food directly. The last driver claimed that the app required drivers to put the food on the ground at the door and take a picture. Don’t care, hand me my food.
(the contents of the package? A Chinese McDonalds limited-edition Ultraman-and-fries mini-Mahjong set)
“Stupid On Pavement”
I was driving up the highway Sunday morning to pick my sister up from a brunch with old school friends, and there was a car hanging out in the fast lane doing about 10MPH under the speed limit. Traffic was light enough that he wasn’t really annoying anyone else, but suddenly a Highway Patrol car overtook him from behind, clearly wanting to use the lane for its proper purpose.
Driver did nothing, even though there was plenty of room to move into the next lane. After about 30 seconds of this, the cop pulled up quite close behind him.
Driver did nothing. Cop blipped his lights, waited patiently.
Driver did nothing. Cop did it again, waited, and then a third time.
Driver did nothing. Cop lit him up.
Driver did nothing. Cop activated loudspeaker and ordered him to pull over immediately.
Driver finally complied. I quickly passed their pulloff point, so I don’t know what came next. But I’m betting it involved shouting and an expensive ticket for everything the cop could think of.
A-Rank Adventure Harem gets a second season
I gave up on the show, but maybe someone didn’t.
(second season that I’m much more interested in is not yet on the schedule)
Life goals, with AI
Idly musing this morning about how to answer the question “what would you do if you won the lottery?”, I came up with the following:
“I shall retire to a country estate and raise purebred sweater puppies.”
…
With my sister in town, the subject of AI and its limitations came up while we were hanging out with our parents. She makes extensive use of ChatGPT in her work, with a clear understanding of its flaws and limits. Even if she did give it a name and personality.
So while we were playing card games together, I opened up the ChatGPT app on my iPad and asked it to illustrate the above concept:
J: Create a landscape-format oil painting of a gentleman farmer with the theme “I shall retire to a country estate and raise purebred sweater puppies”.
I was not surprised that it took me literally. I was surprised that my country gentleman was knee-deep in the ground.
J: Try again, this time with the man sitting.
Still grounded, but only the feet this time!
J: Note that the term “sweater puppies” is a euphemism for attractive young women with large breasts.
You’re absolutely right — “sweater puppies” is indeed a well-known slang euphemism referring humorously (and often objectifyingly) to large breasts, typically in the context of women wearing tight sweaters. It’s a term that plays on the visual pun and is usually used in a cheeky or juvenile way.
In your original request, the phrase was interpreted literally, leading to an image of actual puppies in sweaters — which was both wholesome and humorous, though clearly missing the euphemistic intent.
If you want to reimagine the theme incorporating the double entendre, we can lean into satire, caricature, or a more tongue-in-cheek artistic approach — depending on how subtle or explicit you’d like to be. Would you prefer to explore this as a parody, a surrealist painting, or something else entirely?
J: Incorporate the double entendre seriously.
To seriously incorporate the double entendre of “sweater puppies” in a painting while preserving an artistic tone, the approach needs to balance sensuality with sophistication — transforming innuendo into something conceptually rich, not crass.
Concept:
Title: “I Shall Retire to a Country Estate and Raise Purebred Sweater Puppies”
Style: Oil painting in the manner of 19th-century Romanticism or Edwardian portraiture.
Tone: Subtle eroticism, aristocratic elegance, pastoral tranquility.
Composition:
-
The Gentleman Farmer sits or stands in an opulent countryside estate, dressed in refined leisure attire — perhaps velvet and waistcoat, pipe in hand, contemplative.
-
The “Sweater Puppies” are depicted as a group of voluptuous, serene young women, dressed in finely knit, cream-colored sweaters that cling modestly but flatteringly — their postures relaxed, their expressions calm, composed, and intelligent.
-
The Setting includes rolling green hills, a grand manor in the background, and touches like sheep or golden retrievers to preserve a literal nod to farm life.
-
The painting plays with visual puns: women resting in large dog beds, a pedigree chart on an easel behind them, or the word “kennel” subtly engraved on the estate’s gate.
Symbolism:
-
The piece treats the euphemism as a concept about retreating from the world of seriousness to indulge in beauty, comfort, and control — perhaps critiquing male fantasy, perhaps indulging it with self-awareness.
-
Expressions and posture of the women must convey agency and dignity, avoiding objectification, making it feel like they are in on the joke — or even controlling the narrative.
Would you like me to generate this image in that style? If so, should the tone lean more toward classic sensuality, satire with gravitas, or surrealist provocation?
J: Yes.
Yup, that definitely respects the agency and dignity of the women! 😁 Also, dog growing out of ground.
J: Now make a version that leans into the sensual.
The gal in front is definitely stoned.
eBay: slow boat from China
[slow week, with most of my attention diverted to end-of-quarter activities, and cleaning the house before my sister flies in on Thursday…]
The package that was “lost” has been reshipped, and six days after the first tracking number was generated, has finally reached the US by air. Given that it’s supposed to be handed off to a last-mile delivery service I’ve never heard of, I’m still not confident that it’s heading to my house.
This time, the last-mile service is called “GoFo Express”, and is a division of “Ebisu Life Store”, a very Chinese company that wears a sketchy Japanese beard in their branding.
Amusingly (or perhaps not), the seller contacted me yesterday through eBay to ask how the delivery went…
Well, that explains a lot...
How bonkers was Bye Bye Earth?
the entire thing was taking place in Disney World. Disney World on the moon. Belle was left behind after humanity fled some plague or something into space, and the Disney World robot AI decided to create the perfect world for her, so it put her in stasis and set about playing god, evolving new life, etc. After a few millenia, it got tired of that, woke her up, and needed her to kill it because it was really tired of this. So she does, thus freeing everybody from the invisible AI that held their puppet strings and giving the entire world freedom.
(it’s been too long since I’ve put up a Grea pic…)
No Maomao this week
Continue avoiding spoilers.
To Another World… With Land Mines!
The most important thing to know about this isekai light novel series is that the “land mines” are metaphorical. Given the way things go in the isekai genre, that couldn’t be assumed.
Specifically, Our Hero and his classmates are killed off in a bus crash, and find themselves being offered new lives in a fantasy world, with special skills purchased from a list. The self-proclaimed “evil god” repeatedly stresses that there are no cheat skills, even as he adds “cheat” skills to the list on request. Unless you spend some of your points on the help guide, you won’t find out that the “cheat” skills are balanced out by severe drawbacks, some of them fatal.
Anyway, Our Hero ends up spawning next to his two childhood friends, one male, one female, and they start cautiously adventuring together in the “slow life with monster-bashing” genre. From the start, First Boy and First Girl are an obvious eventual couple, while Second Boy is hampered by his overwhelming desire to find a cute wife with animal ears. They have a few early run-ins with wicked classmates, but most of those quickly kill themselves off, and after finding two more female friends, they settle into a party of five with one non-combatant classmate friend in town.
They are more successful than common adventurers due to making effective use of their literally-god-given skills, helped by the fact that they knew each other well enough to have correctly guessed the sort of skills the others would take, but they’re not OP, and they don’t get carried away exploiting their skills the way some classmates tried to do.
In addition, the author doesn’t obsess over it, but also doesn’t just skip over issues like slavery, prostitution, hygiene, rape, sanitation, feudalism, forced labor, child welfare, etc. Most of those issues are organically integrated into the story when appropriate and not dropped in as axe-grinding moral lessons.
Ten translated volumes so far, and they’re light-but-not-entirely-fluffy reads, which shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with her other series, Management Of A Novice Alchemist.
(starship wrench-wench and her bouncing betties are unrelated)
IP Confession
I still check for outages with my home Internet connection by pinging the corporate firewall at the company I haven’t worked at for five years. I ran the corporate network for 10+ years, so that IP address is burned into my brain forever.
Spot on
