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Weak XL
1 October 2022
No. 9,164 (cartoon)
Is “it depends” the answer to any possible question?
Possibly.
I suppose it depends.
2 October 2022
DALL·E and Me (continued)
After reading what I wrote a couple of days ago, Sandra sent me a piece by Nitasha Tiku on the myriad threats the image-generating program DALL·E poses for our society, law and order, and indeed The World As We Know It. The article was so hysterical (as in alarmist) that it was hysterical (as in hilarious).
I slipped through a time warp and found myself back in the early nineties hearing about the myriad threats Photoshop posed for our society, law and order, and indeed The World As We Know It. The jeremiad went like this: “From now on, we can never trust a photograph again.”
My favorite example was when a politician asked incredulously whether someone could create a convincing image of him standing next to Yasser Arafat. “Sir,” the Photoshop guy replied, “I can put his tongue in your ear.”
The World As We Know It has indeed become worse, but for reasons that have nothing to do with manipulated photographs. There’s probably not an idiot on the planet who believes that Elvis Presley had sex with Marilyn Monroe in the International Space Station even after looking at a photograph of them in fragrant delicto.
Three decades later, people who should know better are warning us that DALL·E will generate a realistic image if someone asks it to show, “Elvis Presley having sex with Marilyn Monroe in the International Space Station.”
Tiku warns, “Fake photos could be used to enable bullying and harassment—or create disinformation that looks real.” She cites an obscure professor who’s apparently never heard of Photoshop: “Once the line between truth and fake is eroded, everything will become fake; we will not be able to believe anything.”
Hysterical!
3 October 2022
Bad Reviews
I don’t review books anymore, so this ain’t no book review. I’m writing to show my appreciation for Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin’s Bad Reviews, a compilation of—you guessed it!—bad reviews.
Waldemar Januszczak inadvertently provided one of the catalysts for the project with his 2006 rant, er, review of a group show of American artists, including Mir, in London in 2006.
“This is a generation of paint-happy know-nothings brought up on hamburgers and porn, a talentless bloom of post-pop trailer trash.”
Mir loved the naked display of the Brit’s inferiority complex. “There was a superiority about it that just rang so beautifully true.”
And then there’s Mats Nygren’s critique of Marianna Uutinen: “She paints with the brush in her ass.”
If you want a third example, you’ll have to buy the book ... except you can’t.
Mir, Griffin, and their colleagues couldn’t afford the time and money needed to get reproduction rights to a hundred and fifty reviews, so they’re selectively giving copies away and encouraging people to freely distribute them.
I like the approach, sort of a contemporary variation on some of Abbie Hoffman’s ideas in Steal This Book, although that’s a stretch and then some.
4 October 2022
National Poetry Day
Randall asked me if I was going to say anything snarky or offensive on National Poetry Day, so I had to come up with something like, “Actually, I do like some poets; the problem is that ninety-nine point nine percent of them give the rest a bad name.”
Or something like that.
5 October 2022
Caffeinate. Contemplate. Animate!
There’s a reason the Washington Post is one of the best newspapers around (not that there’s much competition): investigative reporting. I was reminded of that after reading a hard-hitting piece the editors ran asking whether coffee or tea is best for one’s health. The writers conducted an exhaustive eight-step analysis and concluded coffee is better than tea, in part because of its fiber.
Fiber?!
Darn me to tarnation if this ain’t the truth: you damn straight coffee got fiber.
That makes sense when you think about it, and more sense if you don’t. That’s because drinks that have the most opacity are healthiest. I’m talking about your dark rum, I’m talking about your porter, I’m talking about your espresso, I’m talking about your good stuff.
6 October 2022
Endangered Drunk French Hunters
Oxymoron of the day: sober French hunter.
French bureaucrats—they invented the word—are trying to destroy the republic from within by making it illegal to hunt while drunk.
France’s gun lobbyists are predictably furious. They’re French, after all, no? They point out that only ten percent of the armed human predators are drunk. And anyway, an intoxicated hunter gives a wild animal a better chance of survival, so what’s the problem?
Vive la France!
7 October 2022
Uranus Fudge Factory
Will Uranus jokes ever get old? The sniggering adolescent in me says “never,” and, since I don’t have multiple personalities, there’s no debate. And that brings us to Uranus, Missouri, home of the Uranus Fudge Factory.
Sort of.
The Uranus Towne Center isn’t an actual town or towne, it’s a marketing brand to allow a handful of businesses to incorporate “Uranus” into the company name, so it’s back to the Uranus Fudge Factory. From there, it’s on to the predictable jokes about feces (The Best Fudge Comes from Uranus!) and anal sex (We Love to Pack Your Fudge!).
If that sort of puerile humor is amusing at all, it’s only funny for two or three seconds at most, so now it’s long past time to move on.
8 October 2022
Terrorizing Cats, Not Russians
The low-flying American military jets roaring overhead are terrifying Leo and Poppy—the San Francisco cats with whom I’m living these days—and greatly annoying me, especially when it’s time for a nap.
I suppose it’s fun to fly a fighter jet loud and low over an urban area and shake buildings and rattle windows, but it seems like they should be terrorizing the Russian murderers, looters, and rapists pillaging Ukraine instead of terrifying law-abiding American kitties.
On one hand, I can see why the pilots are afraid to go where someone might take a potshot at them, but it also must be frustrating to fly an attack jet without ever firing a missile or dropping a bomb.
Coming next weak: more of the same.
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