I amused myself for a short while by adding the word “swole” to AI prompts.
The term “swole” is actually new to me, but someone somewhere said that the goofy AI pictures of Donald Trump were of “Swole Donald” and I thought “I wonder if the AI training sets have that in their vocabulary?” Well, of course they do. I did these with Automatic1111 running on my gaming machine, instead of Midjourney, because I was too lazy to turn on my other system, which has my Discord credentials. (That’s pretty lazy, isn’t it?) Anyhow, here’s everyone’s favorite swole ubermensch:
You gotta love muscular philosophy! I know, it got the mustache wrong. I had to use a different training set that apparently had a better model of Nietzsche, and then it came out OK:
The first is with a training set that largely learned on anime and illustrations, and the second a training set that learned on photos. What is starting to happen, which I find interesting, is that people who play with AI are starting to train sets based on their own creations, which they curate. I.e: I could generate a Nietzsche model by cross-training swole Nietzsche with some actual photos of him (of which there are few). A more typical way, nowadays, is to use a model that is designed to remap faces, like IPAdapter, which relocates what the AI think are interesting characteristics of a sample image, into the target. That’s a similar process to what you get with Midjourney when you give it a sample image and ask it to re-draw it with a different prompt. When that is combined with controlnets, it’s possible to produce pixel perfect short videos of the same creation – i.e.: I could take my image of swole Nietzsche and a short video of a body-builder, and let the AI re-render each frame of the video using the same input, namely my swole philosopher.
Naturally, this is all going to result in better and better “deepfakes” which I don’t see as a particularly big deal. In the next 5 years, everyone will come to learn that you can’t trust an apparent photograph, any more than you could trust one in the early 20th century, or you could trust one of Nadar’s photos. But people want to be lazy: they want to be able to immediately accept an image as an actual photograph of an actual scene, kind of like the way people accepted the (rather obvious fakes) Cottingley fairies.
Judging from the blurring, that was an exposure time of about 1/2 second. Anyone who understands photography would know that the fairy’s wings would be blurred. It’s as bad an error as an AI putting 12 fingers on one hand. That image would not have fooled a photographer for even a second! How was the fairy supported? Must have been a couple black wires. This would have gotten harder to pull off once cameras got better. Clever of her to hide her hands so you can’t see the shutter release that she must have been holding to activate the camera.
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to a time when people are forced to be a bit more skeptical about the images that they see. We don’t have to have people running around thinking that Nietzsche was a real ubermensch who could snatch, clean, and jerk a Trabant.
I played with a few other swole characters because it amused me, including swole Margaret Thatcher, the iron-pumping prime minister:
And I simply can’t toss this magnificence away: swole Louis XIV, rendered for my dad (who is one of the world’s foremost scholars in the evolution of absolutism under Louis XIV and the Vendee, etc.) They called him “Louis the fourteen” because that’s how many one-handed chinups he could do:
Alright, enough of that.
Like everyone else here, I am falling apart. I turn 62 this November. In fact, my birthday is November 5th, so what I want for my birthday is for Donald Trump to be utterly crushed in the popular vote and electoral college. I don’t want a pony. I don’t want Biden. But what I really really don’t want is Trump. Please, let’s have that.
Anyhow, since 2020, when I appear to have suffered some pretty bad unknown damage to my central nervous system, my feet have tingled 100% of the time, which is extremely annoying even though it sounds like it’s a minor thing. Also, my memory is pooched and some other things that are even less good than that, but let’s stick with the tingles for now. My doctor suggested I try a mild serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which will have the effect of boosting some of the nerve signals and may give the nerves in my legs enough of a “kick” that they can figure out the tingles and eventually mask them. And, it’s working! Which is awesome! It’s also supposed to have a moderate anti-depressant effect and might otherwise boost my activity levels. Not enough for me to get “swole” don’t worry. It seems, interestingly, that what generally motivates me is despair or depression or something – because I do feel pretty upbeat a lot of the time, now, except it’s easier for me to sit and listen to music or a podcast and not do anything much. I’m not saying I’ve become a “veg” but now “vegging out” is on the menu and it’s quite delicious. I have discovered that it’s very easy to sit in my armchair (where philosophers sit, rather than pumping iron in the gym) and frantically track the play-by-play of Donald Trump’s trial in New York, and the Supreme Court arguments, etc. I know Nero supposedly fiddled while Rome burned, but I think doom-scrolling is on the same spectrum somewhere. Watching the disgusting antics of the Supreme Court was embarrassing and enraging, though I am now officially in love with Kitanji Brown Jackson. I wish Biden would send SEAL Team 6 to go kill half of the Supreme Court, then claim presidential immunity. It’s what swole Nietzsche would do.
All of that is to explain why I’ve been a bit quiet. I’m fine and I’m in good spirits, I’m just riding the meds and enjoying them a lot. In the last 2 months I have done some really cool projects, and my greenhouse is sprouting (!) and whatnot. I taught a friend how to turn wood bowls, I made a great bigass Scottish-style dirk, and a way overpowered Zulu-style iklwa (short stabbing/slashing spear) and a couple of pretty good dagger blades, too. I’ve been letting my sadistic tendencies out to play, a bit, making these evil, hurtful things. I am not sure if I should post pictures of them, or not.
I have a posting of some substance that I want to make, about some archeology stuff that I stumbled into, but I’m still researching it, and – did I mention, it’s easy to veg out instead of writing, and with my memory damage I have extreme difficulty doing research and having it stick. I’m OK with topics I learned about prior to the 2020 damage but I can’t even remember a phone number long enough to type it in. As Shakespeare said, “time fucks us all up.” Don’t it though?
Totally agree.
“The term “swole” is actually new to me, but someone somewhere said that the goofy AI pictures of Donald Trump were of “Swole Donald”…”
this is just beyond comprehension to me, like, why?
Sure, that asshole is tall, and has a big frame, but is notoriosly lazy and has even spoken out claiming exercise is harmful.
I’m just utterly baffled by clearly false, blatant lies like this.
Reminds me of that bit I heard of where supposedly most men claim to be ~2″ taller than they are, and how I once knew a guy who was shorter than me (I’m ~5’6″), so much so that I could see the top of his head, and yet he repeatedly claimed he was 5’8″…
?
“Clever of her to hide her hands so you can’t see the shutter release that she must have been holding to activate the camera.”
That is 12-year old Frances Griffiths. I would suggest that the camera was being operated by her cousin, 19 year old Elsie Wright. The camera used was a Cameo folding plate camera lent to them by Edward Gardner. It didn’t have a remote shutter release.
(I did my chemical engineering degree at Bradford University, where the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Science and Media Museum) is. I’ve seen the cameras!)
lochaber@#2:
this is just beyond comprehension to me, like, why?
Agreed. To me it’s obviously inauthentic and the fact that someone is doing it non-ironically is just a red flag that they have serious “issues” with their self-image. In the case of Donald Trump and his supporters, that is not a longshot concept. If you are not familiar with Trump advisor Tom Fitton, he’ll make your flesh crawl. Seriously creepy, and that’s where the blockhead is getting advice from.
With AI-based “sparkle up” image editing apps, everyone can look like a Kardashian, now. But what happens if you meet them in person and discover that they don’t remotely resemble the icon you saw on the internet?
Imagine if I actually thought Nietzsche actually looked like that, because I’d never seen a real picture of him, or read anything about the man. I’d be pretty shocked to discover that he was a pencil-necked geek.
sonofrojblake@#3:
I would suggest that the camera was being operated by her cousin, 19 year old Elsie Wright. The camera used was a Cameo folding plate camera lent to them by Edward Gardner. It didn’t have a remote shutter release.
I just dug up some pictures of the thing here and you can see a threaded insert to the camera right of the shutter trip lever – that’s the socket for a wire shutter release. Back in those days, the shutter remotes were typically a length of rubber hose and a squeeze bulb which pushed a piston screwed into the shutter release. They actually still sell them. Some lenses even integrate a built-in timer, like the lenses on early Rolleiflex cameras.
I suppose they must have been using pre-coated commercial film, or something and weren’t pouring and sensitizing their own plates.
It’s a testament to how little people understood photography, at that time, for anyone to have taken the fairy pictures seriously. The motion blur is an instant dead giveaway. In fact, I had mostly forgotten about the fairy pictures until I was trying to think of an obvious example of photo fakery. I mentioned Nadar, who was much more skilled (but who was having fun and not trying to fool anyone) when I looked up the fairy images they were so bad that I instantly laughed out loud.
I wrote:
But what I really really don’t want is Trump. Please, let’s have that.
That was a really awkward construction but I think it works.
Reminds me of an existentialist joke: Sartre sits down in a French cafe and orders a coffee, without cream. The waiter says, “I’m sorry, monsieur, but we do not have cream today.” Sartre replies, “very well, then I’d like it without milk.”
I understand that this is a regular occurrence with dating apps.
I feel the same about UFO “evidence.” Most of the recent videos submitted as serious evidence turned out to be clearly stupid camera tricks, such as bokeh, or parallax, etc.
Nietzsche seems to have experimented a bit with his mustache style. See the picture at Brittanica for example. Both of your ‘swole’ variations look pretty tame by comparison.
Yeah. I could see it slightly better when I was literally standing two feet away from the actual thing itself. There was no remote release with it. Why would there be? The pictures were a collaboration between the two people I named, one in front of the camera, one behind the camera. I’m slightly baffled why you’d think a remote release necessary.
Elsie’s father, who owned the camera they used to take the first couple of pictures, never took them seriously for a second. Their mother, who knew nothing about photography, did. In fairness, it was a fairly new technology at that time. How many people really understand the internet?
I understand it, but I’m a dog.
Humanoid robots are learning to fall well
A necessary step towards mastering the martial arts.
Louis XIV is hilariously terrible with his extra set of abdominal nipples, crumpled sixth fingers, and the demonic expression. Maybe it’s due to him apparently being impaled by the bar? The AI is getting a little better at rendering letters. It’s 80’s Louis with feathered hair and a YSL tank top.
I look forward to your archeology post. I am beyond excited for this year’s new excavation at Sutton Hoo in cooperation with Time Team.
ChatGPT shows better moral judgment than a college undergrad
I don’t know what the big deal is. A quick survey of the philosophical literature reveals that trolleys are the source of most moral dilemmas today. The solution is simple: ban trolleys.
Reginald Selkirk@#12:
ChatGPT shows better moral judgment than a college undergrad
As a large language model, ChatGPT cannot drink Jagermeister
sonofrojblake@#8:
I’m slightly baffled why you’d think a remote release necessary.
I never closely studied the incident, because I thought it was stupid. So, I didn’t realize there were 2 people involved, which makes it extra super stupid. Amazing anyone fell for it.
Perhaps there’s some tool-based fixity? I used to use one of the pneumatic shutter trips back when I was doing wet plate ambrotypes – it’s a good way to drop the shutter with a minimum of vibration.