Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@qoto.org

Just sighted in my new scoped .177 Daisy air rifle. Hit within half an inch at 20 yards.

Hopefully this will help deter the ducks who no longer fear me and insist on nesting in my roof.

Mocked up a train last night in about an hour for fun.

There's an episode of *M*A*S*H* where Colonel Potter needs to deal with the fact that his son-in-law cheated on his daughter. In the end, he does so by relating to the boy the time that his own fidelity faltered.

I wonder how different the world would be if more of us understood that the things that piss us off the most in others are just reflections of the flaws we see in ourselves.

Just saw a guy leave his vehicle unattended at a gas station, while fueling, with the engine turned on and the door open.

Not only was it a huge fire hazard, but I could have walked up and drove off in it.

How have people gotten this stupid and careless?

And, of course, it was a gigantic truck, because stereotypes exist for a reason.

Lol, they've been getting free marketing services for decades and now they're upset that the company that gave it to them wants to let its robots read their webpages too.

Wait, am I supposed to be deleting #mastodon notifications after reading them?

Call "self-censorship" by its original name: "cowardice".

Were there any ominous shadows in its last contact?

There's a black & white cat in our neighborhood (I call him Ghostface because his face is white framed in black), and according to my security cameras, he loves to hang out on the hood of my black & white car at night.

Every time technology enables the masses to do something that was once a specialized skill, we have uproar. #AI is just the latest in humanity's long history of enabling the democratization of skill.

Now artists are crying left and right about how awful AI is and how it's taking all their work, but there's two important points to remember:

1) If the requirements for a visual product don't include heart and soul, then why hire someone to put heart and soul into it? Most commissioned "art" these days just needs to not look like shit. No wonder we're happy to switch to an algorithm that responds instantly to our requests with no snark.

2) Now that the tools have raised the tide, we can all have better baseline/placeholder art, and any of us can use these tools to generate it. That's a good thing! But it doesn't mean we won't ever need artists.
We mass-produce furniture, but that doesn't mean woodworking artisans have vanished. We mass produce food, but local honey is still amazing. We mass produce clothing, yet designer gowns continue to be made.
There will always be those who keep the old ways alive, and others who are willing to pay for that higher quality. So, the question becomes: Are you good enough to be better than the machine, or are you complaining about not getting work making shitty logos for the rest of your life?