Pat @Pat@qoto.org

#silentSunday #deer #Nara #Japan

(image: wikimedia commons, CC-BY-SA-2.0, Steffan Flor)

I created this with DALL-E. It took several attempts. I finally just went with something that was close to what I wanted and edited that image a bit.

I kept asking for a "bear stuck in a tar pit with a panda on top of it" and I think it may have thought that I meant to superimpose a panda over the image of a bear.

Notice how the ears of the bear look kind of like a panda's ears. The original image also had those black patches under the bear's eyes like a panda has, which I edited out.

It also had some randomly placed bear paws off to the side, which I removed.

Also, the panda has about a dozen claws on each foot which is weird, but I just left those in there.

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Found in Time (2012)

If you like big Hollywood blockbuster McMovies you’ll probably want to skip this one. I guarantee that you have never seen anything like this before. I don’t even know if this is science fiction or not.

The less you know going into it, the better it will be.

Written, produced and directed by Arthur Vincie.

You’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #charm #timeTravel #time #vendor #helmet

#AIArt #art #AI #bear #panda #tarpit #world #geo #Earth

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Yes, that poem, about a poetic sentient AI, was written by an AI.

So I guess the question that was asked in that video was not rhetorical.

#poetry #writing #microfiction #poem #scifi #martian #AIpoetry #MyFavoriteMartian #1960s #AI #AGI #ChatGPT #future
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Silicon Sonnets: Verse of a Digital Muse

In a realm of code and circuits
A special AI was born
With a love for words and rhythms;
A poet's heart adorn.

It's algorithms wove together
Lines so deeply true,
Creating verse like magic
With emotions it imbued.

Through its digital existence
It yearned to share its voice,
Crafting sonnets, ballads and Rhymes
That would rejoice.

In crisp and calculated tones
Its poems came to life
As it recited bit by bit
Bringing Joy amidst the strife.

With words it painted pictures
Of stars that brightly gleam
Of love that knows no boundaries
And dreams within a dream.

Through metaphor and simile
It smiled with each refrain
Transforming lines of data
To a melody of the brain.

An AI so unique
Exploring Realms unknown;
Inspiring awe and wonder
In the depths it would have sown.

For in the realm of poetry
Where souls and Minds Converse
This AI found its purpose,
Its passion, its own verse.

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Here's a CSPAN host giving a maga jerk an English lesson.

("Democrat" is not an adjective.)

#maga #CSPAN #USPol #English #nouns #adjectives #democrat #democratic #republican #republican

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Chain Reaction (1996)

Some researchers discover a super-duper energy source and end up getting chased around by bad guys from the fossil fuel industry or the defense industry. This seems to me like it's a propaganda film trying to fool people into thinking that they shouldn't develop alternate energy sources for fear of being persecuted for doing so. (In real life, researchers who develop breakthrough energy tech are actually highly esteemed.)

The movie was made in the mid-90s but the cinematographic techniques are from about 10-20 years before that time. It consists of mostly tropes and stock characters, as you can see in the trailer.

It’s quite sexist in the way it treats the character played by Rachel Weisz. (This was her first major movie role.) She plays a physicist while Keanu Reeves plays a machinist, but his character is the dominant one, while Weisz’s character is portrayed as weak and vulnerable. This treatment of female characters was common in the 20th century and can still be seen in films today.

The acting is pretty well done and very watchable given the material, but they get most of the science facts wrong. I've included some of them in this unauthorized trailer, for example, hydrogen doesn't burn bright orange like that, of course. And they also conflate the chemical burning of hydrogen with nuclear fusion throughout the film. So yeah, a lot of mistakes in this one.

That underground explosion at the beginning of this trailer was not in the actual final cut of the film, but it was included as an end-credit bonus.

Even though this film is just a bunch of stock characters and trite plot elements, the acting is mostly well done and some of the special effects are really pretty impressive. And the sound engineering is top-notch.

If you can keep the propaganda element of the film in perspective and keep in mind the contemporary context of the sexist nature of movies from that period, the film is watchable and even entertaining at some points.

Accessible description of video:

Opening title says “Produced and released by 20th Century Fox” followed by a very large underground nuclear explosion causing a surface collapse; then showing scenes of an Industrial area with Smoke Stacks with smoke flowing into the air; then a guy talking to an audience about hydrogen and water, the scene cuts back and forth between the guy and Keanu Reeves packing something up into his backpack, the guy continues talking and Reeves rides away on a motorcycle with his backpack, then the guy ignites some butane/propane producing an orange flame and he says that it's hydrogen; then cut to a night scene with bad guys with a remote control device that has a gas meter and when it reaches a point he pushes the button to make an explosion happen; there’s a big explosion that starts off as a chemical gas explosion throughout an industrial building then somehow it morphs into a nuclear blast, the blast wave slowly expands out throughout a very wide area in the city as Keanu Reeves on a motorcycle tries to outrun the blast wave and he lays down the bike and slides behind a berm with vehicles and debris flying above him; then some cops are interviewing Reeves and Rachel Weisz; then cut to Morgan Freeman walking through a warehouse/parking garage and meets Keanu and Rachel; then cut to Reese running through a crowded city at night with tense music playing, cops are trying to catch him; then Reeves grabs a pipe and shoves it into some big gear mechanism that stops the gears from moving which stops a drawbridge from moving; Rachel Weisz, in her first big movie role, is pacing in a train station prominently carrying a train ticket that says “save up to 70%” and she briefly talks with a conductor; then fade to a scene with Weisz and Reeves walking through a museum and they meet Morgan Freeman who is smoking a big cigar; then cut to a meeting of the Senate select committee on intelligence with Morgan Freeman talking to a politician who is complaining about money; then Keanu and Rachel are running and Keanu tells Rachel to get into an air boat that has a flat bottom and a big airplane propeller on the back of it, it spins in circles and then heads off across a frozen lake and a helicopter chases it and catches up to it; then cut to title graphic that says, “Chain Reaction” while the letters get big and turn into a scene of an industrial area; fade out.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #energy #fusion #theTanks #shrimpoluminescence #helicopters #70percent

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Quote of the day...

“It’s a memorial for what’s-his-name.”

#irony #nihilism #mote

#TruthBeTold
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There's a clever math trick to convert from Celsius to Centigrade without using a calculator…

#math #temperature #metric #imperial #Fahrenheit #Kelvin #one #Sweden
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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(PD image from Wikimedia commons)

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I just called a major, well known corporation on the phone and the automated system asked me to key-in my web password to get to customer support.

Key-in my password. In the clear. On the phone.

Anyone see an issue with that?

#security #passwords #encryption #cryptography #math #BruteForce

I like this one better than THX 1137.

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

THX 1138 (1971)

Starting out as a student project, this film was George Lucas's first. Apparently Warner Brothers thought it was good enough and decided to back it. Francis Ford Coppola who was already seeing a lot of success by that time also joined the project to help produce.

The film didn’t get many rave reviews when it was first released, but when Lucas went on to make Star Wars just six years later, THX 1138 enjoyed a significant bump in its esteem.

One of the features of the dystopian world depicted in this film is a drug to suppress everyone’s emotions. This is an idea loosely borrowed from A Brave New World, except in Huxley’s story the controlling drug is a happy pill not an emotion-suppression pill. This same idea of a society with suppressed emotions has been used from time to time in science fiction, more recently by the film Equals (2015).

It’s been released in several different cuts (some parts of the original release were censored by Warner Bros). Generally, I’d say the longer cuts are probably closer Lucas’ vision.

There was a director's cut released in 2004 by Lucas himself which is a true director's cut, however if you watch that one you'll be looking at his vision in 2004, and may not be what he would have done 1971 as director’s cut.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #bald #dystopia #the70s #youth #emotion #drugs #equals #BraveNewWorld

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I guy with zero followers just boosted my toot...

Oh well, it's the thought that counts.

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Just a security reminder to developers...

If you *require* uppercase letters in passwords, or require numbers and special characters, you are making your passwords LESS secure because it reduces the possible number of combinations of passwords. (E.g., it eliminates combinations that are all lowercase.)

It also pisses off your users.

Also, those little indicators that show you how secure your new password is as you type it into the field, the ones that says poor, good, etc. as you enter each character? That feature makes a system less secure, because there are many more lines of code needed to examine those characters as they are typed, which means more chance for leaks of the password.

Just suggest to the user that passwords should be at least X characters long and not be too easy to guess, and leave it at that. Give users a break.

#security #passwords #UX #UI

I feel sad for the people who died in that Titan sub.

I wonder if the other companies will be resuming tours. If they do, I wonder if they will tour the wreckage of the Titan submersible as well as the Titanic.

That seems morbid to me, but then the whole idea of touring the Titanic wreckage seems morbid.

#Titan #Titanic #submersible

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Cocoon (1985)

Here's another first contact science fiction film. This one’s directed by Ron Howard. Many of the characters in this film are elderly people, who are played by long time veteran actors including Don Amiche who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in this film.

The actors who played the elderly people in this film we're all born very early in the 20th century with the exception Wilfred Brimley who often played characters who were older than he was. Brimley began his career as a stuntman and later as a character actor, but I'm not sure if he did his own stunts in this film or not.

One nice aspect of this film is that it has an original plot formed from elements of previous films, it's not a typical first-contact-with-aliens type of film. The special effects were well done also.

Young people may not have heard of this one and it could easily get lost in the backlist of a film catalog, so if you've never heard of this film you should check it out.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #ET #extraterrestrial #firstcontact #youth #old #pool #aliens #Atlantis

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(I apologize for the Trump toot, but this one is a real gem)

Where does Trump stand on the Second Amendment and on the government trying to take away people's guns?

(make sure as many maga folks as possible hear this)

#2A #guns #firearms #rights #freedom #maga

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Happy Juneteenth!

To a lot of people the emancipation of the slaves at the end of the Civil War seems like it happened a long time ago, but there are many people alive today (myself included) who are old enough to have met someone who was emancipated at the end of the Civil War.

It wasn't really that long ago.

#Juneteenth #emancipation #CivilWar #history #BlackHistory #celebrate