Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 10

Losing out to AI?

Apparently the AI will soon take over the world, or at least a lowly writer's work, like my own. But the following prompt gets
tell me a story about a boy who overthrows an empire:

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a young boy named Tom who lived in a small village on the outskirts of a great empire. Tom was not like other boys his age, for he was incredibly intelligent and resourceful. Despite his youth, he had a thirst for knowledge and a desire to understand the world around him.

One day, while exploring the forests that surrounded his village, Tom stumbled upon a hidden cave. Inside, he found an ancient book filled with knowledge and wisdom that had been lost to the world for centuries. Tom spent countless hours poring over the book, learning all that he could.

As he grew older, Tom's knowledge and intelligence continued to expand, and he began to understand the workings of the great empire that had long ruled over his land. He saw that the empire was corrupt and oppressive, and he knew that something needed to be done.

So, using his cunning and his wits, Tom began to secretly plot against the empire. He gathered a group of like-minded individuals and began to plan their rebellion.

At first, their efforts were small and insignificant, but as time went on, their rebellion grew in strength and numbers. Finally, the day of reckoning arrived. Tom and his followers stormed the imperial palace and overthrew the corrupt rulers who had oppressed their land for so long.

The people cheered and celebrated as Tom took his place as the new ruler of the land. He was hailed as a hero and a savior, and he ruled with justice and fairness. The empire was transformed, and Tom's name became known throughout the land as the boy who had overthrown an empire.

So there is a narrative there, and it all ties together, but it does lack details and the cliches are quite weak, iMO. 
A second try gets us this:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a young boy named Max. Max was a curious and clever child, always eager to learn and explore the world around him.

The kingdom was ruled by a cruel and ruthless emperor, who oppressed the people and hoarded all the wealth for himself. The people lived in poverty and fear, and many of them longed for a hero to rise up and overthrow the tyrannical ruler.

One day, Max discovered a hidden underground cave filled with ancient scrolls and artifacts. He spent hours studying the scrolls, and soon discovered that they contained powerful magic spells and incantations.

With his newfound knowledge, Max began to gather a group of loyal followers and trained them in the use of magic. Together, they plotted to overthrow the emperor and bring freedom and justice to the kingdom.

As the rebellion grew stronger, the emperor became increasingly worried and began to send his armies to crush the uprising. But Max and his followers were prepared, and they fought bravely, using their magic to defeat the emperor's forces.

Finally, the day of the final battle arrived. The emperor's army marched on the rebels, but Max and his followers were ready. With their powerful magic, they defeated the enemy and captured the emperor, ending his rule
And remixes of Cinderella gets me this:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a young girl named Cinderella. Cinderella was a kind and gentle soul, but she was treated poorly by her stepmother and stepsisters, who forced her to do all the household chores and treated her like a servant.

Despite her hardships, Cinderella remained strong and determined. She dreamed of one day escaping her miserable life and finding happiness.

One day, the prince of the kingdom announced that he was holding a grand ball, and all the eligible young ladies of the kingdom were invited to attend. Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters were thrilled, but they forbade Cinderella from attending, saying that she was unworthy and would only embarrass them.

But Cinderella was determined to go to the ball and meet the prince. With the help of her fairy godmother, she transformed into a beautiful princess and attended the ball. The prince was immediately captivated by her beauty and charm, and they danced together all night.

The next day, the prince searched the kingdom for the beautiful princess he had met at the ball. He finally found Cinderella, and the two of them fell in love.

However, the prince's parents were not pleased with their son's choice of bride. They preferred a more suitable and politically advantageous match, and they pressured the prince to marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom.

Cinderella was heartbroken, but she refused to give up on her love. She gathered her strength and courage, and with the help of her fairy godmother, she stormed the castle and overthrew the prince's parents, becoming the new queen of the kingdom.

The prince was grateful and impressed by Cinderella's bravery, and he vowed to rule justly and fairly alongside her. And they lived happily ever after.
Interesting remix here. Not sure it reaches the level of good, but it may. Wonder if you can create a book and have it sell well. 
 Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Been out. Working on some new things.

Mainly mixing visuals and text for story telling. A couple pubs, I'll share the others as time goes by. I think I mentioned it (or did I?) how I read a book on comics and the combination of visual and texts to tell a story and realized that one issue was that I wasn't combined two separate train of thoughts of my own. That is, I had created visuals mixed with text from the artistic side (but  mainly as a way to expand a moment, a memory) in terms of non-fiction. Meanwhile from the fictional side it was photo essays as short stories, and some other attempts (collage and text) but that's about it. Now I'm combining both and it has been interesting to say the least. 
That being said launch some asteroids when you have the time. 
And the World Cup has been fun, but it looks like it will just be the usual suspects in the quarterfinals. Which means non Euro/SA countries have fallen short yet again. I'll also say that this means the games should be pretty fun. Brasil France looking great and Messi still has a chance (if his fellow players step it up). 
And finally, just in case you weren't sure what open carry was about:



Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

World Cup Tomorrow!

Not even gonna get into the internet's talk about Qatar's sins. So let's laugh for a second instead. Cause dammit if this copy pasta from the internet isn't gold:

I destroyed some kid on FIFA and he just sent me this (self.copypasta)

submitted 4 hours ago by v3xpunk

I bet your dad is so disappointed. Who wants to raise a man who plays with Madrid? Do you always take the lazy way? Do you work at Target and go to the local community college? I bet he asks you how that degree is coming like 3 times a month. It’s always the same though, isn’t it. The tinge of shame, then a small outburst. “I’m working on it dad, and my app is gonna take off.” But there is no app, is there. There’s no hope. Just loneliness.

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

That One Plague

Not ours, but the Black Death. Interesting that it has been found to originate from Central Asia. And it also started a huge series of rolling plagues that lasted hundreds of years. Nuts. So even the Defoe journal I read was possibly about the plague (I mean I knew it was the plague, but I thought it had just been around with varying levels of success as a vector) as a variation of the Black Death. 

Hence, the ancient Central Asian strain that caused the 1338-1339 epidemic around Lake Issyk Kul must have come from one such reservoir. “We found that modern strains most closely related to the ancient strain are today found in plague reservoirs around the Tian Shan mountains, so very close to where the ancient strain was found. This points to an origin of Black Death’s ancestor in Central Asia”, explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Well that's better to read than people screaming about twitter. Again, any of these major websites go down and I fail to see how it's a bad thing. Could be me hatin' given my lack of success on said websites, but so be it. 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

The crazy keeps on going.

Possible that Russian missiles hit Poland. One hopes that cooler heads prevail, but they may not, given the anger in parts of that world. I have more to say on this, but it's neither here nor there. You certainly won't hear about it on the MSM. I really do wonder if the covid virus just made everyone worse off in the head. Directly speaking, not in some, the pandemic itself causing some sort of short circuit psychologically speaking.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Boring Dystopia.

Children's hospitals are closing down because our society has deemed that not reimbursing for their care is the way to go. Yeah, perfectly normal, perfectly healthy. 
Oh, and don't worry, the fact that our DHS was manufacturing stories (as I'd sensed and written about) about terrorists (antifa!!!!) shouldn't worry you at all. Nor that our liberal media is not putting this on the front page. Shocker, that. 

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. 

sigh 😔 And here's the thing, it isn't like the Dems will throw everyone involved with this in jail or even fire them. Just absolutely insane levels of actions being left unpunished. 

adding they “didn’t even know why some of the people were arrested.”

Police ran off legal observers and physically beat journalist who suffered injuries at the hands of federal agents armed with crowd control weapons as well. In response to the bad press, Justice Department lawyers filed a successful motion in court giving police the power to force reporters off the streets.

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Collages and such oh my.

First, I read Unflattening by Nick Sousanis and it had some thought provoking ideas in it, though I think that it could have done more to answer the question it posed to the reader. Indeed, a question I myself have been posing in various forms (and the likes of Hockney as well, coming from the visual side). 
Thing is, either way (I've come from the other side, mimicking photo essays in the form of short stories etc) I've come to the conclusion that some kind of collage and map and abstraction is needed. This is a limited take, and I'd say that there needs to be more thought (certainly there is more non-western thought as I've pointed out in the links above) put into it on my side of things. 
I'd say the same about some of Nick's points. I liked to hear someone else asking the same question as me, and even seeing different thought processes that brought him to similar conclusions as I have. But to simply stop at comics, or collages, as I have, seemed a little underwhelming (though it has pushed me to think about the question more and that is always worthwhile). 
So where to go from here? I suppose I'll think on the subject just a little more. But after looking at Nick's twitter and the obsession with comics specifically (and slight variations of the same old ideas), I was a little let down. I wanted to see things that were out there, not just aesthetic, but also a better way of putting forth ideas, you know?
Even looked at some reviews of his books, like this one and this, and though some seemed to point to some of my own criticisms, I wanted more. I wanted a conversation, a dialogue where people, if they asked said question about his book, gave an answer or, dammit, at least attempted to answer it. You know?
And, again, there are a million ways to try to come at this, at the linearity of words, as you're reading them here. I know Egan tried powerpoint (not a fan of the result, but liked the question it asked and definitely liked that she was bold enough to ask it[1]) and there's Moore who points out that his attempt at changing some aspects of comics with his storytelling and visuals was never used "for good". 
Again, I'm not against comics, I'm just trying to stretch my own mind and thoughts on this matter. So I'm going to look for more discussions (though I'm sensing that either the internet culture or tools are a little too sick to ever find stuff like that? Because I'm seeing either praise, which is never really specific enough or I'm seeing criticism, which is specific at times, but rarely in a built up discussion way. You know? Cause I too thought that Nick should have had more on breaking the linearity of words, but what comes from that? Why not mention non-western ways of dealing with it and so on? Why not build on it? It's like everyone wants to be their own silo. Or maybe that's what's found first. 
Well, reader, if I come across such an article or post I'll send it your way. 
edit: Good one deciphering non-Western "comics"


[1] Seriously, some of the diagrams do not make sense. I'm sure some one will tell me it's art, but it could have been more than that. And, again, it's breaking up linearity, but then again, it's really not:


Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

On Kasparov

The one who's cheerleading American war is here cheerleading Iraq and Afghanistan etc. I will also note that many who are for the Ukraine war were also for the Iraq Wars. Were all for imperialism and yet are now yelling about Russian imperialism. It's pretty impressive. 
Kasparov is obviously really good at chess. But that's about it, apparently. Here he trots out old conservative memes like "withdrawal from Iraq led to ISIS" without any proper analysis of what the Syrian war did, who we funded in the Syrian war etc. To someone like this, there isn't a single place where a bomb (on brown people, or even just other people) can't be the solution. 

" It helped Vladimir Putin to regain his confidence and because after his attack against the Republic of Georgia in 2008 in August, he was basically rewarded by Obama/Clinton “reset” policy instead of paying a price for taking territory of neighboring country.

And of course, you know, it helped terrorist groups to regroup and, of course, it helped Iran to gain so much power. You know, I can hardly imagine the Shah would dream about total control of Iraq and basically spreading the Shia influence across the nation and becoming the dominant power that it dwarfs out the Arabian Gulf monarchies in the region.

Holy fs! This guy thinks what we did in Georgia (ignoring who started that) is what gave Islamic terror and Iran (all eating out of the same trough, apparently) before Obama was in office is what set off everything after that. 
Is this some kind of chess binary brain?


Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Hikaru World Champ

Impressive stuff here. I do wish they did it with longer time controls. But it's crazy how the best in the world at this game find themselves in completely new territory and make these huge mistakes. 




Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

FRC World Championship

Cool analysis here. 



Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.