Justfolk's photos with the keyword: AI

I've been fascinated for some time by what's happening in AI. Today I started playing with one of the AI image generators. I got dragged into a couple-of-hours-deep hole of giving "prompts" and seeing what I get back. Many pictures are very amusing, even endearing. I suspect the computers' source pictures are not ordinary snapshots, but rather professional images, thus selected for emotional content. As the meme goes, we have to stop calling it AI Art and start calling it sophisticated plagiarism. Nonetheless, there are surprising images. The prompt I gave for this picture was something like "1950s style, Diane Arbus style, b&w, old men and women smoking hashish and laughing." This is basically what I got (I did do some trimming and framing, and a small amount of "curves adjustment"). It's not photography as we have known it.

Gerald and Harold certainly had the harmonies right with their brother Orralt's song about his new pick-up truck. Just the same, Orralt was reluctant yet to start beating out the time on the spoons.

Among the little known aspects of life in the Vatican (at least to outsiders) is the regular Sunday night concert given by the revolving members of the official Vatican band, The Holy See. "The C," as everyone there knows it, has been led by each Holy Father in turn through a half-dozen papacies. In various eras it has been mainly a calypso band, a hard-rock band, a rock-jazz-fusion band, and even for a time a Texas swing band. These days, if you weren't paying attention, you might think Carlos Santana was leading it. Almost every week there are guest appearances, usually though not always by other clerics. Among the guest musicians have been several Archbishops of Canterbury, two Archbishops of Cyprus, the Very Rev. Desmond Tutu and even, for several years off and on, Oral Roberts himself. Roberts is legendary for his performance of a c&w version of Let It Heal, a song he learnt as a boy at summer camp. Bill Clinton famously showed up once with his saxophone but he was perceptibly drunk and was asked to leave. In the 1980s, Tom Lehrer, visiting Rome for a maths conference, was invited by the Holy Father (Wojtyła, of blessèd memory) to sit in. Lehrer stayed longer than he expected, playing piano in the band for over a month. "The C" nearly got renamed The Rag in his honour.

On the fourth anniversary of the 2024 acquisition by the Vatican of the Warner Brothers film catalogue, and after the Rome premiere of the new WB-V "Barbie" film "Sister Barbara Frances and the Conversion of Dolldom," the Pope stops for selfies with fans.

Although Ratzinger and Bergoglio both were well trained in bicycle maintenance and repair, Ratzinger had no interest in it. He would always step aside impatiently when, on their morning walks around Rome, Bergoglio would stop to give advice to people in the street. Many bikers were eager to hear what "Repairman Pope" would say about their pedals, their tires, and especially their chains. And most were happy that Ratzinger kept his counsel; he was known as a bit of a yappy dog.

Few people outside the Vatican know that, for nearly 125 years, new Popes have all been trained in bicycle maintenance and repair. This is in case the world changes, the Vatican's fortunes are reversed, and the Popes have to go out to work with their hands for a living. The present Pope, more than most in the past, embraced his new skills as an avocation.