Girls gone wild: Yellowjackets review

What goes up...

WARNING: SPOILERS

Season one of Yellowjackets was different and fun. The show's basically Lord of the Flies with girls, and it switches from their ordeal in the wilderness to the characters some 30 years later. 

The young ladies in question are members of a ruthlessly competitive girls soccer team, who are heading off to the world championships, when their chartered plane goes down in the Canadian wilderness. God knows we have enough wilderness to go around, enough for a thousand such shows. 

You'd think there'd be moose. Or beavers. Or at least horse flies. Nope.

Things get nasty quick. One nerdy little girl, the outcast of the bunch, takes immediate charge and cuts off the injured coaches mangled leg, which is caught under a piece of the aircraft. She's taken all the first aid courses there were on offer, and knows her stuff. 

Unfortunately, she quickly becomes addicted to her new valued status. 

Things get worse from there. Much, much worse.

Exactly what is left to our imaginations, at first. But it is heavily implied that as little as four or five people survive.

The very opening scenes show the girls hunting one of their own members, wearing masks, and performing what look like cannibalistic rituals. 

But we don't get to that state again in season one. It's a teaser to hook viewers in with the promise of the premise which they seem to mostly forget about.

Instead we cut to the girls later in life, when they've settled down into dull, domestic not-so-bliss. At first, there are only three. It seems the wilderness was a bloodbath that few returned from... until they introduce another survivor. 

And another. 

And another. 

And so on. 

It's like a shampoo ad, and the longer it goes on, the lower the dramatic stakes become. 

The show dives deep into the characters to the point of disinterest. The navel gazing is extensive and probing, and not recommended for carbon fibre hulls. But the actors are fabulous, and they do well with what they are given. It's an abundance of riches, which will suit some tastes more than others.

The scenes with the kids in the wilderness were even more compelling, with higher stakes. Whenever a 'now' scene rolls by, the urge to fast forward soon strikes, especially later in the season. 

Yet the wilderness family cannibal adventure is well worth watching, and I recommended the show to friends. I liked the heavy hints of the supernatural, that there were otherworldly forces dwelling in that forest, and had confidence the showrunners wouldn't drop the ball.

Then season two landed. 

The ball wasn't just dropped, it was lost entirely.

The scenes in the present became meandering and self-indulgent. 

Back in the wilderness, the vague supernatural forces hinted at earlier are... hinted at again and again. There's enough vague hinting to constitute trolling.

One character sits with her best dead frozen friend for three months, doing her hair and makeup before casually eating her ear. Because of course she did. Her friends find out about her freezer zombie ear parties, and decide enough is enough, they'll burn the corpse. 

You'd think that'd be the end of that. But wait! Vague maybe-sort-of-kinda supernatural forces drop a pile of snow on the funeral pyre, and voila, the corpse comes out like a braised butterball turkey. The girls then crowd around and chow down.

That got a guffaw. Not the response the show runners were hoping for, I suspect. Maybe they were going for horror or revulsion or something. All I could see was mouth watering Butterball.

The famine angle is mentioned, but not consistently, and the girls didn't behave or look starved. Obviously, they can't starve aspiring actresses. I mean, this isn't a Stanley Kubrick show. 

A few skipped episodes later was the finale, because that's all I could stand to watch. It was silly and pat. The central mom continued her death spiral into awfulness, hoping to one day to join the esteemed ranks of Dexter, Walter White and Tony Soprano. Or maybe not.  

Few shows so intriguing became so awful so quickly. Yellowjackets, like Icarus, soared high and then plummeted straight down and pancaked into pavement. Well. Icarus went into the sea, but you get the idea. 

Of course, I am not the target audience, so your mileage may be much better. For your sake, I sure hope so.

Yellowjackets would be an interesting subject for a screen writing class.

War of the Roses and Medieval Genealogy ChatGPTrees

They begat and begat and begat until one day God said, "Stop fucking around!"

So I was looking into how Henry VI of Lancaster was related to the York leader Richard Plantagenet, for reasons that will soon become clear. I decided to pose the question to ChatGPT, because I’m lazy and genealogy gives me a headache:

Edward III was the grandfather of Henry VI. The lineage connecting them is as follows:

Edward III (1312-1377): Edward III was the King of England from 1327 until his death in 1377. He was married to Philippa of Hainault, with whom he had several children.

John of Gaunt (1340-1399): John of Gaunt was the third surviving son of Edward III. He married three times and had numerous children, including an illegitimate line of Beaufort descendants.

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1373-1410): John Beaufort was the eldest son of John of Gaunt from his relationship with Katherine Swynford. He was later legitimized by King Richard II. John Beaufort's descendants were known as the House of Beaufort.

John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset (1404-1444): John Beaufort, the great-grandson of John of Gaunt, was elevated to the title of Duke of Somerset. He married Margaret Beauchamp, and their son was Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset.

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (1406-1455): Edmund Beaufort was the brother of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset. He succeeded his brother as the 2nd Duke of Somerset. Edmund Beaufort's son was Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset.

Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset (1436-1464): Henry Beaufort, the son of Edmund Beaufort, was the 3rd Duke of Somerset. He was a prominent Lancastrian during the Wars of the Roses and a key figure in the reign of Henry VI.

Henry VI (1421-1471): Henry VI was the son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois. He became the King of England in 1422 as an infant and his reign was marked by political instability and the Wars of the Roses. He was a Lancastrian monarch.

Thus, Edward III was the grandfather of Henry VI through his son John of Gaunt and subsequent generations of the Beaufort family.

And this is why I hate the Middle Ages.

Extraction 1.0 and 2.0 review

Was it live or AI?

What a great video game walkthrough! 

Or was it a movie? 

The lead sure looked like Chris Hemsworth, but he wasn't jokey/goofy. So hard to tell. Could have been AI. Like Salma Hayek in Black Mirror.

Extraction is eerily like watching someone play a video game: long action sequences that morph into car chases, then foot chases, train chases and then more action scenes. 

Every now and then there is a cut scene where the actors emote and cry. 

Then it's right back into astonishingly long single shot action scenes. 

The action here is incredibly intense and visceral. You can almost feel the pain of the blows; it's not clean or antiseptic. That was quite well done, although most people (all people?) would be dead long before the characters in the film after taking that much punishment.

So fabulously well done action flick from a technical point of view. Very bare bones, plot and character wise. If you're good with that, you'll love Extraction. It's incredibly well done for what it is. 

If you want a more involved story, and aren't keen on 90 minutes of stabbing, shooting, pummelling, kicking, eviscerating, hacking, exploding and decapitating(?), then maybe this movie isn't for you. 

I have just one question: can Salma Hayek star in the next one?

Commute Density Graph for Toronto

Basically, the best time to drive is 5 AM Mon-Friday:

Somehow I don't see myself rearranging my schedule. 

On the flip side, there's a black hole Thursday afternoon around 2:30 PM that sucks cars into a super density black hole from which they'll never reappear, and which will ultimately destroy the entire planet.

Savage review of Mandalorian Season 3

The Pitch Meeting series I've really enjoyed watching over COVID lockdowns. It's one guy who plays both the screenwriter and the studio exec in an imagined pitch meeting for the film. He's usually got some sharp, or at least funny, insights.

This one? Savage. Absolutely savage:

Battle of Kursk: deja vu in Ukraine?

The Kursk Pimple

During the early months of 1943, the Nazis were rolled back hundreds of miles from Stalingrad, until they finally stabilized their defensive lines in Ukraine. The line was relatively straight, except for a large bulge into the German side, centred around the city of Kursk. 

The Germans decided to squeeze this obvious like a ginormous pimple.

But the Soviets could read a map, too, so they new exactly where the Nazis were going to attack (also thanks to intel from the British Ultra program and the Red Orchestra).

Hitler hemmed and hawed, waiting until more of his Wonder Weapons were ready before attacking. The Soviets used that extra time to pack the pimple with troops, tanks and artillery, wrapped them in pillboxes, trenches, and mines, and tied a great big kill zone bow on top.

One of Porche's Not-So-Wonder-Weapons: The Ferdinand Dud

When the Nazis finally did attack, they made slow and costly progress against fierce and entrenched Soviet resistance. The new Nazi tanks proved unreliable: they hadn't been tested long enough to work out all the mechanical problems, and many broke down and were abandoned before they even encountered the enemy.

Once the Nazis had spent their offensive power, the Soviets launched a massive counter attack, overwhelming the exhausted Germans and paving the way to Berlin. 

A painting of the carnage at Kursk

Sound disturbingly familiar?

The Ukrainian offensive is trying to cut off Russian supply lines to Crimea. The Russians know exactly what the Ukrainians want to do, and where they are likely to attack. 

And while the Ukrainians have been waiting for Western tanks and equipment (and better weather), the Russians have been creating multiple defensive bands, with pillboxes, trenches, mines, kill zones, etcetera. 

A zoomed out view of multiple Russian defensive lines in Ukraine

The Russians are really good at this, and they don't need especially skilled soldiers to pull it off.

Speaking of which, the Russkies just moved some 300,000 more men into the area.  

Heck, take a look at the Reuters page on the Russian defenses, they describe it better than I ever could.

Pundits set unrealistic expectations for the Ukrainian counter offensive during the spring (and no thanks to the spectacular Ukrainian success last year around Kharkov), and as such people are now looking in askance at seemingly lacklustre Ukrainian progress. Ukraine is reportedly going slow to preserve the lives of their troops and inflict Russian casualties. Fair enough!

Yet the longer the war goes on, the more damage to Ukraine, its people, and its economy. 

US General Ben Hodges was suggesting that Russia might be thrown out this summer, leading to an armistice. While that might still happen (Ukraine is cutting of Russian supply bridges to Crimea using missiles), it seems increasingly unlikely. 

But hope doth spring eternal!

The superficial view shows Ukraine bogged down in attritional fighting. Which is bad. Very bad.

What happens if Ukraine falls? Some pundits say that's as far as Putin and Co. will go. Which would be bad, especially for Ukraine, but not catastrophic. 

Others claim he's going to keep going, and will hit Moldova next, then the Baltic states. Which are in NATO. Which means potentially catastrophic escalation.

Which is bad for everybody.

It's in Russia's interests to sow fear and division in the West, to amp up escalation worries, and in so doing deprive Ukraine of needed assistance, so maybe that's all these fears are.

I think I'll go watch some TV.

Slo mo life drawing

 Dragged my lazy old bones out for some more life drawing. The poses were for the same duration as always, but I felt like I was in slow motion. I usually can get in some shading, or even colour on the longer poses. 

Not this time. 

This was the longest pose. Can you tell?

Collision 2023 whizzed by with plenty on AI

Godfather of AI: Geoffrey Hinton... he's the tiny figure in the centre. Squint and you can see him.

I dropped in on Collision 2023 during the week. It's billed as the biggest tech industry event in Canada. 

Think of your usual office meeting. Now set it in the middle of a Madonna concert: that's Collision. 

I don't think I'm as used to so much cacophony since COVID.

The day's top billing was with the Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton. The rest was filled with big sounding talks like The Future of Quantum Computing, but which really were just company sales pitches. I bet investors get the same deal. Rather than higher level or theoretical discussion, it was the limited perspective and plans of a single company. 

If I made a social media app and then billed a talk as 'The Future of Social Media', that'd be disingenuous. 

The talk itself was fine for what it was; I just felt the title advertised something the talk was not. 

Another presenter was still with Google. Now Google is in so many ways awesome, putting out products we are hopelessly addicted to. However, this mouthpiece was so peppy, positive and reassuring about everything AI it verged on soporific. 

And honestly, I've listened to car salesmen I'd trust more. I don't buy the corporate line there will be no job loss thanks to AI. 

Creative Destruction has been bringing diminishing job creation returns, while productivity boosts drive money to the owners, not the workers. GM, Ford, etcetera employed millions back in the day. The new drivers of the stock market (Meta, Google, etc) employ a small fraction. 

Corporate Mouthpiece?

The Google Mouthpiece claimed AI cannot think, it can only thunk, which while cute was directly contradicted by the Godfather of AI, who's left Google and can now say whatever the heck he likes. He's run tests with large language models and says they show reasoning abilities. Generative AI is a lot more than just advanced autocomplete. 

I'm more inclined to believe him than the happy happy corporate shill. Funny enough, it was the journalists earlier who were noting that Generative AI doesn't do well with nuance. Neither do some agendas. 

Hinton expressed concern about autonomous AI battlebots, wealth polarization, mass disinformation and other points of concern that I really should have written down because now I can't remember. Old age sucks, man.

99% of researchers are working on making AI better, and only 1% is working on making it safe and ethical. 

I don't doubt that avaricious, insatiable, manipulative and machiavellian AI being built for the stock markets and don't have the faintest clue what an ethic is, or if you can buy it. 

Hinton's talk only lasted 20 minutes or so, which is a selling point for the event; the talks are short enough there's no time to get bored. Here though, it was much too short. Honestly, I could have listened to Hinton all day. 

A lot of money was poured into the super slick Collision glitz fest, and I'm sure many a useful connection was made; hopefully productive deals, too, especially for all the startups and smaller companies. One can hope.

For me, though, the talks were disappointing, especially the corporate ones. I wanted more candor, less pablum. The most interesting talks were by gadflies who'd quit their prestigious positions to warn the world about AI, and the nuanced take of the journalists, who will one day be writing about 'our new robot overlords.'

And I for one just hope to be a part of it.

It Blew Up Good, REAL GOOD: Nordstream

Did the US, with help from Norway, blow up the Nordstream pipeline? Seymour Hersh seems to think so, thanks to one anonymous source. 

This has received a lot of coverage in Europe, but less so here in Canada or the USA. 

From the article:

"If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine – there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during joint a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "We will bring an end to it... I promise you, we'll be able to do it."

Hersh has vehemently defended his reporting:

"I've been doing stories for fifty years and I worked at The New York Times for seven or eight years. I won an awful lot of prizes there for a lot of stories. And I doubt if maybe 5% of my stories had a source named. Most of them were without sources because you can't do this kind of reporting without it."

It makes a certain kind of sense: it hits Russia in the pocket book and peels Germany away from its Russian fossil fuel addiction. 

On the other hand, it economically damages Germany, a US ally, and I can't see the Germans being happy about that. It's uncharacteristically reckless for Biden to pull such a stunt; he's been consistently cautious about escalating tensions with Russia.

But who knows? Power politics is a damn dirty business.

Things like this make me side eye the media narrative, and consider Mearsheimer's assertion that the USA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014. I don't doubt the US helped give advice to dissidents, and even funds to liberal political movements, but a full fledged coup? It's a serious claim that requires serious evidence.

The CIA has pulled stuff like this before. 

Then again, it may have been these guys:

As with pursuing the Arc of the Covenant, poking the Russian Bear in its den is not something to be undertaken lightly... 

Hot and tasty: Prigozhin's Cup-a-Not-a-Coup

Prigozhin's Chicken Noodle flavoured Instant Cup-A-Coup!

Is Putin done?

I doubt it. 

Then again, I was not expecting Putin's caterer to occupy Rostov and send an army of convicted murderers and rapists on a "March for Justice" to Moscow. 

Putin fled in his private jet as a few Russian army units joined in the march. Prigozhin took control of a TV station to broadcast that the war was being fought under false pretenses (deja vu, America!) and that Ukraine had actually never persecuted Russians and wasn't run by Jewish Nazis. 

I couldn't make this stuff up, it's so bonkers.

And then, after shooting down some Russian attack helicopters, the caterer suddenly dropped everything and set off for exile in Minsk, thanks to a deal worked out by Lame-duck-Lukashenko of Belarus. 

As OMC and Navalny might say, how bizarre!

'Priggy' has always been a loose cannon, but to bite the hand that fed him so directly was a major surprise. 

Why'd he do it?

Serious miscalculation.

Last week, Putin made clear he was going to roll Wagner into the MoD org. This would strip Prigozhin of all his power, and possibly expose him to existential danger at the hands of Shoigu, who hates his guts. So Priggy Prigozhin preempted them all, caught the FSB flat footed, and the road to Moscow open. Wagner troops willingly followed their hard nosed boss: they weren't keen on being integrated with the regular Russian army, which (naturally) has worse food (Prigozhin was a former chef and caterer, after all). 

Everyone else rallied around President Putin, and Prigozhin's 'March for Justice' stunt was denounced as full fledged treason. That seems to be when when Warlord Prigozhin started to look for an off ramp. Too little, too late.

So now what? The private army is going to be split up among regular Russian army units so they can never again act against Warlord-President Putin.

That removes the biggest threat to his regime. At least that I am aware of. Shoigu and Gerasimov may be disliked by the rank and file, but they are Putin loyalists. No threat there.

Putin does come out of this bizarre affair with egg on his face. His reputation as a machiavellian plotter who is always ahead of his opponents is tarnished, and it will take time for him to reestablish his cold blooded utter ruthlessness cred. 

I think he'll succeed in doing so, and I wouldn't want to be in Prigozhin's shoes right now. I'd hire someone taste test his afternoon tea, if you know what I mean. Stay away from Russian windows.

Overall, I think we all got off easy. 

Priggy would be the worse option to have in control of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Both of these warlords are dangerous men, but Priggy's more volatile and unpredictable. 

I'd rather see a stable, democratic liberal regime in Moscow, but that's not gonna happen. Russia is still an empire, which means that if the security forces let up, several regions will try and secede. 

Stay tuned for the next episode of Russian Political Roulette...

Moh Life Drawin'

Some life drawing from earlier this spring, using pencil brushes in ProCreate. Theme was pirates.

Generative AI frenzy: Adobe Firefly vs. Midjourney

A spaceship on the moon... looks more like Mars, but whatever. The details on the ship are dodgy, but the overall impression is quite good. With a bit of editing, it's usable. From Firefly.

Companies are going bananas over generative AI. It's being hailed as a tectonic shift, an existential crisis, a matter of 'embrace or die'. 

Is it really all that?

No. 

Is it useless and laughably bad? 

Also no. 

Wasn't super keen on these Firefly results; the hands are as messed up as earlier versions of Midjourney

It can be useful, it's already being embedded in services we use every day, yet it also has serious limitations (it's not 'thinking', it's just probability predicting based on a huge pool of nevertheless limited data). 

One big issue with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are the ethical (and legal) issues, which stand in the way of wider commercial adoption. The top reasons for companies to adopt new software, after all, are efficiency and price. If it's cheaper, easier and faster, it'll be looked into. But only if it doesn't bring on all sorts of complicated legal headaches. No one wants to deal with the Legal Team. Sorry, guys.

The frog was meant to be serving the tea, but this is close enough. Looks pretty good!

Adobe's Firefly is designed to be used commercially from the get go: it's trained only on public domain art and Adobestock, which they have rights to. 

So how does Firefly stack up against the perfidious scrape happy Midjourney? 

Good question. 

I spent 4 months fiddling with Midjourney (before cancelling my subscription), and recently I got in on the Beta for Firefly. 

A psychadelic Firefly desert; I quite like this one.

My expectation for Firefly were (probably unreasonably) high: Adobe is the international standard for professional graphics software, and according to their press release, they're planning on incorporating Generative AI into virtually all their other products.

The interface is clean and simple It has a text input field, plus categories to help spark ideas, paired with little icons. I'm not keen on on them: they feel more limiting than helpful, and the icons are too small to get anything out of them:

The image output is... varied. Some is quite good, but much is still dodgy around the edges. The biggest issue right now is subjective: I am not finding the Firefly output as compelling as Midjourney's. 

That's one interesting US flag on the upper right

The quality difference is, perhaps, telling: many Firefly renders often look like stock art, because the tool was trained on, well, stock art. Midjourney renders have more pizazz. They are often better composed, with more impressive colour schemes and just feel... a lot more fun. 

And that fun factor is very likely derived from the living artists and the millions of copyright artwork that Midjourney (and Stable Diffusion) were trained on. 

Generative AI is only as good as the stuff you feed it. Stock in, stock out.

Maybe I'm imagining it. You decide.

I don't mean to sell Firefly short. Some images are production ready or very close to it. My views are somewhat jaded thanks to thousands of Midjourney images.

Stock, just slightly messed up deformed stock (first one); the others I wouldn't be able to tell without close examination, and even if then, maybe not

Overall I like these, but if you look closely the details (as is typical of AI output) don't hold up.

So while Midjourney is (to me) leagues ahead of Firefly, and Firefly will likely never be able to catch up, perhaps Adobe doesn't intend for that to ever happen anyway. Adobe's goal may just be to provide a cheap customizable stock art alternative for people to use and modify. It will undercut Getty Images and the other stock houses (if Firefly is set at a competitive price point). 

A farm in Ukraine... turned out amazing. Still a bit of a stock feel to it, but I couldn't tell it was AI. How much of an original stock image does it pull in? Are some essentially verbatim?

If you look at dozens of Midjourney images, you notice a smooth slickness, a plastic feel, to them after awhile. Prompt wizardry can minimize or negate this, with lens types and whatnot. Haven't noticed that with Firefly, at least not yet.

Lower value jobs will go to Generative AI, much the same way stock dominates when budget doesn't allow for original art, and they can't find overeager students to exploit. But those jobs are already largely gone anyway.

Lowest common denominator content, generic stuff companies need but don't really care about, could be generated by AI and then curated by humans. 

If the lawsuits go against artists, AI will be more of a threat to job security.

A monkey chess piece rendered in Firefly; pretty solid!

The side nav, with the various categories and options in Firefly

Lenovo's Queen Latifa AI ad

Actual Latifa

This is pretty wild: personalized AI ads featuring Queen Latifa talking up small businesses across North America. 

She does look a little stiff in the AI generated section, with only the head moving, but otherwise it's very impressive, and this will only get better. 

That's not Latifa talking; it's AI leveraging her image and voice

I'm amazed how good her speech is. Sounds absolutely seamless to me, no jarring breaks between words, smoothly flowing, doesn't sound artificial at all.

Midjourney V5: hands up!

"They can do hands now!"

Ladies and gentlemen, Midjourney can now do hands.

They look... pretty good, actually. 

That didn't take long. Check out this article for more. 

Horrifically deformed hands were a hallmark of earlier Midjourney iterations, and (seemingly) major technical barrier blocking it from full fledged commercial use. I mean, aside from the rights and ethics issues. 

From a visual perspective, Midjourney's looking more impressive than ever. The artifacts and weird glitches are far fewer, the 'plastic' feel absent. Some pieces purporting to be done in Midjourney look to me like well rendered classical oil paintings. I still find it hard to believe some images are AI renderings and not originals. 

Some artists sniff that the AI art 'has no soul'. And yet, Midjourney is trained on art by MILLIONS of human souls, so I imagine some of that has filtered through, however gestalt soul mush it may be. 

I know of professional artists, ones far more talented than I (who are also anti-AI art), who have been fooled by these computer created concoctions. 

This is astonishing progress in a mere 8 months, and this is a technology still in its infancy. I keep wondering where it will be in ten years.. 

With Adobe launching their own AI renderer, Firefly, AI rendering is here to stay. 

We're about to see a whole lot more of it. 

 

On outgrowing franchises (Star Wars, natch)

"Is it enough that they can fly now?"

The very nature of television franchises is repetition: give them the same thing, only slightly different. Like eating the same bowl of porridge, just with different lighting. Characters do not evolve: they stay the same through the entire series. Their nature, interrelationships and circumstances shape the franchise stories, which always follow a similar pattern (or you're not getting greenlit), and everything resets at the end of every episode. 

This way, the series can be watched out of order in syndication. If the characters evolved and changed, you'd need new sets, new locations, new characters, and it would no longer be The Show anymore. Friction/conflict generates stories, and that comes from the dynamics of the cast. Someone is always the foil, for example. 

Real changes in franchises only occur when actors ask for too much money, or ratings dip and the show runners get desperate and add a cute fluffy dog to the cast. Or Ted McGinley, the Patron Saint of Shark-jumping, if you want to kill the show off quick. 

Eventually, after a couple decades of this endlessly churning story watermill, you get bored. People stop watching. Ratings dip. Cancelation strikes and the program is shipped off to the archives, or that Christian station that still airs Happy Days.

Times change, too, and what young viewers want to see now isn't what I wanted to see thirty years ago. I'd say kids are more media savvy (and saturated) than I was as a kid. I only had 3 channels plus PBS. Kids today have cable, multiple streaming services, movies, internet, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook (or is that just for old fogies now?), cell phones, and stuff I'm not hip enough to keep up with. 

Franchises need to grow and adapt to stay fresh; sadly, such change also risks alienating earlier generations of viewers. 

Star Wars is a toy line with a film franchise that's migrated to television, where Mando remains Mando and Grogu is eternally an insufferably cute marketing placement. I mean baby. Even the films just cycle through the same stuff, blowing up the Death Star over and over and over again, or recycling the stories of entire earlier films, just juggling the order of events. Empire or First Order, Rebellion or Resistance, nothing really changes. 

Fortunately, by the time you're on the brink of death from boredom, there's a new generation waiting in the wings to replace you; after that, marketers don't give a crap what you watch. Just toddle off and die under a tree somewhere, old timer.

Franchises like Doctor Who, Star Trek and Star Wars I don't enjoy much anymore. It all blends together now, like some kind of gigantic genre pastiche golem. 

Took long enough! 

I tapped out of Who with the later Matt Smith era (too convoluted, characters all sound the same, and when everyone is snappy and glib, no one is), Star Trek changed too much (got dark and more like Star Wars), and Star Wars pumped out a deluge of poorly thought out content.

It's long past time I was done with Star Wars, in particular.

It is explicitly made for children. I'd say the first two films (Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back) are all ages films, but Return of the Jedi (and the Ewok merchandising placement) aimed at a much younger target audience, and the Prequels even more so. 

George Lucas has repeatedly and loudly affirmed that the films are for kids.

Maybe we should listen to the guy.

For example, in Kenobi where they escape from an Imperial base with Little Leia Lulu hidden under Obi Wan's trench coat, he looks like a character from the cartoon Bojack Horseman. I kid you not. I don't think this is political commentary on the Empire (which was an impressive logic pretzel someone tried to construct, and kudos for the effort), but if it is, it's preposterously hammy. My bet is that the writers thought little kids would find it funny, and they very well may. No doubt it's been tested with focus groups. It's Disney after all.

Yet when I was a kid, I hated shows that talked down to me. 

Some kids (and some adults!) will love Kenobi, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

The characters in Kenobi have no more dimension than the cardboard cutouts populating The Abominable Book of Boba Fett. 

I am greatly enjoying shows like Severance, Better Call Saul, The Expanse, The Boys, Barry, Dark, Mindhunter, The Witcher, To the Lake, Bojack Horseman, Devs, Brooklyn Nine-nine, White Lotus, and Tales from the Loop. Many of these are bleak, but I find them much more compelling than Star Wars.

The whole franchise has been pulled along for almost 50 years based on the strength of the first two cinematic outings. Personally, I think they should have aimed at all ages rather than titling so far towards kids, but that's just me. 

I understand Taika Waititi is making the next Star Wars flick. If any director can get me to throw money away on this franchise, it's Taika or James Gunn. Both are smart, funny and have a strong creative voice. 

Jojo Rabbit showed Taika's got things to say; he comes across as someone with artistic integrity (and maybe also a creative madman; I cannot imagine trying to pitch the concept of that film and getting a green light). My fear is that Taika's sense of humour would make him a much, much better fit with Flash Gordon than Star Wars. 

The tone of Flash Gordon is almost identical to Ragnarok. They're a perfect match: both are fun, irreverent, wahoo space adventures. Pure fun.

The original directors of Solo were fired for deviating too much from the Star Wars tone (presumably making the film too funny), and I suspect Taika would make a wickedly funny film that is totally unacceptable to Disney stakeholders.

Change, just not too much change.

Could be wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok, and expect to like Love and Thunder (EDIT: I hate Love and Thunder). 

I was going to post this last July, but Andor really surprised me, so I shelved it for awhile. Andor's definitely for adults, and won't appeal to most kids. Hell, a lot of adult fans found it boring, but I loved it. That said, the whole franchise can't move in this direction: there's not enough of an audience for it, and you can't afford to alienate kids. 

But it was nice to see the franchise stretch.

Adobe's new AI renderer: Firefly

Step aside, Midjourney, Adobe's entering the AI renderer ring with Firefly.

The biggest thing about it? Firefly's built for commercial use. It was only trained on public domain, openly licensed images... plus Adobestock (which has hundreds of millions of professional grade images). 

Adobestock contributors will, apparently, be compensated; they're working on it.

So they say.

Adobe's going to integrate Firefly into Adobe Creative Suite all over the place. It'll be inescapable. Right  there on your interface, a click of a button away. On the most used design and illustration software in existence.

AI Renderering is going mainstream commercial, baby. 

Firefly is designed from the ground up for just that. Text, vector, raster... holy crap they are ambitious little heinzelmännchen, aren't they?

I've been wary of the AI renderers for a little while, both in regards to copyright, and the unethical sourcing of imagery, which Adobe's... solved? That and embedding it into products designers use every day is going to make it awfully tempting. 

From their site:

• First Adobe Firefly model will empower customers of all experience levels to generate high quality images and stunning text effects
• Adobe launches beta of first Firefly model focused on commercial use
• Adobe Firefly will be integrated directly into Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Experience Cloud and Adobe Express workflows
• Adobe will introduce “Do Not Train” tag for creators who do not want their content used in model training; tag will remain associated with content wherever it is used, published or stored
• Adobe is planning to enable customers to extend Firefly training with their own creative collateral, generating content in their own style or brand language

Holy crap. 

Things are changing. 

Artist Karine Giboulo does Covid-19 lockdown

Some days I feel just like this...

Saw the Karine Giboulo: Housewarming show at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, tucked in across the street from the far better known ROM. The show's about the Covid-19 lockdowns, and it's a wonderfully fun, whimsical and idiosyncratic take:

"Enter a world at once familiar and uncanny. Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo invites visitors into an immersive reimagining of her home. Brought to life by over 500 miniature polymer clay figures this is no ordinary house. The figures tell stories that unfold inside or on household furniture appliances and everyday objects.

Just the place to wear Kramer's fragrance: The Beach

On the kitchen countertop a line of people masked and socially distanced await access to a food bank. In the bedroom the drawer of a dresser opens to reveal rows of masked factory workers hunched over industrial sewing machines. In the laundry room a forgotten iron causes a forest fire forcing animals to flee their natural habitat."

It's a faux house filled with little figurines. Certainly a productive way to cope with Covid's disruption of all our lives. 

Rather than being a downer, it made me laugh. 

Posing before the Jeff Bezos Dick rocket

Hi ho, hi ho, a disinfecting we will go. 

This happened to me too.

Biohazard team to kitchen table one

It's even got the kitchen sink

A comment on all the horrors going on in the long term care facilities

Alexander Stubb vs. John Mearsheimer on the war in Ukraine

Former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb recently talked about John Mearsheimer's theory that the war was provoked by the US and NATO expansion. He presents five arguments:

Seductive Midjourney V4 Easy Bake Imagery

Midjourney is seductively easy. 

Write a prompt. Wait a minute and voila: result. Boom. Done. 

I stopped using Midjourney over the ethical issues, but it was damn fun. Midjourney creates a powerful and beguiling illusion of accomplishment, and every time I walked away I'd have another idea that'd draw me back in. 

There are really wonderful, idiosyncratic and inventive imagery being generated. Human users play the role of art directors and curators. 

The more I look at Midjourney imagery, easier it is to spot it in the social media wild. You have to dig into the history of visual arts and tailor your prompts to carve out a more distinctive, curated look. 

I didn't do much of that. My main interest was in sci-fi imagery, pictures to support stories I've either written or contemplated writing, as opposed to purely aesthetic explorations. 

If I ever go back to Midjourney, I'd like to explore aesthetics, and see if I can create a distinctive 'style' through advanced prompts. But I'd prefer the software to be ethically sourced before I do.

Anyway, these are some of the results I got:

A derelict cyclopbot stands sentinel over a desert oasis in Nevada

Beached freighter hulks on a salt flat

NeoBabylonian-Deco style tower over the Grand Canyon

Desert spring pool

Mr. Moogles and his post-apocalyptic junk shop

Werewolf reacts to the lack of fresh dog food at the Quickimart

Captain Nemo's leisure yacht

The lonely Blue Wizard Otho Four Star Box

The most accomplished Blue Wizard was Three Cone Methusaleh, who feuded with his brother Otho for centuries