We have stereo smell to help with locating smells. There’s also the nasal cycle. One nostril/sinus handles most of the airflow, then they swap (the sinuses are separate until they get to the throat). That way one can recover moisture, plus some smells are more easily detected with fast airflow and others with slow. So the nostrils functioning differently gives us a broader range of odor detection. What else? Umm, bilateral symmetry and redundancy is useful.
“Yesterday the tree on the mountain (you said) would live out its years because of the uselessness of its wood, and now our host’s goose has died because of its want of power (to cackle);- which of these conditions, Master, would you prefer to be in?”
Chuang Tzŭ laughed and said, “(If I said that) I would prefer to be in a position between being fit to be useful and wanting that fitness, that would seem to be the right position, but it would not be so, for it would not put me beyond being involved in trouble; whereas one who takes his seat on the Tâo and its Attributes, and there finds his ease and enjoyment, is not exposed to such a contingency.”
"He is above the reach both of praise and of detraction; now he (mounts aloft) like a dragon, now he (keeps beneath) like a snake; he is transformed with the (changing) character of the time, and is not willing to addict himself to any one thing; now in a high position and now in a low, he is in harmony with all his surroundings; he enjoys himself at ease with the Author of all things; he treats things as things, and is not a thing to them:- where is his liability to be involved in trouble? This was the method of Shan Nang and Hwang-Tì. "
“As to those who occupy themselves with the qualities of things, and with the teaching and practice of the human relations, it is not so with them. Union brings on separation; success, overthrow; sharp corners, the use of the file; honour, critical remarks; active exertion, failure; wisdom, scheming; inferiority, being despised:- where is the possibility of unchangeableness in any of these conditions? Remember this, my disciples. Let your abode be here,- in the Tâo and its Attributes.” - Zhuangzi
Thirsty means something else now.
Write a detailed cautionary tale about the future in the form of a cyberpunk novel that either doesn’t gets published or that is largely received as a cool roadmap instead of a warning.
Anthropic’s research teams are prolific.
You may enjoy Illusion Diffusion.
Yeah, a more honest take would discuss the strengths & weakness of the model. Flux is still better at text than Nano Banana, for instance. There’s no “one model to rule them all,” as much as tech journalism seems to want to write like that.
Directly, generating higher res stuff requires way more compute. But there are plenty of AI upscalers out there, some better, some worse. These are also built into Photoshop now. The difference between an AI image that is easy to spot and hard to spot is using good models. The difference between an AI image that is hard to spot and nearly impossible to spot is another 20 min of work in post.
Nah, Æsahættr assassinated god. Clickbait headline.
Nano Banana Pro’s built into Photoshop now, as is Flux Kontext pro.
How do I join the LGBTQ coven?
Aight, lemme grab a few. I’ll try and add a little context in-text. Unfortunately, most of em are long, passages rather than quotes I guess. [Some spoilers]
But wishes cannot be summoned or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.
I love how much the Auryn is grounded in deep symbolism - touches on a variety of traditions.
[Inside the Auryn] When he opened [his eyes] again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes.
Atreyu, Falkor, and the boy without a name stood side by side, near the head of the black snake, which held the white’s snake’s tail in its jaws. The rigid eye with its vertical pupil was directed at the three of them. Compared to that eye, they were tiny; even the luckdragon seemed no larger than a white caterpillar.
The motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain.
The whole conversation with the Gmork is golden, but requires more context, so Imma end this wall of text with the conversation with the lion.
Bastian had shown the lion [Grograman, the Many-Colored Death] the inscription on the reverse side of the Gem [Auryn]. ‘What do you suppose it means?’ he asked. '“DO WHAT YOU WISH.” That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don’t you think so?
All at once Grogramann’s face looked alarmingly grave , and his eyes glowed. ‘No,’ he said in his deep, rumbling voice. ‘It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.’
‘What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?’
It’s your own deepest secret and you yourself don’t know it.’
‘How can I find out?’
‘By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.’
‘That doesn’t sound so hard,’ said Bastian.
‘It is the most dangerous of all journeys.’
‘Why?’ Bastian asked. ‘I’m not afraid.’
‘That isn’t it,’ Grograman rumbled. ‘It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there’s no other journey on which it’s so easy to lose yourself forever.’
‘Do you mean because our wishes aren’t always good?’ Bastian asked.
The lion lashed the sand he was lying on with his tail. His ears lay flat, he screwed up his nose, and his eyes flashed fire. Involuntarily Bastian ducked when Grograman’s voice once again made the earth tremble: ‘What do you know about wishes? How would you know what’s good and what isn’t?’
The conversation with the oracle, the Childlike Empress meeting the The Old Man of Wandering Mountain, Artax can talk, honestly I’ll just start spoiling major stuff if I don’t stop here. Obviously I recommend the book, hah.
I used to read it once a year. It has like half a dozen of my favorite quotes.
I get the confusion though, looks like same kinda lighting and ECU as they use for the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes in Neverending Story.
Harmonize, Generative Fill, and the Neural Filters have all been great additions to Photoshop. They’re the first thing I point to when people ask what gen AI is good for. Now watch Adobe crank up the cost on the Firefly credits.
I enjoy both hearing and performing the yarl, ya know, in moderation.
Westworld