I've begun playing with Dall-E.

Click to embiggen.

Sparrows enjoying their bath. There's a square waterdrop right in the middle, and the droplets overall don't show the sort of specular highlights I'd expect on a sunny day. Also one birds head angle makes his neck look broken, but I've seen them do that, so...

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Click to Embiggen.

My old Narnia character, Moonstone. This one came out pretty close to model, although his mane should be bluer, and his coat white. Pale blue and lavender works well, though. He always was rather effeminate.

I'm reminded now of Twilight Sparkle correcting with "I'm lavender", when someone calls her purple.

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On the whole, seriously easy to use and get good results. Progress marches onward.

I'm making good progress with the black cat. Last night, the raccoons (I think) ate all of her food and carried away the bowl, so she was waiting this morning when I went to feed her. I meowed at her several times, and she answered each time. We also did the slow blink "I like you/I trust you" thing. Then, when I set out her food, she let me pet her! She held her tail in the air as well while I petted her, so I may be wrong about her having never had a home. At the very least, her mother had to have taught her that (it's a learned behaviour), so she's not entirely wild. Alexandra seemed interested and friendly. Black cat was a bit afraid of her (Alexandra is much larger), and gave a warning growl when she got too close, but didn't seem overtly hostile. Things seem to be going quite well.

In ancient Ireland, around the time of the Roman Republic, one demonstrated one's fealty to the King by publicly sucking on the King's tits. Some things, you never expect. It makes sense in a symbolic way, but still doesn't fit with my idea of kingship.

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Interestingly, when thousands of cars got stuck in the blizzard in Virginia, people got pissed off at the government's fecklessness, but everyone made it home. When the same thing happened in Pakistan a few days later, a bunch of them died. I'm tempted to make jokes about American moral superiority, except that several dozen of the Pakistanis seem to have died because they failed to take the basic precaution of clearing the snow from their exhaust pipes, and asphyxiated themselves in a completely preventable manner. So, yeah.

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I have, provisionally, an extra Qat. An entirely black stray, I think a female, showed up last week. I've been supplying her with Qat Füd and water (putting out water several times a day, in fact, as it keeps freezing), and so far she seems inclined to stay, although she's very shy about letting me get close. Hopefully, by the time the weather warms up, she'll have calmed down, and then we'll see if she and Alexandra get along. If so, I'll try to bring her inside.

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One bright spot in the whole all-encompassing disaster is that someone managed to get the cats and dogs from the shelter evacuated.

So, if you surprise someone by shooting them at their birthday party, should you shout "Unhappy Birthday!", or will a regular "Surprise!" suffice? What would Miss Manners say?

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A very good boy's funeral.

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A local TV news crew makes themselves useful.

So, tomorrow I should reach peak immunity. At that point, I think, I can eat out once again, for the first time in over a year, at a proper fast food place staffed by underpaid teenagers^1, with a no more than average risk of the food killing me. I would very much love to have a Subway Veggies n' Cheese footlong, soggy with oil and vinegar.

I still, however, have problems with the clumsy, greedy machinations of Subway's management. Their current plan is to require customers to install an app, then buy two subs, getting the second one for half off. First, I'm not going to install an app to order from. I'll cheerfully make exceptions for places like Wow Bao! automatic restaurants, where never seeing a human during your entire visit is part of the fun. For ordinary fast food, and especially for places like Subway that actually show the workers in their advertising as part of the reason you should come there, no. No chance whatsoever.

Second, I object, and object strongly, to being required to buy two sandwiches to get a discount. That's not even volume discounting. That's just being dicks, and trying to coerce customers into bringing a friend. I shouldn't wonder that they lose more business than they gain on that point.

I think that what I'll do tomorrow is to go to one of the Subways, and ask to buy a sammich for 25% off. We'll see if the manager wants the business or not (I suspect he will). Fortunately, with it being Subway, they're liberally scattered, so I'll prolly find one that wants the sale.


^1 At places staffed and supervised by adults, hence presumably safer, I've been somewhat more liberal in my conduct.

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I won't be going to Hardee's. There's something entertainingly ironic in their misfortune, as their advertising stresses that their burgers are prepared by being mildly charred by open flames. I was never a fan of eating burnt meat, although the practice has survived long enough that I have to suppose it's more than just some weird 80s fad.

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Africa, too, is getting back to normal, with the money they were given for the Chinese Doom being stolen and wasted. I suppose I should see signs of hope in the fact that they're arresting people, rather than just asking for replacement money. Certain commentators are suggesting direct remedies, as well.

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Vaccination seems to be gaining traction in Indiana. Unlike many others, Indiana concentrated on vaccinating those groups with the highest death rates first.

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A Dog rescues his friend from drowning.

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It appears that Pfizer and Moderna both are about 80% effective two weeks after the first dose, which is reassuring. It emphasizes what a half-assed rush we've made of this whole thing, that something like that is only being learned now.

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Some people got the wrong second vaccine. That's interesting in a number of ways. First, the fact that it was caught afterward suggests that the patients knew what they were supposed to get. I (and everyone here, that I can tell), got a CDC-issued card* with a place for a sticker from our vaccine lot, and instructions to bring that back when we returned. I assume those are universal. Plus three separate people asked me beforehand "You're here for your first shot?". They had to fall through a fair number of holes to get the wrong follow-up, and both at the same facility.

* Twenty years from now, little kids will be finding those in drawers and boxes, and asking about them...

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A local program for reading to shelter animals. I know for a fact that Dogs, even ones that barely know you, will listen raptly if you read to them in your 'story-telling voice' and make occasional eye contact. They haven't a clue what's going on, but they're sure it's important. Cats may listen for a minute or two. And I absolutely love that the shelter has a 'Cat Silo'. That delights me, for some reason.

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Free wood chips!

And so the Pope returns, completely intact, from Iraq. I would not have bet a nickel on that. I expected him and his entourage to be blown to fragments in the first day or two. He's a brave man, and my virtual hat's off to him.

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Today I set the plants outside, and can leave them until at least Thursday afternoon. The plants were desperately needing some time in the sun. I've been swapping them in and out of the breakfast nook window, but it's not the same thing. Where I placed them, by the front door, was under several feet of snow three weeks ago.

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Alexandra (the cat) very much likes grape popsicles, the good ones that are made of grape juice and smashed grapes. (In all fairness, I have not yet tried her on any other sort, so it may be a more general taste). This is an unexpected discovery. There's something very fulfilling about sharing a treat with one's pet.

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Moderna vaccine apparently dramatically reduces viral shedding, by at least 60%. Not really a surprise, but certainly welcome news anyway.

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Thai sailors rescue cats from sinking ship. The boat was on fire and sinking, and the crew abandoned the ship's cats. Some Thai sailors swam across from their ship and rescued them. Again, not really surprising, but with all the nastiness in the world, it's nice to see people living up to the best traditions of their service.

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Good Lord! The Pinatubo Mouse actually managed to survive that remarkably violent, all-engulfing eruption. They must be ineradicable.

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So, yesterday Biden was promising to have all of us vaccinated by spring. Today, his timeline has slipped to summer.

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So, unscientific poll by local, soft-leftish newspaper shows that 53% of their readership don't believe that Biden won.


It's not hard to see why. Here's the New York Times record of how the votes were tallied on election night in Wisconsin.

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Cat translator app.

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Rockefeller Center Christmas tree comes with free Christmas Owl included.

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Back in 2001, when the Endless War started, I opined that we'd do far better to keep ground troops out of it, and just send heavy bombers to saturate the Taliban-held villages at unpredictable intervals, so that nothing moved that wasn't blown by the wind. I still think that.