proportionwheel

yes but best to steer the convo away from Trans or any other LGBT+ people, or the whole proposition collapses

gestural abstraction in reds, yellows, blues, and greens, with organic shapes. ©Michael B Patterson, 2025

Been a while since I’ve posted any new paintings. Here’s a smallish (17.7×22.1 inches) exploration, paper mounted on matboard, mounted on a wood frame behind (trying to work out a way to present these that’s practical for me and allows easy hanging.

Sure. In order to be sympathetic one has to feel sympathy. An LLM/AI does not feel anything. To the extent it offers you a “sympathetic” response it’s just doing what its input data & programmers tell it to do. Real intelligences are capable of critical thought & will be negative when you’re wrong.

I for one would like to extend my sincere thanks to Andrew for demonstrating so vividly that it is untrue that the sons of successful politicians* are genetically destined for the same success.

*I didn’t like his dad much either but he was much smarter.

really none of them accurately depict their subjects

It doesn’t know how what answer is correct, just which one is statistically most likely within the set of texts it’s been trained on*. The word “intelligence” does not belong, here—it’s just playing odds.

*if those texts include, as they do, a bunch of fascist substack and X posts, well....

I’m completely serious here; it’s part of the Billionaires’ Club’s plan to make us all into serfs.

Henceforth in my consciousness, Gerald will always be Fard.

Mamdani’s political instincts are so much better than the average Democratic politicians‘

Ha!

just deleted the most redundant reply in the history of replies.

Read that article all the way through, where you can learn that men with long guns harassed a pride gathering with kids present but “people's worst fears largely did not materialize.” Yikes. But credit where due: Idaho (Coeur d'Alene) cops did OK with this.

Been a couple years, but I did enjoy The Copper Fox last I ate there.

Do you think he wouldn’t have signed a better bill if it had been passed?

🔭Even better, from Sekula:

mastodon.cooleysekula.net/@steve/11492...

Also: It’s REALLY HARD to believe that anyone with coherent cognition could sincerely believe that

What AI is is something like: out of all the foods in the world you calculate an average—average flavor, average color, average texture, and call that the next gourmet craze.

I built my Dob mount from plans on that page! (I was just thinking I need to get busy on a bigger version)

Porter was a remarkable polymathic genius. See:

duckduckgo.com?t=ffab&q=rus...

This was the creation of club founder Russell Porter, who went on to be primary designer of the mounting of the 200" Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar.

The Porter Turret is a sort of inside-out Newtonian, with a large diagonal flat that rotates around the declination axis, reflecting light to the primary at the end of the boom, which focuses inside the turret through a hole in the diagonal. You observe in comfort inside. The turret = polar axis.

🔭The most public-facing aspect of Stellafane is the Stellafane Convention, held each summer. This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Stephen Sekula, of SNOLAB. He posted about the Porter Turret Telescope, the odd thing in the background of the video below.

mastodon.cooleysekula.net/@steve/11493...

I dropped the ball this year about the Convention, and didn’t say anything here. It’s over for this year. “Stellafane” is the name of the place, but people use it short for “Stellafane Convention,” a fantastic gathering of astronomy enthusiasts, amateur and pro, each summer there, since 1926.

That is correct. Ken Slater (in that short WPTZ video) maintains it, and it is a remarkably rich source of information about telescope making and amateur astronomy in particular.

🔭Stellafane is one of the coolest places on the planet. More people should know about it, so I’m reposting this, which I promise you is worth 2:44 of your time. The place is 88 acres with multiple observatories. Much more at stellafane.org — dig the groovy retro website style. That site is HUGE.

My mom did precisely that,* except her piecrust was her own. I didn’t know what a real pizza was until I was at least 17.

*I mean, 1950–’60s—it’s a pie, isn’t it, like apple or something?

Just watched, post-pizza, the second episode of “The Gentleman,” an “action comedy” based I guess on a movie I’ve never seen (like most movies, sadly or not). I’m finding it pretty entertaining so far, myself. You, anyone?

Anyone who sneers at garlic powder or jarred marinara or grocery-store shredded mozzarella can just fuck off. I use all the fresh versions when appropriate. This is a quick Sunday-night pizza. -30-

Was quite good. I forgot to mention I at the last minute sprinkled a bunch of Thai fried red onions over the top (these, unlike French’s or similar, are not battered and salted, just fried crisp. That was not a mistake.

The baked pizza, close up, showing the thick crust because I stretched the dough and let it rise for a couple hours. Looks OK.

Baked. Will report on its relative edibility in a bit.

Always read my ALT text.