Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1195
I want this hat. Continued Adirondack chair discourse. Jane's unending cough. A long rumination on Meta labeling images with AI. Filing photos of dead friends. Major Daddy school.
Good morning, hello friends and family. Wait does any family read this? I think my sister does still, hi sis miss you how’s the homestead project going. And I think my, mm, we call her Aunt Sherry these days does. Hi Sherry thank you for the recent kind words about dad. An edition of GMHHAY where I only say personal messages to certain readers would be fun. Well, for me. And for those specific people. Maybe not so much for the rest of the readership. Still, maybe something there. Will stew on it.
Also thank you to Anne and I think it was Ana woah coincidence, who both told me about the use of citric acid as a food spice. I am all about that. I hereby abandon my concern about citric acid, my teeth are impenetrable anyway, and I am embracing it as a culinary delight.
Public service question does anyone know where I can get this hat? Ultra-wide, stiff brim, made of straw, with a dark inside for shade? I am obsessed. Brim needs to be this wide, so wide wide enough it covers the neck. And note that the brim is mostly flat: no angles. Need this hat.
And I have inquired on the video, but no luck, alas.
Adirondack Chairs discourse is progressing and it might be a gender thing? Holy shit someone write a dissertation about this right now, with deep ethnographic research factoring in geography, alcohol consumption, age and size of the bonfire. I would devour it.
Listening to Six Organs of Admittance’s new album, a collaboration with someone or something called Shackleton which I can only assume is a descendent of Ernest Shackleton. Wait does Ernest Shackleton require a hyperlink? Do we all know who Ernest Shackleton is? We do, right? Man I think I need to write a GMHHAY style guide I need some link guidelines oh god that sounds so fun I want to write that so bad. Anyway it’s moody and a little bit more rhythmic than the last few Six Organs of Admittance albums but god I love 6O so much am I their biggest fan? I wonder if poor Ben Chasny has some super fan that follows him around that would be weird. But you legit gotta appreciate Chasny’s artistic output. In 2023 and 2024 he has released two Sig Organs albums, a 6O collab album (this one), a solo colab album 9with Rick Tomlinson) and appeared on Mary Lattimore’s amazing Goodbye, Hotel Arkada. And toured. Dude has his habits down.
(It seems that Shackleton is Sam Shackleton, born in Lancashire, England, as opposed to Ireland like Ernest but hey that doesn’t mean…)
(I really should link here to the album but I can’t stand it when newsletters link out to like 5 different things that I should consume it gives me anxiety so I am sparing you, add that to the GMHHAY style guide: links are only for optional additional edification not obligatory cultural consumption.)
Jane is avoiding camp again this morning but I forgive her because her stupid cough is back, like clockwork, less than 24 hours after the antibiotics ended, and I am getting somewhat despondant about this because I do not especially want my daughter to live off of antibiotics because of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Russian Prisons (thank you Annie and the Gates Foundation for wigging me out about this). I mean, I lived on antibiotics as a kid and I’m fine (right? right?), but it seems a thing a “good parent” doesn’t do anymore. But can she please stop couging? And of course the antibiotics worked, so that’s distressing too, because it sort of kills off plausible alternative explanations of the cough, like allergies. And she’s passed an allergy test anyhoo.
Gah.
But today is my day off so at least she can’t crash a bunch of meetings. Juneteenth. Felt good when we killed off some old colonizer holiday and replaced it with Juneteenth at work. It was, of course, the George Floyd year. Or maybe the Eric Garner year fuck it could have been any of them, Amurca. Also that year, we still owned Timehop and we put nothing but black history items into the history fact-of-the-day at the end of your day. We did that for months. Millions of people a day and after, like, oh, four months or so, the dudebro complaints started trickling in, maybe one or two a week. And of course on social media it looked like a tidal wave because butthurt people are so f’n loud on the internet, but again - a couple a week, out of millions. It was a teeeeeeeny minority.
My head hurts. Again. Very tired of it.
AI. Meta labeling images with AI. Meta labeling images with AI even when all you did is use the AI generative fill from Photoshop to take out a person in the background or something. Apple offering this new feature as well. And that was the example in the Apple demo: a nice picture of you on the beach, except someone else is in the background, and you want them out of the photo because you want to be on the beach alone I guess. And there are those “Photoshop Service” social media feeds on all the platforms: love this picture of me and my date could you make him a foot taller? Could you take out that dude in the background?
Lotta people seem to think that using Adobe’s AI image fill tool shouldn’t count as AI.
And I have been having so many thoughts about this. It’s actually a stunningly complex issue!
Exhibit 1:
Just in this little exchange, there are like five layers!
To whit: “AI” as a term is bunk. It’s bunk in all circumstances, but this exchange illustrates why it’s bunk in this implementation. Noah’s right. It’s just another tool to edit and alter photos. Except it’s not just one tool, it’s a bunch of tools. It’s a catch-all term for machine-assisted, including stuff machines used to assist us with before the term AI got all hot and sexy. And in this case, it is some what arbitrary. Why is it useful to the end user to know I used the Adobe Generative AI Image Fill tool instead of methodically, manually, used the rubber stamp tool to remove that gentleman in the background in the photo? In either case, the photo has been altered, and it seems that is what the end-user would care about most.
But on the other hand maybe it’s time for a re-reckoning on Noah’s second point there. He’s right that any photo that we put into Photoshop and fuck around with is an altered photo, and altered with a machine. But that’s not what people presumably care about, right? They care about whether you meaningfully altered the photo, regardless of tools. Presumably.
To that end, I actually think such a warning would be great on any image you altered meaningfully. To me, it is a different photo, it’s dishonest, when you take that dude on the beach out of the background of the photo. It has all sorts of ramifications: did you get up early, go to the beach early, work for it to be on that popular beach when it was empty? That’s information! Pretending otherwise is dishonest! Or maybe you were supremely lucky. That’s information too! It really amplifies the magic of the moment, rather than partaking in stolen valor magic. Or what about access? Maybe you’re rich and powerful and you got a private tour of that beach? That’s information too!
Of course, the photo on its own cannot tell me whether you’re lucky, an early bird, a really good photographer or rich, but the dude in the background does tell me you’re probably none of those things, and I guess it’s useful to know if you are pretending to be one of them?
But all of this is sort of irrelevant, right? Like people just want a nice photo of themselves without a dude in the background.
Well, then, hire a photographer!
Well, what if you’re poor?
Good point! Why not just use software!
Well, you can! All we’re talking about here is a little bug in the upper corner of your Instagram post saying you changed the photo! That’s not so bad!
But the bug in the corner as-is is fucking useless because you don’t even know what got changed. What if you used generative AI to just, I don’t know, clean up a scratch on a negative you scanned in your negative scanner (hey. what? Some of us still do this.) That imparts a totally different meaning than removing a human from the background.
So I am of kind of two minds here. Path one: double-down on this “made by AI” bug but make it honest and detailed and useful and expand it beyond the arbitrary set of tools we currently call “AI” and, like, you know what? For every photo on the web just post the edit history in photoshop as a downloadable XML file. That would rule.
But, path 2, I am also a total curmudgeon and believe that any photo edited in any way is kind of BS and a great photo is only shot in the camera and even old analog darkroom tricks are kind of BS and yes I used to sit in the darkroom and judge people who dodged and burned and I wasn’t even a very good photographer but the dream, the point was the lifelong pursuit of one perfect photo captured in-camera. The “perfect shot.” The unattainable dream. Everything else was just practice.
Oh also! AI is just another name for ML they are just trying to rebrand it for financial reasons. And the Apple iPhone — and Android too! — is absolutely lousy with AI/ML on every single fucking photo you take. But that doesn’t count according to Meta’s new tag? That seems… BS?
I do not have pithy point here and I can see all sides and you can see why I stopped that Twitter Threads conversation and just moved it to a nice, naval-gazing essay without any pat opinions.
Semi-related: Since Megan died last week, people have been posting photos of her. Photos I’ve never seen. And I love it. And I have had a habit since the early internet of downloading photos of my friends and saving them. Forever. But I am coming to realize, as the years go by, that as the years go by the photos I have taken of the person-in-question and the photos other people have taken, all get lumped into the same folder and I am not as capable of remembering which is which. Like two years back? Easy to say “Yeah I took that one” and “oh that one I grabbed from Facebook.” But twenty years later? Thirty? Those memories get hazy. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that every one of the (checks folder structure) 569 friends folders — and probably some other folders like rock shows, trips and bars — should, in actuality, have a “taken by me” and “taken by others” subfolder. Because it’s obvious not but it won’t be obvious in, like, 20 years. And it doesn’t really matter, but I have once or twice, in similar, recent situations, accidentally claimed a photo is one that I shot when, in fact, it wasn’t. I don’t feel great about this. But my god, the labor of rectifying the situation. It is probably, mmm, gonna say four-five days of work? Is it worth it? Feels.. insane?
(Man that double “as the years go by” was so good).
And as I was adding photos of Megan to my Megan folder, I was reminded I went through this not too long ago with Annie, with Andy. And also there’s like this sad ritual to the whole thing: the last time I will be adding photos to this person’s folder. They’re dead now, they’re gone. And now their watch has ended. And now this folder is no longer a dropbox, it’s an archive. And there’s something really sad about that.
On Monday I got 100% on my two new daily map tests: Native American Tribes and Native American Indian Reservations. The tribes one is sadly only the top 12 or so major tribal groups, not the hundreds of individual tribes, boy I would love that on a map. And my god I thought there were more than nine reservations in the US. That is horrifying. Reminds me of a Tweet Thread I saw last night
Daddy school last night was intense. We recapped our weeks-long pause in the Renaissance now and I checked to see that Jane did know what class was, and understood the rise of the merchant class and the concept of trade. So we progressed into the slow balancing of power between the nobility and the merchant class. Which meant we had to talk about power, power dynamics, the stupid shit that goes on in our brain about power jealousy, the ability of power to corrupt. And it is very hard to walk a fine line between teaching her the various theories of power and corruption: power corrupts, power reveals, power tempts. I used the example of giving her a sip of Ginger Ale, and how happy that would make her. But then her friend’s dad gives her friend a whole can of ginger ale, how does she feel now. And you could see her get it, it was so fascinating: I was happy with my one sip of ginger ale, why I am I pissed now?
So then we talked about the Magna Carta and revolution and how in each country that used to have a king or queen, there was some rebalancing of power. She would then list off countries and I would use my right hand to indicate how smooth the transition was, and my left to indicate how well it turned out. I took a decidedly westerncentric view here and I am not embarrassed. England? Both hands up high. Russia? Both hands down low. France? Right hand down low left hand up high. Etc.
I know that sounds like a lot. And insane. I am not.. like.. presurring her? It’s 45 ish minutes, 3 nights a week, and optional. And half the time is spent recapping the last lesson. And she loves it. Like the presence of the stuffies really helps: she can pretend they are learning, she already knows, and she is the teaching assistant. Makes it less embarrassing for her.
The other thing I noticed the last two Daddy Schools is that she paces constantly. At first I thought she wasn’t paying attention. But in the recap portion last night, we went over stuff from the previous session, and she was a pacing machine the last session, which I thought was an abject failure. But it wasn’t! She had absorbed! So many ramifications for her learning style. How’s she gonna learn at a desk? And I guess I’m the same? I realized recently I hate Zooms and Google Meets even with the camera off because I have to sit at my desk and I am so better on calls while pacing.
Be awesome if we could find a way to let her learn while pacing without, you know, DIYing it, because, you know, public schools need our support, etc. etc.
BUT ANYWAY.
Oh hey look an ambient playlist is done. It took like forever to make this so I guess I missed out on the Andre 3000 discourse entirely but I do rather enjoy that album and still do occasionally listen to it. Super into the new Tara Jane O’Neil it is not an ambient album, per se, but it is all over the map and a wonderful expansion of the repretoire of the famed Half Cocked actress who, I am proud to say, follows me on Mastodon omg suddenly I miss Mastodon.
Have a good holiday and I will see you tomorrow xoxo.
is is selfish to start a new thread for a new topic? probably. i have so many feelings about image integrity that all trace back to photography school. i only printed full frame and for a time used negative holders that had been filed down. cropping was for people who “were too lazy to get closer”.
anyways, as a user, i would love to click an icon on an image and get a modal that gives me more complete information about how AI was used.
this might be a good option for a wide flat brim straw hat: https://www.sandiegohat.com/products/perfect-unisex-el-campo-ultrabraided-sun-hat?variant=45557777268906&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwg8qzBhAoEiwAWagLrJfh7dycZ6PSkbCUHU3wJDZA0auJnJnfHB7aaYwfZgKIChtOak9fkBoC1r0QAvD_BwE