#aiart prompt 1153: The eccentric painter, standing in front of his easel, looks towards the camera as he taps his brush on his palette. With a mischievous grin, “This is your bravery test.”

#aiart prompt 786: Grungy, gothic, bizarre marionettes against a poorly painted theatrical backdrop. Harsh lighting; high contrast; low depth of field; black and white.

It does amuse me a significant amount of curling is vehemently shouting while vigorously scrubbing a brush.

I’m reading The Maltese Falcon. The (presumed) protagonist chain smokes so hard that if he isn’t dead from being pumped full of lead, he’ll certainly be from all the cancer.

#aiart prompt 1152: Within a futuristic museum, within one of its myriad halls, near a display. The display is bright and verdant, sunset on the veldt, comprised of holographic animals projected into the room, against a curved view screen wall displaying the environment.

#aiart prompt 785: Abstract tree formed of liquid glass

Listening to Olympic event commentators like:

You may not like it, but this is what peak Olympics looks like:

#aiart prompt 1151: The cat, looking imperious, down its nose. Three quarters view; from below; close up. Dual-toned monochromatic, in a dark, reddish purple and a light green-yellow. High contrast, low depth of field. #caturday

#aiart prompt 784: Fractalsaurus Rex

One of the nice side-benefits of the new pc (limited though it might be): I can play Crusader Kings II, again, which I’ve not really been able to play in well over a year. I’m currently planning a wacky Levantine/Qarmatian/Republic run, centered in Ascalon.

#aiart prompt 1150: The pile grew, heaped upon the gorging flame, of discarded paintings; for lack of purity, for want of being good enough, for never quite meeting prerequisite demands: tossed out, so that none might be even modestly embrightened.

#aiart prompt 783: The dark forested countryside below, the night sky ablaze with stars above. Ground based stellar photography, the stars streaks due to long exposure time.

#aiart prompt 1149: Woman in a veil. Atmospheric, moody, outré, gothic, bizarre. Cyanotype, distressed, low depth of field, high contrast.

#aiart prompt 782: Mythological star chart on weathered vellum.

#aiart prompt 1148: He wore a suit and stovepipe hat; sat at the controls of the contraption, its spherical shell eerily lit around him, electricity arcing from coils mounted to the hull. As time began to melt, his face drew rictus with maniacal laughter.

#aiart prompt 781: Dragonrider against the storm. Baroque painting, oil on canvas. #DragonTuesday

Doomers, Neo-Luddites, Unicorn Theorists; my block-list grows.

#aiart prompt 1147: In black ink with red watercolor on beige: a gothic scene: the dragon perched on the manor house. #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 780: Out of body experience. Cyanotype; low depth of field; high contrast.

#aiart prompt 1146: A city of sand and stone; a city of bulky, tactile, retro tech; a woman wearing a half-cape and matching kepi walks near a street corner near an aged silo. Warm; low contrast; washed out.

#aiart prompt 779: Like dirty, cracked, and peeling vellum: a desolate landscape, as seen from above, of dried lakes and riverbeds, of burnt and blasted trees, of salted playa and fractured stone.

#aiart prompt 778: Cat in a top hat of quantum instability.

#aiart prompt 1145: The anthropomorphic cat wore a hooded cloak; she leaned back in a recessed doorway, watching the road for activity before heading out. The night was calm, the sandstone warm.

#aiart prompt 777: Yellowish orange blobs in thick, viscous black liquid. Weak ambient light. Low depth of field.

#aiart prompt 1144: Outré demonic portrait, three-quarters view, close up, looking away; blended with a blue plasma pattern. High contrast; low depth of field.

#aiart prompt 776: In cyan and magenta tones: beachfront idyll; dual-toned photography; low depth of field; spatial blurring; light burnout; randomly stretched horizontal distortion.

I’m seeing a whole lotta posts in Discover that appear to be geared towards either (1) suppressing voter turnout and/or (2) assuaging guilt over throwing us to the barbarians.

#aiart prompt 1143: Inverted, a channel of water running along the ceiling of a tunnel; a small boat traveling there in. A woman in the boat, her loose hair hanging downward.

#aiart prompt 775: A red leaved tree, tinged with frost, at night in low light. Swirled, abstract.

My first successful run in Woodland in #HeIsComing. I’m so ridiculously happy with how this went.

And thus finished the first book of 2026. Le Morte d’Arthur, at my ponderous pace, was read over the course of 28 days, averaging about 80 minutes a day; total read time: about 37 hours. At the font/text size settings, I read about 34 pages and hour, 46 a day.

I should be finished with Le Morte d’Arthur today, so cheesy medieval themed images should become rare, again. At least, until I decide to reread White’s Once and Future King.

#aiart prompt 1142: A woman—glowing, ephemeral, ghostly, angelic—in flowing white robes, head bowed, walks through dense woods, carrying in both hands a large, ornate goblet. Layered, within obscuring trees and brush in the foreground.

#aiart prompt 774: The dragon on wing over the countryside. Claymation, low depth of field, dramatic lighting. #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 773: Soaring upon the nether-light, scaled wings beat in flight; sinuous neck, horned pate: look away ere you meet your fate! For fire the wyrm doth bring, with it the stones doth sing. (cont) #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 1141: Viridian dragon flow. Minimalist; out-of-focus; chromatic distortion; cool lighting; light burn. #DragonTuesday

#aiart prompt 772: The hands see all

My email address—established so long ago it be old enough to drink—has a very deliberate period in it, separating my names. I get a lot of junk mail, phishing attempts, spam, etc. I set up, long ago, a label to auto apply to email sans that period as “Likely Fraud”. The label remains undefeated.

#aiart prompt 1140: The robot stood up at the town meeting to speak its mind; those sitting in the nearby pews turned their attention toward it. Rockwell-esque painting.

#aiart prompt 771: Molten drops of glass accrete into a miasma of refractive haze. Low depth of field, warm lighting.

The YouTube Bob Ross channel has been doing nonstop all-weekend streams for about the past month. It’s been a nice mental sanity preserver.

The “couldn’t be ass’d to vote”/“pox on both parties” lot are very vocal this weekend declaring the legitimacy of their tunnel-visioned decision to hurl us into this maelstrom of madness. A whole lot of folk would be alive, safe, unmolested right now if these chucklefucks weren’t myopic fuckheads.

I live out in the PNW backwoods, miles away from anywhere populated. Some yahoo in the area has set up an air raid siren, apparently, and is now occasionally signaling it. Concerning. Especially as we occasionally get thick fog.

#aiart prompt 1139: A quirky bespectacled man—wearing jeans, a white and red striped sweater, and a matching beanie—walks through a dense crowd of people in a fantastical setting.

#aiart prompt 770: Be it mackerel, be it void, be it tortoiseshell, be it orange, be it Persian, be it bengal, be it Siamese, be it sphinx: all these and more be noble and worthy.

#aiart prompt 1138: A woman in a rich, velvet, sage-colored medieval dress trimmed with gold braid stands near a balustrade on a covered stand, observing the jousts. Her hair is covered by an upswept, curved, white covering, which has a veil covering her face.

#aiart prompt 769: A skin of ice traps frosted leaves in the water basin. Macro lens, low depth of field; washed out, low contrast; cool lighting.

So, I’m pretty adamantly against capital punishment—beyond the immorality of state-sanctioned murder, it is costly and obviously doesn’t work as a deterrent—but I’m coming around to thinking that certain exceptions must need be made for the health of our democracy.

#aiart prompt 1137: Two martial artists, from the post apocalyptic year 200X, standing back-to-back, arms crossed. The gi one wears is fluorescent pink; the gi of the other is light blue. Stylized, within a circular backdrop cutout; neon punk.