TCRT 10: The TCRT Strikes Back (retroactively titled TCRT10: Episode V – The TCRT Strikes Back)

If the dream was in third person, he counts as both.

An aunt of mine went through a gruelling brain operation last week to improve her arm movement and bring about improved quality-of-life. Initial results seem to be that it has been a success .

But... whilst traveling home from the hospital she fell and broke her leg in two places . She's now back in hospital - around two hundred miles from home - awaiting two operations. The brain operation people need to maintian checks on her so they're having to visit her in the hospital whilst she prepares ready for these other ops.

Strawbin' hell.

Jesus mate, rough luck there.

That's dreadful, are you sure her name isn't Calamity Jane or something?

That is a bit of bad luck following good, jawa. Hope she's okay and those operations are a success.

Thanks, guys - we're so grateful and happy that the brain part appears to have created some big improvements for her arm movement.

It's a real shame that the follow-up incident has happened, but we're hoping that she can have the initial op (to attach some sort of metal frame to her leg) very soon; then her leg can heal a bit so that the subsequent fix operation can take place - ideally nearer to her home rather than in central London.

Is she older and frail or was it a very bad fall? Just seems extraordinary to get that amount of work done on a trip. Saying that I twisted my ankle two years ago and it still irritates me every so often, probably should have had that checked out.

DarkRula wrote:

Ironhide wrote:

DarkRula wrote:

Tsunade wrote:

DarkRula wrote:Dreams under covid are just plain weird. Thursday night it was my consciousness moving between brains floating in a glass box - like balloons packed into tight space. Friday it was just a white light. Last night was perhaps the weirdest, where I'd somehow broken a game and my ability to sleep, so every time I closed my eyes to try getting to sleep, my mind just brought back up that image of the broken game.

Can't wait for tonight.

Reminds me of the sorts of dreams I had when I was on a lot of morphine when i was in ICU. Really strange and unusual.

Just absolute surreal stuff.

I once had a dream in which I was being ritualistically murdered by garden gnomes.

No illness or morphine was involved either.

Wow. That must have been a fun one to witness.

It was pretty horrible really, could feel every stab from their little spears.

Was round about the same time as I had a vivid dream where I was shagginng Rose McIver (Liv in iZombie) which was far more pleasant

Ironhide wrote:Was round about the same time as I had a vivid dream where I was shagginng Rose McIver (Liv in iZombie) which was far more pleasant

Human McIver or zombie McIver?

Johnny Ryall wrote:Is she older and frail or was it a very bad fall? Just seems extraordinary to get that amount of work done on a trip...

Yeah, she is aged 77 and carrying a bit of weight. The brain op meant that her brain has temporarily "expanded" a wee bit and this has side effects; including upon her balance. She was at the train station with my uncle and he'd assisted her to sit down - but she kind of didn't sit down and fell over to the side with her leg caught under her. Dreadfully bad luck.

It seems that the appropriate hospital staff were unable to attend to her quickly enough and so the break(s) were not promptly managed. Apparently the op to affix a metal frame will help set the leg back into more of a proper position; the blood blisters can then heal and the main operation can take place. Fingers crossed!

Johnny Ryall wrote:...I twisted my ankle two years ago and it still irritates me every so often, probably should have had that checked out.

It could be worth it, Johnny. A few years back my brother-in-law had probs with his foot and, after being x-rayed, it was found that a chip of one was loose in it. The doctor indicated that the damage appeared to have been done around twenty years ago (with the bit of bone finally coming loose) and the likely cause was traced back to a work injury around that time that had been recorded. A small op sorted things out.

So, yeah, it might be beneficial to get it looked at, dude.

Just got my car tax renewal in.

£520 for the year
It's only a 2 litre Diesel Engine!

Moggy wrote:

Ironhide wrote:Was round about the same time as I had a vivid dream where I was shagginng Rose McIver (Liv in iZombie) which was far more pleasant

Human McIver or zombie McIver?

Zombie of course.

Ironhide wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Ironhide wrote:Was round about the same time as I had a vivid dream where I was shagginng Rose McIver (Liv in iZombie) which was far more pleasant

Human McIver or zombie McIver?

Zombie of course.

Josh Widdicombe was 2 years old when this happened.

Ironhide wrote:

DarkRula wrote:

Ironhide wrote:I once had a dream in which I was being ritualistically murdered by garden gnomes.

No illness or morphine was involved either.

Wow. That must have been a fun one to witness.

It was pretty horrible really, could feel every stab from their little spears.

Was round about the same time as I had a vivid dream where I was shagginng Rose McIver (Liv in iZombie) which was far more pleasant

Ooh, I hate it when you can feel what happens in dreams. Makes them far too real. Not that I'd mind. During good stuff.

I got access to the full fat Dall-E AI image creation thing, and while it produces much better looking images, it's still pretty hamstrung by their use policies. Apparently requesting an image of Mick Lynch punching Boris Johnson in the face is not allowed as it is a violent image. Fat chance of me ever getting to see what kind of debauched imagery this might come up with for an extreme metal album cover, which was another thing I wanted to try. Unsurprisingly, anything sexy is also right out.

I used to think I was pretty pro ethics in machine learning, but I guess I'm a libertarian now.

Knoyleo wrote:I got access to the full fat Dall-E AI image creation thing, and while it produces much better looking images, it's still pretty hamstrung by their use policies. Apparently requesting an image of Mick Lynch punching Boris Johnson in the face is not allowed as it is a violent image. Fat chance of me ever getting to see what kind of debauched imagery this might come up with for an extreme metal album cover, which was another thing I wanted to try. Unsurprisingly, anything sexy is also right out.

I used to think I was pretty pro ethics in machine learning, but I guess I'm a libertarian now.

Ooooh... I'd love to have a go with it.
I'm on the waitlist but nothing yet.

LewisD wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:I got access to the full fat Dall-E AI image creation thing, and while it produces much better looking images, it's still pretty hamstrung by their use policies. Apparently requesting an image of Mick Lynch punching Boris Johnson in the face is not allowed as it is a violent image. Fat chance of me ever getting to see what kind of debauched imagery this might come up with for an extreme metal album cover, which was another thing I wanted to try. Unsurprisingly, anything sexy is also right out.

I used to think I was pretty pro ethics in machine learning, but I guess I'm a libertarian now.

Ooooh... I'd love to have a go with it.
I'm on the waitlist but nothing yet.

Chuck me some ideas and I can drop them in if you want.

Just remembered there is a dedicated Dall-E thread, will post results in there.

Knoyleo wrote:I got access to the full fat Dall-E AI image creation thing, and while it produces much better looking images, it's still pretty hamstrung by their use policies. Apparently requesting an image of Mick Lynch punching Boris Johnson in the face is not allowed as it is a violent image. Fat chance of me ever getting to see what kind of debauched imagery this might come up with for an extreme metal album cover, which was another thing I wanted to try. Unsurprisingly, anything sexy is also right out.

I used to think I was pretty pro ethics in machine learning, but I guess I'm a libertarian now.

Yeah, DALL-E 2 is pretty good at making coherent images of concepts it understands, but has a somewhat smaller domain of understanding than other models as well as that very aggressive content filter on top.

Their content filter isn't really anything to do with ethics in AI of course - there's nothing inherently unethical about using e.g. violent keywords to generate e.g. horror imagery - it's about OpenAI controlling their branding and marketing. As they improve DALL-E they want to license it to corporations and they don't want it to be associated with certain kinds of output.

If you're interested in trying models with slightly better "understanding" and fewer filters, at the price of somewhat lower coherency, then take a look at Craiyon (formerly "DALL-E Mini" but nothing to do with OpenAI) or apply to the Stable Diffusion beta for open source models. (Midjourney can also be pretty good and is less filtered than DALL-E, but it's closed source.)

Latent Diffusion can also be pretty good. It has the interesting property of (almost) understanding what words appearing as text in images should look like - so prompts like "A robot holding a sign saying 'Hello'" will work (but the sign will say like HELLLO or HELOO some of the time).

site23 wrote:Latent Diffusion can also be pretty good. It has the interesting property of (almost) understanding what words appearing as text in images should look like - so prompts like "A robot holding a sign saying 'Hello'" will work (but the sign will say like HELLLO or HELOO some of the time).

I read a recent NewScientist article about how Dall-E amends prompts to counteract bias, seemingly uncovered by feeding it prompts like "A person holding a sign saying", which would then generate images of say a black person holding a sign with the word "black" written on it, suggesting the prompt was amended to "A person holding a sign saying black".