My co-worker's performance appraisal

 

These two weeks at the library we are having our performance appraisal meetings with the managers. I like to sign up for the last slot possible, trusting my co-workers to wear down these managers into a state of a weary complacency. It's probably a youngest child thing.

Today one of my early bird co-workers came out from their performance appraisal and sat down at the front desk. I went up to them and said:

"I know you were in there complaining about how I always accuse you of complaining about me in your performance appraisal!"

I knew it wasn't true.

But it could be next year.

Before and after the graffiti

 

I have another photo roll for you today...

My library is hosting an art show for the area's public schools. There are freestanding frames holding a variety of art by everyone from First Graders to High Schoolers. It's all lovely stuff and a great deal of fun to look at.

Out of curiosity one day I took some pictures of this kid art and then made AI versions of it, gussing it up into various versions of slick refinement and hyperrealism. They were neat images, but it wasn't really a proper use and respect for the original art, so I deleted them. 

Later that week, though, I was down hiking in Shangri-La and came upon a particularly good graffiti wall. As is my wont I took a bunch of pictures there. Later, looking them over, I wondered if... and I decided that art illegally spray painted in public places is a kind of up-for-grabs fair use.

Sort of like a blog post freely plopped onto the Internet.

Uh oh.

A fun thing about graffiti is that it starts out already a lot like AI, with all its borrowed idioms and fascination with the collision of abstraction and realism. Below you will find a full roll, so to speak, of before and after graffiti pictures. Sometimes there are two "after" pictures if I couldn't bear to choose between my many versions.

Drinking vermouth with Bob

 

Bob Dylan and I got together to drink vermouth. "I can't be drinking so much anymore. I'm in my eighties now." Bob said. "So let's taste vermouths."

"That's still drinking, I'm pretty sure." I replied.

Bob shrugged and sort of waved, like, why worry about these insignificant details.

So, sure, we can drink vermouth. Bob is off soon on a big tour of Europe, and, like he said, he's in his eighties. Who knows if we'll ever go out drinking together again!

Not that I told him this. He does not look kindly upon sentimentality. I merely ordered us a couple of Antica Formula Vermouths, by Carpano. This is not the vermouth you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet.

"This is not the vermouth you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet." I commented, sipping delicately.

Bob made no response. He doesn't respond during the first drink. He only gestures during the second. And he can do anything from grunting to becoming loquacious during the third. 

For our second vermouth we had Mancino Rosso Amaranto Vermouth. I've never even seen this one before. They charged us a lot for it. It was pretty good though.

"This is pretty good." I said.

"If you like oregano." Bob observed. 

I guess I was wrong. Bob does talk during the second drink, but only about oregano.

"I like oregano." I said.

Bob made some kind of body language that suggested there are certainly worse things than oregano, and he took another sip.

"I listened to a podcast about your Christian years." I told Bob.

"Why would you do that?" Bob asked.

"I thought they were leftists. I love leftist podcasts."

"The left is always doomed." Bob said. "They either lose and are destroyed, or they win and move to the right."

"You're no longer a Christian and now you're an anarchist."

"Is that what the podcast said?" Bob asked with a stirring interest.

"No." I replied. "They said you absorbed the fevered Christianity into your geniusy maw and carried on with it all now as a part of you. And that as far as motivation you currently love your audience and have wearily given yourself to them."

Bob expressed a kingly touch of disdain at the idea.

"A winks as good as a nod to a blind man." I said. 

We were now on our fifth vermouth. This one was a bit like what you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet. "I'm going back to the Caprano." I added.

Bob gestured that he would prefer to do that as well.

"What were we talking about?" Bob asked.

"Your revolutionary ideas." I replied.

"I'm a rich man." Dylan said.

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." I quoted. It's my go-to New Testament quote.

Bob chuckled and smiled a tiny bit despite himself.

By the sixth drink he always starts to like me.

Misinformation times three

 

I hate misinforming people. I did it twice this week, and the incidents haunt me.

Being haunted by giving misinformation is probably a helpful trait for a person working at a library, but it's all a bit much for a person living... life.

In the first episode, a library patron was idly curious about some small colored dots on the books in The Friends of the Library Bookstore. They wanted to know if the dots had any meaning. The books in there have default prices or, rarely, price stickers. The dots don't mean anything about price, and I told the person that the dots are left over from other collections and had no meaning.

BUT THEY DO!!!!!

ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Get this: It turns out that the tiny dots are part of The Friends of the Libraries secret code system denoting how long the books have been for sale!

The second episode occurred this afternoon. A man came into the library with a medium sized German Shephardish dog. There was a bit of a yelp from the dog as he came in. He was on a leash. The man walked with him to the elevator. I asked a nearby manager what our official policy was on confronting dog wielding patrons, but all we could remember was that the policy was a bit... complicated. I walked back out to the desk, looked towards the man and he quickly left the library. Several minutes later the man and dog returned, and as they crossed in front of me I said "You can't bring a dog into the library."

The man replied "He's a service dog."

I said "He needs to have a vest of some kind."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I learned that a dog does not need to have a vest. 

We can only ask two questions. 

1. Is that a service animal?

If they say yes we must accept the answer even if it is obviously not true. We can also ask:

2. What service is your animal trained to assist with?

It is not advised to ask the second question.

I also learned that only two animals can be service animals- dogs and pygmy horses.

Pygmy Horses!!! I was super excited, and somewhat insulted that one could have a pygmy horse as a service animal, but not a cat or a bunny.

But then I learned that the pygmy horse loophole was closed and one can only have a dog as a service animal.

Later in the evening the man with the service dog (who the man almost certainly lied about being a service animal, even though after the one yelp the dog turned out to be pretty well behaved) was on the public phone yelling angrily at someone.

So I went up to the dog and said "I'm sorry, but you can't bring a person into the library."

Actually, I didn't do that.

I misinformed you.

And now I will have to pay the price.

My friend the plagiarization of everything

 

I have had my critical things to say here about AI. But we're not going to go into all that today.

Instead we're just going to indulge my favorite current AI magic trick. 

Is my goal to impress upon you the power of AI? Is it to say "If I can pull these tricks off in minutes, what limits are there to what people will be able to do with it soon?" Is it to show that our very understanding of the world is imperiled?

No. 

It's all smoke and mirrors here.

But that doesn't mean I don't love it.

Pixie dust and Pinocchio.

Many pictures incoming. 

But first, what will we be looking at?

I took a short series of pictures while wandering around in a Joann Fabrics store. These are mainly pictures of cheap, mass produced crafts; fake flowers, little statues, bulk paintings.

Then I Blue Fairy'd them!

I imposed some rules on myself. I decided I would do one version for every picture I took. So while my souped up version is cherry picked from multiple attempts, I did a version here for every ridiculous thing I photographed at the Joann Fabrics. Perhaps this is my way of keeping the trick honest. I am not showing the best of what this trick can do, more the baseline.

Here are the before and afters: