I thought this image that I made with Stable Diffusion would make a cool book cover. I call it, Working on the AI. In the foreground, a person is tinkering with the brain-like folds of the artificial intelligence’s circuits. The room is composed of memory banks and processor cores. As with the other SD images featuring a brain, this one is also based on my fMRI brain scans.
This post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk style image used my brain’s fMRI scan to inspire the face with red eyes and cables running along its hairless head. The lone person beneath it seems tired or defeated. It makes me think of a nightmare and choking on smoke or smog. Yet, there is that one bright light in the upper right that gives hope to an otherwise desolate scene. It was created with Stable Diffusion, A1111, and controlnet.
I used controlnet in A1111 to feature an fMRI scan of my brain in this image that I call, Mind Manifesting Mind. In all of the images that I create using Stable Diffusion that feature a brain, I use screenshots of my brain’s fMRI scan that I created using Osirix for MacOS some years ago.
I was sad to learn today that Michael Bishop, the southern science fiction writer, had passed away about a month ago on Nov. 13 in LaGrange, Georgia, a small town near the Alabama border–north of Columbus and southwest of Atlanta. I had the honor of moderating a discussion panel called, “Engineering the Future and Southern Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy,” at the 2009 Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Conference in Atlanta that featured Mr. Bishop alongside F. Brett Cox, Paul Di Filippo, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Jack McDevitt, and Warren Rochelle. It was a lively discussion and I remember him being friendly and kind throughout the event where he was the Guest of Honor. The pictures above and below are from his GoH reading on Friday, June 12.
Y and I finished watching the Attack on Titan (2013-2023) anime series tonight. The character of Survey Corp Commander Erwin Smith reminded of this resolute WWI soldier bronze statue by Coeur de Lion MacCarthy at Niagara Falls, Canada.
Considering wars past and present, AoT points out the irrationality and tribalism that propels these kinds of conflicts. It reflects the seeming inevitability of repeating past mistakes mired in violence and death. The rebooted Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) covers much of this ground, too. Even though the subject matter and mythologies in these series are different, they are clearly in dialog with one another regarding the human condition, free will, tribalism/social structures, and propensity for violence over dialog and compromise. Both seem to say that we are doomed to repeat
