The above photo is not real. It’s the product of artificial intelligence. I believe, from what I read, that all it takes is a text description of what’s in your mind, entered into a software program, and voila, there’s your picture. Another one:

Who needs a camera any more? Who needs creativity? Also:

The point is, there used to be the adage, “The camera doesn’t lie”. Well, I’m afraid that doesn’t hold any more. Completely over-ruled. You cannot tell whether any image is real, altered or entirely false now. Even video can be completely faked now. This is quite worrying.

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Maybe it’s time I came clean about one of my images.

I’m quite proud of this, but I have to confess it’s a composite of two images. I did this about 15 years ago:

The above right picture lacked something, so I cut the girl in the cloak from the group on the left and pasted it, twice, into the empty street. I spent a lot of time adding the shadows and adjusting the size of the girls so they are in proportion to the street. I also duplicated one of the girls, adding it back in, changing the colour of the cloak, adjusting the size, adding the shadows and adjusting the height above the pavement so they aren’t floating. So, although it’s a composite, I’m happy to show my work.

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What to do? I bought a new mattress about a month ago, and I hate it!

I bought it on-line as the company not only delivered, they took the old mattress away for me. Naturally, I didn’t have a chance to try it before I bought, but I didn’t think it would be a problem.

But what I’m finding is that I feel as if I’m having to climb up a slope from a soft edge to a hard middle of the bed. It’s listed as a medium hardness, but as I say, it’s too soft on the edge and too hard in the middle.

So I guess I’ll just have to phone the company’s 1 800 number and ask what to do. Damn, I don’t want to have to deal with this. I just wanted a clean changeover.

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CHAOS! I used to be an optimist. I used to think all would be well. I used to think science and engineering would produce solutions to the world’s problems.

But I’ve lost hope. I truly believe we are seeing the decline of civilisation. I truly believe that the money motive is overriding common sense, leading to destruction of the environment in every respect. The oceans are being polluted so badly as to be destroyed. Plastic pollution is growing by the year. Fish stocks are declining. Pesticides and fertilisers are polluting the soils. Animals and insects are declining. Forests are dying. The weather is turning against us. Wars are growing. Famines are growing. Viruses and bacterial infections are increasing. The Earth is biting back.

I’m afraid I’m a bad pessimist now.

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I’ve just finished watching a Netflix Japanese TV series called Japan Sinks. Bloody hell, what a joke. I had to finish it, just out of morbid fascination, but is this how Japanese people really behave? All the government committee meetings are punctuated by “We must do out best!” and “We must try harder!”

The story is that undersea seismic movements result in almost the entire Japanese chain of island sinking beneath the waves. They have to find a way to move 120 million people to other countries. I’m glad to say that Australia finally comes good and agrees to take 10 million or so. I’d like to think it would be possible, but I don’t think so. As I said, this is a deeply racist country.