Category Archives: Art/Style

Happy Winter Solstice

Posted on by


ChatGPT: “The solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, was celebrated in many pre-Christian cultures. Festivals like Yule in Scandinavian regions and Saturnalia in Rome marked this time with feasts, gift-giving, and decorations—elements that later found their way into Christmas traditions. When Christianity spread, many pagan practices were adapted to ease the transition and make the new religion more familiar. December 25th, chosen to celebrate Christ’s birth, aligns closely with solstice festivals, though the exact date of Jesus’ birth isn’t known.”

Thanks to James Nelson

DALL-E

Posted on by

This is how ChatGPT describes DALL-E:

“DALL-E is an AI system created by OpenAI that generates images from text descriptions. Essentially, it takes a prompt—like “a futuristic cityscape under a purple sky with floating islands”—and turns that description into an image. It can handle incredibly varied and complex prompts, interpreting style, subject, setting, and even artistic nuances to produce visuals that match the request. […] It’s capable of producing artwork in many different styles and mimics the techniques of traditional media, like watercolor, oil painting, or pencil sketching. […] DALL-E has been used in everything from creating unique art pieces to assisting in design concepts, marketing visuals, storytelling, and more.”

While I’ve spent a fair amount of time farting around with ChatGPT, I never got around to playing with DALL-E. Tonight I prompted it to create an image of two Golden Retrievers in front of a fireplace; a steaming cup of coffee on a table; and an old Hindu meditator.


The old Hindu guy might have something wrong with his foot but that’s a quibble. I find this technology so amazing I have no idea what to say about it. A new sort of doodling, perhaps.

NEXUS: Religion

Posted on by

Yuval Noah Harari begins his “history of information networks” talking about books as a type of technology, the Bible being the most successful example. And the Catholic Church as one of the most powerful networks.

After his death, Jesus became the subject of one of the most remarkable branding campaigns in history. […] The story of Jesus managed to have a much bigger impact on history than the person of Jesus.

While most Christians were not physically present at the Last Supper, they have heard the story so many times, and they have seen so many images of the event, that they “remember” it more vividly than they remember most of the family dinners in which they actually participated.

Religions always claim to be an objective and eternal truth rather than a fictional story invented by humans.

The Bible as a single holy book didn’t exist in biblical times. King David and the prophet Isaiah never saw a copy of the Bible. […] no two ancient Bibles were identical.

Catholic theology accepted that Jesus told us to love our enemies, but explained that burning heretics was an act of love, because it deterred additional people from adopting heretical views, thereby saving them from the flames of hell.

The first rule of changing church teachings is that you never admit to changing church teachings.

Religions throughout history claimed a nonhuman source for their holy books; soon that might be a reality. Attractive and powerful religions might emerge whose scriptures are composed by AI. Pg 209

The Bible had a profound effect on billions of people, even though it was a mute document. Now try to imagine the effect of a holy book that not only can talk and listen but can get to know your deepest fears and hopes and constantly mold them.