Wild Last Boss 2, episode 7

Turns out The Little Big Bad Water Devil’s real motive was a long-standing unrequited crush on Cute L’il Devil Gal from four episodes back, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself to save her from the sad fate of all devils. Meanwhile, Our Underpowered Hero watches His Cute Little Angel Crush vanquish something that’s way out of his league, but shows his worth by having the guts to man up and talk to Our Friendly Neighborhood Supervillainess. Lots of random plot droppings are scattered throughout.

Verdict: I think “scattered” is the right word for this episode. It’s all over the place in tone and setting.

(Cute L’il Big Devil Gal is unrelated)

Vortex Farce, episode 6

Our Mild-Service Heroines are really turning out to be not particularly bright. They’ve met the enemy, learned her nature and her goals, and their problem-solving consists of “if we can’t punch her in the face, let’s find a way to punch her in the face!”.

On the bright side, Our Guardian Shota has now found His Backup Future Waifu. A bit young at the moment, which is probably the only thing that kept her from pinning him down and making him a man, right there on the beach.

Verdict: they really, really shouldn’t rely on the storytelling to carry this show. They managed to reach an island full of supplies and restock on food and water, but what they really needed was a change of clothes and a long, lingering bath scene.

Isekai Kinky Porn Game Cheat Harem, episode 7

A: “You got your character development in my fan-service.”

B: “You got your fan-service in my character development.”

AB: “Heeeeeeeey!”

This week, Our Cheating Hero spends some quality time with His Jiggling Angel Maid, and unlike last week, we get to see more of her body than his. Fortunately.

Verdict: M.A.O is good casting for busty maid gal, and the show continues to have better art and animation than expected. Most of the other gals are missing this week, though, except for Naughty Step-Mama.

MP Repo Fairy MP, episode 6

Give a gal some mana, and she goes all berserker on ya. Next week, Our Lending Hero needs to learn how to talk her down when the battle’s done.

In other news, Our Jackass Party continues their ignominous slide into oblivion and irrelevance, in front of another team of adventurers who turn out to have quite a high opinion of Our Boy. Refreshing that not everyone in this world is a jackass.

Verdict: Our Much-Rejected Samurai Gal somehow manages to gainax a bit while wearing a steel breastplate, but I don’t mind. She’s at least wearing sensible armor for a frontline fighter, and she can stand upright without the back pain that surely afflicts the two Jackass Gals. Bonus points for adding new cute gals who like Our Hero and resent the way he was treated.

(unrelated busty half-naked elf would fit right in)

Is it a side quest or a secret mission? Only the next episode can tell for sure!

RTX Spark laptop: Windows-only

Developers working with AI like Linux. Nvidia built an AI PC platform, mostly released as laptops. Developers successfully put Linux on it. Everything works great, including AI, unless you plug it in. The power management subsystem is Windows-only.

Amazon Eats

A while back, Amazon bought a stake in Grubhub, and eventually added it to the Prime perks. Thursday they switched over to Uber Eats. (I found out in email before this story was up)

Grubhub sucked, so I don’t mind, but I never liked Uber Eats, either, so I doubt I’ll be taking advantage of this benefit.

(I also didn’t know that Amazon is invested in Deliveroo in the UK; I have an account for that, in case I ever visit my office again)

Magic 8 Ball says: two years of complete suck.

Flatcat & Sword-Daddy 2, episode 6

This week, Blue Cat slavers make the worst, and last, mistake of their lives. But first, Fran in a swimsuit!

Our Adorable Warrior Kitten might be the cutest murderhobo in the business, but in her mind, slavers are no better than monsters, and she treats them accordingly. Then she rescues the victims, who include some visiting royals around her age.

Verdict: there’s enough meat in this story arc to finish out the season. Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…

Rerun’s Special Magic 2, episode 5

Our Tied-Up Sidekicks quickly demonstrate that they let that happen, so Our Returning Hero arrived just in time to discover that they didn’t need his help. Pity, I was hoping someone would gag Tsuntail and Bunnyboy and then spend a few minutes forcing Ice Princess into erotic poses and taking pictures. Oh, well.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to remember who the people were who showed up to help clean up the streets, but they didn’t do anything that would make me want to see more of them. Guess that was just to fill some screen time before the trope fight. Once that’s over, we get a hastily-conjured macguffin and a sudden world-ending event. Or is it?

Verdict: (checks episode number) pretty sure next week will involve another major ass-pull. Meh.

Elder Dominated Busty Elf Gal’s secret weapon is slightly more subtle than her main batteries: pheromones. Her attempt to demonstrate them on Our Susceptible Mayor is quickly intercepted by Our Very Possessive Legal-Loli Demon Gal, though, and then Night-Knight Gal Karen slowplays her pocket aces. The road to a type 1 Tenchi solution is hard, it seems.

Next week, a new player enters the game, who is definitely not a haremette.

Verdict: still delivering on its promises.

(I can’t speak for her show, but I have to say that Amona deserves a lot more fan-art)

A Malfoid Movie…

Someone on X posted a Mr. & Mrs. Smith movie poster for Harry and Miss Malfoy, so I responded with something that seemed obvious:

What I learned was that neither Krea 2 nor Qwen 2.1 knew what to do with the Unicode “¾” fraction glyph, but both automatically composed it if you asked for “3/4”.

The Book Of Poses

I’ve been having good success using Strata’s more capable LLMs to generate random art styles, so I thought I’d see how it would do at generating sexy poses. I was careful with my wording, so I wasn’t getting too many refusals, but then I found out that there was a built-in uncensoring switch, documented but hidden under an obscure name, --experimental-speed-projection. Add that to the setup line, and refusals go way, way down. This is good, because you get to use a large LLM without having to deal with the issues often introduced when someone uses uncensoring and abliteration techniques to create a new model. As a bonus, the feature enables a switch in the GUI, so you can simply turn it off if you detect any issues with a particular request.

Anyway, I built a library of 608 distinct prompts that produced mostly distinct poses. I deduped them in my usual way, but I needed to actually render them to see if different text produced substantially identical results. Which it often did.

A bit of LLM-assisted tinkering produced a script that mostly clustered similar poses, but I have to tweak the variables to reduce the number of false associations. Meanwhile, here’s some of the test outputs.

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Isekai Space Merc Harem, episode 5

Our Heroes pull off their secret strategy, single-handedly turning the tide of battle in their favor while making a bundle. Then they get the hell out of Dodge while the getting’s good, to avoid Our Hot Blonde Officer’s relentless attempts to nail down Our Happy Harem Hero Hiro with a proper job.

Soon they’ll find out just how relentless she really is. Next week, a new star system, with new problems and new hot chicks. Shame they had to leave Hot Guild Gal behind.

Verdict: they trimmed down the crystal-entity stunt quite a bit, which I don’t think hurts the story at all. The battle scenes were animated but not terribly interesting; they got the job done, but without much in the way of flair. It was oddly trivial for them to take out actual warships compared to their usual pirates.

(definitely not a flat-elf!)

Isekai Solo Worshipper, episode 4

First Waifu, unlocked. Our Worshipping Hero pulls a skill out of his ass that not only defeats the out-of-their-league monster in a ridiculously flashy way, but warms up His Fiery Half-Elf Partner and sends him so close to the grave that he earns a scolding from His Personal Goddess and unlocks a new power. Thanks to an accidental confession that he doesn’t really regret, Half-Elf Waifu is now entitled to be jealous of Cute Guild Gal’s affectionate attention. Thanks to an accidental full-frontal exposure, though, I don’t think she really needs to worry about competition right now.

Verdict: Half-Elf in the streets, Half-Demon in the sheets! Forget the dungeon, son, and take her up on that room-sharing option, pronto!

Little Monsters, After-Action Report

Based on the last four years of data at the new house, I did not expect a lot of trick-or-treaters, so I bought a lot less candy (mainly stuff I’m willing to eat rather than the usual variety packs), and still had a lot left over.

Final count: 24. Interestingly, unlike the four previous years, every single kid was black. That’s not a criticism or complaint; they were exactly the same sort of cheerful middle-class American kids I’ve seen previously, with their parents watching from the street as they hit the houses. I suspect the shift comes not from any sudden change in neighborhood demographics, but from white parents being scared into doing only sponsored “trunk-or-treat” and other “safe” events. Shame, really; it was great weather for it.

(Crunchy was running late today; very trick-or-treat-ish)

Wild Last Boss 2, episode 6

Our Cute Little Angel faces more challenge than expected, but fortunately she’s backed up by Our Would-Be-Boyfriend’s Hero Party. Meanwhile, Our Emotionless Robot Maid uses her partner as a human shield, in one of the shoutier scenes this show has produced.

Verdict: an amusing little sidequest, but we get more of this next week, and the show’s now half over. How much will the main story advance?

Vortex Farce, episode 5

This week, Bouncy Veggie Gal hacks the CGI robot head until she runs out of coffee and brain fog sets in, which leads Our Shota Hero to make a batch of horrific fake herbal coffee that somehow perks her up anyway. Then all her efforts turn out to have been anticipated by Our Hot Villainess, and now she has to cyber-dive into Shota’s mind to try to rescue his chastity mech connection.

We do not get to see the inner thoughts of a 13-year-old boy stranded on a desert island with four hot chicks. We do, however, get to finally meet up with Villainess and learn that she wants him for his body. To make it her body. Sure, let’s run with that.

Verdict: the production team doesn’t seem to be truly committed to the cheesecake the way Strike Witches and Vividred were. They seem to be relying on the storytelling, which is probably a big mistake. They should at least have had the other gals swim and do some laundry while Veggie Gal worked on the head.

(Hot Teen Villainess is unrelated; although, she’s closer to Shota’s age than his future waifu…)

Isekai Kinky Porn Game Cheat Harem, episode 6

This week, Mom Is My Wingman, plus The Lube Dungeon.

Verdict: speaking of not being committed, despite the promise that being doused in lube will make everyone increasingly aroused, there’s not so much as a stiff nipple protruding through damp clothing, just a hint of lace bra and a brief panty shot. All of the nudity comes from Our Cheating Hero, which is not appealing to me.

MP Repo Fairy MP, episode 5

Wow, they really padded this out in order to end the episode with the announcement of Our Lending Hero and Our Abandoned Samurai Gal’s new party. First they replayed a bunch of his scenes from last week, then they flashed back to her PoV scenes, which must have killed at least ten minutes.

Verdict: pacing, please. At least Samurai Gal is cute and busty. And Jackass Party #1 did not appear at all except as a silent montage, and Jackass Party #2 was escorted out of the show in a fairly permanent way.

(Ass-Guardian’s tsuntail is not impressed)

Toon Styling

My latest set of LLM-generated style prompts is cartoon-focused. Before sharing it on the SwarmUI Discord, I made sample images for each style (Krea 2 Turbo, same seed for all, prompt was “A cartoon catgirl chasing a cartoon mousegirl. $STYLE”

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A standalone Maomao Magical Mystery. Or is it?

No lease

Apple’s newly-announced 512 GB Mac Studio does not have a leasing option for its $22,000 - $30,000 sticker price. You can get 0% financing for 12 months, which is $1,800+ per month.

Admittedly, I would have turned down the lease option, too.

Double-checking the pace…

I watched the Space Merc Harem OP in slow motion, which confirmed the presence of Our Underaged Would-Be Haremette. This is important, because it means they weren’t just trying to speedrun things by showing off Our Versatile Robot Maid Haremette in the flash-forward in the first episode. Also it establishes that Our Horndog Hero Hiro has boundaries: she might be interested, but he won’t cross that line.

Also, beach episode.

(I’ll be curious if they follow the light-novel version in his interactions with Our Hot/Crazy Medical Researcher, who also has a brief OP appearance)

Feeling flush?

The folks at Meerschaum Market have a few items that demonstrate that the image of pipe smokers as refined, scholarly fellows is… exaggerated.

(I really, really don’t want to see a well-used instance of this particular design; meers tend to color starting with the shank and moving up the bowl, in colors ranging from orange to dark-brown…)

Dear Apple,

Please include a setting in the next release to automatically deny every app that requests permission to search for devices on the network. Don’t pop up a modal dialog, just reject the fuckers. I can count the number of apps that should have this permission on the fingers of one hand.

Six days before the election, I received a small, easily-missed postcard announcing a permanent change in my voting location. That was nice of them.

(um, Amazon, maybe this isn’t the best recommendation three days before Halloween?)

Flatcat & Sword-Daddy 2, episode 5

If you like number-crunching and level-ups, you’re in luck, because Fran spends most of the episode out cold, and Teacher is forced to watch as his prayers are answered by an unexpected helper. Most of the rest is exposition about the true nature of their enemy and how to escape before he blows himself up and takes Team Hero with him.

Verdict: as much as I like the novels this is based on, I honestly have little patience for the detailed skill-point and evolution tracking the genre indulges in. This time there were a lot of story reveals going on at the same time, but hopefully they’ve gotten it out of their system for a while, and can keep Our Adorable Little Catgirl conscious and cuddly.

Rerun’s Special Magic 2, episode 4

Oh, joy, a tournament arc. Oh, thank goodness, a terrorist attack that disrupts the tournament arc. And the dull politicking. Thank you, Mysterious Terrorist. Now if only the magic-master battling the terrorist didn’t treat it like a walk in the park with a friendly rival.

Verdict: bit of a chore, but at least we got to see Azest smiling and tied up. Not at the same time.

R.I.P Walter Koenig

I read his autobiography some years back. Three things still stick out in my memory:

1. When he accepted the role of Bester in Babylon 5, he insisted on adding a subtle physical disability. Watch how he moves his arms.
2. He attended a con not long after Bester debuted. Some fans had made a Psicop uniform, and he cheerfully wore it and cosplayed the show as Bester.
3. He had attended acting school with Werner Klemperer, and like many of his friends, tried to get him to do his Colonel Klink character, which he always refused. Until one day Klemperer caught him off guard and left him speechless with a drive-by Klink bit.

(Krea2 isn’t heavily celebrity-focused, but has at least a vague idea what to do with Pavel Chekov; pity it didn’t have even a tiny clue about Babylon 5)

Fallout 2…

The only guy in Latvia who knows how to upgrade PHP still hasn’t gotten around to fixing their package-tracking site yet. Fortunately, that package finally arrived Monday. Meanwhile, the package that’s coming from Ukraine reached the Dayton Post Office on the 16th and went silent. It finally went out for delivery on the 28th.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that the Ukrainian craftsman has hooked himself up as a marketplace vendor on Amazon US, with his most popular products warehoused by Amazon, so I could have gotten it with two-day Prime shipping, sigh. Well, one of the items, anyway; most of his stuff is only available on eBay, shipped from Ukraine, largely due to the personalization options that I have no interest in.

First you fold, then you crack

In news that should surprise no one, Apple’s first attempt at a phone with a folding display is:

A. an ergonomic nightmare, especially if you’re left-handed,

B. cracking pretty often now that it’s in the hands of consumers.

Never buy the first shipment of a brand new hardware design from anyone.

Doctors Without Boundaries

Or ethics. Médecins Sans Frontières “fired 18 staffers, following an internal investigation revealed 59 reports of sexual violence and exploitation, particularly involving women and young girls who are refugees from neighbouring Sudan.”