Is a Picture really worth a Thousand Words?

A new way to test this theory!

Last week the arrival of an invitation to hop on to the Dall-E Bandwagon supercharged my ascent out of hypersomnia, the low point of my particular Cyclothymia Characteristics. I seem to be at this with a wavelength of 58 days from peak to peak. This the Brain Storms started early as this artistic platform, not to mention getting a pile of flutes turned and the imminent arrival of one of Marcel Dreux’s accordinas supercharged the ascent into the usual Hypomania part of the cycle.

Note - I have decided to embrace my Cyclothymia as a feature, not an illness in the now developing Neurodiversity sense. Its just the way I am, not something I am sick with. Google describes this well: Neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one "right" way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits.

Think about how the world viewed same-sex preferences as an illness or perversion and came up with the horrific torture known as Gay Conversion Therapy. Ugh! They are still at this in many parts of the world including the USA. Expect it to get worse if the Nat-Cs (Christian Nationalists, or Natijnalist Christians. Same thing. ) take over in the ways they are planning!

Autism is another mental condition that is usually considered a disorder. What needs to be cured are not the people who exhibit these characteristics in their personalities. Instead it is how society and individuals interact with these people that needs some therapy.

Not all mental conditions are a feature however. Some are definitely illnesses that need to be treated. Cyclothymia can sometimes make one feel sick and the same drugs used for Bipolar Disorders are crudely applied. It takes a long time to titrate the correct mix of drugs - something that I was unwilling to do. Cognitive Behavoral Therapy is another method applied with some “success” for some. I have found that this doesnt work in the long term for me and thus I have decided to simply accept my Cyclothymia. This acceptance actually stabilizes it and for the first time in 17 years I can accurately predict when I will peak and valley.

Cyclothymia is described as Bipolar Disorder’s Gentle Cousin. We once recently asked the great psychiatrist Kevin Carr what is the difference between Cyclothymia and Bipolar. His answer: “One remains Sane with Cyclothymia”. We asked him to define Sanity in this context. He clarified this and described the boundary between Sanity and Insanity in this context as whether or not one was a danger to oneself and others, or delusional. We asked him to define Delusional. He cited an example of the latter: “Its like when that person starts telling you that his Television spoke to him Personally, ordering him to do something stupid or dangerous, such as attack the Capital on January 6th.”

Back to Yesterday: I immediately wore myself out running fast 24/7 and blew out the mental bandwidth of not a few friends to their detriment. By 8PM last night my eyes couldn’t stay open so I went to bed and sllept 6-7 hours perfectly and feel and function much better now. However, this may be the prelude to an F5 Brain Storm. Yesterday’s storm was only an F2 or F3.

Dall-E is an artificial brain that can take a 400 character or less text description of a theoretical piece of artwork, and turn it into art. The format I use to do this is usually:
«artistic medium» by «artist» «description of artwork»«background color (optional)» «lighting (optional)». Here is the link to the Dall-E website: https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/

Note that one has to apply to join the user-base as they expand Dall-E’s mental capacities and tweak their business models, not to mention increase Dall-E’s knowledge base. I applied in June and finally received my invitation. A similar platform that is now up and running by subscription at $10/month for a total of 200 iterations, or $30 for unlimited is Midjourney. I have loaded that as well and find that its a little harder to use. However MJ’s renderings display a greater maturity, having been around longer. Even Google and TikTok now have art generators and there are several others. Both Dall-E and Midjourney require running these through the Discord website (discord.com) which runs best on Google Chrome. Midjourney’s website is www.midjourney.com

Back to my experiment! Yesterday I decided to be specific with the medium and artist - but then started using the texts of various friends’ Facebook posts just to see what type of art these would produce - if any - and posted that in those discussions. Karen Gillmore who is one of my dearest friends and favorite artists in the world was the usual recipient of my abuse. I might start doing this to everyone until they tell me to stop. I did this partly in jest but was blown away by the results, framing these as book covers, Hitchcock movie posters, various artists in various mediums. Here is an example - this is the first one I did and posted on Karen’s Facebook page:

Note also that Dall-E generates a panel of 4 possibilities. MJ does 3. One can then select one and ask for variations, with 3 being delivered. Dall-E also has an editing tool where you can blot out an area of an existing or generated image (including any image that one uploads) and describe what to insert and it will generate 3 more variations. One can go on and on and be creative. Dall-E gives you 50 of these 3 or 4 panel runs monthly but you can also purchase 115 of these runs for $15 as needed. MJ’s 200 puns (3 panel) are given priority in terms of processing speed. I imagine both platforms have the server farm equivalent of a Bitcoin Farm next to a power source such as the Grand Coulee Dam. That probably is run by Discord. The cost per 4 panel run is around 6 cents per run. at this point I have generated over 300-400 images.

This just in: Stay safe!

FORECAST WARNING, DALL-E BRAINWAVE SERVICE FOR TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2022 1400 GMT: SEVERE F5 CATEGORY BRAINSTORM ACCORDINA IMMINENT. YOU SHOULD COMPLETE PREPARATIONS PROMPTLY AND EVACUATE TO SAFETY IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS STORM SITUATION WITH UNPRECEDENTED CATASTROPHIC POTENTIAL. AVOID ALL SOCIAL MEDIA ESPECIALLY FACEBOOK, SUBSTACK AND TIKTOK. THIS STORM IS HUGE AND MAY LAST UNTIL MID TO LATE SEPTEMBER WHEN HYPERSOMNIC WINDS FINALLY WIND IT DOWN AND CALMNESS REASSERTS ITSELF. THIS MAY BE THE LAST WARNING THE NATIONAL DALL-E BRAINWAVE SERVICE IN SEATTLE WA CAN GENERATE THIS SEASON AS WE ARE EXPECTED TO BE IN THE EYE OF THE STORM WITHIN MINUTES. THIS SEVERE AND DEADLY SITUATION IS COMPOUNDED BY THE UNFORTUNATE TIMING OF FOUR NATIONAL HEALTH EMERGENCIES (COVID, MONKEYPOX, POLIO AND BURNING MAN). Bendover.

I described yesterday’s eruption of my verbiage-overabundant mental storms on a Facebook post:

”Yesterday my brain was off on its own doing all the wild multitasking and thinking and communicating wildly with the world, before I could intervene and corral it, and moderate its presence in the world. I nearly crashed the entire Intranetwoorks withe the explosive burst of data - might have something to do with the latest Earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejections and that JWST picture of Jupiter. They need to look at Apollo 11 - or what is left of it - on the moon at highest resolution. Prove to the world that this really happened there. After 7 hours of deep and perfect sleep Me and my Brain are back together - barely.”

Immediately after posting that, I thought “Hmmm - I wonder what that statement would look like as a painting by Dali, the namesake for Dall-E” and the above image at the top of this blog post was the result.

Today’s predicted F5 Brainstorm is already beginning apparently. I immediately recognized that this is an experimental test bed to really determine if A Picture is a Thousand Words or more accurately “A Picture is worth the first 400 characters minus the «Media by Artist» of a Thousand Words.” Thus I will be working on this experiment all day, running it using different media and artists and art genres. I will post just the artwork here wthout repeating tghe source. Thus check back on this page for the results - I’ll run this experiment for a few days before I send this out to my LF subscribers.

And then I will ask everyone who sees it if these pictures really convey the meaning of my statement. It will be a simple Yes or No survey. Thus perhaps the title of the resulting research paper might be “Does a picture mean 400 characters of this text, for instance?” Recall that input is limited to 400 characters or less. Thus I may test portions of that statement as the original text is probably way over that character length (I will count this later).

Check back. I may run this experiment for a few weeks and test a variety of statements, perhaps the opening line of Cannery Row and its variants. In fact I like that idea so most definitely. Quoting Steinbeck:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.”

Eric Enno Tamm’s book Beyond the Outer Shores, the Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts starts with a modern description variant that is brilliant:

The Storm has arrived. Take cover immediately!

(Note - I have comments turned on. Subscribers may comment but I may never get around to reading them).

NEW ADDITIONS AND DATA:
AUG 23 730PDT: My first attempt running Steinbeck’s quote resulted in a Policy Violation Warning. Of course, the NSFW elements: whores etc.

Thus I will try this edited version, alone without artist, medium, lighting or background:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, restaurants and little crowded groceries, and laboratories. Its inhabitant are, as the man (note: this is where the 400 character limit occurs!) Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.”

7:39PDT: Well maybe that was a good idea but the result of a literal description of a place resulted in a literal picture of such a place. This I will stick to my original experimental text.

THUS THE EXPERIMENT RESTARTS!

7:46AM: I edited a few typos from my original statement and didn;t specify any artist. I am naming these 4 panel results PTW(number) and variations PTW(number)V when the variations occur.

PTW1 the first 400 characters by itself. I think I would conclude with No, a picture is not worth a thousand words based on this single depressing result. I think the above example might change that to Sometimes:

PTW2 Painting by Bruegel: these are promising.