Temu Promethius

I rarely if ever use the illustrations in the thumbnail for the article. But first of all, the use of generative ai for illustrating science discoveries and inventions has been a big game changer. Second of all this idea needs an image, and this image seems to be perfectly explaining what's going on. It's a neuromorphic substrate for a neuromorphic computer that grows all by itself, in other words, "Artist's rendering of a biocomputing device that combines biological neurons with advanced electronics into a network that can be programmed to recognize patterns" --Kate Zvorykina w Ella Maru Studio, Inc for Princeton, 2026

Source:

New 3D device harnesses living brain cells for computing

Apr 2026, phys.org 

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-3d-device-harnesses-brain-cells.html

But here's the real reason for this post. 

AI Art - Shitty image generated by the editorial team using AI for illustrative purposes - 2026

Watching this seismic shift in visualization is a crazy experience - these kinds of images, the thumbnail here, are exactly the kind of thing I pushed my art students to go past - it's always a person or a person's head, and cramming other more abstract objects etc into it or near it. It's the most basic form of symbolic imagery creation, and it's fucking boring guys. It doesn't matter if it's done with good technical accuracy, it's still boring. Will we all learn to grow past this tendency together or will there be a divide between people who can think more outside the box vs everyone else (sounds like the role the artist has had forever, no different just because ai is so "revolutionary").

Note that my google email inbox services ask me if I want to use their artificial intelligence email summary feature to summarize this email, but only this email, the one containing this article that I sent to myself, despite my having hundreds of similar ones in the same inbox. But I digress; because I don't care about the article, just the picture.

Source:

Can AI ascertain our personality traits from our ChatGPT history?

May 2026, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-ai-personality-traits-chatgpt-history.html

New Jersey Graffiti in the Wild

EVICT and 2BROKE in the background - Apr 2026

https://www.nj.com/resizer/v2/GXL62IVCSRC4TBTIHDD6SA7FJA.jpg

Over 100 firefighters battle fire that erupted at N.J. chemical warehouse, authorities say

Apr 2026, nj.com

https://www.nj.com/essex/2026/04/over-100-firefighters-battle-fire-that-erupted-at-nj-chemical-warehouse-authorities-say.html

More than 100 firefighters battled a blaze Thursday afternoon that erupted at a Newark chemical warehouse, authorities said.

Crews were called to the warehouse, located at 104 Lister Ave., at 12:53 p.m. and within the hour, the fire was upgraded from a two-alarm to a three-alarm blaze, Newark Public Safety Director Emanuel Miranda said.

The Most Representative Image of Lab Blood on the Internet

Can we just pay some respects to this image - it's been around for years and shows up at least once a week, carrying most of the weight of the internet when it comes to anything related to blood and science and even just human health in general. Respect!

For example, in the wild:

PFAS exposure may limit improvements in blood sugar after bariatric surgery

Dec 2025, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-pfas-exposure-limit-blood-sugar.html

Deep Pope and Other Images of Distinction

Only here to document the fact that this is the most famous deepfake image from our current era of the AI craze. The Pope in a puffy jacket. That is all. 

--Source: Sensor chips help identify deepfakes by adding cryptographic signatures to camera data, Mar 2026 https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-sensor-chips-deepfakes-adding-cryptographic.html

And now for something completely different

"Playmate of the Month". Playboy Magazine. November 1972, photographed by Dwight Hooker.

Lenna (or Lena) is a standard test image used in the field of digital image processing, starting in 1973. It is a picture of the Swedish model Lena Forsén, shot by photographer Dwight Hooker and cropped from the centerfold of the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine. The scan became one of the most used images in computer history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Use of this 512x512 scan is "overlooked" and by implication permitted by Playboy.

Alexander Sawchuk et al scanned the image and cropped it specifically for distribution for use by image compression researchers, and hold no copyright on it.

--The USC-SIPI image database, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20658476

And further follow up - Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from IEEE computer journals, Mar 2024 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/playboy-image-from-1972-gets-ban-from-ieee-computer-journals/

Robert Tinney - Collage of classic Byte magazine covers - circa 1980s

Post Script:

"Computing’s Norman Rockwell" - Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78, Feb 2026 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/

Post Post Script for Posterity Purposes:

The "Spaghetti Benchmark" in AI video traces its origins back to March 2023, when we first covered an early example of horrific AI-generated video using an open source video synthesis model called ModelScope. The spaghetti example later became well-known enough that Smith parodied it almost a year later in February 2024.

--Google’s Will Smith double is better at eating AI spaghetti … but it’s crunchy? May 2025 https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/googles-will-smith-double-is-better-at-eating-ai-spaghetti-but-its-crunchy/

The Original - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/yes-virginia-there-is-ai-joy-in-seeing-fake-will-smith-ravenously-eat-spaghetti/

The Parody - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/will-smith-parodies-viral-ai-generated-video-by-actually-eating-spaghetti/

And the Upgrade - [sorry it was posted on the site formally known as Twitter, you get no link]

The Williamsburg Art of Cookery

Also titled The Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion: Being a Collection of Upwards of Five Hundred of the Most Ancient and Approved Recipes in Virginia Cookery

By Mrs. Helen Bullock, 4th edition, 1942

Published in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Original printing in 1742 by William Parks, and collected from a much larger book by Mrs. E. Smith in England. He omitted ingredients and materials not found in Virginia (hence the "Williamsburg" added to the title). But it also sounds like they added recipes from Williamsburg, either from locally sold cookbooks, or from the books in people's houses, used by the cooks of the house, and collected at estate sales and the like. 

It's like reading a book of magic spells. 

Unusual or surprising ingredients:

• "Some make this broth with a sheep's head instead of a leg of beef, and it is very good, but you must chop the head all to pieces."
• walnut ketchup p14, mushroom catsup 
• okra is mentioned in a gumbo recipe 
• curry powder too! 
• snail broth 
• Brunswick Stew starts w 2 squirrels cut up 
• Samphere (in a mutton cutlet) - it's a succulent, marsh samphere and rock samphere, which is also called sea fennel 
• Collops - sliced bacon 
• Squab pie works for robins too 
• BBQ squirrel 
• Morels! and they're explicit from "mushrooms"
• pickled oysters 
• there's a lot of oysters in this book
• cracklin bread (w cracklins) 
• "salad oil" 
• salsify is a root like a carrot but more limp and thinner and tan colored. Used to be very common but doesn't keep well, disappeared w locally grown food. 
• cornstarch (in 1800) 
• brown corn syrup (in a recipe from 1750-1850?) 
• celery vinegar 
• pickled nasturtiums
• sea wormwood 
• lavender relish??? 
• For seed cakes - "...Pounded cardamom, coriander, bene, and caraway were the old favorites" 
• Pork cake 
• Hartshorn jelly (a deer antler) 
• Orgeat - an almond milk drink 

Unusual or surprising processes or uses of ingredients:

• Beef broth for sick people - take a piece of lean beef and cut it cross and cross, and then pour on it scalding water and cover until cold. When you want it, heat the broth again and season it ("beef tea") 
• "settle w egg shells"(?) in both the catfish chowder and black eyed peas soup 
• pocket glue, pocket soup, veal glue; it lasts for months (this is the reason I bought the book) 
• A savory jelly - "the whites of two eggs beaten, and their shells..."(?) 
• Why is the butter always "rolled up in flour"? 
• the recipe for the reconstituted mega egg using bladders is crazy 
• (on measurements) "Put in a saucepan, over the fire, with enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan when melted" 
• (on measurements) butter the size of an egg and a gill of wine 
• for a fried trout, garnish w the leaves of strawberries, parsley, etc. 
• The first sentence of the Turtle Soup recipe: "Kill the turtle at daylight in summer, the night before in winter, and hang it up to bleed" (assuming the warm temp might spoil too fast?)
• a quick over means a hot-ass oven, also called a clear fire; they had no thermometers
• slow oven! 
• "Cold Slaw" recipe - the word is today "cole slaw" but it's Dutch kool-cabbage and sla-salad; but wait, this recipe comes from no joke Mrs. Cole, so it could also be called Cole's Slaw
• toss them up well with a silver fork
• "To have them in perfection ..." starts a sentence with 83 words and 4 semicolons 
• Pumpkin Fritters - "the pumpkin must be well boiled, left from dinner"(?) 
• "Having picked your spinach very clean, and washed it in 5 or 6 waters" 
• turnip tops must be boiled in lots of water; not enough and they taste bitter 
• why a silver knife? 
• wash the salt from a pound of butter? 
• pickled mangos - ... and so do every day for nine times together, and when they are cold, cover them with leather 
• Peaches in Brandy gets covered in lye at first 
• they're saying to use turmeric to collect scum from the top of boiling water for sweet watermelon pickle 
• Beautiful description of a party table - ... Veal that had sucked two well-fed cows. Lamb that was fattened in a house. Bacon well-fed on Indian corn ... 
• "Take a pot of coffee made in water" (what else do you make it in?) 
• "Boil it to the ninth degree"! 
• "Beat your yolk, half an hour at least" 
• Beat your almonds very find, and with rose water 
• Wine icing 
• The Lisbon Cake must be the longest recipe in the book 
• They use spinach and beets and cochineal to color their deserts, and if you can taste the spinach or the beets, you're happy just to look at it 
• Isinglass is collagen from dried fish bladders 
• Almonds, blanched and beaten, very fine in a little rose water 
• The recipe for Steeple Cream is the witch's brew - it contains to ounces of ivory, and some of hartshorn, which is shaved deer antler, and seems to act like baking powder (or baker's ammonia?) 
• Throwing Irish shade! "Irish potato pudding is made in the same manner, but is not so good" circa 1831 
• in the "whipt cream" they suggest perfuming with musk or "ambergrease" 
• a lot of milk in the alcohol recipes 
• "Add slowly, drop by drop, one pint of choice French brandy"
• Orange wine, with oranges and yeast 
• There's a recipe containing beer, milk and eggs, and to heat til just before boiling 
• So much sugar!
• one of the mince pies lasts 4 months 

Mass Persuasion - The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive

by Robert K Merton, 1946 

• This book is about one specific war bond drive, called "War Bond Day" and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System, as in CBS, yes that CBS, on September 21, 1943, and by broadcaster Kate Smith. Note - this radio station went off the air about March 19, 2026, the day I finished this book. 
• Merton and the Bureau of Applied Social Research conducted this study from hundreds of surveys and interviews of the radio-listening American public. 
• This war bond drive is considered "an extraordinary instance of mass persuasion"
• On Mass Persuasion, the Marathon Gestalt, and Compulsive Listening - "The idea that her voice, and energy might not endure was suggested by Smith herself ... and one listener ... noted in the evening 'The voice gave out. It was getting weaker. Her finish was 'will you buy a bond' and it was weaker and weaker," p31 [she is sacrificing herself, on-air]
• "The performer who is on the edge of failure evokes sustained interest. No one is interested in seeing a weight lifter toss up 10 pounds; there is no zest in watching him fail to budge a thousand pounds, but somewhere in between, where he might succeed or fail, the spectators hold their breath." p31
• "If ... I hoped a lot of people would rush in and revive her with the response of buying bonds." p32 [I'm thinking of Go Fund Me's success; it's a real-life version of this.]
• ... and the listeners "watch the sacrifice" of others (like Kate Smith) p40
• you appeal to the sacred, not the secular; patriotism, not sound financial investment, and you offer no incentives (gifts in return), because that negates the sacredness of the thing. p48
• Their data says it worked because they think she's sincere. Why?
• She sells products on other commercials just the same ... people like her more. Also , she wasn't getting paid for the extra 18 hours "so it must be genuine" p84-85
• But now, because of the marathon, it validates the sincerity that's already there. p89
• The marathon broadcast took on the attributes of a sacrificial ritual. p92
• She's also seen as patriotic (re selling war bonds), and moreso than the politicians; it's not actual service but dramatized events. That's what connects to regular people. p101
• Of those who were persuaded to buy, they fell into these groups:

1. The Predisposed - they didn't even pay attention since they were going to buy regardless
2. The Susceptible - they were guilted into it; she redefines the appropriate amount, modifying the norm. And she redefines by staying on the air all day; she's doing more, so you should do more. 
3. The Indifferent - they see the bonds as a practical investment. 
4. The Undisposed - they require little cumulative persuasion (only listening to 8 of the 30 broadcasts). But a lot of this group called thinking they would talk to Kate personally. They just like her. (and it's mentioned here that she's fat and that 'it's easier to trust someone who's fat')

• In opposition to what rich people would do in response to a request for bonds (they would be greedy and selfish of course) there was an aggressive attitude towards the rich and how they spend their money. "But characteristically, the aggression is directed towards the wealthy (I)people(I) not the (I)institutional(I) structure that permits of such seeming unhappiness and moral disintegration [of the rich, that is] p166
• "Mass persuasion is not manipulative when it provides access to the pertinent facts; it is manipulative when the appeal to sentiments is used to the exclusion of pertinent information." p186
• On the Moral Dilemma of Mass Persuasion - What are the effects upon personality of being subjected to virtual terrorization by advertisements which threaten the individual with social ostracization unless he uses the advertised defense against halitosis or B.O.? Or, more relevantly, what are the effects, in addition to increasing the sale of bonds, of terrorizing the parents of boys in the service by the threat that only through their purchase of war bonds can they ensure the safety of their sons and their ultimate return home? ... A society subjected ceaselessly to a flow of "effective" half-truths and the exploitation of mass anxieties may all the sooner lose that mutuality of confidence and reciprocal trust so essential to a stable social structure." p188-189 

Experiments on Mass Communication

Carl I Hovland, Arthur A Lumsdaine, Fred D Sheffield

Robert K Merton is Experimental Consultant

Princeton University Press, 1949 

Volume 3 of a 4 volume set on Studies in Social Psychology in World War II

I. The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life

II. The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath

III. Experiments on Mass Communication

IV. Measurement and Prediction 

Organized by the Research Branch of the Army's Information and Education Division

Surveyed by the Survey section of the Branch

Controlled experimentation by the Experimentation section

Their job was to make experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of various programs of the Information Education Division, including orientation and information films.

This is a list of other things they studied, other than the films mentioned in this book:

• "Yank", the Army weekly magazine
• library card records
• "the optimal phonetic representation of foreign language words"
• radio listening habits and program preferences of patients by direct observation in army hospitals
• unit orientation programs
• comparisons between commentator and documentary radio presentations
• comparisons between physical conditioning programs for the War Department
• veterans' reports of fear-producing effects of various kinds of enemy weapons and tactics for the Office of the Surgeon General
• optimal time for trainees first jump for the Paratroop School at Fort Benning
• redeployment interviews for for Air Corp

For this book, the topic is about morale, leadership, and training programs, and specifically military training films for the Military Training Division of the Armed Services Forces.

"The "Why We Fight" films constituted probably the largest scale attempt yet made in this century to use films as a means of influencing opinion" p21

On Recognition of Propaganda - of the minority who did criticize the films as propaganda, they were also more educated, and thus more articulate, and capable of influencing others p88

On the Meaning of Propaganda (according to those critical soldiers)

• untruthful or biased presentation, distortion of facts
• manipulative purpose or motive p88-89

Characteristics of Propaganda (again according to those critical soldiers)

• one-sidedness, ie only showing the strength of the enemy and not our strengths also, or how British losses were underplayed
• repetitious shots used in the film
• exaggeration, unrealistic, overdramatic presentation, aka the Hollywood Touch
• source of film materials; so actually people just don't know that "captured enemy footage" exists, so they think it's all fake, otherwise, how would we get shots from inside enemy territory
• close-up shots in combat; same thing, they don't know that was actually happening, and they definitely don't know that the cameras in fighter planes are synchronized with the guns to verify enemy loss

Findings on Propaganda

• This is the "most significant finding to emerge from the study"
• People opposed to the ideas in the film were more likely to accept those ideas if the film presented "both sides" p269
• Yet both one-sided and both-sided worked
• In "both sides" studies, introducing opposed arguments that can't be refuted can reduce aggressive tendencies in opposed viewers, but it needs to be done early, or it tends to weaken the conclusion
• And, refute only when an obviously compelling and strictly factual refutation is available; otherwise it's unnecessarily antagonizing; and it should come later, in the hopes the proceeding arguments have softened the opposition.

Notes

• They're using the word "especial" not "special"? 1949
• They are using the word "polygraph" to describe giving someone a like and dislike button to press during the film. The recorded responses are called a polygraph. p104 (204?)