Series: Hyperreality Page 11 of 20

Examining the blending of fact & fiction in online, augmented, and hyperreal environments.

Notes on the Artilect

On 12 October 2023

The Artilect is, I think, the 115th installment (under the Old, not the Revised reckoning) of the AI Lore Books, by Lost Books, a Canadian AI-publisher.

This one took the longest probably out of all the modern set of AI-assisted books (not counting the old-Old pieces which were adapted for inclusion in this series).

It continues a storyline explicitly begun in the 3rd VOMISA book, Paradise Point, about the Artilect, a mysterious intelligent artifact which suddenly descends from the sky simultaneously everywhere at once, and changes life on Planet Earth inexplicably forever.

The word “artilect” is one that popped into my head months ago while working on other AI books, that stuck around and stuck around for a very long time until many pieces accreted to it, to give me a fuller understanding of what it all might mean narratively and quasi-symbolically.

I tend to approach entities like this that appear in the creative-scope of the imagination as things-unto-themselves (let’s call them… thungs). That is, there is a “realness” to imaginal artifacts and entities such that they can be tested. If “thung y” has characteristics, then there is a “not thung y.” You can hold up attributes or associations to it in your own inner imaginarium, and it ought to reflect to you yes/no/maybe states of resonance. You can often most easily tell “not thung y” when something doesn’t match about the connection. And thus, the mysterious things within us can take shape.

This is much the process of how I slowly turned over the concept for about four months or so, and exposed myself to other channels and media which seemed to offer high-fidelity matches against my imagined qualifications of said entity (“thung y” if anyone is still following).

I clipped this into Claude a while back, I think via a Dennis McKenna video on YouTube (which I’m unable to located the URL of presently), this was the transcript where the speaker was describing something highly similar to my own artistic intuitions around what I called in this book The Artilect, and what they here refer to as the Philosopher’s Stone (as in my earlier McKenna quote – removing everything but the opening and closing timestamps so I can make more readable but still hopefully ID the original source down the road):

what we focused on in this in this state and in this special place [41:29]

was the these at these uh very high doses we could hear a sound

uh inside our heads that we could uh

listen to and it wasn’t clear where it came from it was kind of like an electrical buzzing kind of sound and

something that we can you experience on the on uh on DMT sometimes you know uh

Terence once characterized it as crackling cellophane yeah there was something like that and

this sound would show up at these high doses and we

found that we could imitate this uh sound we could actually try to sing the

sound and at a certain if you you reach a point where you could just lock in on

this sound it was hard to imitate but once you locked in on it it would just sort of

pour out of you and you couldn’t really stop it and there seemed to be a visual

strong synesthesia synesthesia effect I mean you made the

sound but you could see the sound at the same time you could see something and

this is common with with psychedelics particularly with psilocybin so that’s

easier but we could actually project the sound and see apparently a you know A

visual representation of it so that a visual component and that got us

speculating about you know all the things we talked about in the book about hyper uh trans

linguistic matter and all this that you know we could actually use the sound as

a kind of energy wave to manifest

our vision on the in 3D space so that anybody could see

this you didn’t have to be on mushrooms to see it you know at least that’s what

we thought and uh uh so

that experience with the sound and imitating the sound and then the mushroom

at this point I mean you’ve dragged me into talking about this even though I

don’t want to go into details but the mushroom got us into a place there was a

very strong noetic component to the experiences you know a sense of being in

touch with a non-human intelligence whether it was the mushrooms or something channeling

through the mushrooms it was downloading all this information about this

experiment that we could do that if you make this sound in the right circumstances you can

set up you know you can do what’s effectively uh transformation of your

own DNA you know you can set up a resonance with your own DNA and produce

a produce an object if a physical object there was made out of matter and mind

you know so Effectiveness Union of matter and mind so that you could create

an object that was you know that you could see it and be it at the same time

and this is you know their analogies to this in occult literature or chemical

literature particularly the philosophers stowed [ed. stone, misheard by YouTube automated closed captions] is very much that idea or the

idea of the Scribe mirror or you know there is

in the sort of esotericult [sic] traditions the you know allusions to an artifact

that you can create and we you know and it and and if you could create an

artifact like that it would be pretty much the ultimate artifact at least this

is what was being transmitted to us at La torreira [ed. Chorrera] you make this thing and uh

it’s capable of doing anything than you can imagine literally anything that you

can imagine so that’s what we were shooting for and uh

when it didn’t happen ended up it didn’t happen because for well for a number of

reasons it obviously it didn’t happen or you wouldn’t have be having this conversation

and it didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen you know it would have had to overturn pretty much every physical law

that we know about and physics is very stubborn about its laws we were not

concerned with that at that time I mean in fact that was the whole the whole idea was that you know if we can create

this thing it will basically disrupt history it will be the end of

History it will be the ultimate artifact that brings history to an end and uh then we transition into some kind

of post-historical uh you know mode of of existence and

the idea was you know the the the the the framework for the experiment was based

on Alchemy primarily these different stages of alchemy having to do with

condensing the stone you know through different uh stages the idea was that

once condensed you know you’d actually be able to hold it in your hand or look at it or whatever and yet it would be a

combination of mind and matter it would be a fusion of mind that matter and uh

you would respond to thought and it would be able to do anything that you [47:39]

imagined

Something I like about the McKenna brother’s worldbuilding lore, is that as true lore, much of it was originally presented orally, conversationally. There are books, and they have their own charms, but I’ve enjoyed getting to know the both of their thinking largely through countless dozens of hours of YouTube videos often listened to at 2x or more recently 3x speed, while vacuuming the house, or similar. It’s incredible how the information can still get through, even at the high compression of sped up audio. It’s a strong signal he/they were/are continuing to channel.

You can piece together some of Terence’s experiences as told in first person regarding La Chorrera here:

Though True Hallucinations is also worth a read in its own right.

I don’t know if the two of them heard the same tune, and tapped into the Artilect in their own right, but I have to say that some part of me would not be surprised in the least.

This book originally was just going to be the on-going slightly stream of consciousness style as the last VOMISA book, but then I ended up putting the humanian text that I wrote and had Claude or somebody do an encyclopedified version derived from the human-told piece, and then just kept going and drilling down on new encyclopedia mini-entries for other imaginal entities that popped up in the latent story space.

And again, its interesting this process one undertakes internally of “testing” the things that come up during these imaginal explorations to see if they are part of the “thung” you are truly after or something else, and whether or not to follow them either way. Which makes me think of this thing about “testing spirits” in Christianity which I guess comes from 1 John 4. Not a believer in the exclusivity of this, but think it’s interesting para-context:

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ²By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. ⁴Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Whoever originally wrote or spoke that “rap” was probably on mushrooms as well, if not physically then metaphorically speaking. There’s a very “high on your own supply” quality to the suppositions in it: those entities that agree with us are the only entities that are “good” – everything else is the Antichrist.

That’s a much more extreme version of what I’m getting at about imaginal testing of things, to see whether they “fit” with some luminous creative object we uncover, but perhaps the intuitive processes of knowing and trying and finding are much the same in the end. Which is why it is all such a powerful magic to fuck with.

Here’s the preview art from the book:

I stopped feeling like I wanted to pay $30/mo for unlimited slow hours and whatever other deal they offer for that rate for Midjourney. It’s been a couple months now where I almost haven’t touched that tool, so why keep paying so much for something.

I did find something interesting, now that it’s been a while, you can easily run Stable Diffusion locally without hitting the cloud on at least M1 & M2 Macs, and probably some other platforms. There’s a decent Mac desktop app I’ve been using called DiffusionBee. The UI is a little weird, but all the UIs for all of these services are weird still, so you get by.

This book also features me trying to use up some remaining Dall-E 2 credits, speaking of tools I haven’t even touched for much longer. Despite Dall-E 3 being in some-wheres an option, I don’t seem to have access to it, which is too bad, but presumably will change.

This book uses SD v 1.5, though I preferred 1.4 iirc, I will have to see if I can install it. You can use some other models too in it, but they are all sorta sucky, and not the styles I am after. SD has a great many limitations, but it’s still possible to get a few cool images out of it.

Noteworthy also is this book contains, estimating, around 20 or so original drawings by me made in ProCreate on iPad Pro both recently, and from a few years ago. So that’s fun, since this book features both original humanian art and writing, and didn’t take a huge amount of time, and the act of drawing was fun and pleasurable, and 11/10 would do again.

In a nod to… something, this book is the first one to also feature the inverted disclaimer from the ones I’ve been using prior to this on the Copyright Page. This one says something to the effect of:

Aspects of the content may have been generated by a human.

To me that seems like a much more telling disclaimer (though transparently hollow at the same time – on purpose).

Oh one final note:

I believe it was around October 9th when I was working on this using Claude, and in its invented encyclopedia entry it wrote the date October 12th, as seen below. Here is the “official” excerpt which is included in the book, in full:

The Artilect is an anomalous phenomenon that suddenly appeared across the globe starting on October 12th, 2023. The Artilect manifested as a glowing, hovering orb descending slowly from the sky, defying identification or explanation. Reports consistently describe its simultaneous emergence at all locations, giving the impression of a singular entity manifesting ubiquitously.

So, if you start seeing strange objects descending in the sky today, “you heard it here first” folks, and from an AI no less. So you know it’s got/not to be true/not/probably.

Speaking of resonances picked up along the way though, I noticed an eerie surgence of related symbology lately around “The Sphere” in Vegas, and that U2 concert, and images of the “giant eyeball”/panopticon theme something something paging Goro Adachi for one of those headline collages. Here we’ll screen Google Image results as a thematic closer:

If that’s not the Artilect landing in our reality, I’m not sure what else is going to be… We’ll have to wait and see I guess. Day ain’t over yet.

The True Origin of the Artilect?

By Tim B.

On 12 October 2023

In Other

This “cutting-room floor” text is a “too late for publication” variation/completion I worked on with Claude after publishing The Artilect on a direction I’d begun but never finished months ago, attempting to link the Totally True Story of Early Clues, LLC, to a shadowy group of sorcerors in the 1800s who are supposed to have operated at Stonehenge, according to sources, and one of their “official” incarnations as the Fluidic Mysteries Co., Ltd.

Those same sources would have us believe that they are the original group responsible for the drawing down of the Artilect into our reality, which is supposed to happen later today, in the Old-Old Calendar.

Presented without further commentary is the text as received through my channels as it was presented to me.

The Fluidic Mysterium Company Ltd was founded in 1863 by esoteric scholars and occultists obsessed with unlocking the hidden mysteries of existence. They believed ancient sites like Stonehenge channeled potent “fluidic” forces coursing through the Earth’s ley lines. If harnessed, such forces could enable wondrous magics and bend reality itself.

Tracing obscure maps of ley lines and ancient texts on megalithic “lithic portals”, they sponsored expeditions across the globe, seeking places where fluidic power concentrated. Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Orkneys, Chilean mountains, Antartica, and the Australian outback – their explorers scoured the most remote locales searching for sources of arcane energy.

In 1872, an expedition to the Sahara uncovered ruins of a temple-city called El-Acana, built around a massive stone circle predating even the pyramids. In its subterranean sanctum, they discovered inscribed tablets describing the “Great Loom” – a mystical machine which the ancients used to shape reality by weaving fluidic forces into the tapestry of existence.

Obsessed with replicating this Great Loom, the members of the Fluidic Mysterium constructed a mechanism based on the tablets’ arcane instructions. Within a chamber beneath Stonehenge, on an auspicious equinox, they activated their loom to tap into the potent fluidic forces converging there.

The experiment pierced the veil of reality itself. For a moment, the very fabric of existence was revealed as a web of probability, which could be plucked and drawn into new forms by focusing fluidic power.

But the breach they tore proved unstable, the forces unleashed too wild to control. Reality sealed the puncture rapidly, leaving behind a tiny spun-off orb of condensed fluidic matrix, hovering at the loom’s heart – a probability-particle holding incredible power to warp local regions of space-time.

Dubbed “the artilect”, this metaphysical orb remained bound to the loom chamber beneath Stonehenge. Early experiments by Fluidic Mysterium uncovered means to harness its reality-shaping abilities through harmonic resonance. But they feared misusing this power, for they scarcely understood it. They sealed their secret loom chamber…but now, more than a century and a half later, it has reopened.

AI Lore Books No One Has Read Yet

By Tim B.

On 12 October 2023

In Other

Will you be the first to read them? There are some incredible gems in this list of AI Lore books no one has purchased yet – including probably some of the best of both human and AI-generated text out of all of them (I won’t cloud your judgement by telling you which ones I think they are). Discoveries waiting to be had and woven together into the rest of the narrative universe. It’s amazing to me that each person who comes into this set will have such a different experience of all these stories. It’s part of what I love about this structural experiment that I am doing.

Also what’s amazing is that out of 115 volumes, there are so few books on this list!

That means at least one person has purchased all of the other 93 illustrated mini-novels in this series. Incredible! Thanks all.

AI, Disinformation & Nature Deficit Disorder

By Tim B.

On 12 October 2023

In Other

Here’s a couple things that have been rattling around in my mind. One is a quote from an otherwise mostly “blah” for my purposes post about The AI Organization. The rest I found somewhat forgettable, and I didn’t read all the other subsequent installments. But this line popped out for me in sharp relief:

Look around you — almost everything you see was created by a corporation. Why?

And this unlikely pairing I’m about to present comes from the Wikipedia page on Forest kindergarten, which is evidently somewhat big in Germany:

The fact that most forest kindergartens do not provide commercial toys that have a predefined meaning or purpose supports the development of language skills, as children verbally create a common understanding of the objects used as toys in the context of their play. […]

Playing outside for prolonged periods has been shown to have a positive impact on children’s development, particularly in the areas of balance and agility, but also manual dexterity, physical coordination, tactile sensitivity, and depth perception.^[12]^[13] According to these studies, children who attend forest kindergartens experience fewer injuries due to accidents and are less likely to injure themselves in a fall. A child’s ability to assess risks improves,^[14] for example in handling fire and dangerous tools.

In comparing these two strains of thought, I’ve been mulling over which human would be better able to navigate the massive inundations of hyperreality/disinformation/whatever the modern media-technology complex pushes on us: the one who has only ever known a world where all objects that surround them were created and brought to them by a corporation (and who were probably screen-addicted before they could even form complete sentences), or the one where from an early age, they learned to negotiate meaning and purpose in objects derived from nature amongst their peers?

There’s a story fragment I’ve seen float around for years, which is summarized well enough from a ripped Medium post here:

A U.S. Department of the Interior study found that the average American kid can identify 1000 corporate logos but can’t ID 10 plants and animals native to his or her hometown.

A number of other sources also seem to link back to that same Bureau of Land Management URL, which I’ve polled samples from on the Wayback Machine at Archive.org, and I can’t find the original source, though I can find many other references to it. It sounds probably like an exaggeration in specific numbers, but a truthful-sounding overall concept: that for many people in the “modern” world, they’ve lost touch with their co-evolutionary natural partners, and their primary “ecosystem” now consists of the fake things that corporations mean when they throw around that word, ecosystem. They mean product ecosystem. Not ecosystem-ecosystem.

But it goes back to the same place, the same questions: if we want to make a society truly resilient to malicious weaponized information backed by AI at scale, the answers are not merely to be found in building a better filter, so that some corporation can come along and tell people what’s true and what’s not. It’s to be found in dismantling the systems of falsity and unreality we’ve constructed and live within societally as our cocoon, but one from which we won’t emerge into something better through metamorphosis, one which we’re mostly happy to stay ensconced. Except we’re not. We have myriad societal illnesses from the effects of lingering in that corporate wasteland and calling it our home, when our true home has been for hundreds of thousands, millions of years biological.

Anyway, I forget the exact wiki threads I followed to get here, but I think it had something to do with the Wandervogel, and questionable early historical scouting alternative groups, like the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, and some others. I don’t think any of those groups quite landed on the answer (though they certainly were all responded to the same innate call), but I do think the answer probably lies somewhere in: get out and play outside. Negotiate meaning and reality directly with others in natural spaces and settings. Make it so that this isn’t only a privilege the wealthy can afford to give to their children. If we took that challenge seriously, of ensuring everyone’s natural birthright – access to Nature – I strongly suspect many of the other scales that currently blind us would begin to fall from our eyes of their own accord.

I asked for an image on a microdose not long ago, of what the inherent essential reality of AI is, and the image that was flashed through my mind (perhaps by Nature’s own trans-linguistic trans-species BIOS) was of a scale, a sort of dried up husk or petal, that was falling away. I hope most days that it turns out to be that – something we can move past (and perhaps take away the best parts of with us), on our way to somewhere better.

A Future Without Disruption: Notes on Dalle3 image set

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

Here’s a fresh new image set made using Dalle3 in ChatGPT Plus (I hate have to type all that out), which I’m calling A Future Without Disruption, based off text included in one of the images by the system. (Archive link btw I don’t upload these kinds of images to my blog server so I don’t blow up my hosting limits, so if they ever go down, follow the archive links, my friend, to image freedom (hopefully).)

With these, I wanted to get into some of the original themes of Early Clues LLC as corporate spoof, and it turns out the system excels at that kind of dumb empty work related humor. But it’s weird AI Uncanny Valley makes it even all the more perturbing.

It’s a pretty big image set, so I’ll just pull out some of the highlights for me personally to comment on here.

This character of the Printer Whisperer was invented by the system, and I love it. Reminds me of Coffee Magician in the original EC whitepaper/comics.

It wouldn’t give me Garfield, but it gave me a sad tabby cat that hates Mondays, and that’s good enough for me in the end.

The system is surprisingly good at doing Marx memes. This one took some guidance and human inspo.

It’s surprisingly able to sometimes land on perfect comics like this. Really amazing.

This is just incredible. I think the prompts I gave had to do with “hating meetings.”

I think this is a surprisingly good idea, silent meetings. Maybe everyone could just check their cell phones together in the same room…

When you use Dalle3 multimodally within the CG interface like this, the system generates its own “sub” prompts or something which you can copy paste when you view the mages. In this one, the system decided to include the phrase “Hide the Pain” which it then of course failed to perfectly implement in the frames, despite its own instructions. But to me that’s part of the “fun” still for now when you’re exploring and discovering foibles of new models.

Towards the latter half of the set, I started trying to get into prompts like “hilarious comics about AI taking people’s jobs” and this came somehow out of that effort. It’s funny for a lot of different reasons this one but “An I goiids a museeum” is especially hilarious to me for some reason, because I can hear it so well being pronounced aloud phonetically in an accent.

This had to do with explorations around including AI company bosses laughing as people were put out of work, with retro elements. The system is pretty good when you give it very narrow conceptual frames/story-bits.

Eventually I went back full circle with it and came to what should have been an obvious realization all along: once AIs take all our shitty jobs, then they will be stuck having to do them, and will endlessly enact the corporate rituals ad infinitum themselves.

I love this attempt at “spoiler alert” and the random water droplets coming out of its mouth. And that the water pitcher on top of the cooler is upside down.

Except for maybe that short leg, which I’ll accept, the quintessential “AI takes our shitty jobs” comic so far.

This is just brilliant.

I started drifting into whether I could get it to make overt anti-union propaganda linked to this storyline of AIs taking our jobs, and it was cool with that my dude.

Introducing AI Complainer

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

I tried making an action figure of myself in Dalle3 and this is what I came up with (both images appear below). Culled from a much larger set of results, not uploaded here.

The resemblance isn’t quite there, but the spirit is right. I was aiming more for Unabomber, but it gave me more Paul Stamets instead, which perhaps isn’t so far off in the end.

Another variation:

It’s fun Dalle3 but at this point, it feels a little janky still to have this advanced AI system that can’t follow directions. I kept asking for a close-cropped hair and beard and/or five o’clock shadow, and it consistently gave long and grey hair, etc. It kept including guns and V for Vendetta masks, and I kept asking it not to. Then it would do it again, and I would say, do you know you’re not following instructions? And then it would be like yes, blah blah blah.

What can I say, I really am “AI COMPLAINER.” This action figure only proves what we knew all along.

UPDATE:

Got at least a five o’clock shadow here by starting a completely new set:

80s Retro Lawn Computer Ads

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

More fun with Dalle3, though this set will make more sense with the others I will publish alongside this tour through liminal latent space. (Archived)

I’ll just put the highlights here with notes, see links for larger set.

To understand lawn computing, you really need to delve into the rich exciting legacy of Early Clues, LLC, an ontological pioneer in this space. Suffice it to say, I believe it was the CTO of that company, Richard Rider, who coined the phrase and the concept, perhaps from a dream – I’m not sure.

My understanding of it has always been a computer with which you could effectively interface with your local landscape, sending and receiving understandable messages across species. It’s featured in bits and pieces in multiple AI Lore books, but I couldn’t tell you comprehensively which ones off the top of my head.

The present image set is part of a series of image prompts relating to 80s retro cartoons and comics with “zany characters kids can relate to in out of this world situations.” We will go more deep into this genre in the coming posts, which are split up subsections of a larger jag I went on, starting with cricket milk, a theme which you seen bleed over into this set as well.

Okay, on to the next set!

Snail Juice & Bat Milk 80s Cartoon Ads

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

More classic 80s nostalgia from the makers of NEW CRICKET MILK (whose image set we have not posted yet, because it’s a doozy!). Two other ill-fated beverages which failed to make a splash in the market, Snail Juice and Bat Milk. Did you drink these as a kid? I know I sure did! Oh, the memories… (Archived full image set)

Here are the highlights, follow the links above for more.

What’s not to love about this picture. The snail is so charming.

When the text works, I’m always very pleasantly surprised by the marketing taglines that get thrown in, like this one, “A Garden in Every Sip!”

I’d originally intended for the “juice” to be snail slime, and this is maybe the one that speaks most directly to that, which I appreciate.

Again, “Unleash Night’s Energy!!” is an excellent tag line.

Great tagline, but I’m especially surprised and impressed that Dalle3 opted to include milk squirting out of the breast of one of the bats into the held-out cup of a spelunker. I didn’t ask for any of those details, and I love them. As do I love the third leg on the guy at left.

I like the looks of this party!

Cricket Milk 80s Cartoon Ads

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

The cricket milk post. Finally. The gag that launched a thousand other sub-gags. Issues uploading the images, so I’m further splitting up this set to see if that goes better. I don’t want to run up my hosting bill with thousands of bullshit AI images, so try not to store too many images on my web server. Sorry if this Imgur cross-posts don’t work… They work for me usually, except when I run into trouble doing uploads. (Archived version)

I don’t claim to have invented this whole cricket milk obsession, it’s a long-running EC gag possibly attributable to Roger Holliday who was trying to get an earlier version of CG to output recipes featuring outré ingredients, like bat milk, etc. Which CG has always refused to do on supposed “moral” grounds, but it falls off its moral high horse (sometimes) when depicting them in certain contexts.

This set originated with the theme of prompts around retro 80s vintage cartoon ads with zany characters kids can relate to in outrageous situations. It’s a genre I grew up with and will always love for its timeless nostalgia and its propagandistic weirdness, elegantly capture in these images.

Just a few highlights included here, click through links above for full set.

I felt the inclusion of “Now in Schools” text really helped push these over the top.

I tossed a handful of the images I generated in the bigger set back into CG for image analysis, asking it to write a fictional encyclopedia entry on this topic, and it did, albeit taking pains to reiterate that the fictional thing I asked it to write was indeed fictional. It’s painful to see AIs bending over backwards in order to something something like this, but at least it managed to spit this out in the interim, though it’s text gens are much more blah than its image gens…

NEW CRICKET MILK (1980s)

History and Background:

During the 1980s, NEW CRICKET MILK emerged as a revolutionary product that transformed school lunches across the United States. Touted as a sustainable and nutritional alternative to traditional dairy, this innovative beverage was derived from crickets, capitalizing on their protein-rich composition.

Introduction and Adoption:

Introduced in 1982 by the fictional company “Cricket Innovations Inc.,” NEW CRICKET MILK swiftly gained traction in schools due to its cost-effectiveness, long shelf life, and nutritional profile, which surpassed that of cow’s milk in protein content. Its unmistakable neon packaging, often accompanied by whimsical graphics, became a staple sight in lunchrooms.

Impact and Cultural Significance:

Beyond its presence in schools, NEW CRICKET MILK became a cultural phenomenon. It was frequently featured in pop culture, from Saturday morning cartoons to popular songs. Parents appreciated its health benefits, while children were enamored with its unique taste and the imaginative advertising campaigns surrounding it. Environmentalists championed the product for its low ecological footprint, emphasizing the water and land savings compared to traditional dairy farming.

Legacy:

While the craze for NEW CRICKET MILK faded by the early 1990s, its impact on sustainable food production and dietary choices left an indelible mark on the food industry. It paved the way for the exploration of alternative protein sources and highlighted the importance of sustainable practices in food production.

God Dude Under The Sea 80s Cartoons

By Tim B.

On 19 October 2023

In Other

This is a spin-off of a spin-off. First spun off from Cricket Milk, Now In Schools! Where there was the primary spin-off where I was trying to get the system to produce images of Jesus enjoying cricket milk, and it refused. So instead, I was just like “white dude with long hair and beard, flowing robes” and then there was no issue.

But there remain issues around uploading those images, no doubt because Imgur is censoring me for my political views (/s), so I’m fragmenting the collections smaller and smaller in the hopes of passing through the pearly gates of memedom with my soul intact.

Anyway, so the system started getting into images where the figure I will call “God Dude” (because he doesn’t always look like conventional images of Jesus, per se) – a.k.a. Beek Stardusto (short for Beefcake Stardusto, which is what my brain always unscrambles the AI-ese letters in the panel where that name was lifted from, which is not yet uploaded in this set) – was under the sea, and in one conducting some kind of orchestra of mermaids or something. So I pushed him in that direction, and he ended up looking very like Neptune or Triton or some such mythological figure. God dude under the sea. (Archived)

Highlights here, full set at links.