What do you wish existed?

I am absolutely drunk on power.

Recently, I got access to both Dall-e and Midjourney. Both are AI image generators trained on the entirety of digital art available on the Internet.

The idea is that you submit a prompt (for example, “beautiful utopia with dramatic light and shadowing reflection under the sea”) and end up with an original image (below).

This is great fun.

• Dall-e is a web app by OpenAI (the guys that brought you GPT-3) and generates the most “realistic” images. You get 50 prompts free, later you have to pay $15 for 115 prompts.
• Midjourney works as a Discord (discord is similar to Slack or MS Teams) bot. You get 25 prompts free and later have to pay $10/month.

I much prefer Midjourney, as it produces much more “artistic” results. I was reluctant to deal with Discord but liked it quite a lot. Creations generated by free accounts are posted to Discord public channels, and you get to observe human creativity in action.

Some of the images are unreal, but the human ingenuity that gave them life is as fascinating.

While I am trying to generate an image of my hometown, somebody else creates an image from a prompt: “Corgi wearing space suit.”

How do I start with Midjourney?

1. Click here to join the Midjourney Discord
2. Join one of the “Newbies” channels ( for example, newbies-117, or whichever will be available when you join)
3. Type in a prompt “/imagine your amazing image idea”. You can add --ar 16:9 for 16:9 aspect ratio or any ratio you want.
4. Wait for your image to be generated. You can now click a button to “upscale” one of them.
5. Enjoy!

Alternatively- email me your idea, and I will generate it for you!

I’m also collecting the best findings in this thread. Click for “spider man playing the violin on the battlefield”.

A few things I published

• Recently I switched from Roam Research to the Logseq note-taking app. Logseq stores data in an open Markdown format, which allowed me to integrate it with various other workflows. I summarized them in this thread.
• I just finished “A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson. The book is a splendidly narrated ride through the entire history of science. I published a small “summary” here.
• While simultaneously exploring the Artificially created art and history of Romantic Science, I realized that Frankenstein, a novel that started the Sci-Fi genre, is actually about AI. I included my musings about Intelligence being a sham.

A few things I’ve read

• Kyle shares his 43 lessons at age 43. My favorite is “Going outside is never the wrong decision.”
• Ferruccio summarizes why publishing a blog or a newsletter (he calls them “Friendcatchers”) is a great idea: Serendipity on the internet only happens by putting things out in the world.
• If you consider yourself a maker, I highly recommend Paul’s essay about Taste for Makers:

Most of the people who’ve made beautiful things seem to have done it by fixing something that they thought ugly. Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks, I could do better than that.

In the age where you can generate stunning images with a few words, the taste may be something unique to humans. It’s up to us to decide what creations are good, and which ones should fade away like Frankenstein’s monster.

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