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Ed Smith
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Marianne Rosenstiehl, Juliette Binoche, Paris 1995

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Withnail and I

Vivian MacKerrell

Vivian MacKerrell – who really did drink lighter fluid – shared a house with Withnail and I director Bruce Robinson. (Guardian).

Image: Sotheby's

[ed. Never seen the movie, but this arresting photo caught my attention. Who is this guy? See also: Disdain, decay and a half-dead eel: Withnail and I:]

***

"This is an age of rackety behaviour. Withnail is a story about rackety behaviour. More than that, it is about decay and disdain for the authorities that contrive to make us miserable. And who can say they haven’t felt the misery of life now? (...) Withnail taught me many things. I might not have understood the film when I first saw it. But the sense of freedom, even if ill-conceived, spat at me like water from a fatted pan. These were my people. I recognised the nihilism, the attraction of necking booze from the bottle at lunch, and the hard, unspoken words of love."

Roadside Attractions

Man walking his dinosaur, Murdo, South Dakota. June 2018

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May require a larger vessel
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Happy Labor Day
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Anonymous, Fair entry, photographs exhibit
via: markk

Nano Banana

Something unusual happened in the world of AI image editing recently. A new model, known as "nano banana," started making the rounds with impressive abilities that landed it at the top of the LMArena leaderboard. Now, Google has revealed that nano banana is an innovation from Google DeepMind, and it's being rolled out to the Gemini app today.

AI image editing allows you to modify images with a prompt rather than mucking around in Photoshop. Google first provided editing capabilities in Gemini earlier this year, and the model was more than competent out of the gate. But like all generative systems, the non-deterministic nature meant that elements of the image would often change in unpredictable ways. Google says nano banana (technically Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) has unrivaled consistency across edits—it can actually remember the details instead of rolling the dice every time you make a change.

Google says subjects will retain their appearance as you edit.

This unlocks several interesting uses for AI image editing. Google suggests uploading a photo of a person and changing their style or attire. For example, you can reimagine someone as a matador or a '90s sitcom character. Because the nano banana model can maintain consistency through edits, the results should still look like the person in the original source image. This is also the case when you make multiple edits in a row. Google says that even down the line, the results should look like the original source material.

Gemini's enhanced image editing can also merge multiple images, allowing you to use them as the fodder for a new image of your choosing. Google's example below takes separate images of a woman and a dog and uses them to generate a new snapshot of the dog getting cuddles—possibly the best use of generative AI yet. Gemini image editing can also merge things in more abstract ways and will follow your prompts to create just about anything that doesn't run afoul of the model's guardrails.

The model remembers details instead of generating completely new things every time.

As with other Google AI image generation models, the output of Gemini 2.5 Flash Image always comes with a visible "AI" watermark in the corner. The image also has an invisible SynthID digital watermark that can be detected even after moderate modification.

You can give the new native image editing a shot today in the Gemini app. Google says the new image model will also roll out soon in the Gemini API, AI Studio, and Vertex AI for developers.

by Ryan Witwan, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Images: Google

[ed. Hot new thing. Try it here. See also: Google aims to be top banana in AI image editing (Axios).]

Front porch wildlife
Image: markk

Morning golf 

Image: markk

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via: here/here

How the Media Shapes a Narrative. Alaska Edition.

People show their support for Ukraine outside the Government Hill gate prior to the summit with President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Bill Roth / ADN) [ed. Liberals! lol!]

Supporters of Donald Trump wave signs on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025 in Midtown. (Bob Hallinen for ADN). [ed. Whoa. Well, it is a pretty red state.]

Except, the day before there was this. Which was briefly mentioned in this link:

Several hundred protesters gathered along the Seward Highway near Northern Lights Boulevard on August 14, 2025, to protest President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Marc Lester / ADN)

by By Iris Samuels, Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News |  Read more:

Additional image: Marc Lester

[ed. So, what do we know now about how things actually went down in Anchorage. Hell if I know. And... what about that Epstein guy everyone was so worked up about last week?! Was all this just convenient and reciprocal diversion tactics (for both)? See also: Trump leaves Alaska summit with Putin empty-handed after failing to reach a deal to end Ukraine war (ADN). Update: a few more sign wavers:]

[ed. See also: The Power of the Trump-Putin Presidential Photo Op (NYT):]

The two men clasped hands, and then strode to Mr. Trump’s limo, in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties (red for Mr. Trump, burgundy for Mr. Putin), giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.

That’s the picture that was caught by the waiting cameras, and those are the photos that have gone around the world to accompany reports of the nonproductive meeting.

In the absence of an actual resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have become the takeaway. And that, said both President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, even before the meeting, was Mr. Putin’s goal in the first place.

“He is seeking, excuse me, photos,” Mr. Zelensky said. “He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”

Why? Because whatever happened afterward, a photo could be publicly seen — and read — as an implicit endorsement.

After all, the Russian president has been a virtual pariah in the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine; accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Whether or not Mr. Trump was tough with him behind the closed doors of their meeting room — whether or not their talks were, as Mr. Trump later said, “productive” — what has now been preserved for posterity is Mr. Putin’s admission back into the fold.

And of all current world leaders, the only one who understands, and embraces, the power of the image quite as effectively as Mr. Trump is Mr. Putin. Both men have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.

Ralph Ziman, MIG-21 Project (Boeing Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA)
Images: markk

[ed. South African beadwork on a Large scale. All exhibits including Air Force One, the Space Shuttle program, and more here. Don't miss if you're in Seattle.]

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[ed. American terrorists... making their nut and enjoying authority (incognito, of course.) (South Park).] 

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[ed. Whenever a discussion trends toward DEI, I tell folks I'm a great supporter, having lived it all my life. In Hawaii, where I grew up, we call it the "Aloha Spirit" - a sense of compassion, respect, love, interconnectedness, and unity among all individuals, regardless of race or background. You know, the whole multi-cultural, melting pot thing. Jeez, what a hell hole.]

Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer at The Masters, 1966
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[ed. Old school cool.]

36,000 feet above Sahara Desert

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Faroe Islands

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