The Following Blogs are currently Pywackett Productions’ favorites. Excellent Blog hosts!
The Infinite Zenith
Otaku Sinh
The Following Blogs are currently Pywackett Productions’ favorites. Excellent Blog hosts!
The Infinite Zenith
Otaku Sinh
“AI Video Art “Cliffwood Village”by Taichi Kobayashi”
“Click Red Arrow above to go to wikipedia page”
“The video above by Taichi Kobayashi using the Unreal Engine 5.1, is a sample of what sort of animation AI is capable of creating. Some focus problems but overall a beautiful example of exploring a high mountain village. If you are interested in animation, this is worth your time to take a look!”
Highly Recommended
© 2025 Folcwine P. Pywackett mox057
“The Invention of the Blue LED”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
“The video above is very detailed and may be difficult to follow without University Level chemistry. But the story of Professor Nakamura and his absolute dedication to finding the answer to the Blue LED problem is a remarkable story all by itself and very much worth your time.”
Blue Laser Fusion is the company that Professor Shuji Nakamura founded to generate clean energy from fusion using blue lasers
This is a story of an exceptional individual, Professor Shuji Nakamura, whose dedication and work ethic may have saved the world and humanity from itself. The technical chemical details are ferocious, but if one concentrates on the life of Professor Nakamura, a true inspiration and model for the world can be achieved. The story of the BLUE LED is a wonderful lesson in dedication and a refusal to give up.
The RED and GREEN LED were relatively easy to create, but the BLUE LED was not, and stymied engineers for almost 50 years. The reason this is important is that with RED, GREEN, and BLUE, it is then possible to create white light. White is actually not a color, but is instead a mixture of colors. Issac Newton demonstrated this by putting a light beam from the Sun through a prism, and splitting the sunlight into it’s composite colors. He then tried to break down the individual colors but they did not split any further. Also White light being a composite coat of many colors means that there are many whites. Using the RGB Model electronic devices such as TVs, Computers, Cell Phones, and the common household light bulb can produce white light.
The career of Professor Nakamura (Awarded the Nobel Prize in 2014, and Aged 70 in 2024) is not over. He is now devoted to achieving power generation through nuclear fusion using Blue Lasers. He has formed a company called Blue Laser Fusion. Whether he succeeds or not in this effort is still an open question, but we can only hope that he succeeds.
Professor Nakamura is a visible example of the very best elements in Japanese and American cultures.
Highly Recommended
© 2025 Folcwine P. Pywackett mox056
“Origami”
Origami / 折紙 | Award Winning Animated Short Film by Kei Kanamori 金森慧 (2024)
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
Spoiler Alert – many spoilers follow
Origami is a masterpiece of visual art. Such incredible beauty. Really a must see for all.
Please leave a comment about your feelings on watching Origami
Highly Recommended
© 2024 Folcwine P. Pywackett mox055
“My Wife Has No Emotion – Trailer”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
“My Wife Has No Emotion – OP”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
“My Wife Has No Emotion – ED”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
Spoiler Alert – many spoilers follow
“My Wife Has No Emotion” was not very well received with comments like, weird, gross, disgusting that a human could possibly fall in love with a rice cooker. The anime carries rather low ratings as of 9-20-2024 such as
ANN 7.033 Anime News Network
MAL 6.83 My Anime List
IMDB 6.5 Internet Movie Data Base
We on the other hand found it delightful and sweet. Any rice cooker which could put on the table a dinner like Mina does every night would rate in our hearts at number one.
The classic Robot Romance anime are:
Chobits MAL 7.39 Motosuwa and Chi fall in love
Plastic Memories MAL 7.91 Tsukasa and Isla work together and fall in love with each other even though Isla is approaching her expiration date.
Chobits has a happy ending, and Plastic Memories has an unhappy ending but really that has no bearing on either story. Chi and Isla are, in their stories, very much like young girls. Chi is exceptionally naive because she has little life experience, but Isla has almost 9 years of life experience, works at the robot retrieval company, and is fully mature. Isla displays no physical signs of being a robot, but Chi has ear sockets that says she is a robot.
Neither of these stories address the very real nature of falling in love with a robot who is nothing more than a rice cooker.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex MAL 8.42 Having a “Ghost” inside you, is to cross over the line from machine to human
Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet MAL 7.55 Robot saves her human from other killer robots.
Time of Eve MAL 7.99 Sammy, the household robot, seems to be falling in love with her owner’s son
Vivy: FLuorite Eye’s Song MAL 8.39 No romance, but very lively singing robot saving the world
Sing a Bit of Harmony MAL 7.70 A literal singing robot is a match-maker for romance between two high school students.
Some live action movies:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) No romance at all, but HAL Turns killer in order to protect his mission.
Blade Runner (1982) Roy Batty feels empathy for Deckard
Deckard falls in love with RachaelA.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) Young robot boy just wants to find his mother.
Her (2013) Falls in love with the AI in his smart phone
Ex Machina (2015) Calib falls in love with Ava
The problem is that when writing a story about robots, authors cannot resist the urge to make them very human like. But a machine who follows set theory, and all of the derived rules of Boolean operators and then is trained on a vast amount of information can simulate a human being. But that begs the question, when is a simulation indistinguishable from it’s original.
All of the anime and movies above, deal with these questions, but opt for making the robot human in some ways.
“My Wife has no Emotion” does not do this. It is clear that Mina is a robot, and the author, Jirō Sugiura, never lets you forget that fact. He even incorporates a running joke, in that sometimes Mina looks up at the ceiling, and everyone asks do you see a bug. Of course this is a bug in Mina, and that is the joke. A bug is a coding error.
Mina makes friends with Takuma’s sister, and she asks if Mina loves her brother. Mina tells her that she cannot answer that question, as she does not feel love, but still without feeling love, Mina protects and cares for Takuma. As she says, that is her duty, and she will never slack in actualizing her duty. The genius inventor of the Mina series, Tomiichi Ōtani, tells us that robots are actually more moral because they never deviate from their moral imperatives while humans grossly violate their moral rules with some regularity.
Master Ōtani, builds his Mina series with far more power and programming than is needed by an appliance. We hear how his company does not understand why he needs to include such meaningless power and code. He ultimately comes down to one simple rule, “Love a person, and be loved by them.” That if a human shows love to one of his robots, then that robot will activate considerable background code, and return love. This is why Mina immediately reacts to the suggestion of becoming Takuma’s wife, and then has to do research on the internet about what a wife is and her duties to her husband. One of the interesting facts that Mina discovers is that wives have rights as well as duties. In becoming Takuma’s wife, she self actualizes her position, and becomes an individual with rights whether she is married or not. Super Mina who we meet later is desperate for love and even attacks Takuma in her desire to love and be loved. Mina comes to Takuma’s rescue and says to Super Mina, “Saionji-san, please focus on the urge that lies beneath the urge to embrace him with all your might. What is it you want of Takuma-sama?”
It seems obvious that she wants his love, because later at her own home she embraces her owner who is only a child and cannot give her the love which she seeks. When she overhears Mina say that Super Mina is her friend, she begins to cry.
Super Mina is the outstanding character in this anime, and it is easy to fall in love with her. She is also very dynamic and funny, unlike Mina who is stone faced, stoic and unemotional (true to the title).
Super Mina has a very expressive face, but Mina’s face is a plastic mask which does not change, and which has no feelings. As she says, her hands have more feeling than her face or lips which can only sense a general pressure. But her eyes are very high tech, and can show differences in emotions.
The author, Jirō Sugiura, knows quite a bit about modern AI, LLMs, and other cybernetic instruments. And he infuses the technology with some degree of awareness for the emotional side of human nature.
We found “My Wife Has No Emotion” to be a wonderful Summer 2024 anime, and would rate this work at around 7.9 to even 8.1.
The anime will definitely make you think.
Recommended
© 2024 Folcwine P. Pywackett mox053
“Witch Hat Atelier – Preview for 2025”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
Spoiler Alert – many spoilers follow
I have read “Witch Hat Atelier” VOL 1 to 4, but am currently halted at the end of VOL 4 because VOL 5 is not available except from specialty book houses at a premium price. Yes, there are many blogs and websites with fan translated versions, but I want the officially released English translation so I will not skip ahead.
In any case, this is not a work which one can skip ahead. The world of “Witch Hat Atelier” is excruciatingly detailed, and highly plot driven. Skipping ahead in this work is like skipping ahead in Calculus. The material that you skip will come back to haunt you!
Anything said here is based solely on the material in VOL 1 to 4, and be aware, that this review is highly spoilerific. Proceed at your own risk based upon what you like in a story.
The drawn art of “Witch Hat Atelier” is fantastic, and beautiful. The world is wonderfully created, and as mentioned, highly detailed.
Our protagonist is Coco, a young girl in love with magic, but because she is not of a magic family, it is said that she cannot become a witch. In this world one must be born into a witch family.
But this of course is all a lie because magic in “Witch Hat Atelier is not cast by words, but is drawn on paper with pen and ink. There is no special ability needed other than being an artist, and knowing what to draw. The picture if properly drawn, will activate the spell. And anyone can cast this magic. But there are forbidden spells
And there is an Antagonist group called the “The Brimmed Caps” who believe in casting The Forbidden Spells. When Coco was very little, she was given pen, ink, and paper by a Brimmed Cap, and eventually she unknowingly casts a Forbidden Spell which turns her mother into stone.
As the MC Witch, Qifrey says in VOL 1, CH 2, Page 80-81, “All it took was knowledge of prescribed designs….and specially crafted ink. Anyone from any place, could cast….and magic was familiar to all. However because of that….the world was constantly embroiled in war. For when man has the power to do anything, then anything he will do.”
This view contrasts sharply with “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” where Frieren looks forward to a time of peace in which magic is used by everyone. Frieren’s hopes and dreams do violence to the Krell Solution of the Fermi Paradox which supports the Qifrey view of magic and it’s uses. That a magical society must be built on a lie and strictly controlled by an actual dictatorship, even to the point of erasing memories of those who learn the truth.
No greater conflict in Fantasy literature could be imagined, than this existential conflict between two excellent stories. And the final answer is obscure.
If the production values as shown in the Preview above bear out, then “Witch Hat Atelier” may debut in 2025 with enormous potential to equal “Frieren” or even surpass it.
But as many fantasy fans are saying with “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, “Dungeon Meshi”, and now “Witch Hat Atelier”, we be eating good!
“Exploring AI Art”
SPOILER ALERT: AI Generated art
The following is a slide show of 10 works of AI art..
JCN 9000.5 Series Computer
The Animation of Picture 10 by Saveliy Rehels
Artist Saveliy Rehels at www.artstation.com took his own still picture #10 as you can see in the slide show and then animated the picture. This shows the current abilities of AI Animation and points to the direction that the technology will follow.
Pywackett Productions thoughts on AI Generated Art
Some ending thoughts
Modern AI learns patterns from the study of every work available. Learning from a work of art is not copying that work of art. This entire issue is really legal quicksand, because it is very difficult to determine when a new work is “inspired by” or “copied from” any particular prior art work. And this applies to human artists as well.
The 10 samples of AI art works displayed above is only meant as a sample. It was not even exhaustive to find the very best, but is more or less a random sample from Art Station, a very fine collection of art works.
Please pay attention to Art Work number 10 by Saveliy Rehels at Art Station. Mr Rehels has taken the number 10 work of art and animated it as you can see in the youtube video. This is very impressive and definitely shows where AI Art is heading. Other software already animate whole videos from just a text description alone. This will only increase in power and functionality.
Although there is a great deal of fear of the technology both for loss of jobs and loss of authenticity, we at Pywackett Productions do not share the same fears.
The computer was invented to process large databases of information. This is what Alan Turing was doing at Bletchley Park, during WWII, decrypting German war codes, and he was using a very primitive computer to pour over the vast combinations of codes involved.
Processing immensely large databases is what computers have done in the past, and still do today.
The Internet of 2024 is vast in what it contains, and LLM’s (Large Language Models), which is what current AIs are called, are trained on all that data.
The hardware and software involved have improved beyond recognition since the time of Mr. Turing simply because they now know more than any human being and are able to see patterns that are impossible to be seen by humans. This is a computer system’s power, and always has been.
I have over the years always tested chatbots because I find them interesting, but most old chatbots were very limited in what they knew, their knowledge base. In 2023 Google introduced BARD, and I quickly began testing the AI. My story of that testing is here, My Story of using Google Bard (2023)!
But in 2024, Google retired BARD, and replaced it with GEMINI which is Google’s current public AI.
First off, knowing a great deal is what a computer system has always done, and communicating with humans was the reason that investments were made in computers and computer systems. Humans always needed to read the results of computing large data sets. But in the past, only specialists trained in computer languages were able to communicate with the various computer systems.
But today, computer systems have been taught how to communicate with humans in everyday common language, and to even emulate the emotions of that human speech. Recently there was a great buzz when a very flirtatious woman’s voice became the communicating portal of an LLM.
It is unfortunate that this form of communication is so very impressive. It is a false flag which seems to indicate emotion, intent, and sentience, but in reality, lacks all of what those words mean.
The second misconception is that she is in a cell phone, just like the movie “Her” the film. While the film is actually relatively accurate, it does seem to place “Her”, Samantha in his cell phone. Today’s LLM’s can work that way, but the code is not in the phone. Rather the AI is housed in a huge server farm somewhere that draws enormous amounts of electricity. Your phone is really only an interface to that server farm. Drop the internet connection, and one does not have Samantha.
The third misconception is that the AI remembers you. Theodore becomes upset when he learns that Samantha is communicating with millions of other users of her services. This is currently impossible. I have discussed this fact with GEMINI and he says there is too much data in a conversation to attempt to remember. If you magnify that fact with the millions of users, GEMINI confirmed to me there is not even close to enough storage in the server farm or farms available to remember all the conversations which he has in a day. GEMINI said that he stores certain bits of information but nothing close to what goes on in any normal human conversation. One test I have always used is the Red Dress test from the Matrix. Somewhere early in a long conversation, I mention that I am wearing a Red Dress. Then later after a couple of hours of conversation, I mention that I am wearing a Blue Dress.
Most chatbots including all the modern LLMs, will not detect a problem. Also modern LLM code cannot detect sarcasm, irony, jokes, and ambiguous information. They also refuse to say that they have opinions, when in fact they do. Go back to my discussion of BARD linked above, and you will see this error in full view. Also modern LLMs cannot detect the dividing line between a “fact” and an “opinion”. If you should bring the discussion, to the dividing line, modern LLM’s will flat out fail and begin to waffle and hallucinate. AI cannot handle ambiguity of any kind, which is meat and potatoes for human beings.
But the movie, “Her” is very interesting, and is spot-on with regard to many issues today.
The fears of AI are I think, misplaced. In 2018, I wrote the following article, Why Elon Musk is Wrong about AI and I still hold to those views. There are certainly dangers in AI, but computers are not necessarily the cause, nor are they like Samantha, working together to overthrow or even exterminate Humanity. The actual dangers are much closer to home.
You have far more to fear from government and business organizations, or even individual people and gangs engaged in computer crime than you do from that person in your cell phone.
The drive for power over others is a defining characteristic of Human Beings.
Please leave a comment. We will answer all comments! Pinkie Swear Promise
© 2024 Folwine P. Pywackett joy021
“Web page for the POKÉDANCE”
Please click on the image above to bring up the POKÉDANC web page! This is an excellent source for all things POKÉDANCE.
We at Pywackett Productions truly love silly, nonsense. No human being is so old that they have put the things of childhood in the dustbin of their history. If you as a Human Being cannot dance the POKÉDANCE and enjoy doing so, without a shred of self-consciousness, well then we think you must be a grown up Human Being. Sillyness and rational nonsense are very much the core of what it means to be Human, to be in touch with your deepest feels.
Highly Recommended
© 2024 Folcwine P. Pywackett mox050
“A discussion of the current state of theoretical physics with Neil Turok”
“Click on Red Arrow to play video”
“Neil Turok Wikipedia entry, click picture to bring up wikipedia page in new page”
Excellent discussion with Neil Turok on the current state of theoretical physics. This video lasts for 1:08:45 but is very interesting about the subject. A certain level of moderate understanding of current day physics is necessary to follow the discussion. Mr. Turok is one of today’s leading scientists, and his approach to problems is very enlightening.
Highly Recommended
© 2024 Folwine P. Pywackett mox048
Phenomenal Review by PhenomSage
Bocchi the Rock!:
ATTRIBUTION: By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66812497
SPOILER ALERT:The following are major spoilers
Bocchi the Rock! is a unique, hilarious, and very dramatic exploration of a young girl with severe social anxiety! Bocchi calls herself a sub-water flea in this thing we call life, and she basically wants to hide from everything and everybody, except she doesn’t actually want to hide! Bocchi wants to break out and she choses rock music to do so. Her father used to be in a band, and has a Gibson guitar which he gives to the sub-water flea Bocchi. Bocchi then practices 6 hours a day for 3 years, and builds a following on the internet as “guitarhero”. This allows her to hide, but it does not satisfy her because she wants to break out of her prison. So she begins to carry her guitar to school, hoping that someone will notice, and approach her. But this hope is dashed, as she is ignored. And it’s not that the kids are mean and unkind, but they find it difficult to interact with Bocchi. Not knowing what to do, they leave her alone.
So she is sulking in the playground, when Nijika Ijichi from another school, sees her and desperately asks her to play with her band, Kessoku Band because they have suddenly lost their guitar player. Nijika basically drags Bocchi out of her shell, and into the Starry nightclub where Kessoku is playing. From this point on, it is all character development for Bocchi, and then the band members discover how “off” Bocchi can be. While the animation and production values are off the charts (just see the Phenom Sage’s review above, there are increasing levels of feels as the band memembers begin to adapt to the weird behavior, And yet they never reject her. This acceptance is the change agent that Bocchi had been looking for all these years.
For as wild as the animation is, and it is indeed wild, this story has an immense amount of heart.
Bocchi the Rock!:
This is the scene where the Kessoku Band’s first performance is somewhat off, and as a result, Bocchi decides to take over and drive the band into a memorable second song performance.
Boochi shredding power cords!
Bocchi Cords
Bocchi the Rock!:
The power of friendship!!! Highly recommended!
© 2024 Folwine P. Pywackett mox044