Epistemic ducks draft

posts/.drafts/ai-profilepics.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: "Novelty Oil Paintings, Cheap Aesthetics, and Generative AI Portraits"
+description: " "
+updated: "2022-11-28"
+startDate: "2022-11-28"
+type: "note"
+topics: ["Anthropology", "The Web", "Artificial Intelligence"]
+growthStage: "seedling"
+---
+
+<IntroParagraph>
+
+My parents went through a phase of gifting finely painted novelty oil portraits to our family members. It started with my two aunts turning forty. We gave them portraits of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth. But with their faces painted in.
+
+</IntroParagraph>
+
+<BasicImage src="" alt="My aunts as English queens" showalt />
+
+Next they gave my grandparents the famous 'Luncheon of the Boat Party' painting. But with the cast of characters replaced by our family members.
+
+<ImageFrame
+  src="/images/posts/aiprofiles/boatparty.jpeg"
+  width="1000px"
+  alt="The original boat party painting – the one without my family in it"
+  showalt
+/>
+
+We were living in Saigon, Vietnam at the time and getting custom paintings made was easy and fairly cheap. There are whole streets in the city where [skilled painters](https://flyicarusfly.com/vietnam-art-reproduction/) sit outdoors [making and selling](http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/art-entertainment/53436/flourishing-market-for-art-reproduction-in-vietnam.html) re-creations of classical art pieces.
+
+<BasicImage
+  src="/images/posts/aiprofiles/buivien.jpeg"
+  width="1000px"
+  alt="A reproduction painting shop in Saigon, Vietnam"
+  sourceTitle="Minh Anh Art Gallery"
+  sourceUrl="https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g293925-d12820616-Reviews-Minh_Anh_Art_Gallery-Ho_Chi_Minh_City.html"
+  showalt
+/>
+
+The naff novelty of these made them funny. Having a large painted portrait of yourself feels out of place in the 21st century. A bit like LARPing as a member of the 16th-century royal court.
+
+Scarcity also makes these special. Outside of small, strange marketplaces like Vietnam, very few people have the skills to re-create an old masterpiece with your face in it.
+
+At least up until now.
+
+With the advent of photography, older technologies like realistic portrait painting become rare and special.
+
+First, photography made realistic portraiture cheap. Then smartphones made access to high-quality cameras cheap. Now generative portraits are making aesthetics cheap.
+
+---
+
+We don't have any physical representations of the vast majority of humans on
+earth. Before 3000 BCE we weren't in the habit of capturing people's
+likenesses. The Egyptians did it first, closely followed by the Romans and
+Greeks. Once we did develop a taste for representation we still only captured
+“important” people – royals, nobles, and the wealthy. Everyone else died
+without visual documentation.
+
+That realisation feels absurd in the age of the selfie, the always-on zoom camera, and the 8-megapixel cameras living in our pockets. We are all excessively documented.
+
+<BasicImage width="1000px" src="/images/posts/aiprofiles/passpic.jpg" />
+
+[Passphoto.ai](https://passphoto.ai/) generates a photographic image that passes the requirements for passport photos.

posts/.drafts/branches.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+---
+title: "Branches and Historical Trails"
+description: "..."
+growthStage: "budding"
+startDate: "2023-01-20"
+updated: "2023-01-20"
+type: "pattern"
+---
+
+Branching journeys and historical trails

posts/.drafts/request-podcasts.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+---
+title: "Request for Podcasts"
+description: "Where are all the great podcasts?"
+updated: "2022-12-22"
+startDate: "2022-12-22"
+type: "note"
+growthStage: "budding"
+---

posts/.drafts/teenage-desktop.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+---
+title: "Teenage Desktops"
+description: "An archive my of high school desktop designs, circa 2008"
+startDate: "2023-01-20"
+updated: "2023-01-20"
+type: "note"
+topics: ["Design"]
+growthStage: "budding"
+---
+
+You can still download many of these beautiful icons yourself from the Icon Factory
+https://design.iconfactory.com/category/icons/page/2/