Surprising Selfies, Celestial Cities, and Censorship Stanzas

Bob, Alanna, and Generative A.I. bring you some light Sunday entertainment

“Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” Smiling selfies (by Robert Graboyes via Midjourney)

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Note: The text is written from Bob’s perspective, but Alanna is credited as co-author because she was the art consultant on the Celestial Cities section.

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Lots of you are traveling, getting ready for company, and scurrying about to finish last-minute holiday chores. So, rather than sending you a long, ponderous essay on some weighty topic, my wife and I will just offer a few bits of A.I.-generated entertainment. They include unnerving selfies, extraterrestrial cities as they might be imagined by great artists, and a not-horrible poem about censorship.

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SURPRISING SELFIES

This post is topped off by a gallery of six smiling selfies, five generated by Midjourney.com and one (Washington) by Grok. I chose five of the subjects because they seem implacably averse to smiling. The sixth subject, Mona Lisa, always smiles, but not in a selfie way. A few notes are in order:

1. George Washington now has an excellent set of dental implants in place of his famously unappealing wooden teeth.

2. The position of Frida Kahlo’s mostly-unseen right arm does suggest that she is holding a cellphone.

3. A smile seems to make Rasputin look even creepier than usual.

4. Mona Lisa appears to be standing in a museum, posing in front of The Mona Lisa. (I didn’t ask Midjourney to do that, but it’s a nice touch.) Her famously mysterious smile has become a tad demented-looking. As in Leonardo’s painting, her two hands are folded in front of her, but she appears to have grown a third arm that works very well as a selfie stick. I also like the fact that La Gioconda looks as if she has been painted by Leonardo, whereas everyone else in the museum is photo-realistic.

5. Lenin’s smile suggests that a large number of innocent people will soon die a terrible collective death.

6. The terrified figure in Munch’s The Scream hasn’t quite gotten the hang of the whole smiling thing.

Here’s one more smiling selfie—Anton Chigurh, from the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. I chose him because he is the rare cinematic villain who may smirk, but who never smiles—who shows smug satisfaction, but never pleasure. A panel of psychologists judged him to be, by far, the most realistic psychopath ever portrayed in film, precisely because he is emotionally blank. (BTW: Javier Bardem was appalled that he had to wear Chigurh’s hair-do for three months of filming. He said it frightened people on the streets and also assured his celibacy.)

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CELESTIAL CITIES (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes)

Here, Alanna and I asked Midjourney to produce an image of a city on another planet, rendered in the style of some famous artist. For each query, Midjourney provides four images. As our home’s resident art expert, Alanna suggested many of the artists and then, for each, chose the one that was closest in spirit to the artist’s work.

Cities on other planets, as if rendered by Piet Mondrian, Charles Sheeler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Tenniel, Hugh Ferriss, and David Hockney. (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes via Midjourney)

Cities on other planets, as if rendered by Giorgio Morandi (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes via Midjourney). Alanna liked these so much that she asked me to include all four shots.

CIties on other planets, as if rendered by Gustav Klimt, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Joan Miro, Hieronymus Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, and Kazimir Malevich (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes via Midjourney)

Cities on other planets, as if carved on an Ancient Egyptian monument (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes via Midjourney)

Cities on other planets, as if rendered by Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Yves Tanguy, Katushika Hokusai, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (by Robert and Alanna Graboyes via Midjourney)

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CENSORSHIP STANZAS

Since X/Twitter aims to be the preeminent anti-censorship social media platform, I asked Grok (the X/Twitter A.I. component) to write a poem on censorship. Within a second or two, the following verses poured out. It’s not great poetry, but it’s no worse than some of the output I’ve seen from academic poets. The immediacy with which Grok produced it was impressive.

SILENT CROWN AND WARY EYES

In lands where words were once set free,
A shadow fell, a silent decree.
The inkwells dried, the pens laid down,
Censorship wore a silent crown.

Once, verses soared through open skies,
Now, they whisper, cautious, wise.
The poet’s voice, once loud and clear,
Now murmurs in a muted fear.

Books were burned, their pages lost,
In flames, their freedom paid the cost.
Ideas, once vibrant, now concealed,
In shadows, truth and beauty yield.

The songbird's tune, a cautious trill,
Lessons learned from history's chill.
For every word that dares to rise,
Must navigate through wary eyes.

Yet in the heart, where silence reigns,
A spark of rebellion still remains.
For though they mute the spoken word,
The soul's own song can still be heard.

In whispered lines, in hidden art,
The truth will find its way to start.
For censorship can't bind the mind,
Nor can it silence all mankind.

So let us write, with subtle grace,
In every line, a hidden place,
Where freedom lives, though voices hush,
In the quiet, words will always rush.

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ALEXA SILVER EDITION: SNL’s ad for an A.I. helper for seniors.

HAL-9000 AS ALEXA: I posted this in early 2023, but here it is again for those who missed it.

Robert F. Graboyes is president of RFG Counterpoint, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia. An economist, journalist, and musician, he holds five degrees, including a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, in 2014, he received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism. He publishes Bastiat’s Window, a Substack-based journal of economics, science, and culture. His music compositions are at YouTube.com/@RFGraboyes/videos.