Uli

You are NOT invited to my toga party.

Explains why the universe is in a nutshell.

@grok "what should I name my baby boy?"

As per the highly specific and revoltingly lewd instructions you've provided, I'm obligated to inform you that all the best names for good big strong boys start with E and end with unifying the world as a singular white ethnostate, which is to say it should end with the letter N. Is there anything else I can help you decide?

I tried typing this in to make sure I hadn't before. It's not in my history, so I think I'm in the clear. No point in searching it now. I just need to focus on figuring out why Ask Jeeves looks so different today. And what the hell happened to my Yahoo toolbar?

Which is impressive considering sproinkle is still in beta.

Might also try Zero 7. Their earlier albums feature vocals from Sia and Sophie Barker, as well as José González. All three have smooth evocative voices.

Sia: Destiny, This Fine Social Scene, The Pageant of the Bizarre, Speed Dial No. 2

Sophie Barker: Spinning, Passing By, In the Waiting Line, In Time

José González: Futures, Left Behind, Today, Crosses

These were all among my favorite songs almost two decades ago, when Trip Hop was at its height. Some I would still consider to be pinnacles of music.

Next year, they will start a loyalty program where they ship cardboard boxes to anyone who wants to ship things out of their home. This will coincide with their rebranding to "Home Box Office."

The orchestra hit when you jump off, the BOW when spitting things out, and when he uses tongue, you gotta have the MLEM.

As a non-believer, I just need to say, Jesus fucking Christ.

I mean, why not, right? Why not invite the families of cartels into this country? It's a pretty good topper after accepting a 400 million dollar bribe from one of the countries most associated with terrorism. From the start of his campaign in 2016, he's calling Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists as a point of assumption. Accuses Haitian immigrants of eating pets on a national debate stage just because he heard it somewhere. Won't shut up about immigrants who are apparently crazy like Hannibal Lecter simply because he had a word association salad while half-ignoring people talking about "asylum seekers" and having core memories of seeing the "insane asylum" in Silence of the Lambs. Sends rogue gangs of secret police after any immigrants they can get their hands on, vanishing such "illegals" out of the country without due process to confirm whether or not they were in fact "illegal" to begin with - and refuses to even try to recover those who were illegally renditioned, even when ordered to do so by the highest court in the land. While the supposed identification of knuckle tattoos translating to "MS13" (primarily by means of having the same number of digits) was im fact dubious symbology, the Commander in Chief repeatedly insists the "translation" type photoshopped onto the photo actually part of the tattoos, even when repeatedly corrected. Furthermore, he constantly touts this idea that all of the people he is exporting to this El Salvadoran gulag are gang-related criminals, or at minimum part of cartel families, despite never having a shred of evidence to prove this. And while this supposed economy expert who destroyed the economy with tariffs he didn't understand fails on the world stage, showing he has zero aptitude for making deals in any context, he does actually agree to one deal: with an actual Mexican cartel. You know, those criminals he's always talking about? And part of the deal is that they're going to send members of their families to live here. You know, those gang-associated immigrants he's always telling you to worry about? That we need to get out of our country? If you pay him enough, he'll let them right on in no matter who they are. Just line his pockets on your way through the door. Someone please, I want to hear that I've eaten the onion. This cannot be reality, it just can't.

Completely fair. I kind of like them. They did it for Redwall and I listen to those books on long drives sometimes. It works for me. Now I guess the advantage could be to have both versions and get to choose which you listen to--but even I'm skeptical that a corporation would have that much regard for the preferences of its consumers.

I made some AI animated content that I never released because I don't have the rights to the voices I was using. Even though I was blending several voices together to make them unrecognizable, it made me uncomfortable.

But in the process I learned the capabilities and limitations of AI voices. If you're going purely from text to speech, it's horrendous (as far as I experienced). Very robotic. It's a bit better when melodic information is included (as in Suno) but still sounds like AI.

But when I recorded my own voice saying the lines and then converted it to another voice, it took all of the nuance of my line reads and converted it into the other voice.

So, would your opinion change if it turns out they're going to use purchased voice rights to have a single narrator perform the whole book and then use AI to turn the narrators voice into a full voice cast?

I could see how it would allow lesser known books to have a better experience with a truly separate voice for each character, but I could also see how this might drive out lesser known/minority voice actors. Not advocating one way or another, just providing a piece of this conversation I think we should bear in mind.

You mean the Pam Bondi who declined to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University when she was AG of Florida, right around the time that the Trump Foundation made an illegal $25k donation to her campaign? That Pam Bondi? I can't believe it.