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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Respite Open Thread: (In)Famous Personalities

Respite Open Thread: (In)Famous Personalities

by Anne Laurie|  February 22, 20227:08 pm| 59 Comments

This post is in: KULCHA!, Open Threads

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Hidreley Diao uses AI to capture what historical figures would look like if they were modern people.

George Washington: pic.twitter.com/Wh5bi9FAgL

— Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) February 20, 2022

The whole thread is fun, especially when you add your own commentary…

known and feared at his local games workshop https://t.co/jBHk4dmJKP

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) February 21, 2022

'i'm gonna need to see those numbers on my desk by tomorrow morning, yeah?' https://t.co/CFqF8P3X60

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) February 21, 2022

still a sociopath but this time works in finance https://t.co/lQhnY6VMnq

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) February 21, 2022

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Previous Post: « DJT picks a side…
Next Post: Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Vladimir V. Putin, Not A Well Man »

Reader Interactions

59Comments

  1. 1.

    germy

    February 22, 2022 at 7:08 pm

    Why does Washington remind me of Bernie Madoff?

  2. 2.

    germy

    February 22, 2022 at 7:09 pm

    I love this stuff:

    Awesome photo of the mosaic recently discovered in London https://t.co/gKImx89NX5 pic.twitter.com/JP2yDIKsWR

    — Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) February 22, 2022

  3. 3.

    debbie

    February 22, 2022 at 7:12 pm

    @germy:

    Because you misremember Bernie Madoff? //

  4. 4.

    Baud

    February 22, 2022 at 7:12 pm

    I’d buy life insurance from Ben Franklin.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    February 22, 2022 at 7:15 pm

    Why do they all look like targets on To Catch a Predator

  6. 6.

    trollhattan

    February 22, 2022 at 7:22 pm

    @germy: ​
    Amazing. Nice touch that it’s within view of The Shard (fun fact: the architect is Italian). Frickin’ Romans got around.

    Found in a drain pipe, ancient Baby Ruth bar doubtless released by preteen Roman prankster.

  7. 7.

    raven

    February 22, 2022 at 7:22 pm

    I have never met Napoleon
    But I plan to find the time
    ‘Cause he looks so fine upon that hill
    They tell me he was lonely, he’s lonely still
    Those days are gone forever
    Over a long time ago,

  8. 8.

    cmorenc

    February 22, 2022 at 7:23 pm

    Um… the modern “statue of Liberty” woman beats discomforting resemblance to Melania Trump.  OTOH Melania is an American immigrant story, albeit not at all of the Ellis Island variety.

  9. 9.

    CaseyL

    February 22, 2022 at 7:24 pm

    Beethoven and Newton are, as expected, very hot.

  10. 10.

    germy

    February 22, 2022 at 7:25 pm

    @trollhattan:

    I like ancient household items:

    Fascinating world of ancient #glass: an amazing #Roman blue glass #fish that was cast in a mould. It was presumably used as a cover of a dish for serving a fish (about the size of a trout).

    Dating 1st century AD.
    Photo: https://t.co/8q9C5RJDQE

    #RomanArchaeology pic.twitter.com/dDCtnXwvO0

    — Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) February 22, 2022

  11. 11.

    cmorenc

    February 22, 2022 at 7:29 pm

    @raven: your dog is loose spewing gerel everywhere.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    February 22, 2022 at 7:29 pm

    I’ll nominate Robert Plant in the Isaac Newton role.

  13. 13.

    Miss Bianca

    February 22, 2022 at 7:30 pm

    OK, that was a nice little palate cleanser after a whole day of BLECH in the news…

  14. 14.

    daize

    February 22, 2022 at 7:35 pm

    @raven: Oh, yeah.

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    February 22, 2022 at 7:40 pm

    ObRepost – Smiling Abe Lincoln (8:17)

    Just amazing stuff.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    February 22, 2022 at 7:42 pm

    Trump’s Truth Social’s disastrous launch raises doubts about its long-term viability

    Former president Donald Trump, a longtime critic of how Democrats debuted Healthcare.gov, is facing a bungled website launch of his own.

    His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a [ed: self-claimed] 300,000-person waitlist.

    “The basic thing they needed to actually get right, to get someone in the door, they couldn’t get right,” said Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy researcher. The “ineptitude of the rollout,” he added, could be a warning of future issues ahead: “There is no better sign of a rushed implementation than the fact that you can’t onboard anybody. So I’m hard-pressed to understand why anyone would trust that these people would keep their information safe.”

    The site’s problems extend beyond its waitlist: Its logo — a broken capital ‘T’ with a period — is identical to the logo of Trailar, a British seller of truck solar panels. A company executive told The Washington Post that it is “seeking legal advice to understand next steps and options available to protect our brand.”

    Although Trump has criticized social networks’ “wildly aggressive censorship,” his site’s “terms of service” mark some extensive restrictions for acceptable speech. People are banned from trying to “trick” or “mislead” other users, violating anyone’s “privacy or publicity rights,” or posting messages that “depict violence” or include messages related to “sexual fetishes,” “sugar babies” or “sexually suggestive” phrases. People are also forbidden from posting anything “false,” “indecent,” “misleading,” “profane,” “obscene,” “filthy” or “otherwise objectionable.”

    How long until Trump gets banned from his own network?

    Also, 3rd-party grifters are getting in on the action:

    During the months of waiting, several copycat sites also beat Trump’s social network to the punch, including a totally unaffiliated “social app for truth” that charges users $4.99 a week. Another “Truth Social” look-alike showed a Trump rally photo next to boxes asking for people’s email addresses and passwords.

    But those sites offered something the real Truth Social could not: They worked. Even a copycat site, TMTGSocial.com, which someone unaffiliated with Trump registered after Trump’s allies first announced Truth Social in October, now has hundreds of users — posting pro-Trump content, seemingly under the impression they’ve joined the real thing.

    For months, many of them have been posting comments and photos, friending each other and following fake Trump accounts. Others have voiced their excitement that Trump is, as one said, about to “let the TRUTH PREVAIL.”

  17. 17.

    Ken

    February 22, 2022 at 7:43 pm

    @germy: I assume they’re cleaning the mosaic so the carpark’s asphalt will stick better.  Sure, in a sense it’s priceless as history of the very origins of London; but in the only sense that matters, it’s occupying quite a few square meters of the most expensive real estate in the world.

  18. 18.

    Parfigliano

    February 22, 2022 at 7:44 pm

    @cmorenc: Melania is a Slovenian slut illegally here.

  19. 19.

    tom

    February 22, 2022 at 7:44 pm

    @CaseyL: Alexander too

  20. 20.

    Baud

    February 22, 2022 at 7:45 pm

    @dmsilev:

    Its logo — a broken capital ‘T’ with a period — is identical to the logo of Trailar, a British seller of truck solar panels. A company executive told The Washington Post that it is “seeking legal advice to understand next steps and options available to protect our brand.”

     

    They better sue before they become the next AYDS.

  21. 21.

    Ken

    February 22, 2022 at 7:45 pm

    @dmsilev: Trump’s Truth Social’s disastrous launch raises doubts about its long-term viability

    Has it lasted long enough for the marks’ payments to clear? Because I’m 99% sure that was the only design requirement for the site.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    February 22, 2022 at 7:46 pm

    Whole bunch of similar things inside the Mystery Scoop channel at YouTube.

  23. 23.

    dmsilev

    February 22, 2022 at 7:49 pm

    @Ken: Well, it has lasted just barely long enough for Devin Nunes to accomplish one very important task:

    Truth Social has already banned an account named for a Twitter parody that targeted former congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who resigned from Congress to become the Trump company’s CEO.

  24. 24.

    CROAKER

    February 22, 2022 at 7:50 pm

    His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches

    reginod …

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    February 22, 2022 at 7:50 pm

    @CaseyL:

    van Gogh, OTOH, looks like he might be sleeping on a park bench near you.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    February 22, 2022 at 7:52 pm

    @dmsilev

    Canceling candy?

    Presumably Baby Ruth is still okay.

  27. 27.

    scav

    February 22, 2022 at 7:52 pm

    @Ken: Yup, carparks are inevitably exactly what get put on the world’s most expensive real estate.  Because the technology of lifting and moving shit is pure sci-fi fantasy.

  28. 28.

    Ohio Mom

    February 22, 2022 at 7:57 pm

    @Another Scott: That was very believable, until Lincoln smiled broadly enough to show his too-perfect teeth. Obviously, I don’t know what his teeth looked like but I am guessing not like he’d recently been to a cosmetic dentist and gotten veneers.

    On another, completely different unrelated note, Ohio Dad has just come in with the mail and yet another of my doctors is retiring. Looks like her replacement is barely out of medical school, and I already have one of those. Not happy about this!

  29. 29.

    dr. bloor

    February 22, 2022 at 7:59 pm

    Henry VIII still looks like some mope from Texas who gets an HCA at Reddit.

  30. 30.

    bbleh

    February 22, 2022 at 8:06 pm

    @CaseyL: @Roger Moore: @dr. bloor:

    Shakespeare keeps having his screenplays rejected by the studios for “old-fashioned dialogue,” works part-time at a library to make ends meet.

    Da Vinci took a buyout from Bell Labs, went solo in Silicon Valley and sold out for just under a billion, and now lives in Sonoma.

    Beethoven does porn.

  31. 31.

    Kayla Rudbek

    February 22, 2022 at 8:11 pm

    The US Patent and Trademark Office historian has been having a good time with Black History Month on Facebook. He started off with telling the story of Henry Baker, who was a Black patent examiner at the turn of the century. Mr. Baker picked up patent examining after getting his law degree from Howard (and being racially hazed out of the Naval Academy before that). So Mr. Baker drew up a list of Black inventors/patent holders (eventually writing books on the subject); the list got read into the Congressional Record in 1894 and used by W.E.B. DuBois. And when the historian started looking

    at the list, one of the inventors (Richard America) has a living son who still has his dad’s patent information. I’m curious to see what the historian is going to find out about the other inventors on Mr. Baker’s list…

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    February 22, 2022 at 8:13 pm

    @dmsilev: Trump is a trash magnet, so it’s no surprise his people can’t pull this app off.

  33. 33.

    Kayla Rudbek

    February 22, 2022 at 8:15 pm

    @dmsilev:

     

    @Baud: you are exactly correct. Everyone flames the trademark enforcers until it’s their own marks being tarnished…

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    February 22, 2022 at 8:17 pm

    @dmsilev:

    BBC interviewed chinless Trump assistant Jason Miller, unironically, about the forthcoming social medium launch and how it would be totally unlike any of those other social media launches Trump has already tried. He promises.

    Why come it’s not called TROOF? Branding fail.

  35. 35.

    debbie

    February 22, 2022 at 8:32 pm

    @dmsilev:

    Great, but I was kind of hoping it was Devin Nunes’  ?.  ?

  36. 36.

    Danielx

    February 22, 2022 at 8:36 pm

    @Ohio Mom:

    What are you complaining about? To me they all still look like they are in high school.

  37. 37.

    A Ghost to Most

    February 22, 2022 at 8:39 pm

    Sounds interesting, but I have more fun assigning current actors to co-conspirators in the upcoming films. Especially the comedies.

  38. 38.

    Danielx

    February 22, 2022 at 8:41 pm

    @raven:

    most excellent

  39. 39.

    Peale

    February 22, 2022 at 8:47 pm

    @Baud: Christ. So some intern responsible for the design concept when and back clicked on someone elses logo and plopped it into a PowerPoint deck. I bet they took the deck and rather than paying to complete the work, told them they were fired and went and used it as is, saving themselves $1,000.

    They are mean, but very cheap thieves.

  40. 40.

    Roger Moore

    February 22, 2022 at 8:50 pm

    @Ken:

    I assume they’re cleaning the mosaic so the carpark’s asphalt will stick better.  Sure, in a sense it’s priceless as history of the very origins of London; but in the only sense that matters, it’s occupying quite a few square meters of the most expensive real estate in the world.

    OTOH, the English have plenty of experience transporting antiquities from the far corners of the Earth back to London and displaying them in museums there.  It should be a piece of cake with something that’s already in London!  Maybe it can replace the Parthenon Marbles on display when they’re finally repatriated to Greece.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    February 22, 2022 at 8:52 pm

    Julius Caesar was awesome, I don’t care what anyone says.  ;)

  42. 42.

    Craig

    February 22, 2022 at 9:09 pm

    @trollhattan: Renzo Piano is rad.

  43. 43.

    Miss Bianca

    February 22, 2022 at 9:15 pm

    @Jeffro: Yeah, he did look disturbingly sexy, for a ruthless corporate overlord.

  44. 44.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 22, 2022 at 9:15 pm

    @Baud:  I’d buy life insurance from Ben Franklin.

    I used to shop at his five-and-dime.

  45. 45.

    James E Powell

    February 22, 2022 at 9:18 pm

    @germy:

    Say what you will about the brutality of the Roman Empire, those guys built stuff to last.

  46. 46.

    Bill Arnold

    February 22, 2022 at 9:23 pm

    @dmsilev:

    People are also forbidden from posting anything “false,”

    Well, every post on the site is a “Truth”. I imagine that a logician could amuse themselves playing with this.( I’m betting that they do not have even a basic filter that blocks posts like “True is False”?)
    Also, from screencaps, they are asserting that everything somebody posts is a Truth. The aggregate of an individual’s truths apparently must be true, and perhaps the aggregate of all truths must be true.

  47. 47.

    Percysowner

    February 22, 2022 at 9:29 pm

    I like Royalty Now for modern recreations as well.

  48. 48.

    rekoob

    February 22, 2022 at 9:39 pm

    @Ohio Mom: The rule of thumb is that you can never have too young a doctor, nor too old a lawyer. I’d say you’re in good shape!

  49. 49.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    February 22, 2022 at 10:28 pm

    @dmsilev: ​
      cancel culture is outta control

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    February 22, 2022 at 10:28 pm

    @rekoob:
    My new internist is only a few years out of medical school and she does not yet have a sense of proportion. Not everything in my history is especially currently pertinent. But my policy is to give new (to me) doctors a couple of visits before passing too much judgement.

    I think a 40 year old doctor is perfect: old enough to have acquired judgement, young enough to have many years left. But twenty years later, they retire, just as you are old enough to start falling apart!

  51. 51.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    February 22, 2022 at 10:34 pm

    Dump’s media platform is supposed to fail. He’s using Max Bialystock’s playbook.

  52. 52.

    prostratedragon

    February 22, 2022 at 10:38 pm

    From Fellni’s Roma, “Frescoes”

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    February 23, 2022 at 12:43 am

    Kinda respite-y:

    One of only 7 Democrats in the WY legislature spoke up fiercely against an anti-CRT bill — his fight inspired enough members to vote it down.

    It matters to elect fighters in every state, no matter how red. You never know who will make the difference!https://t.co/HIqnaYlgqm pic.twitter.com/mbQcBfpL3P

    — Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) February 23, 2022

    +1. Good, good.

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    Origuy

    February 23, 2022 at 12:57 am

    @Roger Moore: According to the article in the Guardian, it will be lifted and conserved. I know there have been mosaics found in fields that have been covered back over, because it’s expensive to lift them, but apparently this one must be moved. Some Roman sites in London have been built over with public access to the ancient level.

  55. 55.

    evodevo

    February 23, 2022 at 8:13 am

    @Origuy: that’s the way it is in Chester…you can walk down to the sub-basement and view the Roman underpinnings of several different bldgs

  56. 56.

    J.

    February 23, 2022 at 8:22 am

    @germy: I do too! That’s so cool. Thanks for sharing.

  57. 57.

    tam1MI

    February 23, 2022 at 10:53 am

    @trollhattan: I’ll nominate Robert Plant in the Isaac Newton role.

    Brian May or I riot. ?

  58. 58.

    Paul in KY

    February 23, 2022 at 11:01 am

    @James E Powell: There’s a scene in Count Belisarus where they are trying to dismantle/break a cistern built by the Romans hundreds of years before. Turns out they can’t do it as it is built so well & strongly.  Count Belisarus notes the old ones ‘built for the ages’.

  59. 59.

    columbusqueen

    February 23, 2022 at 5:03 pm

    @tam1MI: Same here, not to mention May has the scientific background as well.

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