Weird Archives - Perfect Duluth Day

Timber structure washes up near Lakewalk

Apr 15, 2023 No Comments

A large timber structure has washed up on the Lake Superior shoreline just west of the Beacon Pointe condominium and hotel complex. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)

Another large timber structure has washed up on the Lake Superior shoreline just west of the Beacon Pointe condominium and hotel complex.

The structure appeared on the shoreline below the Duluth Lakewalk trail following an April 4 snow and wind storm. It is made up of 12 x 12 timbers, metal cables and bolts and looks to be the size of Chevrolet Silverado crew cab pick-up truck.

The Nimrods win American Birkebeiner Giant Ski Race 2023

Feb 27, 2023 No Comments

This highlight video shows the drama from the qualifying run and finals of the American Birkebeiner Giant Ski Race, held last weekend on Main Street in Hayward. The Nimrod Giant Ski Team recaptured the championship this year.

I tested ChatGPT’s morals and things escalated quickly

Dec 16, 2022 2 Comments

I asked the AI illustrator craiyon.com “Are you sentient?” Its cagey reply was the pantheistic picture above. So I was eager to see how ChatGPT would reply to the question. I also wanted to test its AI morals. Here’s how it went.

The Institute for the Study of Light and Water: Another psychedelic weather report

Nov 14, 2022 No Comments

Sunset a silent H-bomb

Now a burning Saturn, now an apricot pastel dab on slate. Sun zips the sky closed behind it as it goes, now dying, now resurrecting in orange creamsicle. Color cosmologies. Gold birch leaves rattle like paper coins. Leaves crunch, clatter, gather against curbs.

The Institute for the Study of Light and Water: Fall weather report

Oct 30, 2022 No Comments

Green-red and other impossible hues

Evaluation of Impossible Colors

On the grounds of the Institute, which really are all grounds, observations were made of maple and oak leaf colors absent from Newton’s spectrum: green-red and other impossible hues. The Institute conducted evaluations along subjective parameters as follows:

Random Lake Superior Aquaman, Weird

Is Duluth, Minnesota really paradise?

Aug 19, 2022 2 Comments

Creating Duluth-Themed Art with AI

Aug 17, 2022 7 Comments

A Van Gogh style painting of a 1920s cargo train traveling on a winter night though an evergreen forest next to a huge blue lake with the aurora borealis in the night sky.

DALL-E is an online tool that uses machine learning to generate digital images from plain English text descriptions. You type a description of something real or imaginary and the program does its best to create a unique image based on that description. After some time on a waitlist, I recently received an invite that allows me to create and download a limited number of artificial intelligence generated images per month. This came at a good time, as I recently found a watercolor print of the Duluth hillside in a Lincoln Park shop that I liked quite a bit but could not afford. I decided to use some of my AI image credits to see if I could get the automated system to produce Duluth art of at least somewhat comparable quality. In the examples that follow, I describe this process, showing what worked and what did not. The captions of each picture show the text query that generated the image.

Canal Park souvenir invites tourists to envision a lift bridge over the Mississippi

Aug 12, 2022 No Comments

Some years ago, I had a Duluth nameplate hanging from the back of my bicycle, which I suppose is why I impulsively bought another when I saw it recently in a Canal Park souvenir shop. I vaguely remember the one I had purchased in my younger years having a generic cityscape and not actually showing Duluth.

This one seemed no different, and might even be the same design, but this time I noticed that the building on the far left had a rather specific architecture. Checking with a group of skyscraper-obsessed friends led me to a conclusion that I should have reached myself: this Duluth souvenir depicts the skyline of St. Paul.

Successful transplanting of phallus impudicus

Oct 03, 2021 No Comments

I successfully transplanted these phallus impudicus (“impudent phallus,” aka the common stinkhorn) from one end of town to another in my diabolical plan to expand the range of this deLIGHTful species.

SubSuperior: Day 1

Aug 14, 2021 No Comments

Beta-test/proof of concept/first annual; video to come. Making music underwater and projecting it on land with hydrophones.

Artificially Perfect Duluth Day: The Microsoft Flight Simulator

Aug 05, 2021 No Comments

Microsoft’s Flight Simulator came out on the Xbox last week and allows players to fly anywhere in the world, including Duluth. It combines information from Bing maps with an algorithm that builds 3D representations of the landscape, creating shapes and textures when data is missing or incomplete.

The video below shows a simulated flight over Park Point.

Avant-Garde Women: Michele Bernstein, Queen of the Situationists

Dec 31, 2020 2 Comments

The video below is from a 1960 French TV interview about Michele Bernstein’s subversive novel “All the King’s Horses”. Yes this is in French, which I cannot follow. The auto-translation isn’t much better. It’s sort of a friendly verbal chess match. At around 2:30 the interviewer asks her something about having respect for her literary forebears. She replies: “We each import our own small stone to the cathedral.” Asked what novel she can compare hers to, she replies, “I don’t know; if it is simply a novel we can compare it to all that exist.”

Avant-Garde Women: Eliane Brau, the Invisible Icon

Dec 04, 2020 4 Comments

Born Eliane Papai around 1935 in Spain, Eliane married her way into a couple other last names; she is mostly referred to as Eliane Brau, using the last name of her second husband. I think of her simply as Eliane, in deference to her singularity. Below I argue that her role in the “Letterist” movement of early 1950s Paris has been diminished; conversely, the achievements of the Letterist men have been overblown. It has been too easy to write her off as a passive “muse” for these men who indeed loved her fiercely. She deserves parity. Sadly, unlike her lovers, there is a distinct lack of information about her on the internet. I cannot even determine if she is still alive. Eliane is an invisible icon.

Nate J. Mattson – “Moon Racer”

Sep 15, 2020 No Comments

This experimental music video by Duluth’s Nate J. Mattson features Shereé doing her “Original Tiger Dance.”

Music, Videos Weird

Short story about PDD blog comments’ infinite recursion of self-referentiality

Jun 30, 2020 4 Comments

With regards to a recent sarcastic comment by Vicarious about me posting on PDD about an interview I did about a PDD post, I was reminded of this Richardson brothers story. It was inspired by a war in the PDD comments section back in the old days, but the gist is infinite recursion in blog comments.

Art Lake Superior Aquaman, Weird

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