I create a lot of images and stories with AI just for fun, most of which I've never bothered to share anywhere. If you drive a car, you do much, much, much more damage to the environment than I do, so get all the way off my back about that. I'm sharing these because I'm not concerned about undermining the Legend of Zelda fan art industry, and they're a fascinating illustration (pun intended) of how generative AI can still be so incredible and so stupid at the same time. I gave Gemini a simple two-word prompt:

Princess Zelda

I think this looks gorgeous. Of course, you don't have to look long to find some apparent errors. A castle stands in the distance, even though Zelda is already in one in the foreground. But so what if our princess is in another castle? There's precedent for that. She has on the back of her hand the Hylian crest instead of the Triforce symbol, but oh well, it looks cool anyway. She's holding the Master Sword that usually belongs to Link, but I could not possibly be less bothered because it looks badass. Her hair is shorter than usual, which is an interesting choice that doesn't matter either way. I gave it another prompt:

Link

Gemini made the interesting choice to keep the same setting and keep Zelda in it, but to shift the perspective and bring in Link. Also, a giant compass is on the ground as if he's just presented it to Zelda as a gift, unaware that it can only be used in the dungeon where he found it. Derp. It looks like he has a copy of the Master Sword, but he hasn't put it in his scabbard.

​Impa

This time, Gemini didn't move the scene around, but there's Impa. Very nice. No notes. I'm most familiar with and interested in the Ocarina of Time era, and these are clearly not the Ocarina of Time versions of these characters, which is fine. I wondered if Gemini would have any issues integrating characters specific to that game into the scene. Oh, and Link put his sword away and lost his shield and compass.

​Nabooru

Link seems slightly alarmed by Nabooru's arrival... or maybe he's just staring at her boobs.

Princess Ruto

Not bad. Gemini missed the distinctive shape of her head, but the coral crown is a nice touch. If your eyes are sharp, you may have already noticed the quality of the scene beginning to deteriorate, which happens when AI repeats an image over and over. I didn't let that dissuade me. I was no longer trying to create a beautiful piece of artwork, I was just curious how it would interpret each character and how many I could fit.

Darunia

This is the worst one so far. He looks too human with that nose and those ears, and his hair should stick up a lot more. Oh well.

Navi​

Gemini certainly has enough training data to be aware that Navi appears in the game as a ball of light with wings, but that was obviously due to graphics limitations, so I'm inclined to see this as an "intentional" design choice rather than incompetence. If she looked like this in the game, would players be more patient with her? And hey, she seems to have reminded Link to stop staring at Nabooru's boobs.

​Happy Mask Salesman

I really liked this one. The masks look great, and the salesman looks appropriately happy and insane. Now I'm imagining a crossover where Majora's mask turns him into the Joker.

Malon

Nice braids. Never saw her wearing braids before. The background is really starting to look like crap now, and the mask salesman is leering creepily at Malon while she blocks the view of most of his merchandise. Although its efforts hadn't been flawless up to now, this was the point where I felt like Gemini became stupid. It was not using the available space as wisely as it could have.

Talon

Oh hey, he's holding his daughter's hand. What a cute touch. Now the Happy Mask salesman is obscured altogether, but for some reason, a few masks that aren't the same masks he had before are now visible. Hello, Gemini? Big empty space on the left, next to the column that's starting to look like a watercolor left in the rain?

Ingo

Or you could just remove all of Malon except her arm to make room for Ingo. Even though that's clearly not Ingo. Looks more like Flynn Ryder's cousin or something. Don't get me wrong, he looks cool, but this is the worst attempt yet at replicating an established character, and why did it have to put him right there?

Epona

Possibly because I sent this prompt the next day, possibly because Epona is a horse, or possibly by coincidence, Gemini realized it had some space available on the left and put it to use. The characters who have been here longest are really showing their age now.

Tingle

What scene would be complete without the Zelda equivalent of Jar Jar Binks?

Saria

I skipped Saria when I did the other Sages from Ocarina of Time because I just didn't feel like a child fit the mood I was going for, but I realized that was dumb and let her in. She stood right in front of Tingle, who, it just occurred to me, is right in front of Link. Did Gemini match the colors on purpose? It's not easy being green. Oh, but I missed one more Sage.

Kaepora Gaebora

The game never reveals that Kaepora Gaebora is the corporeal form of the Sage Rauru, but he is, and I decided I'd rather have an owl than a bald old man. Gemini made only its second change to the scenery since this sequence started, giving the owl a ledge with some form of Hylian script that probably translates to gibberish. And at this point, the image was so muddy and pixelated that I decided to give it a rest. I opened a new chat and started over.

Live-action Princess Zelda

Oh wow. Oh wow wow wow... wow. No notes.

My 33rd birthday is in two days. I know I won't likely ever have another birthday, or another day of my life, period, as great as the one last year when I went to a "Weird Al" Yankovic concert and then met him in person. I accept that. Life is not a steady progression from good to better, and any day that doesn't suck is good enough.

​I was going to have a party at the park today, but a friend asked me to reschedule because her kid's birthday is today, and her kids love me a ridiculous amount and would have wanted to attend both. By "a ridiculous amount," I mean that this particular kid recently called me "Daddy" despite being old enough to know better and not even seeing me that often. Maybe she just hates her real dad, which I could relate to. (She did tell me once, "You're lucky you're not married so you don't have to fight with your wife all the time. My parents fight all the time, and it's not fair.") I don't know why kids love me so much without me trying. Mary hypothesizes that it's because I radiate calm. Anyway, I rescheduled for Friday, which made half of the people I'd invited unable to come. A couple of days in advance, I considered that maybe the kids would get sick and not come, meaning that I would have rescheduled for nothing. I told myself that I was being irrational, making up a scenario that hadn't happened yet and getting preemptively annoyed by it. And then that exact scenario happened.

I tried not to be annoyed because it's not really anyone's fault, and of course I feel bad for the kid having her whole birthday weekend ruined. When the mother asked how it went, I did let her know that a lot of people had been unable to come because I rescheduled, and she apologized, which I think is an appropriate response to negatively impacting someone by accident even if you couldn't have known. I didn't want her to feel awful, I just wanted her to be aware. Now I wonder if I was a dick to mention it at all and should have kept it to myself. Anyway, what happened to her kid is far from the worst thing that happens to kids in this world, but it reminded me nonetheless what a shitty parent the father god I was taught to believe in is. This kid's earthly mother would do anything to stop it, but Heavenly Father, who actually could stop it, is just like, "Sorry, you have to suffer because something something learning experience." And I'm supposed to worship this guy and regard him as the pinnacle of goodness and love because people say so.

Of course, I still got some people at my party - specifically, a few activists who all knew me and each other from protesting and a Mormon woman I met at a friend's wedding reception. That morning, in a Signal chat, I had chimed into an unflattering discussion about the LDS Church with a couple of fun facts - that it calls itself Israel and does a very shallow cultural appropriation of Judaism, and that it removed all pro-Israel rhetoric from its hymns and manuals in Germany to appease the Nazis. So now, in person, one of the activists asked me if I was an expert on Mormonism. My mouth said "Yeah" while my brain said "Oh shit." I didn't want to embarrass the Mormon woman by singling her out, so I just prayed silently as the activists' conversation shifted into Mormonism-bashing mode. Fortunately, someone thought to ask her before it went too far, though the phrasing of the question - "You're not LDS, are you?" - could have been better. Yes, I still have some Mormon friends. I can love people even if I don't agree with their lifestyle.

People brought brownies, pizza, fruit, and juice. Someone gave me a bottle of Merlot, which I was advised to save for "when it happens." I don't drink alcohol, but I haven't ruled out the possibility of drinking this if I ever figure out what "it" is, because of course I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about, wink wink. People also gave me a book, a Joker action figure, and a volleyball painted like Wilson from "Castaway." I had asked someone to bring a volleyball so we could play, but I didn't expect one as a gift. I wonder if I'd have gotten more food and gifts if more people had been able to come. Anyway, I got a little depressed because I didn't feel like I deserved the love these people gave me. I know I'm a good person, and they know I'm a good person because we protest for the same things, but I don't feel like I contribute enough to the world or their lives to be loved like that. Obviously, that's a me problem. Obviously, if I tell anyone that, they'll tell me not to feel that way because I'm great, as if that will solve the problem. Oh well.

I also felt a little depressed about aging. I'm still in my prime, but only for a couple more years, and then I face two options: die young, or experience my body slowly and painfully breaking down. The former option appeals to me more, but lately, my death anxiety has risen. I think death itself doesn't bother me as much as not having the slightest idea when it will happen. At any moment, it could be five minutes, five years, or fifty years away. A friend's brother-in-law just died from a blood clot. That could have been me. It still could be. Even if death is a wonderful and beautiful thing, as most people who have come close to it will attest, I don't like the idea of it catching me off-guard. Someone jumping out and yelling "Surprise!" at a random moment isn't much better than someone jumping out and yelling "Boo!" I waxed philosophical about this with a friend as we played with the volleyball, and he didn't resolve anything for me, but I felt like processing this together was an important part of the journey. Then he let me take a couple puffs of weed, and the trees and the lights and the sunset took on a vaguely artificial, enclosed quality, like a football field, that seemed to underscore the illusory nature of our time in this world.

On my actual birthday, I plan to watch the Mandalorian movie and go to dinner with a friend who couldn't make it that time. Tonight, since I'm free, I plan to celebrate the solstice by taking an edible, going back to the park, and experiencing the drum circle. If I get stabbed to death, oh well, I had to die sometime. I'm glad the days are going to start getting shorter, albeit very slowly. I hate waking up at 4:30 and staying awake because the damn sun is already coming up. That's the downside of falling asleep more easily because I get more sunshine by not living in a basement. Anyway, none of these events will beat Weird Al, but they don't need to.

A week ago, I found the second shield beetle that had gotten through my poorly sealed window. Today, I've found eight. I am no longer willing to take time out of my day to catch and release them. Now they die. Sorry. I wish I didn't have to come to this. If I can find their exact entry points or a way to repel them, I'll do that. Sometimes I see them on the outside of my window and pound on it to scare them away before they get in.

At least I never burned grasshoppers to death for fun. How's that for a transition? That's how Kyle McKay, the official LDS Church "Historian" - I use scare quotes because, like most LDS Church leaders, his background is in business and law - recently opened his remarks at a stake conference in Oklahoma. He said that being under the bright lights with his glasses was like the "revenge of the grasshoppers" that he killed as a kid. Pretty messed up, but kids will be kids, I guess.

Then he called "This Little Light of Mine," which was recently added to the Mormon repertoire after decades of singing boring white Protestant hymns with as little enthusiasm as possible, "a song where white people try to sing like black people." If he'd stopped there, I wouldn't have seen a problem. Jokes about cultural differences are not inherently racist, and if anything, given the aforementioned context, this one sounds to me like it's poking fun at white people. But then he gave his impression of a white person singing like a black person and made up a whole conversation that didn't happen. "​I wanted to turn to him and say, 'You know you’re white. And he would say, 'No, I'm an African slave, is what I am, and I'm singing 'Swanee River.'" In case you're unaware, "Swanee River" is a racist minstrel song. I have no idea why he thought this imaginary conversation needed to be shared. He seemed to be under the influence of something, and I don't mean the Holy Ghost.

I have nothing personal against McKay, whom I heard from at an institute devotional before he was important and remember liking just fine. I appreciate his apology and don't think this incident makes him a bad person, but I think it demonstrates loud and clear that Mormon leaders are out of touch and uninspired - not, despite the straw man apologists will want to apply, because I expect them to be perfect, but because anyone actually speaking for God in the year 2026 would know better than to preface his remarks by joking about a racist song that most people born after the 1950s have probably never heard of. That is absolutely not an unreasonable standard to hold them to. This might be a good time to point out that McKay's primary qualification for Mormon leadership is being a former prophet's first cousin twice removed. His sole qualification for being a historian, meanwhile, is his loyalty to the LDS Church's narrative. If you think that's not a real qualification for being a historian, you're so right. This shows in a talk he gave in 2023 called "A Sure and Certain Foundation," which, while not racist, was pretty awful.

According to McKay, the abundance and strength of evidence and arguments against the LDS Church just prove that it's true. I'm not exaggerating.

​"As you increase your efforts to increase your testimony, you are likely to be confronted with reasons to doubt. President Nelson cautioned, 'Don’t pollute [your testimony] with false philosophies of unbelieving men and women.' Please hear me and understand: there will always be some reason or another to doubt the truthfulness of this church and gospel. There are arguments and evidence supporting the proposition that there is no God, that Jesus was just a good philosopher-teacher, that Joseph Smith was simply a charismatic storyteller and that this church and gospel are not true. This evidence, these arguments, are on some level appealing and believable, for there are many who believe them....

"In short, agency - that is, our ability, our responsibility, to choose for ourselves - is essential in all things, including and beginning with belief. In order to preserve our agency in the matter of belief, there must be opposites from which to choose - reasons to believe and reasons to doubt. God does not give us doubts, nor is He the author of error, but He allows them because it is absolutely critical that you and I choose for ourselves to believe or not to believe. There will never come a time, at least pre-Millennium, when God removes all reason to doubt, for to do so would be to remove all agency in the matter of belief.

"Now, I want to be clear - by acknowledging the existence of reasons to doubt, I am not legitimizing them, and I am certainly not advocating or excusing doubt itself. Jesus said, 'Doubt not.' In the face of reasons to doubt, doubt not.

"And what? Did you think Satan would throw up flimsy, easily dismissible reasons to doubt? No! They will be enticing and flattering. If the prince of darkness can transform himself into an angel of light, then surely he can put forth ideas and arguments that appear enlightened."

See, I told you I wasn't exaggerating. I hope you realize that any religion could make this same rebuttal to its critics with equal validity - Catholicism, Islam, Scientology, Heaven's Gate, etc. And I think it's so funny how Satan gets all the credit for deceiving people and destroying their testimonies when he has so much help from Mormon leaders themselves. Is Satan the one who inspired Brigham Young to undermine confidence in his prophetic authority by declaring on multiple occasions that mixed-race couples and their children should be put to death? But of course, following the party line, McKay grouped every uninspired or downright awful Mormon leaders have said or done under "mistakes" and "errors" and makes critics out to be the unreasonable ones for expecting them to be "perfect." He even turned the accusation around:

"And what about you? If the truthfulness of this Church or the truthfulness of or your beliefs were judged by your errors, would anyone ever believe what you believe? Would there have been fewer mistakes, fewer messes, if God had only restored His Church and gospel through you?"

Yes, I answer without hesitation, pausing only to add the caveat that this is entirely hypothetical because the "restoration" is a fiction to begin with. Like many, many people who aren't Joseph Smith, I've managed not to be a serial adulterer and sexual predator despite my imperfections. I'm aware that in real life, people might already be less inclined to listen to the spiritual wisdom I have to share because I don't always live by it, and that's too bad, but I've never claimed to speak for God, whether I'm sharing wisdom or being an asshole. My mistakes and messes reflect on me. Kyle McKay's racist flub reflects on God because he was speaking in his official capacity and was supposed to have the Holy Ghost telling him what to say, which he invoked right before he started talking about the grasshoppers. Of course, everyone has off days, and this wasn't so bad that I would consider it a smoking gun against the LDS Church on its own. It's just part of a long-term pattern, with countless much more concerning examples, of these men not having the inspiration they claim.

"Sometimes, in studying the Book of Mormon or presenting it to others, we are tempted to bypass its primary purpose and jump straight to the collateral conclusion that if the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith is a prophet and this is God’s church."

Off-topic, but I noticed this while I was skimming and wanted to comment because excuse me, this is exactly what the LDS Church taught us to do and what it teaches missionaries to teach prospective converts to do. Literally this exact line of reasoning is spelled out in Preach My Gospel. I'm so tired of rank-and-file Mormons being thrown under the bus for issues that come from the top. Of course, when the church tells us that David Whitmer testified of the Book of Mormon to the end of his life, it doesn't mention that he also said Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet, polygamy was an abomination, and the LDS Church was in apostasy. Anyway, McKay's point here was to suggest that we "read the book for its primary purpose - to convince the people of this earth that Jesus is the Christ." He went on,

"When you ask God, the Eternal Father, if these things are true - if Jesus is the Christ, if this is His gospel - it is essential that you ask in faith. Asking, and for that matter, reading from a position of doubt or skepticism will not summon a response from Heaven. 'Prove-it-to-me' prayers are seldom answered, and if they are, it is usually to the condemnation, even destruction, of the one demanding proof. Think Korihor and Sherem, for example. Asking in faith - even a particle of faith - implies that you at least have a desire to believe. Lead with this desire and 'let [it] work in you.'

"Asking in faith also means that you believe God will answer your prayers and give you the knowledge you desire. This faith is often demonstrated by what you do after you ask. Waiting patiently, unwaveringly for the witness you desire is part of asking in faith."

This is literally the definition of confirmation bias. Of course, McKay didn't come up with it on his own. Mormon epistemology is founded on confirmation bias.

"Brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that having perplexing questions that arise from reasons to doubt is not a problem. But please understand, finding answers to these perplexing questions ultimately is not the solution. The solution is a sure and certain foundation whereon if you build, you cannot fall. That foundation is Jesus Christ and His gospel, the fullness of which is found and taught in this Church."

Begging the question here - I mean actually begging the question, not the incorrect way everyone uses that term now. We must start with the conclusion that the fullness of Jesus Christ's gospel is found and taught in the LDS Church, and anything that gives us cause to doubt that conclusion, like whether the leaders of the LDS Church act anything like Jesus Christ would tell them to act if he were talking to them, is preemptively deemed irrelevant. Again, any religion could defend its truth claims with a similar fallacy. This is something I've noticed a lot lately. When I was a kid, prophets were supposed to direct us to Jesus, but now they cause so many problems for belief that we're told to just ignore them and focus on Jesus. My mom told me (back when I still spoke to her), "I made my covenants with God, not Spencer W. Kimball or Brigham Young." And where, pray tell, does she think everything she believes about covenants and God came from?

And oh, I didn't even realize this. McKay closed this talk with the story of Jane Elizabeth Manning maintaining her testimony of the LDS Church despite its policy that barred her from the temple because of the color of her skin, and the refusal of multiple prophets to make an exception for her.

"Her request was not granted. The Church President to whom she petitioned was John Taylor. He who once withstood what might have been his compelling reason to doubt now became part of what might have been Jane Manning’s compelling reason to doubt. Jane made similar petitions to Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith, who similarly upheld the race restrictions at the time. It would have been easy and understandable for Jane to pack it in, shut it down, and walk away. But she didn’t. Why? Because because her foundation was sure and certain in the truths that she had learned."

Very inspirational. Of course, like the other white Mormon leaders who use Jane's story as propaganda, he didn't say the policy was racist or wrong, he didn't mention that Joseph F. Smith eventually did compromise by having Jane sealed to Joseph Smith as a "Servitor" with a white woman as proxy, and he didn't mention that her surviving children left the church. Maybe if he'd ever really grappled with the LDS Church's treatment of black people instead of assuring himself that it was fine because a very small number of them believed in it anyway, he wouldn't have been so out of touch with reality that he thought his "Swanee River" joke would go over well. How's that for continuity?

I saw that quote on Facebook this week, attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. My response, which took me no time to think about at all, was that butterflies don't infest people's homes, get in their food, or spread diseases. I withheld my further analysis that Nietzsche was a moron and I could scratch looking into his philosophical contributions off my bucket list. In preparing for this post, however, I wasn't very surprised to learn that this quote doesn't come from the famous 19th-century philosopher at all, but rather from some random guy on Twitter in 2012. Classic internet.

The thing is, this guy could have made a valid point if he'd picked an ugly bug that wasn't a cockroach. When I see an earwig in my living space, I kill it on the spot with a feeling of revulsion. When I see a spider, I catch it and put it outside. When I see a box elder bug, I ignore it. The latter, admittedly, hasn't happened since I lived in Logan, where they were so plentiful that I didn't care if they crawled on me, like invasive Japanese ladybugs when I lived in New York. I'll freely admit to being a bug racist. But cockroaches are an extra level of awful, and my own experience with them wasn't even that bad. The most I ever killed in a day was nine. I've heard about people killing hundreds in an hour. A friend told me about living in a place where the floor went from black to white when he turned the light on, and having them swarm his face and stuff. If I'm ever in a situation like that, rest assured that I'll burn the place down with myself inside.

Mind you, I'm talking about my living space. I typically go out of my way not to kill bugs outside, no matter how ugly they are. I've seen several June bugs outside my apartment complex, and I've seen several that have obviously been crushed to death on purpose, and I don't like that. If one ever gets in my apartment, I'll freak the hell out, but until then, I say live and let live. Conversely, if I see ants in here, I'll kill them even though I don't find them particularly ugly because they cause some of the same issues as cockroaches. I try to take a non-malicious approach regardless. Cockroaches are a morally neutral part of nature that evolved to do what they do, and they have as much right to exist as I do - but I'm a part of nature too, and I'm bigger than they are, and I don't want them here. I felt a little bad about them slowly dying of thirst inside my Roach Motels, but that's life.

Thanks to the angels at the Roach Motel company, I haven't seen a live cockroach in months, but I realized that they'd traumatized me when I had a nightmare about them this week - possibly because I read that quote, though I've already forgotten which happened first. I was in a train car talking to some people about stuff, and I asked them to kill the cockroach that flew in. I had some awareness that this was a dream, and I debated whether I should wake up to make sure that, by some unfortunate coincidence, a flying cockroach hadn't actually gotten into my apartment to start a new infestation. I recognized that I was being paranoid, but in the end, I couldn't rest easy until I knew for sure, so I did wake up. What fun.

Today, for the second time, a little brown shield beetle got through my supposedly sealed window. These guys don't look like either of the species of cockroaches I've had, but they're close enough to make me uneasy. The first time, I caught it in a cup, took a picture, and asked Gemini if it was a cockroach. This time, I tried to do the same thing because I'd forgotten exactly what the first one looked like. However, this one was less docile. The first one stayed in the cup without me even having to cover it, and I didn't even realize it could fly until Gemini told me, after I'd carried it outside and shaken it out onto a bush. This one escaped while I was trying to take a picture. Right next to my bed, too. Fortunately, after I got back from the Pride parade, I found it on the frame of the balcony door, and I got a picture and shooed it outside before Gemini reassured me that I hadn't just made a terrible mistake by not killing a cockroach when I had the chance.

Sorry if this isn't interesting. I thought maybe I'd write about Jeff Strong's new book, Torn, that's meant to help LDS Church members understand how many people have left and the real reasons why, or the Bricks and Minifigs / American Fork Police Department scandal that I finally learned about because approximately eight million YouTube channels are covering it, or Pete Kegsbreath's new military chaplaincy classification chart that doesn't classify the LDS Church as a Christian denomination because news flash, Mormons, you're not welcome in the Christian Nationalist club no matter how much you help them take trans people's rights away. I didn't feel motivated enough to force myself to write about those things. What got my fingers moving? Cockroaches. Freaking cockroaches. Well, specifically the fact that someone was ignorant enough to think that crushing cockroaches but not butterflies is solely a matter of aesthetic criteria. I'm glad that someone wasn't Nietzsche. Maybe I'll read some of his stuff someday after all.

And cockroaches still deserve to live more than ICE agents do.