Sublime

I found my new department located in another abandoned temple – this time much older than Alfred Mond’s shrine to the Imperial Chemical Industries. The Old Admiralty had been purpose-built as the headquarters of the British Navy in 1703. Its courtyard walls were topped with leaping dolphins, the ceilings decorated with plaster anchors, and the inte

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Lancelot frowns. ‘We’re not going to the Department?’ ‘Ah, no,’ says Marlowe. He clears his throat. ‘As I said, there have been one or two changes.’ ‘Such as?’ ‘Well, the whole sector’s been privatised. Musty old intelligence agencies broken up and sold to US private equity firms. That sort of thing. The services previously provided by the Departme

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He wasn’t around the Current TV office too often, but he was around when it mattered, and he was always curious and kind. Graceful. He told a story about the kernel of the network’s concept, which was a story about human evolution, the way visual media hacks our brains, and the urgent need, therefore, to make visual media that is actually good. He ... See more

But then came this summer’s unveiling of the aforementioned Midjourney, which is free to anyone via its Discord bot. An even bigger surprise was the release of Stable Diffusion, which is not only free, but also open source — and the resultant models can be run on your own computer.