Eric Roberts

Three strikes, you're out! Why the cutoff date of September 2021? What use is AI if it has such limited access to the past?

Interesting that the symmetry is not exact. Superficially, both halves look identical, but they're not.

" I correct it and it thanks me, but AI does not apologize. LOL" - Now there's a challenge: to teach AI software good manners.

A poster from the Sixties? I like the shadow of the eyelash on the left cheek.

Thanks Rob! What you have "created" is quite amazing. Good on you for having the curiosity and technical know-how to explore this AI thing. Strange that only the head animates, but it does this (lip synching, blinking, head movements, etc.) fairly convincingly. This video presents a challenge to us all: a talking head of "Francis Bacon" speaking in the first person about his achievements. Do we take it seriously as truth, or dismiss it as mischievous propaganda? Now, any representation of anybody can sell anything to everyone. Used effectively, for the right reasons, as you have done here, AI can open us to new ways of understanding the past, but it will never replace hard evidence from historical sources. Used badly, (e.g. AI videos on YouTube of John Lennon singing Paul McCartney songs, etc), it's of no interest. Well done for investigating future forms of communication with all your passion for the Bard (FB).

Hi Light-of-Truth - it's interesting how "the machine" (AI) imitates brush strokes and chooses dramatic lighting... all by itself, as an aggregate of millions of pictures.

Thank you, Christie, for sharing your knowledge and insights. In her History of Gorhambury, Lady Charlotte Grimston gives a different account of how Gorhambury came into the possession of Sir Nicholas Bacon. Here are the relevant pages:

I think in those days the monarch owned all the land. This would mean that, technically, all private estates were leased from the crown. But judging from his other manor houses (Norfolk, Suffolk?) he was wealthy enough to afford to build a new mansion in Hertfordshire. Compared to Lord Burghley's "palace", Gorhambury was quite modest.

Spooky!

Hi Light-of-Truth I get where you're coming from... even though he was Elizabeth's right hand man, Sir Nicholas wasn't "royal", so why have the royal motto and standard carved on the facade of Old Gorhambury House? Was it to flatter the monarch when she came to visit? Or was it to secretly proclaim the royal identity of his adopted son? Thanks to Yann for deciphering the highly eroded letters beneath the coat of arms. Well done! I couldn't make head or tail of it.

Sad to say, the Phoenixes' Promus promo isn't playing back on my laptop (?). Problem could be at my end.

https://archive.org/details/promusofformular00pott/page/n1/mode/2up

Any guesses as to what the damaged inscription once said?

I only have the Burton-Taylor film to go on, but it's amazing how passionately alive the two central characters in the play are, and to think of SFB in his early sixties revising this work of his youth into a timeless tussle between male and female archetypes. Wow, indeed!

Hi A. Phoenix. Thanks for putting two and two together and naming Ubaldini as the calligrapher who designed Lady Lumley's book of the Gorhambury sententiae. Makes a lot of sense. You really are on the cutting edge of Baconian research.