Dustings #92

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Regarding book tests that require you to know the page number the person is on [See Wednesday’s post], a friend of mine uses this technique and has had some great success with it. I’m changing some of the details because he doesn’t want to give away his actual routine at this point. But if you have someone think of something from a long list in the Xeno app, and then go to the page number at their list position in the book, then you’ll know the thing they’re thinking of, the page number, and your book-test reveal, all without them saying or doing anything.

So, for example, they think of any character from a list of 100 Marvel comic’s characters. You tell them to go to the page in your book of Aesop’s fables that matches up with the number on the list of the character they’re thinking of. You then have them insert the character they’re thinking of into the fable they’re reading, so they have this screwy hybrid thought in their mind which you can then reveal.

“I’m getting… The Thing… and he’s… chopping down a cherry tree? Is that what you’re thinking of?”

You could do this entirely remotely, assuming you left the spectator with the book (which you could do with Aesop’s Favorite Book Test, for example).

This is undoubtedly a convoluted way to get someone to a page in a book, but I think you could sell it that you’re trying to expand your mind-reading capabilities. And to do so, you have to springboard from a subject you know very well (in this case, Marvel Comics) to one you don’t know well (in this case, Aesop’s Fables). I think that sounds pretty reasonable.

AI Giveth

Speaking of Xeno (or Digital Force Bag), ChatGPT is excellent at coming up with long lists of things. Just ask it to provide you a list of a certain length of a certain subject, and you should get what you need with a little tweaking.

AI Taketh Away

I asked Dall-E-2 to create an image of Marvel Comic’s The Thing chopping down a cherry tree to illustrate the first section of this post and this is what it gave me.

AI sucks.

In yesterday’s post I asked for you to email me with any examples of “neo techniques” that mimic the way a beginner might handle cards. One clarification: the “slop shuffle” is not the way a beginner would mix cards, it’s the way a fucking imbecile would. Maybe there can be another set of techniques that mimic the way a spazzy dipshit would handle cards, but that’s not what I’m looking for here.