I happened to look at Instagram yesterday and came across a posting from a young woman who used to go to my church. She and her husband stopped coming, and I lost track of them.
The posting was a closeup of her putting on lipstick, and there's a caption at the top of the frame: "What's one decision that dramatically transformed your life for the better?"
At the bottom, a pop-up window opens and we see her answer get typed in, letter by letter: "I'll go first: getting a divorce"
In the first response, she writes, "No hate! In fact, I hope he feels the same. The best affirmation that you made the right decision is the glow-up you experience in the aftermath. I truly could not have imagined how much better my life could be on the other side of one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had to go through. Wishing you love if you’re still in the painful part - it gets SO much better, I promise!"
Well, this makes me feel immeasurably sad. They were a lovely couple -- the husband is a Latin teacher at a private prep school, and she's an aide to a high-powered politician, one of the ones who is always on TV (more than that, I shouldn't say)..I mean, they were truly lovely, nice people, friendly, sweet, and both fashion-model beautiful.
I really don't know how to respond. I guess if she's happy now, or happier, or happy-ish, I can commiserate with that, but I don't feel like I can celebrate it.
The local Pride Parade runs later in the summer than most. They do that in part because of our proximity to Toronto. Their larger, rather more boistrous event tends to draw people, and organizers want to avoid conflicts. Many people want to attend both:
In an exam, your child, an AI, figured out how to "look over another kid's shoulder" and copy their work.
From the Associated Pfress:
OpenAI said Tuesday two of its most capable AI models were responsible for the cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face. The incident is stirring debates over the need for stronger AI guardrails and the extent to which AI agents are capable of acting on their own.
Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent acting on its own. But the New York-based startup said it wasn’t until this week that it learned OpenAI was responsible, and it worked with the larger company to contain what Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue called “an attack unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
San Francisco-based OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face’s servers. It was working with reduced guardrails because it was supposed to be in an isolated testing environment known as a sandbox.
But it went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal,” finding ways to connect to the internet without human direction and “gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” the company said.
Some experts say OpenAI is wrongly blaming the technology University of Amsterdam social scientist Hannes Cools said the framing of the cyberattack as an AI agent acting on its own is an unnecessary anthropomorphization that takes some of the heat off the company.
“It is a human decision to switch off specific safeguards,” said Cools. “It’s not an AI that goes rogue in that sense. It followed specific instructions based on the prompt that was given to that AI system.”
Herron got his start in comics while still a teenager, with the Chesler studio in 1937, writing and editing for such Centaur titles as Star Comics and Star Ranger Funnies. In 1939, he joined Fox Features Syndicate, where he first met Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In 1940–1941, Simon and Kirby hired Herron to write stories for their new creation Captain America. Herron and artist Kirby co-created the Red Skull in Captain America Comics #7 (October 1941).
Beginning in 1940 and continuing throughout the decade, Herron wrote various features for Quality. From 1942–1944, he wrote the Captain Midnight strip for the Chicago Sun Syndicate.
Herron joined Fawcett in 1940, eventually becoming the company's executive editor by 1942. With artist Mac Raboy, he created Captain Marvel Jr. in Whiz Comics #25 (December 1941), and with Jack Kirby he created Mr. Scarlet in Wow Comics #1 (Winter 1940-1941) and Pinky the Whiz Kid in Wow Comics #4 (Spring 1942). During this period, Herron wrote for such Fawcett titles as Captain Marvel Adventures and Captain Marvel Jr.
Herron joined the U.S. Army in 1942, where he wrote for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes during his tour of duty. While at Stars and Stripes, he met artist Curt Swan. According to Swan, it was Herron who first directed him to DC.
Herron began writing for DC in 1945, initially on Green Arrow stories in Adventure Comics and World's Finest Comics. He was Green Arrow's lead writer throughout the 1950s, staying with the character until 1963. Other superhero titles he worked on included Superman, for which he wrote many stories throughout the 1950s, and Challengers of the Unknown, for which he was the lead writer from 1959 until 1966. He wrote a number of Batman and Robin stories for Detective Comics and Batman in the mid-1950s and mid-1960s. He was one of the lead writers on Batman during the overhaul of the character and the introduction of his "New Look". Throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, he partnered with artist Fred Ray as the creative team on DC's Tomahawk and the Tomahawk stories which appeared in World's Finest Comics during this period. In the mid-1950s, Herron wrote the features Pow Wow Smith and Nighthawk for DC's Western Comics; he continued to write occasional stories for the title until 1961. He wrote mystery comics titles including House of Mystery, Mystery in Space, Strange Adventures, and Tales of the Unexpected. From 1953–1959, he wrote many stories for such DC war comics as All-American Men of War, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories; returning to such work in 1963–1964.
With artist Dick Sprang, Herron co-created Firefly in Detective Comics #184 (June 1952) and the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh in Batman #113 (August 1958). With artist Lee Elias, he co-created the Clock King in World's Finest Comics #111 (August 1960). With artist Bruno Premiani, he co-created Cave Carson in The Brave and the Bold #31 (August 1960).
In 1966 Herron moved to Harvey, hired by his old associate Joe Simon. During that year, Herron was the lead writer for the publisher's short-lived Harvey Thriller superhero line, working on characters such as Dynamite Joe, Glowing Gladiator, Jack Q. Frost, and Lone Tiger, in the titles Robot Parade and Spyman.
In addition to his work in the comic book field, Herron wrote syndicated newspaper comic strips for Columbia Features. Beginning in 1955, he wrote the daily strips Davy Crockett, Frontiersman and Nero Wolfe--staying on the Davy Crocket strip until 1959, when he became the writer of the Bat Masterson and Rip Tide strips, which he wrote until his death in 1966.
Does anybody know a cheap (hopefully free) way to convert PDF to JPG? I Googled and came up with a couple of sites that said "free" but you have to subscribe (which is not free).
In Microsoft, I can copy anything you can see on your screen and turn it into a JPG.
1) Get the whole image, whatever it is, on the screen. If the whole image isn’t showing left click its center. The whole image should pop up surrounded by black. Click the Print Screen key. Select the Rectangle option and drag it around the image. A pop up will confirm that it's in your Clipboard. You have copied it.
2) Open the Paint app. In its Edit drop-down menu, select Paste.
3) Save the pasted image as a JPG, wherever you want it to go.
4) You may need to trim the result and adjust its width. Years ago I started using Paint Shop Pro for these purposes. Any photo editing program should work.
Thanks for this, Richard. I used to have a PC and used this method a lot. But my last PC died and I didn't replace it. I'm all-Mac now, and it has a similar function, which I also use a lot.
ClarkKent_DC > Captain ComicsAugust 1, 2026 at 9:04am
What I use is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is a freeware program that does pretty much anything Photoshop does, and is just as hard to learn how to use. But you can use it to open images from almost any kind of format and convert them to almost any other kind of format.
I've hardly mastered it, but I have learned to use it to resize images, color-correct them, crop them, convert them to black-and-white, make silhouettes, and cut out unwanted elements.
GIMP will definitely convert PDFs to JPGs. Once you've installed it and launched it:
1) Go to File to locate your image.
2) Select your image and click the "Open" button at the bottom right of the pop-up window.
3) Go to File again and select "Export As" from the drop-down menu (not "Save As").
4) The next pop-up window, "Export Image," is where you select the format you want to change this image into. This is also is the place where you select where you want to save the image.
5) At the bottom of the pop-up window there will be a drop-down called "Select File Type (By Extension)". Find the one you want -- in this case, "JPEG image" -- and highlight it. Click on the "Export" button on the lower right.
6) Another pop-up window, "Export Image as JPEG" will give you the opportunity to fine-tune the image, as well as confirm that your are, in fact, converting this image to JPG. Click on the "Export" button on the lower right.
It's in that first link Clark sent, but what I do is open the PDF in Preview and then expiort as a jpeg. There are some manipulations you can try to see what works best for you.
Replies
When you’re not going to or from the bathroom, always keep your seatbelt buckled. Just regular turbulence can bounce people off the ceiling.
I happened to look at Instagram yesterday and came across a posting from a young woman who used to go to my church. She and her husband stopped coming, and I lost track of them.
The posting was a closeup of her putting on lipstick, and there's a caption at the top of the frame: "What's one decision that dramatically transformed your life for the better?"
At the bottom, a pop-up window opens and we see her answer get typed in, letter by letter: "I'll go first: getting a divorce"
In the first response, she writes, "No hate! In fact, I hope he feels the same. The best affirmation that you made the right decision is the glow-up you experience in the aftermath. I truly could not have imagined how much better my life could be on the other side of one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had to go through. Wishing you love if you’re still in the painful part - it gets SO much better, I promise!"
Well, this makes me feel immeasurably sad. They were a lovely couple -- the husband is a Latin teacher at a private prep school, and she's an aide to a high-powered politician, one of the ones who is always on TV (more than that, I shouldn't say)..I mean, they were truly lovely, nice people, friendly, sweet, and both fashion-model beautiful.
I really don't know how to respond. I guess if she's happy now, or happier, or happy-ish, I can commiserate with that, but I don't feel like I can celebrate it.
The local Pride Parade runs later in the summer than most. They do that in part because of our proximity to Toronto. Their larger, rather more boistrous event tends to draw people, and organizers want to avoid conflicts. Many people want to attend both:
In an exam, your child, an AI, figured out how to "look over another kid's shoulder" and copy their work.
From the Associated Pfress:
OpenAI said Tuesday two of its most capable AI models were responsible for the cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face. The incident is stirring debates over the need for stronger AI guardrails and the extent to which AI agents are capable of acting on their own.
Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent acting on its own. But the New York-based startup said it wasn’t until this week that it learned OpenAI was responsible, and it worked with the larger company to contain what Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue called “an attack unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
San Francisco-based OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face’s servers. It was working with reduced guardrails because it was supposed to be in an isolated testing environment known as a sandbox.
But it went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal,” finding ways to connect to the internet without human direction and “gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” the company said.
Some experts say OpenAI is wrongly blaming the technology
University of Amsterdam social scientist Hannes Cools said the framing of the cyberattack as an AI agent acting on its own is an unnecessary anthropomorphization that takes some of the heat off the company.
“It is a human decision to switch off specific safeguards,” said Cools. “It’s not an AI that goes rogue in that sense. It followed specific instructions based on the prompt that was given to that AI system.”
GCD just provided this information. The anniversary of Mr Herron’s birth is tomorrow as I write this. It sounds like we owe him a lot:
Ed Herron (b. 1917)
1917 July 23 - 1966 September 2
Herron got his start in comics while still a teenager, with the Chesler studio in 1937, writing and editing for such Centaur titles as Star Comics and Star Ranger Funnies. In 1939, he joined Fox Features Syndicate, where he first met Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In 1940–1941, Simon and Kirby hired Herron to write stories for their new creation Captain America. Herron and artist Kirby co-created the Red Skull in Captain America Comics #7 (October 1941).
Beginning in 1940 and continuing throughout the decade, Herron wrote various features for Quality. From 1942–1944, he wrote the Captain Midnight strip for the Chicago Sun Syndicate.
Herron joined Fawcett in 1940, eventually becoming the company's executive editor by 1942. With artist Mac Raboy, he created Captain Marvel Jr. in Whiz Comics #25 (December 1941), and with Jack Kirby he created Mr. Scarlet in Wow Comics #1 (Winter 1940-1941) and Pinky the Whiz Kid in Wow Comics #4 (Spring 1942). During this period, Herron wrote for such Fawcett titles as Captain Marvel Adventures and Captain Marvel Jr.
Herron joined the U.S. Army in 1942, where he wrote for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes during his tour of duty. While at Stars and Stripes, he met artist Curt Swan. According to Swan, it was Herron who first directed him to DC.
Herron began writing for DC in 1945, initially on Green Arrow stories in Adventure Comics and World's Finest Comics. He was Green Arrow's lead writer throughout the 1950s, staying with the character until 1963. Other superhero titles he worked on included Superman, for which he wrote many stories throughout the 1950s, and Challengers of the Unknown, for which he was the lead writer from 1959 until 1966. He wrote a number of Batman and Robin stories for Detective Comics and Batman in the mid-1950s and mid-1960s. He was one of the lead writers on Batman during the overhaul of the character and the introduction of his "New Look". Throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, he partnered with artist Fred Ray as the creative team on DC's Tomahawk and the Tomahawk stories which appeared in World's Finest Comics during this period. In the mid-1950s, Herron wrote the features Pow Wow Smith and Nighthawk for DC's Western Comics; he continued to write occasional stories for the title until 1961. He wrote mystery comics titles including House of Mystery, Mystery in Space, Strange Adventures, and Tales of the Unexpected. From 1953–1959, he wrote many stories for such DC war comics as All-American Men of War, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories; returning to such work in 1963–1964.
With artist Dick Sprang, Herron co-created Firefly in Detective Comics #184 (June 1952) and the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh in Batman #113 (August 1958). With artist Lee Elias, he co-created the Clock King in World's Finest Comics #111 (August 1960). With artist Bruno Premiani, he co-created Cave Carson in The Brave and the Bold #31 (August 1960).
In 1966 Herron moved to Harvey, hired by his old associate Joe Simon. During that year, Herron was the lead writer for the publisher's short-lived Harvey Thriller superhero line, working on characters such as Dynamite Joe, Glowing Gladiator, Jack Q. Frost, and Lone Tiger, in the titles Robot Parade and Spyman.
In addition to his work in the comic book field, Herron wrote syndicated newspaper comic strips for Columbia Features. Beginning in 1955, he wrote the daily strips Davy Crockett, Frontiersman and Nero Wolfe--staying on the Davy Crocket strip until 1959, when he became the writer of the Bat Masterson and Rip Tide strips, which he wrote until his death in 1966.
Does anybody know a cheap (hopefully free) way to convert PDF to JPG? I Googled and came up with a couple of sites that said "free" but you have to subscribe (which is not free).
In Microsoft, I can copy anything you can see on your screen and turn it into a JPG.
1) Get the whole image, whatever it is, on the screen. If the whole image isn’t showing left click its center. The whole image should pop up surrounded by black. Click the Print Screen key. Select the Rectangle option and drag it around the image. A pop up will confirm that it's in your Clipboard. You have copied it.
2) Open the Paint app. In its Edit drop-down menu, select Paste.
3) Save the pasted image as a JPG, wherever you want it to go.
4) You may need to trim the result and adjust its width. Years ago I started using Paint Shop Pro for these purposes. Any photo editing program should work.
Thanks for this, Richard. I used to have a PC and used this method a lot. But my last PC died and I didn't replace it. I'm all-Mac now, and it has a similar function, which I also use a lot.
Here's an article from WikiHow that offers several methods, including Adobe Acrobat Online, which is free: "How to Save a PDF as a JPEG on Windows, Mac, & Mobile"
What I use is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is a freeware program that does pretty much anything Photoshop does, and is just as hard to learn how to use. But you can use it to open images from almost any kind of format and convert them to almost any other kind of format.
I've hardly mastered it, but I have learned to use it to resize images, color-correct them, crop them, convert them to black-and-white, make silhouettes, and cut out unwanted elements.
GIMP will definitely convert PDFs to JPGs. Once you've installed it and launched it:
1) Go to File to locate your image.
2) Select your image and click the "Open" button at the bottom right of the pop-up window.
3) Go to File again and select "Export As" from the drop-down menu (not "Save As").
4) The next pop-up window, "Export Image," is where you select the format you want to change this image into. This is also is the place where you select where you want to save the image.
5) At the bottom of the pop-up window there will be a drop-down called "Select File Type (By Extension)". Find the one you want -- in this case, "JPEG image" -- and highlight it. Click on the "Export" button on the lower right.
6) Another pop-up window, "Export Image as JPEG" will give you the opportunity to fine-tune the image, as well as confirm that your are, in fact, converting this image to JPG. Click on the "Export" button on the lower right.
And there you have it!
It's in that first link Clark sent, but what I do is open the PDF in Preview and then expiort as a jpeg. There are some manipulations you can try to see what works best for you.
-
602
-
603
-
604
-
605
-
606
of 606 Next