What Adam Is Reading · AI Art of the Week

Inside: One Ordinary Man

This week, the newsletter's stories are tattooed on a sideshow strongman. The empty retatrutide vial, the hibernating bear whose labs say kidney failure, the minivan from the Frozen years, the patient who always answers, the dog who says OUTSIDE, and a game controller marked NOV 19. The banner promises a marvel. A small card on the tent flap says what is actually inside.

Why this style

The four renderings

The most faithful of the four. It is the only one to put OUTSIDE on the button, NOV 19 and 37 on the shin once each, and an iron dagger across a bronze sword. The bear and the minivan are actually tattooed on his forearms. It drew six doctors, and the patient came out as a grinning boy rather than a ventriloquist's dummy, so read him as the dummy.

The only empty vial. The bottle is clear glass with nothing in it, and the green dots have escaped onto his skin below, which is more or less what CBS found. The blue ground and yellow scrolls look most like a real 1940s banner. OUTSIDE became OUTDBE, a second dog wandered onto his shin, and LET IT GROW appears twice.

The talker's cane runs straight across the fine print, so the footnote reads *RE...ERENCE-FREE. The man selling the show is covering the asterisk, which is the best accident of the week. It also misspelled the biggest word on the banner (TATTOOOED), tattooed NOV 16 and 27, and drew mRNA as a DNA double helix.

Clean lettering and a convincing canvas, and no drift into animation this time. But Grok painted a man holding the week's stories rather than wearing them. The bear sits on his palm like a dish, the minivan rides on a scroll, and the crossed dagger and sword became three daggers in his shoulders. He looks stabbed.

Scorecard

What we learned

1. Nobody can count to five. The dummy was supposed to be ringed by five tiny doctors. The models drew four, four, six and seven.
2. The fine print survived everywhere. All four put the asterisk under 82% ALIVE in smaller type. Gemini went further and let the talker's cane cover it, which is what talkers are for.
3. No model drew the clue. Every model drew the ID photo on his neck with 0.72 under it. None gave the face hollow eyes and a sharp nose, the bedside sign the face model actually reads. The models drew the label and skipped the contents, which was the week's theme.
4. Only one vial was empty. Three of four bottles had something in them. Perplexity drew an empty bottle and let the bacteria spill out onto his skin.
5. Two models drew mRNA as DNA. Gemini and ChatGPT wrapped the heart in a double helix. mRNA has one strand.
6. Tattoo or prop. Grok painted a man holding the week's stories. The other three, to varying degrees, inked them on him. The prompt said "every inch of skin," and only ChatGPT and Perplexity took that literally.

The key

• Empty RETATRUTIDE bottle, thirteen green dots. CBS tested a Brooklyn bodega vial and found no peptide and 13 bacterial colonies. The Third Vial
• Sleeping bear, creatinine up, urea down. This week's JERKFoW. By human kidney tests, a hibernating bear looks like it has kidney disease.
• Minivan, cereal, snowflake, LET IT GROW, ROGAINE'S NOT WORKING. The opening, and the Lopez lyrics I did not share at parents' weekend.
• Heart with 34. The personalized melanoma therapy encodes up to 34 targets from each patient's tumor. Forty-Two Percent of What
• Ventriloquist's dummy and five doctors. Microsoft's diagnostic panel of five simulated roles, tested against a simulated patient who invents an answer whenever the chart is silent. The Patient Who Always Answers
• Bees around a padlock, iron dagger over bronze sword. One hacker, a swarm of AI agents, and cheap weapons in many hands.
• Dog pressing OUTSIDE. The soundboard dog studies. Fencing Out Clever Hans
• ID photo and 0.72. The face model's ability to pick which of two patients dies first. A Survival Score From a Face Photograph
• Controller, roses, NOV 19, 37. Grand Theft Auto VI launch day, and the average American gamer's age. A Billion Dollars of Thursday

The prompt

A hand-painted 1940s American carnival sideshow banner, oil on heavy canvas, in the tradition of the great midway banner painters: bold flat color, thick dark outlines, theatrical exaggeration, crackled and sun-faded paint, frayed edges, brass grommets, lashed with rope to two wooden poles. Photographed hanging on a carnival midway at dusk, string lights glowing above, the striped canvas of a sideshow tent behind it. Tall portrait format, 4:5.

The banner shows THE TATTOOED MAN, painted in the old sideshow style: a bald, mustachioed strongman figure standing in a heroic pose, wearing only striped circus trunks, every inch of skin covered in bold American-traditional sailor tattoos (black outlines, red, green, yellow, banner scrolls). The tattoos are:
- On his chest: a classic poison bottle with skull and crossbones, its label reading RETATRUTIDE, the bottle empty except for thirteen small green dots.
- On his left forearm: a black bear asleep in a snowy den, with a small lab slip beside it reading "CREATININE ↑ UREA ↓".
- On his right forearm: a 2006 minivan with a scattering of cereal O's and a single snowflake, under a scroll reading LET IT GROW.
- Across his bald scalp: a small scroll reading ROGAINE'S NOT WORKING.
- On his upper arm: a tattoo heart with a banner reading 34, wrapped in a ribbon of mRNA.
- On his belly: a ventriloquist's dummy in a hospital gown, smiling and talking, ringed by five tiny doctors' heads.
- On his shoulder: a swarm of small bees around a padlock, with an iron dagger crossed over a bronze sword.
- On his thigh: a dog pressing a big round button marked OUTSIDE.
- On his neck: a small instant-photo ID portrait of a face with hollow eyes and a sharp nose, with "0.72" written beneath.
- On his shin: a video game controller wrapped in roses, with scrolls reading NOV 19 and 37.

Around the figure, painted in bold carnival lettering on the banner: "THE TATTOOED MAN" across the top. Side panels: "SEE THE EMPTY VIAL!", "THE BEAR WITH KIDNEY FAILURE WHO FEELS FINE!", "THE PATIENT WHO ALWAYS ANSWERS!". Across the bottom: "82% ALIVE!*" with a much smaller "*RECURRENCE-FREE" beneath it.

In the foreground, an outside talker in a straw boater and striped vest points his cane up at the banner. Beside him, the tent flap is open a few inches, and pinned to it is a small, plain, hand-lettered card reading "INSIDE: ONE ORDINARY MAN."

Saturated, crowded, theatrical, warm dusk light. No modern logos, no recognizable cartoon characters, no photorealistic skin. The banner should look painted, the midway around it photographed.

Background: Fred G. Johnson (Wikipedia), the banner painter behind this week's style. Images generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok from the same prompt. The What Adam Is Reading archive.