Shared posts

10 Dec 08:43

Bad Sex in Fiction Award Is Canceled, as 2020 Was Bad Enough

by Alan Yuhas
Editors of the Literary Review, which has given the award for almost 30 years, said the public had been “subjected to too many bad things this year to justify exposing it to bad sex as well.”
30 Nov 00:43

Danish Hygge Is So Last Year. Say Hello to Swedish Mys.

by Ingrid K. Williams
The essence of mys is the feeling of warmth. And the best city to stock up on mys-making supplies is Stockholm.
08 Sep 15:51

China Conducts War Games, and Taiwan Is the Target

by By AUSTIN RAMZY
The live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait come as China and the United States are at odds over the self-governing island, which Beijing considers its territory.
06 Dec 20:20

How to make high-tech pies sound really old

A while ago I made a bunch of new pies. Well, I didn’t *make* them because they were neural network invented titles and although it tried to imitate the list of pies I gave it, the neural net’s imitations are imperfect.

Strawberry Ham Pie, Impossible Maple Spinach Apple Pie, Caribou Meringue Pie

The neural network, after all, is a computer program with about as many neurons as an earthworm. It doesn’t understand what the ingredients are, or why some combinations don’t work. Some of its titles were intriguing, though. They sounded mysterious. Potentially delicious and/or magical?

Flangerson’s Blusty Tart, Mur’s Tartless Tart, Cromberry Yas

Or maybe it just helps that they’re vague. I decided I wanted more like these. To help it along, I spiced up the pie dataset with the names of cookies and apple varieties from the 1905 edition of Apples of New York. I filtered the names for those that had possessives: Mcaffee’s Nonesuch, Cornell’s Savewell, Wile Ox’s Winter (all apples), combined with Goldy’s Dungeon Bars, Esther’s Bracelets, and Fido’s Rewards (all cookies). Then, to give it added old-school flavor, I added all the Dungeons and Dragons spells that had possessives as well (for example, Ivy’s Irresistible Scent, Freedom’s Toast, and Leomund’s Tiny Hut).

I arranged the training data so the pies would be last (so they would be freshest in the neural net’s virtual mind). Then I gave it one single look at the data.

It turns out that I didn’t manage to prevent the neural net from coming up with bad ideas. Perhaps what I should have done instead was remove all the meat pies from the training data.

Chicken Pineapple Cream Pie, Lemon Chicken Meringue Pie, Mothy Mincemeat Cheese

But some of the pies were exactly what I’d hoped for.

Cherry Pie With Cheese Fashions, Hodnum's Favorite, Grandmoss pie
Sheeper's Short, Lord's Crunch, Stradd's Snack

And some even went a little past “ancient” and into “legendary”

Light's Strike-Tart, Bigubbunkupkilecic Pie, Pumpkin Chiffon Summon Pie
Snake's Swift Shortbread, Bigby's Gluring Strazbert, Mordenkainen's Potato Pie

This week’s bonus material: a few more pies, including some that were inexplicably PG-13.