Standing at 2,717 feet (828 m), the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the tallest building in the world (and casts quite a long shadow!). The design of the 163-floor structure is an abstraction of the Hymenocallis, a type of desert flower that has long petals extending from its center. The building has been well received since it opened in 2010; however, its construction was controversial as it was built primarily by workers from South Asia and East Asia who earned low wages and were housed in abysmal conditions.
Hong Kong International Airport is located on Chek Lap Kok, an island in Hong Kong’s western waters. Today, for the second day in a row, airport check-ins were suspended and dozens of outgoing flights were cancelled amid clashes between riot police and protesters. Protests in Hong Kong have been ongoing since June, when a proposed bill threatened to have people extradited into mainland China’s justice system. The airport is the world’s 8th busiest by passenger traffic, handling 74.7 million travelers in 2018.
He defies convention — somehow, he is both a male and someone who doesn’t like rugby, polo shirts, Vespas, steroids, talking over people, or the color blue. (You don’t want to be a Tomgirl. Nobody will ever want to date or hire you. Everybody knows this.)
Daddy’s Little Prince
His parents’ goal is that he’ll settle down with a woman who can support him financially. The woman will not propose until after she has sowed every single one of her wild oats; meanwhile, he will wait, indulging only in self-bettering activities such as watching reruns of The West Wing, completing national park-themed jigsaw puzzles, and consuming Spirulina. His parents caution him not to live with the woman before marriage, because you know what they say about buying the cow when you can get the milk for free. (He is the cow.)
Pageant King
After entering into society as a Dude-utante, he was crowned Mr. Oregon three years in a row. He crushed every competition category, including Interview, Wetsuit, and Evening Flannel. He once burped the entire Bill of Rights and the cause closest to his heart is saving the turtles.
Loose Man
Everyone gossips about how he gives his body freely for women’s pleasure. Does he have no self-respect? If he and his partner discover they have gonorrhea, then it is definitely his fault because she has natural biological urges; he is just a slut.
Groomzilla
He wants everything to be perfect on his special day (this IS the day he finally loses his virginity!), and as a result, he goes crazy. He is bossy. He is fussy. Why is he showing so much emotion? His virginity is the ultimate gift he can give his wife (again, it’s cool if she has had sex before; totally fine). He wears a white tux at his wedding to symbolize his purity, goodness, and his innocent desire for marshmallows. When the time comes, he leans in and kisses his new bride on the left nostril because he is so delightfully inexperienced.
Trophy Husband
Some say he’s a bit of a bimbo, a bit of a gold-digger, and a bit of a flirt. He spends all of his wife’s paycheck shopping for cufflinks that won’t clash with the caviar. He is high-maintenance, but he’s worth it. He is never described by his personality.
Boxer Burner
He expects equal pay, which is confusing because he is a man. (It is common knowledge that men should make less because they spend half of their working hours going on shopping sprees in their minds.) Also known as a Career Man, he is selfish and unnatural because he puts his career before starting a family. When he eventually feels professionally and spiritually stable enough to settle down and conceive, the doctor obsessively mentions his geriatric sperm. He is 35.
Stay-at-Home-Dad
He chauffeurs their five children (“I want a whole basketball team!” she decided years ago) across the city for dental cleanings, Taekwondo classes, tuba lessons, and earwax removal appointments for the twins. But he’s a Stay-at-Home-Dad, so he does all of this without ever setting foot outside the home. He really misses the scent of pine, the feel of wind, and having friends outside of his online Fantasy Football league. He imagines that having friends in 3D would be delightful.
Since he is not married, everyone pities him and whispers that he must be growing penile cobwebs. Cat Man does not own a cat. (He’s actually highly allergic.)
Boob-Buster
He’s the archetypal Hero.
Male Scientist/ Athlete/ Engineer/ Mathematician/ Doctor/ Firefighter/ Boss/ CEO/ President
In the rare cases that a man is able to break the pink-tinted glass ceiling and therefore does not align with one of the aforementioned archetypes, his title must NEVER be mentioned without the word “male.”
Do you wake up each morning with fear in your heart?
Do you fall asleep each night with doubts in your mind?
I felt these things once. Then I discovered a proven program of Zen meditation that voided my desires and left me with nothing but bliss.
I can teach you my secret.
The only catch?
You must be willing to do this:
Yes, that’s right, you must master my zero weird tricks.
Here is my offer to you today. For just zero payments of $0, I will teach you nothing. As soon as you have learned it, you will be free.
My program can be used in your home or apartment, in a cubicle, on a park bench, or in a prison cell, though these are all the same.
If you want my zero weird tricks, perfect: join my email list and I will send you no emails every day for zero days then unsubscribe you automatically. Goodbye.
My program is not like others.
Other programs promise flat stomachs, great riches, or the incessant clapping of hands and tongues.
I, instead, offer this:
Are you skeptical? I understand. I was skeptical once too. Skeptical of zero tricks.
But now I believe.
Why? Because nothing works. It works amazingly.
Do not just take my word for it.
Listen to the incredible testimonials of my students:
“ ” – Laura
“ ” – Daniel
“ ” – Jeannette
“Wow, I love it!” – Bob
Bob was given a full refund of $0 and kicked out of my program.
Do you wish to avoid Bob’s mistakes?
I will show you how.
To begin, it is simple.
Fill a glass with water, and put the glass on a plate.
Have you done it? Good.
Now empty the glass.
Now remove the glass.
Now remove the plate.
What remains?
That, my friend, is my proven program.
It changes lives.
People hear of my program and give an incredulous stare. They want some “better tricks.”
They ask, “If I want to feel better, shouldn’t I maybe eat an apple or go for a walk?”
“Your program is so cheap! It sounds too good to be true!” they cry.
“Funny how life is like that,” I answer.
Now it is time to ask yourself… Are you ready to reach nirvana by closing your eyes and subtracting your thoughts from themselves?
Welcome.
Do you want to become one with a single raindrop that reflects the universe on its surface and holds emptiness at its center?
Hello.
Are you prepared to put away your fears and complaints, and stare at a waterfall for fifteen hours?
That’s nice, but it’s too many tricks. Come back in a month when you are ready to do less. Preferably nothing.
If you feel ready to start, then please do not look for my BUY NOW! button as I have none. I do not accept money since I have nowhere to put it.
Instead, you will find my program by looking through an infinite window in a room with no walls.
Or you will find it resting on a motionless breeze in a place with no air.
Or you will find it at my ClickFunnels landing page, here:
Choose one.
Then act now. Or later. Or never.
Will my offer today last? Surely nothing lasts.
One day you and I and everyone we know will cease.
But my zero weird tricks will remain.
A tasteless taste.
A soundless sound.
A formless form.
Are you contemplating these things?
Then my program is working already.
Could it help your friends and loved ones too?
Could we change the world together if you share my totally blank infographics on Instagram?
These questions remind me of a story.
Once a great master, Zeno, was approached by an ambitious politician.
The politician sought wisdom, so that he could create utopia.
“Oh, great master Zeno,” the politician said, “How shall I become enlightened?”
The master replied, “Enlightenment is simple. To find it, you must first climb a mountain with no height.”
The politician said, “Old man, that’s impossible! How do you climb a mountain with no height?”
The master replied, “Zero steps at a time.”
After pausing, he added, “And the next ten people to do so will automatically receive this FREE, limited-edition Contigo Travel Mug.”
TIL the dictionary isn’t as much an instruction guide to the English language, as it is a record of how people are using it. Words aren’t added because they’re OK to use, but because a lot of people have been using them.
July 26th, 2019: T-Rex really did make this bet, ten years ago this very night!! It's like the old saying goes: what even is the point of having a decade-plus-long art project if you're not going to have your past self toss balls for your future self to catch?
To Whom It May Concern, or To Whom It May Not Concern Whatsoever,
Thank you for considering my application to show up in a building for 40 hours a week doing whatever tasks you want me to do. I am excited for the opportunity to dedicate my most productive hours, days, weeks, months, and potentially years of my life to your enterprise, in exchange for your giving me paper that allows me to stay alive.
I am reaching out because I think that my skills match your needs as a company. I have a body and brain that can be transported wherever I am told to go; you, meanwhile, have a repository of funds — a small percentage of which could be used to secure my labor for as long as you care to keep me around. (And by around, I mean here on this Earth.)
I must say, I think I would be an excellent fit for your company culture. Upon some cursory research, I learned that your employees share a common purpose: showing up to the office every day and following instructions so that they can eat, have a place to sleep, and (maybe) get access to healthcare. I am confident that as a member of your corporate team, I would immediately demonstrate those qualities too.
I am also impressed by your benefits package. Not only do your employees receive money that allows them to purchase basic necessities — you also provide them with other money that can be used for luxury goods, like clothes, air conditioning units, and plane tickets home to visit their grandmothers in the hospital.
Further, I was encouraged to see that dedicated workers who receive conditional promotions over the course of a few decades or so are sometimes rewarded with additional money, in the height of largesse: this results in occasional day trips to the beach, the chance to own the dwelling they reside in, and even the right to stop performing labor in the last few years before their death (assuming natural causes).
If you look at my résumé, I think you’ll find that I have extensive relevant experience that I could bring to the table after onboarding. In the formative years of my life, I attended primary school in exchange for not being detained per truancy laws in my home state; I then matriculated to college, where I cut my teeth going to classes in exchange for a framed sheet of cardstock that was a prerequisite for submitting this application. (I also literally cut my teeth but couldn’t do anything about it because my parents don’t have dental insurance.)
During that time, I also took on several unpaid internships in exchange for the increased probability of securing other unpaid internships. So, all of this is to say: I know what it takes to voluntarily surrender my autonomy to an organization in an effort to continue existing. In other words, I am all about that hustle!
I understand that this is a competitive position, and you’ll be receiving hundreds of similar applications from other qualified individuals. And it would be ethically unjustifiable for me to argue that my humanity is somehow superior to that of the other applicants, and that you should select me, leaving the others to find some other means of making a living.
Yet, at the same time: I am arguing that my humanity is somehow superior to that of the other applicants. You should select me. Leave the others to find some other means of making a living.
I am fully aware of the prestige associated with this company and the role I would be taking on. That’s why I can pledge right now that if I am given an offer, I will happily field LinkedIn messages from future prospective employees and give them advice about how they too can improve their chances of serving your company’s interests. That advice will include, and be limited to, “just keep putting apps out there,” “be yourself in the interview,” and “you can mention my name but it probably won’t make a difference.”
Thank you so much for your consideration. I can’t wait to hear back from you. Really, I genuinely can’t.
Some good news from Australia. These are really beautiful sharks.
Almost all the world's species of rhino rays are critically endangered, based on devastating declines of more than 80 per cent over the past few decades due to the shark fin soup trade in Asia. But the rays have been sheltering in the safe and shallow waters of the Top End.
CityLiveSketch is an artistic project created by Italian artist Pietro Cataudella. This ongoing series features 3D architectural drawings that seem to jump off the page using perspective and shadow. Other drawings depict cartoon characters as well as famous paintings superimposed over other paintings and structures to create an unexpected effect.
The aim of CityLiveSketch is to showcase the beautiful world surrounding us, both the iconic places and the most characteristic views, using not only simple photos but also drawings made on a normal travel sketchbook.
See more of Pietro Cataudella's work on Instagram or at his website.
I have a feeling we’re in for a lot of manipulated videos as we get closer to the election. The Washington Post provides a guide for the different types. I hope they keep building on this with a guide on how to spot the fakes, but as they say, knowing is half the battle.
Ok, everyone can just subscribe to this feed already so I can stop sharing every. single. post.
Neural networks can be good at naming things, I’ve discovered. Recently I’ve been experimenting with a neural network called GPT-2, which OpenAI trained on a huge chunk of the internet. Thanks to a colab notebook implementation by Max Woolf, I’m able to fine-tune it on specific lists of data - cat names, for example. Drawing on its prior knowledge of how words tend to be used, GPT-2 can sometimes suggest new words and phrases that it thinks it’s seen in similar context to the words from my fine-tuning dataset. (It’ll also sometimes launch into Harry Potter fan fiction or conspiracy theories, since it saw a LOT of those online.)
One thing I’ve noticed GPT-2 doing is coming up with names that sound strangely like the names of self-aware AI spaceships in Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels. In the science fiction series, the ships choose their own names according to a sort of quirky sense of humor. The humans in the books may not appreciate the names, but there’s nothing they can do about them:
Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again Zero Credibility Fixed Grin Charming But Irrational So Much For Subtlety Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall
Now compare some of the effects pedals GPT-2 came up with:
Dangerous But Not Unbearably So Disastrously Varied Mental Model Dazzling So Beautiful Yet So Terrifying Am I really that Transhuman Love and Sex Are A Mercy Clause
Give Me A Reason Thou Shalt Warning Signs Kill All Humans
Did GPT-2 somehow have a built-in tendency to produce names that sounded like self-aware spaceships? How would it do if it was actually trained specifically on Culture ships?
A reader named Kelly sent me a list of 236 of Iain M. Banks’s Culture ship names from Wikipedia, and I trained the 345 million-parameter version of GPT-2 on them. As it turns out, I had to stop the training after just a few seconds (6 iterations) because GPT-2 was already beginning to memorize the entire list (can’t blame it; as far as it was concerned, memorizing the entire list was a perfect solution to the task I was asking for).
And yes. The answer is yes, naming science fiction AIs is something this real-life AI can do astonishingly well. I’ve selected some of the best to show you. First, there are the names that are clearly warship AIs:
Not Disquieting At All Surprise Surprise And That’s That! New Arrangement I Told You So Spoiler Alert Bonus Points! Collateral Damage Friendly Head Crusher Scruffy And Determined Race To The Bottom
And there are the sassy AIs:
Absently Tilting To One Side ASS FEDERATION A Small Note Of Disrespect Third Letter of The Week Well Done and Thank You Just As Bad As Your Florist What Exactly Is It With You? Let Me Just Post This Protip: Don’t Ask Beyond Despair Way Too Personal Sobering Reality Check Charming (Except For The Dogs)
The names of these AIs are even more inscrutable than usual. To me, this makes them much scarier than the warships.
Hot Pie Lightly Curled Round The Wrist Color Gold Normally Comes With Silence 8 Angry Doughnut Feelings Mini Cactus Cake Fight Happy to Groom Any Animals You Want Stuffy Waffles With Egg On Top Pickles And Harpsichord Just As Likely To Still Be Intergalactic Jellyfish Someone Did Save Your Best Cookie By Post-Apocalyptic Means LGRPllvmkiqquubkhakqqtdfayyyjjmnkkgalagi'qvqvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
At least it does sound like some of these AIs will be appeased by snacks.
Bonus content: more AI names, including a few anachronisms (“Leonard Nimoy for President” for example)
AI is going to be huge for artists, and the latest demonstration comes from Nvidia, which has built prototype software that turns doodles into realistic landscapes.
Using a type of AI model known as a generative adversarial network (GAN), the software gives users what Nvidia is calling a “smart paint brush.” This means someone can make a very basic outline of a scene (drawing, say, a tree on a hill) before filling in their rough sketch with natural textures like grass, clouds, forests, or rocks.
The results are not quite photorealistic, but they’re impressive all the same.
This software isn’t groundbreaking exactly — researchers have shown off similar tools in the past, including one from Google that turns doodles into clipart — but it is the most polished demonstration of this concept we’ve seen to date. The software generates AI landscapes instantly, and it’s surprisingly intuitive. For example, when a user draws a tree and then a pool of water underneath it, the model adds the tree’s reflection to the pool.
There has been a surge in awareness of the damage that plastic pollution does to our planet in recent years. It has spurred a number of campaigns to remove single-use plastics from our daily lives. This extends to food packaging, with a Waitrose supermarket in the city of Oxford recently launching a package-free trial.
Many people bemoan the large amount of packaging that supermarkets use, particularly for fruit and vegetables, most of which have their own natural protection. Nonetheless, a …
Deborah Harry Does Not Like Interviews, a short documentary by Meghan Fredric.
Blondie’s Debbie Harry endures years of superficial, tedious, and demeaning questions from journalists until she devises a brilliant way to turn interviews on their head.
I laughed out loud, literally and LOUDLY, so many times!
So the other day I heard from Change.org, a company that lets anyone make an online petition and gather signatures. In over a decade of existence, they’ve hosted about 5 million unique petitions.
Some of the petitions are VERY unique - like the ongoing petition to sell Montana to Canada, which gathered so many signatures that the Montana House of Representatives introduced a bill to release a statement opposing the sale. The bill failed to pass.
The question that Change.org - and I - became obsessed with is: if I trained a neural network on the full list of petitions, what kinds of demands would it generate?
The neural net I ended up using is 117M-GPT-2, by OpenAI, which is better at stringing together readable sentences than some of the other neural nets I’ve used. It also comes with a lot of prelearned knowledge about how words are used in sentences, and how they relate to one another, so it will even suggest things that aren’t in the training data sometimes. As training data to imitate, I gave it about 190k petition titles (heavily filtered for quality). I trained it for several minutes on Google’s free colaboratory GPUs (thanks to a colaboratory notebook put together by Twitter user @roadrunning01), and then played with the sampling parameters (mostly truncation) until it was producing very weird (but still readable) petition titles.
Just like real Change.org petitions, the AI-generated demands were clustered in a few general categories:
Bad ideas/Lost Causes: Dogs are not a thing!! Dog Owners are NOT Human beings!! Help Bring Climate Change to the Philippines! Taco, Chipotle, and Starbucks: Bring Back Lettuce Fries Filipinos: We want your help stopping the killing of dolphins in Brazil in 1970’s Mr.person: I want a fresh puppy in my home Simple Stats Administration: Make Another proboscis. Officials at Prince Alfred Hospital: Aurora to Tell The Company To Send A Baby to Mars Sign Petition for Houston’s New Fireworks to be Offensive
What? Make a mudchat Please not punish myself with a $20 fines. Unicorn: Stop breaking crab products Rooster Teeth : Have Rooster Teeth Fix Your Responses To Obama The people of Great Adventure: get lil bl00ty moose loyal to us The People of Kashmir : Ban of Airbrushed Bamboo Trees By Pune Barack Obama, Barack Obama, and Barack Obama: STOP PING MY HUSBERS! Saskatoon Police Service: No more scootty One Highway, Four Hens, Highway 1 Rhino Amish Culture Association: Cut the horns of the congon sturgeon & treat it better!
Seems reasonable: Harmonix: Increase the speed limit on Easton Road to 5mph. Everyone: Put the Bats on YouTube! Donald Trump: Change the name of the National Anthem to be called the “Fiery Gator” Taco Bell: Offer hot wings and non-perfumed water for all customers Do not attack the unions! Keep cowpies! Anyone: Get a cat to sing on air! The people of the world: Change the name of the planet to the Planet of the Giants Dr James Alexander: Make the Power of the Mongoose a Part of the School’s Curriculum
There must be a story behind this one: Theresa May MP: Stop The Pigeon Rally in Great Britain Karen’s mother: Please bring your own breadsticks for Karen. baseleine planetarium: Unnecessary insults are not welcome in our flat, end it! Anyone: Stop the use of the word ‘shoe’ in a derogatory way. City of Toronto, The City of Toronto, The City of Toronto: Remove the “Bam Bam” sign Basketball Club of St. Louis: Stop the Feral Horseshoes at the Basketball Club Tom Heneghan as OBE Change Council Localimian: Dammit you! Denny: Put one more black bee sweater on Em1nt du Poste Belfast City Council: Fire the cabbages at Clutch MarketI Kim Hsu: Tougher Penalties for Pedestrians and Elephants on City Street in Austin Texas
As bonus content: I have here some entire petitions generated by 117M-GPT-2. The full text for “One Highway, Four Hens, Highway 1″ is a TRIP. Sign up for bonus content here!
Last year I trained a neural net to generate new names for kittens, by giving it a list of over 8,000 existing cat names to imitate. Starting from scratch, with zero knowledge of English or any context for the words and letter combinations it was trying out, it tried to predict what letters might be found in cat names, and in which order. Its names ranged from the strange to the completely nonsensical to the highly unfortunate (Retchion, Hurler, and Trickles were some of its suggestions). Without knowledge of English beyond its list of cat names, it didn't know what letter combinations to avoid.
So I decided to revisit the cat-naming problem, this time using a neural net that had a lot more context. GPT-2, trained by OpenAI on a huge chunk of the internet, knows which words and letter combinations tend to be used together on the English-language internet. It also has (mostly) figured out which words and letter combinations to avoid, at least in some contexts (though it does tend to suddenly switch contexts, and then, yikes).
Read the whole thing — with pictures! Apparently the Morris Animal Refuge is using this algorithm to name the animals it offers for adoption.
